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Last Carbon
Episode 3 of 3 of Purple Dauber by Beth Callahan · free to read
My mother drove, her purse on the console between the seats with the checkbook inside it.
She had never been to bingo. Thirty-one years my grandmother had played at that hall, and my mother had dropped her at the curb maybe twice and never come inside. I sat in the back. My grandmother gave directions to a place my mother had already found on her phone.
“Left at the light. Not this light. Nicky, tell her.”
“She knows, Grandma,” I said.
“She doesn’t know where to park. There’s a spot by the kitchen door nobody takes because of the dumpster. You park by the dumpster, you’re first in line for spaghetti.”
My mother parked by the dumpster.
Inside, my grandmother bought her six-face pack and a three-face for my mother, twelve dollars and six, and paid in cash from an envelope. She laid the daubers out on the table in a row. Purple, green, orange.
“Purple is mine,” she said. “Orange is for people I don’t like. You get green.”
“It’s Friday,” I said. “Green’s for Tuesdays.”
“Tonight’s a special occasion,” she said.
My mother turned the green dauber over and read the label like it would tell her something. Then she took a folded bank statement from her purse and laid it between her cards and my grandmother’s, very square, and smoothed it flat.
“Two thousand dollars since May,” she said.
“Twenty-one hundred,” my grandmother said. “You missed the pantry in August.”
“Mom, I’m not here to fight. I’m here to see.”
“Then see.” My grandmother tapped the statement once with the capped purple dauber. “Everything on that page is on the carbons. You’ve had the carbons since Tuesday. Clip’s still on them.”
My mother’s hand closed around the green dauber. “How do you know that?”
“Because you’re honest,” my grandmother said. “It’s your worst quality.”
“You’re Gene’s girl.”
Connie Herrera stood at the end of our table at intermission with a coffee in each hand. She set one in front of my mother, who had not ordered it, and sat down on my grandmother’s coat like it was hers.
“I’m Janet,” my mother said.
“I know who you are. You had a perm in high school. It was a bad idea and you did it anyway.” Connie stirred her coffee with the wrong end of a pen. “Your mother’s been paying me back money my Manny lent your father the winter the shop closed. Twelve hundred dollars. Two hundred at a time, since May, and fifty in cash last week that I’m giving back.”
My mother looked at my grandmother. My grandmother looked at the number board, which was blank.
“The shop closed in February,” my mother said. “He said he was tired of it.”
“He was tired of it. He was also twelve hundred into Manny and a roof into old man Lisle, and the pantry left a box on your porch every Thursday until April. Manny forgave the whole thing before he died. I’ve told Bev that since July. She writes the check anyway.”
“Give me the book, Janet,” my grandmother said.
My mother took it out of her purse. The binder clip was still on it. My grandmother popped the clip, opened the checkbook to the last page, and wrote in her tall handwriting. Connie Herrera. Two hundred dollars. On the memo line, Gene, and after it, two more words: paid full.
She tore it clean. Connie did not put it in her pocket. She held it.
“That’s Manny done,” my grandmother said. “Duane has two to go. The pantry goes till I do.”
She closed the book and pushed it across the table to my mother, carbons and all.
“You wanted it. It’s yours. That’s the winter you don’t remember.”
“Under the O, sixty-four. O, sixty-four.”
The coverall took twenty minutes and my mother did not daub for the first ten of them. She read the carbons instead, one at a time, while Rudy called and my grandmother worked the purple dauber across six faces without looking up. Connie Herrera sat with us and played her nine faces and kept quiet for once.
At carbon nine my mother put the book down and picked up the green dauber. She was a dozen numbers behind and caught up in silence. Her card was not neat, but it was covered where it counted.
“Connie,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know any of...”
“Don’t say sorry to me,” Connie said. “Daub your card.”
My mother daubed her card.
Rudy called under the B, fourteen, and my grandmother’s hand stopped over her fifth face. She was watching across the table, not her own card, and she set the dauber down.
“Bring your lawyer’s form Monday,” she said, to nobody in particular. “I’ll sign it. Bring a pen that works.”
My mother did not answer. Rudy called under the G, fifty-one. My mother looked at her card, then at the board, then at her card again, and I saw it was all green, every square, the free space too, dead center.
She did not yell it. She put the green dauber down next to the checkbook.
Mom raised her hand.