The Money Orders That Kept Mom Home

Clint

At four thirty-two, gravel crunched at the front of the lane.

Clint drives a gray work pickup with a toolbox across the bed and a dent in the tailgate. He came down the lane slow, the way you’re supposed to in a park, and pulled in beside Mom’s porch where he always parks.

He sat in the cab a second. I could see him looking at us through the windshield, all four of us.

Then he got out slow.

He had on his work shirt from the tire shop with his name stitched over the pocket. He looked tired. He looked older than fifty. I’ll say that for him, because it’s true.

He looked at the door first, where the notice had been. Then he looked at the steps, where the boxes should have been stacked by now. Then he looked at Avis, and then at Merle in his lawn chair, and then at me.

“Jolene,” he said. “Didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Mom called me,” I said.

“Dolores.” He turned to her. “I came to help, like I said. I don’t know what happened with the office, but we’ll figure it out. Maybe it’s time we talked about you moving somewhere you can be looked after, with your eyes and all.”

Mom stood up.

She didn’t say anything right away. She reached into the pocket of her slacks and took out the little receipt book from the dime store, the one with the carbon sheets, and she opened it to the right page. She’d marked it with a twist tie.

She came down one step, then another, until she was standing on the bottom step, eye to eye with him.

She held the book out.

Clint looked down at it. I watched his face. I watched him read his own initials, C.F., four times down the page, in his own blue pen.

He didn’t take it.

“Avis paid it off this morning,” Mom said. “No. Jolene paid it. Avis wrote me the receipt. I’m paid through September.”

“Dolores,” he said, “I was going to put it back. I swear I was going to put it all back. I’m behind on my own place. They raised me a hundred dollars and cut my hours and I just, I thought I’d catch it up before anybody…”

“Before anybody what?” Mom said. She didn’t raise her voice. She never has.

He didn’t answer.

“You told Avis I came up short,” Mom said. “You stood in her office and told her I couldn’t pay my rent.”

Clint looked at Avis. Avis looked right back at him, her folder in her lap, and didn’t blink.

“You told me this morning you’d help me figure out where to go,” Mom said. “I believed you. I packed two boxes, Clint. I packed my pictures. I packed your daddy’s picture of you with that fish.”

That’s when his face went. I watched it go.

“Dee,” he said. It was what his dad used to call her. “Dee, I’m sorry.”

Mom pushed the receipt book against his chest until he put his hand up and held it.

“You keep that,” she said. “You look at it. I’ve got the carbons.”

Then she said it, so quiet that Merle leaned forward in his chair to hear.

“From now on, you sign for nothing of mine.”