Chapter 24: Parents' Day

A year later, on the Saturday of Parents' Day, I stood in line for lunch behind a first-grader with a dinosaur backpack.

The tables were set up on the same lawn, under the same trees.

In front of every dish stood a small card that listed everything in it, in big letters.

Every table had a canvas bag clipped to its leg, and I knew without looking what was inside.

"Your turn," the first-grader told me, pointing at the potato salad. "You're slow."

"I was reading the card."

"The card says peanuts."

"The card says no peanuts," I said. "Read it again."

She did, moving her lips, and then she gave me a look of enormous contempt and ran off with her plate.

Our table was at the end under the biggest oak.

My grandmother had claimed it at nine that morning with a cardigan and a thermos, and nobody had dared move either.

My mother sat next to her in scrubs.

She worked at a public school across the district now.

She had come on her day off with a lanyard around her neck and a pen clipped under it.

"Sit," she told me. "Eat before it goes."

"I'm eating."

"You're standing."

I sat.

Lindsey was already there, home for the weekend from her first year of college.

She had a paper cup of lemonade and a fork stolen from somebody else's plate.

She had turned eighteen in March. She wore her hair longer now, and she ate when she was hungry.

"You're late," she said.

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