One More Plate at Sunday Dinner

They went out the back door, and the screen door slapped behind them, and Greg and I stood at the window over the sink and watched them cross the yard to the open stretch of grass between the garden and the machine shed, where Noah used to throw with his father when he was seven.

Noah knelt down in front of Colton and put the ball in his hand and moved his fingers onto the laces one at a time.

He showed him how to turn his shoulder and step with his opposite foot.

He stood behind him and held his elbow and brought his arm through the throw, slow, three or four times, like a dance.

Then Noah jogged out about ten yards and turned around and held up his hands. Colton wound up with his whole body and threw.

It wobbled. It wobbled terribly. It went about six yards and hit the grass and bounced sideways toward the garden fence.

Noah ran and got it and came back and knelt down again and moved his fingers on the laces again.

They did that eight or nine times. Greg didn’t say a word.

On about the tenth throw, it spun. Not perfectly. But it spun, a real spiral, small and tight, and it went right into Noah’s hands, and Colton threw both arms straight up in the air and screamed, and Noah whooped and ran back and picked him up and swung him around.

Greg put his hand flat on the counter. “I never taught him that,” he said, very quietly. “I never once took him out and did that. I kept saying when he’s bigger.”

He was crying. Not loudly. Just standing there in my kitchen with the bank book in one hand and tears running down into his collar.

I handed him a dish towel. It was the only thing I could think of.

He took it and wiped his face with it and then looked at it, like he didn’t know where it had come from, and folded it in half and set it on the counter.

“Twenty-five a month,” he said.

“Twenty-five a month,” I said.

“I’ll match it,” he said. “Twenty-five from me. Same day. The first.” He looked at me, and his eyes were red.

“It’s not much either. It’s what I can do. But I’ll do it every month, Lynn. I’ll set it up at the bank tomorrow. You can watch the book. You’ll see it.”

“I believe you,” I said. And the strange thing is, I did.

We had apple pie in the dining room, from last fall’s Haralsons off the tree in Mom’s yard.

Greg sat in the chair at the corner by the kitchen door, the one with the wobbly leg. Maddie didn’t look at him for ten minutes.

Then Colton asked Maddie if she could braid his hair, and she said, “You don’t have any hair, goober,” and Colton said, “Then braid Dad’s,” and the whole table broke up, Greg included.

Maddie laughed so hard she had to put her fork down. It was the first time I had seen her laugh with her father in the room in a long time.

She passed her father the cream for his coffee after that, when he asked. Not warm. Not yet. Some things take longer than a Sunday.

Sam took Colton upstairs and they came back down with Sam’s old Matchbox cars in a shoebox, which Sam said Colton could keep because they were just taking up space. I knew better.