Every Friday at the Legion Fish Fry

The Friday She Came

It was the second Friday after Easter. Spring was coming in slow, the way it does up here, mud and old snow along the ditches and the first robins standing around looking like they regretted coming back early.

I dropped Grandpa at the door. I parked the car.

Inside, the line for the cod ran clear back to the coat rack, so I got Grandpa settled at our table before we went up, the way we did on the busy nights.

The corner seat had his glove on it. Bud and Hank were already halfway through their cod.

I hung my coat on the chair and told Grandpa I would stand in line for both of us, and he smiled up at me under his cap.

Then Hank stopped chewing. He was looking past us, toward the door.

I turned around. Marcia was standing just inside the entrance in her good wool coat, the one she wore to church.

She had her purse in both hands in front of her, the way a woman holds a purse when she does not know where to put her hands.

She looked smaller than I had ever seen her. I don’t mean she was smaller.

I mean she stood in that doorway like a person who was not sure she was allowed in.

The noise of the hall kept going all around her, the raffle numbers being called, the kids, the clatter of the kitchen.

But at our end of the table it went quiet. Bud set his fork down. Hank wiped his mouth.

Marcia walked toward us. She came straight down the aisle between the tables, and people moved their chairs in to let her pass, and she stopped at the end of our table, across from her father.

Nobody said anything. I could feel my heart in my throat. I could feel Grandpa beside me, very still.

Then Grandpa put his hand on top of mine on the table. He turned to Bud and Hank.

He spoke in the same plain, even voice he used to read me the funny papers when I was little.

“Boys,” he said, “I want to tell you something about my two girls.”

What Grandpa Told the Men

Bud and Hank looked at each other. Marcia’s knuckles went white on her purse.

“This one,” Grandpa said, and he squeezed my hand, “is Debbie. She’s my granddaughter. She’s been bringing me here every Friday since January. She’s paid for every plate I’ve eaten in this hall, and I’ve tried to pay every single time, and she won’t let me.”

“We know, Walt,” Bud said gently. “We’ve watched you try.”

“And this one,” Grandpa said, and he looked across the table at his daughter, “is my Marcia. She’s our baby, seven years behind her sister. She was born in a snowstorm and her mother never let me forget I couldn’t get the truck started.”

Marcia made a sound. It was not quite a laugh.

“Marcia took some money of mine she shouldn’t have,” Grandpa said. He said it simply. He did not raise his voice.

“A good deal of it. For her girls. I found out. Debbie found out. I asked Debbie to leave it be, and she did, because I asked.”

Hank looked down at his plate. Bud did not look away from Grandpa at all.

“Then Marcia told me Debbie only came around for money,” Grandpa said.

“So Debbie went and made sure that every Friday, in front of the whole town, it was her money on the table and not mine. She never said one word against her aunt to anybody. Not one.”

He let go of my hand and folded his own on the table, the way he folds them in church.

“I’m ninety-one years old,” he said. “I don’t have time to keep score anymore. I love them both. That’s all I wanted you boys to know. That’s my two girls.”