The Lift Chair That Came Home

Brenda

She came Wednesday at a quarter to six, which is the hour I used to set the table for her when she was in high school and had a part in the play. I learned later that Thelma Haas had telephoned her Tuesday noon and said one sentence: “Your mother has her chair back, and you have a day to come and see it.”

I heard her car in the drive. I knew the sound of it, the loose belt that Curt keeps meaning to fix. I was sitting in my chair in the front room with my afghan across my knees and the lamp on, and I heard her car door, and then I heard nothing for a very long time.

She stood on the porch. I could see her shape through the storm door. She had her coat buttoned wrong, and she was holding her purse in both hands in front of her like a woman at a bus stop.

She came in without knocking. She had a key. She stopped in the doorway of the front room.

She looked at the corner, at the chair, at me sitting in it. I watched her face go through three or four things.

“Mama,” she said. Her voice was very small. “Who paid for it?”

“Come into the kitchen,” I said. “I have the kettle on.”

I took my time getting up. I wanted her to see. I pushed the button, and the seat tipped, and I rose with my hands free, and I watched her watch me do it.

She followed me to the table. The two cups were out. She looked at them, and I saw that she knew how long they had been there.

I poured. I put my hand on the table beside my cup, palm up, the way I did when she was little and wouldn’t say.

“Tell me,” I said.

She told me. It took a long time and I will give it to you short.

Curt’s hours at the implement plant in Pella had been cut in September, from forty to twenty-four, and then in December he’d been told it was likely permanent. They were three months behind on the house on Linden Street. The bank’s letter had come the Friday before she phoned Mr. Fitch. The past-due amount was $1,742, plus a late fee of $107.

That is $1,849, to the dollar.

“I didn’t plan it,” she said. “I want you to know that. I didn’t sit down one night and plan to take your chair. I looked at the letter and did the math. And then I thought, well, there’s Mama’s chair, it’s on my card, I could have the money back in a week.”

“You called Mr. Mabry on Monday,” I said. “To drive me to Knoxville.”

She flinched. “That was the plan, yes. I knew I couldn’t do it if you were there.”

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

She put both hands over her face. When she took them away, she looked fourteen.

“Because at Daddy’s funeral I stood up at the lunch and said I would look after you, Mama. I said you’d never have to worry about a thing as long as I was alive. Everyone heard. Thelma Haas heard. And then Curt’s hours got cut, and I thought, I can’t be the one who says, Mama, I can’t. I can’t be the one who asks you.”

“So you took it instead,” I said.

“I told myself you didn’t need it.” Her voice broke. “I told Mr. Fitch you didn’t need it, on the phone and again on your porch, and I said it three times, to make it true. Mama, I would rather have been a thief than a daughter who asks.”

I let her cry. When she was done I handed her a dish towel, and she wiped her face like she was seven.

“I should be angry at you,” I said. “I was. I want to be clear. I sat on that couch for an hour and forty minutes and could not get up. If I hadn’t had two throw pillows and a stubborn streak, I do not know what I would have done.”

“I know.”

“You don’t,” I said, not unkindly. “You can’t. You haven’t been seventy-nine.”

She nodded.

“But I will tell you what I decided. I decided that I have one daughter. And that I would rather have her at my table, owing me, than gone.”

I took her hand.