Part 3 — Behind The Ironing Board
I set my chisel down because a coffee can sat in the compartment, a red Folgers can with the lid pressed on tight. Taped to the front was an index card, and the writing on it was shaky but clear.
For Annie Louise. College. Do not spend.
Inside the can were bills folded in neat thirds, a pile of coins in a sock, and a bankbook from the Ravenswood Savings and Loan. Under it lay a pressed corsage and a program from a high school graduation.
The couple who owned the house, Marcus and Elaine, came in from the porch. Elaine put her hand to her mouth. “Somebody saved this for years,” she said.
The dates on the bankbook ran from 1958 to 1966. A little at a time. Four dollars. Seven dollars. Eleven dollars on a good week. The total was $2,318, which in those years was a good deal of money for a seamstress.
The old owner was a woman named Opal Fitch. Elaine found her in the county obituaries. Opal had passed away in 1998, with a single survivor named in the notice: a daughter, Annie Louise Fitch Carver, of Parkersburg.
Marcus phoned her that evening. Annie Louise was seventy-eight, and her voice was brisk and kind. “I am sorry, I need you to say that again,” she said. “My mother saved for my college?”
Opal had never told her. After a hard year in 1966, the family had to use the college money for a funeral. She hid the empty plan in the wall out of shame, and kept the coffee can anyway, in case things ever got better.
There is nothing in the law that obliges a homeowner to return such a thing. But Marcus and Elaine said it was never a question. They drove it to Parkersburg on Sunday.
Annie Louise met them on her porch with a plate of lemon cookies. She held the coffee can in her lap for a long time before she opened the lid.
She laughed, and then she cried, and then she said, “She never once complained. Not one day.”
A mother can fail at saving enough and still leave behind exactly what her child needed, which was proof that she tried.
Annie Louise took the money and enrolled in an art class at the community college that fall, at seventy-eight years old. She sends me a card every Christmas with a painting of an ironing board on the front.