The School Kitchen Job I Took to Stay Insured

The First Week

I set aside the five hundred and eighty-eight dollars the way my mother would have, out of the egg money and the coffee can on top of the refrigerator.

I did not tell Ron. I want to be honest about that. When he finally asked where I went all day, I said appointments. It was true, and he let it go.

But I knew what I was doing. I was letting him find out on his own.

Ron left at six every morning and came home after dark that fall. He was finishing a remodel in Concordia and starting a shop building by Glasco. I was home before three.

Monday morning I was at the school by seven forty. Joan handed me a white apron and a black hairnet and introduced me to the crew.

Deb had been there eighteen years and ran the ovens. Karen ran the dishwasher and never stopped humming. A young mother named Amy worked the register.

The work was harder than I expected and easier than I feared. You learn the scoops. You learn that the third graders are the hungriest.

You learn the names fast, because the kids say them to you. Mrs. Albrecht, can I have extra corn. Mrs. Albrecht, I don’t like the brown part. By Wednesday I knew half the grade school by face.

Our grandson Jacob was in third grade that year. He is our daughter Kim’s boy, Cole’s nephew, eight years old and all elbows. The first time he came through my line he stopped dead and said, “Grandma?”

“Keep moving, buddy,” I said, and gave him extra peaches.

Kim knew. I had told her Sunday night so Jacob would not be surprised. She cried on the phone and told me I had to tell Dad. I said I would, when I was ready.

Thursday in Salina

Thursday I drove myself to Salina, an hour each way, because I did not want to ask Ron for the day. Joan had cleared it with the district office as an unpaid day. She said that was what unpaid days were for.

The infusion center is a long room with recliners along the windows. The nurse with the folder was there, and she held my hand while they accessed the port.

The first chemo was red, and they pushed it in slowly by hand. The nurse warned me the bad part usually came on the second and third day.

A woman in the next recliner was knitting a yellow baby blanket. She told me to eat bland and drink water like it was my job.

I drove home with a bucket on the passenger seat. I fed the chickens and lay down on the couch, and did not wake up until Ron came in at eight.

“You sick?” he asked from the doorway.

“Little bit,” I said.

“There’s leftovers?”

“In the fridge.”

He ate standing at the counter. He said goodnight from the hallway. I have thought many times about that night, and how close he was, and how far.

Friday I could not lift my head off the pillow. I lay there and listened to the furnace kick on for the first time that fall, and I wondered if I had been a fool.

Saturday was worse. Sunday I sat up and ate saltines and watched church on the television from Wichita, because I could not face our pew.

Monday I was back on the line.