The Pecan Pie at the Soup Kitchen

Telling Walt

I did not tell Walt what Mark had said for three days. I told myself I was waiting for the right time. The truth is I was ashamed, and I did not know who I was ashamed of.

He knew something was wrong anyway. On Wednesday he came by to look at my garbage disposal, which did not need looking at, and stood in my kitchen drying his hands on a dish towel.

“You’ve been quiet since Sunday,” he said.

So I told him. All of it. The bakery aisle at Hy-Vee, Dad’s pew, the potatoes. I told it plain, the way I would read a story to a class, and I did not make Mark sound worse than he was.

Walt folded the dish towel in thirds and hung it on the oven handle. He took his time with it.

“He’s your boy,” he said finally. “He lost his dad young. I don’t hold it against him.”

“I do,” I said. “A little.”

“That’s allowed.” He leaned on the counter. “Carol, I want to say something, and I want you to hear it the right way. If it’d make things easier with your family, I can step back for a while. Through the holidays. I’m not going anywhere. I’d just be quieter about it.”

I looked at him, this big gentle man offering to make himself smaller so my son would be comfortable.

“No,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“I spent nine years being quiet, Walt. I’m not going to hide you in a closet like a Christmas present. You are not something I’m ashamed of.”

He nodded slowly, like a man checking a line before he climbed.

“Then what do you want to do about Thanksgiving?”

That was the question. I had turned it over all week. I could go to Mark’s alone and sit at the table and pass the potatoes and pretend Walt did not exist. Or I could stay home and eat a turkey sandwich and feel sorry for myself in front of the parade.

I did not want to do either. Going alone would be a lie. Staying home would just be a different way of hiding.

“What do you do on Thanksgiving?” I asked him.

He smiled for the first time that afternoon. “Same thing I’ve done for eleven years,” he said. “I take pies down to the soup kitchen on Jennings Street, and Sister Mary Agnes puts me to work.”

Sister Mary Agnes

The soup kitchen is run by the sisters out of an old parish hall downtown, a few blocks from the river. It feeds a good part of the county on a regular weekday. On Thanksgiving it feeds more.

Walt and Darlene had started going together the year their youngest went off to the Air Force. After Darlene died he kept going alone. He told me once it was the only day of the year he did not feel like half of something.

He called Sister Mary Agnes that night, with me sitting next to him on my couch.

“Sister, it’s Walt Brandvold. Yes, the pies. Yes, same as always.” He listened. “Well, that’s the thing. I’ve got a volunteer I’d like to bring. She’s a good worker. Ran a school library thirty-some years. She can handle a line.”

I could hear Sister’s voice through the phone, small and quick. Walt held it away from his ear and grinned at me.

“She says Thanksgiving’s been full since September,” he reported. “Everybody wants to volunteer on Thanksgiving. Nobody wants the second Tuesday in February.”

“Oh,” I said.

“But she says if I’m vouching, and if you’ll come in Saturday for the food safety sheet and the orientation, she’ll put you on the serving line.” He covered the phone. “And she wants to know if you’ll do the second Tuesday in February.”

“Tell her yes,” I said. “Tell her both.”