Part 3 — Page Six
The second note unrolled from the bobbin with a little curl of red thread, and the union hall went so quiet you could hear the coffee urn hiss.
“Phil, the page is number six. Look at the name.”
Ursula the fund representative opened her folder and slid the notarized waiver packet across the head table. Page six was a single sheet with a signature line at the bottom.
It read “Phyllis Costa.”
My name has been Philomena Costa since 1971. I have signed it with the same loop on the P for fifty-five years, and my mother never once called me Phyllis.
Odetta put her hand over her mouth. Sal looked at the floor.
Ursula said in her calm professional voice that a waiver of a survivor pension has to be signed by the spouse and witnessed by a notary, and that the stamp on this page bore a commission number that did not exist.
Federal law had protected me all along, and Tony had known it, and he had written me the first letter of his life to make sure I would use it.
She said the fund would void the waiver at once, and my pension of eighteen hundred sixty dollars a month would continue without a day missed. The matter of the false signature would be referred to the funds review office, as the rules require.
Sal asked in a small voice whether he could speak. He told the whole hall he had been laid off for two years and had been paying his rent with money borrowed from men he did not like.
Nobody clapped. Nobody shouted either.
I stood up with my wooden bobbin and said that I did not want him in handcuffs. I wanted the gold chain, the truck keys and the pension stub on my kitchen table by supper, and I wanted him to go and talk to the union counselor on Monday.
He did all three. The counselor found him a job with the city maintenance crew by spring.
That night, Odetta and I went through the dumpster bobbins that I had hauled home in a laundry basket. Six of them were heavy at one end.
Each held a rolled-up scrap of paper tied with red thread, in block letters I knew. “Phil. Still yours.” “Phil. Go make thread.” “Phil. Thank you for the coffee.” “Phil. I looked at you at the loom today, and I could not look away.”
Forty-nine years, and he never wrote me a card. He wrote me seven.