The Four Lids on My Counter

I have thought a lot about that picture since. I am not proud of how it looked. She is 66 years old.

She buried Neil’s dad, Harold, three years ago in February, and she has lived alone in that house in town ever since.

I knew she ate most of her suppers by herself. I knew she watched the news at five-thirty and Wheel of Fortune after, with a plate on a TV tray. I did not know yet about the freezer. That came later.

“Laurel,” she said finally. Her voice was not loud. It was hurt, mostly, and something else underneath it that I could not name yet. “When I was a girl, the kids ate last. We turned out just fine.”

I did not answer that one right away. I could feel my face getting hot, and I knew if I opened my mouth too fast something would come out of it that I could not take back in front of her brother.

“Not at my table, Bernadine,” I said, as quietly as I could and still have her hear it. “Not today. He’s been up since six. He eats.”

That was all I said. Then I turned around and went back to fixing plates, because there were still four other children in that house, and nobody had fed any of them either.

Ethan was the first one to move. He is Renee’s oldest, twelve, all elbows and big feet, and he does not say much to grownups.

He pushed his chair back and walked over to me with his plate held out.

He did not say anything. He just stood behind where Jonah had been standing, like it was a line at the school cafeteria, and held out his plate. I filled it from the containers and the pans both, and he said, “Thanks, Aunt Laurel.”

Then Lily got up, who is eight, and then Grace, who is five and had to be lifted to see over the counter.

Renee got up and stood behind Grace and held her plate for her, and she did not look at her mother once.

My brother Tim got up last with a little divided plate for Rose. He did not need to. Erin had a jar of sweet potatoes in the diaper bag.

But he stood in that line behind his niece like he had been waiting all day to do it.

I filled every one of those plates. I took turkey from Bernadine’s container until the container was empty, and then I took dark meat from the bones.

I scooped the dressing out of her container until I could see the bottom.

The pecan pie I left alone. You do not give a five-year-old pie before her turkey. I am not a monster, whatever anybody at that table might have been thinking about me by then.