“Look at us,” said the Meals-On-Wheels girl. “Aren’t we pretty?” They sat down on the concrete bench and drank glasses of wine while the Meals-On-Wheels girl played “Swannanoa Tunnel,” “In the Shadow of the Pines,” and “The Mermaid Song” on the banjo. After that, Ida couldn’t keep up with all that went on. There was laughing and talking and the rosy light filtering through the dogwood leaves, and for no reason at all Ida began reciting the names of old daffodils—Butter and Eggs, Hoop-Petticoat, Campernelle, and Pheasant’s Eye. Then there was a different kind of wine, and suddenly they were eating a clear golden soup with little green lemony bits floating on top in the silver consommé dishes, and the Meals-On-Wheels girl sang out, “All the flavor is in the feet!” After that, food seemed to appear out of nowhere—snowy mashed potatoes, little green onions, crackling bread, and greasy collards. Everything that should have been hot was hot, and everything that should have been cold was cold. At one point between the creamed Jerusalem artichokes and the caramel custard, Ida and the Meals-On-Wheels girl held hands and danced around the liriope border, singing “Way Down in Lone Green Valley.” The Meals-On-Wheels girl’s long red skirt twirled around her ankles, and she swayed and bowed and pranced out her little feet over the dormant daffodils.

Ida woke up in the morning with the feeling that she had grit under her eyelids. Her feet were cold, and she lay in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling. But before she had time to think, she heard, “Meals-On-Wheels!” bellowed out from the back porch, then heavy walking, and suddenly there was the old Meals-On-Wheels girl standing in the bedroom door.

“I’m back!” she said, then made a slow turn with her hands on her hips. “Now you’ve got you a mess. And don’t be asking me to go at it with the 409 and a rag; you’re going to have to get the professionals in here for this.”

Slowly Ida pushed back the covers and put her feet on the floor. It had turned cold in the night, the first freeze. All along the walls the dead morning glories hung, festooning the windows in slimy tatters, and smearing the woodwork and windowpanes.

“But,” said Ida, “what about…where is…” But the old Meals-On-Wheels girl was already back in the kitchen laying out the styrofoam tray and the plastic fork and spoon and talking about surgery.

“There I was, cut open from here to here, and them telling me to get up and walk up and down that hall within twenty-four hours. I was hanging on to them railings, I can tell you that. They said two months, it’s been two months, I’m dragging, but I’m here; now get on up, honey, you need to eat you something, I got to get over to Miss Eunice.”