The Second Chair on the Key West Pier

The sunset

The four of us watched the sun go down together on the edge of Mallory Square.

Mom in her chair with the yellow ribbon. Ralph in his rented chair with the ice dripping through the towel onto the bricks. Augusta kneeling on the bricks between them, holding Mom’s hand. Me on the low wall, holding Mom’s other hand.

The sun went down orange and then red and then a kind of pink I have never seen over a cornfield, and when the last edge of it slipped under the water, the whole square clapped. People clap for the sunset in Key West. I had read that, and I did not believe it until I heard it.

Mom clapped too. Slowly. Her hands are not strong anymore.

Then she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

“Ellis,” she said, very soft, not to any of us. “I made it.”

Augusta put her head down on Mom’s knee. Ralph put his big hand on Augusta’s back. I sat there and let the tears come, and I did not fuss with my face, and nobody told me to.

The walk back

We went back to the ship slowly, the four of us, two chairs side by side on the waterfront, while the lights came up along the pier.

Augusta pushed Ralph. I pushed Mom. The two of us went shoulder to shoulder like we used to walk to the school bus, back when she carried my lunch box because I always dropped it.

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you,” Augusta said, halfway back. “About the chair. About anything. I never ask you anything.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “I’m going to try.” “I know you are.”

“You didn’t yell at me,” she said. “On the pier. I was waiting for you to yell. I almost wanted you to.”

“Would it have helped?” She thought about it. “No,” she said. “The receipt helped.”

Ralph laughed out loud. Then he winced, because laughing jostled his knee, and then he laughed again anyway.

At the foot of the gangway, the same young officer was there. He looked at the two chairs side by side and smiled.

“Good sunset, folks?”

“The best one,” Mom said. “Forty-seven years late and worth every day of it.”