The Apron at the Pantry Table
Every one of them stopped when they saw me. And every one of them, once they got over it, looked something like relieved.
I did not say one word to anybody about Dena. When people asked why I was down there, I told them as much of the truth as was mine to tell.
“Josh got laid off with everybody else,” I said. “I’ve got Saturday mornings free, and Dena needed hands.”
People nodded. A woman named Brenda Ott, whose husband was on first shift, told me it was easier to take a box from somebody who knew what it felt like.
Nobody talked. Not the way Dena was afraid of. In a town of 3,000, everything gets back to you eventually, and nothing ever did.
Dena watched me all morning.
I could feel it. Every time I looked up she was at her end table, and her eyes would go back down to the sign-in sheet. She did not speak to me except to say “Number forty-six” or “We’re out of doubles, use two singles.”
At one o’clock we locked the door. Rick folded the chairs, Leon swept, and I broke down the empty cartons for recycling.
Dena came over while I was untying my apron.
“You did fine,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She looked at the apron in my hands, then at my face. I think she wanted to say something else. I think she nearly did.
“Same time next week,” she said instead. “It’s turkey Saturday. It’ll be worse.”
“I’ll be here.”
I walked home in the cold. I had not taken a single thing out of that basement but my own coat.
When I came in the back door, Maisie was on the kitchen floor with the big box of crayons from her birthday and a stack of manila paper. She had drawn a turkey. It was mostly orange and it had five legs, but you could tell it was a turkey.
“What’s that for, baby?” I asked.
“It’s for the boxes,” she said. “Daddy said you gave people boxes of food.”
“I did.”
“So they need a picture in them,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “So they know somebody was thinking of them.”
I sat down on the kitchen floor in my coat. Josh was leaning in the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder. He did not say anything. He just looked at me.
“How many people got boxes?” Maisie asked.
“A hundred and twelve families.”
Her eyes went big. Then she pulled the paper toward her and started counting sheets.
She drew all week, every afternoon after kindergarten and every night until her bath. Turkeys. Pumpkins. A cross with a sun behind it. A cow, because Leon had told her once at coffee hour that he had cows.
Kaylee helped her with the words: Happy Thanksgiving, God loves you, Have a good day. Owen colored in the backgrounds when Maisie got tired, and he did not complain once.
By Friday night she had a Red Wing shoebox full. Josh’s work boots had come in it two years before. She had counted them herself, twice, with Kaylee checking.
“There’s one extra,” Maisie told me, very serious, when she handed me the box.
“That’s smart thinking. There might be more people this time.”