The Car Seat in Her Buick

“She’s going to be mad for a month,” he said.

“Probably.”

He sat down across from me and picked up the keys and turned them over in his big hand. He has his father’s hands. Darlene says that all the time.

“Dad used to say Mom would rather be mad than wrong,” Ryan said. “He said the trick was to let her be mad for a while and not take it personal.”

“Did that work?”

“Forty years,” he said. “Mostly.” He set the keys down. “I’ll call her tomorrow and tell her myself. You shouldn’t have to carry this one by yourself.”

I put my hand over his on the table, and we sat like that for a minute, too tired to talk, listening to the fan in Jack’s room.

The next morning I left the house at six thirty and drove the forty miles to Brookings before my shift. I didn’t want to buy a seat online and wait a week while Darlene stewed. I wanted it in her car by sundown.

The Walmart in Brookings had a whole aisle of them. I stood there in front of the shelf for twenty minutes reading every box, while a man stocking diapers pretended not to watch me.

I picked a convertible seat, the kind that faces backward for little ones and turns around later, with a weight limit high enough that Jack could ride rear-facing for another year or two. It had a steel frame, a recline bubble on the side, and lower anchor clips with a push button release.

It cost $279.88, plus tax. That was most of a week of my take-home pay. I put it on the card and didn’t let myself think about it.

At the checkout there was a bin of stuffed animals by the register. Jack already had a giraffe he dragged everywhere, a worn yellow one with one ear chewed flat, so I didn’t buy anything else. I just stood there a second thinking about how much he loved that giraffe.

I read the manual twice in the parking lot with the engine running and the air on. Then I drove back and worked my shift, and I filled prescriptions all day with the box in the back of my car like a passenger.

At four o’clock, Ryan texted me. “Talked to Mom. She hung up on me. Then she called back and asked what time you were coming.”

“Six thirty,” I texted back.

“She says don’t be late. She’s making a hot dish.” Then, a minute later: “That means she’s not that mad.”

Ryan had dropped Jack off at his mother’s that morning on his way to the elevator, so I went straight there from work, still in my pharmacy smock with my name tag on. It was six thirty and the light was going gold. Somebody down the block was mowing.

The Buick sat in the driveway where it had been sitting since Tuesday. It was a 2007, tan, with a dent in the back bumper from the bank drive-through post and a “Proud Grandma” sticker in the rear window that Ryan’s sister had put there.

I had checked before I bought anything. The Buick’s back seat belts lock when you pull them all the way out, which is what the manual says a belt install needs. I had tested it the night before last, in the dark, before I left.