The teller set one canceled check beside my mother’s Social Security deposit slip, and I knew the signature was wrong before she said anything. It was the long tail on the last letter. Mom’s hand hadn’t made a line like that in years. I’d watched her try to sign Christmas cards, pressing so hard the pen tore the paper.
“Did your mother write these?” the teller asked.
I looked down at the other checks. There were nineteen of them. Each one was for $238, payable to cash.
I’d gone in to deposit Mom’s monthly check. That was all. I was sixty-four, and I’d been helping her with errands since she moved into assisted housing outside Wausau. I had a joint account with her so I could get bills paid when her arthritis was bad. I figured the teller had caught some small mistake. I didn’t know yet that every check came from the account I was supposed to be watching.
Mom, whose name is Doris, had lived at Maple Grove for seven years. She could still get around with her walker, and she could tell you exactly how she wanted her tea. But holding a pen was hard, and she hadn’t been out to the credit union in a long time. My sister Yvonne handled a lot of her errands. She picked up prescriptions and brought over groceries, or said she did. I took Mom to appointments and handled paperwork.
We had split things up without ever sitting down to decide who was responsible for what.
The teller kept her voice low. “These have been coming out every month.”
“Every month?”
“Most months. Same amount.”
She slid the checks across the counter. I saw Yvonne’s handwriting on the back of one. Not a signature, exactly. Just her name, with the Y looped like it always was on birthday cards. I remember the smell of the teller’s hand lotion, something like oranges. It seemed such a small thing to remember when I was looking at $4,522.
“Can I have copies?” I asked.
“Of course.”
She printed them and handed them to me. I folded the pages once and put them in my purse. My hands were steady. That’s the part I’m proud of, though maybe it’s not much to be proud of. I didn’t make a scene. I walked out and called Yvonne from the parking lot.
She answered on the fourth ring. “Hey, what’s up?”
I told her what the teller had shown me.
She laughed a little. Not a happy laugh, more like she was tired of a silly question. “That money paid for gas and groceries.”
“Every check?”
“Carol, I’ve been doing Mom’s errands. You know that.”
The way she said my name made me feel like I’d accused her of something ugly. Maybe I had. I looked at the handicap sign beside my car and sat down on the curb under it. The concrete was gritty through my slacks.
“Mom’s refrigerator is empty,” I said.
“It isn’t.”
“I was there yesterday.”
“I bought groceries Friday.”
I wanted to believe her. There was a bag of apples on Mom’s counter the last time I visited, and Yvonne had brought them. I’d even said, “Good, you got her the kind she likes.” At the time, it felt like one of those little things that meant we were managing. I reckon I was glad enough to see the apples that I didn’t look farther into the fridge.
I asked Yvonne to come over that evening.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll bring the receipts.”
I went back inside and asked the teller about the signature. She showed me the account card with Mom’s old signature, then laid it beside one of the checks. The letters were close enough from a distance. Up close, the line shook in exactly the same spots on every check, like somebody had followed the same path again and again.
“I can’t say who signed it,” the teller said. “But I can flag the account.”
“What happens if I report it?”
She took a breath. “That could lead to a fraud investigation. Your sister could be contacted.”
I heard the warning in the word could. Yvonne was my sister. She had sat with Mom through a hospital stay when I was working late. She had also borrowed $600 from me once and paid back $400, then acted offended when I asked about the rest. I’d let it go because I didn’t want every family visit to turn into an accounting.
The teller gave me the copies anyway. “You don’t have to decide this second.”
I drove to Mom’s apartment. I was supposed to bring her a bottle of shampoo. I had it in the passenger seat, rolling around every time I turned. Mom was watching a game show when I got there, and she asked if I’d brought the peach shampoo she liked.
“I did,” I said.
“Good. The other kind smells like a hospital.”
I set the bottle on the bathroom sink. Then I looked in her fridge. A jar of mustard, half a carton of milk, and one apple. I checked the freezer too. There were two ice trays and a bag with three slices of bread in it. I stood there longer than I needed to.
“Yvonne said she brought groceries Friday,” I said.
“She brought apples.”
“Did she bring anything else?”
Mom rubbed one thumb over the other. Her hands looked smaller than I remembered. “She said she had to go back for the rest.”
“Did she?”
“I suppose.”
I didn’t want to make Mom feel like she was being questioned. I knew that face. She’d used it when we were kids and one of us had come home with a scraped knee. She hated being put in the middle, even when she was already in the middle.
“I’ll get you some groceries,” I said.
“Don’t fuss, Carol.”
“It’s not fussing.”
She watched me put milk and bread on the counter. “You two always get cross over money.”
That stung because she wasn’t wrong. Yvonne and I had been keeping score since we were young. Who got the bigger room. Who got Mom’s old car. Who drove to the clinic more times. I’ve never been good at seeing a favor without wondering if I’ve done my share too.
“I’m not cross,” I said.
Mom looked at the milk. “All right.”
I called Yvonne again that night. She said she was on her way, so I waited at Mom’s place. She showed up with a grocery bag and three crumpled receipts. One was from a gas station, one from a grocery store, and one from a pharmacy. They added up to less than $100.
“Here,” she said, putting them on the table. “I’m not making this up.”
I checked the dates. Two receipts were from the same week, but none matched the checks. The checks were months apart, and the amounts were always exactly $238.
“You cashed nineteen checks,” I said. “That’s $4,522.”
“I know what it adds up to.”
“Did you write them?”
Yvonne pulled out a chair and sat down hard. “I did the checks. Mom told me to take cash when she needed help.”
“Mom can’t sign like that.”
“I know.”
There was a pause. Mom sat at the kitchen table with her tea, listening without looking at either of us.
“Then why trace her name?” I asked.
Yvonne picked at a spot on the table. “Because the bank wouldn’t cash them otherwise.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“You would’ve said no.”
I hated that she knew me well enough to say it. I hated more that she might be right.
“Mom’s fridge was empty,” I said.
“I didn’t spend it all on groceries.”
It was the first straight answer she’d given me. She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand.
“I had a bad year,” she said. “I was behind on my car payment. I had the heat bill. I thought I could pay it back.”
“How much did you use?”
“I don’t know. Most of it.”
Mom’s spoon tapped the side of her cup. “Yvonne.”
“I said I’d pay it back.”
“You said that last winter,” I told her.
“I was going to.”
I could have kept going. I had all nineteen copies in my purse. I wanted to lay them in front of her one at a time. Instead, I asked if she still had the grocery receipts.
Yvonne looked up. “What?”
“The ones from the checks. The groceries you said you bought.”
“I don’t keep every receipt.”
“Then what did the money go to?”
She looked at Mom. “Some of it was groceries.”
Mom was quiet. Not confused. Just quiet. The television in the next room called out an answer to a question nobody had asked.
I drove home that night thinking the worst had happened already. Yvonne would repay what she could. We’d change the account, put groceries on a regular order, and find a way to stop arguing over it. It felt ugly, but it felt fixable. I told myself that was enough.
Two days later, I brought Mom a printed list of the checks. I’d written the dates and amounts in a notebook, one line per check. It looked like a school lunch count sheet. I used to work in a school cafeteria, and numbers still calm me down when people don’t. A line is a line. You can see what’s missing.
Mom read the list slowly. “You made this?”
“I did.”
“Every one?”
“All nineteen.”
She touched the page with one finger. “I didn’t know there were so many.”
“Did you ask Yvonne to cash checks for you?”
Mom’s finger stopped on the last amount. She didn’t look at me.
“Mom?”
“She needed help.”
“Yvonne?”
“After her divorce. She was behind on things.”
My first thought was that Yvonne had talked Mom into saying it. I was ashamed of how quickly I thought that. Mom had never been easy to push. Even now, she could send a nurse out of her room with one look if she didn’t like the way a blanket was tucked.
“Did you tell her to take $238 every month?”
“Not every month.”
I sat beside her. “What did you tell her?”
Mom pressed her lips together, then let out a breath. “I told her she could take some money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. I said she could take the first one.”
I didn’t answer. The little bag of apples came back to me. Yvonne carrying it in, Mom pleased, me saying it was good she’d remembered. I’d seen the apples and treated them like proof. Proof of what, I couldn’t have said.
