The First New Car of Her Life
“I thought I’d make it up,” he said. “Next quarter, next quarter. And then the parking. You have no idea what it costs to park up here. I started getting tickets because I couldn’t pay the garage, and then the tickets doubled when I couldn’t pay them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mom said. “The truth, I mean. Not the scooter.”
He looked at his plate for a long time. “Because Dad always just fixed it,” he said finally. “I’d call him, and he’d fix it, and he’d never say a word to you about it. And when he died, I called you, and you fixed it. And I didn’t let myself think about where the money came from.”
Mom reached across the table and put her hand over his, the way she used to when he was little and couldn’t sleep.
“I knew about your dad,” she said. “The car payments. The credit card. I always knew, Shane. I just let him think I didn’t, because he needed to do it for you.”
Shane stared at her. I stared at her. I had kept that secret for six years, and she’d known the whole time, and she’d let both of us carry it.
“But I’m not your dad,” she said. “And I’m not going to do it anymore. Not because I’m mad. I’m not mad, honey. Because I’m sixty-eight, and I’ve got a car payment now, and I’d like to see you stand on your own two feet while I’m still around to watch it.”
He didn’t say much the rest of lunch. He walked us back to the car and hugged Mom on the sidewalk for a long time. He hugged me, too, which he doesn’t usually do, and said in my ear, “You could have called me. You could have yelled at me.”
“She asked me not to,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds like her.” He let go and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Thanks for not.”
Mom drove us home. She didn’t flinch at Joliet this time. Somewhere south of Dwight, with the sun going down orange over the stubble fields and the combines coming in with their lights on, she started humming a hymn, “In the Garden,” which was Dad’s favorite.
He came down the next Saturday. He drove the BMW, because he still had it, and he parked it on the street in front of Mom’s house instead of in the driveway, behind the little blue SUV.
I was there, because Mom had called me and said, “Your brother’s coming, and I want you here,” and when Mom says that, you come. Kaylee came with me. She’d been begging to sit in Grandma’s new car anyway.
Shane walked up onto the porch where Mom was sitting in the glider in her red jacket. He didn’t sit down.
He stood in front of her with his hands in his coat pockets, the way he used to stand in front of Dad when he’d broken something.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “For all of it. For the delivery fee and the tickets and asking you for that scooter when your car was falling apart in your own driveway and I knew it. Stacy told me in August that the Buick was slipping. I knew.”
I had told him that. I’d forgotten. He hadn’t.