“Name,” Karen finished, and she opened the folder against her chest as one opens a hymnal. “Mrs. Combs, the checks were endorsed by Brian and deposited into an account in the name of Ashlynn Tate, her maiden name. Twenty two payments. Thirty two thousand dollars. For two years, I told my sons their father was broke. I told them not to be angry.” Behind her, Tyler and Josh stood in their school jackets with their heads down, and the younger one still clutched in both hands the lace handkerchief of my mother.
The deputy, a patient man named Burns, introduced himself with his hat in his hand. He explained that Karen had filed a complaint that morning, and that a judge had signed an order for the bank records. If the funds were meant for child support and were diverted, he said, it was a crime, no matter who was married to whom. Ashlynn grabbed the arm of her fiance. “Brian,” she said, “tell him it was a joint account.” “Ashlynn,” Brian said quietly, and I will never forget it, “it was never a joint account. It had only your name on it.”
He turned and looked at me for the first time. He is fifty two, and he has the forehead of his father. I thought I saw, behind the gray of his face, the boy who had once sobbed at the table over a bad report card. “Mom,” he said, “I signed the checks over to her. She said it would help us with the wedding. I told myself I would catch up on the child support later. I let you pay it and I let her keep it. I do not know when I stopped being ashamed.” Tyler made a sound like a hurt animal.
A watch that has stopped for years may only need a small hand to wind it.
I asked everyone to come in. I do not know what instinct made me do it. I put the kettle on, and laid out the good cups, and seven people sat down at my table who had no business sharing one. Ashlynn, in her white jeans, wept silently into a napkin. Brian sat with his hands flat on the table. Karen, in her scrubs, drank her tea like a woman who had not eaten all day. The boys sat together on the sofa, their shoulders touching. In the middle of the table, I laid the lace handkerchief.
“There will be no wedding on Saturday,” I said. Nobody argued. “Brian, you will pay Karen every dollar, from your own wages, with a receipt, in person, on the first of every month. You will do it for as long as it takes, and you will not ask me for help. I will not rescue you again.” I turned to Ashlynn. “Young woman, you will answer to the law. I am not your judge.” The deputy cleared his throat. “That will be the court, Mrs. Combs.” He was kind about it.
Ashlynn pleaded to theft by deception. She was sentenced to restitution and two years of probation, and the wedding venue refunded the deposit, which came to me with a note I framed. Brian sold his truck and moved into a one room apartment above a hardware store. He took a second job at a distribution center. On the first of each month, for fourteen months, he drove to the house of Karen and knocked on the door and handed her an envelope and waited for a receipt. Karen told me later that he never once raised his eyes.
Tyler and Josh came to supper on Saturdays. They arrived in a rattly car, hungry as wolves, and ate everything. I made pot roast, and cornbread, and an apple pie from the tree in the yard. Josh, who is seventeen and does not say much, wandered the house after supper, touching things. He stood a long time in the sewing room in front of the picture of Ernest. “Grandma,” he said, “what happened to the pocket watch of Grandpa?” I took it from beside the frame. It had not ticked since the day he died.
Josh turned it over in his hands. He pressed his thumbnail into the back of the case, and it popped open, and inside he found a tiny key worn smooth as a river stone. He wound it, five slow turns. He held it to his ear. His eyes widened. He held it out to me, and I heard it too: a thin, bright, patient tick, the sound of long silence breaking. I put a hand over my mouth. “It only needed winding,” Josh said, with the solemn wonder of a boy who has solved something.
Tyler graduated from the technical college in May with a degree in nursing, like his mother. He asked me to pin him. I stood on a stage in the gym in my brown coat, the very brown coat Ashlynn had mocked, and I fastened the pin to the lapel of my grandson and kissed his cheek. In the front row, Karen cried openly in her scrubs. Beside her sat Brian, in a borrowed jacket, with his hands folded, hardly daring to breathe. When Tyler glanced out at them, Brian lifted one hand, and Tyler, after a pause, lifted his back.
I carry the lace handkerchief in my purse now. I will give it to the bride who earns it. Perhaps she will be the wife of Tyler, perhaps of Josh, perhaps neither, and perhaps it will go into the box for another century. That evening, I wound the watch of Ernest before bed, five turns, and set it on the table by his photograph, where it ticked in the dark like a small, faithful heart. “Ernest,” I said, “our boy is coming home.” The watch ticked on, and I slept until morning.