My mother drained the college fund she had been “holding” for me, and the deposit booklet in the kitchen drawer had every dollar I had earned at the diner since I was sixteen.
My mother drained the college fund she had been “holding” for me, and the deposit booklet in the kitchen drawer had every dollar I had earned at the diner since I was sixteen.
My name is Della Stillman.
I am thirty-five years old.
I work as a hospice nurse for Allegheny Hospice and Palliative Care out of an office in Bloomfield in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I have been a registered nurse for eight years.
I have sat through the last hour with two hundred and three patients since I passed my boards in 2018.
Before that I waited tables for six years at the Cherry Street Diner on Penn Avenue, from the summer I was sixteen until I started nursing school at twenty-two.
On the third Tuesday of October, at three-forty-one in the afternoon, I was on a kitchen chair pulled up to the bedside of a man named Lonnie Bunting in his daughter’s house on McCandless Avenue in Sharpsburg.
Lonnie was eighty-seven.
He had stage four pancreatic cancer.
The hospice paperwork had been signed nine days before.
The morphine pump was running at four milligrams an hour.
He had not opened his eyes since the day before.
His daughter Bridget was at the front of the house making peach tea with the back of her hand against her cheek.
My work phone vibrated in the front pocket of my dark blue scrubs at three-forty-one.
The screen said MOM.
I stepped into the front hallway.
I said: “Mom. I’m with a patient. Two minutes.”
Pamela said: “Della. The savings is gone. I had to use it. I would have asked, but you’d have said no, and I needed the roof done. You can earn it back. You’re a nurse.”
She said the four sentences in one breath.
She had rehearsed the four sentences.
I said: “Mom. Say that one more time.”
Pamela said: “Della. The savings account is at zero. The bank balance is at six dollars and forty cents. The check from the roofer cleared in August. The rest went where it needed to go. You’re going to be fine. You’re a nurse.”
I said: “Mom. I am going to call you back tonight.”
Pamela said: “Della. I love you. I have always loved you. I want you to know that.”
I hung up.
I went back into the bedroom.
I sat on the kitchen chair beside Lonnie Bunting.
I checked the morphine pump.
I held Lonnie’s right hand for the next thirty-eight minutes.
At four-nineteen Lonnie took a small breath and did not take another one.
I called the family in.
I called Bridget in from the front of the house.
I held Bridget while she cried for nine minutes.
I called the hospice physician at four-forty-two.
I documented the death in the chart at four-fifty-one.
At five-eleven I walked out the front door of the house on McCandless.
I walked to the silver 2014 Honda Civic I have driven since 2019.
I sat in the driver’s seat with the keys in my lap.
I did not start the car.
I sat in the car in front of Bridget Bunting’s house from five-eleven until five-thirty-three.
I read every text message in my phone from my mother going back twelve months.
I read every voicemail my mother had left me on the work line over twelve months.
I read the deposit confirmation emails from PNC Bank I had been forwarded as a joint account holder until 2017.
There were no joint deposit confirmation emails after 2017.
I had not looked twice.
I had stopped looking at my email folder for the joint account in 2017 because my mother had told me that she was now getting paper statements at the house, that I did not need to check, that the account was healthy.
I started the car at five-thirty-four.
I drove to my mother’s house on Goodhart Street in Greenfield.
The house was the brick three-bedroom my mother had bought outright in 2003 with my father’s half of the equity from the divorce settlement.
The kitchen was the kitchen where I had eaten grilled cheese at eleven at night in March of 2002 the week after my father left.
I let myself in through the side door at six-oh-three.
My mother was not home.
My mother had a Tuesday-night cafeteria-aide shift at the Greenfield middle school until eight.
I went to the kitchen drawer to the left of the sink.
The drawer was where my mother had told me she kept the deposit booklet.
The drawer was where I had watched her file my paychecks from the diner from age sixteen through age twenty-two.
The drawer was where I had not looked since 2014.
I opened the drawer.
The deposit booklet was in the drawer.
The deposit booklet was a small kraft-paper booklet, three and a half by five and a half inches, with the PNC Bank logo on the cover and the words PASSBOOK SAVINGS in raised gold lettering.
The booklet had been issued in 2004.
The booklet had not been used as a passbook since 2009.
I opened the booklet.
The first page had my own teenage handwriting.
The first entry said: 07/14/2006 — $86.40 — first shift Cherry Street Diner.
The second entry said: 07/21/2006 — $124.18 — week 2.
The third entry said: 07/28/2006 — $147.92 — week 3.
The handwriting was mine.
The pen was a blue ballpoint I had bought at a Rite Aid on Forbes Avenue in 2006.
I flipped forward.
By the page dated December of 2012, the year I finished community college, the running balance was thirty-two thousand four hundred and ninety-one dollars.
By the page dated May of 2018, the running balance was forty-six thousand one hundred and twelve dollars.
The handwriting had changed in 2009 from mine to my mother’s.
The last entry in the booklet was dated April of 2014.
The last entry said: 04/03/2014 — balance forward $49,612.55.
There were no entries after April of 2014.
I closed the booklet.
I did not put the booklet back in the drawer.
I put the booklet in the front pocket of my scrubs.
I walked back to the living room.
The cedar chest sat at the foot of the staircase to the second floor.
The cedar chest had been my grandmother’s hope chest, made of red cedar with a brass keyhole, since 1957.
The chest had been in this house since 2003.
I opened the chest.
The chest had four neatly folded items of clothing on the top tray.
The first item was my baptism dress.
The second item was my mother’s wedding dress in a clean white pillowcase.
The third item was my father’s blue oxford he had left behind when he packed in 2002.
The fourth item, on top of my father’s oxford, was a small navy-blue cardigan with white anchors knitted into the bottom band.
My father had knitted the cardigan for me for my ninth birthday in 2000.
He had taken a knitting class at the Carnegie Library on East Liberty Boulevard in the winter of 1999 because he wanted to make me a present I would keep.
He had knitted the cardigan in eleven weeks.
He had given it to me at my ninth birthday party at the bowling alley on Penn Avenue.
He had left in 2002.
I had stopped wearing the cardigan when I was twelve.
I had not seen the cardigan since I was nineteen.
I lifted the cardigan off my father’s oxford.
I held the cardigan in my hand.
I refolded the cardigan.
I set the cardigan back on top of my father’s oxford.
I closed the cedar chest.
I left the house at six-twenty-two.
I drove to my apartment in Lawrenceville.
I did not yet know that fourteen thousand dollars of the missing money had paid a 2018 court settlement for my aunt Brenda Veliz.
I did not yet know that eight thousand two hundred dollars of the missing money had paid for a Carnival cruise my mother and Brenda had taken to the Bahamas in 2022.
I did not yet know that the roof on the Goodhart Street house had cost eleven thousand four hundred dollars, of a missing fifty-one thousand eight hundred.
I knew where I was going to start.
I lifted my work phone out of my scrub pocket.
I dialed Lou Wu.
Lou Wu had been my nursing-school roommate at Pittsburgh Technical Institute from 2014 to 2018.
She had been a charge nurse at Allegheny General Hospital for five years.
She had been the only person in my life I had told about the deposit booklet, and that had been one sentence at a kitchen table in 2017 on the night before her own boards.
Lou picked up on the third ring.
I said: “Lou. My mother drained the savings. She called me on shift this afternoon. The deposit booklet was in the drawer. The booklet shows a forty-nine-thousand-dollar balance forward in April of 2014. I need to talk to a bank and an attorney by Friday. I need a couch for tonight or I need you on mine.”
Lou was quiet for two seconds.
Lou said: “Della. I will be at your apartment at eight-thirty. I will bring takeout from Spak Brothers. Take a shower. Eat something. We will sit at your kitchen table and write a timeline. Tomorrow morning at eight I will drive you to the PNC branch on Forbes.”
I said: “Lou. Thank you.”
I hung up.
I drove the rest of the way home.
I parked in front of my building on Butler Street at six-forty-nine.
I went up the back stairs.
I unlocked the door of my one-bedroom apartment at six-fifty-one.
I set the deposit booklet on the small round oak kitchen table in the corner of the front room.
I set my work bag on the kitchen counter.
I changed out of my scrubs.
I put a pot of water on for tea.
I sat at the kitchen table.
I did not yet cry.
On the second Friday of March in 2002, at eleven at night, my mother stood at the gas range in the kitchen on Goodhart Street with a square of yellow American cheese between two slices of white bread on a black cast-iron skillet.
I was sixteen.
I was in a t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts at the kitchen table.
I had not eaten dinner.
My father Carl Stillman had loaded a suitcase and a cardboard box of vinyl records into his maroon Chevy Lumina at four-eleven in the afternoon and driven down Goodhart toward East Hutchinson Street and out of our marriage.
My mother flipped the grilled cheese with the spatula at eleven-oh-three.
The butter on the skillet smelled of brown.
The kitchen radio was on the windowsill.
The radio was tuned to 104.7 The Beat.
She slid the grilled cheese onto a small white plate.
She set the plate in front of me.
She said: “Della. It’s just us now. We’re going to be all right. I’ll handle the bank. You just stay in school.”
I heard: my mother is the partner I have left.
I have heard that one sentence as partnership for twenty-three years.
In July of 2006 I walked into the Cherry Street Diner on Penn Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street at nine on a Friday morning.
The owner was a woman named Roberta Skarda.
Roberta was sixty-two.
She had run the diner for twenty-four years.
She hired me at the counter on a paper application and a verbal handshake.
She paid me four dollars and seventy-five cents an hour plus tips.
On the second Friday of that July, at four in the afternoon, I rode the 71D Hamilton bus from Penn Avenue to Goodhart Street with eighty-six dollars and forty cents in cash in the front pocket of my black work pants.
My mother sat at the kitchen table on Goodhart.
She had a kraft-paper deposit booklet on the table.
She had a blue ballpoint pen.
My mother said: “Della. Sit down. We are going to do this right from day one. You will hand me the cash on Friday. I will deposit it on Monday at the bank. I will write the deposit in the booklet. The booklet stays in the drawer beside the sink. You can look at the booklet any time.”
I sat down at the kitchen table.
I handed her the eighty-six dollars and forty cents.
She wrote the entry in the booklet in my hand, because she said the booklet was mine and the booklet should be in my hand: 07/14/2006 — $86.40 — first shift Cherry Street Diner.
I wrote the entry myself.
I handed the booklet back to my mother.
She put it in the drawer.
I worked the Cherry Street Diner counter from July of 2006 until May of 2012.
I worked the morning shift Tuesday through Saturday in the summers between high school years.
I worked the four-to-eleven shift Wednesday through Sunday for the four years of community college and the first three years of nursing school at Pittsburgh Technical Institute.
I walked into the kitchen on Goodhart Street every Friday for two hundred and eighty-six weeks.
I handed my mother cash.
I wrote the booklet entry myself from July of 2006 until April of 2009.
In April of 2009 my mother said the bank had asked for the booklet to be brought in for a passbook update.
She said she would do the booklet entries herself from then on.
I did not see the booklet for the next thirteen years.
I had no reason to ask for it.
I trusted my mother to keep the entries.
On the Wednesday morning after my mother’s three-forty-one call, at eight in the morning, Lou Wu drove the silver Civic to the PNC Bank branch at Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill.
Lou parked in the surface lot.
We walked across the parking lot and through the revolving door together at eight-oh-eight.
The teller on the counter was a young man named Adrian Quintero.
Adrian had been at PNC for two years.
Adrian had handled my joint-account update in 2017.
I said: “Adrian. I would like to request the full nineteen-year statement history for the joint savings account ending in 4421. I am a named account holder. I will pay the retrieval fee. I will provide identification and the account verification number.”
Adrian typed into the system.
Adrian said: “Ms. Stillman. The retrieval fee for nineteen years is one hundred and ten dollars. The retrieval window is three weeks. The statements will arrive in three separate priority-mail packages from PNC’s retrieval center in Cleveland. Pages eighteen hundred and thirty-two through the present will be in the first package.”
I paid the one hundred and ten dollars with my own debit card.
Adrian printed me a receipt.
Adrian said: “Ms. Stillman. The retrieval is in process. The first package will arrive at the address on file by the second Friday of November. Your name is on the account. You do not need any further authorization from the other account holder.”
I said: “Adrian. Thank you.”
I walked out of the bank with Lou at eight-twenty-eight.
Lou drove me back to my apartment at eight-forty.
We climbed the back stairs.
We sat at the round oak kitchen table.
Lou had brought a stack of my own old pay stubs.
The stack was from the cardboard banker’s box I had kept under my bed since 2008.
I had not thrown out a single pay stub from Cherry Street Diner, from my work-study at the Carnegie Mellon library in college, or from any nursing shift at any of the three hospitals where I had floated as an RN since 2018.
Lou laid out the pay stubs on the kitchen table in chronological order.
She laid out a long sheet of butcher paper she had brought from her own kitchen.
She drew a horizontal line across the butcher paper.
She marked the year 2006 on the left end of the line.
She marked the year 2025 on the right end.
Lou said: “Della. We are going to build the deposit timeline tonight. The booklet is yours. The pay stubs are yours. Your handwriting is in the booklet for the first three years. The booklet shows your deposits in your hand from July 2006 through March 2009. We will work forward from there. We will use your pay stubs to reconstruct what should have been deposited.”
I uncapped my pen.
We worked the timeline from nine until one-fourteen in the morning.
By one-fourteen we had three numbers on a yellow legal pad in front of me.
The first number was what I had handed my mother in cash from July of 2006 through May of 2012.
The first number was twenty-eight thousand seven hundred and eleven dollars.
The second number was what I had wire-transferred or check-deposited to the joint savings account from June of 2012 through July of 2017, the year I stopped looking at the joint account.
The second number was twenty thousand nine hundred and forty dollars.
The third number was my best estimate of what the joint savings account should hold today, including five percent compound interest on the balance from 2006 through 2017 and three percent flat after that.
The third number was fifty-eight thousand four hundred and twelve dollars.
The bank had told me the account balance was six dollars and forty cents.
Fifty-eight thousand four hundred and five dollars and sixty cents was missing.
Lou drew a circle around the third number on the legal pad.
Lou drew a circle around the bank balance.
Lou drew an arrow from the third number to the bank balance.
Above the arrow, in Lou’s nurse’s hand, she wrote: $58,405.60 unaccounted.
Lou said: “Della. This is the timeline we will bring to the attorney on Monday.”
I said: “Lou. Monday.”
Lou said: “Della. Constance Fisk on Liberty Avenue. She does elder financial cases out of a small two-attorney practice. She does not advertise. Her son is on my unit. He gave me her number last summer when a patient’s family asked about a guardianship issue. I called Constance on the drive over here at seven-thirty. She has Monday at ten.”
I said: “Lou. Thank you.”
Lou said: “Della. I will be on your couch tonight. I will be on your couch the night the PNC statements arrive.”
I said: “Lou. You will.”
Lou slept on my couch that night.
She made a pot of coffee at six-thirty in the morning.
She washed our two cups at the kitchen sink.
She drove her own Subaru Forester home at seven-eleven to feed her cat Bisquick before her own shift at ten.
I capped the pen at one-twenty-one.
I closed the deposit booklet.
I set the deposit booklet on the corner of the kitchen table beside the legal pad with Lou’s circle and arrow.
I left the booklet on the table.
I did not lift it.
The first PNC priority-mail package arrived at my apartment on the second Friday of November at four-eleven in the afternoon.
The package was a single brown envelope ten inches by thirteen, sealed with reinforced tape.
The package contained three hundred and forty-eight pages of statements covering tax years 2018 through October of the current year.
Lou Wu sat on the wood-frame couch in my living room.
She had driven over from Allegheny General at three-thirty after her own ten-to-two shift.
She had a thermos of coffee and a tray of pierogies from the Smiling Moose on her lap.
I opened the brown envelope at the kitchen table.
I worked from the oldest statement forward.
Lou worked from the most recent statement backward.
We met in the middle on the May 2018 statement at six-forty-seven.
The May 2018 statement had a single line item I did not understand.
The line item was dated the eleventh of May.
The line item said: CASHIER’S CHECK # 88-204-771 — withdrawal — $14,000.00.
I looked at Lou.
Lou said: “Della. Cashier’s checks are traceable. The number is printed. The recipient is recorded at the issuing bank. We can pull the public court records for that date and that number tomorrow morning.”
I said: “Lou. Tomorrow morning.”
We kept working.
The July 2022 statement had a different line item I did not understand.
The line item was dated the third of July.
The line item said: CARNIVAL CRUISE LINES — debit — $8,200.00.
The Carnival debit was matched to a Capital One travel rewards card my mother had opened in 2021.
The Capital One card had been opened from the joint savings account as the bill-pay source.
We worked through the rest of the statements until nine-forty-two.
There were eleven other withdrawals between 2018 and the present that did not match the roof contractor’s invoice schedule, the property-tax payment schedule, or any pattern I could explain.
The eleven other withdrawals totaled eleven thousand nine hundred and forty dollars.
The total of the cashier’s check, the Carnival debit, the eleven other withdrawals, and the legitimate roof expense came to forty-five thousand five hundred and forty dollars.
The bank balance was six dollars and forty cents.
The reconciliation gap was twelve thousand eight hundred and seventy-one dollars.
Lou said: “Della. That gap is the small monthly withdrawals. We will not be able to tag every twenty- or forty-dollar transaction. The cashier’s check, the cruise, and the eleven larger items are enough. Constance will only need the major movements.”
I said: “Lou. The cashier’s check.”
Lou said: “Della. Tomorrow.”
On the Saturday morning at eight, Lou drove me to the Allegheny County courthouse on Forbes Avenue.
The civil case files were open to the public at the prothonotary’s office on the third floor.
A clerk named Lavina Houska helped me pull the 2018 civil docket index.
Lavina printed a single page of a 2018 settlement record at eight-forty-nine.
The case was Veliz v. Brutto.
The plaintiff was a man named Anton Brutto, a contractor on the south side of Pittsburgh.
The defendant was Brenda Veliz, my aunt — my mother’s sister, who had been my aunt since I was born.
The case alleged that Brenda Veliz had refused to pay a fourteen-thousand-dollar interior-remodel invoice for her house in Bethel Park.
The settlement was paid on the twelfth of May of 2018 — one day after the cashier’s check from my joint savings — for fourteen thousand dollars, by cashier’s check number 88-204-771, drawn on PNC Bank Squirrel Hill branch.
I read the page once.
I said: “Lavina. I would like a certified copy.”
Lavina charged me thirteen dollars for the certified copy.
Lou drove me home at nine-forty-eight.
I went into my apartment.
I sat at the kitchen table.
I lifted my work phone.
I dialed Brenda’s daughter Janet Veliz.
Janet was thirty-eight years old.
She had been my cousin since we were both four.
She had lived in Cleveland since 2014.
She worked as a clinical social worker at MetroHealth.
Janet answered on the fourth ring.
I did not say hello.
I said: “Janet. This is Della. I am calling because I just pulled my joint savings account statements and the 2018 court file on Veliz v. Brutto. My mother paid your mother’s fourteen-thousand-dollar settlement out of my savings account in May of 2018. There is also a Carnival cruise charge for eight thousand two hundred dollars in July of 2022. I do not know if you know about either of those. I am calling to ask you, not to accuse you.”
Janet was quiet for nine seconds.
Janet said: “Della. I am sorry. I have known about the cruise since they came back. I have not known about the settlement. I will write you what I know about the cruise tonight in a long text. I will not tell my mother that you called. I am sorry I did not call you when they came back from the cruise in 2022. It was not right. I am sorry.”
I said: “Janet. Thank you.”
I hung up.
Janet’s text arrived at six-forty-eight that evening.
The text was four hundred and twelve words long.
The text described what my aunt had told her about the cruise — that Pamela had paid for both staterooms, that Pamela had said the money was a gift from a “life-insurance settlement” that had come through earlier that year, that there had been no life insurance settlement, that Janet had not asked her mother to clarify because Janet had been thirty-four years old and had not wanted to fight with her own mother about her own grandmother’s funeral expenses they had also been pretending were paid.
I forwarded the text to Lou at six-fifty-two.
On the Sunday afternoon at four, I drove the silver Civic to my mother’s house on Goodhart Street to drop off a birthday card I had bought for my aunt Brenda the week before, because my mother and Brenda would have lunch on Wednesday for Brenda’s birthday and my mother had asked me to drop the card at the house by the weekend.
My mother was at the Greenfield middle school on a Sunday-afternoon special-event shift.
The card was in a small envelope.
The envelope had Brenda’s name on the front in my hand.
I let myself in through the side door at four-eleven.
The cardigan was on the kitchen table.
The cardigan had been refolded.
The cardigan was on top of a small Goodwill bag that was open.
The bag had three of my father’s old shirts in it from the cedar chest.
My mother had been planning to donate the cardigan that afternoon when she came home from the special-event shift.
I lifted the cardigan off the bag.
I refolded the cardigan one more time.
I set the birthday card for Brenda on the kitchen table where the cardigan had been.
I left the Goodwill bag where it was.
I walked out of the house with the cardigan in my hands at four-fifteen.
On the Monday morning at ten, Lou drove me to Constance Fisk’s office on the third floor of a brick building on Liberty Avenue.
Constance Fisk was sixty-one years old.
She had been a Pennsylvania-licensed attorney for thirty-four years.
She had handled elder-financial-abuse cases since 2005.
I sat across from Constance Fisk at her oak desk.
I set the deposit booklet on the desk.
I set the certified court file on the desk.
I set the PNC statement printouts on the desk.
I set the legal pad with Lou’s circles and arrow on the desk.
I set the printed copy of Janet’s text on the desk.
I said: “Constance. My mother drained the joint savings account I have been depositing my own paychecks into since 2006. Fourteen thousand of the missing money paid my aunt Brenda’s 2018 civil settlement. Eight thousand two hundred paid a 2022 Carnival cruise. Eleven thousand four hundred paid my mother’s actual roof repair in August of this year. Approximately twelve thousand nine hundred more is in untraceable small withdrawals. The total missing is fifty-one thousand eight hundred. The account balance is six dollars and forty cents.”
Constance Fisk wrote on her own legal pad in a fine black ballpoint.
She did not interrupt.
When I was done, Constance said: “Della. I will draft a restitution demand letter this afternoon for fifty-one thousand eight hundred dollars. The letter will be served on your mother by certified mail tomorrow morning. The letter will give her fifteen business days to schedule a meeting at this office to discuss a voluntary repayment plan. If she does not schedule a meeting within fifteen business days, I will file a civil complaint under Pennsylvania’s elder financial abuse statute. The statute covers theft from any family member of any age when there is a documented breach of fiduciary trust. Your booklet, your handwriting, and the joint-account agreement are the fiduciary record.”
I said: “Constance. Draft the letter.”
Constance said: “Della. I will.”
I was ready.
On the second Thursday of December, at two in the afternoon, my mother sat across from me at the oak conference table in the small conference room behind Constance Fisk’s office on the third floor of the brick building on Liberty Avenue.
The conference room had a wall of east-facing windows over Liberty.
The afternoon light through the windows was a clean winter gray.
A small radiator hissed against the south wall.
A pitcher of ice water sat in the center of the table on a black plastic tray with four glasses.
Constance Fisk sat at the head of the table.
Lou Wu sat on my left.
My mother sat across from me with a woman named Lorraine Pankow on her right.
Lorraine was a sixty-four-year-old attorney out of a small office on East Carson on the South Side.
She had been admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1989.
She had been hired by my mother on the seventh business day after the certified mailing of the restitution demand letter.
My mother was in the dark plum cardigan she had worn to my nursing-school graduation in 2018.
Her hair was pinned back in the same plastic combs she had worn since 2009.
She had a small embroidered handkerchief in her left hand.
She had a wedding band on her left ring finger.
She had taken the wedding band out of the small jewelry box on her dresser specifically for this meeting.
She had not worn it on her hand for twenty-three years.
Constance Fisk had a blue file folder open in front of her.
The folder had a printed tab on the top edge.
The tab said: STILLMAN — PAMELA — DECEMBER 11.
Constance opened the folder.
Constance said: “Pamela. Lorraine. Della. Lou. We are here this afternoon to review a proposed repayment plan in the matter of the joint PNC savings account ending 4421 held in the names of Pamela Stillman and Della Stillman. I have prepared a four-page summary in this folder. The summary identifies forty thousand four hundred dollars of unaccounted withdrawals from the account between May of 2018 and August of the current year, after accounting for the eleven-thousand-four-hundred-dollar roof repair Pamela completed on the Goodhart Street property in August. The summary proposes a ten-year repayment plan at three hundred and thirty-seven dollars a month, garnished from Pamela’s cafeteria-aide wages at the Greenfield middle school, secured by a lien on the Goodhart Street property in the amount of the remaining principal at any given time.”
Constance slid the four-page summary across the table to Lorraine Pankow.
Lorraine read the four pages in four minutes flat.
Lorraine said: “Constance. The repayment number is within the range Pamela and I discussed Tuesday. The garnishment percentage is below the Pennsylvania statutory maximum. The lien is standard. We have one revision to request. We would like Pamela’s sister Brenda Veliz to be separately responsible for the fourteen thousand of the 2018 settlement, payable directly to Della on a separate agreement, on the grounds that the settlement benefited Brenda and that Pamela should not carry that portion of the principal.”
Constance said: “Lorraine. Brenda Veliz has already been served with a separate restitution demand from Della’s counsel. I served the letter on Brenda’s South Side address on Monday morning. Brenda has fifteen business days to respond. If Brenda responds with a voluntary repayment, we will reduce Pamela’s portion by fourteen thousand. If Brenda does not respond, we will pursue Brenda separately and Pamela’s portion will stand.”
Lorraine said: “Constance. We accept the conditional reduction.”
Constance said: “Lorraine. Conditional reduction accepted on the record.”
My mother looked at me.
Pamela said: “Della. I am your mother. After everything I gave up to raise you alone. I do not understand how we got here.”
I did not say anything for six seconds.
I said: “Mom. The summary is in front of you. Lorraine has reviewed it. The figure is forty thousand four hundred, conditional on Brenda’s fourteen thousand. The terms are ten years. The garnishment is three thirty-seven a month. You can sign today. You can take the summary home and sign Monday. Either is acceptable to me.”
Pamela said: “Della. You are taking your mother to court.”
I said: “Mom. The court is a backstop. We are at a conference table, not in a courtroom. You signed me onto the joint savings account when I was sixteen so I could deposit my own diner paychecks. You wrote in the booklet in my hand from April 2009 forward. You told me the bank had asked for the booklet to be brought in. You told me the bank had updated to paper statements you would handle. The booklet has been in your kitchen drawer. The statements have been arriving at your address since 2017. The bank balance has been six dollars and forty cents since the third of August of this year, when the roofer cashed the last check. I am not asking you to apologize for any of that. I am asking you to sign the repayment plan today or Monday.”
Pamela said: “Della. You are a hospice nurse. You make seventy-eight thousand a year. You have a savings of your own from your own paycheck. You have a Honda Civic that runs. You have an apartment in Lawrenceville. I am sixty-two years old. I make twelve dollars and forty cents an hour at the middle school four days a week. You will be fine. I will not be fine if you take this from me.”
I said: “Mom. The repayment plan does not take three hundred and thirty-seven a month from a person who cannot pay it. The garnishment is calculated from your gross wages under the Pennsylvania statutory schedule. The lien on Goodhart Street does not force a sale. The lien follows the property if you ever sell it. If you live in the house until you pass, the principal balance comes off the estate. The plan does not change your monthly grocery budget. The plan does not change your prescription budget. The plan does change the trajectory of the next decade so that the fifty-eight thousand I deposited between sixteen and twenty-six is going to come back to me one month at a time.”
Pamela was quiet for ten seconds.
Pamela said: “Della. I love you.”
I said: “Mom. I love you too. That is not the question on the table. The question on the table is the summary in front of Lorraine.”
Lorraine looked at Pamela.
Lorraine said: “Pamela. The summary is fair. I would not be giving you a better deal in court. I would sign today.”
Pamela picked up the summary.
Pamela read pages one through four.
Pamela set the summary down.
Pamela signed Pamela G. Stillman on the signature line at two-twenty-nine.
Constance countersigned for Della on my limited power of attorney.
Constance dated the page.
Constance notarized the page in her capacity as Pennsylvania notary.
Constance said: “Pamela. The first garnishment of three hundred and thirty-seven dollars will be deducted from your January fifteenth paycheck at the Greenfield middle school payroll office. The lien on the Goodhart Street property will be filed with the Allegheny County recorder of deeds on Monday morning. The plan is in effect today.”
Pamela picked up her purse from the chair beside her.
Pamela cried into the embroidered handkerchief for thirty seconds.
Pamela did not look at me.
Pamela stood up.
Pamela did not look at the summary on the table.
Pamela did not look at Constance.
Pamela did not look at me.
Pamela walked to the elevator.
Lorraine Pankow walked with her.
The elevator doors closed at two-thirty-six.
From the conference-room window above Liberty Avenue I could see the parking lot at the back of the building five floors down.
Pamela walked out of the front of the building at two-forty-one.
Pamela stood beside her 2009 Buick Lucerne with the cellphone against her right ear.
The call lasted four minutes.
Pamela hung up at two-forty-five.
Pamela got into the Buick.
Pamela drove the Buick out of the parking lot at two-forty-seven.
The Buick turned right at the stop sign and went south on Liberty toward the Strip District.
Constance let out a long breath.
Constance set her pen down on the table.
Constance said: “Della.”
I said: “Constance.”
Constance said: “Constance has the rest.”
I said: “Constance. I was going to say that line on the elevator.”
Constance said: “Della. Save it for the voicemail tonight.”
I picked up my coat from the chair beside me.
I picked up my copy of the summary from the table.
I shook Constance Fisk’s hand.
I shook Lou Wu’s hand.
I walked out of the conference room.
I rode the elevator down.
Lou drove me to my apartment in Lawrenceville at two-fifty-one.
I went up the back stairs.
I unlocked the door at two-fifty-four.
I set my coat on the back of the kitchen chair.
I set the copy of the summary on the kitchen table beside the deposit booklet.
I lifted my work phone.
There were three new voicemails on my work phone from my mother’s number, all left between two-forty-six and two-fifty-three.
I did not listen to any of them yet.
A fourth voicemail arrived at three-eleven.
The fourth voicemail was from Janet Veliz in Cleveland.
I did listen to the fourth voicemail.
Janet’s voice on the voicemail said: “Della. My mother called me from the parking lot at two forty-three. She is on her way home. She is going to demand I help her sell the Bethel Park house to pay her share back. I am going to tell her no on the phone tonight at seven. I have already arranged a Pennsylvania attorney for myself in case my mother decides to make this a problem inside the family. The attorney is a woman named Lupita Reardon. She is meeting with me on Friday morning. I will text you Friday afternoon with what we decide. I am glad you called Sunday before last. I am sorry I did not call you in 2022. I love you, Della. Goodbye.”
I saved the voicemail to my chart-style log.
I did not text Janet back that night.
I planned to text Janet on Saturday morning when I had finished my Friday twelve-hour shift at the Stayton hospice patient’s bedside in West Mifflin.
The patient’s name was Wilma Stuckert.
She had end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
She had eleven days left.
I uncapped the pen.
I opened the spiral notebook I had bought at the CVS on Penn Avenue in November.
I had been keeping a chart-style log of every interaction with my mother in the notebook since the day after the cardigan came home.
I wrote: 12/11, 1429 — Pamela signed.
$40,400 over 10 years at $337/mo via Greenfield middle school payroll.
Lien on Goodhart Monday.
Brenda’s $14,000 conditional reduction.
Three voicemails on work phone 1446-1453.
Not yet listened.
I capped the pen.
Six months after the conference table at Constance Fisk’s office, on a Saturday morning in May at seven-fifty in the morning, I sat at my round oak kitchen table in the one-bedroom apartment on Butler Street in Lawrenceville with a small white ceramic mug of black coffee on a paper coaster.
The mug had no chip on the rim.
The coaster had a photograph of the Roberto Clemente Bridge on it that I had bought at a craft show on Penn Avenue in February.
The kitchen table was the same round oak table I had moved into the apartment in 2022, on a Saturday with Lou’s brother Henry’s pickup truck and a six-pack of Yuengling at the curb.
The first repayment installment from my mother’s Greenfield middle school payroll had cleared into my PNC checking account on the fifteenth of January.
The amount was three hundred and thirty-seven dollars.
The deposit posted to my online banking at six-eleven in the morning.
I had logged into the banking app at six-fourteen.
I had taken a screenshot at six-fifteen.
I had filed the screenshot in the spiral notebook I had bought at the CVS on Penn Avenue, under the tab labeled REPAY in my own hand.
The second installment had cleared on the fifteenth of February.
The third on the fifteenth of March.
The fourth on the fifteenth of April.
The fifth on the fifteenth of May, three weeks ago.
Brenda had repaid the fourteen-thousand-dollar 2018 settlement in a single bank-wire transfer on the second Friday of February, after Janet’s attorney Lupita Reardon had negotiated the lump-sum option in lieu of a separate civil filing.
Brenda had sold a small rental condo in Brentwood she had owned since 1999 to fund the wire.
The wire had landed in my PNC checking account at three-forty in the afternoon.
I had screenshot that one too.
The lien on the Goodhart Street house had been recorded with the Allegheny County recorder of deeds at four-eleven in the afternoon on the third Monday of December.
The lien was for forty thousand four hundred dollars, decreasing on the fifteenth of each month by three hundred and thirty-seven.
The cardigan was folded on the top shelf of the small linen closet in the front hallway of the apartment.
I had folded it in three on the Sunday after the conference table.
I had set it on the top shelf above the bath towels.
The shelf was at six feet two inches.
I had to stand on the second tread of the small step stool from the kitchen pantry to reach the shelf.
I had not worn the cardigan.
I had not thrown the cardigan away.
On Mother’s Day three weeks before — the second Sunday of May — I had not called my mother.
I had set a small soy candle in a glass jar on the top shelf of the linen closet beside the cardigan.
The candle was the kind I had bought from a small candle maker at the Lawrenceville Farmer’s Market in March.
The candle was vanilla and a hint of cedar.
I had lit the candle at six-thirty on Mother’s Day evening.
I had let the candle burn for one hour.
I had blown the candle out at seven-thirty.
The candle had burned the wax down by about a half-inch.
The candle had not been relit.
The candle sat on the closet shelf beside the cardigan.
I did not yet plan to throw it away.
The Useless Apology had been left on my work phone in four voicemails between January and March.
I had listened to none of the four.
I had filed the dates and times in the spiral notebook.
A fifth voicemail had arrived on the second Tuesday of April.
The voicemail was forty-one seconds long.
I had listened to the fifth voicemail one time at my kitchen table on the Wednesday morning after.
My mother’s voice on the voicemail said: “Della. It’s been six months. I have been thinking about us a lot. The pastor at Greenfield Methodist told me to call. We are still family, Della. Family does not put each other through court. Family fixes these things at a kitchen table. You and I had a kitchen table on Goodhart for thirty-five years. I will be at the cafeteria until two on Wednesdays. You can call me any time after. I love you. Goodbye.”
The word “family” was in the voicemail three times.
I listened to the voicemail one time.
I put my phone face down on the kitchen table.
I lifted my laptop off the kitchen counter.
I opened the spiral notebook to a clean page.
I uncapped the pen.
I wrote: 04/14, 0707 — fifth voicemail, 41 seconds, “family” used 3 times, Greenfield Methodist pastor referenced.
Filed.
I capped the pen.
I closed the notebook.
I closed the laptop.
I picked up my gym bag from the corner of the front hallway.
I drove the silver Civic to the gym on the corner of Butler and Forty-Sixth at seven-fifty-eight.
I lifted weights for forty-eight minutes.
I came home at nine-eleven.
I showered.
I had not called my mother.
I sit with people in their last hour.
The thing families do in that hour is begin reordering the story of who showed up.
I have watched two hundred and three families reorder.
I knew my own mother had been reordering my story for nineteen years before I let myself say it out loud.
The deposit booklet in the kitchen drawer was not the proof I needed.
The proof I needed was the willingness to read what the booklet had been telling me since I was sixteen.
This Saturday morning in May, I sipped the coffee.
The kitchen radio on the windowsill above the sink was playing the WYEP Saturday morning singer-songwriter program at a low volume.
I lifted the small step stool from the kitchen pantry.
I carried the step stool to the front-hall linen closet.
I climbed to the second tread.
I lifted the cardigan off the top shelf.
I held the cardigan against my chest for thirty seconds.
The cardigan was a size 9 child’s, navy blue with twelve small white anchors knitted into the bottom band in a single row.
The cardigan smelled of cedar from the chest at my mother’s house.
The wool was a worsted three-ply that my father had bought at a yarn shop in Squirrel Hill in 1999.
I refolded the cardigan in three.
I set the cardigan back on the top shelf.
The candle in the glass jar was still beside the cardigan.
The half-burned wick was still in the wax.
I climbed down from the step stool.
I closed the closet door.
I carried the step stool back to the kitchen pantry.
I sat back down at the kitchen table.
I drank the coffee.
The mug was warm in my hand.
The Roberto Clemente Bridge coaster sat under the mug.
On the kitchen table beside my mug was a new birthday card I had bought at the Half Price Books on Forbes Avenue on Thursday.
The card was for Janet’s son Maddox, who was turning four on the second Saturday of June.
I had not bought a card for Maddox in 2024 or 2023.
I would mail this one tomorrow.
The cardigan was on the top shelf.
The candle was beside the cardigan.
The booklet was in the spiral notebook in the kitchen drawer beside my own sink.
The lien was on Goodhart.
The wire from Brenda had cleared in February.
The fifth voicemail had been filed.
On Monday I had a new hospice patient in Lincoln-Lemington named Vergie Honeycutt.
Vergie was eighty-one.
She had congestive heart failure and twenty-six days on the chart.
Vergie’s daughter Tabitha had asked me on Thursday afternoon whether her mother’s annuity had been written into the trust as the family attorney had promised in March of last year.
I had told Tabitha that the chart-style log I kept on her mother was for the medication and the symptom record, that the annuity was a separate paper trail, and that Tabitha could open the family chart in a different notebook of her own.
I had given Tabitha the spiral notebook brand and aisle number at the Penn Avenue CVS.
Tabitha had bought one on Friday morning.
She would bring it to the bedside on Monday at ten.
She would let me see the first page.
That was the part of the work I had not been able to do for myself for nineteen years.
That was the part of the work I could now help another daughter do for her own mother at a bedside in the last hour.
The Roberto Clemente Bridge coaster was still under the mug.
The coffee in the mug was now lukewarm.
The radio was now playing a Patty Griffin song from her 1996 record.
The May light on the kitchen wall was a clean diagonal off the east window.
I drank the coffee.
