The Ring on Her Good Tablecloth

It is about forty minutes from Marilyn’s place, south on 75 through the dark into Topeka and then west on I-70 to the exit with the big lit sign you can see for two miles.

I had left a ring on a tablecloth. I had walked out on the man I loved, on Christmas Eve, without even telling him. I kept waiting to feel sorry, and I did not.

What I felt was the way you feel when you set down something heavy you did not know you were carrying. Tired. A little shaky. Clear.

The truck stop was lit up like a ballfield. There were twenty, maybe thirty rigs idling in the back lot, a long row of them with their running lights on, and the diesel smell came in the car vents as soon as we pulled in.

It is open twenty-four hours, every day of the year, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day included. Truckers do not get the holiday off, and somebody has to feed them.

The cafe is through the store, past the rack of trucker caps and the beef jerky and the CB radios.

It has a long counter with stools and a row of booths along the windows, and a pie case by the register that turns slowly under a light.

There were maybe ten people in there. A couple of drivers at the counter with their phones propped against the napkin holders.

An older man in a booth by himself with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. A family with a little girl asleep across two chairs.

The waitress came over with menus. She was about my age, with her hair pulled back and a name tag that said Patty, and a little sprig of plastic holly pinned beside it.

“Just the two of you tonight?” she asked. And then she looked at us properly, at my face, I suppose, and she said, “Sit wherever you like, hon. Take the corner booth. It’s warmest.”

We took the corner booth. Patty brought water and two menus and did not ask a single question, and I have loved her a little bit ever since for that.

She told us later, when it got slow, that she had worked the Christmas Eve shift nine years running.

Her kids were grown, and the drivers tipped better on holidays, and she said she would rather be useful than sit home and watch the television.

Dylan ordered the hot beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and brown gravy.

It is what he always gets anywhere that has it. I ordered coffee, and Patty raised her eyebrows at me.

“You need to eat something, too,” she said. I said I would think about it. I did not eat anything, and I did not drink much of the coffee either, but I held the cup because it was warm.

Dylan ate his whole sandwich. He was fifteen, and he had been hungry since noon, and whatever had happened at that farmhouse, his stomach did not care.

I watched him eat, and it was the best thing I had seen all day.

When he was done he pushed the plate to the edge of the table and wiped his mouth and said, “Okay. Pie.”

He did not ask me what I wanted. He knew. He called Patty over and ordered two pieces of pie, cherry for me and pecan for him, and two more coffees, because he had started drinking coffee that fall and was very serious about it.