The Spare Key on Dad’s Hook

Dad’s kitchen

Dad’s house sits on the east edge of St. Elmo, a white frame house with a gravel drive and a shed out back where the truck used to sit.

The spot by the shed had gone to weeds. That was the first thing I noticed when I pulled in.

He was at the kitchen table with the newspaper folded to the farm prices, his reading glasses down on his nose.

His barn coat hung on the hook by the back door, and the boots under it still had road dust on the toes.

“You walked to the cafe this morning,” I said. I did not say hello. I did not sit down.

Dad took off his glasses and folded them, slow and careful, the way he does everything. “That waitress talks too much,” he said. “Always has. Her mother was the same.”

“Dad. A mile each way. It was twenty-eight degrees on Tuesday.”

“I had my coat on.” He looked at me over the table, and his eyes were the same pale blue they have always been. “Merilee, sit down. You’re making the kitchen nervous.”

I sat. The clock over the stove ticked. Out the window the bare maples along the street threw thin shadows across the yard in the noon sun.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. “I’d have driven you. Your husband would have driven you. Anybody would have.”

“Because then you’d have done just what you’re about to do,” Dad said, “and there’d be trouble between you and your sister, and I’ll not have that. Not over a truck.”

“It’s your truck.”

“It is.” He turned his coffee cup a quarter turn on the table. “And Annette is my daughter, same as you. She’s happy with that man. He works hard. He’s had a bad year. I won’t be the reason her marriage has a crack in it.”

That was the whole of it, right there. I could have called anybody. I could have made a scene at Sunday dinner.

But Dad would not hear of making trouble for my sister’s marriage, and all he wanted was his truck back in his own yard.

I looked at the back door. Next to the coat hook, on a little hook my mother screwed into the frame years ago, hung the spare key to the pickup on a little brass ring.

Dad saw me look at it. He did not say anything. He did not tell me to leave it alone, either.

“Do you want it back?” I asked him. “Just tell me plain. Do you want your truck back?”

He was quiet so long I thought he would not answer. Then he said, “I’d like to go see your mother on Sunday. That’s all. I’d like to drive out and see your mother.”