Takeoffs and Landings(35)

“Yes,” she answered some unseen questioner. “My husband and I owned a six-hundred-acre farm in Ohio. That is, we owned what we didn’t owe the bank for.”

The camera panned back. Some of the congressmen were snickering.

“And then your husband was killed on your farm last fall?” someone asked, his voice dripping with that false sympathy that always made Lori angry.

On screen, Mom didn’t even recoil.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “The electrical system on one of our tractors malfunctioned. There was a spark. . . . The fuel tank exploded.”

“And your husband was on the tractor when this happened?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

There was a brief silence. Even congressmen were at a loss for words after that.

Then one of them said, “And your husband went to his grave believing he was well insured?”

Mom hesitated, almost as if she wanted to protest the wording of the question.

“When we had our first child, we bought a life insurance policy that was supposed to provide for our children if anything happened to either of us. We wanted . . . we wanted them to have good lives.”

“You’re referring to policy number XG1065387, held with the Rylen Insurance Company?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

“And you had paid all the premiums on this policy?”

“Yes,” Mom said. She took a sip of the water in front of her. “It wasn’t cheap. And those were scary times for farmers—two of our neighbors were going through bankruptcies. Several times we talked about taking our chances, canceling the policy and just praying that nothing went wrong. But we knew we could never forgive ourselves if—” She took another drink. Her eyes were misty. Lori thought she looked like one of those people you saw on the evening news all the time, labeled HURRICANE SURVIVOR, TORNADO SURVIVOR, MASSACRE SURVIVOR. She looked practically otherworldly, as if she’d witnessed things nobody else would understand.

The congressmen were waiting for her to finish her sentence, but she didn’t. Finally one of them spoke.

“So you had every reason to believe that, upon your husband’s death, the Rylen Insurance Company would pay in full?”

Mom nodded.

“But they denied your claim?”

Mom nodded again.

Was that what Mom’s testimony had been about? Lori wondered. She had never known. Mom had never told her. Gram and Pop had never told her. When she was six years old, her father’s death alone seemed like a big enough event that Congress needed to be informed. And after that, nobody talked about it.

Had the insurance company cheated them? Were they poor after Daddy died?

Of course they’d been poor. They’d had to sell their house and farm and move in with Gram and Pop. But Mom had just said, “Won’t it be nicer this way? You can see Gram and Pop all the time.”

Lori’s mind was reeling. She missed some of what Mom and the congressmen were saying, up on the screen. When she started paying attention again, a congressman was saying, “So you were left with nothing?”

“Just—” Mom seemed to be having trouble speaking. “Social security.”

“Mrs. Lawson,” one of the congressmen asked gently. “You have several children, don’t you?”

Mom nodded. But instead of giving a number, she started listing their names.

“There’s Chuck,” she began slowly. “He’s seven. Then there’s Lori, who’s six.” She stretched out their names, as if caressing them. “And Mike, who’s three. And Joey, who’s two. And Emma, the baby.”

It was agony listening to that slow litany of names. Even Lori, who certainly knew how many brothers and sisters she had, felt like the list was endless. Twice, a congressman started to interrupt, as if expecting Mom to be done.

“That’s five, right?” a congressman asked when she finally stopped.

“Yes,” Mom said. “I have five children.”

“And now you have to raise them alone, without the insurance money you had every reason to believe was yours,” another congressman said. “Mrs. Lawson, how do you intend to survive?”

Mom’s cheeks were flushed. She sat up very straight.

“By the grace of God,” she said, “we’ll get by.”

She sounded almost noble, saying that. All of the congressmen were silenced. Lori got chills, and the banquet hall was so quiet that Lori could hear Chuck breathing behind her. It was that line. Lori felt like she had been watching the scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett O’Hara raises a fistful of dirt to the sky and proclaims, “I’ll never be hungry again.” But that was just an actress, pretending, and this was Mom, Lori’s mom, for real. Lori had never seen anything so real before in her entire life.