Allie and Bea by Catherine Ryan Hyde EPUP & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: Catherine Ryan Hyde
- Publish Date: May 23, 2017
- Language: English
- Genre: Domestic Life, Friendship, Literature
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Pages: 350
- Price: Free
- ISBN: 1477819711
Rude Checkbook
For perhaps the twentieth time that morning, Bea narrowed her eyes at the
checkbook sitting on her kitchen counter.
“Stop looking at me that way,” she told its blue vinyl cover.
Then her face flushed, and she looked around the tiny room as if
someone might have overheard that embarrassing outburst—a second act of
instability all in itself. Other than her friend Opal, nobody had so much as
stepped foot into her trailer since the passing of her husband, Herbert. And
Opal wasn’t here now.
She hadn’t meant it literally, what she’d said to the checkbook. It had
been something of a bitter joke. But, in truth, she had been mostly joking
rather than completely joking. That was the trouble right there.
She did feel mocked and threatened by its presence. There was no
denying that.
“They put people away in weird places for making comments like that,”
she said out loud. Then, as an afterthought, “Also for talking to yourself.”
She took three sips of her coffee, which was tepid, bitter, and one cup
too many in the first place.
“I’m going to get this over with,” she said.
Hands shaking ever so slightly, she dug through a drawer and found a
pen for writing checks and a pencil for recording them in the register. She
grabbed the offending checkbook off the counter and sat down to pay her
bills.
She added in her monthly Social Security check—which should have
reached her bank by auto-deposit that morning—to the total of funds. Then
she stared at the number. It looked okay. Heartening, almost. But then, it
always did. Before. It was after she’d written checks for the rent on this little
trailer—not just the space on which it sat but even the trailer itself, which she
and Herbert had once owned—the gas and electric, the water and garbage
service, the phone bill. That was when the numbers began to look scary.
And this month there had been something more. A minor medical
procedure to remove a skin abnormality that could have been cancer but,
thank goodness, had revealed itself to be benign. Five months earlier she’d
had to drop the Medicare gap insurance to save herself its monthly premium.
Now, as she stared at the bill from the dermatologist, she realized the co-pay
on this one visit had wiped out those savings almost twice over.
She looked up and out her window to see that awful Lettie Pace walking
that awful brown poodle-mixed-with-something-or-other—looked like a dirty
string mop if you asked Bea—across Bea’s tiny patch of grass. Lettie paused
to allow the dog to sniff.
Before Bea could even struggle to her feet, the mop-dog hunkered down
and rounded its back into that unmistakable and undignified position,
preparing to leave a pile on Bea’s grass.
Bea rushed to her front door and threw it wide.
Lettie and the mop were already scurrying on as if nothing had
happened.
“Lettie Pace!” Bea shouted.
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