The Twelve Chairs I Carried Home
“I’m sure I’ve got company coming and no place to put them.”
Donna had been quiet. “How much company?”
“Harold. And me.”
“Our kids are at his folks’ in Sioux Falls this year,” she said. “I was going to do a turkey breast and feel sorry for us.” She put her hand flat on the table. “What time?”
“One o’clock.”
“I’ll bring the sweet potatoes and the green bean thing.”
That made four. By supper it was nine, because Donna told Pat across the street. Pat and her husband Jim had their daughter Kim home with her two little boys, and Kim’s husband works for the railroad and was sitting on a train somewhere west of North Platte, the railroad not caring one bit what day it is. Pat had been dreading her own kitchen. She called me herself.
“Roberta, is it true you’re having people? Because I will pay you money.”
“Bring the boys,” I said. “Bring a relish tray.”
Tuesday morning I called Stephanie at the dental office where she works the front desk. I wasn’t going to show up at her door without a word. I won’t do that to anyone, least of all my own child.
“I’ll be by at four,” I said. “I’ll be needing my things for Thursday.”
“The turkey? Mom, I was going to…” I heard her cover the phone and say something to a patient. “Okay. Fine. Dylan’ll be home from school. I’ll just buy another one. I have to go, we’re slammed.”
“Stephanie, I mean all my things.”
But she had already hung up. I stood there holding the phone and decided the Lord had heard me say it, even if she hadn’t.
It was a gray day, the sky the color of a galvanized bucket. At four o’clock Wayne backed his pickup and trailer up my daughter’s driveway as neat as parking a car. I rode beside him with a stack of old tied comforters on my lap. Not my good quilts. The ones that go on the garden when it frosts.
My grandson answered the door. Dylan is fifteen, all wrists and ankles, in a hooded sweatshirt he has worn since school started.
“Grandma? Hey, Wayne.” He looked at the trailer. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve come for my turkey and my table, honey. I’m having dinner at my house Thursday.”
He frowned. “You’re having it here.”
“No. Your mother has a full table this year.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your new grandma’s family is coming, and there’s twelve of them with you three, and twelve chairs.”
I watched him do the same arithmetic I had done. He is good at math. It didn’t take him long.
“So you’re not coming,” he said. “To Thanksgiving.”
“Not to this one.”
He turned and looked through the hall at the dining room. The table was already set. She had put on a cream cloth I didn’t recognize, and candles, and little cards at each place with the names written in her careful hand. I will admit that went through me. She had worked hard on it. She wanted so badly for it to be right.
Dylan looked at it a long time.
“It’s your table,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Does Mom know you’re taking it?”
“I told her this morning I was coming for my things. I don’t believe she heard all of it.” I put my hand on his arm. “You don’t have to help with this, Dylan. You can go up to your room, and nobody will think one thing about it.”