The Toys We Wrapped Twice

What Loretta said to me

Before I left, Loretta walked me out to the car. The boys were already in the back seat with their presents piled on their laps, and it was getting dark the way it does early in January, the sky going from gray to a darker gray.

She put her hand on the car door before I could open it.

“You knew,” she said. “When you came in today.”

“I found the receipt the day after Christmas,” I said.

“And you didn’t call me.”

“He’s your son,” I said. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you.”

She was quiet for a while. Her breath made little clouds in the cold.

“You let those boys tell it,” she said. “Because they didn’t know what they were telling.”

I felt my face get hot, because that was the part I had prayed about, the part I was not proud of. I started to say something, and she shook her head.

“I’m not scolding you, honey,” she said. “If you’d told me in my kitchen, he’d have had a story ready. You didn’t give him time to have a story. He had to look at those tags.”

She looked through the car window at Ty, who was holding the fire station box against his chest and already half asleep.

“His daddy would’ve been ashamed of him today,” she said. “And proud of him at the end. I’m going to hold on to the end part.”

The envelope

It snowed on the fifth of January, a real snow, six inches, the first good one of the winter. The schools in Franklin County called off by six in the morning, and the boys were out the door in their boots before I had my coffee.

Jeremy pulled into my driveway at noon. He had the day off, because the roads were too bad to haul. He got out of his pickup and came up to the door, and he had a plain white envelope in his hand.

He held it out to me. On the front, in his blocky trucker’s printing, it said: 640. I’m sorry. J.

I opened it there on the porch. It was all twenties and tens and fives, and a few ones, the way money looks when somebody has put it together from a lot of different places.

“I sold my bow,” he said, before I could ask. “And the big rolling toolbox I never use. And I drove two extra loads to Hutchinson for a guy Mom knows from church. I’m caught up on the pickup through the end of the month.”

“Jeremy,” I said. “You didn’t have to sell your bow.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

I did not argue with him. I think a man needs to be allowed to fix his own mistake, all the way, with his own hands. If I had told him to keep it, I would have been taking that away from him.

So I said thank you, and I put the envelope in my coat pocket, and I hollered for the boys.

“Where are we going?” Ty yelled from the yard.

“Grandma’s hill,” Jeremy yelled back. “Get your sleds.”