Chapter 5: Chamomile

Breakfast was served at eight on the terrace, and the coffee came in a silver pot.

My father sat at the head of the table in a camel coat he had not taken off.

My mother sat beside him with her hands around a cup she never lifted.

Clem poured the juice and chattered about the florist.

I counted three staff and two guards at the door, and one of them was the driver who had brought me up the bluff.

The waiter filled a white cup and set it at my place.

The coffee smelled fine, and that was what bothered me.

Nobody at the table had looked at my cup yet, and my father had stopped talking about the weather to watch me reach for it.

I picked it up and carried it toward the door.

"Where are you going, sweetheart?" my father said.

"Fresh air," I said.

The driver stood by the glass doors with his hands folded.

He had a gray crewcut and a tired face, and he had been up since five.

"You look like you need this more than I do," I said, and put the cup in his hand.

He hesitated, and my father cleared his throat behind me.

"Go on," my father said. "Miss Dunleavy's offering."

The driver drank half the cup in one swallow.

I went back to my seat and took a clean cup from the stack by the waiter's elbow.

I poured my own coffee and drank it, and nobody could say a word about it.

I counted slowly.

By the time I reached forty, the driver put his hand on the door frame.

By sixty he had slid down it onto the floor.

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