Chapter 11: Unity

The Millvale parish hall on Christmas Eve held six hundred people and smelled of fish, pine and warm wine.

A long head table stood under the crucifix with white linen, red candles and place cards written in a nun's careful hand.

Mine was beside Assunta Pellegrino, who had the steel thermos at her elbow.

Dominic sat on her other side. Paola, pale in a wrist brace, sat beyond him.

Dominic's father sat at the center in a black suit, a heavy, silent old man with a cane between his knees.

He said nothing to anyone. Everyone looked at him anyway.

Below the stage, the long tables ran back through the hall in rows, and I knew nearly every face.

The oldest widow sat at the third table with her great-grandsons. The captains sat with their wives in their good coats at the fifth.

My father was among them, with his cap in his lap.

Tomo stood against the back wall with the lodge men.

He caught my eye across six hundred heads and did not smile, and my whole body turned toward him.

The priest said the grace.

He was a spare, gray man in a green vestment, and he said it slowly, and he did not look at the head table once.

Then the soup came, and the fish, and the bread. I ate everything and tasted none of it.

At eight, the priest rose again with a glass of wine in his hand.

"Tonight three parishes are at one table," he said.

"We ask a blessing on a marriage that would join two good families. Dominic, you have a few words."

Dominic stood up. He took my hand, warm and dry, and held it up beside his.

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