Chapter 24: Eat Something

On Sunday the kitchen on Wilson Avenue smelled of burned garlic.

"It's fine," Nunzio said from the stove, with a dish towel over his shoulder and a wooden spoon in his fist. "It's almost fine."

"It's black," Ilario said from the doorway.

"It's dark."

"Marta, he's burned the escarole."

"He's learning," I said.

I stood at the head of the table with a stack of plates against my hip.

The table was new.

Six captains had carried my grandfather's old one out to the yard on Thursday.

They had planed the scars out of it and added two leaves and a pair of borrowed legs.

It now ran the length of the room and out through the door into the hall.

There was a chair for everybody who had said they would come.

Fifty-one people were coming.

I had counted them twice, on a piece of paper, with my finger under each name.

The gray-haired captain arrived first, with his cane and a tray of cannoli from the bakery that had been shut since the funeral.

The man with the gold watch brought his wife, who kissed me on both cheeks and said nothing at all.

The union steward came with his hat in his hands and thirty longshoremen's wives behind him, carrying covered dishes.

Nobody laughed when I took my time greeting them.

They waited, and I took it, and then I told each one where to sit.

At two o'clock, the room was full.

My grandfather's chair stood at the head of the table, with its high back and its worn arms.