The Job in My Mother’s Kitchen
She said, “Mr. Halloran, I hired this woman not knowing who she was, and I have kept her on four weeks knowing it. That’s on me, and you can write me up for it. But I have got a resident who lost nine pounds in three months while her daughter stood at your front desk, and gained four back inside of three weeks once that daughter started carrying her tray. I’m done letting it ride.”
Mr. Halloran sent for me at ten.
He was a younger man than I expected, forty-five maybe, with his sleeves rolled up and Keith’s email printed out on the desk in front of him. He looked like a man who had not enjoyed his morning.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
He said that when a resident’s health care agent, the responsible party on her admission agreement, tells a home that a visitor agitates her, the home follows it until somebody above them says otherwise, because nine times in ten there is a real reason. He said he had read my brother’s four lines, assumed a family quarrel he did not want to referee, and signed off without ever walking down to room 114 and asking the one person whose opinion counted.
“That was wrong,” he said. “I went down and asked her an hour ago.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, and I am quoting, that she has two children and she’d like to see both of them, and that if I needed it in writing she still knows how to hold a pen.” He rubbed his eyes. “I can put your name back on that list myself in about one minute. Your mother’s told me what she wants, and that settles it as far as I’m concerned.”
“But I think your brother ought to be the one to do it,” he said. “I don’t think he knows what he did. I think he sent an email. If I fix it with a pen, he never has to know, and you two never have to speak of it, and I’ve seen how that goes in families. I’ve got him coming Thursday at noon. He thinks it’s a care conference.” He looked at me. “Will you give me until Thursday?”
I thought about my mother saying she meant to keep both.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m on the schedule Thursday lunch anyway.”
“I know you are,” Mr. Halloran said. “I checked.”
Thursday was meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, a dinner roll, and peach crisp.
Keith came in at ten minutes to twelve in a golf shirt and pressed slacks with a leather folder under his arm. I saw him through the pass window, looking for an office to go into.
Mr. Halloran met him, shook his hand, and walked him across the room to table four, where a fourth place had been set.
“Your mother’s expecting you,” I heard him say, as they came near. “We’ll talk about her care after. I thought you ought to see a meal first. I’ll join you.”
Mom looked up at her son. She let him kiss her cheek.
“Sit down, Keith,” she said. “This is Lois. This is Mr. Wendell. He was a railroad man.”
I loaded the tray. Four meatloaf, one of them cut in the kitchen and laid back in its shape. One whole milk. I pushed through the swinging door with my hip.
I served Lois, then Mr. Wendell, then my mother.
Then I set a plate down in front of my brother.