The Morning I Paid My Father Back

The morning

My hair appointment was at seven. My cousin Amber did hair out of her basement, and she had put my long hair up in big rollers the size of soup cans so it would have curl by noon. I wore a white zip up hoodie that said Bride on the back in pink script, a gift from the girls at the daycare, and my oldest jeans.

My mother picked me up at Amber’s at a quarter to eight. She took one look at me getting into her Buick and said, “You’re going now, aren’t you.”

“He opens at nine. He’s always there by eight.”

“Then I’m driving you.”

“Mom.”

“I’m driving you, and I’m sitting in this car with the engine running, and if you’re not out in ten minutes I’m coming in.” She pulled out of Amber’s driveway. “That’s not up for discussion. It’s your wedding day. Nobody gets to wreck it while I’m breathing.”

So I let her drive me.

Brenneman Auto sits on a gravel lot on the south end of town, two dozen cars in rows with prices painted on the windshields in yellow grease pencil. The little office is a block building with a window unit and a hand painted sign. My father has run it for thirty one years.

His truck was there. The office door was propped open with a cinder block, the way he always propped it in summer.

He was not at the desk. Through the window I could see him out at the far end of the lot with a garden hose, rinsing the dew and dust off a red Malibu. He had his back to the office.

I went in.

The desk

The office smelled like coffee and Armor All. Everything was exactly as it had always been. The metal desk with the green blotter. The calendar from the NAPA store, still turned to May. The pegboard on the wall with the keys hanging on cup hooks, each one with a paper tag in his handwriting.

I had done my homework at that desk when I was little. He used to let me write the tags for the keys. He told customers I was his office manager.

I took the envelope out of my hoodie pocket and opened it. I stood at the desk and started counting the bills out onto the blotter, one at a time, in a neat row.

One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.

I heard the hose shut off outside. I heard his boots on the gravel. I did not stop counting.

He came to the doorway and stopped. I did not look up until I had laid down the last bill. Three thousand dollars, thirty bills, in three rows of ten.

Then I looked up at him.

He was in his work clothes, khakis and a green polo shirt with Brenneman Auto stitched over the pocket. There was a wet spot on his knee from the hose. He looked at my rollers. He looked at the money. He looked at me.

“Kayla,” he said.

“That’s all of it,” I said. “Count it if you want. Brenda counted it twice.”

He didn’t move toward the desk.

“I didn’t come to fight,” I said. My voice was steady. I had practiced, but I think it would have been steady anyway. “You asked for it back, and I don’t want to start my marriage owing anybody. So that’s done.”

He opened his mouth. I kept going, because I knew if I stopped I would cry and I did not want to cry in my rollers.

“The wedding is at eleven. Bethel Church on County Road 16. There’s a seat on the aisle in the second row with your name on a card. It’s still yours, Dad. It was always going to be yours.”

He just stood there in the doorway with the morning light behind him.

“If you want it,” I said, “come sit in it.”

I walked past him. He stepped aside to let me by. Neither of us said another word.

My mother had the car running. She did not ask anything. She just reached across and squeezed my hand, hard, and pulled out onto the road.

I did not look back at the lot. I am a little sorry about that now. I would like to know what his face looked like.