The Pecan Pie at the Soup Kitchen

Jen

I asked Sister if I could take five minutes. She clicked her clicker and said, “Take ten. Darla, cover turkey.”

Jen and I stood in the back hallway by the coat rack. She was twisting her keys.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for all of it. I should have said something to Mark weeks ago. I told him he was wrong. I just didn’t tell him loud enough.”

“It’s not your job to fix him, Jen.”

“It’s not yours either.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her glove. “Owen’s been asking about Walt since the summer. He said it isn’t fair to make Grandma choose.

“And this morning, after you called, he put his coat on and stood by the garage door for forty minutes. He wouldn’t take it off. He wouldn’t eat a cinnamon roll.

“Mark finally said, fine, take him, and went in the den and shut the door.”

I thought about my grandson standing by a garage door for forty minutes in his coat. I thought about Mark at sixteen, standing by the same kind of door, waiting for his dad to take him hunting.

“Is Mark all right?” I asked.

“No,” Jen said. “He hasn’t been all right for nine years. He just hides it better than you do.”

Mark

At ten after one, with Sister’s clicker at a hundred and four, the side door to the alley opened and let in a gust of November.

Mark came in and stood just inside the door with his hands in his coat pockets. He was wearing the Iowa State hoodie he wore to rake leaves. He had not shaved. He looked around that big loud room with the paper turkeys on the walls and the steam coming off the table like he had walked into the wrong church.

Lily was holding his hand. She saw me and broke loose and ran, and Sister Mary Agnes said, “No running, child,” and Lily walked very fast instead, which Sister allowed.

I hugged my granddaughter over the sneeze guard, which is not allowed, and Sister let that go too.

Mark did not come to the line. He just stood by the door. After a minute he looked at me and tipped his head toward the alley.

I took off my gloves and threw them in the trash and took off my hairnet and went.

The Alley

The alley behind the parish hall was narrow and cold, with a green dumpster and a stack of milk crates and a view of the back of a pawn shop. The wind came off the river and went right through my apron.

Mark leaned against the brick wall. I stood across from him. For a while neither of us said anything.

“Owen walked out on me,” he finally said. “My own kid.”

“He didn’t walk out on you, honey. He walked toward something. That’s different.”

He laughed, but it was not a laugh. “You keep saying that. That’s different. Everything’s different with you.”

“Mark.”

“No, let me…” He pushed off the wall, then leaned back on it. “Let me say it. I came down here to say it and if I don’t say it now I’m going to get back in the car.”

I waited. Forty years of letting people finish their sentences.

“When Dad died,” he said, “I was thirty-one. I had a baby and a mortgage and I’d been at the agency two years. And I walked into your house and you were sitting at the kitchen table in his flannel shirt and you looked like somebody had pulled the plug out of you.”

“I remember.”

“And I thought, okay. Okay. I’m it now. I’m the man of the family. I’ll do the gutters and the furnace and the snowblower. I’ll call every night at eight. I’ll make sure she’s okay.” His voice cracked. “And I did. For nine years, I did. And I got good at it. It was the only thing I was good at that had anything to do with Dad.”