Chapter 23: A Fork for My Father

"I won't come in," my father said. "I came to ask."

Behind me the garage had gone silent.

Carla's chair scraped, and Marco's fork clinked down on his plate.

"Ask what, Dad?"

"For a seat."

He held out the dish towel with the plate wrapped in it.

"I put the card table out on the curb on Friday," he said.

"The one in Mom's kitchen?"

"The one where I sat at the head by myself for eight years. A man from down the block took it."

"Why?"

"Because I looked at it and I couldn't remember one meal I ate there that I wasn't hiding something."

He had shaved, and his cap was in his other hand.

I looked past him at the street.

A light rain had started, and his jacket shoulders were dark with it.

"You told me to act like a father on a Sunday that wasn't a birthday," he said. "This is a Sunday."

I stood in the door for a long time.

Then I turned and walked to the head of my mother's table, and I did not pull out a chair.

I picked up a folding chair from against the wall.

I carried it to the far end by the radiator and set it down with a clack.

"There," I said.

He came in slowly.

He sat in the folding chair and unwrapped the towel.

He set the white plate in front of him with both hands.

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