The Quilt Money on the White Tablecloth

“I know,” I said. “Your father loves you. He just doesn’t know how to say it without a dollar figure attached.”

He laughed, a little wet. “Yeah. I know that too.”

Then Curtis and I got into his Silverado, and he backed out of the lot, and we turned onto the county road toward home.

He didn’t say anything for the first ten miles. Neither did I. The heater ticked. The wipers went once in a while for the drips off the trees. Out past the headlights the fields were black and shining, still too wet to plant.

I had decided, somewhere around the coffee, that I wasn’t going to speak first. Not out of spite. I just didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make it worse.

Somewhere past the turnoff to the Amish school, Curtis cleared his throat.

“You were right,” he said.

I looked at him. His hands were at ten and two on the wheel, the way his father taught him.

“I heard it coming out of my mouth,” he said. “Every word of it. And I couldn’t stop. It was like I was standing outside myself watching some old man talk.” He shook his head. “It was my dad. That was my dad’s speech. Word for word.”

I didn’t say anything. I let him drive.

“You know what he said to me the week before our wedding?” Curtis asked. “I went over to the farm to ask if he could help with the hall. Just the hall. It was three hundred dollars. And he said no, and then he said I’d thank him someday. Said it would build character.”

I did know. I had heard it before, a long time ago. But I let him tell it again.

“I never thanked him,” Curtis said. “I never once thanked him. I just paid off that wedding for two years and hated every payment. And then tonight I sat there in front of Hannah’s folks and said it like it was something to be proud of.”

He was quiet for a mile.

“I think I wanted Mark to think I was a big man,” he said. “Five thousand dollars. I wanted them to know we did our part. And then I couldn’t leave it alone. I had to make it sound like we were doing them a favor.”

“You were doing our son a kindness,” I said. “And then you took it back.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. That’s what I did.”

We were coming down the long hill into our valley. I could see the yard light at our place, and the dark shape of the machine shed, and the window of my sewing room on the second floor.

“I’m sorry I did it there,” I said. “At the table, in front of them. I should’ve found another way.”