The Chair

It takes Papa several tries to get out of his rocker. He plants his two hands on the arms of the chair and pushes his lanky body to an upright position. He looks down at his slippered feet as if to give them the order to move, to walk the few steps from his chair to the bathroom. One foot moves forward; one arm reaches for the corner of the refrigerator. Another step and his bony fingers wrap around the edge of the door. There is a sigh when he reaches the toilet and then another when the weak stream of urine hits the bowl. The toilet flushes and he retraces his steps back to his chair.

“Can I get you something, Papa?” I’m seated at the kitchen table. My algebra book is open but the worksheet in front of me is blank. “A glass of water? Some saltines?”

“No,” he answers. His eyes are closed as he slowly rocks back and forth. “Well, maybe you could get me a glass of beer.”

I look at the clock. “Mama will be home in half an hour. You know she doesn’t want you drinking when…”

“Just a small glass, Nora. It’ll be all gone before she walks through the door.”

Winter:

It’s been a long winter. The snow comes day after day, covering the sidewalk from our steps to the street. Mr. Moreau, our landlord, makes a pass with his shovel after each storm. But the January winds blow the snow back onto the walkway. Papa spends his days sitting in his chair next to the stove, smoking his Camels and listening to the crackling transistor radio.

At the end of the month, the January thaw finally comes. The sun shines for several days and the walkway is clear. One Saturday morning, Papa pulls his rubbers over his shoes and slips into his brown overcoat.  “I’m going out,” he announces. “I’m going down to the store to see the men. Get some fresh air. Get the hell outta here.”

An hour later, he turns up the walkway, pausing at the bottom of the four steps. He holds the railing and climbs to the covered porch. He looks at the aluminum chair that’s sitting in the sunshine. But he shakes his head and places his hand around the doorknob. There’s a sigh as he comes into the kitchen.

“Can I help you, Papa?”

“No,” he says. “I’m alright.” He stops to open the refrigerator door, takes a can of beer from each coat pocket and pushes them behind the milk bottle. A few more shuffles and he sits down. His eyes close and he’s asleep, still wearing his rubbers and coat.

Spring:

My mother gets up earlier now. She gets Papa out of bed, takes him to the bathroom, dresses him, helps him to his chair.  When she makes her lunch, she makes a second sandwich, wraps it in waxed paper and places it on the top shelf of the refrigerator. “I’ve made your sandwich for lunch. Nora will make you breakfast before she leaves. You’ve got your radio, your smokes. Anything else you need?”

“No, Peg. Thank you.”

“And Myra will stop by at noon to check on you and then Nora will be home right after school,” she adds as she heads out the door. 

“Hmmm,” he says.

Before I leave, I make him toast and coffee and tell him to come sit with me at the table. 

“I’m not hungry right now. You go along. And don’t be late after school, hear?”

But I will be late. I’ll have cheerleading practice or the school newspaper or a chance meeting with a certain boy at the library. But early or late, it makes no difference. The toast will still be on the plate, the coffee cold with blotches of muddled cream floating in the cup. And Papa will be in his chair, eyes closed.

I come home shortly after four o’clock. The kitchen is dim, the winter light unable to reach past the covered porch to the window. I spread my books on the kitchen table so my mother will think I’ve been studying. “Papa, wake up. You didn’t eat breakfast. Your sandwich is still in the fridge. Mom’s not going to be happy. Do you hear me?” 

His chair begins to rock.

Summer:

It’s harder and harder for my mother to wake Papa in the morning. Sometimes I have to help her get him up and out to his chair. Sometimes she has to change his sheets and use the air freshener spray around his bed. She’s always looking at the kitchen clock, afraid to be late one more time. Worried that her passengers will be waiting in the driveway. Afraid that they might have to find a last-minute ride to the greenhouse.

My mother is tired.  She gets up once, twice each night to check on Papa, to listen for his slow breathing in the darkened bedroom. She has dark circles under her eyes and her corduroy pants and flannel shirt are a size too big for her already thin body. One night after supper, when she finally gets Papa settled, she calls her sister. She stretches the telephone cord from the kitchen wall into the living room and closes the door. Her voice starts off low and then gets louder. “Ellie, I don’t know what else to do. Please!” It’s a short conversation. When she comes back into the kitchen, I can see that she’s been crying.

The next day she does not go to work. She gets Papa up and dressed and sits with him at the kitchen table until he’s eaten half his toast and his coffee cup is empty. She helps him back to his chair, talking to him in her low, steady voice. Then she gets the brown suitcase out of the bedroom closet and packs it with shirts and pants and underwear from his bureau.

Uncle Norman arrives at noon with his friend, Red. Together they get Papa up and then down the steps and into the passenger seat of the station wagon. “He’s going to stay with Aunt Ellie and Uncle Norman,” my mother tells me. “They can keep an eye on him. I can’t lose any more time at work.”

 She stops to see him each afternoon on her way home. She sits next to his bed, watching him sleep. Listening to the rasp in his chest. She gets home late, stopping at the A & P for milk and bread or the laundromat where the clothes have been washed and folded. She warms up the leftover meatloaf or heats up a can of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti & Meatballs. We sit down to eat, just the two of us at the kitchen table.

Late summer:

I come home from my shift at the A & W, my face and arms burned from the August sun. The front of my vest is damp from the root beer that sloshes over the frosted mugs; there are still ketchup packets in my apron pocket. My mother’s car is not in the driveway. I use my key to unlock the door; she hasn’t been here. The overhead light is off and the breakfast dishes are still in the sink. I sit at the kitchen table and count my tip money. Lots of change, some dollar bills and a folded note asking if I have a boyfriend. When she finally comes through the door, she’s dressed in slacks and a cotton blouse. No work clothes today.

“What’s wrong? 

 “Aunt Ellie called me at work. Said they had to call the ambulance for Pa. Trouble with his breathing. Wash up and change and we’ll go see him. Visiting hours are until eight.” 

I have never been to a hospital. It is a place of quiet whispers, slow slipper-shuffling and cleaning-cabinet smells. His room is at the end of the hallway, away from the activity of the nurse’s station and the voices from other rooms. His blanket-covered body is a long ridge down the middle of the hospital bed, ending with two white lumps of feet at the bottom. His sunken eyes beneath the bushy eyebrows are closed. Sideburns connect his gray hair to the stubble on his face. I pull up the chair and sit close to the side of the bed. “It’s me, Papa. It’s Nora.”

His eyelids flutter and there’s a glint of blue. He nods and raises a hand a few inches off the bed. I reach for it. His long fingers find mine.

 A nurse taps at the door and enters to adjust his pillow and take his pulse. “Daniel, you need to drink some water.” She raises the glass with the bent straw to his lips. He takes one sip. “Maybe you could get him to drink,” she says to me. “Maybe he would do that for you.”

“Papa, please. Just a little more.”

There’s a slight shake of his head; he gives my hand a squeeze. His eyes blink, once then twice, as if he’s saying goodnight to me. I watch his chest rise and fall until he is asleep. I place his hand beneath the sheet and brush the stubble of his cheek with my lips.  

“Goodnight,” I whisper.

Homecoming:

Papa comes back to the neighborhood at the end of August in a black hearse. It passes slowly by the house at #45 where he lived with his parents, his sister and brothers and for a while, his wife and two young girls. He comes home to the Dion Funeral Home, two houses up from the tenement where he’s lived with my mother and me for as long as I can remember. 

The August night is hot. Inside the funeral home, floor fans sway back and forth. But the room gets hotter and hotter as it fills with more people. I’ve never seen a dead person before. I’ve only seen dead in the movies where cowboys and Indians shoot at each other and end up in a heap on the ground or bent over a painted pony. But my Papa is inside a wooden box. His silver hair is neatly parted and combed to one side. There’s no sign of stubble on his thin face. He’s dressed in his Sunday best: dark blue suit, white shirt, striped tie. A black rosary winds between those long  fingers. 

My mother and Aunt Ellie stand beside the casket as friends and neighbors and people I don’t know pay their respects. Aunt Kitty is seated to the side of the casket. And I am in the chair directly behind her. It is my job, my mother instructs me, to help her with her walker should she need to get up to use the restroom. There are empty chairs on either side of her. A place for her friends to come and sit. Suzie McKenny and Angie Trainor and Laura Peters all hold her hands. They lean in to whisper in her ear, shake their heads back and forth. 

I watch my mother closely as she greets people. She shifts from foot to foot, nods at each story or kind word that a caller offers. There is a thank you, a thin smile before she turns to greet the next person in line. Fire Chief Clancy arrives with a contingency from the department. They’re dressed in their parade best. They must be sweating inside those woolen suits, I think. Each man pauses at the coffin and offers a salute. Frank Grimes comes in, representing the state of New Hampshire, honoring the years that Papa was a member of the state legislature. Mayor Breen and members of the city council speak in low voices to my mother and my aunt.

I hear Bridgie Bennet before I see her. Her voice booms ahead of her as she makes her way down the entry foyer to the parlor. She pauses at the door, surveys the room and then her body sways from side to side as she walks directly toward the casket. She takes a rosary from her pocketbook and uses the crucifix to make the sign of the cross. Her eyes close and the pursed lips move ever so slightly. There’s another sign of the cross before she turns to my mother and Aunt Ellie. She wraps her body around the two of them.

“God bless you for your troubles. Sorry for your loss.” There is the faintest hint of the brogue in her voice.

“Thank you for coming, Bridgie,” my mother says. 

“Yes, thank you,” Aunt Ellie echoes.

Bridgie turns to Aunt Kitty, nods at me and settles herself into the empty armchair.

“Good evening, Miss Bennett,” I say. 

“ Not much of an evening. But hello to you anyway.”

“Oh, Kit,” she whispers. “You got quite a turnout tonight. Seems like half the town is here. The mayor and selectmen and fire chief.”

Aunt Kitty nods and opens her mouth to speak. But Bridgie keeps on talking.

“Daniel was a good man. He didn’t have an easy life but he always did right by you and the two girls. And all those years taking care of Peggy after all her troubles. After what happened, you know?”

My ears tune in to Bridgie’s words. I know my Papa took care of my mother and her sister after his wife ran away with another man. I know that Aunt Kitty helped him raise the girls as if they were her own. But what’s this about my mother and her troubles?

Bridgie pauses to look around the crowded room, to take a deep breath before continuing. “Yes, he did his best to look after Peggy and to raise Nora after that business with Mickey. Daniel made sure that no one ever said anything bad about her husband, about his dying…his situation,” she whispers.

I am sitting just inches from these two women.  I am listening so hard. What troubles? What situation? I lean forward in my chair but their conversation stops.

The room becomes quiet as Father Polito makes his way toward the casket. His tall, black figure stops to say a few words to my mother and aunt and then he turns to face the crowded room. “In the name of the Father…”

Goodnight:

I’m sitting on the porch steps when my mother finally comes up the driveway. She’s walking slowly with her head down. I can see the glow of a cigarette between her fingers. She doesn’t see me sitting in the dark.

“You must be tired,” I say.

She looks up at me and takes a drag on her Lucky Strike. “I am. This dying thing takes so long.” 

She starts up the steps, past me. 

“It’s hot in there,” I say. “Even with the lights off. There’s a little breeze out here.”

She goes through the door and switches on the overhead light. I hear the fridge door open and close, a bottle cap clinks on the counter. She rummages in the cupboard for a glass. The kitchen chair scrapes the floor as she sits down to drink her beer. I join her at the table. 

“Bridgie was talkative tonight,” I say.

“That old bitty is a gossip,” my mother replies. “Who was she talking about tonight?”

“Actually, she was offering Aunt Kitty her condolences. Telling her what a good man Papa was to raise you and Aunt Ellie.”

“Yes… he was a good father. Did the best he knew how. And Aunt Kitty was a good sister to help him out with our raising. She and Pa did their best.”

She lights a cigarette, exhales the smoke slowly and takes another long drink of beer. “What else did old Bridgie say?”

“That Papa took care of you all those years after your troubles.” 

“After my troubles? God, Nora. Everyone has troubles. Fact of life.”

“And she mentioned the situation with my father.”

“What situation?”

I shrug my shoulders. “You tell me, Mom. What was the situation with my father?”

“He died. Your father died. When you were little. That’s the situation.”

“And she said Papa never let anyone say anything bad about the situation. People don’t say bad things about dying, do they? Why would people say bad things about my father dying?”

She stands up, lumbers to the fridge and uncaps another beer. “It’s late. We have to be up early in the morning for the Mass.”

“Can you tell me again how my father died?”

“Oh Christ, Nora. I’ve told you this before. The furnace went out. He went down the cellar to get it running. The stairs were old and there wasn’t a railing. He fell. It was an accident. He fell and hit his head on the cellar floor. He died. That’s it.”

“That’s very sad,” I say. “Everyone must have been upset. But why would anyone say anything bad about his dying from an accident?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago. And that old Bridgie doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Oughta keep her mouth shut.” She starts to head toward her bedroom then pauses. “Nora…”

“Yes?”

She takes a deep breath and looks around the kitchen. At the fridge, the stove, the open windows and the night outside. At Papa’s chair.  She looks at everything but me.

“What?” I ask. “What were you going to say?”

She continues to shuffle to her room. “Don’t forget to turn off the lights.” 

After years of raising a family, teaching seventh-grade English and managing her own business, Nancy McAtavey has returned to a long ago passion—writing. She lives in the seacoast of New Hampshire with her husband and a room full of writing journals. Her stories have appeared in Storyhouse and The Sopris Sun.