The Propane Tank in My Name

Pam

Pam called on Thursday of the next week, a little after five. I was in the extension office, packing up for the day, with three boxes of fair-book proofs on my desk.

I knew when I saw her name what it was going to be. The co-op letter.

“Did you call the co-op?” she said. No hello.

“I did.”

“I got a letter saying the tank on Mom’s place has been moved off my account. To you. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“I knew you’d find out. They told me they’d send a letter.”

“You went behind my back,” she said. Her voice was very even. Pam has always gotten quieter when she is angry. We are alike that way, though neither of us would say so.

“I went to the co-op,” I said.

There was a long silence on the line. I could hear the furnace in my own office kick on, and I thought of Mom’s, and I waited.

“Mom’s fine,” Pam said. “She likes it cool. She always has. You come out once every couple of months and decide you know better than the people who are actually there.”

“The tank was at five percent, Pam.”

Another silence. Longer.

“I’m not doing this on the phone,” she said, and she hung up.

I sat at my desk until the parking lot lights came on. Then I went home and told Steve, and he put a bowl of knoephla soup in front of me and did not ask me anything until I had eaten all of it.

Eleven Weeks

Pam and I did not speak for eleven weeks.

That is the longest we have gone since I was in college. We are not the kind of sisters who call every day, but we are the kind who text about nothing, about a recipe, about somebody from high school who passed away, about whether it is going to snow.

There was nothing. Not on my birthday in February. I texted her on hers, in March, just happy birthday and a heart, and I saw that she read it and she did not answer.

Rob and Dean both sent me a check in February, without my asking, toward the fill I had put on my card. Dean put a note in his: For the top-off. Rob put in an extra hundred and a sticky note that said, For Mom’s next fill. Don’t argue.

I did not argue.

I drove out to the farm every other weekend that winter. Mom kept the thermostat at sixty-eight because she said seventy felt wasteful, and I let her have that. The co-op came out in late February without anybody calling them, and the ticket was in my name.

Mom asked about Pam every time I came. Had I talked to her. Were we all right.

“We’ll be all right,” I said, every time, and I hoped it was true.

Pam was still taking Mom to her appointments. Mom told me that. She came out on Sundays and took Mom to church and brought her home and sat with her for an hour. Mom said she did not say anything about me, and did not say anything about the propane, and seemed tired.

“She’s carrying a lot,” Mom said once, in March, looking out at the snow going gray in the shelterbelt. “Don’t forget that she’s carrying a lot.”

“I know she is, Mom.”

“I don’t know if you do,” Mom said, not unkindly. “None of you are in town. She is.”

I thought about that for a long time afterward.