The new Meals-On-Wheels girl didn’t just set the styrofoam tray down on the kitchen table and arrange the plastic spoon and fork and paper napkin with little twitchy, snatchy movements, then flounce out with a “Have a nice day!” The new Meals-On-Wheels girl got one of Ida’s good plates out of the dining room cupboard and rummaged around in drawers until she found a proper spoon and fork. “You shouldn’t have to eat off plastic,” she said. Ida had to wash the dishes after she ate, but she didn’t mind. It was nice to see her grandmother’s old Flight and Barr Worcester again. The new Meals-On-Wheels girl had reached it right down off a high shelf.

The next day the new Meals-On-Wheels girl brought Ida a little iced cake she had made herself. “Just because you’re old, that doesn’t mean you should have to eat this goop,” she said, and she threw the Meals-On-Wheels Jell-O into the garbage. She stepped on the little lever so hard that the lid flew up and then popped shut with such a snap that Ida grinned and said, “Ha!”

The Meals-On-Wheels girl dished up the rice, meat loaf, and beans on yesterday’s plate and got a dessert plate from the china cabinet for the little cake. Then she sat down and crossed her arms on the table and watched Ida eat.

“I’m a good cook,” the girl said. “I used to cook for prisoners. ‘Just because you shot a clerk at a Jiffy food store for a six-pack of beer, that doesn’t mean you should have to eat instant mashed potatoes for the rest of your life,’ I used to tell them.”

Ida stopped with the fork halfway to her lips.

“I used to bake little cakes for them. Each prisoner got his own individual cake. I put a different flower on every single cake—red, yellow, blue; green leaves. I have a pastry tube.”

“She used to make little cakes for prisoners,” Ida told Judy that night.

“That’s nice, Mama,” said Judy.

“She has a pastry tube.”

“She sounds like a nice little friend for you, Mama.”

“Sex,” said the Meals-On-Wheels girl. She was ironing one of Ida’s linen napkins. “I gave it up.” She pressed the napkin from the back, against a folded tea towel, so the corded letters ICW would stand up high. “I just lost interest in it. Turned forty, that was it. Poof. Gone. Elvis has left the building.”

“Oh,” said Ida.

“I don’t miss it though. Now I have more energy for other things. My mind is freed up.” The girl folded the napkin in threes with the raised letters in the center, poured jasmine tea into Ida’s blue-and-white teacup, and put three little biscuits on a dish. “Devonshire scones,” she said. “They’re flavored with rose water.”