The Paycheck I Handed My Mother

Vance walked by twice that afternoon. Both times he stopped, watched me for a minute, and walked on. The second time he said, “That jig’s out of square. I couldn’t get it right all week.” I squared it. It took about four minutes.

He nodded and went back to the office.

That week, I split my time. Mornings at the plant, afternoons in Urbana. Mallory’s husband had found a way to drive regional for a month so he could be home nights, and that helped everybody.

The kitchen order shipped Friday. I heard later that the man from corporate called Vance personally to say it was the first order out of our plant on time all quarter.

I also heard later that the office had found out about the docked days. Not from me. Not from Mom. I suspect it was the woman from the paint line, who has never kept her mouth shut about anything in her life and was not about to start.

Nothing came of it in any official way. Nobody filed anything. Nobody got called up to the office. But there was talk in the break room all week, and Vance heard every bit of it, and he had to walk past that talk ten times a day.

I will not pretend I felt sorry for him. But I did not enjoy it, either. He was family. He had carved the turkey.

Arlo stayed in the unit five more weeks.

He came off the breathing help the second week. He learned to take a bottle the third week, which turns out to be hard for a baby that small, because they have to learn to suck and swallow and breathe all at the same time.

Mom was there every afternoon she could be. Every Sunday after church in her navy coat. She held him outside the isolette for the first time in his fourth week, skin to skin against her chest under a blanket, the way the nurses showed her.

She sat with him in the wooden rocker for an hour and a half. She sang to him. Not loud. Old hymns, mostly, the ones her own mother sang when she was hanging wash on the line. “Blessed Assurance.” “In the Garden.” “It Is Well.”

Sylvie told me later that Arlo’s heart rate was the steadiest it had ever been on the monitor while Mom sang.

“Grandmas,” Sylvie said, shaking her head. “There’s no machine for that.”

On the second Friday of November, the doctor said Arlo could go home. He weighed five pounds. Five pounds even, which Mom said was the right kind of number, round and solid.

We all came. Mallory and her husband, me, Mom, and even Norbert, who drove over on his lunch hour because he said he wanted to see the baby the boys had taken up a collection for.

Mallory carried Arlo out to the car in the car seat, and he was still so small in it that the straps looked like they were made for someone else. It was a cold, bright afternoon, and the parking lot glittered with frost that had not quite melted in the shade.

Mom stood on the sidewalk and watched them buckle him in. She had her hands in her coat pockets. She did not cry. She smiled the whole time, a small, tight smile, like she was afraid that if she smiled any bigger, something would break loose.