Two Lawn Chairs at the Flagpole

“Ma’am,” he said to Mom, “I’ve been watching from my window. I believe that’s the best-behaved line I’ve seen on this lawn in twelve years. Would you mind if I got a picture for the newsletter?”

Mom laughed and said she supposed she wouldn’t mind. Wade waved the children back, and they came running from the swings and sat down in the grass around her chair again, grinning, sugar still on their faces.

Kendra stood up out of the other chair and stepped back, out of the way. I watched her do it.

Nobody asked her to. She just stood there at the edge of the grass with her arms crossed again while Wade framed the shot.

There was Mom in the green chair in her red cardigan, holding up the pie tin.

There was Mason at her feet, cross-legged, grinning. There was half the third grade around them, under the flagpole, in the sun.

Kendra was not in it. That was her consequence, and she stood there and looked at it, and she did not say a word.

The picture she had wanted so badly was taken, and it was taken six feet in front of her, and she had chosen to step out of it.

After Wade had his picture, he looked at Kendra, and then at me, and I think he understood more than he let on. He was a principal a long time.

“We’ll fix that sign-up next year,” he said, to nobody in particular. “Two guests per child. The lunchroom can stand it.”

Mom handed him the last half pie out of the tin before he went, and he ate it in two bites and said it was better than his own mother’s.

Then he went back inside, and the bell rang at 12:30, and Mason hugged his grandmother one more time, hard, and ran for the doors with the others.

At the door he turned around and waved. He waved at all three of us. I saw Kendra lift her hand and wave back.

Troy called me Saturday afternoon, as soon as he got back into town. I was raking leaves in the front yard and I almost let it go to voicemail.

“Kendra told me,” he said. There was no hello. “All of it. The phone call to your mom. The seat. She sat at the kitchen table this morning and told me the whole thing and cried for an hour.”

“I’m sorry, Troy,” I said. “I didn’t do it to hurt her.”

“I know you didn’t,” he said. He was quiet for a second. I could hear his truck idling. “Beth, she shouldn’t have called your mother. I’d have told her that if I’d known. I didn’t know.”

“I figured you didn’t,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t call you on the road.”

“Wade sent the newsletter home with Mason,” he said. “Your mom’s on the front page. Every kid in his class is in it but Mason looks the happiest I’ve seen him look in a year.”