The Pan of Bars on Nicole’s Porch
But I did not want a lawyer to make Nicole say something. I wanted Nicole to tell me why. Thirty-four years. I wanted to hear it from her own mouth before I let anyone else near it.
Here is the part I have to tell you, because otherwise you will not understand the bars.
Three years ago Nicole’s dad, Dale, had a heart attack in his deer stand on the second Saturday of rifle season. He was sixty-eight. They found him at noon, sitting up, his thermos still warm.
Nicole called me from the hospital parking lot. I drove there in my pajama pants and my school sweatshirt and sat with her in her car for two hours with the heat running.
The funeral home in Monroe gave them a price, and it was more than Jean had. Dale had a little life insurance but it was slow to pay. Kyle, Nicole’s husband, had just put everything they had into the body shop.
I had four thousand dollars in a savings account. It was what was left from the house sale after the divorce. I had been saving it for Kenzie’s braces.
I wrote Nicole a check at her mother’s kitchen table the night before the visitation. She cried and said she couldn’t, and I said she could, and she tore a sheet off Jean’s grocery pad and wrote on it.
I.O.U. $4,000. Nicole Haas.
She made me take it. I put it in my Bible, in the back, behind the map of Paul’s journeys. I never once asked for a penny. I never would have.
Shane had the kids that first week. On Sunday at six I drove them to his place, a nice new house out past the quarry, and Brody would not let go of my coat sleeve.
“It’s just a week, buddy,” I said.
“Dad said you have to blow in a phone so they know you’re not drunk,” Brody said.
I felt that one all the way down to my feet.
Kenzie, who is twelve and knows everything, reached over and pinched him. “Shut up, Brody.”
“Kenzie,” I said. “Don’t.”
I got out of the car. I knelt down on Shane’s driveway in the snow and took both of Brody’s hands.
“Look at me,” I said. “I don’t drink. Not wine, not beer, not anything. A judge made a rule because some grownups said something that isn’t true. I’m going to do the rule, because that’s what you do. And I’m going to fix it. Okay?”
He nodded. His nose was running.
Shane came out on the porch. He had his hands in the pocket of his Carhartt jacket, and he did not come down the steps.
“Shane,” I said, not loud. “Don’t tell them things like that. Whatever you think of me. Not them.”
He looked at Brody, and something in his face went sorry, but he didn’t say it. “Come on in, guys,” he said. “I got pizza.”
That week I did the breath test twice a day. Eight in the morning in the school parking lot, blowing into a little device clipped to my phone while it took my picture. Eight at night at my kitchen table, alone, with nobody’s homework to check.