“Don’t you dare say you’re full,” she warned, “or I’ll have to point out again how thin you’re getting.”
Ellis’s stomach was indeed running out of room—his weekly budget rarely allowed for a sizeable meal—but her smile was so encouraging he couldn’t say no.
“Sure. Just one more.” He swiped a roll, his third of the evening. The scent of warm bread always smelled like home.
When he took a bite, his mother sat a little taller in her floral housedress. Her blue eyes glimmered. They were a nice reminder of all the traits he’d inherited from her. Like the smile lines and rounded chin, the wavy black hair—hers invariably worn to her shoulders. She’d even passed down her medium build that ran slim through the hips.
Come to think of it, in his teenage years, a sturdier physique was the one way in which Ellis wished he’d taken after his father. Aside from the darker complexion they shared, reflecting their distant Portuguese roots, they bore little if any resemblance. Especially these days, with his father’s brown hair turning thin and gray, his black-rimmed glasses now worn full time—the latter being a product of his wife’s gentle but determined prodding.
“How about you, dear?” she asked her husband. “Another roll?” He was parked on Ellis’s other side, at the head of the table, though it was easy to forget he was there.
“I’m all right.” He waved off the basket, his hand calloused and fingernails stained faintly black. The same grease dotted his signature plaid shirt. He returned to the creamed corn on his plate.
The lull that followed didn’t survive half a minute. Ellis’s mother had long ago honed the art of filling the silence as one would potholes in a weathered road. She was a master of smoothing the tension with talk of radio shows, her knitting projects, health updates on the grandparents—her side living in Arizona for the sun, the others already passed—and the latest word on neighbors and friends, including those from Ellis’s school days.
His ties to old pals in the area had faded over time, but he nodded along. And every so often a topic would interest his father enough to chime in.
There was a single subject they would never broach, of course, despite its presence in the empty seat facing Ellis.
At the thought, he could almost smell wafts of cinnamon apples spilling from their old home in Hazelton. He’d been sitting outside, poking at the cast on his arm, fresh from a bicycle tumble that day. Inside, his mother was baking a pie. He didn’t realize the screams were hers—he’d never heard such sounds before—until she burst from the house with the swaddled baby, Ellis’s father right behind. Her face was frantic with fear as they both climbed into the truck. Ellis must have been at least five. Old enough to wait behind alone. Smart enough to save the pie from the oven, half of which he ate from the pan when hunger pangs set in.
That night, his mother had perched on his bed, her voice turned rough as sandpaper. Sometimes babies just stop breathing, for no reason at all. He remembered the tears on her cheeks and trying to comprehend how his brother had gone to live with the angels. He later awoke from his father’s heavy footsteps, traveling here and there over the squeaky floorboards. It was a late-night habit he continued for years to come, as if he’d lost something that could never be found.
If his father had laughed even once since that day, or uttered a word about Henry’s passing, Ellis couldn’t say for sure. Though he’d guess the odds were no better than his mother ever baking another apple pie.
“Ellis?” she said, pulling his mind back. “Would you like some peach cobbler?”
He smiled at her. “I’d love some.”
She was about to rise, leaving Ellis alone with his father. “Ma, hold on. You sit and relax. I can bring it out.”
Naturally she protested, but they reached a compromise. While he carted the used dishes to the sink, she served up the coffee and dessert, and they all settled back in.
“I hope it doesn’t have too much nutmeg,” she said as Ellis and his father took their first bites. “I was trying out a new recipe from Good Housekeeping.”
“It’s perfect,” Ellis insisted through a mouthful.
His father agreed. “Tastes fine, Myrna. Real good.”
She smiled with more pride than relief. Then she resumed leading the chitchat that would fill the rest of their meal, and Ellis realized his chance was