At the McDonald’s window for a soft-serve an hour after you died, I thought of telling the woman who took my three ones that I was motherless now, that I wasn’t hungry, not really, but the germicidals and sour blankets were still stuck in my throat, and anyway, a cone was your last craving, and I would’ve run out to get you one before the morphine, but the nurses were fairly adamant that I not, which took the decision out of my hands—a relief, honestly, after so many decisions, etc. The same story a thousand ways, and she’d probably heard them all, so I thought instead I’d ask if she got a lot of people on the road from the hospital late at night, and if she was glad for the quirk of location, or had aced some special training, because the way she gave me my 90-whatever cents change, a funnel of fingertips square in the meat of my palm, no claw-dropped jumble, but a squat column, placed so neatly, so gently…
I felt a weird pang of responsibility, staring at the stack, its top-heavy-ish wobble, so I made my own careful finger-funnel around it, hoping the woman was watching but also not watching as my eyes darted around for a spot to put it down that’d keep it intact for the shift out of park, the dip at the exit, road work, etc. And now she was thrusting the cone at me, less gently, the swirl tilting already in the heavy August midnight, requiring me to go right into licking before drips reached my hand, while my other hand had to settle for bracing the stack inside the too-vast empty cupholder. I thought of asking the woman between licks about the quirks of her job, like how many people drive right through the drive-thru, or hesitate at the ordering station before driving through, or don’t pick up or pay when they do order, as if there’s a shift in them during the short distance between stops, the small demands too much or something, but by then she’d finished her staticky headset thank you and was sliding the window shut. You would have laughed, Mom. Me licking and swallowing, licking and swallowing. Tongue hard against the loose custard, fingers soft around the little slipping tower, both hands tied. And now there was a car behind me.
