The voice of Mama came out of the little tape player in a whisper I had not heard in years, tired and clear, the voice she used at bedtime when I was small. “Carol, honey, if you are hearing this, Wayne already took the first forty thousand from the account at Hancock. I found out in June. He used a paper that he got me to sign at the kitchen table, saying it was for the property tax. I am so sorry. I should have known my own son.” Bobby sat very still on the other side of the table with his hands folded.
She talked for twenty minutes on the first side. She said that the house was paid for, that the pension of my father had been saved in a certificate of deposit, and that Wayne had been borrowing money from her for ten years in sums she called “small favors,” which added up to more than ninety thousand dollars. She had stopped him in March. He had then begun to talk about “assisted care” for Bobby, and visited with brochures. She said she lay awake in the dark at night, afraid that one day she would not be there, and that Bobby would be placed in a home he did not choose.
The second tape was the instruction. In a firm voice she told me to take everything to a lawyer named Mr. Fontenot in Gulfport. “He is the one in the letter. He has the real will, the one I made last year, and he is a decent man. Bobby is to live in this house for the rest of his life. It is in a trust. Wayne cannot sell it. Carol, you are the trustee. I know you have your own life in Atlanta. I know it is a lot to ask. But I could not think of anyone else.” Then, softly: “Bobby, baby, if you are listening, you did exactly right.”
A mother who plans for the day she is gone leaves her child a house made of foresight, and every board of it holds.
I looked over at my brother. He was smiling the way he does when someone praises him, bashful and proud. He said, “I kept it safe, Carol. I did not tell Wayne. Mama said not to.” I came around the table and put my arms around him. He smelled of her lavender soap. I told him he was the best brother in the world. He said, “I know.” Then he asked if there was any of the peach cobbler of Mama left in the freezer, and I laughed so hard that I wept into his shoulder.
The little blue bank book told the rest. It showed deposits over thirty years, small ones, like twelve dollars, twenty five dollars, which my mother had put away for Bobby. The balance was one hundred and seven thousand dollars. It was in his name alone, with me as the co signer, and Wayne did not even know it existed. Mr. Fontenot, when I called him the next morning, said, “Mrs. Hathorn, your mother was the smartest woman I ever worked for. Come to my office. And bring Bobby. He will want to see the file.”
Wayne arrived at the house on Tuesday with a real estate sign under his arm and a woman in a pantsuit. He was whistling. He unlocked the front door with a key he still had and found me at the kitchen table, with Mr. Fontenot, a sheriffs deputy, and my brother, who was eating a bowl of cereal. Mr. Fontenot stood and introduced himself. He handed Wayne a copy of the trust and a letter from the court, and said, in the most polite voice I have ever heard, “You are trespassing on a protected property, sir.”
Wayne argued. He shouted. He called my mother senile and me a thief, and said he would have Bobby declared incompetent. The deputy took out a small notebook. Then Mr. Fontenot played the first of the tapes aloud, the one with the voice of my mother, and the room went quiet. At the part about forty thousand dollars, Wayne sat down. At the part about the paper for the property tax, he put his face in his hands. When the tape said, “I should have known my own son,” he began to cry. I did not have the heart to watch.
He was charged with elder exploitation, though the prosecutor, who knew our mother from church, agreed to a plea. Wayne repaid the money over three years, with interest, from the sale of his boat and his truck, and he moved to Mobile to live with a cousin. For a long time he sent nothing, no letter, no card. Then, at Christmas, a package came for Bobby. It was a hymnal, the same Methodist hymnal Mama used, with a bookmark at number 217. Inside, in the hand of Wayne: Bobby, I am sorry. I will try to be better.
I resigned from my job in Atlanta in January and moved into the house in Biloxi. It was not a sacrifice. I discovered that I loved the porch swing, the gardenias, the bakery on the corner, and the way the light came through the pines in the late afternoon. Bobby and I eat breakfast together every morning. He sings in the choir at the Methodist church, in the tenor section, and he knows the number of every hymn in the book. I sit in the third pew with Miss Odessa, who passes me tissues.
On the first anniversary of the funeral, we took the straw hat of Mama to the grave. Bobby set it on the headstone, patted it twice, and said, “Mama, I did a good job.” I knelt beside him in the grass. I told her we were both fine. I told her about the cobbler and the choir and the new roof on the porch. And in the stillness, with the salt wind coming up from the bay, I thought I heard something. A hum. A lullaby, very faint, going on and on.