The Forty One Families at Wednesday Supper

The Room

I would like to say that somebody said something wise. Nobody did, not right away.

Forty-one families sat and looked at a woman they had known their whole lives, and the looking was the worst thing that could have happened to her.

Kristi had been on the women’s circle board for six years. She ran the funeral lunch committee. She did the books for the Christmas bazaar.

Every person in that room had trusted her with something, and every one of them was doing the math.

Later that week she stepped down from all of it, the circle, the funeral lunches, the bazaar books. Nobody asked her to in front of anyone.

Pastor Tom told me she came to his office on Thursday and handed him a list of everything she ran.

That was the consequence. Not a squad car. Not a newspaper.

Just a room full of people who knew, and a long walk to the parking lot on a February night with every one of them watching her go.

I sat down. My hands were shaking so hard Ryan took the list out of them and put it in his own shirt pocket.

He did not say anything. He just put his hand flat on my back the way Paige had the night before.

Arnie

It was Arnie Pederson who moved first. Arnie is eighty-one, a dairy farmer until his knees gave out, and he has worn the same seed corn cap to every Wednesday supper since I was a girl.

He got up from his table slow, the way old farmers get up, one hand on the table and one on his cane.

He walked the length of the fellowship hall, past every table, and nobody said a word while he did it.

He did not come to me. He stopped by Paige’s chair.

She had been sitting very still through all of it, my quiet girl, with her library card in the front pocket of her sweatshirt where she kept it now.

Arnie reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet, a brown leather one held together with a rubber band.

He took out a twenty-dollar bill and folded it once and held it out to her.

“This one’s for you,” he said. “Not for the house. Not for your folks. Not for anybody. You spend it on something you want, and you don’t let anybody tell you how. Understand?”

Paige looked at me. I nodded. She took the twenty with both hands, the same way she had taken the library card from Mrs. Berg, and she said thank you so quietly I almost could not hear it.

Arnie patted her on the head, once, like he was patting a calf he was proud of.

Then he walked all the way back to his table and sat down next to June and picked up his coffee.

Three different women stopped by our table on the way out and squeezed my shoulder. One of them was Lisa Dahl.

Two of them stopped by Kristi’s table too, and I saw that, and I was glad.