With or Without an E
By Ann Iverson
The day’s projected forecast was 100 degrees with humidity to match. My father called finally asking for help. His voice faint and shaken, “Can you take me out to one of those places?” "You want an air conditioner?" "Yeah, Yeah.” “Okay, I’m on my way.”
When I pulled up to his house, I saw him walking with tiny, feeble steps down the front stairs. I helped him get situated into the car and as we drove, he gazed out the window looking and wondering like a child. I realized that was the first time in a long time that he was riding as a passenger and traveling much further beyond his regular five-mile radius. I looked down at his tattered, second-hand shoes, so surrendered and collapsed and listened as he breathed hard and slow, sighing often.
"You know where this place is?" "Yep, I 've been there before. It's tucked up off the frontage road." Walking just slightly in front of me, he grabbed at the entrance walls, then I took his arm to balance him. At once the central air perked him up in total wonder as we walked down the rows and rows of merchandise. With the help of a salesclerk, we selected a unit immediately, the last one that would fit his bedroom window. Anxious and uneasy, he started to write the check out. I tapped him on the shoulder, “We need to go up front to pay." I turn to ask a few questions, and he began to write the check again. “We have to wait until we get to the register so they can figure in tax." He looked at me bewildered, and I tried to see clearly to the truest point of his fading eyes, I point, "Up front."
At the cashier, I watched him try to finish the check and my heart panged as I saw him write, his shaky innocent handwriting and thought of how he always spelled my name with an “e” and I never had the heart to tell him. It’s Ann without an e. And when he would say my name it was always “Aannne” holding the A for two beats longer. He handed me the pen so I could fill the amount in.
While we drove, I asked, "Is there anywhere else you need to stop?" "Yeah, how, about a bite to eat. You like McDonald’s don’t you?” In the parking lot, a lady he knew stopped and asked of his welfare, helped to steady him and said that she was glad to see that he wasn’t trying to drive himself anymore. He responded with the most regards he could muster in the heat. We sat at McDonald's for a long, long time without saying too much at all. I somehow managed to get the unit into his window, then two days later I called but he didn’t know what day it was. He had slept for two days straight in his air-conditioned bedroom. A week later he stroked, never to write or say my name again with or without an “e.”
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About Ann Iverson
Iverson is a writer and artist. She is the author of five poetry collections: Come Now to the Window by the Laurel Poetry Collective, Definite Space and Art Lessons by Holy Cow! Press; Mouth of Summer and No Feeling is Final by Kelsay Books. She is a graduate of both the MALS and the MFA programs at Hamline University. Her poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals and venues including six features on Writer’s Almanac. Her poem "Plenitude" was set to a choral arrangement by composer Kurt Knecht. She is also the author and illustrator of two children's books. As a visual artist, she enjoys the integrated relationship between the visual image and the written image. Her art work has been featured in several art exhibits as well as in a permanent installation at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital. She is currently working on her sixth collection of poetry, a book of children's verse, and a collection of personal essays.