The Head Table Moved to the Kitchen

I did not think it over. It was my boy’s wedding supper. That was the whole of my reasoning then and it is the whole of it now.

“I’ll be in the kitchen, Dale,” I said. “Bring it to me.”

He straightened up and saw me standing there with my plate and the card, and I watched him put it together.

I did not wait to see what Cynthia’s face did. I heard her, though, as I walked. “There’s been a mistake,” she said. “Run it again.”

“I ran it Friday, ma’am,” Dale said. “And I ran it again at four o’clock.”

Then I went through the swinging door.

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The kitchen was warm and it smelled like hickory and dish soap, and I will tell you the truth, my shoulders came down two inches the second that door swung shut behind me.

I have spent my whole working life in rooms like that one. A steel prep table down the middle. A three-compartment sink. Foil chafing pans stacked beside the table as high as my shoulder, the full ones on the left and the empties on the right. A radio on the windowsill turned down low to the Iowa State game.

Tammy, who has run Dale’s serving line for fifteen years, was pulling the lid off a pan of potatoes. She looked at me, and at my plate, and at the door I had come through.

“Carla Hoyt,” she said. “What are you doing back here in your good dress?”

“Eating my supper,” I said. “If you have a stool.”

She did not ask one more question. That is a friend. She hooked a stool out from under the counter with her foot and slid it up to the end of the prep table, and she wiped the steel in front of it with a clean towel even though it was already clean.

I sat down. I unrolled my silverware. I stood my place card up beside my plate, because I did not know what else to do with it and I was not going to throw it away.

Mother of the Groom.

And I ate my son’s wedding supper.

The pass-through window was right there behind my shoulder with the shutter rolled up, and through it I could see the whole hall. The lights in the rafters. The cake on its own table by the stage, three tiers, white with real sunflowers.

And the head table, the long way down.

I saw Emily come back. She came out of the hallway holding her skirt up in both fists, laughing at something an aunt said, and she was so pretty it stopped my fork. She sat down by Wade and kissed his cheek. Then she looked at the empty chair two down. I could see her ask him something.

I could see Cynthia lean in and answer before he could.

I found out later what she said. “Carla wanted to eat with her friends in the kitchen.”

There was a boy at the sink, washing pans. Sixteen, tall, with his sleeves shoved up past his elbows. I knew him before he turned around. Cody. He came through my line for seven years, a skinny, quiet thing who was always hungry in a way that told me how things were at home.

He shut the water off and dried his hands on his apron. He went to the cooler. He came over to my stool and set a little dish down next to my roll, two pats of butter, the foil kind.