I leaned on the porch post and looked at Kaylee in her sundress. “You said your family does not need my money to feel welcome,” I said. “But I do. I thought about that sentence for a week, and here is what I decided. You are right about one thing. I did need to be welcome. I needed it badly, and I spent four hundred twenty dollars a month for years trying to buy it. That was my mistake, not yours. So I have stopped. If I am welcome at your table, I will find out on my own.” Kaylee crossed her arms, but her chin dipped.
Behind her, Wyatt stood on the gravel with his hat in his hands, a big sunburned man who had once cried when I trimmed his bangs. “Mama, I stood at the grill the whole day,” he said. “I watched you stand next to me with your arms full, and I flipped ribs. I do not know why. I think I was afraid of her.” He did not look at his wife. “That is the truest thing I have said to you in years.” Kaylee gave a small, shocked laugh. “You are afraid of me?” “Everybody is, honey,” I said gently. “That is the trouble.”
Down the road, my neighbor Earlene had been watering her roses for twenty minutes, in one spot, with the hose pointed at a bed that was already flooded. She turned the nozzle off with a click and called across the fence, “Rhonda, do you need me to stay?” I waved her over. “Earlene, you stay right there,” I said. “You might as well hear the rest.” Wyatt coughed. Kaylee studied her sandals. In the Texas wind, the flag on my mailbox flapped like a small applause, and I had never felt so clear in my life.
A pan of smoked ribs carried back to the truck gave one son the weekend to bring his mother back to the table in Amarillo.
My terms were simple, and I stated them one by one. The RV note belongs to the one who drives it. The car insurance and the phone plan belong to the people who use them. Every holiday dinner will be held at my table, in the dining room, with name cards, and the grill will be run by whoever brings the meat. And Kaylee will bring her parents and grandparents to my house for supper, so that I can feed them properly and they can meet the woman they have never met. Wyatt said yes first. Kaylee said it last, almost silently.
The surprise came the following Sunday, when the grandmother of Kaylee, a tiny woman named Opal with white hair and a straw hat, climbed out of a pickup in my driveway. She marched past her granddaughter and took my hands. “Rhonda, I was told you were a hired cook,” she said. “They told us you cooked for the money. Child, I have been ashamed since July.” I sat her at the head of my table, and I put the first rib on her plate. Opal ate it with both hands, and she did not stop talking, and I do not believe I have ever had a better guest.
At church the next Sunday, Earlene told the ladies of the Bible circle everything, though I had not asked her to, and the ladies were fierce on my behalf. Linda brought a casserole. Marge brought the old grill tongs of her husband. Dolores, who is ninety one and never raises her voice, announced that she would pray for the grill. Everyone laughed, and I laughed so hard that I had to sit down. It was the first time all summer that I had been in a room full of people who were happy to see me.
The money consequences came by August. Wyatt sold the RV at a loss, and he and Kaylee gave up the lake lot they had been dreaming about. They moved into a smaller house, planted tomatoes and discovered that a Friday night could be happy for nothing. Kaylee took a job at the school cafeteria. Wyatt took the overtime at the feed mill. For the first time since the wedding, they were not behind. Kaylee admitted it to me on my porch, with a glass of tea. “Rhonda,” she said, “being short has a way of making you look at what you throw away.”
Kaylee came back alone in September and asked to sit in the shade. She told me that her father had left when she was seven, that her mother had worked three jobs, and that she had learned early to measure love by what a person could give. “I assumed anyone who gave that much was keeping a list,” she said. “I could not believe you wanted nothing back, so I made you pay for the one thing I thought you wanted, which was a seat.” I handed her a glass of tea. “I wanted the seat,” I said. “I never wanted to pay for it.”
In the name of my brother Buddy, who passed fourteen years ago and who could smoke a brisket better than anyone in the Panhandle, I started the Buddy Fund. It pays for the cookouts and supplies of volunteer fire departments across Potter County, so that the men and women who run toward the smoke get fed when the day is over. We held the first supper at Station Six. Forty firefighters came. A young man still in his boots took his plate of ribs, looked at me, and said, “Nobody has ever cooked for us before, Mrs. Rhonda.”
On the Fourth of July, a year to the day, I set my long table in the back yard under a string of lights. Twenty six people came. Opal sat at the head. Wyatt tended the grill, and Kaylee, in an apron, tended the sides, and nobody told me to stand anywhere. When the ribs came off the smoker, Wyatt did something he had never done. He carried the first platter to me, set it down, and kissed the top of my head in front of everyone. “Mama, the best seat is yours,” he said. I sat. Across the table, Earlene winked at me, and the sun went down over the Panhandle.