"The visor lady," he said.
"Yes, sir," Marcella said. She came up three of the porch steps, not all the way, and she stood there gripping the railing. "Mr. Batts. I'm the one who called the police on you. In September. When you were on the sidewalk in the morning. I told them you were suspicious. I told them you didn't belong here." Her voice was shaking now. "You weren't suspicious. You were lost. I knew it when I saw you. I think I knew. I saw an old man with a walker and I called the police anyway, because it was this house, and because you were—" She stopped. She made herself say it. "Because you were a Black man I didn't know, standing in front of a house I'd already decided was a problem. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't expect you to forgive me. I just didn't want to go on living up the street without saying it to your face."
My father looked at her for a long time. The ballgame murmured on the radio. Somewhere over by the pond, a heron complained about something.
"My wife," he said finally, "Ida. When she had her stroke, she'd get up in the night and try to go to work. She worked at the laundry at the hospital in Petersburg for thirty years. She'd get her coat on in the middle of the night, she'd be out at the bus stop in her slippers." He rocked the swing once. "One time a policeman found her. Young white fellow. Brought her home in the front seat of his car with the heater going. Gave her his jacket. She talked about that boy for a year. Never knew his name." He looked at Marcella. "You had a husband who was sick."
She blinked. "Yes, sir. Simon."
"You ever have to go find him?"
"No," she said. "He couldn't walk, at the end. I'd have given anything for him to walk off somewhere so I'd have to go find him."
"Hm." My father nodded slowly. "Well. Then you know what it is. To be scared for somebody." He rocked the swing again. "Next time you see me lost, Mrs. Visor, you come get me yourself. You don't call anybody. You walk me home. That's all. That's what neighbors do."
Marcella Vasbinder put her hand over her mouth, and she stood on my porch steps and cried, quietly, for a long time, and my father turned the ballgame back up and let her, and I went inside and made three cups of decaf, because that seemed like the only thing there was to do.