Chapter 17: The Seating Chart

Judy came home to four perfect pies, and nobody ever learned about the one that had been saved at three-eleven.

"They're a little dark on top," she said, turning the first one in her hands.

"Rustic," said Jack.

"It's how they do it in Paris," I said.

She looked at the two of us for a moment, flushed and breathless in her kitchen, with our shirts buttoned wrong.

Then she handed us each a cup of lemonade and said, "Place cards."

By five the long porch table was covered in cream cardstock and little tubes of gold ink.

Judy sat at the head of it with a fountain pen older than I was.

She wrote the guests' names in a slow, round hand.

I sat at her left, sorting the cards into rows.

Jack sat across from me with a stack of the cousins' glasses and a roll of masking tape, labeling each one with a name.

We weren't speaking.

We had agreed to that on the stairs, with great seriousness, for the benefit of any cousin who might be walking by.

My father passed through the porch every few minutes in a rented tuxedo jacket, an undershirt and work boots.

He held a black bow tie at arm's length like a snake.

"Judy, it's choking me."

"You haven't put it on, Jim."

"It's choking me from over here."

"Come here," she said, and tied it with practiced ease without looking up.

He kissed the top of her silver head and wandered off.

She watched him go, and for a moment her whole face was young.

Then she turned back to her cards, and caught us.

I'd been looking at Jack's forearms.