The Umpire Who Called His Son Out
The envelope was sitting on my mother’s kitchen table between the sugar bowl and the church bulletin, and I knew Courtney’s handwriting before I was all the way through the door.
It was a Tuesday in early March. I had stopped by on my way home from the feed mill like I do most days, still smelling like ground corn and diesel, to see if Mom needed anything carried.
“Sit down, Brandon,” she said. “I made the ham and beans. There’s cornbread in the oven, so don’t you dare tell me you already ate.”
I didn’t sit down. I picked up the envelope instead. It was addressed to Pam Kuehl in blue ink, with a little flower drawn next to the return address, the way Courtney used to sign birthday cards.
Inside was a sheet of notebook paper folded in thirds. At the top it said Jace Travel Ball, Spring and Summer. Below that it said Total $900, and below that, Your half, $450.
At the bottom, in the same blue ink, she had written, “Thanks so much, Pam! You’re the best. Checks to me is fine.”
Then a smiley face, the kind with a curl of hair on top.
I read it twice. Then I looked up, and my mother was standing at the counter with her checkbook already open and her good pen in her hand.
“Mom,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“It’s for Jace,” she said, and she said it fast, like she had practiced it. “It’s for baseball. I don’t mind, honey. Really, I don’t mind one bit.”
She minded. I could tell by the way she kept her eyes on the checkbook instead of on me.
My mother worked the teller line at the First State Bank for thirty-one years, and she counts every dollar twice.
She retired three years ago on a pension that covers her lights, her groceries, her church envelope and not a whole lot more.
Four hundred and fifty dollars was a month of her breathing room.
“Put the pen down,” I said. I said it gently, but I said it.
“Brandon, it’s not worth a fight. You know how she gets. I’d rather just pay it and be done, and then everybody’s happy and Jace gets to play.”
That was the whole thing right there, in my mother’s own words. A bill isn’t a crime.
Nobody was going to jail over a sheet of notebook paper. And Mom would have paid it just to keep the peace.
So I folded the paper back into thirds, put it in my coat pocket, and told her I would take care of it myself.
She argued for about a minute. Then she got the cornbread out of the oven.
Courtney and I were married eleven years. We bought a three-bedroom ranch on the north side of Paxton the year Jace was born, with a chain-link fence and a maple in the front yard that dropped helicopters all over the driveway every spring.
When we split up two years ago, we sold it. After the mortgage and the realtor and the closing costs, there was $104,000 left.
My lawyer said I had a right to half of it, and he said it more than once.
I let Courtney keep all of it. I want to be honest that it was my choice.
She wanted to buy a place in the same school district so Jace wouldn’t have to change schools, and she needed the whole amount to do it.