The Tuesday Volunteer Who Did Puzzles With Dad

The twelfth Tuesday

Steve did not call me. I didn’t know any of this yet. I drove to Maple Court on the first of December like it was any other Tuesday, with the vest in a grocery bag on the seat beside me.

There was snow on the ground, the first that stuck. Somebody had put a wreath on the front door.

Beth met me in the lobby. She didn’t say anything about Steve. She just said, “He’s at the table. The lighthouse is still out. I wouldn’t let anybody touch it.” I pinned on my badge and walked in.

Dad was in his chair. The lighthouse was where I left it, hole and all. I sat down beside him and said, “Arnold, I’m Linda. I carry the mail,” and he said, “Gravel?” and I said, “Most of it,” and he said, “Bring your boots this week,” because of the snow.

We’d been working maybe ten minutes when I saw him.

Steve was standing in the doorway of the activity room. He had on his brown work jacket with the shop name stitched on the chest, and his cap in both hands, and he had stopped dead in the doorway the way a person stops at the edge of ice.

He looked at me. He looked at Dad. He looked at my hands on the puzzle.

I didn’t get up. I didn’t say anything. I’d decided weeks before that if this day came, I would not make it a fight. Not in front of Dad. Not anywhere, really. I just looked back at my brother, and I let him look at me.

Beth was by the fish tank. She didn’t move either.

Steve came across the room. He walked slowly, and when he got to the table, he didn’t take the empty chair across from us. He pulled a third chair over from the next table, and set it down on Dad’s other side, and sat.

Dad looked over at him. His face lit up the way it lit up for Steve, the way it always had. “There he is,” Dad said.

“Hi, Dad.”

“You’re early.”

“I took the afternoon.”

“Well.” Dad nodded at me. “This is Linda. She carries mail. A hundred and twelve miles.”

Steve looked at me across our father. His eyes were red. He swallowed.

“Hi, Linda,” he said.

“Hi, Steve.”

And that was all either of us said for the next hour and a half. Dad did the sky by shape, and I did the stripes, and Steve, who had never once had the patience for a puzzle, turned gray wave pieces over in his big welder’s fingers and fit them in one at a time.