Chapter 6: What Families Do at Lunch
The restaurant was called Hargrove's.
It was the kind of place that had white tablecloths and bread brought to the table without asking, and my mother had always liked it because it made her feel that an occasion was being honored.
I had chosen it deliberately.
Whitney and I arrived first.
We sat side by side on the banquette, which we had also chosen deliberately, so that our parents would have to sit across from us and we could see their faces at the same time.
The letter was in Whitney's bag.
Folded.
In an envelope.
The scan was on both our phones.
"How are you feeling?" Whitney asked.
"Like I might be sick."
"Me too."
"Good," I said.
"That means we're taking it seriously."
She almost smiled.
Our parents arrived seven minutes late, which was not unusual.
My father held the door for my mother.
She came in scanning the room the way she always did, locating us, composing her expression into something warm and slightly relieved, as though she had been worried we might not show up.
She kissed Whitney's cheek.
She kissed mine.
"You look tired," she said to me.
"Are you sleeping?"
"Not much."
"That's the baby." She sat down and opened her menu.
"It gets easier.
I keep telling you."
My father sat across from Whitney.
He nodded at me.
"Arm okay?"
"Better."
"Good."
He opened his menu too.
For a few minutes we were just a family at lunch.
Bread arrived.
Water was poured.
My mother asked about June and I described her in the careful, abbreviated way I had learned to describe things to my parents — enough to satisfy, not enough to invite.
Then Whitney set her menu down.
"Mom," she said.
"I need to ask you something."
My mother looked up.
"Of course."
"When Clara called from the hospital two nights ago — did you know before Dad told you?
Or did you find out when he did?"
A small pause.
So small that someone who hadn't spent a lifetime watching my mother manage conversations might have missed it.
"He told me," she said.
"When she called."
"You didn't already know?"
"How would I already know?"
"I don't know," Whitney said.
"I'm asking."
My mother looked at my father.
A quick look.
The kind that married people use to take inventory of each other.
"I found out when Dad did," she said.
"I was worried, of course.
But Clara said she had help."
"She didn't have help," Whitney said.
"She was alone."
"Well, she said—"
"Mom." Whitney's voice was steady.
"I was on the phone with her.
She was alone.
She had eighteen stitches and a four-week-old baby and she was alone."
My mother set her bread down.
"I don't understand what you're asking me."
"I think you do," Whitney said.
The table was quiet.
My father was looking at the tablecloth.
My mother was looking at Whitney with an expression I recognized — the one she used when she was calculating how much she needed to give in order to keep control of a situation.
"I know you're upset," Mom said.
"Both of you.
And I understand that.
Clara, I should have come.
I see that now.
I'm sorry."
"That's not what this is about," I said.
She looked at me.
"Then what is it about?"
I nodded to Whitney.
Whitney reached into her bag and placed the letter on the table.
My mother's eyes dropped to it.
She went very still.
"Where did you get that," she said.
Not a question.
A statement, flat and careful, the punctuation wrong.
"Your desk," Whitney said.
"A month ago."
My mother looked at my father again.
This time the look was different.
"You've read it," she said.
"Yes."
The bread basket sat between us.
The water glasses caught the light.
Somewhere behind us, another table was laughing about something.
My mother picked up her wine glass and took a slow sip.
When she set it down, she looked at me.
"Clara," she said.
"I can explain."
May you like
"I know you can," I said.
"That's why we're here."
