The Paycheck I Handed My Mother

He did not look at me. He looked at the ground for a while.

Then he cleared his throat.

“Cody,” he said. Still not looking at me. “I need you back on your station this afternoon.”

It was not what I expected. I think it was not what he expected to say, either.

“I’m short three men,” he said. “That kitchen order ships Friday, and I can’t run your station and do the office both. I can’t do it. I’ve tried for a week.”

There was a long pause. Nobody moved. A truck went by on the road out front, loaded with corn, and we all listened to it go.

He was a fifty-five-year-old foreman with sawdust in his eyebrows, standing in front of half his line, asking the son of the woman he had docked to come bail him out.

I looked at Mom. She looked back at me, and I could see her deciding something. Then she gave me one little nod.

“Mallory’s husband is coming back up this afternoon,” I said. “He’ll sit with Arlo. I’ll work the rest of today.”

Vance nodded. He started to turn away.

“Vance,” Mom said.

He stopped.

She did not raise her voice. She never does. “Your wife called me last week.”

“I know she did,” he said.

“She sounded worried about you.”

He looked at her then, finally. And something in his face gave way a little, like a man setting down a load he had been carrying too long.

“Roz,” he said. “I’m sorry about the baby.”

“I know you are,” Mom said. “He’s gaining. He was three pounds even. He’s three pounds six now.”

Vance nodded again. He did not say anything else. He did not say he was sorry about the two days. He did not say anything about the money.

He just turned and walked back across the lot, and the side door shut behind him, and the men in the lot let out their breath all at once.

Norbert held the envelope out again.

This time Mom took it. She took the young man’s too. And she said, very quietly, “This is going in a savings account for that baby. Every cent. Not my rent. You hear me? Not my rent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Norbert said, and he grinned, which I had never seen him do.

I ate lunch with her in her car. She had packed two sandwiches, as if she had known I would be there. Ham and cheese on white bread, a pickle wrapped in waxed paper, and two oatmeal cookies.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, “with the check.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No. You didn’t. But I’m glad you did.” She brushed crumbs off her lap. “Your dad would have done the same thing. Except he’d have said something smart to Vance on the way out.”

“I almost did.”

“I know. I saw your neck turning red.” She patted my knee. “You didn’t, though. That’s the part I’m proud of.”

I worked the rest of that shift on my station. When I walked in, everybody on final assembly looked up, and then went back to work, and nobody said anything. But somebody had left a cup of coffee on my bench. I never found out who.