The Four Hundred Dollars at Our Kitchen Table

“How long,” I said.

“Erin, it’s nothing. It’s fair.”

“Mom. How long.”

She sighed. “That was the second time. The first was the week I came, back in January. She said it was for the household. The groceries and the heat and the electric. She said it was only fair, with one more person in the house.”

“Did she ask you, or did she tell you?”

My mother thought about that, which told me everything. “She told me,” she said. “But kindly, Erin. She sat right here and explained it. She said four hundred was what it came to. And she said not to bother you, because you work so hard and you’d only feel bad.”

Eight hundred dollars. Mom’s Social Security is a little under fifteen hundred a month, and that is all she has besides the house. My father worked thirty-one years at the plant in Grayling, and his pension went with him because of how they signed it, back before either of them thought about such things.

“How did you get her the cash?” I asked, though I already knew.

“You took me to the bank,” Mom said. “Both times. You sat in the car.”

She was right. Twice I had driven her into town on a Saturday, to the credit union, and waited in the parking lot with the heater running while she went in on her walker to take out cash. She had told me it was for her pills and a little spending money. I had believed her, because she is my mother.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because she’s right, honey. I’m in your house. I’m eating your food. And she’s lived here all this time, she knows what things cost. I didn’t want to cause trouble. I’m only here a few more weeks.”

I reached over and put my hand on top of hers. Her knuckles were swollen from the cold and from the walker. I thought about how many times those hands had braided my hair and buttoned my coat, and how she had counted out those twenties as if she were the one in debt.

“Mom,” I said. “You are never going to pay one dime to sleep in my house. Not ever. Do you hear me?”

“Erin.”

“Do you hear me.”

She nodded, and she started to cry, very quietly, the way she does everything.

I want to tell you why I did not pick up the phone right then and call Jon, because I know some people reading this will think I should have.

Jon was in a sleeper berth at a truck stop off I-70 in Indiana, a long day’s drive from home, on his thirty-four-hour reset. There was nothing he could do from there but stew. And this was his mother, under my roof, in my kitchen. I did not want it fought over a cell phone. I wanted it settled at my own kitchen table.

And to be honest, I did not want anyone else telling this story for me. Not Jon, not my sister in Lansing, not the women at work. I had let it happen in my own house without seeing it. I would be the one to fix it.

But first I had to fix the couch.

That evening I made supper, a pot of chicken and dumplings because that is what you make in February in northern Michigan when you need your hands busy. Marjorie stayed in her room. She had a little television in there, and I could hear the Wheel of Fortune music through the door.