Note

A Wallet Full of Hope

The top dresser drawer is empty of its socks and handkerchiefs and loose change now, but I reach into the back, just to make sure, and my hand touches on something soft and smooth and square. It’s stuck in the crevice, so I give it a tug and pull it out, into the light.

Ron’s wallet. It is scuffed and worn, odd pieces of paper sticking out of it. I smile at the sight of it. Ron shoved everything into his wallet: gas receipts, coupons for McDonalds’s, sales slips from Home Depot, the occasional business card. The insignificant details of the life of an ordinary man. I am tempted to simply toss the wallet into the memory box Bonnie made. Anything important—Ron’s driver’s license, cash,  and insurance cards—were removed long ago when he no longer needed to carry a wallet. 

But I hold it in my hand for a moment anyway. There might be a picture or two tucked into this brown billfold that I would like to keep. The scent of the old leather wafts up to me when I open it up and  tiny slips of paper spill out. There are the usual sales slips from various stores, all of them dated more than two years ago, and a coupon for an oil change, long expired. There is a photo of the kids, all in blue shirts, taken a few years ago, and one of me in my doctoral garb. I am gathering  up the slips of paper to discard when I spy a lined note, yellowed with age, folded many times over.

Photo by Ethan Rougon on Unsplash

Before I even unfold it, I know what it is. My heartbeat quickens. Carefully, one crease at a time so it will not rip, I unfold the paper that has been transferred from wallet to wallet for four decades. I smooth it out. My husband’s handwriting is faded but still readable.

Jeffrey Andrew

Ryan Matthew

Patricia Leigh

Laurie Elizabeth

Four names, chosen after much deliberation  at my parents’ kitchen table, written on a piece of paper torn from a college copy book, the night we planned out our future.

*

“Is four too many?” he’d asked, his big hand covering mine. “I like kids.”

I shrugged. “I guess it depends on a lot of things. Like where we live and how much money we have. Kids can be expensive.”

“Well, I’ll never be rich,” he said. “ But I’ll work hard. You’ll see.” He gave my hand a squeeze and chuckled. “Can’t believe I’m getting a college girl like you. You’re so much smarter than me.”

“We’re smart in different ways, “ I said. “And you’re much more fun than me. I’m too serious and I worry too much.”

He laughed. I was learning to love that sound. My new fiancé held nothing back when he laughed, his broad shoulders shaking and his head bouncing up and down, his slightly crooked grin lighting up his whole face.

I looked at the small diamond on my left hand, still getting used to the feel of it. Part of me still couldn’t believe I’d said yes, upsetting my carefully planned out life: four years of college, two years of teaching, back to school for a graduate degree, then maybe marriage and a child or two.

Photo by Amelia Barklid on Unsplash

But I loved him. It was as simple as that. Once he’d slipped onto the barstool next to me at my cousin's wedding reception, there was no going back. My future was now bound up with this tall, dark, and handsome fellow with the crooked smile.

“So,” Ron said, picking up the pen from the table, “what names do you like? I’ve always been partial to Jeffrey.”

“What if we have all girls?”

“Jeffersita?’ He grinned. “Or Pamela. That’s a nice name.”

“Would you want a junior?” I asked. “A little Ronnie?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I want our kids to be whoever they want to be. Have their own names and their own futures.”

“That sounds nice,” I said. “Whoever they are, we’ll love them.”

“Always,” he said.

We spent the next hour suggesting and eliminating names, crossing out and adding on. When we finally settled on four, Ron carefully copied them onto a piece of notebook paper, then folded it into eighths and pulled out his wallet. 

“I’m keeping this list forever,” he’d said and tucked the list into the billfold.

I laughed. “It’s just a piece of paper. We might change our minds about the names.”

“Maybe,” he’d said and tucked the wallet back into  his pocket. “But I’ll never change my mind about you. We’ll grow old together in a little house on the beach where our grandchildren will come to visit us every summer. And in the winter we’ll sit by the fire, and you’ll read your books to me. We’ll be happy.”

Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash

**

My finger traces the faded ink. We did change our minds about the names, but each of our children—three, not four— were individual and unique. Dennis Stewart, a 6’9” artist with his father’s square jaw, just didn’t “look like Jeffrey. Bonnie Lynn, middle child with her father’s good humor and the perfect pre-school teacher, was  too bouncy to be a formal Pamela. And our youngest, Allen Harvey Thomas, two middle names for two grandfathers because he was our last. He was special. 

Tears begin to fall, slowly at first. I fold the faded paper with the carefully chosen names up again, following the original lines Ron made so long ago. They were part of the future we planned; part of the future we didn’t get the chance to have. They were before clinical depression and bipolar disorder, before car accidents and crushed aortas; before punctured lungs and damaged pancreas and mysterious infections and chronic regional pain syndrome. Before dashed hopes and hospital beds and nursing aids who didn’t show up. Before exhaustion so deep it seeped into my bones, into my soul, into my heart. Before I was not so much a spouse as a caregiver, not a lover but a nurse. 

The tears are falling steadily now. I take the small folded square and kiss it, tasting my own salty tears, then I place it in the velvet box where I keep Ron’s wedding ring. The wallet will go into the memory box in the dining room along with the other items the kids like to look through when they visit.

But this list, written with such hope, is just for me. 

I collapse onto the bed, cleaning out the dresser forgotten, and I cry for forgotten dreams, forestalled futures, and the shortened life of a man with a booming laugh, a crooked smile, and a wallet full of hope.

I cry, at last, not for the sick man who died after years of pain, but for the young man I married.

My husband.