Chapter 6: Her Name

By Friday I had a job, a neighbor, and a plan, and I did not trust any of them.

The job was a hygienist's chair at the dental practice on Main Street, where I had worked for four years before the stroke.

The dentist had said, "Can you start Monday?" before I finished asking.

Then he had said, "We kept your license on the wall," and I had stood in the supermarket parking lot and cried into a bag of oranges.

The neighbor was the woman with the pie.

She would sit with Gene Monday through Wednesday for twenty-two dollars an hour, paid out of Gene's account, and she had named the rate herself.

"He's the only man in this town who's ever let me finish a sentence," she told me.

The plan was Friday.

At ten o'clock the grey van came up Water Street, and Neil took one look at the weather and decided against the front room.

"It's seventy degrees in October," he said. "We're doing steps."

The porch had three steps with a rail on the left.

The agency had been trying to get Gene up and down them since spring.

He had done it twice, with a hand on each side of him, and each time he had looked like a man crossing a river.

This morning Neil stood one step below him and put his hands in his pockets.

"No hands," Neil said. "I'm just here for the view."

I stood on the ramp with my coffee and held the rail.

Gene set his cane on the first step.

He lifted his good foot, then the weak one, and the weak one scraped and caught.