The Small Blue Slips My Son Had Kept In A Drawer

Owen brought out his school planner next.

On August 14, he had drawn a square around the words NO VAN. Under them, in smaller letters, he had written, Mom called three times.

I remembered that morning. We had waited outside with his clinic bag until I called a neighbor. She drove us, and I paid her twelve dollars for gas.

“Why did you write it down?” I asked.

“For my calendar project. We had to count something.”

“I thought you counted rides.”

“I counted waiting.”

I sat down beside him.

Some entries were ordinary. Waited for library. Waited for rain to stop. Others had little numbers beside them: forty minutes, sixty minutes, nobody came.

“Did I do something bad?” he asked.

“You wrote down what happened. That's good.”

I took pictures of the pages without pulling any out. Then I put his planner back in his school bag.

“This is grown-up work now,” I said. “You don't have to fix it.”

“Will they let us use the van again?”

That was the question under everything. His next clinic visit was eleven days away.

“I'll make sure you get there.”

After he went to bed, I found the messages Denise had sent when she took me off the schedule in late August.

She had said the office was changing its system. I had thanked her for giving me my mornings back.

The message dated August 29 said, Your access is closed as of today. Ruth will handle dispatch until we hire someone.

I saved a copy in three places.

At ten the next morning, Ruth came upstairs carrying a grocery bag and a thick envelope.

“Apples,” she said, setting down the bag. “Those aren't from the fund.”

I let her in.

She was a retired school office clerk. She had become board secretary in June. Before that, Denise had kept the minutes herself, along with the bills.

“I should have asked more questions,” Ruth said.

“Start now.”

We spread the papers on my kitchen table. There were monthly bills from a business called Hollow Road Transport. Every trip cost thirty dollars. My code appeared in a column headed DISPATCH APPROVAL.

No page had my signature.

“Where did Denise say I put the money?”

“She said you worked with the carrier. That you made up trips and split the payments.”

“With whom?”

Ruth shook her head.

“We haven't met anyone from Hollow Road. Denise handled the supplier setup. She said they filled in when our van couldn't run.”

“Then why does every bill say our van picked people up?”

She bent over the page.

Each line included a vehicle number: BM2.

That was the ride fund's only van. I had washed its floor mats on my porch.

Ruth took out her own notebook.

“May I copy that question?”

“Please do.”

We checked Owen's planner against the bills. Six trips with his name had never happened. Three others listed him on dates when he had been in school all day.

I could prove those with attendance records, but I knew a mother's papers would not settle the whole thing.

“Other people are on here,” I said. “We need to ask them, too.”

“With their permission,” Ruth said. “And privately.”

That was the first thing anyone connected with the fund had said that made me trust them.

My phone rang. It was my supervisor at the laundry.

“You missed last night's shift,” she said.

I closed my eyes. In all the shame and noise, I had forgotten to call. Our neighbor usually stayed with Owen on work nights. That night, he had begged me not to go, and I had stayed without thinking past his bedtime.

“I'm sorry. I can explain.”

She listened without cutting in.

“You still have your job,” she said. “But call me next time. I can't hold a shift I don't know you're missing.”

Eight hours at $16.25. I wrote $130 on the back of an old envelope. That was what the night had cost us so far, without counting the coat.

Ruth waited while I arranged to return that evening.

Then she slid one final page across the table.

It was a list of when the disputed bills had been entered. Twenty-eight trips had been entered together on September 12, under my code.

“Does that mean anything?” she asked.

I handed her my phone, open to Denise's message from August 29.

Ruth read it twice.

Then she took out her phone and called the chairman.