Chapter 9: A Hand on the Stove

"Your birthday," I said into the phone.

"Eighty guests, dear. At the Linden Room, at seven.

"The trip was always the little family version. This is the real celebration."

"And you want me there."

"I want us to look like a family in front of people again," Bernadette said.

"You'll say a few words, and we'll put the little scene behind us. I'd hate for anyone to think you'd been cast out."

"I haven't been cast out. I left."

"Of course you did, dear." The warm voice didn't change.

"Bring a gift. Something thoughtful. It doesn't have to be expensive. I know that's difficult for you."

She hung up before I could answer.

I stood on Grand Avenue with my thumb over the screen.

I laughed, quietly, until a woman with a stroller crossed to the other side of the street.

"You are not going," Dot said.

She said it at six o'clock that evening, across the kitchen table, with a wooden spoon in her fist.

"I'm going."

"That woman wants to humiliate you in front of eighty people. She's inviting you so she can watch."

"I know."

"Then why in God's name..."

"Because she's inviting eighty people," I said. "Her friends. Her church. Everyone who thinks she's a saint."

I spread the bank's printed pages across the table.

They covered it from edge to edge.

I put my father's photograph on one corner to hold them down.

"She stood at that counter and told me I'd be in the back of every photo. I'd like to be in the front of one."

Dot looked at me for a long time.