The Girl Who Read Him the Box Scores

These were not people with money to burn. These were people who came straight from a job to sit in a folding chair for their mothers.

Mrs. Driscoll, the administrator, ran the meeting. I had met her twice. She is a tall woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain and the look of somebody who has not had a full night’s sleep since the spring. She went through the flu shot schedule and the new dishwasher and the fall festival. She apologized that the director of nursing position was still open and said she was covering part of it herself.

She was not putting on a show. She looked worn to the cloth.

“Is there any new business from families?” she said.

I stood up. My knees were not altogether steady. I do not speak in front of people. I hand them a water pump across a counter.

“Mark Olson. My father is Leo, room two fourteen.”

“Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Olson.”

“I only have one question. And it’s not for you, ma’am, not yet. It’s for everybody else in this room.” I held up the statements. “How many of you pay for the daily companion visits? It’s three hundred forty dollars, down toward the bottom, under optional services.”

Nobody moved for a second. Then a hand went up. The woman in the bank blouse. Then one of the two sisters. Then the man in the seed corn cap, slowly, as if he was not sure he wanted to be counted.

Seven hands. Out of twenty-two people.

“Here’s the question,” I said. “Has anybody here ever met the companion?”

It was so quiet I could hear the ice machine in the kitchen.

“I haven’t,” I said. “Fourteen months I’ve paid it. Sunday I finally asked my dad who comes. He said nobody.”

The woman in the bank blouse already had her purse open. She pulled out a checkbook with a statement folded in it, the way my mother used to carry the light bill, and she ran her finger down it.

“It’s on mine,” she said. “Mother’s been here since a year ago March.” She looked up. “I asked Mother once who the nice visitor was. She said what visitor. I thought it was her memory.”

“Donna, it’s on ours too,” one of the sisters said. She had her phone out and her sister was reading over her shoulder. “Every month. I never knew what it was. Ron handles it.”

The man in the seed corn cap had not opened anything. He was looking at his own hands.

“My wife has asked me three times who’s supposed to be coming,” he said. “I told her to be patient. I told her they were busy.”

Mrs. Driscoll had taken her glasses off.

I want to be fair about what I saw in her face, because I had spent four days expecting to see something else. I had expected a woman who would smooth it over. What I saw was a woman who did not know the answer, and who understood in front of twenty-two people that she ought to.

“Mr. Olson,” she said. “Who is the companion assigned to your father?”

“That’s what I came to ask you.”

“I don’t know.” She said it right out. “I’m not going to guess in front of you. Will you all give me fifteen minutes? Please don’t leave.”

She walked out of the dining room. Nobody left. Donna passed the cookies, because that is what women like Donna do when a room does not know what to do with itself.