The Saturday I Poured Her Father’s Coffee
Linda is sixty-eight. She has owned the Chatterbox since 1989, and she has a bad hip, a good heart, and a mouth she keeps mostly under control on account of the church crowd.
“I need to work Saturday after all,” I said. “I’m handing you back the day off. The double, if you’ll have me.”
She did not look up from the crust. “Saturday’s the party.”
“I know when it is.”
The rolling pin stopped.
I told her. I have stood next to that woman for twenty-four years, and I could not make my mouth lie to her.
When I got to the part about the fryer, Linda set the rolling pin down very gently, the way you set down something you would like to throw.
“I’ll drive over there,” she said. “I’ll drive over there this morning. Marlene can watch the grill.”
“You will not.”
“Tammy.”
“You will not, Linda. And I’m not calling her dad, either, so don’t say it.”
She was going to say it. I could see it sitting right behind her teeth.
“He’d want to know,” she said.
“I expect he would. And then what? I’m the mother-in-law who ran and told her daddy before there’s even been a wedding. She’d never forgive me, and she’d be half right. And Kyle would have to stand between us for the next forty years.” I tied my apron. “I’m not going to tattle on a grown woman. If my son wants me there, my son has a telephone and a mouth.”
“And if he doesn’t use them?”
“Then I’ll have found something out.”
Linda looked at me for a long moment. Then she picked up the rolling pin.
“Double’s yours,” she said. “Six to eight. And you’re taking the counter, not the floor. I’m not having you walk fourteen hours on a day like that.”
On my break I sat in the back booth with a card from the rack at the drugstore. It had a pair of doves on it. I wrote:
Dear Kyle and Brooke, with my regrets, I won’t be able to be there Saturday. I hope it is a beautiful afternoon and that everything is just the way you want it. All my love, Mom.
I read it over four times to make sure there was nothing mean in it. There was not. I checked.
Then I put a stamp on it and walked it across the street to the post office, because some things ought to arrive in an envelope.
Kyle did not call Wednesday. He did not call Thursday. Friday night about nine my phone rang and it was him, and I stood in my kitchen with the phone in my hand and my heart going like a girl’s.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, honey.”
“Got your card.”
“Good.”
There was a long quiet. I could hear a television going behind him.
“You sure you’re all right with it?” he said.
As though I had been the one to suggest it. As though he needed me to tell him it was fine so he could sleep.
And I could have. That is the thing about mothers.
“No,” I said. “I’m not all right with it. But I’m not going to make a fuss, and I’m not going where I’m not wanted. You have a nice party, Kyle.”
“Mom.”
“I’ve got to be up at four thirty.”
I hung up before he could say Mom a third time and leave that one lying on the floor too.
Saturday I was pouring coffee by six.