Chapter 4: Pass the Potatoes

Sunday brunch at my mother's new house started at eleven, and by eleven-ten I knew Karl Hartmann was going to ruin me.

He sat across from me at the long oak table with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

Every time he reached for the coffee I saw the forearm that had been around my thigh at one in the morning.

"More pierogi, Karli?" my mother asked.

She was in her new yellow cardigan, at the head of the table next to Gerry, with her hair up and color in her cheeks.

"Just call him Karl, Mama," I said. "He's twenty-eight."

"I like it," Gerry said. "His mother called him Karli."

Karl went still for one second.

Then he held out his plate, and my mother loaded it with cheese pierogi and fried onions, and the second passed.

I watched Gerry reach over and squeeze her hand on the tablecloth.

He was fifty-three and heavy in the shoulders, with a bad knee and a gentle voice, and he had not stopped smiling since June.

In nine years of widowhood, Karl had told me once, his father had never smiled at a breakfast table.

I did not want to be the reason that smile went away.

"Pass the potatoes," Karl said.

I picked up the dish of potato pancakes and held it across the table.

His fingers closed over mine on the handle, warm and slow, and stayed a half second longer than a plate needed.

I let go first.

Under the table his boot nudged mine.

It was a small, accidental-looking nudge, and then his foot was against my ankle, and then his calf was alongside mine.

Nobody could see it.

The tablecloth hung to the floor on all sides.

My mother was telling Gerry something about the church fish fry, and Gerry was nodding.

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