Chapter 23: One Hour

We sat at the head table, in the two chairs nearest the stage, with the ruined centerpiece between us.

My father unbuckled his steel watch.

He turned it over and laid it face down on the cloth, and it looked smaller without his wrist around it.

"Do I start?" he said.

"You don't do anything. That's the hour."

He looked at his hands.

The ballroom smelled of cold roast chicken and lilies, and somewhere a waiter was stacking plates as quietly as he could.

Eli had gone to wait in the lobby.

He had kissed my forehead and said, "I'll be here for the hour or the week."

I had loved him for not asking how long.

My father cleared his throat.

"It's very quiet."

"It usually is."

"I don't know what people do."

"They talk," I said. "Or they don't, and it's fine."

He nodded, and for a while he didn't say anything.

I watched him look at the door, and at the lectern, and at the dark window where his own reflection sat with no stopwatch.

His fingers kept drifting to his bare wrist.

"I could tell you about the boy with the broken arm," I said.

"Who?"

"A seven-year-old. He had a stuffed rabbit called Mr. Pickle. He wouldn't say a word to anyone until a doctor asked about his rabbit."

My father listened.

He didn't look at the watch, because he'd turned it over, and I watched him not look at it.

I told him about the shark teeth, and the mother in her work uniform, and the cast covered in pencil drawings.

He asked what kind of pencil.

It was the stupidest, kindest question I have ever heard.

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