All stories › Family Drama › The Thursday Lid › Episode 3
Before Two
Episode 3 of 3 of The Thursday Lid by Linda Marchetti · free to read
Rita’s knitting bag settled the matter, on the front walk at seven-thirty, by being handed to me.
“You can come,” she said, “if you hold that and you sit in the back and you don’t say a word about my hair.”
“I like your hair.”
“That’s a word about it.” She got in the front. Dad backed out of the driveway with both hands on the wheel and did not honk, and she said, “See, he can do it,” and Dad said nothing, and we went.
Dad drove the highway the way he drives the highway. Mirror, signal, merge. I watched him do it from the back seat like a driving examiner and he knew I was doing it and let me. Rita talked. She had a port, she said, and tapped a spot below her collarbone, and a bag of something they hung for three hours, and today was nine of twelve, and the nurses were nice and the parking was a crime.
“Your mother would have driven me,” she said, to the windshield. “So he does.”
Dad parked in the visitor lot at 8:51. I know because he kept the stub.
The waiting room had a television nobody watched and a coffee machine that took quarters. Dad sat in the same chair he always sat in. I could tell because he did not look for it. He took a crossword out of his jacket and did not do it.
“Since July,” he said, when I asked. “Her daughter’s out of state. She’s got a son who calls.”
“You could have let me drive her.”
“You work Thursdays.”
“I could have taken Thursdays off.”
“Then you’d be sitting here,” he said, “instead of me. What’s the difference.” He filled in one word. “I like sitting here. I’m no use anyplace else.”
I went to the coffee machine so he would not see my face, and put in my quarters, and stood there with my back to him while the cup filled, and that was the one time. When I turned around he was doing the crossword.
At 12:40 Rita came out with a bandage below her collarbone and her coat over her arm. We were home by 1:50. Dad took the snap case out of the door pocket in his own driveway and swallowed the pill dry, standing by the car, and said, “Before two,” and Rita said, “What is that,” and he said, “None of your business,” and she said, “Good.”
Saturday.
Carol’s car was in the driveway when I got there, and the box was on the counter. It was bigger than the organizer by a lot. Gray, with a little screen, and a plug. She had read the instructions twice. Dad’s keys were on the hook by the door, which they never are, and Dad was in his chair in the living room with the paper, not reading it.
“Thursday morning,” Carol said, tapping the empty lid. “Why’s Thursday empty and the rest are full.”
“He takes it later on Thursdays. Pharmacist said it’s fine before two.”
“Why later.”
I did not answer. Carol looked at me, and then at the living room, and then she said, “I still need his insurance card,” and went out to the garage.
She was out there a long time for an insurance card. She came back with the stubs in one hand and Rita’s appointment card in the other and the snap case with my marker on it, and she put all three down on the counter next to the gray box, and did not say anything, and the doorbell rang.
Rita Sheffield stood on the step with the blue dish again, full, and looked past me and saw Carol, whom she had known since Carol was in a stroller. “Well,” she said. “The city one.”
“Hi, Mrs. Sheffield.”
“Tell your father Thursday, seven-thirty, and tell him the honking was fine this week, I’ll give him that.”
She left. Carol stood there with the dish in her hands. She looked at the dish, and at the card on the counter, and at the living room, where Dad had put the paper down.
“Every Thursday,” Dad said. “Since July. She didn’t want it told.”
Carol put the dish down very carefully. Then she unplugged the gray box and put it back in its carton, and folded the flaps in the way that means it is not being thrown away.
“I’m keeping this in my trunk,” she said.
“Fine.”
“And you’re home by two.”
“Pharmacist said before two.”
“Then before two.” She took the keys off the hook and held them out, and he did not get up right away, and she did not put them down.
“Sorry about the honking,” Dad said, to nobody in the room.
Next Thursday I drove past at seven-thirty on my way to work, slow, the way Carol would have. Rita came down her steps with the knitting bag. Dad backed out with both hands on the wheel.
He did not honk.