Two Lawn Chairs at the Flagpole

The secretary, a friendly woman I had talked to a dozen times about field trip forms, said of course they could. Families visited at recess all the time, especially in nice weather.

“You just sign in at the office and get a sticker,” she said. “And you stay out front on the lawn by the flagpole, where the aides can see you. The back playground is students only.”

“What time is third grade recess?”

“Third grade has lunch at 11:40 and goes out at 12:05,” she said. “They’re out until 12:30. Grandparents Day lunch is the same time, so it’ll be busy, but the lawn’s wide open.”

I thanked her. I wrote 12:05 on the back of my hand with a pen, the way Mom used to write my spelling words on hers.

I called Mom back that afternoon from the car, parked in the shade outside my next client’s house.

“Make the pies,” I said. “Make the whole two dozen, same as always. Come Friday. Be at my house by half past ten.”

“Bethany, I don’t want any trouble,” she said right away. “I won’t have that boy upset. Kendra signed up first. That’s the rule.”

“There won’t be any trouble,” I said. “We’re not going to the lunchroom. We’re going to sit on the lawn at recess like a hundred other families do every fall.”

She was quiet. I could hear her radio going in the background, the gospel station out of Portsmouth she keeps on all day, somebody singing about the sweet by and by.

“On the lawn,” she said.

“By the flagpole. I’ll bring the chairs.”

“Well,” she said, and I heard her voice change, just a little, the way it used to change when I came home with a good report card. “I suppose I’d better soak those apples.”

Friday came up clear and warm for October, the sky that hard bright blue you only get in the fall, and not a cloud over the hills from one end of Pike County to the other.

I had taken the day off. I told my agency it was a family thing, which was true, and my supervisor did not ask any more than that. She has grandchildren of her own.

Mom pulled into my drive at half past ten, which for Mom is late.

She had the pie tin on the seat beside her with her pocketbook on top of it, the way she always rides with anything she cares about.

“I made them yesterday,” she said, before I could even say good morning. “Twenty four. Dried apple, and I put a little cinnamon in, the way he likes. They’re better the second day anyway.”

She was wearing her red cardigan, the one with the pearl buttons, over a white blouse and her good black slacks.

She had set her hair. She looked like she was going to church, and in a way I suppose she was.