“So here’s how we do it from now on,” Neil said. “The kids eat first. At our house, at Renee’s, at yours, wherever it is. Every holiday. The kids eat first, and then the rest of us, and there’s always enough.”
“And Mom,” he said, and his voice went a little rough on that one, “you’re not eating by yourself anymore. Not Sunday nights. I’ll be at your door every Sunday with supper. Me and Jonah. You won’t need to take anything home in a box.”
She looked up at him then. I saw her lip go, just once, and then she pressed it flat again, because she is a Vogel and Vogels do not cry in other people’s kitchens.
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“Laurel didn’t do anything wrong,” Neil said. “And you didn’t mean anything wrong either. You did what you were taught. But Jonah’s not going to learn it. None of them are.”
He kept his hand on her shoulder. Then he pulled out the chair beside his own at the big table, the one nobody had taken, and he held it for her the way his dad used to hold it.
For a long second she did not move. Then she walked over and she sat back down.
Nobody said anything for a while after that. Then Marie, who is the kindest woman in Dubois County and does not care who knows it, said, “Well, somebody pass me those rolls before the kids eat them all,” and people laughed, and it was over.
It was not all the way over. Things like that are never all the way over at one meal.
But the noise came back into the room. Doug poured more tea. Rose started banging her spoon again. Frank went back to his deer.
I fixed Bernadine a plate myself. I put white meat on it, the good slices I had saved back from the kids, and dressing and potatoes and noodles, and a square of the persimmon pudding. I set it in front of her and she said, “Thank you, Laurel.”
She did not look at me when she said it, but she said it.
I sat down across from her with my own plate, which I had not touched since five in the morning, and I found I was not hungry at all.
Neil said grace once everybody was settled. It was short. He thanked God for the food and the hands that made it and for his dad, who was not with us, and for his mother, who was. Bernadine kept her head down a long time after the amen.
Here is what I learned at that table, and in the kitchen after, that I did not know when I handed her those lids.
Frank told it first, because Frank cannot leave a quiet alone. He said, “Bernie, you remember Mom’s table? Seven kids and Dad and the hired man. We were lucky if the bowl came back with anything in it.”