The Coffee She Sent Back to My Mother

She was smiling the way she smiles at Christmas.

“You must be Constance,” she said. “I’m Brenda. I am so glad you all made it over the mountain.”

She held out her hand.

Constance looked at it. Then she shook the ends of my mother’s fingers, briefly, the way you test whether paint is dry.

Her eyes went to the shirt. The bluebird on the pocket. The apron.

“You came straight from your shift,” she said. “How dedicated.”

“Something like that,” my mother said. “I meant to be changed and pretty before you got here. You beat me by half an hour.”

“We are always early. Jim’s father was a Navy man.”

“Then I’m the one who’s behind. Sit, sit. Let me get you all some coffee, and I’ll go make myself presentable.”

We sat. Constance took the chair at the head of the table without being asked. She unfolded her napkin and looked at it, and then at the fork, and then she turned the fork over.

My mother came back with the pot. She always pours for a new table herself. She says you can learn more about people in the time it takes to fill four cups than you can in an hour of talking.

“And where did you go to school, Brenda?” Constance asked.

“Cedar Run High. Right up the hill there.”

“I meant college.”

“I didn’t.”

Constance let that sit a second. “You didn’t.”

“No, ma’am. I started here when I was sixteen, and I never did leave.”

“At sixteen. Waiting tables.”

“Washing dishes, first. Miss Dottie would not let you near a customer until you could carry four plates up one arm.”

Constance turned to her husband as though my mother had stepped out of the room.

“Thirty-nine years in one restaurant, Jim. Imagine.”

Jim looked at the pie case.

“Mom,” Drew said.

She did not seem to hear him. She turned to me instead, with her head tilted.

“And you managed nursing school all the same, Allison. That must have taken a great many scholarships.”

“It took a great many pies,” I said.

She smiled at me the way you smile at a person speaking another language.

My mother filled Jim’s cup, and Drew’s, and mine. She filled Constance’s last, because Constance had her hand resting over it until the last moment. I watched the steam rise.

Constance lifted the cup and took one sip, hardly enough to wet her lip. She set it down.

And that brings us back to where I started.

“This is not hot. Remake it. Properly, this time.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The kitchen door swung shut behind my mother, and for a few seconds the only sound at our table was the Ruritans laughing about something two tables over.

“Mom,” Drew said. His voice was very quiet. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“You know what.”

“The coffee was tepid, Andrew.” She is the only person alive who calls him Andrew. “She works here. I hardly think it is an imposition to ask a person to do her job.”

“She is Allison’s mother. She is the reason we are sitting at this table.”

“And I have driven two hours to sit at it. I am not being unkind. I am being clear.” She smoothed the tablecloth in front of her. “If Allison is marrying into this family, there are standards, and it is better for everyone to learn them early. I should think her mother would want that for her.”