Chapter 6 - The Long Dinner
By four o’clock, the sun had dropped below the ridge, leaving the windows of the dining room black and reflective, mirroring the candles my father had lit on the sideboard.
The turkey was dry. The stuffing tasted like boxed sage and too much salt. My aunt Clara ate in silence, her eyes darting toward the head of the table every time the floorboards creaked.
My mother sat at her usual place, but she wasn't carving. My father had taken the heavy silver knife and fork, his hands steady as he sliced the white meat into neat, even strips that looked like they had been measured with a square.
"More potatoes, Arthur?" Clara asked, her voice timid.
"No, Clara," my father said. "Eat your squash."
Lily was awake now, lying in her infant carrier—which my father had brought inside and placed on a sturdy wooden stool beside his chair—staring up at the crystal pendants of the chandelier. Every time the heat kicked on in the basement, the brass framework gave a tiny, metallic ping, and she would turn her head toward the sound, her eyes wide and dark as wet stones.
Nobody mentioned the porch. Nobody mentioned the slush on the diaper bag, which was now drying into a stiff, gray ring around the bottom canvas in the mudroom.
My mother hadn't looked at me since we sat down, but she had spent twenty minutes before dinner going through the diaper bag on the kitchen floor, making sure the extra pajamas hadn't gotten damp through the canvas. When she found that the plastic wipes container had kept everything dry inside, she had closed the zipper with a sharp, decisive zip and carried it into the hallway herself.
"You should have stayed for church," my mother said to me, her fork resting beside her plate.
"We don't go to church, Mom."
"Your father goes on Easter."
"That’s because I like the organ," my father said without looking up from his plate. "Has nothing to do with the sermon."
Emily laughed—a real laugh this time, loud enough to make my uncle Arthur drop his fork against his plate with a sharp clatter.
"What?" my mother snapped.
"Nothing, Aunt Helen," Emily said, her face red. "Just... the organ."
After dinner, nobody moved into the living room. We stayed around the table while the candles burned down, their wax pooling in the silver holders like small white lakes. My father poured himself a small glass of sherry from the decanter my grandfather had brought back from Ohio in 1954—a bottle that had sat on the sideboard through twenty Thanksgivings and never once been opened.
He poured a second glass and pushed it across the mahogany toward me.
"I don't drink," I said.
"It’s not for drinking," he said. "It’s for sitting."
I looked at the small amber puddle in the bottom of the glass. The candlelight caught it, turning it the color of old honey.
"Why did you invite us, Dad?" I asked, low enough that Clara, who was clearing the butter dish, didn't hear.
My father looked down at his own glass, his thumb tracing the cut-glass pattern around the rim. "Because your mother’s been talking to the wall for three years," he said simply. "And I got tired of listening to the echo."
My mother, who was standing by the sideboard with the gravy boat in her hands, didn't turn around. Her shoulders didn't hunch, but she stood a little straighter, her fingers gripping the silver handle until her knuckles showed white under the dining room lights.
May you like
"The house is too big," she said to the wall.
"It always was," my father replied.
