The Glass Her Mother Handed Me

Danny set the fresh drink on the bar, on a new napkin, with a wedge of lemon so fat it looked like a quarter of the fruit.

Kristen picked it up before I could.

“Then I’m carrying it,” she said. “You are not walking one more thing across that terrace.”

I followed her out. I stayed two steps behind, and I watched her back, which was very straight.

Pam was still with the visor and the phone. Kristen held out the glass.

“Here’s your drink, Mom.”

“Oh, thank you, sweetheart. I sent one of the girls for it.”

“I know who you sent.” Kristen’s voice was low and perfectly pleasant. “Mom, this is Barb Renner. Dustin’s mother.”

I have seen a combine header drop off a jack. It was about like that.

Pam Whitlock’s eyes went to my face, then my cardigan, then my shoes, in the same order as before. The woman in the visor suddenly needed something out of her purse.

“Oh,” Pam said. Then she smiled, and it was a very good smile, quick and wide. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Well, you should have said something.”

That was the whole of it. That was the apology. I should have said something.

“It was no trouble,” I said. “Danny found you a better lemon.”

“Barb. Is it Barbara?”

“Just Barb.”

“Barb.” She shook my hand with the hand that was not holding the drink. Her fingers were cold from the glass. “We’ve heard so much. You look so comfortable. I always tell Steve I wish I could just throw something on.”

Kristen made a small sound next to me. I touched her elbow.

“Thank you for having me,” I said.

Lunch was at a round table for six under a green umbrella, and I was seated with my back to the kitchen door. Every time it swung, I got a little wind on my neck and a smell of fryer grease. I did not mind it. I have eaten a good many lunches off a tailgate.

Dustin came back from the simulator with Steve. My son had on the one sport coat he owns, the gray one from his cousin’s wedding, and when he saw me he grinned like he was ten.

“You find everybody okay, Mom?”

“I found everybody,” I said.

Steve Whitlock was a big, tan, friendly man with a handshake like a vise. He was not unkind. I want to be fair to him. He was simply a man who had decided who I was from the parking lot, by the truck we climbed out of, and saw no need to revise it.

“So Dustin tells us you’re in farming,” he said, once the iced tea came.

“Seed cleaning,” I said. “Farmers bring us what they’ve grown, and we get it ready to sell as seed. Take out the weed seed, the splits, the chaff, the dirt. Test it, treat it, bag it.”

“Huh. So like a little mom-and-pop.”

“It started that way.”

“Good for you. That’s the backbone.” He pointed his fork at me. “People forget. Backbone of the country.”

“How agricultural,” Pam said, and smiled at her salad.

Dustin’s jaw tightened. I put my hand on his knee under the table and left it there.

Pam ordered for Kristen without asking her. She told the waitress, by name, that the bread was to come warm this time. Then she set her elbows on the table and turned to me with her whole body.