The Party At My Own Grill

I told Kyle’s mother. I told her everything. She cried on the phone and said, “I wondered when one of you would come.” She did not know about the rent either. Tracie had told her we had worked something out.

I landed in Kansas City on Friday afternoon, rented a little gray car, and drove two hours west on I-70 with the windows down. The wheat was green and knee-high on both sides of the highway. I had forgotten how wide the sky is out there.

I stayed that night at a motel in Junction City. I ate a cheeseburger from the Sonic down the road and called Kyle at what was three in the morning for him. He picked up on the first ring.

“You make it?” he said.

“I made it. I can see the water tower from the parking lot.”

“Get some sleep,” he said. “Ten o’clock. Don’t forget the phone charger.”

The graduation was at ten in the high school gym. I put on a white blouse and jeans, pulled my hair back in a ponytail, and sat in the top row of the bleachers on the far side from the family section, where nobody would notice me.

There were forty-one seniors. It was that kind of school. The gym smelled like floor wax and carnations, and the band played the same march every band in Kansas plays.

At five in the evening in Germany, I called Kyle on video. He was sitting at our kitchen table in a clean shirt, like he had dressed for it.

I held the phone up over the railing. When they read “Dylan Pruett,” Kyle said, very quietly, “That’s my boy.”

Dylan walked across that stage in his red gown and shook the superintendent’s hand. Then he turned to the family section, found his mother, and pointed at her with both hands.

I watched Kyle’s face on the screen. He did not say anything else. He did not have to. He reached up and wiped his eye with the back of his wrist, the way he does when he thinks nobody is looking.

“Thank you, Linds,” he said. “I’ll be up. Call me when you get to the house.”

I slipped out of the gym before the recessional. I sat in that rental car in the parking lot for a long time, getting my breathing right.

Then I drove to my own house.

The street was lined with pickups and minivans. Someone had chalked “Congrats Dylan” in big letters across my driveway.

I parked at the end of the cul-de-sac and walked up. Across the street, old Dale Novak was sitting on his porch in a lawn chair, like he always did.

Dale is seventy-four. He spent thirty years as a civilian mechanic in the motor pool on post, and he had mowed our yard for a month after we bought the house, before Kyle got the old mower running.

He stood up when he saw me. He walked down his steps a little slower than I remembered.

“Lindsey,” he said. “Well, I’ll be. I wondered when you’d come.”

“Hi, Dale.”