The Saturday I Poured Her Father’s Coffee
Don did not move. His hands were on either side of his plate.
“Kyle hear this?”
“Kyle was standing right there.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He didn’t say a word.”
A muscle went in his jaw.
“I sent a card,” I said. “I said I had regrets and I hoped it was a beautiful day. I meant it. I do hope that. I’m not telling you this to spoil it, Don. You asked me.”
“I did ask you.”
“And I’d take it kindly if you didn’t make a scene on my account.”
He did not answer that.
He looked down at his plate for a while. Then he said, very quietly, “Who paid for that room, Tammy?”
I had not expected that one.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I asked her. I said, you need help with this party, and she said no, Dad, we’ve got it covered. I thought, well, good for them.” He looked up. “The two of them have got it covered. A boy turning wrenches and a girl three years out of school, saving for a house.”
I wiped the counter where it was already clean.
“Tammy.”
“Twenty-five hundred,” I said. “It was a gift. I gave it gladly and I’d give it again.”
“Out of what?”
I did not say anything.
Don has been watching me drop my Saturday tips in my apron pocket for nineteen years. He turned his head and looked at the tip jar by the register. Then he looked at my hands. Then he looked out the front window at my Buick, parked where it is always parked, with the rust coming through over the back wheel.
He picked up his coffee and drank the whole cup, hot as it was.
I refilled it. I do not know what else I would have done. It is what my hands know how to do.
He did not drink the second one. He stood up, and he got out his wallet, and he laid a twenty-dollar bill beside his plate. His dinner and his coffee came to eleven dollars and sixty-four cents.
He took his cap off the hook. He did not put it on. He stood there with it in his hand, in his chore coat with the hay chaff on the cuffs and the pliers in the side pocket, and he said, “What time are you off?”
“Eight.”
“Keep a pot on.”
The bell rang over the door. Through the window I watched him cross to his pickup. He did not turn north, toward home and the clean shirt laid out on the bed. He turned south, toward the highway, and Aberdeen.
Roger had turned all the way around on his stool.
“Where’s he going in such a hurry?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said, and that was the first lie I had told all day.
I will tell you, that was the longest afternoon of my life, and I have sat in a hospital waiting room.
Two o’clock came. I pictured the room. I had never seen it, but I had seen the brochure, when Kyle showed me what the money was for. Round tables. White cloths. A wall of windows looking out on the ninth green.
I filled the sugar pourers. I married the ketchups. I wiped down every menu we own.
At twenty minutes past three the bell rang.
It was Kyle.