Part 3 — The Second Widow
The person backing toward the cars was my daughter. Lisa. I said her name once, not loud, and she stopped between a pickup and the new navy blazer of Rick, with her hands at her sides, and did not turn around. Annette Gaskins opened the leather folder and read in the voice of someone who has read a great many names. “The second claimant is listed as Odessa Stokes. The address is a condominium in Panama City. The bank account that receives the payments is held in the name of Lisa Stokes Purvis.”
Odessa Stokes, Ms. Gaskins went on, does not exist. There is no birth record, no marriage record, no person. The marriage certificate attached to the claim was a copy of mine, with the name cut out and another pasted in, and the discharge papers of Otis had been photocopied from the lockbox that I kept for forty-eight years. Lisa had borrowed the spare key after my stroke, saying she wanted to put the papers in order.
Lisa turned around at last. She was crying, but quietly, the way she did as a girl when she had been caught with her hand in the sugar bowl. “Mama, it was not supposed to hurt you. I read on a website that the VA pays a second spouse if the first one is not well. Rick said you would never need the money.” “Lisa,” I said, “a stroke does not make two widows. It only makes one tired one.”
The old man in the 1st Cavalry cap, who turned out to be Mr. Eugene Holloway, a friend of Otis from Vietnam, put his cap on his chest. “Vernell, I have been trying to find you since Christmas,” he said. “The VA called me because I knew Otis in service, and I told them he had one wife, and her name was Vernell, and she drove a school bus for twenty-eight years. They said that was all they needed.” He had come with Ms. Gaskins to stand in front of Rick and look at him. Rick did not meet his eye.
The Legion boys, who had been listening from the edge of the grass, did something I will not forget. Six of them in their blue caps stepped forward and made a small wall between the bench and the parking lot, quietly and without any threat. One of them took the arm of Rick. “Son,” he said, “you are going to want to stay and hear the rest.” The photographer from the newspaper lowered his camera and put it in his bag.
The VA moved with a speed I had not expected. Ms. Gaskins removed Rick as fiduciary that afternoon, and she named a new one, a retired accountant from the Legion named Mr. Pate, who was seventy-eight and had never missed a deadline. The false claim was cancelled by lunchtime Monday. The payments stopped. The account in Panama City was frozen, and the federal prosecutor called me on Wednesday to say he had read the record and that he would speak to my daughter personally.
Everything the VA had paid to the false widow, $91,400, was recovered over the next months from the fishing camp on the Withlacoochee, which was sold, and from the account, and from the new truck of Rick, which was repossessed in front of the dealership where he claimed to work. My own $44,212 came back with interest by check, in an envelope with a flag stamp. I held it in my hands for a long minute before I put it in the cookie jar.
Rick pleaded guilty to theft of benefits, exploitation of a veteran family and false claims. He went to a federal facility in Alabama for a term of years. Lisa pleaded guilty to false claims and conspiracy, and because she gave a full statement and had no earlier record, the judge sentenced her to probation, home supervision, and a restitution order that would last the rest of her working life. She asked to speak. She said, “I thought it was just paper.” The judge said that paper is where the whole world is kept.
Lisa came to my house on a Sunday afternoon in March. I had not asked her. She stood on the porch holding a plain white envelope and a tin of her pound cake, which she knows I like. She said, “Mama, I will not ask for anything.” I said, “Come in and sit down.” She sat at my kitchen table, where I had eaten a good many silent dinners, and I poured her tea. We did not talk about the money. We talked about Otis, and how he used to hum the same four notes when he fixed the screen door.
I took the thirty-one yellow notes out of the freezer bag and put them in a shoebox, in date order. I did not throw them away. They had been the strangest evidence in the history of Valdosta, and Ms. Gaskins had said she would like a copy for the training of her staff. I made one at the library for ten cents, and I sent it with a pound cake of my own.
Twenty-eight years on Route 22 taught me that every child tells you the truth with their face, and every grown person tells it with their paperwork. The bench at the Legion post still stands in the sun, granite, with the name and the unit. I go on the first of every month and sit for a while.
This October a bus came by with its sign lit. A young driver waved, and a little girl in the front seat waved too, and I lifted my hand like I had done it for twenty-eight years. Then I stood up and put my palm flat on the warm top of the bench, over the word Beloved. “Otis,” I said, “it is all in the right name now.” A breeze came across the grass from the direction of the river, and the flag on the pole moved once, and was still.