Chapter 24: Her Birthday

On the morning I turned thirty, I got up at five and set the table myself.

It was a long table, made of three smaller ones pushed end to end.

It stood on the grass in front of the cottage.

Nate had carried them out the night before.

I had told him which went where.

I laid out the plates I had picked, plain white ones from an estate sale.

I put a cloth on it in a blue so light it was nearly gray.

Down the middle ran jars of delphinium, hydrangea and larkspur, every stem a flower that was born blue.

The cake was lemon.

I had ordered it from a bakery in Sierra Madre.

I had said *lemon* to the woman at the counter without checking with anyone.

Frances arrived at nine with a tray of deviled eggs, and she looked at the table for a long moment.

"You've put the chairs facing the oak," she said.

"Yes."

"Nobody's facing the road."

"I like the oak," I said.

"Your mother would have put them facing the oak," my aunt said, and she walked off toward the kitchen with her glasses misting.

The families came at noon.

They parked along the drive, under the cedar plank with fourteen brass numbers, and they brought casseroles.

The old man wore the loose suit.

The boy of ten had grown two inches and brought me a drawing of a door.

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