The Dinner She Was Told to Skip

So I set it on the dining room table. Right next to the bowl of mums, where the lights would show. I slid the switch on. I turned the little volume wheel on the side up as far as it would go, because a dinner party is loud.

I didn’t plan a word of what came over that speaker later. But I knew what I was setting down, and where.

I suppose I wanted there to be one piece of me in that room.

Chad came back in with a basket of rolls. He looked over the table, straightened a fork. His eyes went right across the monitor. It had sat in his line of sight for three weeks. It had become furniture to him, the same as I had.

“Go on up,” he said, not unkindly. “I’ve got it from here.”

I went up, one step at a time.

They came at six on the dot. Farm people, and the people who sell to farm people, are never late.

I was in the nursery rocker with the door open a crack. That house was built in 1924 and it carries sound up the stairwell the way a chimney carries smoke. I heard the doorbell, the storm door, Chad’s big hello.

“Mr. Lindgren. Mrs. Lindgren. Come in, come in. Let me take those coats.”

“It’s Connie,” a woman said. She had a low, warm voice with a little gravel in it. “And he’s Walt after five o’clock. What a pretty house. And where are these babies I’ve been hearing about? I brought something.” Paper rustled. “I couldn’t help myself. Two of everything.”

“That is so kind. They’re asleep upstairs, and Beth’s resting with them. The doctor has her taking it easy.”

There was a pause. I held my breath in the rocker as if they could hear me breathing.

“Oh, of course,” Connie said. “Poor thing. Three weeks. Well, maybe she’ll feel up to saying hello later.”

“Maybe so,” said my husband. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Jeff and Kim came five minutes behind them. I heard Kim ask after me too. I heard Chad say “resting” again, smoother the second time.

Then the chairs scraped and the voices settled, and I couldn’t make out words anymore. Only the rise and fall of a supper I wasn’t at.

What happened at that table, I didn’t see. I know it because Connie Lindgren told me that same night, and Kim told me again a week later over coffee, and the two tellings matched right down to who was holding the butter.

Chad said grace. He said a nice one. He thanked the Lord for the food and the company and the opportunity ahead, and for “the two new blessings upstairs.”

Kim told me she noticed that. Two blessings. Not three.

They passed the brisket. Jeff told a story about a grain bin and a raccoon. It was, Kim said, a perfectly pleasant dinner for about forty minutes.

Then the bowl of mums cleared its throat.

That’s how Connie put it. A little crackle and hiss from the middle of the table, and the lights on the white box beside the flowers jumped up two, three, four.

It was Ben. He always woke up first, and he woke up angry.

Upstairs, I knew none of that. Upstairs I was only doing the seven o’clock feeding.

Ben started with the little goat noise he made, and before I could get to him Lucy joined in, and then they were both going full out, red and furious, fists up by their ears.