My daughter-in-law took my shoes outside the café and said, “Your son doesn’t want you back, either.” I had nowhere to sleep, and she knew it. Then a rider everyone had moved aside for knelt beside me with a basin, and the name she called me made him stop washing my feet.
Those shoes were borrowed, and the shelter wouldn’t hold a bed unless I reached its desk before supper.
Roseanne held them beyond my fingers while people squeezed past us with their lunches.
“They belong to the woman who gave them to me,” I said.
“Then go bother HER.”
She lifted them beside her cheek, pinched between her fingers, and smiled when I reached again.
I’d worked behind that counter until my knees couldn’t take the standing.
Now I couldn’t get inside to use the bathroom.
Seven weeks earlier, she’d left my clothes outside the house and told me Kenny had agreed.
My son worked away.
The messages I’d sent through her stayed unanswered, and my phone stopped working when the family account dropped my number.
I’d gone back to the house.
Somebody else answered.
Roseanne had told me the move was temporary, that she would pass along an address when Kenny was ready.
I kept asking.
That afternoon, I’d come to the counter because I knew she handled the bookings there.
I wanted an address, not lunch.
She’d pointed at the dirt my shoes left beside the door.
I’d slipped them off to wipe the soles with a napkin.
That was when she took them.
“You’re making customers uncomfortable,” she said.
“My coat’s still at your house.”
“Nothing there is YOURS anymore.”
I reached for the shoes again, and my balance went.
My backside hit the concrete.
She stepped away from me before I could catch her sleeve.
A man carrying a helmet stopped beside the curb.
People had been turning sideways to let him through, although there was room enough without it.
He was so tall that I had to lean back to see his face.
He looked from my feet to the shoes in Roseanne’s hand.
“Those hers?”
“We’re handling it,” she said.
He waited.
Roseanne dropped the shoes beside my tote.
“There. Happy?”
One landed upright.
The other tipped over, and the cardboard I’d fitted inside fell onto the pavement.
I’d walked through the lining days earlier.
The man bent to help me stand, but I pulled my feet back beneath my skirt.
“Please don’t,” I said.
He let go immediately.
“All right. Can you stay sitting while I get something?”
He crossed to a motorcycle parked near the corner.
I thought he’d leave.
Roseanne already had her hand around the door handle.
“You can’t sit here all afternoon, Myra.”
The man paused beside his motorcycle.
Then he opened its luggage box.
He returned with a folding basin, a bottle and a cloth inside a plastic bag.
“Camping stuff,” he said. “The water’s clean.”
He knelt without asking anybody to move.
His knee landed on the napkin I’d dropped, and he shifted it aside so it wouldn’t stick to his jeans.
“May I?”
I nodded.
He poured water into the basin and waited while I lowered my feet.
It hurt enough that I caught his sleeve.
He stopped moving.
“Too cold?”
“No.”
I couldn’t get the rest out.
Roseanne pulled the door open, then let it close again when somebody passing slowed down.
“Don’t encourage this,” she said. “She’ll be here EVERY day.”
The rider folded the cloth over his fingers.
“Where do you want it?”
I pointed to my heel.
He worked around the sore place instead of rubbing across it.
I kept waiting for him to hurry.
Behind him, people went past with bags tucked under their elbows, their faces turned toward the crossing.
Nobody asked my name.
Roseanne kept saying it.
“Myra, get up.”
“Myra, you’ve made your point.”
The rider looked at her.
“She can’t put those back on yet.”
“They’re the shoes she CHOSE.”
“They were donated,” I said.
Roseanne’s mouth pulled sideways.
“You’ve always got an answer.”
I tried to reach the cloth so I could finish myself.
The rider put it in my hand.
He didn’t make me ask twice.
“My son used to do that,” I said.
“What?”
“Hand me things instead of telling me I couldn’t manage.”
Roseanne’s fingers slipped off the handle.
“Don’t start about Kenny.”
The rider raised his head.
For a moment, his hand stayed inside the bag where he’d been looking for socks.
“Kenny?” he said.
“My husband,” Roseanne said. “And this is FAMILY business.”
He stood halfway, then settled back onto his heels.
He studied her face.
“You’re Roseanne.”
She stopped looking at me.
“Have we met?”
“Declan,” he said.
She took a step backward into the doorway.
The door caught her shoulder, but she kept pushing against it until it opened.
“LEAVE THIS ALONE,” she said.
Then she went inside.
I held the cloth above the basin because I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing with it.
“You know my son?”
“We ride together.”
I pressed the cloth between my palms.
“Then you can tell him where I am.”
He pulled his phone out, but his thumb wouldn’t settle on the screen.
I leaned toward Declan. “What did she tell you?”
He lowered the phone and looked straight at me.
“I helped carry your coffin.”
The photograph above the till
“Four weeks ago,” Declan said. “A farewell here. Closed coffin. Roseanne said the cremation would be private afterward.”
I took his phone.
“Call Kenny.”
He pressed the number, and I held it against my ear with both hands. It rang until my son’s recorded voice told me to leave a message.
“Kenny. It’s Mom. I’m outside the café. Please answer.”
I nearly added that I wasn’t angry. Mothers will offer a discount before anyone has asked the price.
Declan gave me the socks. I dried my feet myself, with him holding the basin away from my skirt.
“Was Kenny there?”
“Working away. She said they’d agreed he’d say goodbye separately.”
“Did you see me?”
“No.”
He looked toward the door.
“None of us did.”
Through the glass, my photograph hung above the cash register. Black ribbon across one corner. Roseanne must have brought it from the mantel when they moved.
I was wearing the blouse Kenny bought me for my seventieth birthday. He’d left the price on. I’d worn it three times before telling him.
Now I was seventy-three, sitting outside my own photograph with somebody else’s socks on.
“Help me up,” I said.
Declan offered his forearm. He didn’t put his hands under my arms as if I were furniture.
Roseanne stood inside with her phone against her chest.
“You can’t come in like that.”
I looked down at my socks.
“I’ve been getting in here dead. Alive ought to be easier.”
She stepped across the entrance.
Behind her, the door to the upstairs apartment opened. Jeanne, who owned the café, came down with a bundle of sheets.
The sheets hit the bottom stair.
“Myra?”
Roseanne put a hand against Jeanne’s arm.
“Before you say anything, let me explain.”
Jeanne’s booking book
Jeanne shook her hand off and pulled out a chair.
“Sit.”
Roseanne reached for the chair back.
“She needs somewhere appropriate.”
“She’s sitting here.”
Jeanne pushed the chair beneath me herself. We’d worked together in that Dayton lunch counter for eighteen years. She knew exactly how far my knees would bend.
Her booking book lay beside the till, open beneath Roseanne’s reading glasses. I put my tote over it because my hands needed a job.
Roseanne pulled the book free.
“That’s work.”
So was the counter I’d wiped for nearly two decades. Apparently she inherited both when I stopped breathing on paper.
Jeanne crouched beside my chair.
“Where have you been?”
“Here and there.”
“Where last night?”
I looked at the customers instead.
She stood and turned my photograph toward the wall.
Roseanne reached past her.
“Don’t start changing things until Kenny gets here.”
“Then call him again,” I said.
She didn’t move.
Seven weeks earlier, at that counter, I’d counted twenty-four hundred dollars into an envelope for Roseanne. Six months of board in advance, from my last savings. Jeanne had lent me a pen.
“You don’t have to do it all now,” Roseanne had said.
“I don’t want Kenny carrying me.”
She’d put the envelope in her handbag and said, “You’re family, Myra.”
Back in the chair, I pressed my knees together. I could still hear her saying it.
“Did Kenny get my board money?”
Roseanne turned a page in the book.
“We’re not doing accounts in front of customers.”
She’d always been helpful in front of customers. She took bookings, remembered birthdays, arranged flowers. Give her a ribbon and she’d tie it around anything, including me.
Jeanne pulled another chair close.
“You could’ve come to me.”
“I thought you knew.”
Her mouth opened, then closed.
Roseanne had told me everyone agreed. After enough doors, you stop trying handles.
“Is upstairs still empty?” I said.
“Yes.”
“What are you asking for it?”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“I’d rather know.”
Jeanne gave me the monthly rent. I did the sum against the money Roseanne wouldn’t discuss.
Roseanne closed the booking book.
“You can’t just move her into your property. Kenny has to be involved.”
Declan’s phone rang against the counter.
My son’s name filled the screen.
Monday, before supper
Declan put the phone in my hand.
“Mom?”
“Yes.”
“Say something.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“No. Something only you’d know.”
My son wanted a password. After seven weeks of pavement, I couldn’t have told him the day without counting backward from the shelter’s laundry schedule.
Then I said, “You broke my gravy boat and glued the handle on upside down.”
He made a sound I hadn’t heard since he was a boy.
“Mom.”
I bent over the phone. Jeanne put her hand on my back, and I couldn’t bear that either.
“Where are you?”
“At work. I mean, where I used to work.”
“Let me speak to Roseanne.”
“I need you to listen first.”
“I will. I just need to know what happened.”
“I’m telling you.”
Roseanne held out her hand. Her wedding ring tapped the phone when she reached for it.
I pulled away.
“She put my things outside. I couldn’t get hold of you. She said you’d agreed.”
“I agreed you needed another place.”
Jeanne’s hand stopped moving.
Another place. He’d been told there was a place.
“Which one?”
“She said you were staying with someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, Mom.”
Roseanne took the phone while I was still holding it.
“Kenny, she’s upset. Obviously she’s upset. Come tomorrow, and we’ll sit down. You can’t sort this out over the phone.”
She moved toward the booking room.
Declan stepped into the doorway. He didn’t touch her.
“Put it on speaker.”
She looked at Jeanne for help.
Jeanne said, “Do it.”
Kenny came through the little speaker, louder now.
“I’ll be there in the morning. Mom, stay there.”
“The shelter won’t hold my bed.”
“What shelter?”
Roseanne pressed the phone against her blouse.
I reached for it, but Jeanne took it from her and put it on the counter.
“What shelter, Mom?”
“The one I have to get to before supper.”
He said my name the way people do when they’ve run out of questions they can bear asking.
Jeanne brought the upstairs key.
“She’s staying here tonight.”
Roseanne folded her arms.
“Fine. Let everybody calm down.”
Declan went to empty the basin. I waited until he was out of earshot before asking Jeanne whether he needed paying for the water.
She sat down hard.
“Oh, Myra.”
“Don’t do that. I haven’t got enough tissues.”
She took my hand anyway.
By the time Declan returned, the shelter’s supper deadline had passed. My tote stayed between my ankles. Jeanne could offer a bed; my hands still wanted to keep everything I owned where I could touch it.
Roseanne lifted the photograph from above the till.
“Good,” Jeanne said.
But she tucked it under her arm.
“People will ask,” she said.
Tuesday, at eight
Kenny came through the door before Jeanne opened on Tuesday.
I stood too quickly. The chair hit the wall, and he crossed the room with his arms out.
For a minute, I let him hold me.
His shirt smelled of the soap I’d bought when he still lived at home. I wanted to put my face into it and let somebody else manage the morning.
He cried against my hair.
“I thought you were gone.”
“I’m here.”
“I kept thinking I should’ve come.”
“You can sit down now.”
He wouldn’t let go until I patted his back. Fifty-two years old, and I was still telling him when it was all right to stop crying.
Then Roseanne came out of the booking room.
He loosened his arms.
“What did you do?”
She held the back of a chair.
“Can we please have this conversation without an audience?”
Jeanne stood beside the till. Declan had returned because I’d asked him to. His basin was packed away; I needed the man who’d carried the coffin.
“They stay,” I said.
Roseanne pulled out the chair.
“You said you wanted everyone to leave you alone, Myra. Those were your words.”
“After you put my clothes outside.”
“You were impossible to talk to. Every suggestion became an argument.”
Kenny wiped his face.
“Did you say that, Mom?”
I looked at him.
“Did I say I wanted to be dead?”
“No one’s saying that.”
“There’s a photograph with a ribbon.”
He turned to Roseanne.
“Tell me you didn’t do this.”
She sat.
“I thought if we made a clean break, we could move on. She’d made it clear she didn’t want us.”
Declan pushed his chair away from the wall.
“You told me she’d died.”
Roseanne looked at Kenny.
“I wasn’t thinking properly.”
“You chose a coffin,” Declan said.
“I know what I did.”
My son put both palms against his eyes. I waited. I wanted him to ask about my feet, or the seven weeks, or why his wife had taken shoes from somebody sitting on concrete.
Instead, he lowered his hands and said, “We need to keep this in the family until we understand it.”
Jeanne turned toward the kitchen.
“No,” I said.
Kenny reached across the space between us.
“Mom, please. I’m trying to help.”
“Then ask me where I slept.”
“You don’t have to tell everybody that.”
“I slept outside.”
Roseanne made a noise through her nose.
“She had choices.”
Kenny lifted a hand toward her, but he kept looking at me.
“All right. Enough. We don’t need the details in front of people.”
There it was. My son could bear a coffin in front of people. He couldn’t bear his mother explaining where she’d slept.
I took my hand off his.
Declan stood, then sat again when I shook my head.
Kenny leaned close.
“People think you’ve died. We can’t just open the doors and have you sitting here.”
I wanted to say that I could stand by the register and charge admission. My mouth wouldn’t make the joke.
Jeanne’s clock clicked over the counter.
My son got up and locked the café door.
The key on the counter
At nine that Tuesday, Kenny put a house key beside my tote.
“You’ll come with us.”
Roseanne’s chair scraped the floor.
“Kenny.”
“For now,” he said. “We’ll work out the rest.”
I didn’t touch the key.
“Will I have an address this time?”
He flinched.
“You’ll have everything you need.”
“Who has the other key?”
He looked toward his wife.
Roseanne folded her hands. She could sit very neatly when she wanted somebody else to sound unreasonable.
“I won’t argue with you in my own house, Myra.”
“I haven’t been invited yet.”
“Kenny just invited you.”
“I asked you.”
She looked at the clock.
“There’s no point making this harder.”
I pushed the key back toward my son.
He took out his wallet instead.
“Then a room somewhere. I’ll pay. We can find something today.”
“With what happens here kept quiet?”
“We’ll explain you’re alive.”
“How?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“We’ll say there was a mistake.”
Declan leaned forward.
“I carried a coffin, Kenny. You can’t put that down to somebody reading the wrong message.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
My son stood again.
“What do you want me to do? Stand outside and tell everyone my wife did this? I’ve just found out my mother’s alive. Can I have an hour before everybody starts pulling pieces off me?”
I nearly went to him.
That was the worst part. He raised his voice, and my body still wanted to fetch him something.
Roseanne touched his sleeve.
“We’ll get through it.”
He let her hand stay.
Jeanne picked up the booking book and took it behind the till. On the cover was a grease mark I’d made years before with the bottom of a soup cup.
I used to keep every collection in that book. Flowers for somebody in hospital, a birthday supper, help when a cook’s washing machine broke. Name, amount, who took it. People worked too hard for their cash to have it vanish into a handbag.
Roseanne followed my eyes.
“Leave the work out of this.”
Kenny pushed his wallet across the table.
“Take what you need, Mom.”
Inside it was the photograph of me he’d carried for years. Same blouse. Same birthday.
I shut the wallet.
“No.”
He sat back.
“Then I don’t know what else to offer.”
Outside, somebody tried the door. Jeanne put up one finger through the glass.
Kenny looked from the waiting customer to me.
“Could you go upstairs while we sort out what to say?”
I picked up my tote.
For one moment, his face softened with relief.
Then I set it on the chair beside me.
“Jeanne,” I said. “Bring me the book.”
The page with my name
Jeanne put the book in front of me that Tuesday morning.
Roseanne reached across the table.
“That’s private.”
Jeanne kept her hand over the cover.
“It belongs to the café.”
I turned back four weeks.
My name took up two lines. Beneath it, in Roseanne’s writing, was “Help with cremation and final expenses.”
Twenty-three names followed.
I read the first amount. Then the next.
Declan leaned over my shoulder and put his finger on one entry.
“That’s mine.”
He’d given two hundred dollars.
At the bottom, Jeanne had checked the addition. Seven thousand eight hundred forty-three dollars and sixteen cents.
Somebody had emptied a coin jar for me. The cents made me put my hand over my mouth.
Kenny pulled the book toward him.
“You took a collection?”
Roseanne stood.
“People wanted to help.”
“I sent you money for everything.”
“You sent what you thought it would cost.”
“I paid the coffin bill. You said the rest was arranged.”
Jeanne turned the page.
“Roseanne signed for the collection. I gave it to her after the service.”
Her signature sat beneath the total.
Kenny looked up.
“Where did it go?”
Roseanne took a step toward the door.
“We are not discussing our accounts with your mother.”
I put my finger on my name.
He took out his phone.
“Was this what went into the holiday savings?”
She stopped.
They’d talked about that trip over the counter while I was still working. Roseanne wanted a cabin with a balcony. She used to turn her phone around so Jeanne could admire the view.
Kenny held his screen toward her.
“You told me you’d saved it from bookings.”
“I do work, Kenny.”
“Where’s this money?”
“It’s there. Most of the money is still there. I haven’t run off with anything.”
The coffin had earned her a balcony.
I pulled the book back.
Kenny reached for his wallet again.
“I’ll return it.”
“No.”
Roseanne sat down.
“Then what exactly do you want?”
I moved my chair toward the room where they’d held my farewell.
“Another booking.”
The room behind the counter
Jeanne unlocked the café that Tuesday while I stayed in the booking room.
I asked her to bring in the customers who’d contributed. She knew which ones came for lunch. Declan called the riders whose numbers he had.
Roseanne stayed beside Kenny.
“You cannot do this to us.”
I kept the book open.
“You can leave,” I said. “The amounts stay.”
She looked toward the front door, then at my son. He hadn’t offered his wallet again.
By noon, the chairs filled. Two people stood by the doorway. Jeanne brought in my photograph and set it faceup beside the book.
Nobody needed another ribbon.
Roseanne started before I could speak.
“Myra’s had a difficult time. There are things within a family that people outside it don’t understand.”
A woman near the door reached for my hand.
I let her hold it.
Roseanne kept talking.
“What happened was wrong. I accept that. But Kenny and I will deal with it. You will all have your money returned.”
“By whom?” I said.
She glanced at Kenny.
“We’re married.”
He moved his chair away from hers.
“You have the money.”
“Some of it is mine.”
“Then you can use yours.”
She put both hands on the table.
“You told me to handle things while you were away. You knew your mother and I weren’t getting along. You said you couldn’t keep coming back every time she was upset.”
Kenny’s face reddened.
“I did.”
I looked at him.
He didn’t look away.
“I said that, Mom.”
Roseanne seized his sleeve.
“So don’t sit there and act as though I made every decision alone.”
“You told me she’d found a place to stay. Then you told me she’d died.”
“You didn’t ask to come home.”
“I asked. You said there was nothing left to do.”
The woman holding my hand began to cry.
Roseanne pointed toward her.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want a room full of people.”
Jeanne pulled out the chair at the head of the table.
“You wanted them here when they brought envelopes.”
Roseanne sat down.
For a while she talked about pressure. About being responsible for the house. About Kenny leaving her to make arrangements. She spoke until one of the riders stood.
“Did you tell us she was dead?”
“Yes, but—”
“Was she?”
“No.”
He sat.
Nobody supplied the next sentence for her.
I pushed the photograph across the table.
“Where did you think I was?”
She looked at my face in the frame.
“I didn’t know.”
“You knew yesterday.”
Her mouth moved.
“Yesterday was a shock.”
“You held my shoes.”
Kenny stood so abruptly that his chair hit the wall.
Declan moved his foot out of its way. He kept his eyes on Roseanne.
My son went to the doorway. I thought he was leaving.
He opened the door wider.
Jeanne’s customers could hear us now. Roseanne’s eyes followed him.
“Kenny, shut that.”
“No.”
She started crying.
“I said I’ll give it back.”
I turned the book toward her.
“All of it. From your savings. Jeanne will give people their envelopes.”
“And then we’re finished?”
“Then that money is returned.”
She looked at Kenny again.
He pulled his wedding hand out of her reach.
“My mother asked where you thought she was.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The answer.”
Roseanne pressed a tissue against her nose.
“I thought she’d come back.”
“I did,” I said.
She stared at the table.
Jeanne put the spare upstairs key beside my hand.
“The apartment’s available.”
I didn’t pick it up yet.
“My board money first.”
Roseanne lifted her head.
“You lived with us for years.”
“I paid ahead. You put me out the next day.”
Kenny looked from her to me.
“How much?”
“Twenty-four hundred.”
Jeanne said, “I was here when she handed it over.”
Roseanne folded the tissue until it was no bigger than a postage stamp.
“You’re taking everything.”
Kenny sat down beside me.
“You still have shoes.”
Friday’s envelopes
On Friday, Roseanne returned with the money.
Jeanne counted the collection cash at the same counter where I’d handed over my board. I sat beside her with the booking book and read the names.
Roseanne wanted to leave as soon as she put down the envelopes.
“Stay,” I said.
She looked toward Kenny.
He stood by the door with Declan. Neither moved.
The first woman checked her envelope, then looked at me.
“I put in fifty. I couldn’t afford more.”
“I know.”
“I would’ve come for you if I’d known.”
“I know that now.”
She held on to my hand for longer than either of us needed. Roseanne turned toward the window.
Jeanne said her name.
Roseanne faced the counter again.
One by one, the people who’d brought money for my cremation took it back from the woman who’d collected it. Some counted it. Some didn’t.
Declan put his two hundred dollars into his wallet.
Roseanne tried to hand him the next envelope.
“Not my job,” he said.
He stayed until she handed it to the right person.
Kenny stood beside me after the last visitor left.
“I should’ve come home.”
“Yes.”
“I should’ve called you myself.”
“Yes.”
He rubbed his palms against his trousers.
“I don’t know how to put it back.”
I picked up the upstairs key.
“You can carry my tote.”
He did. One bag, up one flight. He took both hands to it.
Jeanne had cleared her sheets out of the apartment. There was a bed, a stove, and a door I could lock from inside.
My twenty-four hundred dollars covered the deposit and the first months of rent. Jeanne counted my payment and gave me a receipt. I folded it into my purse myself.
Kenny set the tote on the bed.
“Can I come tomorrow?”
“Call first.”
He nodded.
“On what?”
Declan held out the phone Kenny had brought me that morning. My son’s number was saved under his name, along with Jeanne’s and Declan’s.
I checked them before putting it down.
Then I sat on the bed.
Neither man tried to help me. My knees bent, the mattress took my weight, and the door stayed open because I wanted it open.
I started crying so hard Kenny reached for me.
“Wait,” I said.
He waited.
I’d kept that noise inside for seven weeks. There was quite a bit of it.
When I could speak, Declan lifted the borrowed shoes from my tote.
“Shall I put these by the door?”
“No. I have to return them.”
Jeanne had lent me a pair that fit for the trip.
The borrowed shoes went into a bag, both together.
Twenty-three names
By the following Friday, every name in the book had a line through it.
Twenty-three refunds. Jeanne handed over each envelope herself and had each person count it.
The total was $7,843.16.
Roseanne returned my $2,400.00 separately. I counted that with her sitting across from me.
Her holiday account began with $11,000.00. After both repayments, it held $756.84. Kenny showed her the balance while she insisted there must be some mistake.
He left the screen in front of her.
The balcony cabin was never booked.
Jeanne took back the café keys and removed Roseanne from the booking schedule. Two paid mornings a week went to somebody who’d worked the counter with me.
Roseanne reached for the book as Jeanne closed it.
“I can at least finish the bookings I’ve started.”
Jeanne put it beneath the till.
“No.”
Kenny moved his clothes out of the house that Saturday. He came upstairs to tell me afterward, without bringing a bag through my door.
I made no space for him. My apartment had one bed.
He stood in the doorway while I checked the last refund against the total.
“She’s saying you could’ve rounded it down.”
“Which part?”
“The sixteen cents.”
I put the cap on Jeanne’s pen.
“No.”
If this one stayed with you, send it to someone who would have pulled out a chair for Myra.
For another family betrayal with an unexpected twist, read My Mother Put Me on Speaker for My Sister. And for more tense family drama, check out The Principal Put My Son’s Chair Outside Her Office and My Father Put My House In His Birthday Speech.
