My Ex-Husband Thought I Still Paid For His Card…

For eleven years, my husband and his mother lived on my credit cards. The day our divorce was final, his mother laughed on the courthouse steps. “Don’t worry, she’ll still pay for my hair.” I smiled and said, “Of course.”

For a long time, those cards paid for ordinary things: gas, beer, bait, the casino bus, and every Friday, Earline’s hair. The small charges showed up on my bills, and I paid them out of my paycheck and tips.

I was a cook at a diner in Kittanning, and I’d been working that grill for twenty-two years. I knew how to keep track of what was burning while I handled the next order.

Faron used to pick me up after the late shift. We’d sit in his truck and split a piece of coconut cream pie with one fork, the radio on low.

I can still remember the way he’d scrape the last bit from the tin.

Back then, it felt like we were getting by together. I held onto that version of him longer than I should have.

In 2015, his body shop went under. His credit went with it, and so did his mother’s after she co-signed his last loan.

He came to me looking tired and embarrassed. “Just till I’m back on my feet, Ange,” he said.

I put him on my cards. Then I added his mother, Earline. The bank called them authorized users.

The accounts were in my name, the bills came to me, and I made the payments.

At first, I told myself it was temporary. Then temporary turned into years. About $600 a month went onto those cards, month after month. Once, I added it all up on a napkin. It came to about $80,000. I tore up the napkin and dropped it in the fryer trash. I didn’t want to look at the number again.

Faron never got back on his feet. This spring, he moved out. “I need to live a little,” he said.

He took the good TV and left me the house payment. I let him take it. I didn’t fight him on one thing in the divorce. I was scared that if I rocked anything, the judge might leave me with his debts too.

My lawyer had told me the cards were mine to handle and weren’t part of the divorce papers, but fear doesn’t always listen when somebody explains the paperwork.

So I kept paying and kept my mouth shut until the judge signed. That was last Tuesday.

I wore my good blouse to the courthouse. Faron wore his fishing shirt. Earline came along in a fresh perm, the one I’d paid for the Friday before. We walked out onto the steps, and she pulled her coat tight and laughed.

“Well, don’t you worry, Faron,” she said. “She’ll still pay for my hair.”

Faron laughed too. “Ange doesn’t know how to say no. Never did.”

They weren’t even trying to keep their voices down. They said it like I wasn’t standing there. I felt the blood rush into my face, but I smiled at both of them.

“Of course,” I said.

Then I asked Faron to give me the cards with his and his mother’s names on them. His face changed.

“You start trouble over a couple credit cards,” he said, “and I’ll tell Peg you’ve been skimming the register.”

Peg owns the diner. I’ve never taken a dime from that woman in twenty-two years. Still, the threat got to me. In a small town, a rumor can get to work before you do.

I drove straight to the diner and told Peg what had happened, from the courthouse steps to Faron’s threat. She was frying hash browns and didn’t even turn around.

“Angela, honey,” she said, “if Faron Mott walks in here to talk about you, I’ll make him pay for his coffee first.”

That got a short laugh out of me. It didn’t erase the worry, but it helped. On the shelf over the grill sits my mother’s recipe box. Her pierogi cards are soft around the edges from years of use. I touched the box on my way out the back door. I always do, for luck.

On my lunch break, I sat in my car behind the diner and called the banks. I closed the first card. Then the second. The third was the one I used for groceries, so I had his and Earline’s names taken off that account. It took about twenty minutes.

When I got home, I cut up my own copies with the kitchen scissors and dropped them in the trash. After the last piece fell in, I sat at the table and shook.

I felt foolish for letting it go on so long. I also felt scared of what Faron might do with the story he’d threatened to tell.

Maybe I was the fool for paying, not them for spending. Maybe I should’ve kept paying until he found somebody else to pay for him. I thought that way for a while. Then I remembered Earline laughing on those steps, and I knew I couldn’t keep doing it.

Wednesday morning, Faron texted me. “Gas pump ate my card. Stupid machine.”

He had two of my cards in his wallet. I guess he figured the other one was fine. I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to get pulled back into explaining a decision I’d already made.

On Thursday, Earline called the diner. Peg told her I was busy, which I was. I was carrying plates to a table and didn’t hear the call. I only heard about it later.

Saturday was the county sports show out at the fairgrounds. Peg’s diner ran the food stand every year, and I worked the pierogi table. My mama’s recipe was potato and cheese, a dollar fifty apiece. I kept turning them in the pan and sliding the finished ones into the tray.

Around noon, I looked up and saw Faron walking with three of his fishing buddies.

They were going by the boat tent like they owned the place. He stopped beside a used bass boat, a sparkly red one, and patted its side like it was a horse.

“Fifteen hundred down holds it?” he asked the salesman.

“Done. Run it.”

He pulled out his wallet slowly, with his buddies watching. Then he handed over the other card, the one with his name on it. My card.

His friends slapped him on the back.

“Look at Mr. Moneybags,” one of them said.

The salesman walked to the little card machine on the folding table. He swiped the card, frowned, and swiped it again. Faron was still grinning and telling the guys where he planned to fish first.

I put down my spatula.

The salesman came back across the tent with the card held between two fingers.

“Sir, it came back declined,” he said, loud enough for all three buddies to hear. “Both times.”

Faron’s grin slid off his face. He turned around to find somebody to blame, and the first person he saw was me, standing at the pierogi table with my spatula in my hand.

“That card is mine,” I said. “I closed the account Tuesday.”

He stared at me. The salesman still held the card between his fingers, and Faron’s buddies stopped smiling.

“You can’t close my card,” Faron said.

“I can close my account,” I said. “It was always in my name.”

He glanced at his friends, then back at me. “You knew I was coming here?”

“I didn’t know you were buying a boat.”

His mouth tightened. The salesman lowered the card toward the table but didn’t set it down.

“Do you want me to try another payment?” he asked.

Faron looked at his wallet. He had another card in there, but it was one of the ones I’d closed. He didn’t hand it over.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “You’re doing this in front of everybody.”

“You threatened to tell Peg I stole from her in front of everybody,” I said. “I’m only telling the truth.”

One of his buddies looked from Faron to me. “You said you were paying for the boat yourself.”

Faron looked at him. “I am.”

“With a card on her account?” I asked.

“Don’t start,” he said.

The salesman still had the card. He needed an answer about whether Faron was paying the deposit, and Faron kept looking at me as if I could make the machine change its mind.

I took my phone out of my apron pocket. I’d kept the bank app open since I closed the accounts, partly because I wanted to see the status for myself.

I brought up the account page and held it out where Faron and his friends could see.

My name was at the top. The card Faron had handed over was listed as an authorized-user card, and the account showed closed.

Faron’s eyes went to the screen, then to the salesman.

“I thought you said you’d keep paying,” he said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said, ‘Of course.’”

“After your mother said I’d keep paying for her hair.” My voice shook a little. I hated that it did. “Then I asked you for the cards back.”

His face reddened, and he looked away from the people around him. I could see the salesman watching him now, waiting to hear whether he could pay.

“It’s not like I was asking for the whole fifteen hundred,” Faron said. “I would’ve paid you back.”

I had heard that promise before. It came in pieces, usually after I’d paid the bill. I wanted to say every ugly thing I’d stored up since 2015, but the one that came out was the one I regretted.

“You couldn’t even pay your own mother’s hair bill.”

One of his buddies let out a breath and looked down at the floor. Faron’s jaw moved, but for a second he didn’t answer.

“That’s low,” he said.

“So was threatening my job because I asked for my own cards.”

“I was mad.”

“You were trying to scare me.”

He turned toward the friends again, like he wanted them to settle it for him. One of them shook his head.

“You told us the shop was doing fine,” he said.

“It was fine,” Faron said.

“Your shop closed years ago,” I said. “I paid the cards. You know I did.”

Faron looked back at me, and for the first time he didn’t have a quick answer. The people at the stand behind me had heard enough to know what was going on. I could feel them watching, but nobody stepped in. Peg was inside the food tent, and I knew she’d heard the raised voices.

The salesman placed the card on the table. “I can’t hold the boat without the deposit,” he said.

Faron reached for the card, but one of his buddies caught his arm.

“Leave it,” the man said. “You don’t need to make this worse.”

Faron pulled away. “I’ll sort it out.”

“You’ve had eleven years to sort it out,” I said.

He looked at me hard. I felt the old reflex, the one that made me want to smooth things over so nobody else had to feel uncomfortable. I could have apologized for embarrassing him. I could have offered to call the bank and ask if there was some way to get the card working again.

Instead, I picked up my spatula.

Faron nodded toward my phone. “Call them. Tell them you made a mistake.”

I looked down at the account page, then at him. I thought about the $600 a month, the bills that came to my house, the Friday appointments for Earline’s hair.

I thought about the house payment he’d left me and the threat he’d made when I asked for the cards back.

Maybe they were right about me. Maybe I was the sort of person who let people keep taking because it was easier than being called difficult. But I was tired of being afraid of what Faron might say.

“No,” I said. “I’m not calling them.”

He took a step closer to the table. “You’re really going to do this over a card?”

“I did it because I’m done paying for you.”

The words came out plain. I didn’t raise my voice. Faron looked at the guys beside him, but none of them backed him up. One had his hands in his pockets. Another kept looking at the boat.

The salesman picked the card up and held it out. “You should take this back,” he said.

Faron took it from him. Then he held it toward me.

I didn’t reach for it.

“That one’s yours to destroy,” I said. “The account is closed.”

He shoved it into his wallet. Nobody said anything for a few seconds. The salesman turned back toward the boat, and Faron’s friends started walking. He followed them without looking at me.

The boat stayed where it was. Faron didn’t put down the deposit, and the salesman didn’t hold it for him.

I turned back to the pierogi table because the next order was waiting. My hands were shaking again, but I picked up the spatula and kept cooking.

When my shift ended, I wiped the counter and put the spatula beside Mama’s recipe box.

THE END!