The Deed I Gave on Mother’s Day

The hug

Heather got up from her chair. She came around the table, and she bent down and put both her arms around my neck, and she held on.

I mean she held on. She put her face in my shoulder like she did when she was little and had a bad dream, and I felt her whole back shake once, and I put my hand on her long hair and just held her.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I let him. I’m sorry I looked at my plate.”

“Hush,” I said. “You looked up tonight. That’s what counts.”

When I opened my eyes, both kids were staring at us. Jace had a forkful of eggs stopped halfway to his mouth.

Bella was smiling a small, puzzled smile, like she had seen something she did not have a name for yet.

I don’t think either one of those children had ever seen their mama hug anybody like that. I don’t think they will forget it. I hope they don’t.

“Is Daddy in trouble?” Jace asked.

Heather wiped her face with the back of her hand and laughed a little. “Daddy’s thinking,” she said. “Eat your supper, bud.”

Troy comes back

He stayed out there about twenty minutes. Heather cut the pie.

I wrapped a piece of it in foil for the next day and we did the dishes, the two of us side by side at Mother’s sink, the same sink I had fixed.

When he came back in, he still had the cap in his hands.

His face was red and his eyes were red too, and he stood in the kitchen doorway like a man reporting to somebody.

“Marcy,” he said. “Can I say something?”

I dried my hands on the dish towel. “Go ahead, Troy.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it. Every time. I knew it was wrong the whole time I was doing it.”

He turned his cap around in his hands. “My dad talked to my mom like that. Every day. And I swore I’d never.”

“I know,” I said. “Heather told me.”

“And every time you fixed something in this house, or paid for something, I felt like he was right about me. Like I couldn’t even take care of my own family.”

He shook his head. “That’s not your fault. That’s mine. I just took it out on you because you were there.”

I looked at him a long time, and I saw that big quiet boy from the wedding standing in there somewhere behind the red face.

It took a lot for a man like Troy to stand in a kitchen and say that in front of two women and his children.

“Troy,” I said. “This house is Heather’s now. I’m not going to fix one more thing in it unless she asks me to, and you can be the one she asks first. That’s between you two now. I’d like us both to quit keeping score.”

He nodded. He swallowed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Then he did a thing I didn’t expect. He crossed the kitchen and put out his hand, and I shook it, and his hand was rough from the pipe yard, and he held on a second longer than a handshake needs.