The Card of Thanks in the County Paper

The kitchen table

By that Wednesday night there were eleven pieces of paper on our kitchen table.

Abby laid them out in a row, the way she lays out name cards on the first day of school, and added them up twice on the back of an envelope.

“Six thousand four hundred,” she said. “Exactly. Like she was aiming for it.”

I sat down across from her. Through the window the beans across the road were just up in rows, and the light was that long gold June light that does not quit until almost ten.

Six thousand four hundred dollars was most of what we had. For two years we had been saving for a down payment, and Abby’s account at the bank in town had nine thousand one hundred in it.

On top of the refrigerator sat a big glass pickle jar where we threw every quarter we got back in change. Our first-house jar. It was more of a promise than a fund.

“I’m going to call her,” I said.

“I know,” Abby said. “Go ahead. I’ll be right here.”

I called Sherri’s cell phone. She picked up on the second ring, bright and happy, the way she always answers.

She asked how the lake was. She asked if we had gotten the pictures yet.

I told her about the bills. I said it slow and plain.

I said I had eleven invoices on my table with my name on them, and all of them were for things she had ordered for herself, and that they came to six thousand four hundred dollars.

There was a pause on the line. Not a guilty pause. A confused one.

“Well, honey,” she said, “the groom’s side pays. That’s how it’s done. The bride’s family does the reception and the groom’s family does everything else. I just put it under your name because it’s your wedding.”

“Sherri, I’m the groom,” I said. “I’m not the groom’s family. You’re the groom’s family.”

“Your dad and I don’t have that kind of money,” she said. “You know that.”

I did not say what I thought, which was that we did not have that kind of money either. I asked her if Dad knew.

“Your dad doesn’t need to be bothered with every little thing,” she said. “He was so proud that day. Let him have it.”

Then she said she had to go, that she had supper on the stove, and that she loved me and she loved Abby and that it had been the most beautiful day. She hung up before I could answer.

Why we paid

People have asked me since why we did not just send every bill back with a note that said to collect from Sherri.

Here is my answer, the same one I gave Abby that night. The vendors billed the groom because the groom’s name was on the paper. They did the work, and they did it well.

They were small shops. A dressmaker working out of her own house in Orange City. A florist with two employees.

Bev, who has catered every funeral lunch at our church for twenty years. They should not have to chase my stepmother.

And there was the reception. I could have turned that driver around in front of Abby’s whole family and made him go find Sherri on the dance floor.

I could have started a fight between the Pedersens and the Bakers at my own wedding with her eighty-six-year-old grandpa sitting three feet away. I would rather have paid for every bill twice.

“I’m not going to stand behind a florist and make her chase anybody,” I told Abby. “That’s not how I want to start out.”

Abby turned the envelope with her math on it over and over in her hands. She is careful with money in a way I was not raised to be.

“It’s our house money,” she said.

“I know.”

“It’s two years.”

“I know, Ab.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then she stood up, went to the drawer by the stove, and got out the checkbook.

She set it in front of me with a pen on top of it.

“Then we pay them,” she said. “Every one. And we pay them this week, so nobody has to wonder.”