Gary Novak held the paper out to me through the open window of his Cadillac, and I took it with a hand that I noticed was steady. It was a petition, three pages, stapled at the corner, with the seal of the Scott County court at the top and my name in capital letters. Petition for the appointment of a conservator for Howard A. Lindquist, an allegedly incapacitated person. Under it, a line for a co petitioner, left blank, and a date. Tomorrow. The first petitioner was my son. “Howard, I did not sign,” Gary said. “I told him to go to hell. I am sorry that it took me three weeks.”
We sat in his Cadillac in my own driveway with the engine running, two old men who had known each other as fathers of schoolmates for thirty years. Gary told me what Eric had said. That I was losing my mind. That I had put the burner on and forgotten it, that I had wandered. None of it was true. That I was the one who had chosen the lock for the back door. “Eric said you needed to be protected,” Gary said. “He said once you were under a conservator, the house could be sold and you could go somewhere nice. He needed two witnesses. I was the second.”
I read the petition twice, slowly, and then I folded it into my jacket pocket. I looked across the lawn at the bay window of my house. The lights were on in the kitchen. I thought of Margaret, standing at that window, washing china by hand, because she would never put it in a machine. Eighty four pieces. Service for twelve. I said to Gary, “What time is Danielle home from the dinner?” He said six. I said, “Then you will drive me to Eric house at six. And you will let me do the talking.”
A set of eighty four plates and a stapled court paper gave one retired machinist the length of a single Thanksgiving week to bring his son back to the truth in Davenport.
I gave my terms to Gary in his driveway, and then I made a telephone call to the one man who could help me carry what I intended to carry. Dale Meiers, who had worked beside me on the milling machines at Rock Island Arsenal for twenty six years, and who owed me nothing but a lifetime of friendship, said he would come with his pickup and his two sons and a stack of moving blankets. “Howard,” he said, “should I bring boxes?” I told him to bring all the boxes he had. I said we were going to bring home my wife.
At six we pulled up in front of the big colonial in Bettendorf, with the three pickups behind us, and Eric opened the door in his sweater with his mouth hanging open. Danielle was in the dining room, with the table set for twelve on the Lenox. The cream and gold and the little blue flowers. I walked in with Gary at my left. I said, “Eric, I would like you to sit down.” He sat. I put the petition on the table, between the gravy boat and the candle, where he could see it. Danielle looked at it and went the color of the napkins. “Dad, you have misunderstood,” said Eric.
Eric did not misunderstand, and he knew it. He told me about the boutique Danielle had opened, a business that lost eighty thousand dollars in a year. He told me about the credit cards, and the second mortgage, and how the house in Davenport was worth three hundred ten thousand dollars. He did not say it with malice. He said it the way a drowning man describes the water. “I did not know what else to do,” he said. “I thought you would be happy in a nice place.” I said, “Eric, you did not ask me what I wanted.” Then he looked down at the table and saw the plates.
He snatched the petition off the cloth, meaning to carry it to the garage and put it in the shredder before anyone could read it again, and he lunged out through the kitchen and across the mudroom, his sweater catching on the doorknob. He burst into the garage, and he stopped short in the middle of the concrete floor. Dale Meiers and his sons had been busy. Along the wall, in rows, stood eleven moving crates stuffed with blankets, with a plate showing at the top of each one, and Margaret rose pattern shining under the bare bulb. Eric could not take another step without stepping on his mother china.
The petition was never filed. Eric and Danielle sold the colonial, paid off the boutique and the cards, and moved into a rental in Moline. Eric took a second job at the farm implement store, and I did not reach into my pocket, because he asked me not to. Danielle deleted the Thanksgiving picture, and wrote me a card in blue ink. Gary Novak came to my house the following Sunday with a pot of chili, and we watched the Packers lose together, which is a solid basis for friendship. The china went home in Dale pickup, one crate at a time, to the cabinet in my dining room.
In the name of Margaret, who passed in 2021, I started the Margaret Lindquist Fund. It pays for holiday dinners, delivered to the door on real china plates, for homebound seniors and widows, in Scott, Rock Island and Muscatine counties. In the first year we served six hundred forty dinners, and every plate came back washed. An old woman in Clinton, who had eaten from a paper tray for nine years, told the volunteer that she cried when she lifted the fork. I borrowed a set of eighty four plates from a church. I bought eleven more for the rest.
This past Thanksgiving, Eric and Danielle came to my house at noon, with a green bean casserole and a pie, and the table was set for eight on the Lenox. I put Eric at the head. I told him it was his mother seat in a way, and that I wished him to carve. He picked up the knife as though it were a sacrament. When the turkey was served, Danielle lifted her glass. She said, “To Grandma dishes. Always yours.” I raised mine. I looked at the little blue flowers on the plate in front of me, and the chair beside me was not empty.