The Pecan Pie at the Soup Kitchen

“Mom, I’m going to say this once, and I need you to just hear it.”

My son Mark was standing at my kitchen counter with his car keys still in his hand. It was the first Sunday in November, and he had followed me home from the ten o’clock Mass without calling first.

I had a pot of coffee going and a coffee cake from the parish bake sale under a dish towel. I offered him a piece. He shook his head.

“You’re embarrassing the family,” he said.

I set the knife down. I remember the sound it made on the cutting board, a small flat click, and the refrigerator humming behind me like it had something to say too.

“People are talking,” Mark said. “Jen’s mother saw you two at Hy-Vee holding hands in the bakery aisle. Holding hands, Mom. You’re sixty-six.”

“I know how old I am, honey.”

“Then you know how it looks.” He turned his keys over in his palm. “Dad’s been gone nine years. Nine. And now there’s some guy from church sitting in Dad’s pew with his arm around you.”

“Walt doesn’t sit in your father’s pew. Your father sat on the left. Walt sits on the right.”

It was not the thing to say. I knew it the second it was out. Mark’s jaw went tight the way his father’s used to when a customer at the lumberyard argued over a bill.

“Thanksgiving is at our house this year,” he said. “Jen’s already bought the turkey. The kids want you there. I want you there.” He looked right at me. “But you come alone. I’m not sitting across from that man and passing him the potatoes like he’s family. He’s not.”

The coffee maker gave its last gurgle. I poured myself a cup, because my hands needed something to do, and I did not pour him one.

I want to tell you I had a speech ready. I did not. What I had was forty years of being a librarian, which means forty years of letting people finish their sentences before I answer them.

“Thank you for being honest with me,” I said.

He blinked. I think he had come ready for a fight and did not know what to do without one.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. You told me how you feel. I’m grateful you didn’t make me guess.”

He stood there a moment longer. Then he said, “Okay. Good. So we’ll see you at two,” and he went out the side door, and I heard his SUV back down my driveway too fast, the way he drove when he was sixteen.

I sat down at the table with my coffee and the uncut coffee cake and I did not cry. Not then. I just sat there and looked at the chair across from me, which had been Dale’s chair, and then had been nobody’s chair for a very long time.