Chapter 24: Putnam Street

At five o'clock on Thanksgiving, nine feet of white oak stood in my mother's front room with a yellow Formica table butted against its end.

Every chair in the house was at it, plus two milk crates and the piano bench.

My mother sat at the Formica end, nearest the stove, with her leg up on a crate.

Ray sat at her right hand.

He had brought the pie, a bottle of cider and a necktie he kept straightening.

Lindsey sat across from him, with Mabel at her ankles.

The retired railroad man from next door sat beside me in a bow tie, because nobody had told him it wasn't a bow tie occasion.

Tom sat on my left, in a plain flannel shirt, and under the table his boot was against mine.

"Ray," my mother said. "You say grace."

"I don't know any."

"Say thank you, then."

Ray stood.

He put his big hands on the back of his chair and looked down the length of the oak for a long moment.

"Thank you," he said. "I can't say all of it. Thank you for having me at a table. That's the whole thing."

He sat down, red to the ears.

"Good grace," said the railroad man, and reached for the rolls.

He looked down the table at Ray and Lindsey and me, and then at my mother.

"Peggy, I never did get it straight," he said. "Which of these two is yours?"

"Both of them," said my mother, and passed him the butter.

"And this fellow?" He pointed his roll at Ray. "He's the dad, then?"

Ray went still with a spoon of cranberry halfway to his plate.

I put down my fork.

"That's my father," I said. "Ray. He peels a potato like he's disarming it."

Ray set the spoon down very carefully.

He didn't say anything at all.