The Suit I Wore To The Bleachers

“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”

“Did he have a good game at least.” She was trying to laugh through it. “Please tell me he had a good game.”

“He hit a double to tie it,” I said. “Scored the winning run. Slid home. Ruined his uniform.” I had to stop a second. “He pointed at me from second base. Right at the suit.”

She made a sound then that I will hear for the rest of my life.

“I missed it,” she said. “I missed my brother’s game for white tablecloths.”

I let her sit in it. Some things a person has to feel all the way to the bottom.

“Shelby,” I said finally. “You married a good boy today. Kyle’s got nothing to do with his mother’s foolishness, far as I can see. You have a whole life ahead. And there’s going to be a Sunday dinner at this house, like always, and there’s a chair for you at it. There’s always been a chair for you. There always will be.”

“And for Donna,” she said. “And Cole.”

“They never left it,” I said. “You’re the one who’s got to come back to the table. Nobody’s going to make you. But it’s set.”

She was quiet a while. I could hear music somewhere behind her, the reception winding down, a band playing something slow to an emptying floor.

“Kyle doesn’t think like his mother,” she said. “I need you to know that. He wanted them there. He asked me three times why they weren’t coming, and I kept changing the subject, because I didn’t want to say the words out loud. Because I knew how they’d sound.”

“Then you already knew,” I said. Not cruel. Just true.

“I already knew,” she said. “I just wanted the pretty day more than I wanted to be a decent person for one afternoon. And I got the pretty day. And it’s the worst day of my life.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I said. “You’re twenty five. You’ve got fifty years of days. Most of them you’ll spend being the girl who drove to a college two towns over and still came home every Sunday. This was one day you got wrong. One. You want to know how many days your mother Donna has gotten right in a row for fifteen years without a thank you?”

“Don’t,” she said, crying again. “I can’t.”

“Then come home,” I said. “That’s all. Just come home.”

She cried some more. Then she said, small, “Can I come to his next game. Does he have a next game.”

“All stars,” I said. “Two weeks. I’ll text you the time.”

“I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll wear something I can sit in the bleachers in.”

“Wear whatever you want,” I said. “There’s room.”