By day he sells flats, pumps, sneakers, and yes, UGGs, but at night he forgets the soles of the day and focuses on the six o’clock soul. At night he is a twenty-five year old angel with freckles and no halo. He sings, holds her hands, and believes in her. Her mind, clouded with Alzheimer’s, sees this volunteer as the boy from her past. She calls him Jacob, the name of her son, the professor who always seems too busy to visit. But the man with the shoes doesn’t mind. He combs the wispy gray strands with the silver combs she hands to him upon arrival. Mostly, he just listens. She tells him about the day she forgot to take the pie out of the oven. The day she got lost on the way to the grocery store. She cries when she relives the day her son brought her to the Home and left her. And she dreams about her man. Details, outlined in charcoal, crafted with traces of her homeland. The front porch swing the color of mist, and her second hand baby blue sundress. Two straws in a Coke at Miller’s Store. The nickelodeon they never actually watched. At this, her blue eyes seem to twinkle and the creases on her face seem to evaporate as she remembers the youthful, carefree girl she always was with him. The tear in his eye, down on one knee, the day she promised she would be his forever girl. Tomorrow she won’t remember what she told him today, but he’ll come back again at six, comb her hair, embrace her fragile hands, and let her transport him back to Roleson Kansas, 1938.
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