The Breakfast I Carried at Seven

He went to Wyman’s. He came to ours and met Clint and shook his hand on the porch for a long time.

He went to Bertie Tate’s, and Bertie must have gotten on the phone, because by Sunday after church there were four women from our congregation in Ivo’s kitchen with a calendar and a pen, sorting out who would bring supper on which night.

Nobody made a speech. Nobody said a word about Joelle.

Bertie just said, “Tuesdays are mine,” and wrote her name down, and the next lady said, “I’ll take Thursdays,” and it went around the room like passing the plate.

Wyman took Fridays. Wyman cannot cook, so Wyman’s Friday supper turned out to be a sack of hamburgers from the drive-in in town, every week, which Ivo loved more than anything any of the church ladies made and never told them so.

Clint said he would take the thermostat and the gutters and anything with a motor in it.

Owen said he would take Saturdays, for checkers. Tessa said she would take the refrigerator, and she meant the pictures.

And Burl turned to me at the end of all that, in the crowded kitchen, with his hat in his hands.

“Mindy, I know you work nights. I know you’ve got a family. But would you stay on at seven? He likes you at seven. I’d pay you what’s fair.”

“I won’t take money for breakfast,” I said.

“Then I’ll pay for the eggs,” he said, and he would not hear another word about it.

Every month after that, an envelope came from Tulsa with a check in it made out to me, and in the memo line it always said the same thing. Eggs.

Joelle came on Sunday evening.

I saw her car pull into the drive from my kitchen window. It was nearly dark.

She sat in the car a long time before she got out, and when she did, she was carrying a pie in a glass dish with a dish towel over it.

I did not go over. It was not my place.

But Ivo told me the next morning, and Burl told me later, and I have put the two of them together as best I can, because I think it is the most important part of this whole thing.

She came to the kitchen door and stood there with the pie, and Burl opened it, and the two cousins looked at each other.

Burl had called her Saturday night. He had told her about the notebook, and about Monday, and he had not raised his voice once. That was not his way.

“I made him a buttermilk pie,” Joelle said. “It was Aunt Luella’s recipe. She gave it to me when I was a girl.”

Burl stepped back and let her in. Ivo was at the table.

Joelle set the pie down in front of him, and then she sat down in the chair I always sat in, and she put her face in her hands and cried.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Ivo,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I told myself you were all right. I told myself the phone calls were enough. I was so tired I couldn’t see straight, and I needed that money for my house, and I just kept telling myself you were fine.”