The father of Cody is named Walt Brandt, and he is a retired county commissioner, a heavy man in a bolo tie with the slow gestures of someone who has sat through ten thousand meetings. He held the deed in both hands, under the lamp. “Smoky Hill Properties,” he said. “Managing member, Mervin Pfannenstiel.” He looked slowly around the apartment, at the pot roast, at the tablecloth and the radiator, at the six faces turned to him. “Mervin, you own the building. You own the wall behind the girlfriend of my son. You own the chair I am sitting in.” He lowered the paper. “And the notice she showed us, about the rent, was written by you.”
“I wrote no notice,” I said. “I am seventy four years old and I have never raised the rent on a living soul.” Tonya had not moved. My daughter is forty six, a trim, striking woman with the red hair of her mother and the smile of a real estate agent that she wears like a brooch, and the smile had come off her face. “Dad,” she said, in a low voice. “I can explain the insurance.” “I would like that,” I said. “Twenty five years of premiums. Doris and I paid every one. And in May, a woman at your bank signed a paper under your power of attorney, and the coverage ended, and the refund of twenty two thousand, four hundred and ten dollars went to an account ending in 6018.”
She sat down. It was a slow movement, with one hand on the back of the chair, as though her knees had gone. “It was so expensive,” she said. “Every month, four hundred dollars. And you never used it. And Dad, you are healthy as a horse. I thought, it is a waste.” She stared at the table. “I was behind on the mortgage on the condo. I was three months behind. I was going to catch up, and then the Jeep needed a transmission, and I could not tell you.” Her voice splintered. “And every time I thought of telling you, I thought of your face.”
A turquoise belt buckle lay on a dinner table beside a warranty deed and gave one western wear owner the evening to bring his daughter back to honesty.
“Tonya,” said Cody, “the down payment on the Jeep.” He was a lanky man of forty, a plumber with a gentle voice and calloused hands, and he put one palm flat on the table. “You told me it was your tax return. And the trip to Branson. And the new couch.” He was not shouting. That was the worst of it. “I love you, Tonya. I have asked you three times to marry me. And I have just discovered I do not know who you are.” Tonya began to cry in earnest, her shoulders shaking, her face in her hands. Walt Brandt reached across and laid his big hand on the forearm of his son, and left it there.
I took the buckle of Doris from my vest pocket, the turquoise one, and turned it over in the lamplight. It was heavy and cool in my palm. She wore it to every rodeo in Kansas for forty years. In the fourth grade, Tonya had asked if she could wear it to the school Western day, and Doris had said yes, and pinned it on her small waist with two safety pins. “Tonya,” I said. “Do you remember this?” She raised her head. “Mom let me wear it. It came down to my knees.” “It did,” I said. “You walked into that classroom like a queen.” I set it on the table. “That is the girl I want back.”
“Dad, I do not know how to get her back,” she whispered. “I think she went away a long time ago.” I told her I did not believe that. I told her that people do not lose themselves all at once. They lose a little each time they tell a lie to make the next hour easier. “And you can get it back the same way,” I said. “One honest hour at a time. Starting tonight.”
I told her the terms. The long term care policy would be reinstated, at her expense, with the help of my lawyer, who had already spoken to a friend at the insurance company. The refund she would repay in full, with the cost of the new premium on top, over four years, at a rate she would set herself. The Jeep would be sold. And the rent. She sniffled, mutely. “The rent,” I said, “is six hundred and fifty dollars, and has been for two years. I am going to give you every dollar of it back.” Her head came up. “Dad?” “And I am going to ask you to move out of that unit, and let me move in.”
She looked at me blankly. “Move out?” “Honey,” I said, “I own this building. I am your landlord. I am going to charge you a fair rent, in writing, in a lease, like any tenant. And I would like to live on the first floor, where the stairs are not so steep.” She began to laugh, a wet and astonished burst, with her hand over her mouth. Cody grinned. Walt Brandt, who had not smiled all night, gave a short bark of delight. “By God,” he said. “Mervin, you old fox. You played them like a fiddle.” I said that I had never played anything in my life but the radio.
Tonya repaid the money in forty one months. She sold the Jeep and bought a used sedan, and took the apartment on the second floor for the fair rent, and paid it in a check on the first. She married Cody in the spring, at the Methodist church on Main Street, in a simple white dress. I walked her down the aisle. At the altar, she turned and asked for the buckle. I took it from my vest. She pinned it to her sash with two safety pins, as Doris had, and it came down nearly to her knee. Cody laughed. The minister waited. And my daughter walked into that church like a queen.
I sit in the first floor apartment now. The radiator clanks. On Sunday nights, the sound of footsteps comes down through the ceiling, and a murmur of voices, and sometimes the thin sound of a laugh, and I lie in my bed in the dark with the quilt of Doris pulled up to my chin and feel the whole building around me like a hand. In the window, Main Street is white with snow. Somewhere down the block, a clock chimes. I think, not for the first time, that I was very lucky in my life.