The Pickup List and the Blizzard

Brittany’s reason

“My grandma raised me from the time I was six,” she said. She was talking to the bowl, mostly. “She drank. Not a little.

“Everybody in our town knew it, and nobody ever said a thing to her, because she was a nice lady and she taught Sunday school and she made the best caramel rolls in the county.”

Nobody at the table moved.

“She used to pick me up from school. And one day in fourth grade she missed the turn by our house and went into the Petersons’ field and rolled her car. I was in the back seat. I broke my collarbone.

“She broke her hip and she was never right after.” Brittany looked up. “And the deputy who came out knew her, and he drove her home, and nobody ever wrote anything down.

“Nobody ever took her keys. Nobody ever said one word. They just kept letting her pick me up.”

She was quiet a minute. Mark Berg looked down at the table. Jenny reached over and put her hand on Brittany’s arm.

“So when Hunter came running at me yelling that Grandma crashed in the ditch,” Brittany said, “I didn’t hear anything else. I didn’t hear you.

“I just heard that, and I was nine years old in the back seat again, and I thought, I am not going to be one of those people who never says anything.”

I came and sat down across from her.

“It was a deer,” I said. “Two deer. A doe and a yearling came out of the Halvorsons’ shelterbelt.

“I braked and the gravel took me into the ditch, and we sat there for ten minutes until Jim came with his tractor. Hunter thought it was a carnival ride. Ava cried because Hunter was laughing.”

She looked at me.

“I don’t drink, Brittany,” I said gently. “I’ve never been drunk in my life. You can ask anybody at this table.”

“She doesn’t even keep it in the house,” Norm said. “Not even for Christmas.”

“I know,” Brittany said. She put her face in her hands. “I know that. I think I knew it in October. I just never asked.

“Because if I asked, and it was what I was scared of, then I’d have to know. And if it wasn’t, then I’d have to be the one who was wrong. So I just didn’t ask.”

There is a thing that happens in a farm kitchen at midnight when everybody is tired and the wind is loud and somebody has just said the truest thing they have ever said out loud.

The room gets very small and very warm. That is what happened.

“Honey,” I said. “You were scared for your kids. That’s not a crime. I’d have done something, too, if I was carrying what you carry.”

I waited until she looked up. “But I’d have asked first. And next time something scares you about me, I want you to ask me. I’ll always tell you the truth.”

She nodded. She could not talk.

“And I want you to know something else,” I said. “I didn’t go get them to prove anything to you. Marlene Kemp called and said there were five kids in a hallway, and I got my coat. That’s all it was.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s what makes it so bad.”

Jenny laughed a little at that, a tired, kind laugh, and so did Mark. After a second, so did Brittany, through her tears, and then so did I.

Then she stood up, right there in front of the Bergs and the Hansons and Norm, and she said it plain. “Thank you, Sherry.

“For going and getting my kids when I couldn’t. For all of them.” She did not look away while she said it, and I have always respected her for that.