“Because I own the company on that letterhead, baby,” I said, “or I did.” Andre had his finger on the corner of the last page, and I watched the color leave his face in one slow wave. The letterhead said, in neat black capitals, Southeastern Wash and Fold, Atlanta, Georgia, and under it, in a line of smaller type: successor to Bettye Wash and Fold, Florence, South Carolina. “In September I sold all nine of my laundromats. Five million eight hundred thousand dollars. I did not tell you because I wanted to know who my son was when he thought his mother had a green ledger and a dryer that ate quarters.” The little radio on the counter played Al Green, soft and warm.
Monique had closed her folder. She is a slender, elegant woman of forty four with a face that never moves much, and I had always thought that stillness was composure. I saw now it was something else. It was a held breath. “Bettye,” she said, “that is wonderful news. Congratulations.” I said, “Thank you, Monique.” She said, “You should have told us. We could have helped you with the taxes.” I said, “Honey, I have an accountant.” She said, “Then we could have celebrated.” I looked at her. “Is that what the agenda was for? The listing agreement for my house? The assisted living?” She did not answer.
Andre had not looked up from the paper. “Mama,” he said, and his voice was very small. “Where is it?” I said, “the Cadillac of James? It is on Palmetto Street, on the lot of a dealer called Marlon Sykes. I drove by on Friday. It is parked in the front row, with a price on the windshield. Fourteen thousand nine hundred ninety five.” I had to stop. “He is selling it, baby, with the burgundy interior and Al Green still in the cassette player. A man at the lot told me a lady in a red Lexus brought the title.” I let it settle. “Monique drives a red Lexus.”
A white Cadillac parked in the front row of a used car lot brought a family meeting agenda to a halt and gave one laundromat owner the afternoon to bring her son home.
Andre turned his whole body toward his wife. He is forty seven, a tall, handsome man and I saw his face crumple. “Monique,” he said. She said, “Andre, it was an old car.” He said, “It was the old car of my father.” She said, “It was making a noise. It was an unsafe car for an old woman to drive.” He said, “Did you sell the car of my mother?” His voice cracked. She lifted her chin. “We needed the money, Andre. The business is struggling. The mortgage is three months behind. I did not want to worry you.” He stared at her as at a stranger. “You forged her name.”
I stood up, and I went to my cabinet, and I took out the good china cups, the ones with the gold rim that James gave me in 1980, and I set them on the table with the coffee pot. My hands were steady. “We are going to sit here,” I said, “and have coffee and cake like Christians. And we are going to talk, quietly, because I am an old woman, and I will not be shouted at in my own kitchen.” Monique stared. Andre sank into his chair. I poured.
Andre told it all, haltingly. How the sales commissions had dried up the previous year. How Monique had told him she could manage, how he had believed her, how he had signed whatever she put in front of him. How they had come to my house on a Sunday in March, rehearsing, to see whether I might be persuaded. “I am a coward, Mama,” he said. “I let her do it, and I called it taking care of you. I did not want to know where the money came from. I did not want to know where the Cadillac went.” He cried then, the heavy, helpless crying of a grown man. I went around the table and put my hand on the back of his neck.
Monique said nothing for a long time. Then, in a voice I had never heard from her, thin and young, she said, “I was so afraid, Bettye. Of the house. Of the neighbors finding out. I have been afraid for two years.” I said, “I know, dear.” She said, “I did not think you would ever forgive me.” I said, “I have not said that I do.” She flinched. “But I am willing to listen, and I am willing to help you out of this, on terms.” I took the DMV record from my envelope and laid it by her cup. “First, the car. You will buy it back from Mr. Sykes this week, at whatever price he asks, from the proceeds of the sale of your own jewelry.”
“Second, the listing agreement goes in the trash. Third, you will both sit down with my accountant and with a counselor who works with families in debt, and you will pay me back the fourteen thousand dollars in monthly installments. And fourth,” I said, and here I looked at my son, “my son will spend one evening a week at my kitchen table, with a cup of coffee, learning the green ledger. I want him to see where it all came from. Not the money. The work.” Andre nodded.
The Cadillac came home on a Saturday morning in a flatbed truck, white and long and gleaming under a coat of fresh wax. Andre walked it into the carport himself, driving slowly with the windows down, and when he shut off the engine he sat there with his hands on the wheel, in the quiet, for a long time. I stood on the porch in my housecoat. At last he got out and stood next to the open door. “Mama,” he said, “it still smells like him.” I came down the steps. I smelled it too.
That evening, I drove it to the end of Irby Street, where the first laundromat still stands, lit up in the dusk, with its window of spinning clothes, and I parked in front. Andre sat beside me. I put in the cassette. The deep, sweet voice began, the song about staying together, and I turned it up, and the two of us sat in the Cadillac of James with the windows down, in the warm Carolina twilight, listening. My son took my hand across the leather seat. He did not say he was sorry. He did not have to. He only hummed, a little flat, along with Al Green.