The Bible I Bought Twice

I bought store-brand everything, and I did not feel sorry for myself, because every time I wanted to buy something I pictured his name in gold.

I picked it up on a Saturday, a week before the baptism. Kelsey at the register slid it across the counter in a clean brown sack.

Pam, who owns the store, came out from the back to look. She ran her thumb over the gold letters.

“Micah Michael Lathem,” Pam said. “That is going to last him all his life, Maxine.”

I carried it out to Warren and Heidi’s house that same evening. They live past the county road in a brick ranch with a three-car garage and a front porch that nobody sits on.

Heidi met me at the door in a sweater that cost more than my Sunday shoes.

She is thirty-four years old, and she grew up in Hoover, outside Birmingham, where her daddy sells commercial insurance and her mama keeps a house you could eat off the floor of.

Heidi and I have never had a fight. I want to be fair about that. We have had eleven years of small, smiling disagreements about things that never get said out loud.

She does not like that I bring casseroles in my old Pyrex with my name on masking tape. She does not like that I wrap gifts in the Sunday funnies.

She told Warren once, and Micah repeated it to me, that his grandmother “just doesn’t have a lot of polish.”

I did not argue. A woman can live a long time without polish and still get a boy through the lunch line.

That Saturday evening I held out the sack and said, “It’s for Micah. For next Sunday. His name is on it.”

“Oh, Maxine.” Heidi took it and looked inside. “That’s so thoughtful. I’ll keep it with his baptism things so it doesn’t get lost.”

I had put the receipt in the sack for her, the way I do with any gift, in case the size or the color was wrong.

I thought I was being considerate. I have thought about that receipt a great many times since.

So that is the Thursday on the porch. Five days after I put that Bible in her hands, my grandson was telling me I had forgotten him.

I finished the beans.

I did not trust my voice for a minute, so I handed Micah the colander and let him rinse them at the spigot while I stood still and looked at the pecan tree.

When he came back I said, “I didn’t forget, honey. Not for one minute.”

“Okay, Grandma.” He said it so easily. He believed his mother. Why would he not?

Heidi’s car was waiting at the end of my drive. She waved from the window, friendly as anything, and I waved back.

I stood in the yard until the dust settled on the gravel. Then I went inside and sat at the kitchen table with my hands flat in front of me.