The Class Ring in the Nursing Home Hallway

“I think so,” I said. “I think Grandpa’s taking care of it. That’s what he does.”

When Dorrie came out of his room, her eyes were red and she had a tissue balled up in one hand.

She did not have the checkbook. She came straight down the hallway to the dayroom, and she went to Darby first, not to me.

“Honey,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That was a wrong thing I did to you, and I knew it while I was doing it, and I did it anyway. You didn’t deserve that.”

Darby stood up in her gown and hugged her. She did not say it was fine this time.

She just hugged her aunt for a long time in the middle of the dayroom, with the old people pretending not to watch.

Then Dorrie looked at me over Darby’s shoulder.

“Can we go outside a minute, Burke,” she said.

We went out and sat on one of the benches by the flagpole. It was close to six.

The sun was going gold over the wheat across the road, which was turning, and we would be cutting it in another month.

Dorrie did not look at me. She looked at the wheat.

“I’m here three times a week,” she said. “Every week. For two years. I do every bill. I fight with the pharmacy. I sit through the care meetings. I wash his good shirts at my house because the laundry here shrinks them.”

“I know you do,” I said.

“Darrel’s hours got cut in March. We’re behind on things. I’m working at the dollar store nights. And I was sitting at my kitchen table in April with Dad’s statement, and it’s the only money I ever see anymore, it’s the only money that’s ever not short.”

She wiped her nose.

“And I thought, Callan needs a truck to get to his job. And I thought, I’m the one who’s here. I’m the one who does all of it. I thought my boy was owed something for all of it. I told myself that. I told myself that for a month.”

I sat with that a while. I could have said a lot of things.

I could have said that it was not her money to decide that with, and that she had looked my daughter in the face in a church parking lot. She already knew all of that. Dad had already said it.

“You’re right that you’re here more than I am,” I said instead. “You’re right about that. I should have been carrying more of it. That’s on me.”

She looked at me then, surprised.

“I’ll start coming Wednesdays,” I said. “Every week. And I’ll take the pharmacy off your hands. I can fight with a pharmacy. I fight with truckers all day.”

She laughed, sort of, through the tissue. Then she put her head down on my shoulder, the way she used to when we were kids and something went wrong, and we sat there by the flagpole until Jill came out to tell us Dad wanted his supper.

The next Sunday, after church, we went out to the home. All of us.

Jill and Darby and me, and Dorrie and Darrel and Callan, who had not said much all week and looked at the floor the whole drive over.

Dad was at the dayroom table in his white shirt and his brown cardigan, with his checkbook open in front of him and a ballpoint pen. Neva had found him a clipboard to steady his hand.