"Then it's done." She reached over and put her hand on mine. Her hand was dry and warm and smelled of the hospital soap she used at work and couldn't get off. "Rollie. Listen. The green car was a good idea. It was not the only idea. I've gotten myself to that hospital twenty-six nights this summer without it. I'll get myself there tonight. You don't owe me a car."
"You walked," I said. "Twice. Mrs. Wozniak told me."
She did not deny it. "It's July," she said. "It's a nice walk in July."
"It won't be a nice walk in January."
"No," she agreed. "It won't."
The phone rang at seven-fifteen that evening, while my mother was getting ready for work. I answered it in the kitchen. A man's voice, smooth and pleasant and practiced, the voice of somebody who did radio commercials on WEOL every morning between the farm report and the obituaries, asked if this was the Haydu residence, and if Mrs. Haydu was home.
It was Royal Conway. Win's father. Elyria's hometown dealer.
My mother took the phone in the hallway with her aide's uniform on and her hair pinned up. I stood in the kitchen doorway and listened, and watched her face, which did not change much, because my mother's face almost never did. She said "Yes," several times, and "I see," and once, "I understand that, Mr. Conway, but my son didn't touch your car," and once, much more quietly, "That's a great deal of money," and then, finally, "I'll have to speak with the Okonskis," and hung up.
She stood in the hallway a while with her hand still on the phone.
"Mom."
"He says it'll cost eleven hundred dollars to repair the door." She said it carefully, like she was reading it off a card. "He says the car is a dealer's demonstrator and it has to be sold in perfect condition. He says his son told him there was an altercation at the church and that a boy named Okonski struck him, and that you were involved."
"Win told the cop he slipped."
"Well." She took her hand off the phone. "He told his father something else. Or his father didn't believe him. Mr. Conway says he isn't interested in the police. He says he's interested in his door." She picked up her purse. "He says he's calling the Okonskis next, and he expects the families to work it out between them by the end of the week, or he'll speak to his lawyer."
Eleven hundred dollars. I could hear Mr. Okonski saying it, in his kitchen, to his wife, with six kids and short weeks. I could see Dennis's cigar box of Snap-on receipts.