The Pink Glasses Grandma Threw Away

“It’s perfect,” I said, and it was.

She put on her yellow T-shirt, the one with the little pocket on the front. She said yellow was a happy color and today was a happy day. I did not know how she could be so sure of that, but I was not going to argue.

We drove south with the windows up and the air conditioner on high, because it was already ninety one degrees at nine in the morning. The radio was low. The wheat fields were all stubble this time of year, gold and flat as a tabletop.

Lark hummed the whole way. Some song from Sunday school about a little light. She does not know all the words, so she fills in the middle with humming.

Somewhere past the county line, she stopped humming. “Mama?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Why did Grandma say I look slow?”

I kept my eyes on the road. I chose my words the way you choose where to put your feet on a creek bank.

“I think somebody said that to Grandma once,” I said. “A long time ago. And I think it still hurts her. Sometimes when something hurts us a long time, we try to keep it from happening to the people we love. Even when we get it wrong.”

She thought about that for about two miles.

“She got it wrong,” Lark said.

“She did,” I said.

“Can I still go to her house?”

“Yes,” I said. “You can still go to her house.”

She went back to humming.

The office in Stillwater is a little brick building on a main street with big front windows and a sign over the door that says Optometry. There is a little shrub by the walk, and the sidewalk out front is shaded by a row of young trees.

Dr. Bratton met us at the front himself. He had the same reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.

“There she is,” he said. “Miss Lark. I hear you had a rough day yesterday.”

Lark looked at the floor. “Grandma threw them away.”

He crouched down to her height, and his knees popped. “Well,” he said, “grandmas make mistakes too. I’ve got a mother who’s ninety two, and she makes plenty. Let’s get you seeing again.”

He had her pick from the low shelf again. I thought she might pick something new, just to see. She walked straight to the pink ones and held them up.

“Same ones,” she said. “I liked these ones.”

He took them to the back. Through the door I could hear the edger running, a whine like a little saw. Lark sat beside me in the waiting room swinging her feet. Every few minutes she asked if they were done.

It took about forty minutes. When he came out, he had the frames in his hand with new lenses in them, catching the light from the window.

He knelt in front of her and slid them on. He bent the left ear piece. Then the right. Then the left again. He was very careful about it, the way you are careful with something you mean.

“How’s that?” he said.

Lark turned her head. She looked at the eye chart across the room. She read the third line. Then the fourth. Then the fifth, slow, and she looked back at me grinning, and I could see the gap where her front tooth used to be.

The girl at the desk printed the bill and handed it to Dr. Bratton instead of me. He looked at it for a long while.