The Wheelchair They Took Away

The big one knocked twice and did not wait for an answer.

“Mrs. Pickett? We’ve got a work order for the power chair.”

He was already inside my front hall in his blue polo shirt, the store’s name stitched over the pocket, holding a clipboard the way a boy holds a hall pass. Behind him on the porch stood a skinny young fellow with a hand truck, looking at the boards of my porch floor as if he had lost something in them.

It was a Thursday, a little past 1:30, and I had my hands in a sink of dishwater.

“There’s been a mistake,” I said. “I paid that on Wednesday. I have the receipt right here.”

I dried my hands and took it off the refrigerator, where it hung under a magnet shaped like a pig. He looked at it. He took a phone out of his shirt pocket and walked into the corner by the coat hooks and talked low for about a minute. Then he walked back.

“Bruce says the order stands. Account was flagged past due when it was cut. I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re just the drivers.”

“Bruce is the manager?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then let me talk to Bruce.”

“He said you could call the store.”

From the living room, my husband said, “Jackie.”

He said it the way he says it when a pot is about to boil over. Not loud. Just a man putting a hand on a sleeve.

I turned around. Glenn was in the power chair by the front window, where he sits every afternoon to watch the road. He had on the green flannel I ironed that morning. His hands rested on the armrests, the left one curled a little inward, the way it does now. He looked at the big man. Then he looked at me.

“Let them do their job,” he said. “They didn’t write the paper.”

“Glenn, you cannot get out of that chair by yourself.”

“I know that, hon.”

He said it plainly, with no heat in it. My husband was a master technician for thirty years. He knew what every sound in an engine meant. He has multiple sclerosis, and he has not been able to stand without help since the winter before last, and in all that time I have never once heard him say a word about it that was meant to make anyone feel sorry.

“Which chair do you want me in?” he asked the big man.

The big man looked at his clipboard.

“The kitchen chair will do,” Glenn said. “Sturdy one, with arms. Jackie, would you slide it over?”

I did. I set it beside the power chair with the seat facing him. Glenn’s transfer board hangs on a hook by the wall where he cannot reach it, so I handed it to him, and he fitted it under himself one slow inch at a time. Then he began to slide.

It took four minutes. I counted them on the clock above the television, because I could not look at his face and I could not look at the two men. Nobody helped. Nobody had been invited to. The skinny one had set down the hand truck and was standing with his hands folded in front of him like a boy in church. The big one studied his shoes.