The Week At The Gulf

Calling the children

Kim cried on the phone. Not sad crying. The other kind.

“A whole week? All of us? Mom, I can’t, the money, Dave’s hours got cut, we can’t swing the gas and the food on top of”

“There’s no on top of,” I said. “It’s covered. All of it. You bring the kids and their swimsuits and that’s the whole bill.”

She went quiet. Then, small, “Why?”

I did not tell her about her brother. That was not hers to carry.

“Because Rosie’s never met your three,” I said. “Because I’m seventy-four and I want all seven of you in one picture while I can still get down in the sand. That’s why.”

Jeff, up in Minnesota, took more convincing. He is proud like his father, does not like a thing handed to him. I told him the same. Rosie needs her cousins. Four years old. He was quiet a long time and then he said Rosie had asked him last week if she had any cousins, and he had not known what to tell her.

“Tell her yes,” I said. “Tell her six of them. Tell her they’re waiting at the beach.”

“Mom,” he said, “I can’t take a week off. The plant doesn’t”

“You can take four days,” I said. “Drive in Wednesday night. Leave Sunday. I don’t care if you’re there one hour. Rosie will remember that you brought her.”

He went quiet again. Jeff is the one who takes after Earl the most, the long silences and the pride and the softness underneath that he thinks he is hiding.

“She’s never been in the ocean,” he said finally.

“Then it’s time,” I said.

Donna, Rick’s wife, I called myself. She was kinder about it than Rick had been. She said the boys would love it and she would see what she could do about the time. I think she already knew by then what Rick had asked us. I did not bring it up and neither did she. We are both women who have learned which things you leave on the table and which you leave alone.