The Braid I Learned for My Wife

Why I didn’t

We talked about it that night in our bedroom with the door shut, after Ella had gone up. Carrie sat on the edge of the bed. I sat on the floor in front of her so I would not be standing over her.

“I want her gone tomorrow,” I said.

“I know you do.”

“She’s taking three hundred dollars a week from us to sit on the porch, Carrie. Ella’s thirteen and she’s the one brushing your hair before school.”

“I know.” Carrie looked at the window. “Matt, she’s my sister. She lost her job and her house in the same year. She’s sleeping in Jill Harper’s sewing room on a fold-out bed. If you throw her out of this house in a fight, she’ll never set foot in it again, and she’ll have nobody.”

“She’s got nobody because of how she treats people.”

“Maybe.” Carrie took my hand with her left one. “But I don’t want it to end in a fight. Please. Pay her what we owe her. Thank her. Let her go home with her head up. I’m asking you.”

That was the whole reason. Not money, not law, not anything a sensible person could have argued me out of. My wife asked me not to throw her sister out in a fight, and in nineteen years of marriage I had never once regretted doing what Carrie asked me in that voice.

“Okay,” I said. “Friday’s the end of the eight weeks anyway. I’ll pay her through Friday and we’ll manage.”

“How are we going to manage?” she asked. Not mean. Just scared.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll figure it out.”

Friday

I took Friday morning off. Dale did not even ask why. I think by then the whole shop knew something was wrong at our house and was waiting for me to say what.

Tonya came down for coffee at nine. I had the envelope on the kitchen table. Three hundred-dollar bills, the last ones out of my dresser.

“That’s the last week,” I said. “Through today. Carrie and I talked, and we think we can take it from here. We want to thank you for coming. You got her through Christmas and the worst of January, and we won’t forget it.”

Tonya looked at the envelope. Then at me. Then at Carrie, who was sitting in her chair by the window with her cane across her lap.

“You’re letting me go,” she said.

“The eight weeks are up,” I said. “That’s what we agreed on.”

She picked up the envelope and put it in her purse without counting it. Her mouth was tight. “You’ll be calling me by Wednesday,” she said. “You have no idea how much work she is.”

Carrie flinched at that, and I saw it, and Tonya saw that I saw it. Something crossed her face then that I did not understand at the time. It looked a little like shame. It went away fast.

She packed her two suitcases and her pillow and hugged Carrie at the door, stiff, and told her to do her exercises. Then she drove off toward Chillicothe, and I stood in the kitchen with no plan at all.