Twelve Turkeys for Mom’s Widows

What I Told Her

I could have lied. I had a dozen easy lies ready. The store ran out. Wayne got sick.

We switched who does it this year. Any of them would have done, and nobody would ever have known.

But Lettie Shook was 84 years old, and she had buried a husband and raised four children on a mill hand’s pay, and she was looking at me the way she must have looked at her own children when they came in late.

“He kept it, Miss Lettie,” I said. “He told me so himself. His hours got cut at the plant and he used it on bills. We bought these this morning.”

Lettie was quiet. Mom stood on the step between us with her hands folded now, and she did not say a word in Wayne’s defense, and she did not say a word against him either.

“His hours did get cut,” Lettie said finally. “Maxine told me. I knew things were tight over there.” She shifted the turkey in her arms. “That’s not what I asked about, though, is it.”

“No ma’am,” I said.

Lettie looked at Mom for a long second. Then she leaned forward and kissed my mother on the cheek, the way Mom had kissed all the others, and called her by her maiden name, which I had not heard out loud since my grandmother died.

“Thank you, Eudora,” she said. “I’ll see you Thursday.” And she went inside and closed the door very softly behind her.

The Week in Between

Mom slept most of that afternoon. I sat with her until she dozed off in her chair by the window, and then I took Cash home and made him a grilled cheese, and he fell asleep on the couch with his shoes still on.

Royal came home from his shift around four and found us like that. He looked at Cash, and then at me, and he did not ask how it went. He just said, “All twelve?”

“All twelve,” I said.

“Good,” he said, and went to take a shower.

I did not call Wayne. He did not call me. On Sunday, he and Maxine sat in their usual pew at church, three rows ahead of us, and Wayne did not turn around once.

After the service, Maxine caught my eye across the fellowship hall. She looked tired. She did not come over, and I did not go to her.

I did not know yet what her mother had told her, or if she had told her anything at all.

Monday and Tuesday went by. I went to work. Mom called both evenings, right before supper, to talk about the dinner: who was bringing the green beans, whether the cranberry sauce should be the can or the homemade.

She did not mention Wayne. Neither did I. On Wednesday afternoon I went over to her house to start the dressing, and she was humming at the stove, and I let her be.