Chapter 5: The Lutefisk Dinner

My mother had not set foot in the Leif Erikson Lodge since the funeral.

On the second Saturday of November she walked in on my arm, in her good gray wool, because Liv had begged her.

The hall was long and loud, with white paper on the tables and two hundred Ballard families passing plates of lutefisk, boiled potatoes and lefse.

The smell of the fish hit me at the door.

Fifteen days had gone by since my last night in the dark.

I kept rubbing the inside of my left wrist where his thumb had been.

I did it under the table, with the other hand, so no one would see.

"You're quiet," Liv said, across a bowl of melted butter.

"I'm eating."

"You're not. You've been moving that potato for ten minutes."

She was in Dad's old gray sweater, and she was loud and bright in it.

She laughed with the same men who had never once come to see her while the Haldis sat in the Kodiak yard.

I loved her for it.

I watched my mother cut her fish into very small pieces and eat none of them.

Everyone who came to the table said her name softly.

"Ragna. It's good to see you out."

"Ragna. We think of Nils every day."

She thanked each of them, and her hands stayed flat on the paper cloth.

I thought: It will be all right.

At the end of the dinner the president of the lodge stood on the little stage and raised his hand.

The whole room got up.

Then two hundred voices sang "Deilig er jorden," slow and low, as they did at every Ballard funeral and Christmas.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Bought My Nights in the Dark, and I Hated Him by Day from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.