The Seat on the Branson Bus

The rest of it was that the girls were tired. Cheryl drove Bev to her heart doctor in Springfield every month, an hour each way.

Lori did her mother’s groceries on Thursdays and her hair every other Friday, and called her every single night at eight.

“They’ve been carrying me,” Bev said. “Ever since Don. I didn’t see it. I thought I was doing fine by myself. I wasn’t. I was leaning on my girls and I never once asked them how heavy I was.”

The bus trip, Cheryl told her, was the one day a month they weren’t anybody’s daughters. The one day nobody needed a ride or a prescription or a phone call.

That was why they never put Mom on the list. They wanted one day that was theirs.

“And she said,” Bev went on, a little more carefully, “that they’d always kind of thought Amanda kept Jake from them. Kept him busy. Kept him out on the farm. Kept him home on Sundays instead of at their houses.”

Jake made a sound in the front seat. “Mom,” he said, “the cows keep me out on the farm. Mandy’s been after me for two years to go to Cheryl’s for Sunday dinner. I’m the one who says I’m too tired.”

“I know that now,” Bev said. “I told her so. I said, your brother is just like your daddy, and you know it. You never once blamed me for your daddy working.”

“What did she say to that?” I asked.

“She laughed,” Bev said. “And then she cried again. And then the driver honked, and we got back on the bus.”

The show

At the show, Bev said, they’d had assigned seats in a long row near the middle, and she’d ended up on the aisle next to Marlene.

During the first half, a group sang old gospel songs, and when they got to “How Great Thou Art,” the whole theater sang along.

Bev said she sang it the way she used to sing it next to Don, with the alto part.

At intermission, Lori came down the row and asked Marlene if she’d mind trading seats. Marlene said she wouldn’t mind one bit and went to find the restroom.

“So Lori sat with me for the whole second half,” Bev said. “She held my hand. She hasn’t held my hand since she was about Kaylee’s age. And when they did the comedy part, she laughed so hard she snorted, and I laughed so hard at her snorting that the lady behind us shushed us both.”

She was smiling in the dark. I could see her in the rearview mirror, with her hat off now in her lap and Kaylee’s head on her shoulder.

“It was the best day I’ve had in four years,” she said. “I’m going to sleep like a baby.”

We pulled into her drive. Jake walked her up to the porch, onto his new step, and waited while she found her key.

She kissed him on the cheek. She’d never been much of a kisser, Bev. She did it anyway.