The Pans I Carried to the Band

The Woman With The Foil

I should tell you about Verlene, so you do not think I am cruel for what came after.

Verlene is Reed’s aunt. His daddy’s oldest sister. And she is not a monster, I want to be fair about that.

She is the kind of woman who shows up to every funeral with a Bundt cake and goes home with three of somebody else’s casserole dishes that nobody ever sees again. She is the kind who fills a plate at the potluck and then fills a second plate wrapped in a paper napkin “for the road.” The road is forty feet to her car.

Nobody ever says a word. That is how it works with a grabber.

You do not say anything, because it is just a plate, just a dish, just a pie. Who makes a scene over a pie? So it goes on for forty years, and the whole family knows, and the whole family lets it.

I will give you one for instance. Two summers before, at Reed’s cousin’s baby shower, Verlene carried off the whole veggie tray and the ranch dip before the mother-to-be had even opened her gifts. Carried it right out to her car in a cake carrier that was not hers.

Somebody noticed. Nobody said anything. Reed’s mama just made a face at her sister across the room and let it go, the way she always had.

Verlene has told herself so many times that nobody will miss it that she has come to believe it is the plain truth. Nobody misses it. Nobody counts.

I think she believed that standing at the back of her Tahoe. I think she looked at all that food and did the math she always does.

There was so much of it. My mother had made too much on purpose. Nobody would miss a pan or two, or six. Verlene had a chest freezer at home and a list of shut-ins she could say she was feeding. The music was loud. It was dark. It was easy.

“The band’s still here,” I said. “The busboys haven’t eaten.”

“They’ll be fine,” Verlene said. “They get paid.”

She said it the way you say the weather is going to turn. Not mean. Just settled. A fact she had already decided on.

The band gets paid, so the band does not get fed. The food comes home with the person quick enough to carry it out.

I looked past her into the open hatch and counted. Six pans. Maybe seven. The brisket, the ham, both green beans, the pork, a casserole.

And she was reaching for the rolls. My mama’s rolls.