The Game Day I Towed Them All

Denny did not yell at me. I think he had it in him to, for about one second, and then it went out of him like air out of a tire.

He walked over and he sat down on the tailgate of his father’s truck, hard, like his legs had quit, and he put the tackle box down beside him and he put his face in his hands.

And this is the part I did not plan. I did not plan any of what came next, because I had been so busy being right that I had not left room for it.

I went and I sat down on the tailgate next to him. The two of us, on Dale’s tailgate, in the quiet.

“I didn’t have it, Ma,” he said into his hands. “I don’t have any of it. The plant cut me to sixteen hours. Kayla’s lawyer says I’m behind on Ruthie’s support and if I get much further behind I don’t get my weekends with her. You know what a season of gymnastics costs? Three hundred and ten dollars. I didn’t have three hundred and ten dollars.”

I did not say anything. You do not, at a time like that. You let it come.

“I couldn’t ask you,” he said. “You already took me in. You already run a heater out to me and feed me and do my wash like I’m fourteen. I’m thirty-nine years old and I’m living in my mother’s garage. How am I supposed to come in your kitchen and say, Ma, on top of all that, I need money too. I couldn’t. I’d rather park cars.”

“So you rented my driveway instead of asking me for help,” I said. Not mean. Just so it was out loud.

“When you say it like that it sounds terrible.”

“It was terrible, Denny.”

“I know it was.” He wiped his face with the heel of his hand, the way he did when he was six. “I told myself it wasn’t your driveway I was selling, it was the spots, like the spots were mine. That doesn’t even make sense. I made it make sense so I didn’t have to look at it.”

The sun was full up now and warm on the side of my face, and there was a wren going at it in the lilac, and I thought about the man I married, who would have known exactly what to say here, and who was not here, and so it had to be me.

“Denny,” I said. “The driveway was never what made me call Donnie.”

He looked at me.

“It was you telling me to go park at the Methodist church so a stranger could have my spot. It was that fellow in the Weller cap telling me I couldn’t stand on my own steps and you letting him. You made me a trespasser at my own house. That is what I could not live with. Not the forty dollars. I don’t care about the forty dollars. I care that my son looked right through me.”