The Mother at the End of the Bleachers

The parking lot

Tyler had to go back to his barracks to get his seabag and sign out on leave. They gave him an hour. I walked back toward the parking lot alone, holding that folded paper in my hand.

I heard somebody coming up behind me. I turned around, and it was Crystal, by herself, still holding her little flag.

She was younger than me, but not by much. Brown hair, nice coat, a face that looked like it had been crying. She stopped about six feet away from me, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to come any closer.

“Tammy,” she said. “I’m Crystal. I know you know that. I just wanted to say it.”

“Hello, Crystal.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I mean, I knew part of it. Dale told me you didn’t want to make the drive. He said you said it was too far and too much and that you’d see Tyler on leave. He said you were fine with it.”

I didn’t say anything. I let her talk.

“I should’ve called you,” she said. “I thought about it. I had your number from Tyler’s graduation party last spring. I thought about calling and asking you if you wanted to ride down with us, and I didn’t, because I was scared you’d say something mean to me.”

She laughed a little, and it came out broken.

“And then today I watched him walk right past us. Right past his dad. And I knew. I knew the second I saw your face. I’ve been writing that boy every week for thirteen weeks and I never once asked if his mother was coming.”

“You wrote him every week?”

“Every week. I sent him crossword puzzles. He said he wasn’t allowed to keep them, but they let him read them.”

I thought about that. A woman I had never really spoken to, sitting at a kitchen table in Bedford, writing my son letters and cutting crossword puzzles out of the paper. I had spent two years being angry at her for existing, and she had spent thirteen weeks being kind to my boy.

“Thank you for that,” I said. “For writing him.”

“I’m so sorry, Tammy. I’m sorry I was on the list instead of you. I’d never have wanted that. Not ever. If I’d known, I’d have stayed home.”

“I don’t want you to stay home,” I said. “I wanted to be there too. That’s all. There was room for both of us.”

She nodded. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

“You held his cover,” I said. “For the picture.”

“He just handed it to me.”

“I know. I saw. You held it like it mattered.”

“It did,” she said. “It does.”

We stood there in the parking lot with the palm trees moving in the wind, and I don’t think either of us knew what to do next. Then Crystal stuck out her hand, and I shook it, and that was more than I’d ever done with her before.

A minute later Dale came walking across the lot. He had something in his hand, a white envelope, thick, from two trips to the bank machine by the exchange. He handed it to me without saying anything at first.

I opened it. Six hundred dollars, in twenties. Thirty of them. I counted, because I’m a cafeteria manager and I count everything.

“It was never mine,” he said. “I shouldn’t have kept it. I’m sorry I made you drive down here alone, thinking you’d be turned away.”

“I wasn’t alone,” I said. “I had the whole drive with him in the visor.”

He didn’t understand that, and I didn’t explain it.

“Tammy,” he said. “Is he going to forgive me?”

I looked at Dale Rourke, fifty years old, with gray coming in at his temples, standing in a parking lot at Parris Island with his hat in his hands and his wife beside him, asking the woman he’d lied to whether their son would forgive him.

“He’s your son too,” I said. “Write him. Call him on Sunday nights. Show up when you say you’ll show up. Don’t keep anybody’s name off a list again. He’ll come around. He’s a better person than we are.”

Dale nodded. I think he knew that was true.

“Breakfast tomorrow,” Crystal said. “I’ll make sure he calls.”

“I know you will,” I said.

They walked back to their car. I watched them go. I didn’t feel like I’d won anything. I felt like I’d gotten back something that had been mine all along, and I was too tired to feel anything else.