Chapter 24: Grilled Cheese in Four, Again

"Her counts are in the normal range," Laurence said. "Every one of them."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"The immunologist says the drug is cleared, and the treatment is holding. She can go to school in the fall."

"School."

"She said the word twice, to be sure I heard it."

I put both hands over my face, and he knelt on the carpet in front of me and pulled them down.

"Ask," he said.

"Hold me."

He did.

I cried into his shirt for a long time.

He did not say anything, and there was nothing in his head but my name.

We told Birdie that afternoon.

She listened with her rabbit in her lap and her feet swinging off the edge of the couch.

"So I can eat whatever I want?"

"Whatever the doctor says is good for you," I said.

"Does a grilled cheese count?"

"It counts."

"Can I have one at a real table?"

I looked at Laurence.

He looked at the dining room, the long one, with the chandelier and the white cloth where the bracelet had lain.

"I think," he said slowly, "that's the right room."

He did not ask a cook.

He did the shopping himself, with Ben.

Ben carried the basket and did not once comment on a billionaire comparing three kinds of bread.

By six, the table was set for five.

Maureen came in her good cardigan with a covered dish and her grey curls pinned up.

She looked around the dining room for a long time.

"I fry eggs in a church basement," she said. "I have never eaten under a chandelier."

"It's a nice one," Birdie said.

"It's a gaudy one, honey. I like it."

Ben sat next to her.

Maureen looked at him, at his dark overcoat, which he had not taken off, and at his notebook.

"Take that off," she said.

"Ma'am."

"The coat. You're at dinner."

Ben took the coat off.

Nobody had ever seen him do it.

Laurence stood at the head of the table with a frying pan.

He had burned two sandwiches and thrown them out and said nothing to anyone about it.

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