The Second Chair on the Key West Pier

The gangway

I pushed that empty chair to the foot of the gangway myself. Mom stayed on the bench in the shade where I could see her the whole time, every second, and I told the man in the fishing shirt, who had come back to the bench, that I would be right there.

“Take your time,” he said. “I’ll keep her company.”

I told the crew at the gangway that I needed to get a message to a cabin. The young officer there was polite and quick. He made a call on his radio, and in five minutes, Augusta came down the ramp.

She stopped when she saw the chair. I took the receipt out of my pocket and put it in her hand.

“This one is Ralph’s,” I said. “It’s paid through Sunday. They’ll pick it up with Mom’s in Tampa.”

She looked at the receipt. She looked at the chair.

“Mom’s chair comes back down with her cushion on it,” I said. “And the ribbon. She likes the ribbon.”

Augusta read the receipt twice. I watched her read it. Her lips moved a little on the eighty-five, the way Dad’s used to when he did figures in his head.

“Odette,” she said. “Go on,” I said. “Ralph’s waiting.”

She didn’t say anything else. She took the new chair by the handles and pushed it up the gangway. I walked back to Mom.

Ten minutes later, one of the crew came down the ramp pushing Mom’s chair, cushion and all, yellow ribbon fluttering on the left handle. He parked it beside the bench, set the brakes, and gave me a little salute.

Mom looked at it for a long moment. Then she looked at me.

“Well,” she said. “Help me up, honey. Let’s go see what your daddy owed me.”

The waterfront

I pushed my mother along the waterfront in Key West. It is not a long way from Pier B to Mallory Square. You can walk it in ten minutes if you are not pushing anyone and not stopping.

We stopped about every twenty feet.

We stopped for a man selling conch fritters out of a paper boat, and Mom had two, and got grease on her chin, and I wiped it off with a napkin like she used to wipe mine.

We stopped at the edge of the water to look at a sailboat with red sails going out past the channel marker. We stopped to let a rooster cross in front of us, because Key West has chickens running loose everywhere like they pay taxes.

“Ellis would have shot that rooster,” Mom said. “And then felt bad and buried it.” “He would have.”

“Push me closer to the water, Odette. I want to smell it.”

I pushed her as close as the railing let me. She leaned forward in the chair with both hands on the armrests and breathed in deep, slow, the way she breathes in a field of cut hay.

“Salt,” she said. “I never smelled the ocean till this Sunday. Isn’t that something?” “That’s something.”

“I’m glad it was you that pushed me here,” she said. Then she looked out at the water, so I wouldn’t have to say anything back.