The Booth My Father Kept Returning To

“Your mother and I had our first supper together in that booth,” he said. “Spring of nineteen seventy-eight. I’d known her from church but I’d never had the nerve. And Lon’s dad, old Harold Ketterman, he knew I was sweet on her, and he sat us at that booth by the window, and I spilled a whole glass of iced tea in my lap reaching for the sugar and I thought I’d ruined the entire thing.” He almost smiled. “She didn’t laugh at me. That’s when I knew. A girl that pretty, and she didn’t laugh at a man making a fool of himself. She just handed me her napkin and said it happens to everybody.”

I did not say anything. I had never heard this. In forty-four years I had never once heard how my parents’ first date went.

“We got married the next June,” he said. “And every year on our anniversary, I took her back to that booth. Every single year. Forty-six years. Harold used to save it for us, and then Lon did after Harold passed. Lon knew. First week of June, that booth was ours, didn’t matter who else wanted it. Your mother would order the chicken fried steak and I’d order the same, and we’d split a piece of pie, and before we ate she’d reach across and take my hands and she’d say grace, out loud, right there in the cafe, and she didn’t care who heard her. She’d thank God for the year. Every year, whatever kind of year it had been. The year we near lost the farm. The year she miscarried before you came along. The years that were hard, she thanked Him just the same. Said thanksgiving wasn’t for the good years. Said anybody can thank God in a good year.”

My throat had closed up. I made myself breathe.

“The last June she was alive,” my father said, “she was already sick. We knew by then. She couldn’t hardly eat, the doctor had her on all that, but she wanted to go. She made me take her. I about had to carry her in. Lon had the booth ready and he put a little vase of flowers on it, which he’d never done, and he wouldn’t let me pay, which he’d never done either. And she couldn’t eat but about three bites. But she reached across that table, Carrie, and she took my hands the way she always did, and she said grace. Her last one in that booth. And she thanked God for forty-six years and for you and for the farm and for every bit of it. And she looked at me and she said, Ray, you are going to be all right. Don’t you sit home in the dark.”