Then I put my arm through his, and we stood there together in that parking lot and listened to that showoff bird until it flew off toward the bank across the street.
That Saturday, Josh drove out to his mother’s place to tell her.
I asked him if he wanted me there, and he said, “I want you there. I don’t need you to say anything. I just want her to see you.”
She saw the truck coming up the drive and came out the front door and down her porch steps to meet us in the yard.
She was wearing gardening gloves. She had on the big smile she always has for her son.
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“There’s my boy!” she said. “Did you bring me some of that brisket? I heard Dale’s got leftovers in the deep freeze.”
Josh didn’t hug her. He stood in the yard with his hands at his sides, and I stood a little behind him, and I could see her notice it.
“Mom,” he said. “There’s no cruise.”
She laughed. It was the same laugh from the dock, bright and loud and a little bit too quick.
“Very funny,” she said. “You had me for a second.”
“It’s not a joke,” Josh said. “Kayla spent the money Monday. All of it but two hundred dollars. She bought Leon new hearing aids.”
Cindy looked at me. Then she looked at her son. Then she opened her mouth, and for a second nothing came out of it at all.
“You took my birthday away,” she said finally. “Over a joke. Over a little dunk in a pond on a hot day.”
“Over his ears, Mom,” Josh said. “Over a $4,100 pair of hearing aids he paid for out of his savings and couldn’t replace. He went five days without hearing a word anybody said to him. He couldn’t hear the phone. He couldn’t hear a smoke alarm.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know they cost that much?” Her voice went up high.
“I thought they were a couple hundred dollars! Like those reading glasses at Walmart! Who pays four thousand dollars for a thing you can lose in a pond?”
“You could have asked him,” Josh said. He said it so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. “Any time in the last six years, you could have asked him anything at all.”
She pulled off her gardening gloves one finger at a time. Her hands were shaking a little. I saw that, and I want to be honest that it hurt me to see it.
“And you just let her,” she said to Josh. “You let her take my trip.”
“I told her to do it,” Josh said. “It was our gift, Mom. We hadn’t given it yet. We gave it to somebody who needed it.”
Cindy turned to me then, and I think she wanted me to fight her.
I think it would have been easier for her if I had. Then she would have had somebody to be mad at besides herself.
I just said what I had come to say. “I’m sorry about the cruise, Cindy. I know you were excited, and I know you’ve been telling people. I am sorry about that part. I’m not sorry about what I bought.”
She stood there in her yard with her gloves in one hand. A pickup went by out on the gravel road, slow, raising dust, and we all waited for it to pass.