The Jar

My husband announced it on a Sunday night in September, standing in our kitchen with his arms folded.

From now on, every dollar I earned in tips belonged in the household jar. Every single one. No more keeping a little back for gas or lunch or Ava’s school stuff. All of it went in the jar, and he would decide how much I could take back out.

“It’s all family money, Lita,” he said. “I’m not controlling you. I’m just keeping things organized.”

I was still in my work clothes. Black pants, black shirt with the steakhouse logo on the pocket, the black apron with the two deep front pockets. My feet hurt. I’d worked a double. Eleven hours on a Sunday, which is the busiest day of the week at Gallagher’s Steakhouse on Route 23.

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I smiled.

I emptied my apron pockets onto the kitchen table. Crumpled twenties and tens and fives and ones, all mixed together, the way tips come out at the end of a shift. A few quarters. A folded fifty somebody left under a plate.

I counted it out right there in front of him. Stacked by denomination. Out loud.

“Two hundred and eleven,” I said.

Then I picked it up and dropped it into the glass jar on the counter.