The Shoe List at Sunday Dinner

Rosie needed sneakers too, and she needed shoes for Easter, because she had worn her old ones to every Sunday and every birthday party for a year and the strap had broken twice.

Ethan had grown two inches since Christmas. His jeans stopped at his ankles and his sneakers had a split in the side that he had been hiding with a black marker.

Kaitlyn needed softball cleats. Practices had started the second week of March. She had been wearing a pair from the church clothes closet that were a half size too small, and she had not told me either.

That is the thing about children whose parents are divorced. They learn very early which things not to ask for. Mine had learned it faster than I wanted them to.

I sat down at the kitchen table on Thursday night, after everybody was asleep, and I wrote it all out in pencil the way my mother used to do her Christmas lists.

Ben, sneakers, little boys’ size 13. $32.

Rosie, sneakers and Easter shoes, girls’ size 3. $58.

Ethan, sneakers and two pair of jeans, men’s size 7 shoe. $96.

Kaitlyn, softball cleats and practice pants, women’s size 8. $88.

Socks, underwear and spring church clothes for all four, figured as close as I could from the sale paper at the Walmart in Mayfield. $190.

At the bottom I drew a line and wrote $464. Then I sat and looked at it for a long while.

Four hundred sixty-four dollars was not a fortune. It was not even close to what Duane still owed.

But I did not have it that month, and the kids could not wait for the month I did.

I did not decide to hand the list to Evelyn until Sunday morning, and I almost did not do it then.

My first thought, on Thursday, had been to give it to Duane. I pictured handing it to him at the door when he came for his weekend, and I pictured him looking at it, and I pictured him saying he would get to it.

He would mean it. That was the trouble. Duane always means it at the time.

Then on Friday, Evelyn called to ask what she should make for Sunday dinner. She did that every week.

She had been doing it since before the divorce, and she had not stopped after.

“And what do those babies need?” she asked, at the end, the way she always did. “You tell me if they need anything, Shawna.”

She had asked me that question every Friday for two years. I had always said they were fine.

It was a point of pride with me. I did not want my children to be anybody’s charity, not even their grandmother’s.

That Friday I did not say they were fine. I did not say anything at all for a second, and she noticed. Evelyn notices everything.

“Shawna?”

“I’ll see you Sunday,” I said. “I’ll bring the green beans.”

I went back and forth all Saturday. I worked the drive-through at the branch until noon and counted other people’s money and thought about whether what I was planning was cruel.

But I kept coming back to the same thing. Evelyn had asked me what the babies needed.

She had asked me every week for two years. And this time, for once, the honest answer was on a piece of paper in my purse.

I would not explain. I would not accuse. I would hand her the list and tell her the plain truth if she asked, and whatever she did with it would be up to her.