The Loan I Never Told Her About

The Note

I sat. For about ten minutes we said nothing at all, and I watched her hands, which knew where everything was. She touched a dial without looking. She glanced at a little screen where a clock was counting down. She rested her palm, once, on top of the projector, as if to tell it to go on being brave.

And I said it. I did not plan to, and I had not planned how. I said, very low, under the sound of the picture, “Pearline, there’s a note.”

She did not turn her head. “On the machine.”

“On the machine. Fifty thousand dollars, in 2013. Cliff couldn’t carry it alone, so I signed with him.” I made myself go on. “I have been paying it since the day we buried him. The fifteenth of every month. It is $376. I have paid fourteen. I wanted you to have a building, not a debt, and I should have told you in September of last year, and I did not, and then I told you to sell it so I would not have to.”

She was quiet. On the screen a man was walking down a snowy street, and a hundred and sixty-eight people held their breath in the dark below us.

Then she said, “The fifteenth.”

“Yes.”

“Cliff went to Walsburg on the fifteenth. To the barber.”

“Yes.”

“Cliff Waldrip,” said Pearline, “has been bald since 1994.”

I started to laugh. I could not stop it. I put my face in my hand, and she began to shake, too, the stool trembling under her, and we sat there in the booth, a woman of seventy and a man of forty-seven, laughing as quietly as we could, so the house would not hear.

When she could talk, she said, “Thirteen years I wondered where he went. I thought, he has a woman, and I thought, it is a poker game, and I thought, if I ask he will have to lie.” She wiped her eyes. “I am glad. That is a better thing than a woman. That is a fifteenth of the month.”

I said, “I am sorry.”

“What for? You did what a son does.”

“I told you to sell.”

“You told me what you were afraid of,” she said. “It is not the same as telling me what to do. I will say that for you. You are the only one in the family who never lied to me about the roof.” She looked at the clock. “We have two hours of picture left. Hand me that binder.”

I handed it to her. She opened the back cover, where there is a pocket for the manual, and took out a small envelope I had not seen. On the front, in Cliff’s block capitals, it said: P., WHEN THE MACHINE IS YOURS. She said, “I found it the first week. I have not opened it. I wanted to be able to say it was true.” She slid a thumbnail under the flap. Inside was one line on an index card: K. IS ON THE NOTE. IF I GO FIRST, LET HIM TELL IT HIS WAY.