The Counter That Moved Across the Highway

The kitchen table

Cody got home at six with grease to the elbows and a box of cold pizza from the gas station. He is a mechanic at the implement dealer in town, and in March he works on tractors and skid steers until his knuckles bleed.

He saw my face the same way Kevin had. He set the pizza down and did not say anything for a minute. Then he said, “Ron?”

“Ron.”

“Because of the baby.”

“He said a mother of four would miss too much.”

Cody is not a big talker. He went out to the garage and I heard him moving things around, a wrench hitting the floor, the shop vac kicking on and off. When he came back in, his jaw was set but his voice was quiet.

“I’ll go talk to him,” he said.

“No.”

“Britt.”

“You’ll go over there and say something you can’t take back, and then you’ll have to fix his loader next week anyway, because you’re the only one in town who can.” I put my hand on his arm. “Sit down and eat.”

He sat. Emma, who is nine, came to the table in her socks and looked at the two of us. Nine is old enough to know when something is wrong and too young to know what to do about it.

“Are you sick, Mama?”

“No, honey. I lost my job today.”

Emma thought about that. Tyler, who is six, did not think about it at all, because he was trying to fit a whole slice of pizza in his mouth. Lily, who is two, was under the table pretending to be a cat.

“Can you get another one?” Emma asked.

“I’m going to figure something out.”

After the kids were down, Cody and I sat at the table with a legal pad and a calculator. I had brought home six hundred and some dollars a week before taxes. Cody brought home more than that, but not enough to cover the house payment, the pickup, the daycare for Lily and groceries for five.

We had one thing. We had a tax refund that had come in the week before, thirty-four hundred dollars, sitting in savings. It was supposed to be a used Suburban, because you cannot fit four car seats in a Chevy Malibu.

“We’ll be okay for a month,” Cody said.

“And then what?”

He did not answer. He put his hand on my stomach the way he does, and she kicked him, and he smiled for the first time all night.

The phone call from Marlene

At nine o’clock the phone rang. It was Marlene Schaefer, Ron’s wife. I had known her my whole life. She taught my Sunday school class when I was seven and gave me a gold star sticker every week whether I earned it or not.

“Brittany,” she said, “I just heard. I’m so sorry, honey.”

“It’s all right, Marlene.”

“It is not all right.” Her voice was shaking a little. “You know what he did is against the law. You can’t let a woman go for being pregnant. Not in North Dakota, not anywhere.”

“I know.”

“You could file something. You could get a lawyer from Bismarck.”

I had thought about it. I had thought about it in the car in the lot with the heater running. A lawyer, a complaint, papers, a hearing, maybe a check someday.

“Marlene,” I said, “a lawsuit pays in two years. My kids eat on Friday.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said something I did not understand until later.

“He’s not a bad man, Britt. He’s scared of something. I’m going to talk to him.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”