The Lunch Lady at the Engagement Dinner

Allison

When the plates were cleared, Linda went to the ladies’ room and Tom went to settle the bill, and Dave went out to warm up the truck. That left Allison and Nick and me at the end of the table, under the little bird napkins.

Allison leaned across Nick and touched my wrist.

“I knew,” she said.

I looked at her.

“He told me back in the fall that you worked for the school district,” she said. “And then at Thanksgiving I saw your hands. The burn on your right wrist, the long one. That’s an oven rack. You only get that one from a convection oven, reaching in for the back pan.”

I turned my wrist over. There it was, white and shiny, eleven years old.

“I worked dish and serving line for the Johnston district for two years in nursing school,” she said. “Five-thirty in the morning, then class. I’ve got one on my forearm just like it.” She pulled up her sleeve and showed me, a little pale stripe. “I knew the second I saw yours.”

Nick was looking at her like he had never seen her before.

“You never said,” he told her.

“You never asked me,” she said. Not mean. Just true.

Then she turned back to me. “Brenda, would you cook for the rehearsal dinner? I mean it. Not a caterer. I want your food. I’ve heard about your cinnamon rolls since our second date.”

The rehearsal dinner is the groom’s family’s to give. Everybody in Iowa knows that. Linda would have known it, and Allison knew it too, and she was handing it to me with both hands.

“I’d be honored,” I said, and my voice did not do what I wanted it to.