The Long Drive to Velma’s Driveway

I had a lot of time to think on that drive, and most of what I thought about was Grandma’s kitchen in Hays. The yellow linoleum.

The wall clock shaped like a teapot. The way she always kept a coffee can of saltines on top of the refrigerator for anybody who came by.

When I was a girl, my parents would drive me down from Iowa every July and leave me with her for two weeks.

She taught me to can tomatoes and play gin rummy and pray before I ate, even a bologna sandwich. She taught me that you write a thank-you note within three days or it doesn’t count.

She also taught me something I didn’t understand until I was grown. She used to say, “You can tell everything about a person by how they treat somebody who can’t do a thing for them.” She said it about waitresses and grocery boys and the man who collected the trash.

I thought about Russ, too, and I tried to be fair. Russ was the one who mowed her yard every summer when he drove up.

Russ was the one who fixed her furnace three winters ago and wouldn’t take a dime. He was not a cruel man. That was what made it hurt so much.

Somewhere past Kansas City, around nine o’clock, my phone lit up with Grandma’s number. I put her on speaker.

“I’m fine,” she said before I could ask. “There’s a lady at the counter named Kim. She’s going to keep the doors open tonight because there’s twelve of us stuck. She brought me a cup of coffee and wouldn’t let me pay.”

“Did you eat?”

“I had some peanut butter crackers out of the machine. Six dollars, Callie. For crackers. Your grandpa would have had a fit.” She laughed a little. “I still have thirty-four dollars.”

“Hang onto it,” I said. “I’ll be there by one.”

The snow got heavier on Interstate 35 south of Emporia. I slowed to forty and followed the taillights of a semi for an hour, my hands tight on the wheel.

I kept the radio off. I prayed, the way Grandma taught me, plain and short. Please keep her warm. Please get me there.

I pulled into the station lot in Wichita at 1:10 in the morning. There were only a few cars.

The snow was coming down slow and fat under the lights, and through the big windows I could see the rows of metal benches, mostly empty.

She was sitting right where she said she would be. The long camel wool coat she’d had since I was a girl, buttoned to the chin.

Her white hair still in its short set, every curl in place. Her brown hard-sided suitcase standing beside her. Her purse in her lap, both hands on the clasp.

Everybody else who was still there was slumped over or stretched out across three seats with a coat for a pillow. Grandma was sitting up straight, like she was waiting for church to start.

I walked in at 1:20 by the clock on the wall. She saw me and her whole face changed. She didn’t stand up right away.

I think her legs had gone stiff from the bench. She just held out both hands, and I took them, and they were cold as river stones.

“I didn’t want to be any trouble,” she said.

“You’re not trouble, Grandma,” I said. “You’re my road trip.”

She laughed so hard she had to dab her eyes with the tissue she keeps up her sleeve.