The Porch by the Bus Stop

The Fall

The first day of school that August, I stood on that porch so nervous my knees were shaking.

Then the bus came around the corner and stopped with a hiss of brakes, and the door folded open, and there they were.

Lily got off first. She always does. She is the oldest and she takes it seriously, the way Kelsey did.

Owen came next in his gray ball cap, the one from his T-ball team.

Gracie came last, and she nearly fell down the bus steps because she was waving goodbye to Pam over her shoulder with her whole arm.

I opened my arms at the top of the porch steps, and they came running.

All three of them, up the four steps, into me at once, nearly knocking me back through the screen door.

Pam honked the bus horn twice and pulled away, and I could see her grinning through the windshield.

That was how it went, every school day. At 3:40 the bus stopped on the corner of Third Street, and at 3:41 there were three backpacks on my porch floor, dropped wherever they landed, and three kids at my kitchen table asking what was for snack.

Apple slices and peanut butter, mostly. Sometimes cinnamon toast. On Fridays, a frozen pizza from the Casey’s up the road, cut in squares the way they like it.

I sat with Lily over her spelling words and with Owen over his addition and with Gracie over her letters.

Nick pulled up at a quarter to six. He would honk once from the street. He never came inside. Not once that whole fall.

The kids would grab their backpacks and run down the steps, and I would stand on the porch and wave, and he would lift two fingers off the steering wheel.

And Ashley never came at all. Not to pick them up, not to say hello, not on the Saturday I hosted Owen’s birthday cake in my little front room.

She sent a gift with Nick, a nice one, a fishing tackle box. But she did not come.

I figured Nick had told her I was difficult. Or that I had moved out in a huff. Or nothing at all, which in its way is worse.

I would lie awake in that little yellow house and wonder what kind of woman she thought I was, and it hurt more than I like to admit.

What Lily Said

In late September, Lily stayed behind at the table one afternoon after the boys, which is what she called Owen and Gracie both, ran out back to the little patch of yard.

She was working on a book report and not really working on it. Finally she put her pencil down. “Mom B,” she said, “how come you don’t live with us anymore?”

“Your dad and Ashley are a new family now,” I said. “And new families need their own house. I’m still your family. I’ll always be your family. And I’m right here on the corner every day at 3:40. That doesn’t change.”

She thought about that for a long time. Then she said, “Ashley’s nice. She does my hair in a French braid.”

And then, a little quieter, “But she doesn’t know how to make anything Mom made. She tried the chicken and noodles and it was soup.”

I laughed. I could not help it. Then I had to get up and go to the sink for a minute and run the water so she would not see my face.