The Money Orders That Kept Mom Home

Unpacking

Mom and I cut the tape on the two boxes and put everything back.

It was her kitchen box and a box of pictures. She had packed the pictures first. I think that tells you everything about my mother.

There was the photo of my dad in his work shirt holding me on his shoulders at the county fair. There was Mom and Clint’s dad on their wedding day at the courthouse in Guthrie, both of them grinning like teenagers. There was my high school graduation.

There was a picture of Clint, too, at about twelve, with a fishing pole and a crappie, before I ever knew him. His dad had kept it on the shelf, and Mom had kept it there after.

She held it up close to her face for a minute.

“His daddy loved that boy,” she said. “Clint was all he had for a long time.”

“I know, Mom.”

“I don’t know what happened to him,” she said. “I know he’s been behind on his own place. He told me back in the spring, his landlord raised him a hundred dollars and his hours got cut at the tire shop.”

“He could have asked you,” I said. “He could have asked me. He could have asked Avis for time. He didn’t have to do it this way.”

“No,” Mom said. “He didn’t.”

She set the fishing picture back on the shelf, right where it had always been. I didn’t say anything about that. It wasn’t mine to say.

We put the dishes back in the cabinet. We put the coffee can of buttons back on the shelf over the washer. We put her winter coat back on its hook.

By three thirty the boxes were flat and leaning against the shed, and the trailer looked like Mom’s trailer again.

But the geraniums were still crowded in the corner of the porch. I noticed them and I almost moved them. Then I didn’t. Something told me to leave that for her.

Four o’clock

At four o’clock exactly, Avis Kendrick came walking down the lane from the office with a manila folder under her arm. She had changed into her tennis shoes.

“I brought the ledger page,” she said. “The owners’ copy. It shows every payment on this lot for two years. I want her to have it.”

She came up and sat down on the top step, the one Mom had swept bare that morning, and Mom brought her a glass of iced tea.

Avis opened the folder on her knees. On the printed page, there was a line for every month. Paid, paid, paid, all through last year and into this one. Then May. Then a blank for June, and July, and August, and September.

“He paid it right up through May,” Avis said. “Then nothing. And in July he came in and told me she’d come up short.”

Mom took the page and held it close. She didn’t say anything. She just handed it back.

At four fifteen, Merle came across the lane carrying his own lawn chair, folded under one arm. He set it up at the foot of the steps, sat down, and crossed his ankles.

“Afternoon, Avis.”

“Merle.”

Nobody said much after that. We sat out there in the sun, the four of us, and listened to a mockingbird going through every song it knew in the elm across the lane.

I called Odell at four twenty. “He’s not here yet,” I said.

“You want me to drive over?” he said. “I’m off at five. I can be there by six.”

“No,” I said. “Avis is here. Merle’s here. Mom’s here. I think this is the right number of people.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m proud of you, Jo.”