The Tuesday Volunteer Who Did Puzzles With Dad

The Tuesdays

I want to tell you that every Tuesday got better. They didn’t. Some of them were good and some of them were hard and a couple of them were very hard. That is the way it goes with this disease, and anybody who has sat with somebody they love who has it already knows.

The second Tuesday, he didn’t know he’d met me before. He introduced himself again, Arnold Kruse, sixty head, down on 11. I said I carried mail. He asked if it was gravel. We finished the covered bridge.

The third Tuesday, he told me about the winter of 1978, when the drifts were so high they dumped milk for four days. I’d heard that story a hundred times. I listened like I’d never heard it, and asked how many gallons. A thousand, he said. It about killed him to open that valve.

The fourth Tuesday, he hummed the whole afternoon. It took me an hour to place it. It was “In the Garden,” which they sang at Mom’s funeral. He didn’t know he was doing it. I hummed along very quietly on the second time through, and he looked over at me and smiled.

The fifth Tuesday was hard. He was agitated when I got there. He kept getting up and going to the window and saying the cows were out. Beth came over and said, “Arnold, the neighbor boy’s getting them in, he called,” and Dad sat back down. Then he got up again.

Beth caught my eye. I knew the rule. I got up, and I said, “I’ll see you next week, Arnold,” and I walked out, and I sat in the Jeep and held the steering wheel until my knuckles hurt.

The sixth Tuesday, he called me June.

Not once. All afternoon. “June, hand me that corner.” “June, did you get the mail?” He was happy. He was easy and happy and teasing, and he patted my hand twice. Beth was watching from across the room, and she gave me the smallest nod. Go where he is.

So for an afternoon I was my mother. I passed him corners. I said yes, I got the mail. When he said, “We should get the kids a sled this year,” I said, “We should,” and I had to put my hand flat on the table for a minute.

Steve came in the side door at five that day, early for once. Beth saw his truck too. She said, “Time for supper, Arnold,” and I slipped out the back hall by the laundry. I sat in the Jeep in the far corner of the lot and watched my brother walk in with his cap in his hand.

He had gotten so gray. I hadn’t seen him since the kitchen table.

The eighth and ninth Tuesdays were quiet. He talked about Mom in the present tense, as if she’d just gone into town. June’s making a pie. June doesn’t like me driving after dark. I said, “She’s right about that,” and he said, “She’s right about most things.”

He never once said my name. He never once said he had a daughter. I told myself that was a mercy, because if he didn’t remember her, he didn’t remember losing her.

The tenth Tuesday, Megan was home for the weekend and stayed through Monday. She came down to the basement while I was looking for the furnace filters, and she came back up holding a box.

“Mom,” she said. “Is this the one?”