The Four Lids on My Counter

Renee came up beside me in the doorway and watched it with me. She did not say anything for a while. Then she said, very low, “I always ate last at her house too, you know. All of us did. I just thought that was how it was.”

“I know,” I said.

“I’m glad somebody said something,” Renee said. “I’m glad it was you and not me, because I would have said it wrong.” Then she squeezed my arm and went to find her coat.

When everybody started packing up to leave, I went to the kitchen and got out my own containers, the cheap ones from the dollar store that I do not care about getting back.

I started filling them like I always do at the end of a holiday.

Turkey for Tim and Erin, because they had a long drive. Pie for Frank and Marie, because Frank had eaten three pieces and Marie had looked at him.

Dressing for Renee, because her kids would not eat it but Doug would.

And then I filled the last two, with white meat and dressing and pudding and noodles, and I walked them into the living room and held them out to Bernadine.

She was standing by the door in her coat with the roll still wrapped in its napkin in her hand.

Neil was holding her tote bag. She looked at the containers I was holding out, and she shook her head.

“No,” she said. “You keep it, Laurel. You feed those boys of yours this week.”

“Bernadine, take it,” I said. “Please. There’s plenty. I made too much on purpose.”

She looked at me for a long moment, and then she did something I had never seen her do in eleven years of marriage to her son.

She reached out and she put her hand flat on my cheek, like I was one of hers.

“I know you did,” she said. “I know you made too much on purpose. You always do.” She patted my cheek once and let go. “Neil’s bringing me supper Sunday. I don’t need to fill the freezer anymore.”

She took the roll Jonah had saved her and tucked it into her coat pocket, napkin and all.

Then she took her tote bag from Neil, and I saw her four containers inside it. Renee had emptied the last two into my own bowls and washed all four, and they sat in that bag stacked inside each other, clean and empty.

“Those are going home empty,” I said, and I nodded at the bag, meaning it as a little joke, because I did not know what else to say.

“They are,” she said. “I’ll need them Sunday, for whatever is left of the supper my son brings me. I imagine there won’t be much.”

Neil drove her home. She does not drive after dark anymore, not since the cataract. Jonah went along to ride in the front seat on the way back.