The Lawn Chair at the Bus Stop
Her dad, Jeff, and I split when she was three. We were too young and we both knew it. He is a good father and he pays his support on time, every time, and I want to say that plainly because people assume things.
Jeff works second shift at the Toyota plant in Princeton. He is on the line from 3:00 in the afternoon to a little before midnight, five days a week, and a lot of Saturdays too. He takes Lexi every other weekend and Sunday afternoons, and he has never once missed.
But he could not do a 3:15 school pickup. Nobody on second shift can.
I couldn’t either. The dental office runs patients until 5:30, and if you leave chairside in the middle of the afternoon, somebody else has to scrub in for you, and there are only two of us.
My mother would have done it. Mama watched Lexi every afternoon of kindergarten. She passed in June, very fast, from something they found in April and could not stop.
After the funeral, it was just me and my little sister, Ashley.
Ashley was 27. She is four years younger than me and I have been looking after her one way or another since she was in diapers. When our dad left, I was nine and she was five, and I learned to make boxed macaroni standing on a kitchen chair.
She is funny and quick and pretty in a way that makes men at gas stations say things. She has never had an easy time keeping money. She cleaned houses in the mornings for three or four ladies around town, and she was always a little behind on her car payment.
In August, before school started, I sat her down at my kitchen table and asked her if she would do pickup.
“Three-fifteen at the curb,” I said. “Bring her here, give her a snack, make sure she does her reading sheet, and I’ll be home by six. I’ll pay you a hundred and twenty a week.”
That was twenty-four dollars a day. It was more than I could really spare. But I wanted to pay her right, and I knew she needed it, and I thought paying her would make it a real job instead of a favor she could forget.
Ashley hugged me so hard my chair tipped back.
“You don’t have to pay me,” she said.
“I want to,” I said. “It’s a job. You’re doing a job.”
So every Friday I put six twenties in an envelope, wrote “Ash” on the front, and left it on the counter by the coffee maker. Every Friday it was gone by the time I got home.
And every weekday at about 3:30, my phone would buzz with one word.
“Home.”
I drove home that Wednesday with the radio off.
When I pulled in, Ashley’s car was in my driveway, like always. The kitchen light was on. Through the window I could see Lexi at the table with a juice box and a coloring book and Ashley on her phone at the counter.
I sat in the car for one more minute.
I had a whole speech ready. I had been building it for twenty-five miles. It was a good speech, and every word of it was true, and if I had said it, my sister and I would not have spoken again for a very long time.
I didn’t say it.
I walked in. Lexi jumped off her chair and wrapped her arms around my legs. Ashley said, “Hey, she did her reading sheet,” and grabbed her keys.