The Class Ring in the Nursing Home Hallway

People kept stopping her to hug her. Somebody’s grandma pinned a dollar to her gown for luck, the way the old folks still do down here.

We got in the truck. She looked at me as I started it.

“Dad,” she said. “Are you mad at Aunt Dorrie?”

I thought about how to answer that. I did not want to lie to her, and I did not want to put my anger on her shoulders. She had enough on them that week.

“I’m not happy about it,” I said. “But Grandpa’s the one whose money it is. We’re going to go see him. We’re going to show him his granddaughter graduated. That’s all we’re doing today.”

“Okay,” she said. Then, after a minute, “Good. I don’t want there to be a fight. Not at Grandpa’s.”

“There won’t be,” I said. I meant that more than anything I had said in a long while.

The nursing home is a long low brick building on the west end of town, with a circle drive and two benches out front and a flagpole the residents salute every morning if the weather is good.

I parked in the visitors’ spaces, and we went in through the front doors.

Inside it was bright and plain, with the waxed floor and the handrails along both walls and the smell of coffee and lotion and somebody’s Sunday dinner still hanging in the air.

A hymn was coming from the dayroom, where a church lady from the Methodists played the old upright piano every Sunday afternoon.

The first aide who saw us was a young one named Kayla, maybe twenty-two. She was pushing a linen cart.

She stopped dead and looked at Darby’s gown, and then her whole face opened up in a grin.

“Is this the granddaughter?” she said. “Is this Lavern’s girl? Oh, honey. Don’t you move. Don’t you take one step. I’m getting him.”

She left the cart right there in the hall and went down to his room at a near run.

I heard her voice through the door. “Lavern. Lavern, put your shoes on. You’ve got company, and she’s wearing a gown.”

The charge nurse came out from behind the station. Her name was Neva. She was close to sixty and had been at the home for twenty-five years.

She had the kind of steady face you want looking at you when something is wrong.

“Burke,” she said. “He’s been asking all day what time it’d be over. He’s had his good shirt on since breakfast. He made Kayla iron it.”

Then Kayla wheeled him out of his room and into the hallway.

He had on the pressed white shirt and his brown cardigan, the one Mom bought him at the Penney’s in Evansville a hundred years ago.

His bald head was shining under the hallway lights, and his white fringe was combed down neat. His hands were folded in his lap.

When he saw Darby, he did not say anything at first. He just looked at her.

Then his mouth started moving before any words came out, the way it does when he is trying to keep his face still.

“Well,” he said finally. “Well, look at you. Look at you in that gown.”

Darby bent down to hug him. She had to hold the cap on with one hand.

He put his arms around her and patted her back three times, the way he used to pat a calf he was proud of, and he did not let go for a while.