Miss Opal reached into her lap blanket and pulled out a thank-you card, and the nurse held it steady so she could read it to the reception.
Mr. Whitmore, she said, you said somebody has to crawl under the dishwasher. Let me tell you who crawled into our attic.
In July, Miss Opal said, during the heat wave, the air conditioning broke at our old folks home in Maryville, and it was ninety-five degrees, and some of us are too old to take that kind of heat. The company said it would be days before anyone could come. And a young man who fixes appliances came out that night, climbed up into our attic, and worked until morning in the worst of it, for free, until the cool air came back on. He saved more than one of us that week. This card is from all of us. We signed every name.
The reception had gone quiet. Wesley had loosened his tie.
Whitmore said he just buys a new one when his breaks, and the man he mocked climbed into a hundred-degree attic all night so a home full of old people would not die in the heat.
Miss Opal was Mr. Whitmores own mother, brought over from that very home for the wedding, and she had been waiting all evening with the card in her lap blanket for the moment her son would say one thing too many.
I am Wesleys mama. He loosened his tie and said congratulations, Mr. Whitmore, and took the joke, because a man who saved a home full of elders in a heat wave does not need a furniture chain owner to tell him what he is worth. Mr. Whitmore took the card from his mothers hands, and he read every name, and he could not get through them all.