I couldn’t say anything after that. I just sat there.
Her new license had come in the mail that Tuesday. Plastic, with her picture on it, smiling a little bit. She put it in her billfold and never mentioned it.
The yellow paper is on her refrigerator now. It’s under a magnet shaped like a loon, right next to the scanner on the counter, which is always on, turned down low, murmuring all day and all night about wrecks and fires and cows out on the highway.
Sometimes, when I’m visiting, I hear Kim’s voice come through it. And sometimes, late, I hear a young man’s voice say, “Kessler, Fourteen,” and my mother will stop whatever she’s doing and listen until he’s done.
Then she goes back to her dishes.
I call her every Sunday night now, about nine o’clock.
She picks up on the first ring.
