The Toast at the End of the Dock

The first payment from Carl came on August 21st. It was a check, not a transfer, mailed from a motel in Ponca City in an envelope that had been folded twice.

Five hundred dollars. On the memo line he’d written, “1 of 9.”

The second one came in September, on the 19th. Five hundred and forty. On the memo line: “2 of 9 (some OT).”

I put both of them in the savings account. I watched that number go back up the way I used to watch it, a little at a time, like the weather.

Heidi and I spoke twice over the summer, both times at Mom’s house in Afton, both times about nothing. Pass the salt.

How’s work. Is that a new haircut. She couldn’t look at me for more than a second, and I didn’t push her.

I’ll tell you what I was afraid of. I was afraid I’d broken something that couldn’t be fixed.

That being right was going to cost me my sister, and that some nights I’d lie awake and wonder if forty-five hundred dollars had been worth it.

Some nights I did wonder that. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.

My birthday is October 3rd. I turned thirty-four on a Saturday. I didn’t plan anything.

Some of the girls from the office took me to lunch on Friday, and Mom called first thing in the morning and sang to me off-key, the way she does every year.

About six that evening, I was out on my porch steps with a book I wasn’t reading, watching the light go long across the yard, when Heidi’s Equinox pulled up in front of my house.

She sat in the car for a minute. Then she got out with a covered casserole dish in both hands and a dish towel over her shoulder, and she walked up my front yard like she was walking into the principal’s office.

She stopped at the bottom of my steps. She had on an old Pryor Tigers sweatshirt and no makeup, and she looked tired and a little older than I remembered.

“It’s chicken and dumplings,” she said. “Mom’s recipe. I messed up the first batch and had to start over, so it’s late.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t trust my voice.

“I didn’t know if you’d want me to come in,” she said. “So I thought we could eat out here. If that’s okay. I brought bowls.”

She held up the dish towel like proof. Two spoons were sticking out of the folds of it.

I moved over on the step. She sat down next to me.

We ate out of the casserole dish with the bowls on our knees, the way we used to eat Popsicles on Mom’s front steps when we were kids.

The dumplings were good. Better than Mom’s, if I’m honest, but I’ll never say that where Mom can hear.

After a while, Heidi set her bowl down on the step between her feet.

“You know what I kept thinking, all summer?” she said. “I kept thinking about you out on that dock. How you smiled at me. You didn’t look mad. You just looked sad. And I thought, I did that. I made my little sister stand up in front of everybody and look sad on my birthday.”