The mother of Derek is named Lorraine Whitfield, a retired county clerk who has read more deeds in her life than most people have read novels, and she did not put this one down. She looked at me over her glasses, and then at the paper, and then at her daughter in law. “Moxee Valley Properties,” she said slowly. “Gloria Gallegos, owner. Dated the twelfth of August.” She set the deed on the tablecloth and smoothed it flat with both hands. “Monica, this deed says your mother owns the house in which we are eating a pot roast.” Monica opened her mouth. Nothing came out of it. Her husband Derek sat frozen with a roll in his hand, like a statue of a man about to eat bread.
“It is true,” I said. “In July I sold my farm to a brewing supply company in Portland. Fourteen million eight hundred thousand dollars. In August I bought this house from the company that was selling it out from under you. I am your landlord, Monica. I have been your landlord for two months.” Lorraine Whitfield made a strangled sound that might, in a different household, have been laughter. The father of Derek coughed into his napkin.
Monica found her voice at last. It was high and thin. “Mom, why would you do that to me?” I said, “Why did you not tell me the rent had not gone up?” She stared. “I called the property office last week,” I said, “and the manager told me the rent had not changed in four years. You raised it on your own, to charge me more than you paid. That is a small thing, Monica. A very small thing. But a small thing is how I learn the size of a person.” I laid the credit card statement beside the deed. “The big thing is this. Nine thousand six hundred, in four months, on the emergency card.”
A deed signed with a company name brought a retired county clerk to a pot roast Sunday and gave one hop farmer the evening to bring her daughter back to the harvest.
Derek turned to his wife. He is a quiet, slow speaking man who sells irrigation equipment, and I have always liked him, and I did not envy him at that moment. “Monica,” he said, “you told me your friend Laurie bought the spa weekend. You told me the Coach purse was a gift from your aunt.” Monica said, “Derek.” He said, “Was it?” She sank her face in her hands. I could not bear it. I looked away, at the window, at the black Yakima night and the faraway orange lights of the warehouses, and I thought of Ray, standing at the edge of a hop yard at dusk, with his hat in his hand.
“I took the card,” Monica said, finally, in a muffled voice. “I took it, and I used it. I told myself it was only until the end of the month. I told myself you would never notice, that you never go out, that you have so much, and that you would never miss it.” She looked up, red eyed and miserable. “I did not know you had so much. I swear to you. I thought you were a poor old woman in a back bedroom, and I thought it was fair to take what you had.” I said, “That is the worst part, dear. That you thought it would be fair.”
There was a long silence. Lorraine Whitfield got up and began, very quietly, to stack the plates. The father of Derek stood and went to the sink. It was the kind of thing decent people do when a family is being torn open in front of them, to give it a little privacy, and I was grateful. In the kitchen, the water ran. At the table, my daughter wept with her forehead pressed to the wood. I reached across and laid my hand on the back of her head, on her soft brown hair, which I had braided every morning for eleven years in a farmhouse in Moxee.
“Monica,” I said, “listen to me. I am not going to evict you. I am not going to send you to Summitview or anywhere else. I am going to give you one chance, and one only.” She lifted her face. I held up three fingers. “First, you will repay the nine thousand six hundred dollars, a little every month, to me, in an envelope, with a note in your own hand. Second, the rent on this house, from today, is the old rent, and I will pay the taxes myself. Third, you will come with me on Saturdays to the farm office in Moxee, and learn what it is that your father and I did, for forty years.”
She came the first Saturday in a pair of clean sneakers, and stood with me at the edge of what used to be our best field, now a sea of new cones, humming in the wind. The new owners had kept the name of the farm on the gate. Gallegos Hop Farms. She read it for a long time. “Mom,” she said, “I always thought it was a small thing, a hop farm.” I said, “It is the biggest thing I ever did.” She picked one of the green cones, rubbed it between her palms, and breathed in the sharp, bitter, resinous smell. “Oh,” she said. “That smells like the hands of Dad.”
By harvest, she had learned to read the dry matter reports and to speak to the brewers on the telephone. By Thanksgiving, she had repaid the first three thousand. She slipped the envelope under my bedroom door with a note, just as she had once slipped the note about the rent. It said, in her round handwriting: Mom, I am so sorry. I love you. I am learning. P.S. I did not buy the purse this time. I laughed out loud, alone in my room, and I kept the note in the drawer with the reading glasses of Ray, beside his small brass compass.
On the last night of that October, the four of us sat down together to a pot roast. Monica, Derek, and I, and Lorraine Whitfield, who had come to bring a pie and stayed. The house was warm. The dishwasher hummed. A train blew its whistle by the fruit warehouses, long and low, and Monica lifted her glass of Yakima red. “To my mother,” she said. “The best landlord I ever had.” We laughed, and it was a real laugh, easy and full. I raised my own glass and looked around the table, at the faces of the people I loved, and I thought, Ray, I think we did all right.
