The Check I Framed Over Her Chair

I want to say something here about the bank. I looked it up, because I wanted to be sure. A personal check is usually good for six months. After that, a bank does not have to honor it. Delphine knew that better than I did. She wrote checks for a living.

So she knew that sometime in September, that check would turn into a piece of paper. She could have just waited it out. She could have told herself that it would all go away on its own.

I never needed six months. I had decided what that check was worth in about three seconds at a steakhouse. I just needed her to decide it, too.

The fifth Sunday was the middle of June, and it was hot, and I fried chicken anyway because Emmett had asked for it all week.

I made green beans with a little bacon, and mashed potatoes, and warmed a pan of yeast rolls. I put on my mint green blouse, the one Emmett liked. The kitchen was so warm I had both windows open and the box fan going.

Delphine came in with a peach cobbler. She was wearing a black blouse and the pearl earrings Wendell had given her for their thirtieth anniversary. Her hair was cut in that sleek silver bob she had done every four weeks in Columbia, and not one piece of it was out of place.

She set the cobbler on the counter and said hello to me. Not Carly, not dear. Just hello. Then she went and sat down in her chair.

I brought the bowl of mashed potatoes to the table and set it down in the middle, and I smiled at her, and she looked up at the frame.

She had done that every Sunday for a month. But this time she did not look away.

Emmett was on his feet, passing a dish down to his daddy. He was telling a story about a squirrel that had shorted out a transformer behind the high school, and how the whole football field went dark during a Friday night game last fall.

Wendell was not listening to the squirrel story. He had a roll in his hand, and he kept glancing at his wife and then down at his plate, smiling, and I did not understand why until much later.

Delphine laid her fork down on her plate. She did it carefully, the way you set something down that you are afraid will break.

Then she pushed her chair back and stood up, and she reached over her head with both hands, and she lifted the frame off its nail.

“Mama?” Emmett said. He still had the dish in his hands.

She held the frame against her chest for a second. Then she turned it around so it faced her son.

“There is something you need to know about this check,” she said.

Then she looked straight at me, and I knew she was asking me whether I wanted to be the one to tell it.

I shook my head, a little. It was hers.

She looked back at Emmett.