Last night Granny and Mommy had a FIGHT. It started off as a whisper fight but then it became a yelling fight. I was on the porch reading A BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA which let me tell you is a VERY GOOD BOOK and they were having their whisper fight in the living room so naturally I could hear everything. I don’t think they knew I was there because I was lying down on the swing, which is how I most like to read.
I thought that it was only parents who have whisper fights.
During the whisper fight Granny said she wasn’t supposed to tell Kristie the money was HUSH MONEY and that it all felt so TAWDRY now. I had to look that word up in the dictionary, but I waited until Mommy and Granny were done with their fight to do it.
TAWDRY means SHOWY BUT OF CHEAP OR POOR QUALITY.
HUSH MONEY is not in the dictionary although HUSH PUPPY is and did you know that they actually used to feed those to dogs which is how they got their name? I love hush puppies.
Mommy told Granny that if she had an issue with it maybe sheshould have brought the check herself. She also said that it was just like a man to leave everyone else to clean up from his DALLYINS.
I’m guessing that HUSH MONEY is money that you whisper about. We learned in fourth grade about figuring words out FROM THE CONTEXT if you don’t know what they mean.
(I also learned from the dictionary that the word is DALLIANCE and that it means AMOROUS TOYING. Then I had to look up AMOROUS and learned that it means INCLINED TO SEXUAL LOVE.)
After that I accidentally dropped my book and Mommy said, “Abigail? Is that you?” so I had to pretend that I was on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water and that I hadn’t heard a thing. I wasn’t even thirsty but I drank the water anyway and as I was leaving the kitchen Mommy and Granny were coming out of the living room. They both had mad faces on and Mommy said FINE, MOM, FORGET IT, and Granny said, VERY WELL THEN, which is a fancier way of saying FINE.
They both went upstairs to their separate bedrooms and both of their doors went SLAM and nobody even checked to see if we’d brushed our teeth, which is how I got in to use the dictionary.
I did brush my teeth, if you’re wondering, but Claire did not.
I was reading when Claire came in looking to see if I wanted to play a game with her. She said she wished we had Connect Four. I have never liked Connect Four because it takes about three seconds to finish a game and then you have to start all over and sometimes the pieces get stuck when you are trying to let them out. I have found most of the sets of Connect Four I have played to be VERY TAWDRY.
Please write back.
Love,
Abigail
28.
Kristie
Fifteen minutes after Louisa and Claire leave, Kristie takes her break in the break room, and she opens the envelope. The check is for one thousand dollars.
It’s a lot of money. Yes. There’s no denying that. But it’s a fraction of what she needs.
Also, part of Kristie is seething.Louisa’smother has been through a lot? What aboutKristie’smother? What about Kristie herself?
She takes out the letter from her mother, the one she carried with her all the way from Altoona, the one she had with her on that Greyhound bus, grieving next to Bob for all of those hours, and smooths it on her lap.
Dear Kristie,
This is a letter I have been wanting to write for a long time. It’salso a letter I thought I might never write. I’m going to do my best to say the things I have to say.
You know I told you right along that your father was dead. I told you he died right after you were born. I told you I never put his name on the birth certificate because I was never married to him and he didn’t intend to stick around anyway. Some of those things are true but not all of them. I wasn’t married to him. He didn’t intend to stick around. Those are the true parts. But he’s not dead.
Let me back this up, Kristie. Let me back it up pretty far.
When I was twenty years old I was working for a law firm as a courier. My family didn’t have enough money to send me to a four-year college, so I had moved to Maine to be a nanny for a family and take night classes at Southern Maine Community College. I did this for two years, and then the family didn’t need me any longer.
I thought I might go to law school myself one day. I thought that could be in my future. Me, a girl from Philly, going to law school! I was the first person in my family to go to any sort of college at all. The thought that I would do something like that was almost inconceivable to everyone I knew growing up. But I was smart, and I was ambitious, and I was determined, and it wasn’t inconceivable to me.
The courier job was perfect for me: it gave me a taste of the law, and enough money to pay my rent, and the right schedule to keep up with my classes.
There were two other girls in my office close to my age. They were law school students, interning for the summer.
Five o’clock on a summer Friday, my boss gave me a package to bring to another law firm. “Go ahead home when you’re done with this,” he said. “Weekend’s here anyway.”
