The 1412 Birthday Cards for Grandma

So Larry holds her checkbook. He pays her bills. Grandma could overrule him any day she liked, but she picked him for the job, and she has never once gone over her own son’s head.

I had brought him the party idea the week after Christmas. The Legion hall rents for two hundred dollars. I had priced ham buns for a hundred people and a big cake from the bakery in Ogallala and coffee and paper plates.

It came to eight hundred dollars, give or take. Out of her savings, which were hers.

He had said he would think about it. Now he had thought about it.

I dried the plate and put it away. Then I went into the front room and sat on the footstool by her chair the way I did when I was nine.

“Grandma,” I said, but she spoke before I could get any further. “I heard him,” she said. “I know you did,” I said.

She was quiet for a while. The radio was playing the market report. Fats were up a dollar.

“He’s not wrong that I don’t get out,” she said finally. “But I know more people than Larry thinks.” I told her I knew she did.

“I know more people than Larry has met.” She smiled a little when she said that, but her hands were still on the afghan.

I went back to the bank at one o’clock and counted out a farmer’s deposit wrong twice. My drawer was off by a twenty at closing, and I found it stuck to the bottom of a strap.

That night I sat at my own kitchen table and told my husband, Jeff, the whole thing.

Jeff drives a feed truck. He is not a man who wastes words. He listened, and then he got up and got two cups of coffee, and set one in front of me.

“It’s her money,” he said. “But she won’t go over Larry’s head. You can’t make him spend it.”

“I know,” I said. “You could pay for the hall yourself,” he said.

“We could,” I said. “But then it’s me throwing a party over Larry’s head. He’d take it as a slap. And he’d still be the one sitting at the table with her every Sunday.”

Jeff nodded. He knows Larry. He has helped Larry work calves for fifteen springs.

“And honestly,” I said, “I’m not sure the party is the point. I’m not sure he’s wrong that it would be a lot of strangers in a cold hall. That’s what scares me.”

That was the truth. It was her money, and she would not overrule her son. I could not make him spend a dime of it.

But nobody needs permission to ask for a birthday card.

The next noon, I asked her first. “Grandma, what would you think about cards? I could put a little notice in the paper. A card shower. They do it for people who turn ninety, a hundred. People send cards.”

She set her spoon down. She was eating chicken noodle, the kind Glenda makes with the thick egg noodles, and she took her time.

“Who would send me a card?” she asked. “Anybody who remembers you,” I told her.

“That’s a short list at my age,” she said. Then she laughed, that dry little laugh she has. “Everybody who remembers me is dead or in Arizona.”