The call came on December 18 at 7:05 p.m., while I was draining macaroni and Hudson was trying to shove a grape into the DVD player. My hands were wet. I almost didn’t answer. The screen said 239 area code—Fort Myers. I hit the green button with my thumb.
“Caroline? It’s your mother.”
I set the colander in the sink. Marla sounded like she’d spoken to me yesterday. She said she was at the Greyhound station downtown and needed a ride.
“You’re in Louisville?”
“Got in an hour ago. I thought I’d spend Christmas with you and the kiddos.”
Hudson got the grape in the DVD tray. It made a soft thump. I fished it out with my fingernail and said, “No.”
“You can’t keep your own mother out on Christmas.”
“I can. You’ve never met my children.”
“I got a right to see my grandbabies,” she said.
I laughed. The sound surprised me. “Name one of them.”
She hung up.
I hadn’t heard her voice in four years, not since Grandma Ruth’s funeral in 2021. That day, Marla showed up in a white blazer, stood in the back of the funeral home, and said to me, “She was like a mother to you.” Then she left to catch a flight because she had “a thing” at three. She did not ask about Hudson, who was nine weeks old and asleep on Devin’s shoulder. That was the entire relationship.
Marla was not a mother. She was a woman who happened to give birth to me. She told me my father was a drunk who cleared out when I was two. I never got a birthday card from him, so maybe that part was true. She spent weekends at a salon on Dixie Highway and came home smelling like perm solution and cigarette smoke. When I brought home straight A’s, she’d check her phone and say, “Uh-huh, good.”
At eleven, she moved to Fort Myers with a man named Lyle who sold timeshares. She packed three suitcases, kissed the top of my head, and drove off in a white Cadillac. Grandma Ruth moved into the house before the oil stains in the driveway had dried. Grandma Ruth taught me to make sausage gravy on Saturday mornings, drove me to band practice, and sewed the hem on my homecoming dress. Mom sent a graduation card four weeks late with a $20 bill and a note: “Proud of you.” The “you” had a heart over the “u.”
I married Devin at the courthouse. Mom said she’d fly up, but she didn’t. The last time I saw her was at Grandma Ruth’s funeral. The house we live in now is the one Grandma Ruth left me—two small bedrooms, a bathroom with a clawfoot tub, and a front door that sticks in July humidity. Devin and I moved in after she died. It still smells like her lemon furniture polish in the hall closet.
We have three kids: Hudson, who is three, and the twins, Cora and Delia, who are four months old. Devin works at an auto shop off Preston Highway and brings home about $2,300 a month. I buy the kids’ clothes at Goodwill on Shelbyville Road. Devin’s parents bring us eggs and canned tomatoes from their place out in Shepherdsville. I am not proud of any of that, but it is our life.
After Marla hung up, I told Devin. He was sitting on the edge of the tub, wiping grease off his hands with a blue shop towel. He had a crescent of black under his thumbnail. He said, “She can get a room. We don’t owe her a holiday.”
The next morning, Marla texted me from a number I didn’t have saved. “I still have the key to Ruth’s house. See you at 4.”
I sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the stove. The twins were in their pack-and-play, kicking their feet. Hudson was eating dry cereal off the tray of his high chair. I opened the bank app. The number in checking was $187.02. I called Earl’s Lock & Key on Frankfort Avenue. The woman said a service call was $75, parts extra, and they could have someone at 3:30.
“Do both locks,” I said. “Front and back.”
Earl showed up at 3:20 in a blue Ford Ranger with a rusty tailgate. He had a red toolbox and a limp from an old hip injury. He didn’t ask questions. I carried the twins into the front room and set them on a quilt on the floor. Hudson sat on the couch with a cracked tablet. Earl drilled out the old cylinders and put new ones in. He handed me two new keys attached to a plain ring.
“Total’s $148.75,” he said.
I counted out the cash. I had $38.27 left. I put the receipt in my back pocket.
At 4:10, the headlights swept across the kitchen wallpaper. The garage light has been burned out since Labor Day, so I saw the car only when it turned into the driveway. A tan Buick LeSabre with Florida plates. Marla got out, carrying a red duffel and wearing a long coat. She had a key on a purple coil around her wrist.
I locked the storm door and stepped back from the window. Next door, Biscuit started barking at the drill or at her, I don’t know which.
She tried the old key in the front door. It wouldn’t turn. She took it out, checked the teeth, tried again. Then she banged on the glass.
“Caroline! I’m your mother!”
I didn’t open the curtain. I unlocked my phone and typed out a text to the number she’d used that morning.
“Motel 6 on Preston Highway. Rooms start at $62. I am not paying for it.”
I hit send. Through the door, I heard her phone buzz. She stood there for a second, reading it. Then she turned toward the street, got back in the Buick, and drove away.
Earl packed his drill. He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said, “Usually I change locks after a divorce.”
“She didn’t raise me,” I said.
He handed me a paper receipt. I folded it twice and put it on the kitchen counter next to the new keys. Then I dropped the old key into the drawer with dead batteries and rubber bands. I shut the drawer.
The new key went on my ring beside the Kroger card. I locked the front door, unlocked it, locked it again. The click sounded like a door I’d chosen.
