Chapter 22: Boxes

Six weeks after the surgery, my landlord let me have the two-bedroom on the first floor at the same rent as my flat, and I didn't ask why.

Cal said it was the casserole.

I said it was the nurse who lived above him and told everyone he was a saint.

On a gray Saturday, my father's truck pulled up to the curb on Orchard Street with the tailgate down.

Maisie stood beside me on the sidewalk in a cardigan, with her hand on her side.

She was walking without the cane now.

"You don't have to do this," she said.

"I don't mind."

"I mind a little."

"You're allowed."

My father got out of the truck.

He wore his work jeans and an old flannel, and he looked ten years older than he had in August.

He nodded to us both and went around to the back.

I had told him the rules by phone, two days earlier, in one sentence.

You can carry Maisie's boxes, and you can't say a word unless I ask.

He had been silent for a long time and then said, "Okay."

Cal came down the front steps with his sleeves pushed up.

"Mr. Hallam."

My father nodded.

"The stairs have a bad spot on the fourth step."

My father nodded again.

Cal looked at me over his shoulder with the face he makes when he's trying not to laugh.

My father carried the boxes.

He carried sixty-one of them, in and out, up the walk and through the door and into the room at the end of the hall.

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