The Knock on My Own Front Door

She was a small young woman with dark hair pulled back tight and tired eyes. Her name tag still hung from her pocket. She held her purse in front of her with both hands.

“Mrs. Brekke,” she said. “Mr. Brekke. Oh, my gosh.”

“Sit down, honey,” Ardis said. “There’s coffee.”

Jade did not sit down. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Brett said you said it was okay. He said he called you at Christmas and you said I could stay as long as we kept it nice.”

“He did not call us about that at Christmas,” Ardis said. “He called on Christmas Day for about four minutes and talked about the Hawkeyes.”

Jade’s face crumpled. She sat down then, right on the chair by the door, still holding her purse.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew something was off. He wouldn’t let me answer the house phone. He made Austin park on the street the first week.” She looked at her brother. “Did you know?”

“No,” Austin said. “Swear to you.”

Ardis got up and poured a third cup of coffee and set it in front of Jade, and then sat back down. She did not say anything else for a while. When Ardis stops talking, it is because she is deciding how much grace a person is going to get.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He drives for the feed mill in Garner some days,” Jade said. “When they call him. Today he’s out by Britt hauling feed. He’ll be home about five thirty.”

“Drives for the feed mill,” I said. “Since when?”

Jade looked at Austin. Austin looked at the table.

“Since December,” Jade said. “Since the plant.”

“What plant?”

She looked at me for a long moment, and I saw her understand that I did not know. That we did not know anything.

“Oh, Mr. Brekke,” she said. “He didn’t tell you about the plant either?”

Part Six: Five Thirty

Brett had worked at the cabinet plant in Mason City for nine years. He was a lead on the finishing line. He liked it there. He talked about it at Thanksgiving, about the new spray booths and the guys on his crew.

On December 12, Jade told us, the plant laid off its whole second shift. Ninety some people. It ran in the Mason City paper. I read the paper online down in Arizona, and I remember reading that story at the little table in the park model and saying to Ardis, “Thank goodness Brett’s on days.”

He was not on days. He had moved to second shift in October for the extra dollar an hour. He had not mentioned it.

So I sat at my own kitchen table at five o’clock on a Tuesday in March and waited for my son, the way I used to wait for him when he was seventeen and had the car out past eleven. Except at seventeen, I knew what I was going to say.

At five twenty-five, his truck came around the corner. A blue Ram, four years old, that he had been proud as anything of when he bought it.

He saw the Toyota in the driveway. I watched him see it through the front window, past the violets.

The truck slowed down. Then it stopped in the street, right in the middle of the road, with the engine running.