Chapter 4 - The Cold Roast
The turkey sat in the center of the table on a heavy silver platter, its skin golden-brown and glistening with grease that was starting to congeal around the edges. Nobody touched the carving knife.
My mother remained standing at the foot of the table, her hands flat on the polished wood, her fingers splayed as if she were trying to anchor herself to the floor. Her eyes were fixed on the silver gravy boat—specifically on the dark smear of mud my father had left on the linen runner beside it.
"It’s cold," she said to nobody in particular. "The gravy is cold."
"Then heat it up," my father said. He wasn't looking at her; he was looking at the small pink ear of my daughter, which was visible just above the edge of my coat.
Uncle Arthur cleared his throat—a wet, hacking sound that made my aunt Clara flinch. "Well," he said, shifting his weight in his chair until the mahogany creaked. "The drive wasn't too bad. Route 9 was clear all the way from Concord."
Nobody responded to him.
Emily walked over from the radiator, her face still flushed, and sat down in the empty seat across from me. She didn't look at my mother. She reached out, her fingers trembling slightly, and touched the corner of Lily’s blanket where it was tucked under my arm.
"She has your nose," Emily whispered.
"She has my father’s eyes," I said.
My mother made a sharp sound through her nose—half-snort, half-sigh—and turned on her heel. Her heels didn't click on the way out; she walked with a heavy, flat-footed tread that I had never heard from her before, the sound of someone whose house had just been unroofed in a storm.
The kitchen door swung shut behind her with a soft thwack.
For three minutes, the only sound in the dining room was the electric clock on the wall ticking off the seconds—tick, tick, tick—and the faint, whistling sound of the wind coming down the chimney.
"She didn't mean it," my aunt Clara said after a long time, her voice small and apologetic, directed at the turkey platter. "You know how your mother gets when the holidays don't go according to the list. She spends three weeks on the stuffing. She buys the cranberries from the specialty shop in town. Everything has to be... well, you know."
"I know," my father said. He picked up the carving fork, his hand steady despite the knots of arthritis on his fingers. "She spent twenty years making sure nobody came through that door who didn't fit the picture."
He looked at me, his eyes wet in the harsh light of the chandelier.
"Did you eat anything this morning?"
"I had some toast," I lied. I hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon, when I’d stood over the kitchen sink eating cold macaroni and cheese out of a saucepan because I hadn't had two hands free to use a bowl.
"Give me the baby," he said.
My arms tightened instinctively around Lily. "She’s sleeping, Dad. She’ll wake up."
"I know how to hold a baby, Clara. I held you when your mother was in the hospital with her hip."
He set the carving fork down, wiped his hands on his napkin, and reached across the table. His palms were large, calloused from decades of woodworking in the damp basement, the skin stained slightly with walnut oil that never quite washed out from under his fingernails.
I hesitated, then shifted Lily into his arms.
He took her with a practiced, automatic ease that surprised me—his left hand supporting her small, round head, his right cradling her bottom against his gray cardigan. He didn't look down at her right away; he looked out the window at the snow, which was coming down harder now, turning the gray hills into white smudges.
Lily didn't wake up. She gave a small, contented snort, her little mouth opening against his wool sweater before settling back into his chest.
"She’s small," my father murmured. "Your mother said you were starving her."
"I’m not starving her."
"I know." He looked down at her face, his thumb gently brushing the tiny peach fuzz on the top of her head. "Helen thinks if people see things that aren't neat, the whole house will fall down. She’s been building that wall for forty years."
"She put her things in the slush, Dad."
"I saw," he said. His voice didn't rise, but the muscles in his jaw tightened, a small muscle jumping beneath his skin near his ear. "I saw."
The kitchen door creaked open six inches.
May you like
My mother didn't come in. Her voice came through the crack—thin, dry, and flat.
"The turkey’s in the oven," she said. "If you want it warm, you can wait another twenty minutes. But I’m not sitting at that table."
