Tuesdays in Dad’s Old Aisles

Vera is Neil’s mother, Uncle Vince’s widow. She is seventy-eight and lives in a brick ranch house on Walnut Street with a wall of African violets in the sunroom. She has run her family’s Sunday dinners for fifty years.

“Meredith,” she said. “I hear you are taking Art to the store.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Neil says nothing about it.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Hm,” she said, which in my family is a whole paragraph.

I stood in my kitchen with the phone against my ear. Then she said something I did not expect.

“Vince used to say that store ran on two things. Coffee and your father.”

I did not know what to say, so I said nothing, and that was the right thing.

“Bring him Sunday,” she said. “I’ll make the roast.”

I did. Neil was not there. Vera did not mention his absence. She cut Dad’s roast into small pieces without being asked and put the gravy on the side.

The fifth Tuesday came up clear and cold, with a skin of frost on the Buick. The sky over the grain elevator was the hard bright blue you get in Illinois in early October.

Dad wore his tan zip jacket. I wore the burgundy cardigan. He had been up since five, which was a bad sign, and he kept asking if Vince was opening.

“Neil’s opening,” I said.

“Good boy,” he said, and a block later, “Is Vince opening?” I answered the same way. Patience is the one skill I have learned in two months that I would not trade.

A black sedan I did not know was parked by the cart corral. Inside the front doors a man in a gray quarter-zip stood near the courtesy desk with a tablet.

He was about forty-five, with a trim haircut and the careful friendliness of someone trained in it. He looked at Dad on my arm, and his eyes did a small calculation.

“Morning,” I said, and kept walking.

Norma was at register one. She saw the man, and she saw us, and I watched her decide something. She set down her scanner and said, loud and clear, “Morning, Mr. Brandt!”

“Norma,” Dad said, delighted. “How’s the hip?”

“Mom’s walking to the mailbox, Mr. Brandt. And the one down the road.”

“Warm water,” Dad said. “Tell her.”

The man with the tablet watched this exchange, and I saw a question gathering behind his pleasant face.

We went down aisle six. Dad squared the tomato soup. Agnes, who was not supposed to be in aisle six, appeared from nowhere with a feather duster and began dusting the end cap beside him.

Walter came through with a pallet. He stopped, set the brake, and began straightening cans on the opposite shelf. It was not his job. He was nowhere near his job.

The man came to the end of the aisle and stopped. I kept my hand on Dad’s elbow and my voice even. I had planned what I would say if he asked us to leave. I would say I understood, and I would take my father home.