The Sunday Drive That Settled Daddy’s Rent

Sherry put her face in her hands and sobbed.

“I’d have given it to you,” Daddy said. “I’d have signed it over at the kitchen table. All you had to do was ask me like I was still somebody.”

That one landed on both of us. I felt it go through me where I stood. Because I had not asked him either, not for three years. I had paid his bill and never once sat down with him and said, Daddy, let’s look at your money. I had treated him like a man who could not be bothered, the same as Sherry had.

He let Sherry cry a while. Then he said, “Teresa. Come here and sit down.”

I pulled the other chair up next to Sherry’s. Daddy looked from one of us to the other.

“Here is how this is going to go,” he said. “And I don’t want any argument from either one of you, because I’m eighty-four years old and I’ve earned the right to say it once and be done.”

We both nodded.

“Bobby’s mailing the rent to me from now on. I told him that yesterday. It comes here, to me, and I’ll sign it over to this place myself. That ought to cover what my checks don’t, near enough. Teresa, you’re done paying. Not one more dollar out of your pocket for me. You hear?”

“Daddy, I don’t mind.”

“I mind,” he said. “That’s the end of that.”

Then he turned to Sherry.

“Sherry, you’ll keep my power of attorney for now, because if I have a stroke somebody’s got to have it, and you live close. But you’ll not write a check on my account again unless I’ve seen it.”

He turned to me. “Teresa, you’re going to come by on the first of every month and go over my statement with me. Both of you are going to have the password to look at it. No more secrets in this family. Not one.”

Sherry nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”

“And the money,” Daddy said. “The rent you took. I’m not going to ask for it back.”

Sherry looked up, startled.

“It went to keep Roger alive,” Daddy said. “I’d have given it to him. I’m giving it to him now. That’s done.”

He held up one finger before she could speak.

“But your sister paid my bill for three years while that money was in your hands. That’s her money you spent, the way I see it. Hers and Doug’s. So you’ll pay her back. Every dollar. As you’re able, but every dollar.”

“I will,” Sherry said. “I will, Daddy.”

“I’ll say what you’ll pay,” Daddy said. “Five hundred a month, and you’ll start the first of December. And if Roger takes a bad turn and you can’t make it one month, you come tell me. Don’t you ever hide a thing from me again. You come sit in that chair and tell me.”

Sherry got up out of her chair and went to him. She knelt down beside the recliner and laid her head on his knee, the way we used to do when we were small and he sat in his chair after supper reading the farm paper.

Daddy put his big old hand on top of her head and left it there.

“I forgive you, Sissy,” he said. Nobody had called her Sissy in forty years. “I forgave you before you came in that door. But forgiving’s not the same as letting it slide. You understand me?”