The Turkey Dad Carved One More Time

I sat down on the basement steps and held that knife in my lap for a while. I am not ashamed to tell you I said a prayer.

Not a big one. I just asked for a good day for him, and for the van not to give me any trouble.

Then I put the box on the passenger seat and drove the four blocks to the nursing home.

It was a quarter to twelve when I walked in. The halls smelled of turkey from the kitchen there and of the floor cleaner they use on everything.

Somebody had put paper turkeys on the doors, the kind kids make by tracing their hands.

Jadwiga was at the nurses’ station with her reading glasses on her head and a cup of coffee in her hand. She saw me and set it down.

“He’s been dressed since nine,” she said. “He wouldn’t let the aide put him in the sweatpants. He wanted the white shirt and the brown cardigan, and he made me comb his hair twice. I’ve never seen him so fussy.”

She pulled out the leave book, a big black binder, and turned it around for me. I wrote his name and the date and the time out, twelve o’clock, and where he was going, and when I expected him back.

“His one o’clock is in here,” she said, and she handed me a small envelope with his name and the pill written on it. “Give it with food. And he’s on a soft diet, so the turkey needs to be cut small for him.”

“He’ll cut it smaller than anybody in the building,” I said.

She laughed out loud at that. “I suppose he will,” she said.

Dad was in his wheelchair by the window of his room when I got there. The sun was coming in across his lap.

His white hair was combed straight back, the way he wore it to church, and his brown cardigan was buttoned all the way to the top.

He saw the gray box under my arm and he did not say a word. He held out his right hand, palm up, and I set the box on his knees.

He opened it with one hand. That took him a while, and I did not help. He got the latch up with his thumb and lifted the lid and looked at the knife in its towel for a long time.

“Sharp?” he asked.

“I didn’t touch it,” I said. “I figured you’d want to check it yourself.”

He ran his thumb crosswise over the edge, the way he always had, never along it. Then he nodded once. “Good,” he said. “Go.”

Jadwiga walked us out to the front door and held it open. A couple of the other residents in the dayroom waved at him, and one old man called out, “Save me a drumstick, Stan.”

The air outside was cold and bright, and the sky was the hard blue it only gets in November after a snow. Dad turned his face up into the sun and closed his eyes.

“Long time,” he said.

“I know, Dad,” I said.

I backed the van up to the curb the way the man had shown me, put it in park, set the brake, and hit the button.

The side door slid open and the ramp unfolded down to the sidewalk with a little hum.

I rolled him up the ramp backward, slow, the way I had practiced on my husband. I locked the wheels.