The Cabin I Took My Boy To

And I know what other people will ask: why did I ever leave him there, and why did I not just tell her off?

The answer is plain. She was my mother and the only childcare I had with Adam gone, and that night I did not need a fight. I needed my son.

It is thirty-five minutes from our place to Mama’s, most of it on the four-lane. I drove the speed limit the whole way.

I set the cruise at sixty-five, kept both hands on the wheel, and breathed the way Pat taught us on the treadmill, in for four, out for six.

When I pulled into Mama’s gravel drive, the sun was down behind the ridge and the porch light was on. Dale’s truck was parked by the shed with the tailgate down.

I could see him out back by the burn barrel, a big man with his cap pushed back, not looking my way.

Tucker was already standing in the front yard with his backpack on both shoulders and his sneakers untied. He had been watching for me.

He did not run to the car. He just walked, fast, like he was afraid somebody would call him back.

Mama came out on the porch in her housecoat and slippers, with her arms folded tight across her chest.

“Carrie, what in the world,” she said. “He called you? He’s fine. He’s just being dramatic, that’s all. You baby him.”

“Get in the car, bud,” I said to Tucker, and I opened the back door for him. He climbed in and buckled himself, and I checked the buckle anyway, the way I always do.

Then I stood in her yard and looked at my mother. She was fifty-five, with the same auburn hair as mine going sandy at the part, the same freckles on her arms.

People have always told us we look alike. That night I could not see it.

“I’m taking him home, Mama,” I said, and I kept my voice exactly as level as if I were telling her the time.

“You’re paying me for this week either way, Carrie. I turned down a cleaning job for Thursday on account of him.”

“Goodnight, Mama,” I said, and I got in the car and backed out.

In the mirror I saw her on the porch with her arms still folded, and Dale coming around the side of the house to see what the fuss was.

Tucker did not say anything until we were on the four-lane. Then he said, from the back seat, “Are we in trouble with Grandma?”

“Nobody is in trouble but nobody,” I said. “That’s not even good grammar, but you know what I mean.”

That night, lying awake beside him, I remembered being eleven the first time she called me lazy. I had the flu, a bad one, and I lay on the couch three days.

On the third day she stood over me and said, “You’d lay there all week if I let you. You always were the lazy one.”

In the morning I drove us both to Morristown. I did not have anybody else, and I was not going to miss a session.

At the front desk I asked if my son could sit in the waiting room with a library book for an hour.

Pat came out and looked at him over her reading glasses. “Is this the famous Tucker I keep hearing about?”

“Well, you sit right there where I can see you through the window, and you wave at your mama when she hits a mile.” She went to the break room and came back with two packs of peanut butter crackers and a juice box.