Part Four: We Never Had Much

We never had much.

We ate a lot of spaghetti. A lot of grilled cheese. A lot of the leftovers I brought home from the cafeteria in Tupperware, which I wasn’t supposed to do.

His clothes came from Goodwill. His toys came from garage sales. His bike was Michael’s old bike from 1990, which Harold had kept in the garage.

We never went on vacations. We never went to Disney World or the beach or Kings Island.

On his tenth birthday, he asked for a PlayStation.

All his friends had one.

I looked at the price at the Walmart on Wilmington Pike. Two hundred and ninety-nine dollars.

I went home and sat at the kitchen table and did the math.

I couldn’t do it.

I gave him a used Game Boy from a pawn shop. Forty dollars. With three games.

He opened it at the kitchen table. He looked at it.

Then he looked at me.

“It’s great, Grandma,” he said.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t complain.

He just played that Game Boy until the buttons wore smooth.

But we had each other.

We had Sunday afternoons at the library. We had Friday night pizza from the little place on Far Hills Avenue, a large pepperoni split two ways. We had the Dayton Dragons minor league baseball games in the summer, in the cheap seats, with a bag of peanuts I brought from home.

We had the warm spot.

Part Five: Smart

Kevin was smart.

Not just a little smart. Really smart. The kind of smart teachers notice.

He read Harry Potter when he was seven. All of them. He did long division in second grade. In fifth grade, his teacher, Mrs. Lindqvist, called me in for a conference.

“Mrs. Haley,” she said. “Kevin’s testing at a high school level in math. I think he should be in the gifted program.”

He was in the gifted program.

He was on the honor roll every semester. He was in the National Honor Society. He was captain of the academic team.

He worked at the Kroger on weekends. Bagging groceries. Then stocking shelves. He gave me half his paycheck every week. I put it in a coffee can in the kitchen cabinet.

I never spent a dime of it.

When he was a junior, he started talking about college.

“Ohio State,” he said. “For engineering. Mechanical engineering.”

He was sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of brochures. I was at the stove, making grilled cheese.

“Ohio State’s expensive, honey,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I’ll get scholarships. And loans. And I’ll work.”

I didn’t say anything.

I flipped the grilled cheese.

I’d been thinking about college since he was four.

Since the night the state trooper came to my door.