Chapter 20: The Memorial Dinner

The dining table at my father's house sat twenty-two, and Bradley had filled every chair.

I looked them over from the doorway while the coats were taken.

Old friends of my father, two uncles, a deacon, the whole senior staff of Ames Builders in their good suits.

My mother stood at the head of the room in black silk with her chin up.

At the far end, beside an empty chair, sat a gray-haired woman in a navy blazer, holding a wine glass she was not drinking.

I had phoned her on Monday morning from the truck.

She had listened for forty minutes, and then she had said, "I'll come as a friend of your mother's. Don't look at me."

I did not look at her.

Melanie came in on my arm in a green dress, with her hair down.

She had insisted on the green, because it was the dress she had worn to my father's funeral lunch.

"I want him to see it," she had said.

Her hand on my sleeve was ice.

Bradley stood at the head of the table in my father's chair.

Nobody had told him to sit there.

He lifted his glass to us, smiling.

"Brother. Sister. And my favorite nephew."

Eric was clinging to my leg in a clip-on tie.

"Uncle Bradley's chair is too big," he said.

"Yes, it is."

I picked Eric up and walked him to the seat my mother had marked, between her and Melanie, as far from Bradley as the table allowed.

Bradley watched me do it and said nothing.

Roxanne sat on his right in a red dress and a ring I had never seen.

She did not look at me.

Across from her, in a plum suit and a smile, sat Melanie's vice president, who had asked to come "to support her boss."

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