???
The first envelope came on a snow-showery Thursday not quite a week later. The address—Mr. Thomas Saubers, 23 Sycamore Street—was typed. Stuck on the upper-right-hand corner was a forty-four-cent stamp featuring the Year of The Tiger. There was no return address on the upper left. Tom—the only member of Clan Saubers home at midday—tore it open in the hall, expecting either some sort of come-on or another past due notice. God knew there had been plenty of those lately. But it wasn’t a come-on, and it wasn’t a past due.
It was money.
The rest of the mail—catalogues for expensive stuff they couldn’t afford and advertising circulars addressed to OCCUPANT—fell from his hand and fluttered around his feet, unnoticed. In a low voice, almost a growl, Tom Saubers said, “What the fuck is this?”
???
When Linda came home, the money was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. Tom was seated before the neat little pile with his chin resting on his folded hands. He looked like a general considering a battle plan.
“What’s that?” Linda asked.
“Five hundred dollars.” He continued to look at the bills—eight fifties and five twenties. “It came in the mail.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know.”
She dropped her briefcase, came to the table, and picked up the stack of currency. She counted it, then looked at him with wide eyes. “My God, Tommy! What did the letter say?”
“There was no letter. Just the money.”
“But who would—”
“I don’t know, Lin. But I know one thing.”
“What?”
“We can sure use it.”
???
“Holy shit,” Pete said when they told him. He had stayed late at school for intramural volleyball, and didn’t come in until almost dinnertime.
“Don’t be vulgar,” Linda said, sounding distracted. The money was still on the kitchen table.
“How much?” And when his father told him: “Who sent it?”
“That’s a good question,” Tom said. “Now for Double Jeopardy, where the scores can really change.” It was the first joke Pete had heard him make in a very long time.
Tina came in. “Daddy’s got a fairy godmother, that’s what I think. Hey, Dad, Mom! Look at my fingernails! Ellen got sparkle polish, and she shared.”
“Excellent look for you, my little punkin,” Tom said.
First a joke, then a compliment. Those things were all it took to convince Pete that he had done the right thing. Totally the right thing. They couldn’t exactly send it back, could they? Not without a return address, they couldn’t. And by the way, when was the last time Dad had called Teens his little punkin?
Linda gave her son a piercing look. “You don’t know anything about this, do you?”
“Uh-uh, but can I have some?”
“Dream on,” she said, and turned to her husband, hands on hips. “Tom, someone’s obviously made a mistake.”
Tom considered this, and when he spoke, there was no arking and barking. His voice was calm. “That doesn’t seem likely.” He pushed the envelope toward her, tapping his name and address.
“Yes, but—”
“But me no buts, Lin. We owe the oil company, and before we pay them, we have to pay down your MasterCard. Or you’re going to lose it.”
“Yes, but—”
“Lose the credit card, lose your credit rating.” Still not arking and barking. Calm and reasonable. Persuasive. To Pete it was as if his father had been suffering from a high fever that had just broken. He even smiled. Smiled and touched her hand. “It so happens that for now, your credit rating is the only one we’ve got, so we have to protect it. Besides, Tina could be right. Maybe I’ve got a fairy godmother.”
No, Pete thought. A fairy godson is what you’ve got.
Tina said, “Oh, wait! I know where it really came from.”
They turned to her. Pete felt suddenly warm all over. She couldn’t know, could she? How could she? Only he’d said that stupid thing about buried treasure, and—
“Where, hon?” Linda asked.
“The Emergency Fund thingy. It must have got some more money, and now they’re spreading it out.”
Pete let out a soundless breath of air, only realizing as it passed his lips that he had been holding it.
Tom ruffled her hair. “They wouldn’t send cash, punkin. They’d send a check. Also a bunch of forms to sign.”
Pete went to the stove. “I’m making more cocoa. Does anyone want some?”
Turned out they all did.
???
The envelopes kept coming.
The price of postage went up, but the amount never changed. An extra six thousand dollars per annum, give or take. Not a huge sum, but tax-free and just enough to keep the Saubers family from drowning in debt.
The children were forbidden to tell anyone.
“Tina will never be able to keep it to herself,” Linda told Tom one night. “You know that, don’t you? She’ll tell her idiot friend, and Ellen Briggs will broadcast it to everyone she knows.”
But Tina kept the secret, partly because her brother, whom she idolized, told her she would never be allowed in his room again if she spilled the beans, and mostly because she remembered the arkie-barkies.
Pete stowed the cash envelopes in the cobweb-festooned hollow behind a loose baseboard in his closet. Once every four weeks or so, he took out five hundred dollars and put it in his backpack along with an addressed envelope, one of several dozen he had prepared at school on a computer in the school’s Business Ed room. He did the envelopes after intramurals one late afternoon when the room was empty.
He used a variety of city mailboxes to send them on their way to Mr. Thomas Saubers of 23 Sycamore Street, going about this family-sustaining charity with the craft of a master criminal. He was always afraid that his mom would discover what he was up to, object (probably strenuously), and things would go back to the way they had been. Things weren’t perfect now, there was still the occasional arkie-barkie, but he supposed things weren’t perfect in any family outside those old TV sitcoms on Nick at Nite.
They could watch Nick at Nite, and Cartoon Network, and MTV, and everything else, because, ladies and gentlemen, the cable was back.