Towed. In the middle of the corn. With an old woman and a pan of melted lemon bars and a grown son who didn’t know a single phone number.
“I see,” my mother said.
“You have anything you want to tell me before I call the wrecker?”
“No. But I wonder if I could ask you one thing first.”
“You can ask.”
“Would you press the button on your radio and say my name to the dispatcher? Just my name. Shirley Hagen. That’s all I’d like.”
He looked at her. Then he looked through the back window of the Buick, right at me, and he grinned. Like the two of us were in on something together. Like I was supposed to grin back at him.
“You think you’re somebody?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think that at all.”
I wanted to crawl under the dashboard and stay there.
