My Husband Secretly Gave His Brother the $43,000 Grandma Gave Us for a House, but She Found Out and Confronted Him

Part Twenty-One: The Next Friday
The next Friday, Grandma came back to Pliska’s Tap.

At two o’clock in the afternoon. Before fish fry. Before the crowd.

I drove her. She wore her old housedress and an apron. Not the royal blue coat.

Gil was waiting at the back door. He’d set up a tall stool in the kitchen. Right beside the fryer. With a cushion on it.

His cook was there. A young man named Tyler, twenty-four, with a hairnet and a lot of tattoos. He’d been frying frozen cod at Pliska’s for three years.

He looked terrified.

Grandma sat down on the stool.

She looked at the fryer. At the boxes of Sysco cod in the new walk-in cooler. At the bag of batter mix on the counter. Golden Dipt. Just Add Water.

She picked up the bag of batter mix.

She dropped it in the garbage can.

“Tyler,” she said. “Get me a bowl.”

For four hours, she sat on that stool and taught Tyler how to make her batter.

Leinenkugel’s Original. Flour. Paprika. Salt. White pepper.

And the secret.

I’m not going to tell you the secret.

I promised her I wouldn’t.

She taught him how to dredge the fish. How to let the excess batter drip off. How to lay it in the oil away from you so you don’t get splashed. How to tell by the sound when it’s done.

“Listen,” she said. “When it stops singing, it’s ready.”

She taught him potato pancakes. Grated by hand. With onion. Squeezed dry in a dish towel. Fried in lard until the edges were lacy and brown.

She taught him her coleslaw. With a little bit of sugar and celery seed.

Gil drove to Wausau that morning and bought fresh walleye and perch from the fish market. And six loaves of rye bread from Mittelstaedt’s.

At four-thirty, the doors opened.

Part Twenty-Two: The Line
The line went out the door.

I’m not exaggerating. I was there. I saw it.

By four-forty-five, every booth was full. Every stool. Every table in the back room.

By five-fifteen, there was a line down the sidewalk on Second Street.

Word had gotten around.

Somebody posted on the Mosinee community Facebook page. Flossie Duda’s back in the kitchen at Pliska’s. Real fish fry. Like 1975.

It got two hundred shares.

People came from Wausau. From Stevens Point. From Marathon and Rothschild and Weston. Old men who remembered Stan’s fish fry in the seventies. Their sons. Their grandsons.

They came for the batter.

Grandma sat on her stool in the kitchen for three hours.

She didn’t fry anything. Tyler did all of it. But every time he pulled a basket of walleye out of the oil, he held it up for her to see.

She’d look at it. She’d nod. Or she’d shake her head.

“Too dark,” she’d say. “Thirty seconds less.”

Tyler would nod and try again.

By eight o’clock, they’d run out of fish.

All of it. Forty pounds of walleye. Thirty pounds of perch. Gone.

Gil had to put a sign on the door. SOLD OUT. COME BACK NEXT FRIDAY.

That night, after closing, Gil counted the drawer.

He came into the kitchen. Grandma was still on her stool, drinking a Coke out of a glass bottle.

He held up the receipt tape.

“Flossie,” he said. “That’s the best Friday since 2009.”

Grandma looked at the number.

She nodded.

“Fix the fish,” she said.

Part Twenty-Three: Every Month
Gil paid the first installment on April first.

He came to our duplex on Fourth Street on a Sunday afternoon. He knocked on the door. He was carrying a white envelope.

He handed it to me.

Inside was a cashier’s check. From River Valley Credit Union. My own credit union.

Pay to the order of Russell and Shari Pliska. Three thousand, five hundred dollars and no cents.

“Fifteen hundred from the plan,” Gil said. “And two thousand extra.”

“Gil,” I said. “That’s not the plan.”

“Fish fry was good last month,” Gil said. “Really good. And I sold the boat.”

He looked past me into our living room. At Russ, sitting on the couch.

“Hey, little brother,” he said.

Russ stood up.

They looked at each other for a long time.

Then Russ walked to the door. He held out his hand.

Gil shook it.

Then Gil pulled him into a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Gil said. “For making you choose.”

“I’m sorry,” Russ said, “for never telling you no.”

They stood in the doorway of our duplex, hugging.

Two big men. Grown men. Brothers.

Then Gil pulled back. He wiped his eyes.

“So,” he said. “Can I tell you no now? About something?”

“What?” Russ said.

“No more frozen cod,” Gil said. “Ever.”

Russ laughed so hard he had to sit down.

Part Twenty-Four: The Payments
Gil paid every month.

April. May. June. July.

Sometimes fifteen hundred. Sometimes two thousand. Once, in August, after the county fair, four thousand.

He sold the Harley in June. Nine thousand dollars. He brought the whole check to our door.

He moved out of the apartment above the bar. Into his aunt’s spare room in Rothschild. Fifteen minutes away.

He rented the apartment to a young teacher from the high school. Nine hundred a month.

He never closed on Mondays or Tuesdays.

Grandma was right. Business picked up every day of the week. People who came for the Friday fish fry started coming back on Wednesday for burgers. On Saturday for the Badgers game.

Grandma kept coming to the kitchen every Friday.

At two o’clock. On her stool. With her Coke.

Tyler doesn’t need her anymore. He’s got the batter down perfect. He can tell by the sound when the fish is ready.

But she comes anyway.

“I like the noise,” she says.

Part Twenty-Five: Maple Avenue
By February, Gil had paid back thirty-one thousand dollars.

Eleven months. Every payment on time.

In March, one year after the night Grandma ordered two Cokes, the house on Maple Avenue came back on the market.

The people who bought it got transferred to Green Bay.

I saw the listing on a Monday morning at my teller window.

1218 Maple Avenue. Ranch. 2BR/1.5BA. Finished basement. Two-car garage. Mature apple tree.

$171,000.

I called Russ on his break.

I called Grandma.

I called Gil.

Gil showed up at our duplex that night with an envelope.

Inside was a cashier’s check for twelve thousand dollars.

The rest of it. All of it.

“Gil,” Russ said. “How?”

Gil grinned.

“Fish fry,” he said. “The line goes out the door every Friday now. Flossie’s batter.”

He looked at me.

“And I took out a small business loan,” he said. “From River Valley. I had a teller there help me with the paperwork.”

He winked at me.

“Very smart lady,” he said. “Counts money all day.”

Part Twenty-Six: The House
We closed on the house on Maple Avenue in April.

A little ranch with a garage. Two miles from the mill. Six blocks from Grandma’s.

On moving day, Gil brought a truck from the bar. He and Russ carried every box. Every piece of furniture. Every bag of clothes.

Hank Wierzbicki came. Darrell Schultz came. Tyler the cook came, with a cooler full of fried walleye in Flossie’s batter.

At the end of the day, when everything was moved in, we all sat in the backyard under the old apple tree.

On lawn chairs and overturned buckets. Eating walleye out of a cooler.

Grandma sat in the best lawn chair. The one with the cushion.

She was wearing her royal blue wool coat. It was cold. Wisconsin in April.

She was drinking a Coke out of a glass bottle.

Gil stood up.

He had a Coke too. He held it up.

“To Flossie,” he said.

Everybody raised their bottles.

“To Flossie,” they said.

Grandma shook her head.

“Not to me,” she said.

She looked at the house. The little ranch with the two-car garage.

She looked at me.

“To Leo,” she said. “He wanted Shari to have a house.”

“To Leo,” everybody said.

Part Twenty-Seven: The Menu
The menu hangs behind the bar at Pliska’s Tap now.

In a frame. Right next to Stan Pliska’s Army discharge papers. Right next to the photograph of Stan in 1971, grinning, holding up his walleye.

It’s the menu from that Friday.

Laminated on the front. PLISKA’S TAP — FRIDAY FISH FRY — EST. 1971.

And on the back, in blue Bic pen, Gil’s plan.

Sell the bass boat. Sell the Harley. Rent the apartment. Pay $1,500/month.

Never borrow from Russ again without Shari at the table.

And underneath, in a different hand. Careful Palmer Method cursive.

4. Fix the fish.
5. Flossie gets her fish for free. Every Friday. For as long as she lives.

People ask about it sometimes.

New customers. Tourists from Minneapolis on their way up north. College kids from Stevens Point.

“What’s that?” they ask. Pointing at the frame.

Gil tells them.

He tells them the whole story. The cooler. The taxes. Forty-three thousand dollars. The two Cokes.

So how is it doing?

Then he points to the kitchen door.

“She’s back there right now,” he says. “Every Friday. Two o’clock. On her stool.”

Part Twenty-Eight: Two Cokes
Last Friday, I picked Grandma up at the bar at eight o’clock.

She’d been on her stool in the kitchen since two. Watching Tyler fry fish. Drinking Cokes. Telling him when the walleye was too dark.

She’s eighty-seven now.

On the way out, she stopped at the bar.

Gil was behind it, pouring beers. The place was packed. Every booth. Every stool. The line still going out the door.

He saw her. He came down the bar.

“Flossie,” he said. “You heading home?”

“In a minute,” Grandma said.

She sat down on a stool. The one in the center. Right in front of the taps.

“Two Cokes,” she said. “In the glass bottles.”

Gil smiled.

He reached into the cooler. He pulled out two glass bottles. He popped the caps.

He set them in front of her.

She slid one across the bar to him.

“I ordered one for you, Gilbert,” she said.

He picked it up.

They clinked the bottles together. Across the old oak bar. Under his father’s photograph.

“So,” Grandma said. “How’s it doing?”

Gil looked out at his bar.

At every booth full. At every stool taken. At the line still going out the door into the cold March night.

At Hank Wierzbicki in his corner booth, eating real walleye.

At Russ, sitting at the end of the bar with me, drinking a Leinie’s on his night off.

“It’s doing good, Flossie,” Gil said quietly. “It’s doing real good.”

Grandma nodded.

She took a small sip of her Coke.

She set it down on a cocktail napkin.

“Good,” she said.

Then she looked at me.

“Take me home, honey,” she said. “My hip hurts. And I want to sit in your garage.”

“My garage?” I said.

She smiled.

“I want to see a car that doesn’t need its windshield scraped,” she said.

I laughed.

I took her arm. I walked her out.

Past the booths. Past the framed menu behind the bar. Past the line of people waiting in the cold for Flossie Duda’s batter.

At the door, she stopped.

She looked back at the bar. At Gil, pouring beers. At Russ, laughing with his brother. At her own handwriting in a frame behind the taps.

“You know what Leo used to say?” she said.

“What, Grandma?”

“He used to say you can always tell a good man from a bad one,” Grandma said. “You just watch what he does when somebody asks him a hard question in front of people he loves.”

She patted my hand.

“Bad men lie,” she said. “Good men pick up a pen.”

Then she buttoned her royal blue coat.

And we walked out into the cold.

THE END…!