The Second Chair on the Key West Pier

Augusta comes back

At three thirty, Augusta came back down the gangway alone. No chair.

She walked across the pier with her arms crossed tight over her chest, like it was cold. She had on her big sunglasses, so I could not see her eyes.

“Where’s the chair, Augusta?” I asked. I kept my voice low. There was a line of people behind her coming off the ship to see the town.

“Ralph’s got his leg up on the bed with ice on it,” she said. “It’s the size of a cantaloupe. He needs to keep it up.”

“Then he doesn’t need the chair while it’s up.”

“He needs it to get to the bathroom. He needs it to get to dinner. Odette, he can’t put weight on it.” She turned to Mom. “Mama, come on aboard. You can watch the sunset from our balcony. It’s the same sun.”

Mom looked up at her a long minute. Mom’s eyes are pale blue and they do not water much, but they did a little then.

“It is not the same sun,” Mom said, very quiet. “Your daddy promised me Mallory Square, Augusta. He never got to take me. I’d like to go.”

Augusta looked out at the water. Her mouth went thin. “Ralph needs it more than you do right now. That’s all I’m saying.”

I could have said a great deal right then. I could have said Mom paid for half of Ralph’s ticket. I could have said our father would have been ashamed. I could have said it loud enough that the whole line coming off the ship would turn around and look.

I did not. You do not win anything worth having by screaming at your sister on a pier in Key West in front of a family from Ohio.

“Okay,” I said. Augusta looked at me like she was waiting for the rest of it. There was no rest of it.

“Okay,” I said again. “Go see to Ralph. We’re fine.”

She stood there a second longer. Then she went back up the gangway, and I took out my phone.

The phone call

I had saved the rental company’s number in my phone back in February, in case something broke. I called it standing in the sun at the edge of the canopy so Mom would not hear every word.

A woman answered on the second ring with a voice like she had been doing this job forever and had heard every story there was.

“I have a chair with you already,” I said. “Cabin on deck seven, picked up in Tampa on Sunday. I need a second one. Today. We’re in Key West.”

“Today,” she said. Not a question. I heard keys clicking. “Today. Pier B.”

“Ma’am, we have a driver in the Keys. He covers the Key West ships. Let me see where he is.” More clicking. “He can be at Pier B by four forty. Standard chair, same as the first one. For the rest of the sailing, with delivery, it’s eighty-five dollars. We’ll pick it up with the other one in Tampa Sunday morning.”

“That’s fine.”

“Do you want it in your cabin or brought to you on the pier?”

“The pier,” I said. “I’ll be right here.”

I read her my card number with the sun on the back of my neck and the ship’s horn going off somewhere for somebody else’s boat.

When I hung up, I sat back down by Mom. She was watching a pelican on a piling.

“Who were you calling?” she asked. “Somebody who rents chairs.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. Then she reached over and patted my knee twice, the way she used to pat it in the pew when I was ten and wiggling.

“Your daddy would have done that,” she said. “Done what?” “Not argued. Just gone and gotten another one.”