Four Hours in the Dark to Dad
He drove her to every appointment. He carried her to the car. He learned to work the pump for her medicine and never once let it run late. I want that on the record. But when the work was done and the room went quiet, he would say “I’ll be out back if you need me,” and I would hear the shop door close and the radio come on, low.
On the last night, my mother died at 3:40 in the morning. I was holding her hand. I had been singing to her, the only thing I could think to do, “Softly and Tenderly,” because it was the hymn she hummed over the dishes my whole life.
Through the window I could see the light burning in the shop across the yard.
He came in after. He stood in the bedroom doorway in his coveralls with his cap in his hand and looked at her, and I looked at him, and neither of us said anything at all.
Four days later we buried her out of the Baptist church, and afterward there was a lunch in the fellowship hall. Ham, hash brown casserole, a sheet cake with a lily on it. I could not taste a bite.
My father was standing by the coffee urn, receiving people, shaking hands, saying “Thank you for coming” over and over in that flat voice. Not a crack in him. Not one.
I walked up to him in front of half the county.
“You weren’t even in the room,” I said.
The hall did not go silent. It was too polite for that. But the nearest people found something to look at.
“You were out in the shop with the radio on,” I said. “She died and you weren’t in the room.”
My father set his cup down on the saucer, very carefully, the way you set down something that might spill. His face did not change. I will never forget that. It was like watching a barn door close.
“You’ve said your piece,” he said. “Then you know where the door is.”
I did. I used it.
I was twenty-two years old, and I had just buried my mother, and I had said the cruelest thing I knew he would believe. And he had answered with the coldest thing he knew how to say. We were, God help us, a great deal alike.
Tom had the lamp on and was already pulling on his jeans before I finished repeating what Pauline had said.
I should tell you about Tom. He works for the county road department, and he is the most steady person I have ever known. For six years he had been setting a sentence down on the kitchen table every so often, like a plate. “You know, your dad’s got to be getting on.” “You ever think about just calling him?” Never pushing.
He did not say it tonight.
“I’ll go,” he said. “Josie can go to Mom’s.”
“No.” I was surprised how fast it came out. “Stay. I don’t know what I’m walking into. I don’t want her sitting in a hospital lobby at three in the morning if he doesn’t even…” I could not finish it. “If he doesn’t know who I am.”
Tom nodded slowly. “Then I’ll follow when it’s light. I’ll bring her if you say so. You call me.”