The Long Drive to Bring Grandma Home

The truck stop booth

The drive north went easier with two of us. My mother sat in the back next to Hazel for the first hour, holding one tiny foot through the blanket, and then moved up front when Hazel slept.

We stopped every two hours. My mother changed diapers on the passenger seat with a speed I could not believe, talking to Hazel the whole time like they were two old friends catching up.

At one stop she handed me a sandwich she had made at five that morning without telling me, wrapped in wax paper, cut corner to corner. I ate it in about four bites.

We got to the truck stop a little after two in the afternoon. It was one of those big places with diesel lanes on one side and a family restaurant on the other, and a gift shop full of cast-iron pans and jerky.

Travis’s truck was already there, parked at the far edge of the lot by the light pole, the way he always parks so nobody dings it. He was standing beside it with his hands in his jacket pockets.

He looked terrible. He had not shaved. He had on the same Carhartt jacket he wore to the plant, and he looked like a man who had been waiting in a parking lot for an hour, because he had.

He walked over as I parked. He didn’t come to my door first. He went around to my mother’s side and opened it for her.

“Barb,” he said. He held out his hand, and then he seemed to think better of it, and he just stood there with his hand half out. “I owe you an apology. I canceled your ticket because I was scared, and that’s the plain truth of it. It was wrong. I’m sorry.”

My mother looked at him for a long moment. She is not a big woman, and Travis is six foot two, but right then she looked about nine feet tall.

Then she took his half-out hand in both of hers.

“I was scared too, the first time,” she said. “Come in and have some pie with us. That baby’s going to want to eat in about ten minutes anyway.”

Your turn, Dad

We took a booth by the window, the vinyl kind with the tear repaired in red tape. A waitress about my mother’s age brought coffee for the three of us before we even asked, and a glass of ice water for me.

I fed Hazel under a blanket in the corner of the booth. Travis sat across from me and watched, and for the first time in two weeks, I saw how scared he was. It was all over his face.

When Hazel was done, my mother held out her arms again, the way she had on the porch. I passed the baby across.

My mother held her against her shoulder and patted her back, slow and steady, and Hazel let out a burp so big that the trucker in the next booth laughed out loud.

“There,” my mother said. “Good girl.”

Travis was watching her hands. I could see him memorizing it, the angle, the rhythm, the way she held the head with two fingers without even thinking about it.

My mother saw it too. She leaned across the table.

“Travis,” she said, “do you want to know a secret?”

He nodded.

“When Jessica was born, her daddy wouldn’t hold her for a week. He was so afraid he’d drop her. He used to stand at the side of the bassinet with his hands in his back pockets.” She smiled. “And then one night I was too sick to get up, and he had to. And after that you could not get that girl away from him.”

She stood up, came around the table, and set Hazel into Travis’s arms. She took his big hand and moved it under the baby’s head.

“There,” she said. “Like that. Your turn, Dad. I’m not here to take her from you. I’m here to help you hold her.”

Travis looked down at Hazel. His face just came apart. He did not make a sound. He just bent his head over that baby in the truck stop booth, and his shoulders shook, and the waitress quietly set three pieces of pie on the table and walked away without a word.

I reached across and put my hand on his arm. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to.