The Wedding Bill and the Receipts

The invoice had been typed on the old word processor Marcia Eberhart used for the church bulletin. I knew it the second I saw it. The letters had that tight, careful spacing, and the heading sat dead center, and somebody had underlined the word Total with a ruler.

That was the first thing I noticed, before I ever read the number. Somebody had taken her time.

It was a Tuesday in the middle of September. I had come over to my daughter’s house with a bag of groceries and a pan of scalloped potatoes, and I found Kayla at the kitchen table with her hands flat on either side of a sheet of paper, like she was holding it down in a wind.

“Mom,” she said. “Don’t be mad at anybody yet.”

“Who would I be mad at?”

She slid it across to me.

Eberhart Farms, it said at the top. Statement of Wedding Expenses. Then a list, eight lines long, each with a dollar figure at the right margin.

Hall rental and cleaning, $1,400.

Catering for 180 guests, $9,000.

Band, $2,600.

Photographer, $2,300.

Bride’s dress and alterations, $2,000.

Flowers, $1,200.

Cake, $700.

Rehearsal dinner, $3,200.

Under that, the ruler line, and the word Total, and $22,400. Under that, “One half, owed by K. Eberhart, $11,200.” And under that, “Interest, $800.” And under that, in a bold black number, “Balance due by October 1st: $12,000.”

At the bottom, in blue ballpoint, in Marcia’s own round hand, was one more line.

We would rather settle this as Christians than bring it to Pastor Stan’s door.

I read it twice. My daughter watched my face the way she used to watch it when she was seven and had brought home a bad note from school.

“It came in the mail today,” Kayla said. “Owen got the mail. He wanted to open it himself.”

That was when I saw the envelope. It lay torn open by the fruit bowl, and it was not addressed to Kayla. It was addressed to Owen Eberhart, age almost four, in the same round blue hand.

Inside it, behind the invoice, there had been a birthday card with a tractor on the front. A twenty-dollar bill was tucked in it, folded small. Owen’s fourth birthday was Saturday.

From the next room I could hear cartoons. I could hear my grandson telling his stuffed bear that Grandma Marcia sent him money for the tractor store.

“She sent it to him,” I said.

“I know.”

“She put a bill for your wedding in with a card to a four-year-old.”

“I know, Mom.”

I did not say anything else for a minute. If I had, it would not have been Christian.

I should tell you how we got there, because the bill did not come out of nowhere. It came out of March.

In March, my daughter’s husband Tyler packed two duffel bags on a Wednesday while she was at work, left his house key on the counter, and drove to Ankeny, where a woman he had met at a trade show had a spare room. He sent Kayla a text. He did not call. He did not come for Owen’s things. Six months later he had still not asked what Owen was learning to say.

Kayla did what a mother does. She worked the front desk at Dr. Fuller’s vet clinic for $17.50 an hour, came home, made macaroni, and got her boy to bed. She cried in the shower, she told me later, where the water ran loud.