The Recliner That Went to Town

Carla’s turn

She sat there a long time with her hand under his. Then she looked at me, and I saw her face clearly for the first time, I think.

Not the woman on the porch with her arms crossed. Just a sixty-two-year-old woman who had been scared for a very long time.

“I’m sorry, Kelly,” she said. Her voice shook. “I told myself the rent was fair. I told myself it was the electric and the groceries. It wasn’t. I wanted you to be a tenant. Tenants leave.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere until he could shower by himself,” I said. “That’s all I was waiting for.”

“I know that now.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I knew it at the time, really. I just couldn’t make myself believe it. When they did it to me before, it started with a daughter who was always so helpful.”

Then Carla turned to Dad. She folded the paper towel into a small square and smoothed it on the table, the way she smoothed the towels on the oven door.

“Walt,” she said, “could I drive you? To therapy? Tuesdays, maybe. I’m off Tuesdays. I could come in and drive you, and you’d still be here for the rest of it, close to the clinic.”

Dad looked at me. I nodded.

“Josh says I’m on Monday, Wednesday, Friday,” Dad said. “But he wants me walking on the off days too. You could walk with me. Tuesdays. Two blocks there and two back.”

“I’d like that,” Carla said. “I’d like that very much.”

Tuesdays

She came the next Tuesday at nine sharp. She parked on the street and knocked on the back door this time.

Dad was ready in his coat and hat, sitting on the bench by the door with his cane across his knees like a boy waiting for the school bus.

They walked to the clinic and back. Two blocks there, two back.

I watched them from the kitchen window, Carla on his left side with her arm hooked through his, matching his pace, which was slow, and not hurrying him once.