My husband pointed his barbecue fork at me in front of thirty relatives at our Fourth of July cookout. “That’s my embarrassment right there,” he said. His grown daughter laughed the loudest. I didn’t answer. I picked up my purse.
It had been hot all afternoon, and Garvin’s people filled our backyard. I’d been up since four making potato salad and two pans of blackberry cobbler. I wore my old chicken-plant work shirt, sleeves rolled, because it had a pocket for my peppermints. I wasn’t dressed for a picture. I was dressed to work.
Garvin had moved into my house after we married. I bought the little place on the hill in 1990 and paid it off with thirty years of plant money. I met Garvin four years later. He had been calling it “my place” for so long that I’d stopped correcting him in front of people.
His daughter, Cerise, had planned the cookout. Her husband, Joby, was running for county commission, and she wanted a crowd. “Judge Prather might even stop by,” she told everybody. “Joby’s been telling him all about this family.”
I had raised Cerise since she was thirteen, after her mother left. I drove her to ballgames and sat through band concerts. At her wedding, she thanked her daddy and her mama in Kansas City. She didn’t say my name. I told myself it didn’t matter. It was easier than admitting that it had.
The first of Joby’s campaign friends arrived, and Garvin called across the yard, “Loleta, get the man a plate.”
I did. After that it was, “Loleta, more ice,” and “Loleta, where’s the ketchup?” When someone tried the cobbler, Garvin said it was runny. I stood near the table with the serving spoon and kept the food moving. Nobody had asked me to plan a campaign event, but I knew how to feed a yard full of people.
Around four, the new grill started smoking black. I looked over at Garvin. “Honey, turn that down. The chicken’s burning.”
He turned with the fork in his hand and pointed it at my face. “That’s my embarrassment right there, folks. Thirty years in a chicken plant, and she still dresses like it.”
Cerise laughed. “She’s been embarrassing Daddy since I was thirteen.”
A few of her friends laughed too. Some cousins looked down at their paper plates. No one spoke up for me. I had been called worse by a rooster, but that one went in deep.
I set down the cobbler spoon. “I’m going inside.”
Garvin glanced at the people around him. “What? I’m kidding.”
“You were pointing that fork at me.”
“Oh, come on, Loleta. Don’t make a scene.”
Cerise was still smiling. “It was a joke.”
I looked at her, then at the relatives staring at their plates. I had no answer that would make any of them uncomfortable enough to say my name. So I went into the house.
My coupon envelope sat by the kitchen phone, where it always did. I walked past it and picked up the receiver. My sister Ermaline answered.
“Come get me,” I said. “I’m sleeping at your place tonight.”
“Lord have mercy, what happened?”
“Nothing happened that hasn’t happened for thirty years,” I said. “But tomorrow, Garvin’s the one who’ll be packing.”
There was a pause. “You mean that?”
“I do.”
“I’m coming,” she said.
I set the receiver down. For a minute I stood by the refrigerator, looking at the old photograph held up with a peach magnet. In it, I was twenty-six, standing beside school bus fourteen. A skinny boy stood next to me in a coat three sizes too big.
I drove that bus for ten years before I went to the plant. The boy, Lynnie, used to ride my whole route twice each afternoon. His father drank, and home wasn’t a place he wanted to reach early. I let him stay on the bus. I gave him half my bologna sandwich most days for a whole school year, from the dented tin lunch box I still used for coupons. I bought him that coat at Western Auto.
One spring, his family moved away in the night. I never saw him again.
I touched the edge of the photograph. “I hope somebody was good to you, baby,” I said.
I put my purse on my shoulder and headed for the back door. By Sunday, the county would have it that Loleta threw her husband out on the Fourth of July. For about a minute I considered going back outside and serving more cobbler. Thirty-two years is a long time to throw away over a fork.
Then I thought of Cerise’s wedding, and how my name had not made it into her thanks. I opened the door.
The gate squeaked.
A tall man in a white short-sleeve shirt and tie stepped through. It was hot enough that the tie stood out. Joby hurried over to him.
“Judge Prather. Sir, I’m so glad you came.”
Garvin wiped his hands on his shorts and stuck one out. “Judge, welcome to my place. Get you a plate?”
Judge Prather shook his hand politely. Then he kept walking. He passed Garvin, Cerise, and the campaign sign Joby had stuck in my petunias. He came straight to me, standing at the bottom of my back steps with my purse on my shoulder.
He was gray at the temples, with a small scar through one eyebrow. I had never seen him before. I thought maybe Joby had asked him to shake the old lady’s hand.
Instead, his eyes filled. He took both my hands, and his own were shaking.
“Bus fourteen,” he said quietly.
The yard stopped talking. Judge Prather looked over my shoulder at Garvin and the relatives.
“Y’all ought to know who this lady is,” he said. “In 1983, on that bus, she let a boy ride her route twice because he didn’t want to go home. She shared her lunch with him. She bought him a coat. That boy was me.”
For a second, I didn’t know what to say. I looked at the scar through his eyebrow, then back at his face. The boy in the refrigerator picture had grown up. I had not known where he went. I had never expected to hear from him again.
“Lynnie?” I asked.
He nodded. “I thought you might remember the name.”
“I remember the boy,” I said. “I didn’t know what became of you.”
“I didn’t know how to find you,” he said. “Then Joby invited me here. I heard the name Loleta, and I thought it could be you. I wasn’t certain until I saw you.”
That explained the tie and the walk through the gate. Joby had invited the county judge because of his campaign. The judge had come expecting a cookout, not knowing for sure whether the woman he remembered would be there.
Cerise had gone quiet. Joby stood beside the cooler, hands still half raised from his greeting. Garvin looked from the judge to me.
“You rode her bus?” he asked.
“I did.”
I set my purse down on the step. “I kept the picture.”
“Would you show me?” Lynnie said.
I went inside and brought the photograph out from the refrigerator. When I handed it to him, he stared at it for a while. The boy’s coat swallowed most of his frame. My younger self stood beside him with one hand on the bus.
“That’s me,” he said, touching the boy’s shoulder. “I remember that coat.”
A cousin leaned closer. “You really did all that for him?”
“I let him stay on the bus,” I said. “He was a child.”
Lynnie gave the picture back. “It was more than that to me.”
I wanted to tell him I hadn’t done anything special. I had a sandwich. I had room on the bus. I knew he didn’t want to get home yet. But standing in front of Garvin’s relatives, with all of them looking at me now, I could hear how often I had used that same smallness to excuse being overlooked.
Garvin cleared his throat. “Well, we’re all glad you came, Judge. Loleta’s always been good with kids.”
Lynnie turned toward him. “You called her an embarrassment.”
“I was joking,” Garvin said. “You don’t know how we talk to each other.”
Cerise shifted her weight. “It was about the shirt, Dad. She knows we tease.”
“I know what I heard,” Lynnie said. His voice stayed level. “And I know who kept a hungry boy company on a bus when nobody else was looking.”
Garvin let out a short breath. “It’s my family. We were having a good afternoon.”
“It’s my house,” I said.
The sentence came out plain. Nobody laughed this time.
Garvin looked at me. “Loleta, don’t do this in front of everybody.”
“I tried to leave quietly.”
“You’re going to throw thirty-two years away because I made one joke?”
“I’m not throwing it away,” I said. “I’m done pretending it’s been good.”
Cerise looked at me, then at the picture in Lynnie’s hand. “I didn’t think you were actually going to go.”
“You laughed.”
“I know.” She stopped and rubbed her thumb along the side of her glass. “I thought it was funny. I don’t know why I thought that.”
“Because it was easier than standing beside me,” I said.
Her mouth opened, then closed. Joby looked down at the campaign sign in my flowers. No one rushed in to speak for either of us.
Garvin lowered the barbecue fork. “You’re making me look like a fool.”
“You managed that yourself,” I said. “I’m not staying tonight.”
He started to answer, but his eyes moved to the relatives around us. That was the part that seemed to bother him most: they had seen him point the fork, and they had heard what I said back.
Ermaline arrived while the guests were still there. She came through the gate and looked first at my purse, then at me.
“You ready?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Garvin said, “You can’t just walk out and decide I’m moving.”
“I bought this house before I met you. I paid it off. You’ve had thirty-two years here because I wanted you here.” I kept my voice steady. “Tomorrow, pack your things. I want you out.”
He looked at Ermaline. “You’re taking her side?”
“I’m taking her home tonight,” Ermaline said. “That’s all I have to do.”
The judge stood back. He did not tell Garvin what to do or make any offer to fix things. He had come because Joby invited him, and he had recognized me. The rest belonged to me.
Lynnie handed me the picture. “I’m glad I got to tell you.”
“I’m glad you found me,” I said.
He held my hand once more. Around us, the guests had returned to standing in small, awkward groups. The cobbler spoon was still on the table where I had left it. I did not go back to serve it.
Ermaline drove me to her place. I slept there that night. The next morning I returned to my house while Garvin packed.
He was quiet at first, carrying clothes out to his truck. Then he came back into the room where I was waiting.
“You really mean it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I can apologize.”
“You can. It won’t change my answer.”
He looked down at the floor. “I didn’t think you’d take it this far.”
“I know.”
He picked up another box. He did not ask me to carry anything, and I did not offer. Cerise came by later. She stood in the doorway while her father loaded the last of his things.
“I should have said something yesterday,” she said.
“Yes,” I told her.
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t tell her everything was forgiven. I also didn’t tell her it was too late to ever speak to me again. We stood there with Garvin’s truck outside and his things nearly gone. For once, I let the silence belong to her.
When he finished, Garvin came inside and set his keys on the counter.
“I’ll call you,” he said.
“Don’t.”
He paused, then left. I watched him drive away from the house on the hill. The house was still mine. So was the decision.
I put the old photograph back on the refrigerator. The boy in the oversized coat had become Judge Prather. I had kept the picture because I remembered him. He had remembered me, too.
I locked the door.
