Nine Suppers in a Bass Boat

“It still works fine, Karen.”

That was what my husband said, standing in our driveway on a Saturday afternoon in late April, with his hand resting on the side of a bass boat that had not been there when I left for the grocery store.

It was green and silver metal flake, the kind that sparkles like a bowling ball. There was a 150 Mercury hung on the back of it and a trailer under it with one tire lower than the other.

I had a gallon of milk in one hand and a sack of potatoes in the other. I stood there holding them because I did not know where else to put them.

“What works fine?” I said.

“The kitchen.” Rick did not look at me. He looked at the boat. “The cabinets close. The stove heats. My mother cooked on worse for forty years.”

That was when I understood where the money had come from.

For six years I had put forty dollars a week from my teller check into the savings account we called the kitchen account. Forty dollars every Friday, set up as a transfer so I could not talk myself out of it.

Some weeks I had to move it back. Tyler’s transmission, the fall he was twenty. The water heater the winter after. But I always caught it up, and by this April the balance sat at eleven thousand and twelve dollars.

I knew the number because I am a bank teller. I count other people’s money for a living. I had counted mine every Friday on my lunch break for six years.

The contractor’s quote was on the refrigerator under a magnet shaped like an ear of corn. Eleven thousand even. New oak cabinets, a laminate countertop, a range where all four burners worked, and labor.

Our kitchen had been put in when the house was built in 1978. Dark brown cabinets with doors that sagged. A burner that only worked on high, so every pot of gravy I made, I made standing over it with a spoon.

“Where did you get the money, Rick?” I asked, though I knew.

“I got a cashier’s check yesterday. At the branch in Nevada.” He finally looked at me. “I knew better than to do it at your window.”

At least he was honest about that. It was a joint account. He had every right in the world to draw it out, and the girl at the Nevada branch had every reason to hand it to him.

“Who sold it to you?”

“Fella from Story City. He’s moving down by his daughter in Missouri. He had the papers ready.” Rick rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s gone already, Karen. He left this morning.”

So that was that. There was no taking it back. No one to call, no store to return it to. The man and my eleven thousand dollars were somewhere on Interstate 35, headed south.

I set the milk down on the hood of my car. I set the potatoes down beside it.

“Well,” I said. “Thank you for telling me.”

He blinked at me like I had spoken another language. I think he had been ready for me to cry, or to throw something, or to go in the house and slam the door. I did not do any of those things.

I picked my groceries back up and went inside and started supper.