Mother’s Day

It hasn’t been six months. Which is to say it hasn’t quite been 1/174th of her life. So not a long time at all.

But seasons have passed. Her daughter died in the fall. It is spring now, coming on full with pollen and heat and afternoon showers that thud in the red clay and provoke rainbows.

Her son-in-law, semi-retired, sits in the garage, smoking and working crossword puzzles from a book. He drops the stubbed-out butts into a gallon bottle that used to hold Jim Beam. That’s on the four days a week he doesn’t drive a truck or piddle around the shop or help out with drop-shipping.

She wishes he’d play more golf. He went down to the course by the airport and signed up for a membership. They give seniors a pretty good break: $145 a month for unlimited greens fees. If you pay for the year all at once, they give you five percent back on a pro shop gift card.

Maybe she wishes he’d talk to someone. He went once to a counselor and says it went all right but he hasn’t gone back, though he’s not opposed to going back if he feels the need.

Mostly she wishes he’d do something for himself. But then, it hasn’t been that long.

On Fridays he meets his granddaughter for lunch. Sometimes they bring her home a burrito, something with cheese, wrapped in a soft tortilla. Most nights he cooks; he goes to Publix, buys the groceries. He pays the mortgage. She pays the water bill because she thinks she ought to do something.

She works as much as she wants at the Dollar Tree a quarter-mile away. She drives but thinks sometimes on a nice day she might walk. It’s mostly young people there and they don’t stay long; the fast-food places pay better and offer signing bonuses. She wandered down there the week she retired from the law firm, started talking to the manager, and started working the next day.

Mainly four-hour shifts, mainly afternoons and early evenings. She’ll help close if they need her to; she’ll follow the manager to the bank in her car to make sure the night deposit gets made. She’s been out past 11 p.m. on those nights, because they needed her to do that. But it is not her preference.

Mostly her job is to stand in the store, smile at customers. It’s called inventory control, though she’s not supposed to do anything if someone grabs a package of chocolates and runs out the door. Presumably the presence of nice older ladies standing in the aisles and by the end-caps is enough to deter the worst kind of behavior, though sometimes when she’s cleaning up she’ll find an empty candy wrapper or bubble pack.

She doesn’t know who does this; she imagines it’s kids.

Everyone who comes in the store seems well enough off to her; they’ve got new phones and HOKA sneakers. Most of them smile. The ones who don’t are mostly grumpy old people who she figures aren’t going to steal an off-brand Barbie (what the catalog calls “pose-able fashion dolls”) or a Landmark Confections Milk Chocolate Pecan Caramel Cluster when you can buy either one for $1.25.

While she thinks she can read a person’s character, the truth is you can’t tell anything by looking them in the eye. Just the other day she noticed this older man—he must have been 70—who reminded her of her daddy, the way his ears stuck out, though she never saw her daddy that gray-headed. Like an old-time country preacher, he had on a humble black coat over a white shirt, a narrow tie and a manner she’d describe as courtly.

She was running the register and a young woman she works with was unpacking boxes nearby. Then the phone rang and the courtly old man came up to her with his purchase, a Coca-Cola, and handed her a $20. As she was making change and her co-worker was talking on the phone he realized he had a smaller bill he could pay with, so he handed her a $5 and she gave him back the bigger bill along with the change she’d already made, and really before he was out the door she realized what she had done but she didn’t quite believe it for a second.

It took all she could muster not to go out to the parking lot and yell at him, but that would have been against policy and foolish besides.

So when the manager got ready to reconcile the cash drawers, she told her she was going to be $20 short and that she would pay for it out of her own pocket because it was her fault and she knew exactly when it had happened. The manager of course said that wasn’t necessary and it wasn’t her fault, because the man who reminded her of her daddy was what they call a quick-change artist, and he’d waited until things were hectic. He had preyed upon her. He was a professional.

It happens. There are people who make a living this way.

She did have trouble sleeping for three nights. And now she’d rather not run the register, though she will if that’s what they need for her to do.

They are good to her there; they let her off for surgeries that relieved the pain she felt in her arms for decades. Whenever she wants to take time off to go see her other daughter in Louisiana, or to meet her friends in Alabama or Mississippi, they let her off. It’s just pin money, not a reason to work.

She works because it’s what she knows. Because otherwise she’d probably sit around and watch Court TV all day.

It hasn’t been that long. Less than six months. Her son in Arkansas calls to remind her to amend her will now that her daughter is gone. It’s just a simple fix, he says, and she imagines that it is, but sometimes, even for her, who spent her second career in a bustling law office, it’s hard to actually sit down and attend to this sort of dry-hearted, practical business.

But she wants her son-in-law to have his share, and doesn’t want any ambiguity.

Her mother lived to be 93. That is not an impossible age these days. She feels good most of the time, she knows how to text and use Facebook, and even if she has been slow to do some things—they need to clean out the front room where her daughter sewed and did crafts; there’s good light in there and it would make a better bedroom—but first they need to find someone to take all that equipment and those clothes, and there’s a weariness that arrives with the thought of moving forward.

But she will move forward. There is a trip to Mississippi planned. Then one to Shreveport. And a summer full of ball games and cheer meets and horse shows. And then it will have been a year.