Amy was at our kitchen table with her reading glasses pushed up on her head, doing the bills, when I got home that Tuesday night.
She took one look at my face and pushed the checkbook aside.
“What did he do?”
I told her. All of it. Tammy. The boys. The truck on Saturday. She listened all the way through without interrupting, which is one of the reasons I married her.
When I got to the part where he said we bought the house so we could feel good about ourselves, she took her glasses off and set them on the table.
“So call him back,” she said. “Tell him no. It’s your house.”
But I’d been telling my father no my whole life, and he’d never once heard it as anything but maybe.
He’d say “fine” and hang up. And then on Saturday morning, that truck would come anyway. And once Tammy’s boys had their beds set up and their mail coming to that address, I’d be the son who put his own father’s girlfriend and her kids out on the curb in November.
I’d never get them out without becoming a man I didn’t want to be.
“He doesn’t hear no,” I said. “He hears a starting price.”
I got up and went into our bedroom. I pulled the gray fireproof box down off the closet shelf and brought it back to the table. I dug through it until I found the envelope from the county recorder’s office.
I unfolded the deed and laid it flat between us.
Warranty Deed. Recorded May 14th. Grantees: Shane Kolb and Linda Kolb, as tenants in common.
Amy put her finger on Mom’s name.
Then I went to the drawer by the phone where I keep my receipts. I’d always kept them. I don’t know why. Habit, I guess. Every time I paid Dad’s gas bill, I’d written the amount on a sticky note and dropped it in that drawer.
I dumped them out on the table. Little yellow squares. Six years of them.
Amy picked up a calculator. She added them up while I sat there not saying anything.
“Five thousand six hundred and twenty dollars,” she said quietly. “Just the gas. Not counting the insurance or your half of the taxes.”
We sat there and looked at that number.
“He told me it’s his house,” I said.
Amy thought about that. She put her glasses back on and looked at me over the top of them, the way she looks at a patient who’s just told her he feels fine.
“Then call your mother,” she said.
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