French Braid(51)

“Died!” several people said, and Alice asked, “Who?”

“David, maybe?”

“David!”

“Well, right off I saw I was wrong,” she said. “But you were all so quiet!”

“We were quiet because you looked scared,” Morris said.

Robin glanced at him in surprise.

“I was scared because I thought someone had died,” Mercy said.

Well, this was getting them nowhere. Robin pushed back his chair and stood up. He cleared his throat. “I’m not much of a one for speeches,” he said.

He had their attention. He plowed ahead. “But I wanted to tell about this salmon loaf.”

“It is delicious,” Greta said.

He paused to say, “Well, thank you.”

“I would like the recipe.”

“I got it from this church cookbook my great-aunt gave us for our wedding,” he said. “I’ll copy it out for you.” He went back to his original line of thought. “We’d been going on all these dates, you see. I’d taken Mercy to all these restaurants, trying to make an impression. Just about pauperized myself!” Soft chuckles around the table. “Crab Imperial in white china seashells, chickens wearing leg ruffles, this dessert they set on fire, one place—”

“Cherries Jubilee,” Mercy murmured.

“Crazy foods! So then we got married. We didn’t take a honeymoon; couldn’t afford to. All those pricey restaurants, I guess.” More chuckles. “First night in our own apartment, then, that little place in Hampden; you girls remember that place. First meal of our marriage. Mercy goes out to the kitchen and starts to fix our supper. I stay sitting in the living room reading the evening paper. It feels like I’m acting in a play or something. I’m wondering what she’ll feed me; I’m hoping it’s not something French. I’m thinking I don’t care if I never see another French dinner in my life. Then she calls me to the table. I fold up my paper; I go out to the kitchen…In front of my plate there’s this salmon loaf, waiting for me to serve it. This loaf pan of salmon with a toasty brown top, and it looked so…”

He swallowed. His eyes were filling with tears; he hoped nobody noticed. “It looked so cozy,” he whispered. “It looked to me like home. Like I finally had a home.”

He had planned to say more, but he stopped. He sat down.

From her place at the other end of the table, Mercy said, “Thank you, sweetheart.”

He raised his eyes to her and found her smiling at him. That made it all worthwhile.



* * *



—

The cake was a big success, especially with the young ones. Of course it was only a sheet cake, because they’d told him at the Giant that that would be the most practical for such a crowd, but “Happy 50th Anniversary” was written in flawless cursive across the top and there was a yellow sugar rose at each corner. Alice asked, “Shall I do the honors?” and Mercy said, “Yes, please,” and waved a hand. So Alice started slicing the cake and passing it around. Even before she was finished the two little girls were ready for seconds, so the people at the Giant had been right.

Greta, meanwhile, went out to the kitchen and fixed a pot of coffee without being asked, which was something of a surprise. While it was brewing she retrieved her plant from the kitchen counter and carried it into the dining room and set it in front of Mercy. “This is what we brought you,” she said in that blunt way of hers.

“Oh, how pretty!” Mercy said, and then, “Robin, did you see?”

“Yes, very nice,” he said.

“I think we should put it in a south-facing window,” she said. “Right, Greta?”

“The light there would be too strong,” Greta said.

“Oh, I guess east would be better, then. Say the east window in the living room,” Mercy told Robin.

“Okay,” he said.

He was grateful she had spoken as if she still lived here.

That little Candle! Such a live wire. She had polished off her second piece of cake now and she wanted all her cousins to come outside with her again, even though they were still eating. “Please? Please?” she said, and she and Serena nagged Emily into laying down her fork. In no time all the young ones were gone, and their section of the table was silent but somehow still raucous-seeming, with the messy plates they’d left behind and the balled-up napkins and crumb-littered tablecloth.

Morris was telling Mercy how his clients admired her paintings. (He had two of them hanging in his office.) “I always say, ‘Well, her card’s in there with your paperwork,’?” he told her, and Mercy said, “Aren’t you nice.” Alice was quizzing David about his classes; it seemed he was teaching a summer-school course in improv. And now Greta brought the coffeepot in from the kitchen, walking with that little hitch of hers and looking a bit weary.

Robin had asked Mercy, once, “How old is she, do you think?” (This was back when they first heard that Greta was pregnant with Nicholas.) “Forty-two,” Mercy said promptly. “I asked her.” Eleven years older than David, therefore. Well, it could have been worse. And they did seem happy. Although who knew, really? How did anyone know what was really going in their kids’ lives?

He had long ago accepted that his experience of fatherhood was not what he used to envision. The girls and he got along, thank heaven, but girls were more a mother’s business and so he couldn’t take much credit for that. David, on the other hand…For some reason, he and David had never seemed quite in step with each other. He couldn’t put his finger on it. He had certainly tried his best. It would have helped, maybe, if David worked with his hands. That would have given them something to talk about. But he didn’t. Which was okay! Better than okay! Robin was fine with that. He was proud of David’s profession, in fact, and somewhere he still had a news clipping about a play of his that a local theater group had staged.