The Paycheck I Handed My Mother

“Nothing yet. Just pray. I’ll be at work in the morning.”

And she was. Monday she worked her full shift and drove to Urbana after. Tuesday the same. She came in with her eyes red from the drive and the hospital lights, and she ran her station like nothing was wrong.

On Tuesday afternoon, a doctor called Mallory in and said the word nobody wants to hear about a baby that small. Infection. They were starting him on antibiotics, and the next two days would tell them a lot.

Mallory called Mom at the plant. Mom took the call in the break room, and when she came out, she walked straight to the office with her safety glasses still on her head.

I was close enough to hear part of it. The office door was open. Vance was at his desk with the order board behind him, and every slot on that board was red.

“Vance, I need Wednesday and Thursday. Put them on my vacation. I’ve got eleven days banked.”

He did not look up right away. He was writing something on a schedule. When he did look up, his face was tired, and I will give him that much. It was the face of a man in trouble of his own.

“Roz, vacation has to go in two weeks ahead. You know that. It’s posted on the wall.”

“It’s my grandson. He’s three pounds.”

“I know it. I’m sorry about it. But we’re behind on the big kitchen order, the one for the builder in Carmel, and they’re watching me on it. I can’t hold your spot two days with no notice.”

“Then don’t hold it. Just put me down.”

“If you go, it’s unexcused. That’s two days unpaid, and a point on your attendance.”

Mom stood there a second. Then she said, “All right,” the way she says it when it is not all right at all, and she walked out to her car.

I found out later what Vance’s trouble was. The plant had a new manager from the corporate office that summer, and he had let it be known that the foremen who missed shipping dates would not be foremen long.

Vance was fifty-five with a mortgage and a bad shoulder. He was scared. I understand scared. I do not understand taking it out on a grandmother sitting beside an isolette.

There was something else, too, and the whole line knew it. Mom had more seniority than Vance did. She had turned down the foreman job twice before they gave it to him, and he had never quite forgiven her for being asked first.

So Wednesday and Thursday, Mom sat in a vinyl chair beside Arlo’s isolette in Urbana, and Vance wrote her down as unexcused, and on Friday the check came up short.

Friday is payout at our plant. We still get paper checks in envelopes, handed through the office window at the end of first shift, a little after two. Most of the line cashes them at the bank in town on the way home.

That Friday was the kind of October day that makes you forget winter is coming. Clear sky, no wind, the soybeans cut and the corn half in. You could smell the grain dryers running across the road.