The Man I Prayed for by Name

Maren and the Stool

I do not remember crossing the basement. I remember that I was suddenly in the church kitchen, on the metal stool by the dishwasher, with both hands flat on my knees as though I were afraid they might float off.

Maren came in and shut the door. She pulled over the other stool and sat facing me and put her clipboard on the counter.

“I can’t tell you who he is without telling you the rest of it,” I said.

“Then tell me the rest of it.”

So I did. I told her about Nadine and the curve past the creamery, the envelope in the drawer, the index card in my Bible, the fifteen years of mornings at the window. I had never said it all in order to anyone but Elton, and my voice had a crack in it by the end like an old plate.

Maren did not interrupt once. When I was done she took off her glasses, wiped them on her sleeve, and put them back on.

“Do you want me to take you off Thursdays?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to send him to the pantry in the next town?”

“Good heavens. No.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I think I asked for something fifteen years ago,” I said, “and I’m not sure it looks like what I asked for.”

“Here’s what I can do,” she said. “I can stand next to you at the bagging table every Thursday so you never have to write his name down. If you want to leave the room, put a hand on the counter and I’ll cover for you, no questions.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s what I’ve got. I can’t pray it out of you. But I can stand next to you while you do.”

I cried then, which I had not done at that pantry in six years of Thursdays, with a woman I had known thirty years patting my shoulder with one hand and keeping her clipboard dry with the other.

When I had finished, Maren said in her ordinary voice, “I’ve got forty bags still to pack and Gladys is going to run out of corn.” At the door she stopped. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s the only one who needed a Thursday.”