The Password on the Shop Door

The stairs

Ray came by the hardware store at about two. He bought a box of sandpaper he did not need and told me the whole thing, standing by the paint counter with his cap in his hands.

When he finished, he said, “He’s going to come see you. Give him a chance to say it.”

“I will,” I said.

“He’s not a bad man, Megan,” Ray said. “He’s a scared one. That’s different, but it’s not an excuse.”

At six-thirty that evening, there was a knock on the apartment door. I knew it was him by the knock.

Three short ones, the same way he knocked on the basement door for five years when supper was ready.

Wayne was standing on the narrow landing in his navy coveralls with the shop’s grease still on his knuckles. He had my envelope in his hand.

It was open now, and the pages had been folded and unfolded so many times the creases had gone soft.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

I let him in. He stood in the middle of the front room and looked around at the boxes and the lamp and the drawing on the refrigerator. He looked at the drawing for a long time.

“Tyler did that,” he said.

“He put it in my desk box Saturday morning. I didn’t know until I unpacked.”

Wayne sat down on one of my two kitchen chairs. He set the envelope on the table and put both hands flat on top of it, like he was holding it down in a wind.

“I read every page,” he said. “Four times. I didn’t know about half of it. I knew you did the payroll. I didn’t know about the filters. I didn’t know you called the bank every time a deposit ran close. I didn’t know you got Patty’s surgery paid.”

“It was my job,” I said.

“It wasn’t your job. That’s the whole point. I never made it your job. I just let you do it.”

He was quiet a minute. A truck went by on Main Street below, and the radiator clanked twice.

“The shop lost forty-one thousand dollars last year,” he said. “You know that. You printed it. And then that tax letter came, and you knew about that too, because I’m the one who told you to hold the deposit and you told me not to.”

“I wasn’t keeping score, Wayne.”

“I know you weren’t. I was.” He rubbed his face with both hands.

“Every time I walked past that front desk, I figured you were looking at me and seeing a man who was losing his shop. And then you asked to be paid, and I didn’t have it, and I couldn’t say I didn’t have it in front of your mother.”

“So you wrote that,” I said.

“So I made you the problem.” He looked straight at me then.

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever done to anybody in my family. I’m ashamed of it. Ray was right, and Lisa was right, and that boy with his drawing was right. I’m sorry, Megan. I’m sorry for the post, and I’m sorry for the five years.”

I had imagined this moment, honestly. I had imagined being cold, or making him wait.

But when it came, I just felt tired, and a little sad for him, sitting at my kitchen table with grease on his hands.

“Thank you,” I said. “I needed to hear that.”

He nodded. Then he pulled a folded piece of shop letterhead out of his coverall pocket and slid it across the table.

On it, in his blocky capital letters, he had written a number and three words.

“Nineteen an hour,” he said. “Three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I ran the numbers this afternoon, the way you would. I can carry that if I quit doing customer jobs at cost because I’m too soft to say no. Ray says I can raise my labor rate four dollars and nobody in this county will blink.”

“Ray’s right,” I said. “You’re eight dollars under the shop in Seymour.”

He almost smiled. “I figured you’d know that.”

“I’ll keep my two days with Mr. Hensley,” I said. “And I’ll keep this apartment.”

“I’d expect you to.” He paused. “The boys asked about Thursdays. Ethan asked me four times in the truck this morning. He thinks reading help won’t happen without you.”

I thought about Tyler’s careful handwriting, and Ethan with his hat on backwards, and the drop-off line, and the car behind me honking while I told them they were not to blame.

“I’ll take them on Thursdays,” I said. “Drop-off and pickup. Not because I owe it. Because I want to.”

Wayne put his hand over his eyes for a second. When he took it away, they were wet, and he did not try to hide it, and I liked him better for that than I had in two years.

“Yes,” I said then, about the paper on the table. “I’ll take the job.”