The Paper
On Thursday, the twenty-ninth of October, I went to Gantz & Pell without Garrett.
I want to be careful here, because this is not a trade or a bribe. I have not changed the will. I promised Wilda the house would stay with the children, and I will not break a deathbed promise by a stroke of the pen in a fit of remorse. What I asked Mr. Pell for was a paper that says what I owe my wife: $23,000 for the windows and bathrooms and $14,200 for the half of the kitchen she paid, $37,200 in all, a debt of my estate that comes ahead of anything left to anyone. My children can have the house after my wife has been paid. Mr. Pell looked at me over his glasses and said, “Rolf, this is not what I usually draw.” I said, “It’s what I should have drawn in 2020.”
I do not have $37,200. I have $9,100 in the bank, and the eighty acres. I asked Boyd on Friday if he would buy the eighty at what it is worth, and he said he would, and he did not ask why. I will pay my wife back before the first of the year, in installments if she will take them, and I will not ask her to take them. None of that fixes a sentence, and I know it. A man has to say the thing, out loud, to the person’s face, with nothing in his hands to hide behind. I could not find the words in four weeks, so I decided to bring the watch. It had been saying it for thirty years, in a sock drawer.
None of that is the point, and I know it. A check does not fix a sentence. I will tell you what I think would fix it, and then I will tell you what I did.