Neil was out in the garage digging out the card table for the kids.
That’s how we always did it. The grown-ups at the big dining room table, with the leaf in. The kids at the card table in the kitchen. Renee’s three. Lisa’s little one. Jonah.
Except the card table was buried in the back of the garage under the Christmas decorations and Neil’s deer stand. He’d gone out to find it ten minutes before.
Everybody else was already seated at the big table.
I could see them through the doorway from the kitchen. Gary at the end, already reaching for the rolls. Pat beside him with her reading glasses on her head. Renee and Doug. Lisa and her boyfriend, whose name I couldn’t remember. The kids hovering behind the chairs.
Bernadine’s chair at the head of the table was empty. She’d come into the kitchen to “help.”
Bernadine is sixty-six. She’s lived in Dubois County her whole life. She was born in Ireland, Indiana, a little German Catholic town ten miles north, the ninth of eleven children.
She buried Neil’s dad three years ago.
Clifford Schnell. Cliff. A big, quiet man with hands like baseball mitts and a laugh that shook the windows. Thirty-four years at Kimball, then retired, then gone. A heart attack. In his recliner. On Thanksgiving Day, 2022.
Before supper. While the turkey was resting.
I knew she ate most suppers alone.
She lives by herself now in a little brick ranch on Jackson Street in Jasper, a block from St. Joseph’s. She goes to the eight o’clock Mass every morning. She plays euchre with the ladies from church on Tuesdays. She volunteers at the Dubois County Museum on Saturdays.
The rest of the time, she’s alone.
I didn’t know about her freezer yet.
Chapter Three: Not at My Table
I set the rolls down.
I took off my oven mitts. The red ones, with the burn marks. I laid them on the counter next to the stove.
Nobody in the dining room had noticed anything yet. Gary was telling a story about a buck he saw on the road to Birdseye. Renee was cutting up her youngest’s food. The football game was on in the living room with the sound down.
I walked to the counter.
Bernadine was fitting the lid on the container with the pie. She looked up at me. She smiled.
“I’m just getting a little to take home, Molly,” she said. “Since there’s so much. You don’t mind.”
It wasn’t a question.
I picked up the first container.
The one with the turkey. The white meat, sliced thick. I held it in my hand. It was warm.
Then I picked up the first lid and held it out to her.
She looked at it. Confused. Then she took it.
She took it. People do. When you hold something out to somebody, they take it. It’s instinct. You don’t even think.
Then the second lid.
I took it off the stack. I held it out. She took it.
The third.
She took it.
The fourth.
She took it.
She was standing there by my kitchen counter holding four plastic lids against her navy cardigan. All four of them, stacked. She didn’t know what to do with her hands.
I turned to Jonah.
“Hold your plate up, bud.”
He held it up. He didn’t understand either. He looked at me with his big brown eyes, Neil’s eyes, and held up his empty plate.
I took the fork out of the container. Bernadine’s fork. And I put two good slices of turkey on his plate. The thick ones, from right along the bone.
Then the dressing he loves best. The crusty corner. The one with the brown edges on two sides.
Then a scoop of mashed potatoes from the pot on the stove. His potatoes. The ones he peeled. With a puddle of gravy in the middle.
Green beans. Cranberry sauce. A roll, warm out of the oven, with butter.
And a square of pudding on the edge, because I knew he’d eat that first.
“Go sit down and eat while it’s hot,” I said.
He looked at his plate. Then up at me. Then at his grandmother.
“At the big table?” he asked.
“At the big table,” I said. “In Grandma’s chair. She’s busy.”
He walked out of the kitchen into the dining room with his plate. Very carefully. Holding it with both hands so nothing would slide off.
He sat down at the head of the table. In Bernadine’s chair. He picked up his fork.
He ate the persimmon pudding first.
