Five Hours a Year novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Sunday Dinner

Frances's house on Russian Hill had a long dining table that had seated three law firms' worth of arguments.

On Sunday night it seated four people and a dog.

The dog lay under my chair with his chin on my shoe.

My mother stood at the stove in Frances's apron, pretending not to supervise the roast.

"It needs ten more minutes," Frances said.

"It needs twenty," Donna said.

"I've been making this roast since before you could spell it."

"And it has been dry since then."

Alec, at my side, put his hand over his mouth, and I saw his shoulders shake.

We sat down at six.

Frances said a short, rude grace.

Alec carved, and my mother corrected the way he held the knife, and he thanked her and held it her way.

I watched him do it, my husband, taking instruction from a retired school secretary at a stranger's table.

Somebody poured the wine.

Somebody passed the potatoes.

Frances told the story of the day she and my father had been thrown out of a moot court for laughing, and my mother added the part Frances had left out, and the part my father had left out for forty years.

I laughed until I had to put my fork down.

Alec told them about the hardware store.

He did it plainly, and he made my mother laugh once, which he had not managed in six years.

He told them how his father had given away the whole afternoon, every afternoon, and what the afternoons had cost.

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