Chapter 6: The Woman in the Checkout Line
I didn't say anything for a moment.
"How did you get this number?" I asked.
"The manager," Diane said.
"I asked him.
I told him I needed to apologize and I didn't want to do it through the store." A pause.
"He wasn't going to give it to me.
I had to ask three times."
I looked at Mom's front door.
She'd gone inside.
The porch light was on.
"What do you want?" I said.
"I want to apologize.
To your mother." Her voice was steady but tight, like someone holding something carefully so it wouldn't spill.
"I know I don't have the right to ask for that.
I just — I need her to know that I'm sorry.
What I said was cruel and I knew it was cruel when I said it and I said it anyway, and I've been sitting in my car in the parking lot for two hours because I can't make myself drive home."
I didn't respond right away.
"I heard everything," she said.
"About the shelter.
About the man who left her the letter.
I wasn't trying to eavesdrop — I just couldn't leave.
I kept thinking I should go, and then something else would happen and I couldn't move." Another pause.
"Your mother is — she's not what I assumed she was.
I made a decision about her in about four seconds and I was wrong."
"You told her she was too old to leave the house."
"I know what I said."
"She was trembling."
"I know." Diane's voice cracked slightly on the second word.
"I know.
I have a mother.
She's seventy-nine.
She lives alone and she still insists on doing her own shopping and I worry about her every single time she goes out, and I still stood there and said that to a stranger." A short silence.
"I don't have an explanation for that.
I was in a hurry and I was irritated and I took it out on someone who didn't deserve it, and that's all it was, and it's not enough of a reason."
I got out of the car.
I walked to Mom's front door and knocked.
She opened it with the scarf still in her hand, reading my face.
"There's someone who wants to speak to you," I said.
"You don't have to.
But she's been sitting in the parking lot for two hours."
Mom looked at the phone in my hand.
"Is it the woman from the line?"
"Yes."
She held out her hand for the phone.
I gave it to her and stepped back.
Mom put it to her ear.
"This is Margaret," she said.
I could hear Diane's voice but not the words.
I watched Mom's face instead.
She listened for almost a full minute without speaking.
Her expression didn't harden.
It didn't soften dramatically either.
It did something more complicated — it settled, like a decision being made quietly.
"All right," Mom said finally.
More from Diane.
"No," Mom said.
"I'm not angry.
I was embarrassed.
There's a difference." A pause.
"You don't need my forgiveness.
You need to go home and call your mother."
Diane said something.
"Tonight," Mom said firmly.
"Not tomorrow.
Tonight."
She handed the phone back to me.
On the other end, Diane said, "Thank you." Her voice was very small.
"Drive safe," I said, and ended the call.
Mom went back inside.
I followed her to the kitchen, where she put the kettle on without asking if I wanted tea.
"That was generous," I said.
"It wasn't generous.
It was practical." She set two cups on the counter.
"Angry people are exhausting to carry around.
I'm 83.
I don't have the energy."
I sat at the kitchen table.
"She felt terrible," I said.
"Good," Mom said, without heat.
"She should.
And then she should let it go and do better." She turned to look at me.
"That's all any of us can do."
The kettle began to whistle.
She poured the water and brought both cups to the table and sat across from me, and for a while we just sat there in her small kitchen with the green scarf on the chair beside her and the tea going warm between our hands.
"Mom," I said.
"I want to ask you something."
"Ask."
"All those years you volunteered at the shelter.
All those winters.
You never talked about it much.
Why?"
She wrapped both hands around her cup.
"Because the people there had enough people looking at them," she said.
"They didn't need me talking about them too."
I thought about that.
"Walter remembered your name," I said.
"After thirty-one years."
"And I remembered his scarf," she said.
"That's how it works.
You leave pieces of yourself in places you don't expect, and sometimes — sometimes — you find out they were kept."
She took a sip of her tea.
Outside, a car started somewhere on the street and drove away.
I thought about Diane, finally pulling out of that parking lot.
Going home.
Picking up the phone to call her mother.
Small things.
May you like
Ordinary things.
The kind that change everything when you're not watching.
