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.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom,\u201d Brian said. \u201cI need the keys.\u201d<\/p>\n
We 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.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d turned seventy-six years old at 6:10 that morning. My mother always kept track of it to the minute.<\/p>\n
My daughter-in-law, Kim, was staring very hard into her coffee cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe keys to what?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I knew. I just wanted to hear him say it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Buick.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou drove me here, Brian. The Buick is in my carport.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t answer that. He just kept his hand right where it was, palm up over my cake.<\/p>\n
I 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<\/p>\n
Two 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.<\/p>\n
I 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.<\/p>\n
Then I called my son and told him about it myself. Because I\u2019ve never once in my life hidden a thing from that boy.<\/p>\n
That was my mistake. Telling him.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne mailbox,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis time it was a mailbox.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fifty-eight years of driving.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom.\u201d<\/p>\n
He lowered his voice. The Schmidts were two tables over with their grandchildren.<\/p>\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<\/p>\n
I set my fork down on the edge of my plate.<\/p>\n
It made a small, clear sound.<\/p>\n
\u201cSold,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA man from Janesville. He came at four-thirty this afternoon. Kim let him into the carport with the spare key.\u201d<\/p>\n
He reached into his sport coat and laid an envelope on the tablecloth beside my cake.<\/p>\n
\u201cForty-two hundred dollars. Cashier\u2019s check. Made out to you. Every cent of it\u2019s yours.\u201d<\/p>\n
People have asked me since how a son can sell his mother\u2019s car without her signature.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s simple. And it was my own doing.<\/p>\n
When my husband Walter died eleven years ago, Brian sat at my kitchen table with a folder full of papers. He put his name next to mine on everything. The bank accounts. The house. The car. So that nothing would get tangled up when my own time came.<\/p>\n
The title on the Buick said Dorothy Hale or Brian Hale.<\/p>\n
Or. Not and.<\/p>\n
Either one of us could sign it.<\/p>\n
I thanked him for that at the time. I thought it was so thoughtful.<\/p>\n
It was a 2005 LeSabre. Tan. Seventy-one thousand miles. Walter picked it out at the dealership himself. He drove it for ten years and I drove it for eleven more.<\/p>\n
There was still a roll of his wintergreen mints in the center console. Gone hard as buttons. I couldn\u2019t make myself throw them out.<\/p>\n
I wondered if the man from Janesville had found them yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay something, Mom,\u201d Brian said.<\/p>\n
I could have said a great deal.<\/p>\n
I could feel every word of it lined up behind my teeth.<\/p>\n
But I worked a telephone switchboard, and then directory assistance, for thirty-one years. I know exactly what a voice sounds like when a person has made up his mind before he ever dialed the number.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no use reasoning with that voice. All you can do is make the connection and let him hear what\u2019s on the other end of the line.<\/p>\n
And I knew something else, too.<\/p>\n
A seventy-six-year-old woman raising her voice in a supper club about her car keys doesn\u2019t sound like a woman who\u2019s right.<\/p>\n
She sounds like the proof.<\/p>\n
So I opened my purse. I took out my key ring. I worked the Buick key and the little black fob off it with my thumbnail. It took me a moment. My hands weren\u2019t shaking. I want that understood.<\/p>\n
And I set them on the tablecloth next to the envelope.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere,\u201d I said. \u201cNow. Is somebody going to cut this cake? Or do I have to do that myself as well?\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim cut it.<\/p>\n
Her hands were shaking a lot worse than his.<\/p>\n
Brian drove me home in his truck. Nobody said much. The lilacs were blooming all along Cedar Street, and the smell came in through the air vents.<\/p>\n
When we pulled in, my carport was empty.<\/p>\n
There was the oil spot on the concrete. My garden hose coiled on its hook. The coffee can full of sand I keep by the step for ice in the winter.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
He walked me to the door.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s fifty years old and six foot one. Standing on my front step under the porch light, he looked about nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll take you anywhere you need to go,\u201d he said. \u201cGroceries. Church. The doctor. You call me, or you call the office and Mandy will find me. Any time. Day or night. I mean that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not mad?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at my boy for a long moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for the ride home, Brian,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
And I went inside and closed the door. Gently. So he wouldn\u2019t be able to tell himself later that I\u2019d slammed it.
\n
\nI didn\u2019t cry.<\/p>\n
I want that understood too.<\/p>\n
I sat down at my kitchen table with the envelope in front of me and the clock ticking over the stove. And I did arithmetic.<\/p>\n
I had enough money in the bank to go buy another car first thing in the morning. I thought about it for a good ten minutes.<\/p>\n
But then it would just be a fight about a car. And he\u2019d have that fight with me at every Thanksgiving until one of us died. And every dent in every parking lot in the state of Wisconsin would be mine.<\/p>\n
He hadn\u2019t taken a car.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d decided what I was.<\/p>\n
A new car wasn\u2019t going to change his mind about that.<\/p>\n
He needed to see me. Hearing me wasn\u2019t going to do it.<\/p>\n
At a quarter past eight, I called Wilma.<\/p>\n
Wilma and I have sat in the same pew at First Lutheran since 1974. She\u2019s seventy-eight. A widow, like me. She drives an old Ford inside the town limits and nowhere else.<\/p>\n
I told her what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did what?\u201d Wilma said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need a ride at nine o\u2019clock tomorrow morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere to? The lawyer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bike shop.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a silence on the line.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve heard a great many silences in my working life. That was one of the better ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cDorothy Hale,\u201d Wilma said finally. \u201cI will be there at ten till.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bike shop is in the old train depot at the far edge of town, right where the rail trail starts.<\/p>\n
A young man named Eli runs it. He couldn\u2019t have been thirty. He came out from the back room wiping his hands on a rag. He looked at two old women in cardigans standing in the middle of his shiny racing bicycles.<\/p>\n
And to his everlasting credit, he did not ask if we were lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cMorning, ladies. What can I do for you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw a three-wheeler in your window at Christmastime,\u201d I said. \u201cA red one. With a basket.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trike. Yes ma\u2019am. I\u2019ve still got her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He rolled it out from behind a rack of helmets.<\/p>\n
It was fire-engine red. It had a wide black seat, and a big wire basket set between the two back wheels. Big enough for four bags of groceries. It had fenders. It had a chain guard, so a person\u2019s slacks wouldn\u2019t get caught.<\/p>\n
It was the most beautiful thing I\u2019d seen in a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThree speeds,\u201d Eli said. \u201cHand brake up front. And she\u2019ll stop if you pedal backward, same as when you were a kid. Is it for you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you ridden one before?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve ridden a two-wheeler. Not since Kennedy was president.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded like that was a perfectly reasonable answer.
\n\u201cThen I\u2019m going to tell you the one thing,\u201d Eli said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s the opposite of everything you remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t lean. On a two-wheeler, you lean into a turn. If you lean on this, you\u2019ll tip her right over. Sit up straight, like you\u2019re in church. And steer her like a grocery cart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can sit up straight,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He lowered the seat for me. He had me sit on it. He looked at my knee. Then he lowered it again.<\/p>\n
He took me out to the gravel lot behind the depot. He walked beside me with one hand hovering just next to the handlebar. Not touching it. Just there.<\/p>\n
The same way I once walked beside Brian on Cedar Street when he was six, the day his father took the training wheels off.<\/p>\n
I went around that lot four times.<\/p>\n
On the first turn, I leaned. The inside wheel came up off the gravel an inch.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrocery cart,\u201d Eli said. Very calmly.<\/p>\n
I sat up.<\/p>\n
By the fourth time around, I wasn\u2019t thinking about my hands at all.<\/p>\n
Wilma was standing by the depot door, holding her pocketbook in front of her like a shield.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell?\u201d she called.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d I said. \u201cI believe I\u2019m a natural.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside, Eli rang it up. Three hundred and eighty-nine dollars. With tax, four hundred ten dollars and forty cents.<\/p>\n
I wrote him a check. And I thought, that\u2019s Buick money. Every dime of it.<\/p>\n
And I felt better than I had in fourteen hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cHold on a second,\u201d Eli said.<\/p>\n
He went to a peg on the wall and came back with a round chrome bicycle bell. The kind with a little thumb lever. He screwed it onto the handlebar right beside the grip.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much is that?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a birthday present.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never told you it was my birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour friend did. While you were out back.\u201d He tightened the screw and tried the lever.<\/p>\n
It rang like a spoon tapped against a water glass.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody ought to give you something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a crier. I looked at a rack of water bottles until it passed.<\/p>\n
I let him win that one. Because a person should be allowed to finish a kindness all the way through.
\n
\nIt\u2019s two miles from the old depot to Main Street.<\/p>\n
I put my purse in the basket. I buttoned my cardigan. It was a bright morning, cool in the shade. The fields were just greening up on either side of the trail. The red-winged blackbirds were going at it on every single fence post.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollow me,\u201d I told Wilma. \u201cIn case I end up in a ditch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to follow you with my flashers on,\u201d she said. \u201cLike a funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike a parade,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
And I pushed off.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll tell you what I\u2019d forgotten.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d forgotten that on a bicycle, the air moves.<\/p>\n
In a car, the world goes by on the other side of the glass, like a picture show. On that trike, it came right up against my face. I could smell fresh-cut grass and manure and somebody\u2019s bacon. I could hear my own tires on the trail.<\/p>\n
The first half mile, my legs complained.<\/p>\n
The second half mile, they stopped complaining and started working.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a woman who has walked to the mailbox and back twice a day for forty years, and hoed her own beans every summer. It turned out there was a good deal more left in me than my son had figured on.<\/p>\n
Where the trail meets Depot Street, I had to go out onto the pavement. Wilma was right behind me in her Ford at about six miles an hour with both flashers blinking.<\/p>\n
A man at the feed mill was loading sacks into the back of a pickup. He stopped with a sack on his shoulder and stared at me.<\/p>\n
Then he took off his cap.<\/p>\n
I rang my bell at him.<\/p>\n
By the time I passed the bank, my thighs were burning. And I was smiling like a fool.<\/p>\n
I did not lean.<\/p>\n
Hale Insurance is a storefront on Main Street, between the old dime store that\u2019s an antique mall now and the bakery. It has Brian\u2019s name painted on the front window in gold letters.<\/p>\n
His father and I paid for those gold letters the year he opened.<\/p>\n
I brought the trike up over the low curb at the corner. I rolled it down the sidewalk. And I stopped it square in front of his window.<\/p>\n
I put one foot down.<\/p>\n
Through the glass, Mandy, his receptionist, stood straight up out of her chair.<\/p>\n
Mandy has worked for Brian for nine years. She\u2019s a kind girl, forty or so. She has a grandmother in the nursing home in the county seat and visits her every single Sunday.<\/p>\n
She put her hand over her mouth. I couldn\u2019t tell if she was laughing or not. I don\u2019t think she could either.<\/p>\n
Then the door to the back office opened. And my son came out to see what she was looking at.
\nHe saw the red wheels.<\/p>\n
He saw the basket, and my purse in it.<\/p>\n
He saw his mother.<\/p>\n
And the color went right out of his face.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d expected him to be angry. I\u2019d gotten myself ready for angry. For the whole two miles. I had a few sentences all prepared.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t angry.<\/p>\n
He looked exactly the way he looked at the cemetery eleven years ago. Standing at the edge of his father\u2019s grave in a coat that was too thin for November.<\/p>\n
He came out onto the sidewalk in his shirtsleeves and his tie.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom.\u201d It came out hoarse. \u201cWhat is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tricycle, Brian. I bought it this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou rode that here? On Main Street?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the trail, mostly. Then Depot Street. Then Main. Wilma followed me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked up the street.<\/p>\n
Wilma was parked in front of the bakery with her flashers still going. She lifted two fingers off the steering wheel at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could\u2019ve been killed,\u201d Brian said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy what? I was going slower than the mail.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are trucks out there. There\u2019s the grain trucks, there\u2019s\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
He stopped. He put his hand on the back of his neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom. This is exactly what I\u2019m talking about. This right here.\u201d<\/p>\n
People were starting to slow down on the sidewalk to watch.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want that for him. Whatever else was going on, he has to make his living on this street.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t come here to argue with you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I kept my voice exactly where I used to keep it for a caller who was upset.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not asking for the car back. You\u2019ll never hear me ask for it. I came to ask you one question. And then I\u2019ll be on my way to the Piggly Wiggly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you decided I wasn\u2019t fit to drive,\u201d I said, \u201cwho did you ask?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean, who did I ask?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you call Dr. Keller? Did you call my eye doctor? Did you ride with me, even once around the block, to see how I did?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you ask one single person who would know?\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he said finally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what did you go on, Brian?\u201d<\/p>\n
His mouth opened.<\/p>\n
For one second, I thought he was going to tell me. I saw it come right up to the surface, whatever it was. Like a fish rising in a pond.<\/p>\n
Then Mandy tapped on the window glass and held up the telephone receiver.<\/p>\n
And it went right back down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a ten-thirty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I\u2019ll let you get to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I rang my bell once to clear the sidewalk. And I rode to the Piggly Wiggly and bought a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a pound of butter, and a small ham.<\/p>\n
And I carried them home in my basket. Six blocks. The bag didn\u2019t even shift.
\n
\nThat was a Monday.<\/p>\n
By Wednesday, the whole town knew.<\/p>\n
In a town of four thousand people, nothing travels faster than an old woman on a red tricycle. And I mean that both ways.<\/p>\n
I rode it to the library. I rode it to the bank and deposited the cashier\u2019s check, minus what I\u2019d spent. I rode it to Tuesday prayer circle and parked it by the church kitchen door.<\/p>\n
Eleven women came outside to look at it. Three of them sat on it.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, I rode it up Cemetery Hill.<\/p>\n
I had to get off and push it the last hundred yards. I\u2019m not ashamed of that.<\/p>\n
I sat in the grass next to Walter\u2019s stone with my purse in my lap. And I told him the Buick was gone, and who\u2019d sold it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be too hard on him,\u201d I said. Out loud. \u201cHe\u2019s got something stuck in him. I just don\u2019t know what it is yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second week, Wilma bought one.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d driven behind me three times by then. The third time, she pulled up beside me at the stop sign on Cedar and rolled her window down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like a fool in this car,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She went to a rummage sale in the next town and came home with a blue trike for seventy-five dollars. It turned out to be built for a much taller woman. Her knees came up to her chin.<\/p>\n
So she went to Eli and bought a brand-new one. Green. And kept the blue one in her garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor company,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Then Shirley bought one.<\/p>\n
Shirley is eighty-one. She gave up her own car two winters ago. By her own choice. And ever since then, she\u2019d been waiting on her daughter\u2019s Saturdays to get anywhere at all.<\/p>\n
Then Donna bought one. Donna\u2019s only seventy, and her knees are better than all of ours put together.<\/p>\n
Eli told me he sold more trikes that May than in the three years before it combined. He started keeping a red one in the front window all the time.<\/p>\n
Wilma named us.<\/p>\n
She stood in my kitchen with a pencil behind her ear and announced it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWednesdays. Ten o\u2019clock. From your carport. The library, then the Piggly Wiggly, then the Dairy Queen. We are the Wednesday Riders. And I\u2019m having that put on a sign.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are not having it put on a sign.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA small sign,\u201d Wilma said.
\nThe second Wednesday, Shirley asked if we could add the cemetery to the route.<\/p>\n
So we walked the trikes up the hill. Four old women in a row, pushing. Stopping twice to catch our breath.<\/p>\n
At the cemetery gate, Shirley parked hers. She took a pot of red geraniums out of her basket.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go on,\u201d Wilma told her. \u201cWe\u2019ll wait right here.\u201d<\/p>\n
We stood at the gate and watched her cross the grass. Slow. In her blue windbreaker.<\/p>\n
She found the stone. She stood there a moment.<\/p>\n
Then we heard her. Because sound carries on that hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon,\u201d she said. \u201cI came by myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilma reached over and took my hand. Donna turned and looked out at the fields. Nobody said a single word. Nobody needed to.<\/p>\n
Shirley hadn\u2019t been to her husband\u2019s grave without somebody waiting in a car with the engine running since the winter she gave up her license.<\/p>\n
She stayed twenty minutes. She set the geraniums down and straightened them twice.<\/p>\n
When she came back to the gate, her face was wet. And she was smiling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d she said. \u201cWho\u2019s buying the ice cream?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what four miles an hour will buy you, if you want to know. Not speed.<\/p>\n
Time enough.<\/p>\n
All that while, my son did exactly what he\u2019d promised. I\u2019ll give him that.<\/p>\n
He called me every evening at six o\u2019clock. He offered rides I didn\u2019t need. On Saturdays he came over and mowed my lawn, the way he has every Saturday since his father died.<\/p>\n
And he looked at that red trike sitting in the carport, in the exact spot where the Buick used to be.<\/p>\n
And he never said one word about it.<\/p>\n
He looked terrible. Gray under the eyes. Thinner.<\/p>\n
Kim called me one night when he was out.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe thinks you\u2019re going to get hit,\u201d she said. \u201cDorothy, he\u2019s worse now than he was before. He\u2019s up at four in the morning most days. Sitting in the kitchen in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was quiet a second.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told him not to do it that way. I told him to talk to you first. I want you to know I said that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you did, honey,\u201d I said. \u201cYou\u2019re the one who cut the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought about that phone call a good deal.<\/p>\n
A man who takes his mother\u2019s car out of plain bossiness sleeps just fine afterward. He sleeps like a judge.<\/p>\n
So it wasn\u2019t bossiness.<\/p>\n
And I still didn\u2019t have my answer.<\/p>\n
I decided to go get one of my own.<\/p>\n
The first week of June, I rode my trike to the clinic and asked for Dr. Keller\u2019s longest appointment.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been my doctor for twenty-two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeff,\u201d I said, sitting down on his paper-covered table. \u201cI want you to examine me exactly as if you were deciding whether to take my driver\u2019s license away. Do not be nice about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t nice about it.<\/p>\n
He tapped my knees and my elbows with his little rubber hammer. He had me stand on one foot. Then the other. He had me get up from a chair, walk ten feet, turn around, and sit back down, while he held a stopwatch.<\/p>\n
He had me remember three words. Draw the face of a clock with the hands at ten past eleven. Count backward from one hundred by sevens.<\/p>\n
I did that last one faster than he could check me. A telephone operator in my day carried half the county\u2019s phone numbers around in her head.<\/p>\n
He put down his clipboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cDorothy,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019re in better shape than I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPut it in writing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did. On the clinic\u2019s letterhead. Signed.<\/p>\n
No medical condition that would limit the safe operation of a motor vehicle.<\/p>\n
The next week, I rode to the eye doctor on the courthouse square. I had my cataracts done four years ago. She put me through all of it. The chart. The side lights. The glare test.<\/p>\n
Twenty over twenty-five in both eyes, with my glasses on. Full side vision.<\/p>\n
She wrote that down for me too.<\/p>\n
And because I know my son, and I know what an insurance man will say about a doctor who\u2019s never once seen you behind the wheel, I did one more thing.<\/p>\n
I called the driving school in the county seat. The one that teaches the high school kids. I paid eighty-five dollars for an hour with an instructor in a car with a brake pedal on his side.<\/p>\n
He was a retired shop teacher named Gus. He took me through town. Out on the highway. Around the courthouse square twice.<\/p>\n
And then into a parallel parking space. Something I\u2019d been avoiding since 1971.<\/p>\n
He never touched his brake. Not once.<\/p>\n
He wrote on his form, with a carbon copy, that I checked my mirrors more often than any of his sixteen-year-olds. And that he\u2019d ride with me any day of the week.<\/p>\n
I still had my driver\u2019s license, you understand. It had been sitting in my purse the whole time. Good for five more years.<\/p>\n
Nobody had taken my license.<\/p>\n
Brian had only taken the car.
\nI put all three papers in a manila folder.<\/p>\n
On the last Tuesday in June, at eight o\u2019clock in the morning, I rode to Hale Insurance.<\/p>\n
Mandy was just unlocking the front door. She looked at the folder sitting in my basket. Then she looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been here since before six,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cHe\u2019s been here before six every single day since that mailbox, Mrs. Hale. I find him sitting back there in his office with the lights off.\u201d<\/p>\n
She bit her lip.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s about a mailbox.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cI don\u2019t either. Thank you, Mandy.\u201d<\/p>\n
His office door was open.<\/p>\n
He was sitting at his desk in his tie, with a cup of coffee he hadn\u2019t touched. The desk lamp was off. On the shelf behind him was the photograph of him and Walter holding up a stringer of bluegills. The summer Brian was twelve.<\/p>\n
He stood up when he saw me.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say good morning. I didn\u2019t say anything at all.<\/p>\n
I laid the folder on his desk blotter. I opened it. I turned it around so it faced him.<\/p>\n
Then I sat down in the chair where his customers sit. I put my purse on my knees.<\/p>\n
And I waited.<\/p>\n
He read Dr. Keller\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n
He read the eye doctor\u2019s.<\/p>\n
He read the driving instructor\u2019s form. The white copy. I watched his eyes get to the line about the mirrors.<\/p>\n
He read all three a second time.<\/p>\n
Then he sat down slowly. He put the heels of both hands against his eyes.<\/p>\n
And his shoulders started to shake.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t seen my son cry since he was a little boy.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t cry at his father\u2019s funeral. He stood there in that thin coat and shook hands with two hundred people. He made sure everybody had a ride to the church basement. He carried the casseroles.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t cry once.<\/p>\n
I got up and shut the office door.<\/p>\n
Then I came around the desk and stood next to him. And I put my hand on the back of his head. Right where his hair is getting thin. The same as his father\u2019s did.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right,\u201d I said. \u201cAll right. Now tell me what you went on.\u201d
\n
\nIt took him a minute to get his breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Sunday before Dad died,\u201d he said. \u201cI rode with him out to the Millers\u2019 place to look at that boat. You remember. He was going to buy that boat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe drifted over the center line twice, Mom. Twice in four miles. The second time, there was a milk truck coming. And I reached over and grabbed the wheel. And he laughed at me. He said the road had moved.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wiped his face with the flat of his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going to say something. I was going to talk to you about it. His eyes. I had it all worked out, how I\u2019d bring it up. I thought I\u2019d wait until after Thanksgiving. So I wouldn\u2019t spoil it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walter died on the nineteenth of November.<\/p>\n
On County N. At twenty minutes to seven in the morning. On his way to open up the cheese plant, where he ran maintenance for thirty-four years.<\/p>\n
He went off the curve by the Miller farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deputy called me,\u201d Brian said. \u201cNot you. You were at the church setting up for the bazaar and nobody could get ahold of you. So he called me. And I drove out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked up at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw the car, Mom. I saw the car before they had him out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t known that.<\/p>\n
In eleven years, he\u2019d never once told me that.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, Brian.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI said nothing. And he died.\u201d<\/p>\n
His voice broke clean in half.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then you called me about that mailbox. So cheerful about it. Laughing. And all I could see was that curve. I haven\u2019t slept right since. I\u2019d lie there and think, I said nothing once. I\u2019m not going to say nothing twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
He shook his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I couldn\u2019t do the talking part. I knew if I talked to you first, you\u2019d talk me out of it. And then you\u2019d be out on some road somewhere. And I\u2019d get another call.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me with his face all wet.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I just did it. I did it all at once. So it would be over.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pulled the other chair around and sat down close to him. Close enough that our knees almost touched.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen to me,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m going to tell you two things. And I need you to hear both of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first one is this. It was ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
He started to shake his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was ice, Brian. I read that deputy\u2019s report. Which is more than you ever did. There was black ice on that curve, from the creek. A boy of twenty-six went off that exact same curve forty minutes before your father did. He only walked away because he was in a big pickup. The deputy told me to my face that a man of thirty would\u2019ve gone off that road.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father\u2019s eyes did not kill him. You did not kill him. November did.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was crying too hard to say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe he should\u2019ve had his eyes looked at. I\u2019ll grant you that. Maybe you should\u2019ve said something. Maybe I should\u2019ve noticed. I was the one sleeping right next to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
I squeezed his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that silence belongs to anybody, we carry it together. You do not get to carry it all by yourself for eleven years. And then set it down on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He made a sound I won\u2019t try to describe.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd here\u2019s the second thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I waited until he looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cFear is not a reason to take away a person\u2019s legs, Brian. I don\u2019t care how much you love her. That car was my legs. You were afraid. So you made me smaller, so you could sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you didn\u2019t sleep anyway. Did you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Because that\u2019s not how fear works. You feed it, and it just wants more. Next it would\u2019ve been the stove. Then the stairs. Then the whole house.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sat with that for a long time.<\/p>\n
Out front, I could hear Mandy answering the phone in a voice that was a little too bright.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said finally. \u201cMom. I\u2019m so sorry. I\u2019ll get it back. I\u2019ll get the Buick back. I\u2019ll call that man right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI do, though.\u201d<\/p>\n
He found the number on a slip of paper in his desk drawer. He dialed it with the speaker on, so I could hear it for myself.<\/p>\n
A man answered on the fourth ring.<\/p>\n
He was very nice about it. He\u2019d bought the LeSabre for his granddaughter. She was starting at the college in Platteville in the fall. He\u2019d already put four new tires on it.<\/p>\n
And she\u2019d named it.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe calls it Walter,\u201d the man said.<\/p>\n
I went very still.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a roll of mints in the console,\u201d the man said. \u201cWith a little note rubber-banded around it. It said Walter\u2019s. Do not throw out. She thought that was the sweetest thing she ever saw. She left them right where they were.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d forgotten I ever wrote that note.<\/p>\n
Brian opened his mouth. I could see him getting ready to offer the man more money.<\/p>\n
I put my hand on his arm and shook my head.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou tell her,\u201d I said toward the telephone, \u201cthat it likes to be warmed up a full two minutes in the winter. And the mints stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes ma\u2019am,\u201d the man said. \u201cI surely will.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the Buick was gone. And that was that.<\/p>\n
And I found I could stand it. A girl of eighteen was going to drive it off to college with my husband\u2019s name on it. There are a lot worse ends for a car.<\/p>\n
Brian hung up the phone. He sat there looking at his hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I\u2019m buying you another one,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not a discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have the forty-two hundred. Less a tricycle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou keep that.\u201d He swallowed hard. \u201cThis one\u2019s mine to do. Let me do it all the way through, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought about Eli. And the bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He found it that same week at the Toyota dealer in the county seat. A silver Corolla. 2015. Eighty-two thousand miles and a clean little back seat.<\/p>\n
He wanted me to have something newer. I told him a woman my age doesn\u2019t need a car that\u2019s going to outlive her by thirty years.<\/p>\n
He paid ninety-six hundred dollars for it.<\/p>\n
At the title desk, the girl asked how the names should read on the title.<\/p>\n
And Brian said, before I could open my mouth, \u201cOne name. Dorothy M. Hale. Just hers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he wrote the insurance policy on it himself. And he gave me the safe-driver rate.<\/p>\n
Because I had the paperwork to prove it.<\/p>\n
I let him believe that was the end of it.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t the end of it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m his mother. And I wasn\u2019t about to let him all the way off the hook.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s one more thing,\u201d I told him in the dealer\u2019s parking lot, with the new keys in my hand. \u201cWednesday. Ten o\u2019clock. My carport.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s Wednesday?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou said I could\u2019ve been killed. I want you to see exactly what you were so afraid of. You\u2019re going to ride the route.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, I\u2019ve got appointments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMandy already moved them. I called her this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
He came straight from the office.<\/p>\n
Which is how he ended up in a white dress shirt and a striped tie, sitting on Wilma\u2019s blue spare. The tall one. With his knees still coming up way too high.<\/p>\n
Wilma looked him up and down.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t lean,\u201d she told him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how to ride a bike, Wilma.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what\u2019s going to tip you over,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
And she rang her bell. And we went.<\/p>\n
Five of us. Down Cedar Street in a line. At four miles an hour.<\/p>\n
Brian leaned on the very first corner. His inside wheel came right up off the pavement.<\/p>\n
Shirley is eighty-one years old. She didn\u2019t even turn her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrocery cart, dear!\u201d she called out.<\/p>\n
He sat up.<\/p>\n
We went to the library, where he carried in everybody\u2019s books. We went to the Piggly Wiggly, where the store manager came out to shake his hand. Brian turned the exact color of my trike.<\/p>\n
People waved from their porches.<\/p>\n
Then a grain truck came up behind us on Depot Street.<\/p>\n
I watched my son\u2019s back go stiff as a board.<\/p>\n
The truck slowed down to a crawl. It followed us a full block. Patient as a cow. And when we turned off, the driver gave two little taps on his horn.<\/p>\n
Donna rang her bell back at him twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s my nephew,\u201d Donna said. \u201cThey all know us now. They watch for the little orange flags.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brian didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
But his shoulders came down.
\n
\nAt the bottom of Cemetery Hill, we all got off and pushed.<\/p>\n
Brian tried to take my handlebar for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cPush your own,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
At the gate, the other three stopped. The way we always do.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou two go on,\u201d Wilma said. \u201cWe\u2019ll wait.\u201d<\/p>\n
He walked beside me across the grass with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up. He hadn\u2019t been up there since Memorial Day of the year before. And then only long enough to set down a little flag and leave.<\/p>\n
We stood in front of his father\u2019s stone.<\/p>\n
Walter James Hale. The dates. Beloved husband and father.<\/p>\n
The wind was coming up the hill through the oat fields.<\/p>\n
Brian stood there a long time.<\/p>\n
Then he crouched down. And he put his palm flat on top of the granite. The way you\u2019d put your hand on a man\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was ice, Dad,\u201d he said. \u201cMom says it was ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
I let him have that one by himself. I looked out at the fields.<\/p>\n
After a while, he stood up. He wiped his eyes with the end of his tie. I pretended not to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe passed every test there is,\u201d he told the stone. \u201cShe parallel parked. You\u2019d never believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would not,\u201d I agreed. \u201cHe used to get out of the car and do it for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
We walked back to the gate together.<\/p>\n
Wilma had the grace to be studying a cloud.<\/p>\n
At the Dairy Queen, my son bought five vanilla cones. And he sat down on the curb in his good trousers next to four old women.<\/p>\n
A man he\u2019d sold a farm policy to drove by. He slowed way down. He looked. He drove on.<\/p>\n
Brian lifted his ice cream cone at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m never going to hear the end of this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d said Wilma comfortably. \u201cYou will not.\u201d<\/p>\n
He slept that night.<\/p>\n
Kim called me the next morning to tell me. Ten o\u2019clock to six, straight through. The first full night\u2019s sleep he\u2019d had since the second of May.<\/p>\n
I have the Corolla now.<\/p>\n
I drive it to church on Sunday mornings. I drive it to my granddaughter\u2019s house in Madison once a month. In daylight. Because I choose to.<\/p>\n
And I check my mirrors more often than any sixteen-year-old in the county.<\/p>\n
Brian rides along with me sometimes.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t grab the wheel.<\/p>\n
But the red trike stays in the carport. Right beside the Corolla.<\/p>\n
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, any errand inside the town limits, that\u2019s what I take. The library. The bank. The Piggly Wiggly. Up the hill to see Walter.<\/p>\n
There are seven of us on Wednesdays now.<\/p>\n
Wilma got her sign. It hangs on a nail at the front of my carport.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a small sign.<\/p>\n
Shirley goes up the hill every Wednesday. She doesn\u2019t cry anymore when she comes back to the gate. She just smiles and asks who\u2019s buying the ice cream.<\/p>\n
Eli keeps my bell oiled for me. He won\u2019t take a dime for it. I bring him banana bread instead, and he doesn\u2019t argue about that.<\/p>\n
Last month, a woman from two towns over called me on the telephone. She was seventy-nine. Her son had just taken her car. She\u2019d heard about us from a cousin.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do I start?\u201d she asked me.<\/p>\n
I told her to go to the bike shop in the old depot and ask for Eli. I told her to sit up straight like she\u2019s in church.<\/p>\n
And I told her not to lean.<\/p>\n
And once in a while, on a warm morning, I ride down Main Street past those gold letters on my son\u2019s front window.<\/p>\n
And I ring my bell.<\/p>\n
Just once.<\/p>\n
And my son looks up from his desk. Every single time.<\/p>\n
And he waves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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