The Lift Chair That Came Home

Arlen and Peg

Friday morning, a little after eight, Arlen Cutler knocked on my storm door with his cap in his hand.

Arlen is seventy-eight, a retired soybean farmer, with a neck like a fence post and a way of standing on your porch like he’s afraid he’ll track something in. He and Peg have lived across the road for forty years.

“Millie,” he said. “I owe you an apology. Peg and I saw a van here yesterday morning. White one, Fitch Home Medical on the side. Brenda was on the porch holding the door for two fellows carrying out your chair.”

I did not say anything.

“I thought she was sending it in for service,” he said. “I told Peg that’s what it was. And then Peg said, Arlen, she took the cushion off first. People don’t take the cushion off for service.”

“No,” I said. “They don’t.”

Arlen turned his cap once all the way around in his hands. “Is it what it looks like?”

“It’s what it looks like,” I said. I did not see any reason to lie to a man who had stood in my yard in the snow.

He looked at the corner through the window, at the dents, and then at my walker. He is not a talker, Arlen. But I watched the red come up from his collar.

“Peg’s got a recliner in the basement,” he said. “It’s low. It’s no good for you. But we’ve got the lawn chair with the arms, if you want that for the porch when it warms up.”

“I’m managing,” I said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know it isn’t.”

He nodded slowly, the way a man does when he has decided to say nothing and do something. He asked me to promise I would call him, any hour, if I needed up. I promised, and I meant it, and I did not call, because I am a stubborn woman and the Lord knows it.

Jonah

Saturday afternoon a truck I knew turned into my drive, a rust-colored Ford Ranger with a bad muffler. It belongs to my grandson Jonah, who is sixteen and who works the evening shift at the Casey’s in Derby, and who has been in my life since the day he was six hours old.

He came up the steps two at a time and stopped at my door like a boy who has been sent to a principal’s office.

“Grandma,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Come in out of the cold,” I said. “You’ve done nothing to be sorry for.”

He sat at my kitchen table, in the straight chair with arms, because he would not take the one I offered him. He sat very upright with his hands between his knees, and he would not look at the corner of the front room through the doorway.

“I heard them,” he said finally. “Mom and Dad. Thursday night, after I was supposed to be asleep.”

I waited.

“I don’t want to say all of it. It isn’t mine to say.” He swallowed. “But Dad said, you can’t take it back from your own mother. And Mom said, it’s already done, Curt, and there’s no other way. And then she cried. And I’ve never heard my mom cry like that.”

I put my hand over his. He has Gene’s hands, long and square at the fingers, hands made for fixing things.

“Jonah,” I said, “your mother is not a bad person.”

“I know,” he said, and his chin shook. “That’s why it’s so bad.”

He went out to the truck and came back with an envelope from the grocery store, the kind they put your receipt in. It was thick. He put it on the table between us like a boy laying down a hand of cards.

“It’s two hundred and twelve dollars,” he said. “It’s what I have from Casey’s. I was saving for a better muffler. I want you to have it.”

“I will not take your muffler money.”

“Then I’ll drive you to Chariton,” he said. He looked at me then, finally, and he was Gene at nineteen, standing in my father’s yard asking for my hand. “I want to see Mr. Fitch. I want to hear what he says.”

I looked at that boy for a long moment.

“Get my coat,” I said.