The Propane Tank in My Name

Her Coat

About an hour after the furnace kicked on, the house had come up to sixty-six. The frost on the windows was going from white to clear around the edges. I could smell the dust burning off the registers, the way it does the first time each fall.

Mom pushed the afghan down off her lap. Then she put her hands on the arms of the recliner and stood up, slowly, the way she does now, and stood there for a second getting her balance.

She reached up and took off the knit hat. Her hair was flat and white and soft underneath it. She ran her fingers through it.

Then she worked the zipper of that long brown coat down, a little at a time, from her chin to her knees. Her fingers were slow, because they were still stiff. I wanted to help, and I did not, because I could see she wanted to do it herself.

She slipped it off her shoulders and folded it over her arm and walked into the kitchen and hung it on the hook by the back door, next to Dad’s barn coat, which is still there.

She stood by the stove in her cardigan, with her hand flat on the counter, and closed her eyes.

“I forgot what this felt like,” she said.

I had to go into the bathroom for a minute after that. I ran the water so she would not hear me.

When I came out, she was cutting a piece of the banana bread somebody from church had brought by, and she cut one for me too, and we sat at the kitchen table in a warm kitchen and ate it, and neither one of us said a word about Pam.

The Text

That night, after Mom had gone to bed in her own bed for what she told me was the first time in nine days, I sat at the kitchen table and wrote the text to my brothers. It took me forty minutes to write four sentences.

I wrote: Mom’s tank is full and the heat is on. I put the propane account in my name today and it’s on keep-full now. Next October, please send the propane money to me instead. I’ll explain at Easter.

I read it over a dozen times. I took out a sentence that said more than it should have. Then I sent it to Rob and Dean, and not to Pam, and I sat there with the phone face down on the table.

Dean called inside a minute. Dean has never in his life let a text sit.

“Laura, what happened? Is Mom okay?”

“Mom’s fine. She’s warm. She’s asleep.”

“Why did you change the propane? What’s going on with Pam?”

“I promised Mom I wouldn’t get into it on the phone,” I said. “I’ll tell you all of it at Easter. To your faces. Can you trust me that long?”

He was quiet. Then he said, “Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I can do that.” And then, because he is Dean: “Do you need money for the fill?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve got it.”

Rob called at quarter to ten. He had been out feeding cows and then checking waterers, because in that cold the tank heaters fail and you lose the whole night chopping ice. He sounded tired all the way through.

“I got your text,” he said. “How low was it?”

“Five percent.”

Rob did not say anything for a long time. I could hear his kitchen behind him, a television, one of his boys asking about a ride to practice.

“In this cold,” he said finally. It was not a question.

“In this cold.”

“All right,” he said. “Easter.” And then, more quietly: “Thank you for going out there, Laur.”