Five Plates and a Folding Chair

I did not say anything. I could not. I just stepped back, and he came in, and the apartment was suddenly very full.

Kat got up first. She is a nurse, so she shook his hand and looked at his color and said, “Mr. Strand, sit down before you fall down.”

He laughed and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and handed her the pie.

There was no room for the folding chair. There was barely room for the four of us.

So Jess pulled her chair to one side and Mo pulled hers to the other, and Dad unfolded the chair and set it right there between them, wedged in at the corner of the table.

He sat down. He is not a small man, and the chair creaked, and his knees came up nearly to the table edge.

Mo was pressed against his elbow on one side and Jess on the other. He looked about as comfortable as a man in a phone booth.

“Well,” he said, looking at the four of us. “This is about right.”

I got him a plate. I gave him the good end of the turkey, the end that was not dry, and potatoes, and a roll, and the last of the gravy, which I had almost put away.

I set it down in front of him and he looked up at me.

“I already ate,” he said. “But I didn’t come for the turkey.” He looked around the table. “Before anybody touches that pie, though. You girls say grace up here?”

“Kind of,” Jess said. “Kat thanked God for us idiots.”

Dad laughed, a real laugh, the one that comes from low down. “That’s a good start,” he said. “Mind if I add to it?”

He bowed his head. Mo bowed hers, and then Kat and Jess, and then me. It was very quiet. I could hear the radiator ticking and somebody’s television through the wall.

“Lord,” Dad said, “thank you for this food, and for the hands that made it. Thank you for my daughter, who is better than I deserve. Thank you for Kat, and Jess, and Mo, who are far from their people tonight. Let them know they have people here.”

He stopped. I thought he was done. Then he went on, quieter.

“And Lord, be with Mo’s grandma, who I hear made gravy the right way. And with my mother, June, who taught Bailey. Tell them both the girls are doing fine. Amen.”

Mo made a small sound. When I looked up, her eyes were wet again, and she was looking at my father like he had handed her something she had lost.

“How did you know?” she said. “About my grandma’s gravy?”

“Bailey told me about your grandma,” Dad said. “In August. She told me your grandma raised you.” He picked up his fork and pointed it at me.

“This one learned her gravy from my mother. Stood on a step stool at a stove out by Hartford every Thanksgiving till she was sixteen.”

“She still makes it with a fork,” Mo said.

“Course she does,” Dad said. “Ma would come back and haunt her if she used a whisk.” He took a bite, chewed slowly, and nodded. “That’s Ma’s gravy. Right there. I could never get it right.”