Part 3: The Folded Twenties
On Saturday, I made pot roast.
Carrots and potatoes in the pan, onions underneath, gravy stirred over the one burner that only works on high.
At ten minutes to six, I carried out my mother’s tablecloth and spread it over the bench seat. I lit the candle in the Mason jar. I set two places and brought out the roast, setting it on the bench between the plates.
Marlys was already in her lawn chair.
Duane and Lyle had parked at the curb.
Tyler and Amber came walking up the sidewalk from the corner, where they’d left their car.
Three cars were pulled onto the shoulder across the street. The pastor’s wife was out walking her dog again.
Rick wasn’t in the garage.
He wasn’t anywhere I could see.
At six o’clock exactly, our front door opened.
Rick came down the front steps in his good shirt, the light blue button-down he’d worn to Tyler’s wedding. He’d shaved and combed his hair wet. In his hand was a folded piece of paper.
He didn’t climb into the boat.
He walked right past it and stopped at the very end of the driveway, where everyone on the street could see him.
A white pickup truck pulled in behind Duane’s.
A young man got out, maybe thirty, in a Hawkeyes sweatshirt, holding an envelope.
“This is Jeff,” Rick said. Loud enough for the whole street to hear. “He’s from Ames. He’s buying a boat.”
Across the street, Marlys set her coffee cup down on the step.
Rick unfolded the piece of paper.
“Karen,” he said. “Come stand by me before I sign this.”
I climbed out of the boat by way of the step stool. I walked down to the end of the driveway and stood next to my husband.
It was the boat’s title.
He laid it flat on the hood of Jeff’s pickup and took a pen from his shirt pocket.
And in front of the whole street, he signed it over.
Jeff handed him the envelope.
Rick didn’t open it.
He turned and put it in my hands.
“It’s a cashier’s check,” he said. “Ten thousand two hundred dollars. I lost eight hundred on it, Karen. That part’s on me.”
I looked down at the envelope in my hands. I couldn’t see it well. My eyes had gone blurry.
“I’m sorry,” Rick said.
And this time it didn’t come out rough at all.
It came out plain and clear, like a man saying his own name.
“You saved for six years for that kitchen. Forty dollars at a time. And I took it for something to prove I was still somebody. I was wrong. Whatever’s left, I’ll make up with overtime.”
Nobody on that whole street said a word.
Then, from across the road, Marlys began to clap.
Slowly at first.
Then Duane joined in. Then Amber. Then Lyle. Then the people standing by their cars on the shoulder. Then the pastor’s wife, with the dog leash looped around her wrist.
Tyler didn’t clap.
He walked up the driveway and wrapped his arms around his father.
Rick held on to him a long time.
Then Rick turned to Jeff.
“One thing,” he said. “Would you mind if we ate supper in her one last time first? My wife made pot roast.”
Jeff laughed and said he didn’t mind one bit.
So Jeff ate with us. He sat on the back deck with his plate on his knees and said it was the best pot roast he’d ever had in his life.
I believe he meant it.
When the plates were empty, Jeff backed his pickup up to the trailer hitch. Rick and Duane helped him hook up, cross the safety chains, and check the trailer lights.
Then Rick stood in the driveway with his hand resting on the side of that green and silver boat. One last time.
Then he took his hand away.
And Jeff drove it off down the street toward Highway 65.
Our driveway was left empty except for a maple kitchen table, two chairs, and my mother’s red-and-white tablecloth folded over the back of one of them.
On Monday morning, Rick took a week of vacation.
He’d been saving those days for deer season.
He and Tyler started tearing out the 1978 kitchen cabinets themselves. Rick said there was no reason on earth to pay a contractor to swing a pry bar when he had two good arms and a son.
The contractor said fine, and he’d knock a thousand dollars off the quote for the demolition.
They carried the old brown cabinets out and stacked them in the driveway, right where the boat used to sit.
Duane came with his flatbed trailer to haul them to the county dump. Lyle brought a cooler of pop. Marlys brought her lawn chair.
On Tuesday afternoon, Tyler took down the very last upper cabinet, the one above the refrigerator. Nobody ever opened that one, because you needed a step stool to reach it.
He handed me what was inside.
It was my coffee can.
My kitchen can.
A big red Folgers can with a slot I’d cut in the plastic lid with a paring knife six years earlier, the same week I set up the transfer at the bank.
I’d started it for the little things. Loose change. The odd dollar bill. Money for new canisters, or a rug in front of the sink, once the kitchen was finally done.
I’d drop coins through the slot and never open it, because I wanted it to be a surprise for myself someday.
It was a good deal heavier than I remembered.
I sat right down on the floor of my gutted kitchen with my back against the bare wall and pulled off the lid.
Beneath a layer of quarters and dimes, that can was packed tight with twenty-dollar bills.
Folded in half, then in half again, small enough to slip through the slot.
Hundreds of them.
I started counting, because I count money for a living and that’s what my hands know how to do.
Tyler sat down on the floor beside me and helped me stack them.
Three hundred and twelve twenty-dollar bills.
Six thousand, two hundred and forty dollars.
Rick stood in the kitchen doorway with a pry bar in his hand.
He didn’t come in.
“Every Friday,” he said quietly. “Since the week you cut that slot. I’d stop in here on the way out to the truck in the morning.”
“For six years?”
“Storm pay, mostly. A little out of my lunch money.”
He looked down at the floor.
“I never said anything because I didn’t know how to. You’d have told me we couldn’t afford it.”
“We couldn’t,” I said.
“I know.”
He finally looked up at me.
“I just figured someday you’d open it. And it’d be a good day.”
