Why I Did Not Just Call Her
The first thing my daughter said, when I told her that night on the phone, was, “Mom, just call Renae and tell her off. Or call Jeff. Let Jeff handle his wife.”
And I understand why she said it. That is the sensible thing. That is what you are supposed to do.
But I have lived long enough to know a few things about a small town, and one of them is this. You cannot un-ring a bell by calling the person who rang it.
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If I called Renae, it would be my word against hers, a phone fight nobody saw.
She would walk right back into that shop next week and say, “Well, of course Loretta denies it.”
A private argument does not travel. The lie was public.
It had already walked out of that shop on a dozen tongues and gone home for supper in a dozen kitchens.
And calling Jeff would only put my brother in the middle of a thing between his wife and his sister while he was doing seventy on I-65 with a trailer full of auto parts. That is not fair to a tired man a long way from home.
No. A lie told in the open can only be answered in the open. Not with a louder voice. My mother never raised her voice in her life and she commanded every room she ever walked into.
It had to be answered with the plain truth, standing up where everyone who heard the lie could see it. And the truth was something I could carry in on my own arm.
I did not sleep much that night. But by the time the light came up I knew exactly what I was going to do, and I was calm the way you get calm when a thing is finally simple.