The Name He Wrote on the Line

I was at the sink. I heard him say, “Son, it’s your dad. Come to supper Sunday next. Deb’s making chicken. No, the salt-free kind. I know. I know it. Come anyway.”

I don’t know what Brian said. Ron listened a long time. Then he said, “Six o’clock,” and hung up, and stood there with his hand on the phone.

“He’s coming,” he said.

The next Sunday, Brian pulled into our driveway at ten till six in his gray pickup. He sat in the truck for almost five minutes before he got out.

I watched from the kitchen window and did not go out to make it easier on him.

He came to the door holding a pie from the grocery store in Vinita, pecan, still in the plastic box. “I didn’t know what to bring,” he said to me. “Dad probably can’t have this.”

“He can have a little piece,” I said. “Come in. It’s cold.”

Supper was quiet. Baked chicken, green beans, a baked potato with no butter for Ron and a lot of butter for Brian and me.

We talked about the weather, and the Thunder, and whether the co-op would ever bury the lines on our road.

When I got up to clear the plates, Ron put his hand on my arm. “Leave them a minute, Debbie. Sit.” I sat. Then he looked across the table at his son.

“I want to tell you about your mother,” he said. “I should have told you a long time ago. I thought it would be easier on you if I let you think whatever you thought. That was wrong.”

Brian put his fork down.

“Your mother did not lose that house because of a woman,” Ron said. “There wasn’t any woman. There was a bottle. I drank the house payment for most of a year before I left. I hid the letters from the bank in my truck.”

Brian’s face did not move, but his hands went flat on the table.

“I didn’t leave her for anybody,” Ron said. “She told me to go, and she was right to. She did the best she could with what I left her, which was nothing. Every bad thing that happened to her in that duplex, I put there. Not Deb. Me.”

“Dad,” Brian said.

“I’m not done.” Ron’s voice was steady. “I didn’t meet Deb for sixteen years. And the first month I knew her, she asked me about you. She asked why I didn’t call you. I said I figured you wouldn’t pick up.”

He looked at me, and then back at Brian.

“She said, call him anyway. Call him every Sunday whether he picks up or not. So I did. That’s why you’ve heard from me every Sunday night for nine years, son. You can be mad at her for a lot of things. You can’t be mad at her for that.”

Brian did not say anything. He looked at me across the table, and I saw his eyes were wet, and I looked down at my plate so he would not have to be seen.

I got up then and said I was going to sit on the porch for a minute. Nobody stopped me.

I took my coat off the hook and went out and sat in the old metal glider Ron’s mother left him.