Chapter 10: Driveway

Solveig Moen had set the table for four on a tablecloth with embroidered rosemaling.

It was Sunday, a week and a day after the wedding, and her narrow house in Lakeside smelled like roast chicken and rye.

Photographs covered the hallway walls.

I saw Isak at six in a bow tie and Kari with a gap in her teeth.

In another one, Leif was held upside down by a man with Isak's chin.

"That's Dad," Isak said, when he saw me stop.

"He looks like you."

"Everyone says that."

"Everyone's right."

Leif sat across from me, six-foot-three and trying to be small.

He had a napkin tucked in his collar.

"So!" he said. "Roz. Serious about my brother? Very serious? How serious?"

"Leif," Solveig said, in a warning voice.

"I'm only being a brother."

"You're being a radio," Isak said, passing the potatoes.

"I'm being supportive!"

I took a potato.

"I'm serious about the potatoes," I said. "These are the best I've ever had."

Solveig glowed.

For the next hour I heard every story about Isak that exists.

He had learned to read at three, from the back of a cereal box.

He had once corrected a substitute teacher's math on the board at eight, and then apologized to her in a note.

He had built a model of the Aerial Lift Bridge from toothpicks, and cried when Leif sat on it.

"I did not cry," Isak said.

"You wept," Leif said.

"I was upset."

"You were eleven and you made a sound like a kettle."

Isak laughed, hard, with his head thrown back.

His mother put down her fork and watched him, with her hand over her mouth.

I looked at my plate.

"My husband's grandmother's ring is in the cedar chest, you know," Solveig said, very lightly.

"It goes to whichever of the children first needs it."

The table went still.

Isak said, "Mom."

"I'm only mentioning where it is."

"We've been together two months," he said. "Mom, there's a pie on the table."

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