The Sunday Drive That Settled Daddy’s Rent

Sherry looked at me, and I looked back at her and did not look away. Then she looked at the floor and started to cry, not loud, just a steady leaking that she kept wiping with the back of her hand.

“It went to the hospital,” she said. “Roger’s hospital. Daddy, it all went to the hospital.”

And then it came out of her, all of it, in a rush, like water out of a broken pipe.

Three years ago, the same fall Daddy broke his hip, Roger had his heart attack at the lumberyard. They flew him to Louisville and did a triple bypass. There were complications, an infection, a second surgery, and five weeks in the hospital.

Roger’s insurance through the lumberyard covered most of it. Most. But the helicopter was out of network, and the second surgeon was out of network, and Roger was out of work for seven months on short disability that paid sixty percent. When it was all added up they owed a little over sixty thousand dollars.

“They were calling the house every day,” Sherry said. “Every single day. They were going to put a lien on the house. Roger was laying there in the bed with his chest stapled up, and every time the phone rang his color went bad. The doctor told me stress could kill him. Kill him, Daddy.”

She was crying hard now.

“And Bobby’s check came that first November. Thirteen thousand dollars. And I was sitting at your kitchen table going through your mail, and I held it in my hand, and I thought, Daddy’s not going to miss it. Teresa said she’d help with the bill. Daddy’s got the land. And I thought I’d pay it back. I swear I was going to pay it back.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a little spiral notebook, the kind you get at the dollar store, and held it out to Daddy with both hands.

“I wrote down every one,” she said. “Every check. Every date. I’ve got it all wrote down. I was going to pay back every dime when Roger got back on his feet.”

Daddy took the notebook. He opened it and turned the pages slowly. I could see her round handwriting from across the room, the same handwriting that used to write my name on my lunch sack.

“Does Roger know?” Daddy said.

Sherry shook her head. “He thinks the hospital forgave part of it. He thinks we got on a payment plan. He’s not well enough to know. He’s still not well enough.”

“You told me the rent was paying my bill,” Daddy said quietly.

“I know.”

“And you told your sister I was broke.”

“I know.” She could barely get the words out. “I know, Daddy. I knew if I told Teresa the rent was coming, she’d ask where it went. And I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anybody. I just kept thinking next month I’ll figure something out. And then it was a year. And then it was three.”

Daddy closed the notebook. He sat with it in his lap a long time, his big hands on top of it.

“Sherry,” he said. “Look at me.”

She looked up at him.

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

She opened her mouth and nothing came out.

“I’ve got 200 acres of ground,” Daddy said. “I’ve got a renter who’s paid on time every year for twenty-two years. Your husband was in the hospital with his chest open. You think I’d have said no? You think there’s anything on God’s green earth I wouldn’t have given to keep Roger alive?”