The Drawings Behind the Stop Sign

She knew exactly what an hour like that was worth, I told myself, and she chose anyway.

We buried Arlen on a Saturday from the Lutheran church. The ladies fed three hundred people in the fellowship hall, and I stood through all of it with my back straight.

Then Corwin and Tamsen and Braylin came back with me to my own kitchen on Alder Street, because I could not stand the house alone. I watched Tamsen wrap up the ham.

She was doing it the right way, in foil, with the ends folded under. She had not slept either. She still had her good black dress on.

Braylin was asleep across two kitchen chairs with his shoes on and Arlen’s green hat over his face, which I had not been able to look at all day.

And I said it. I did not shout, and I have never been sure that was better, because a shout I could have forgiven myself for. I said it in my deli voice, level and clear, the way I used to call a price.

I said, “Arlen asked for that boy, and you let a nap matter more than his last good hour. I hope the schedule was worth it.”

Tamsen stopped with the foil in her hands. She did not say a word. She looked at me for a long time, and her mouth opened once and shut again, and I took that for guilt.

I took it for guilt and I felt, God forgive me, a small cold satisfaction, like a woman setting down something heavy.

Corwin was standing in the doorway with his tie off. He is a big, quiet man, forty years old now, who runs a bucket truck for the borough electric department.

He has his father’s hands and his father’s way of saying very little.

He looked at his wife and then he looked at me, and he said, “Mom. Give us some space.”

That was all. He picked up Braylin, hat and all, and Tamsen picked up the ham. They went out my back door, and I stood in my kitchen and listened to the truck start.

I thought it would be a week. I thought Corwin would call by Sunday supper.

I mailed Braylin a card for his fifth birthday in August. It came back with a line through my address in Corwin’s handwriting. “Not yet, Mom.”

So did the Christmas card. So did the one for his sixth birthday. After that I told myself a woman who has been told not yet three times has her answer.

Thanksgiving came, and I ate a turkey breast alone with the radio on.

Here is the part I most want you to see. I put both returned cards in the drawer under the rubber bands, and I let “not yet” mean whatever suited me. I had said something cruel, and I knew in my bones it was cruel.

But I had decided the first apology was owed to me, for being sent away. I held that account like the deed to land I would never sell.

Which brings me to the corner.

The summer after the funeral I saw a notice taped to the elementary school fence. The borough needed a school crossing guard for Church Street and Quarry Street.