The Second Chair on the Key West Pier

Waiting

The next hour was the longest of the trip, and also one of the sweetest, and I did not know that second part until later.

Mom and I sat on the bench under the canopy and watched people. A little boy in a shark hat fell asleep on his father’s shoulder. Two old men argued about a fishing boat. A girl from the ship’s crew walked past with a cooler and gave Mom a cold towel without being asked.

“Everybody’s so kind here,” Mom said. “Most people are kind, Mom.”

“Most people are,” she agreed. “Your sister is kind too. You remember that.” I didn’t answer. I wasn’t ready to.

Mom talked about Dad. About the time he drove forty miles in an ice storm to get her a pack of saltines when she was pregnant with me. About the summer he built her a clothesline out of old well pipe, so tall she needed a stepladder to reach it, and he never once admitted he measured wrong.

“He’d have hated this heat,” she said. “He’d have complained the whole way and loved every minute.”

“He’d have worn black socks with his sandals.”

She laughed so hard she had to stop and breathe. A woman on the next bench laughed too, just from hearing her.

I held the water to her wrist again. Her ankles were not any worse. I checked them twice without her catching me.

At four thirty-five, a man came walking down the pier pushing a folded chair in front of him. He had a clipboard tucked under his arm and a sunburn on the back of his neck that said he had lived here a long time.

“Odette?” “That’s me.”

He unfolded the chair right there, popped the seat flat, set the footrests, and locked the brakes. He had me sign on the clipboard. Then he looked at Mom, and then at me, and then at the ship.

“This one for her?” he asked. “No,” I said. “This one’s for my brother-in-law.”

He looked at me a second longer. He had been doing this job a long time too. “Good luck,” he said, and he meant it.