My son held his hand out across my birthday cake, palm up. The way you hold out your hand to a child who has something in her mouth she shouldn\u2019t.
\n\u201cMom,\u201d Brian said. \u201cI need the keys.\u201d
\nWe were at the supper club out on the highway. The one with the relish tray on every table and a painting of a lake on the wall behind the bar. It was the third Sunday in May.
\nI\u2019d turned seventy-six years old at 6:10 that morning. My mother always kept track of it to the minute.
\nMy daughter-in-law, Kim, was staring very hard into her coffee cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe keys to what?\u201d I said.
\nI knew. I just wanted to hear him say it.
\n\u201cThe Buick.\u201d
\n\u201cYou drove me here, Brian. The Buick is in my carport.\u201d
\nHe didn\u2019t answer that. He just kept his hand right where it was, palm up over my cake.
\nI noticed his hand wasn\u2019t quite steady. I filed that away. The way I used to file away the sound of a caller\u2019s breathing when I worked the switchboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for your own good,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter the mailbox.\u201d
\nTwo weeks before, in a hard rain, I\u2019d swung wide around a delivery truck parked on Cedar Street. My right fender clipped the Hendersons\u2019 mailbox. It leaned over afterward like an old man with a bad hip.
\nI went to the hardware store that same afternoon. I bought them a brand-new mailbox for thirty-eight dollars. I stood in the drizzle while Jeff Henderson screwed it onto the post and told me not to give it another thought.
\nThen I called my son and told him about it myself. Because I\u2019ve never once in my life hidden a thing from that boy.
\nThat was my mistake. Telling him.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne mailbox,\u201d I said.
\n\u201cThis time it was a mailbox.\u201d
\n\u201cIn fifty-eight years of driving.\u201d
\n\u201cMom.\u201d
\nHe lowered his voice. The Schmidts were two tables over with their grandchildren.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s done,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to do this here. But I didn\u2019t know how else to do it. The Buick\u2019s already sold.\u201d
\nI set my fork down on the edge of my plate.<\/p>\n
It made a small, clear sound.
\n\u201cSold,\u201d I said.
\n\u201cA man from Janesville. He came at four-thirty this afternoon. Kim let him into the carport with the spare key.\u201d
\nHe reached into his sport coat and laid an envelope on the tablecloth beside my cake.
\n\u201cForty-two hundred dollars. Cashier\u2019s check. Made out to you. Every cent of it\u2019s yours.\u201d, and..CONTINUE READING<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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