The Ride Home From My Heart Surgery

Forty-Eight

Neil showed up at nine that night.

I heard the truck first, the diesel that Lester would have recognized from three streets away, and then his boots on the porch, fast and uneven. He did not knock. He pounded.

“Mom. Mom. It’s me. Open the door.”

“It’s open,” I called from my recliner. “I can’t get up, so you’ll have to come in.”

He came in as if the floor were wet. Neil is forty-one, with his father’s shoulders. He still had sawdust in the creases of his work shirt, and his eyes were red. Behind him came Rhonda, in her good navy dress with her hair pinned back for the Chamber event they had apparently skipped, her phone clutched in front of her like something she had been trying to throw away.

“Mom,” Neil said, and he stopped, because he had seen the wristband. I had not taken it off. I was not sure why. “Mom. The nurse said. She said open-heart. She said bypass.”

“Yes.”

“You told us it was a procedure.”

“It was a procedure,” I said. “They called it a coronary artery bypass with a valve repair. Four days in the hospital. I’m told I did very well.”

Rhonda found her voice. “We called you forty-eight times.”

“I saw.”

“Why didn’t you pick up?”

“Because at one o’clock this afternoon I sat on a curb in a wheelchair and asked my only son for a ride home from the worst week of my life,” I said. “And he told me he was busy. And I said okay. That was the last thing I had to say to anybody today.”

Neil sat down on the arm of the couch as if his legs had been cut.

“I didn’t know it was surgery, Mom,” he said.

“I’m not saying you should have known,” I said. “I hid it from you, and I’ll answer for that. But I asked for a ride, Neil. If I had said I’m having a mole removed you would have said the same thing. That’s what I sat there understanding.”

“Who brought you home?” Neil asked finally. “Who drove you?”

“A man from the hospital. A volunteer. He was very kind.”

“I’d like to thank him.”

“I expect you will,” I said. “Eventually.”

Neil put his face in his hands. Rhonda stood with her hand on his shoulder, and in her eyes I saw not guilt exactly. It was arithmetic. She was already working out how this looked.

“I know it’s an awful time to bring up, but Thursday’s the hospital board night, for the bid, and people might ask about you,” she said. “We’ve talked a lot about you in the presentation. How much family matters to the business. I’ll just say you had a medical thing, and that Neil was there for you.”

I looked at her for a very long time.

“Is Thursday the one at the cafeteria?” I said.

“Seven o’clock. Why?”

“No reason,” I said. “I might come.”

They left at ten. Neil kissed my forehead at the door, which he had not done in years, and I let him. I want that on the record. I did not stop being his mother because he had stopped being my ride.

I locked the door behind them myself.