The Dinner She Was Told to Skip

“We talked about it,” Chad said. “Together. She’s self-conscious right now. She hasn’t got her figure back, nothing fits her, and I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable in front of people she doesn’t know. It was to spare her.”

“You told her she wasn’t back in shape,” Connie said.

“I said she’d be more comfortable…”

“Three weeks after twins.”

“Mrs. Lindgren, with respect, I wanted tonight to go right.”

“Yes,” Connie said. “I can see that you did.”

She stood up. She is a small woman, five foot two at the outside, sixty-four years old, and she had on a navy cardigan. She picked up the gift bag by her chair.

“Walt, I’m going up.”

“I’d think so,” said Mr. Lindgren. It was the first thing he had said in five minutes.

Chad was on his feet. “Mrs. Lindgren, please, you don’t need to…”

“Sit down, son,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Eat your supper.”

I heard the stairs before I heard the knock. Somebody lighter than Chad, taking her time.

Then two soft taps on the nursery door. It opened a few inches, and a woman I had never seen looked around it.

“Beth? I’m Connie Lindgren. I’m sorry to barge in on you. May I?”

I couldn’t get up. I had a baby on each side and a pillow buckled around me and my robe open and my face wet. I have never in my life been less fit to meet my husband’s boss’s wife.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Were they loud? I tried to keep them…”

“Honey.” She came in and shut the door behind her. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Not one thing.”

She set the gift bag on the floor. She looked at me, all of me, the same up and down Chad had given me in the dining room. But when her eyes came back up they were full.

“Oh, look at you,” she said. “Look what you’re doing. Both at once. I never had the nerve to try that, and I only ever had the one at a time.”

“How did you know I was…”

“Your monitor’s on the dining table, sweetheart. Next to the flowers.”

“You heard me.”

“We all did.”

“Everything?”

“Church mice and all.”

I started to cry in earnest then, and I had no hand free to wipe my face. Connie pulled a burp cloth off the changing table and did it for me.

“I didn’t mean for anybody to… I put it there so he’d hear if I needed help. That’s all. I can’t carry them both on the stairs, and I thought if they got going, somebody down there ought to be able to hear me.”

“That is exactly what a monitor is for,” Connie said. “And somebody down there did hear you. It just wasn’t the one you had in mind.”

Ben had finished. He had gone slack and heavy against me. Connie held out her arms without asking and I let her take him. She put him up on her shoulder and started patting, like a woman who had done it ten thousand times.

“He told me I wasn’t back in shape,” I said. I hadn’t said it out loud to anybody. “He took the sixth chair out to the garage so there wouldn’t be an empty place.”

Connie’s patting hand stopped. Then it started again.

“He told us the first part himself, more or less,” she said. “He seemed to think it was a kindness.”

“Maybe it was. I look terrible.”