Tuesdays in Dad’s Old Aisles

He stopped in front of the tomato soup. He took one can down and looked at it. Then he turned it, label out, and set it on the shelf.

He took the next one. And the next.

“Somebody’s been shoving these in crooked,” he muttered.

“Probably the Tuesday truck,” I said.

“Probably,” he said, and I heard how pleased he was to have somebody to blame.

He worked down the shelf with the slow, sure rhythm of a man who has done this ten thousand times. Chicken noodle. Beef barley. Cream of mushroom, two in each hand. A little line of red and white, perfectly level.

“Label out,” he said to me over his shoulder. “Always label out. Customer reads the front, Meredith.”

“I know, Dad. You taught me.”

“I did not.”

“You did. I was nine.”

He looked at me. “You were nine.”

“I was nine, and I wanted to ride in the cart.”

“You rode in the cart,” he said, and he laughed. A real laugh, from low in his chest. I had not heard it since August.

I stood there in aisle six holding a shopping cart with nothing in it, and I cried a little where he could not see.

Agnes was working register two. She is sixty-one, she has been at the store since before the sale, and she has the kind of face you want to tell your troubles to. She saw us and lifted two fingers in a little wave.

She did not look toward the office. Neither did I.

But I knew the glass office was up there above the produce, with its venetian blinds. I knew Neil could see everything from it.

I kept thinking, any second now. Any second the door will open and he will come down the stairs.

The blinds moved once, and that was all. Nobody came down.

We stayed fifty minutes. Dad straightened every can in aisle six and half of aisle seven. When he got tired, he sat on the little step stool that lives by the crackers, and Walter brought him a cup of coffee in a paper cup.

“Morning, boss,” Walter said.

Dad did not know Walter’s last name. I could see that. He looked up at him with polite warmth, a man being nice to a good kid, and said, “Morning, son. They keeping you busy?”

“Yes sir. The Tuesday truck was late.”

“It always is,” Dad said, deeply satisfied.

I paid for a quart of milk, because I had to buy something, and Agnes bagged it without a word.

Then she slipped a stick of spearmint gum into the bag, the kind Dad always buys. She did not say anything. She just tucked it in.

That was the first Tuesday.

On the way home Dad slept against the window with his hands folded, and he looked ten years younger. I drove the speed limit and I did not turn on the radio.