The Help Eats in the Kitchen
Then I went back into the empty kitchen and sat down on the stool, and I waited.
It took four minutes. I watched the clock over the door.
First it was just a shift in the sound. A line of people that stops moving makes a different noise than one that is moving.
Then a man’s voice, cousin Jeff’s. “Hey. Where’d the food go?”
“They’re bringing more out.”
“There’s not anything here. There’s not even a pan.”
I could see a slice of it through the window. The long table with its white cloth and nothing on it but the wire racks and one pair of tongs. Twenty-some people holding empty plates, looking at each other.
Somebody’s face appeared in the pass-through. It was Kim. She looked at the bare steel counters, the dark warming oven, the mop bucket. She looked at me, sitting there with my hands in my lap.
“Karen?” she said. “Where’s the caterers?”
“They’ve gone home.”
“Gone home? Are they coming back?”
“No.”
Her face went away. I heard her say it to somebody, and I heard that somebody say it to somebody else, and it went down the pavilion like wind going across a field of wheat.
The screen of the swinging door banged open and Alexis came in.
“What is going on? Jeff says the food’s gone.”
“It is.”
“Well, where’s that woman? The caterer?”
“Her name is Maria,” I said. “She’s on her way back to Hollister.”
“She can’t just leave. There’s people who haven’t eaten.” She looked around the kitchen as if four pans of brisket might be hiding behind the ice machine. “Did you tell her she could leave?”
“I told her she was finished.”
“You told her.” Her voice climbed. “Who are you to tell her anything? This is our reunion.”
I did not answer that. I thought the question would keep.
“Karen. Call her. Call her right now and tell her to turn around.”
“No, honey.”
She stared at me. I don’t believe I had ever said no to her before. Not in eleven years. I had said “let me see what I can do” and “I’ll ask your dad” and “sure, I can pick that up.” I had never once said the plain word.
“You did this because of a joke,” she said. “It was a joke. Everybody laughed. You’re going to let Grandma’s whole reunion fall apart because you can’t take a joke.”
“Your grandmother’s eaten,” I said. “I fixed her plate myself.”
“Dad!” She turned and shoved back through the door. “Dad, come here. You need to come here.”
Greg came in with his tea still in his hand.
He had the look he gets when a deal has gone sideways on the lot. Pleasant on top, tight underneath. He glanced at the counters and back at me, and he pitched his voice low and reasonable, a voice I knew very well.
“Babe. What are we doing?”
“I’m sitting down,” I said. “First time today.”
“Where’s the food?”
“I sent it home with Maria.”
“You sent it.” He set the tea on the counter. “Karen, there’s forty people out there with empty plates. My mother is out there. You want to tell me what you were thinking?”
“I was thinking the help had worked long enough.”
His jaw moved.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. She was out of line. I’ll talk to her. But this is not how you handle it. You don’t punish sixty people. You call that woman back, we get everybody fed, and you and me can sort the rest out at the house.”