Twelve Chairs and a Desk

Three quiet days

Sierra came home at ten after six. I heard her stop in the hall. I heard her stand there in that doorway for a long time.

Then I heard her go upstairs and close Tyler’s bedroom door, very softly, which was somehow worse than slamming.

Wednesday and Thursday the house was so quiet you could hear the furnace click on. Sierra left for work before I left for school.

She came home and went upstairs. She did not go into the gray room at all.

I told myself I did not care. I was a little proud of myself, I will admit that. I had stood my ground without raising my voice.

I had been firm and fair. I said that to myself several times, which is usually a sign that I am not sure.

On Thursday night I went to bed early and woke up at one in the morning for no reason.

I went down for a glass of water. There was a light on in the sewing room, the little gooseneck lamp on Sierra’s desk.

The door was half open. Sierra was sitting at her desk in the corner, hunched over, her hoodie up, writing something on index cards by hand.

She had a stack of them rubber-banded together. She did not hear me.

I stood in the dark hall for maybe ten seconds. Then I went back up to bed.

I thought she must be doing some kind of online job, or something for the store. I did not ask. I wish now I had asked.

Friday

On Friday I came home from school at three-thirty and made my chicken and noodles, the way my mother made them and her mother before her.

I rolled the noodles out Thursday night and let them dry on dish towels over the backs of the kitchen chairs.

I stewed two hens for the broth, pulled the meat, and baked the whole thing in my big casserole dish, the big glass one, with mashed potatoes on the side. Every March for nineteen years, it has been chicken and noodles.

I put on my teal blouse, the one the girls always say looks nice on me.

I brushed out my hair, which I keep chin-length now, still dark but with more gray in it every March. Nobody at that table cares.

Mark got home at five-thirty. He changed his shirt without being told, which is how I knew he understood what kind of night it was.

He carried in an armload of wood for the stove in the dining room and checked the lamps.

At six o’clock the doorbell started ringing. Patti was first, the way she always is, with a pan of her broccoli salad and twelve folding chairs still in the trunk of her car.

Before I could even go out, Tyler came down the stairs, put his shoes on, and went out to Patti’s car.

He carried in the chairs four at a time, without anybody asking him. He set them up around the table, square and even.

Patti looked at me over the broccoli salad. I shook my head a tiny bit. She understood.

We have been friends long enough that most of what we say to each other does not need words.

The rest of the women came in one at a time. Lois with her apple dumplings. Marcy with deviled eggs.

Jan and Karen together, the way they always arrive, arguing about whose turn it is to drive. Then the others, one by one.

Sierra was standing at the foot of the stairs when they came in.

I do not know if she had meant to come down or if she had just been caught on her way to the kitchen.

Every one of those women walked past her, down the hall, into the gray room.

Each one said, “Hello, honey.” Every single one. Not one of them said anything about the paint.

Not one of them looked twice at the walls. They did not have to. Everybody in that house knew exactly what had happened.

They sat down. Lois started in on her grandson’s basketball team. Marcy told the story about her husband and the raccoon in the corn crib, which we had all heard three times, and we laughed anyway because Marcy tells it so well.

It got loud, the way it always does. The lamps were on because it was getting dark out, that first Friday in March before the clocks change.

The room was warm from the woodstove in the dining room and from all of us.

I carried in the chicken and noodles last, holding the dish by its edges because it was so hot.

I leaned over the table between Lois and Patti and set it down on a folded potholder in the middle, and the women made the noise they always make, and I straightened up and looked toward the door.