Chapter 18: Sunday Dinner

My father's kitchen table seated four if nobody minded elbows, and on Sunday evening we had five chairs around it.

Bea sat on the stool she had brought in from the hall.

She had come straight from her shift, still in her green scrubs, and she was eating cornbread out of the pan.

"I'm just saying," she said. "Three cakes in the fridge, and none of them from anyone who loves you."

"They're good cakes," my father said.

"They're apology cakes, Mr. Cheston."

"A cake is a cake."

Elliot sat next to my father with a leather folder in front of him.

He had come in at five carrying a pot roast from a restaurant he refused to name.

He had taken off his jacket, and my father had looked at him for a long moment and said, "You slept."

"Yes, sir."

"It suits you."

I had to look at the ceiling.

Elliot opened the folder now and set a single page on the oilcloth.

"This one is plain, Mr. Cheston. It says the people who pay your bills and the people who decide where your doctor works are you, and you alone.

"Nobody else is named. Nobody gets to sign for you."

"I'd sign for myself," my father said. "I've been doing it for sixty-one years."

"Then I'd like you to sign for yourself."

My father took the pen.

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