Miller's Valley - Anna Quindlen Page 0,19

hands at the sink with a piece of fine steel wool and some Lava, and then they shook hands again.

“You look good,” my father said.

“The food’s lousy,” Tom said, and my father said, “Your mother’s made a nice dinner, believe you me.”

It was true. My mother had made a pumpkin pie, and some scalloped potatoes that could be heated up, and she had two roasting chickens all ready to go in the oven. It was a kind of Thanksgiving dinner even though Thanksgiving was two weeks away. My father called her at the hospital, and she got someone to cover the last few hours of her shift.

“Oh, Tom, you’re skin and bones,” she said when she hugged him.

“You’re blind, Miriam, the man’s all muscle.” That was the first time my father’d ever called Tom a man, I think. Tommy had brought my father a knife with a pine tree engraved on the handle, and my mother a box of saltwater taffy. He brought my aunt Ruth a little crab made out of seashells, and he cracked another beer and carried the crab up to her. “Tell her I’ll send her a plate when we’re done here,” my mother said.

“I wish she would have dinner with us just for tonight,” I said.

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” my mother said. To this day I’m not sure exactly how that makes a lot of sense, but my mother said it anytime anyone wished for anything. She said her mother used to say it. Ruth said she couldn’t recall that at all. She said their mother used to say “Don’t trouble trouble,” which honestly seemed even dumber to me but no way would I ever say so.

When the chickens were out of the oven and on the stove top under a dishcloth Tom came into the kitchen and put his arms around my mother’s waist from behind. “I got an idea,” he said. “Why don’t we have dinner at Ruth’s?”

“Does she have something better in the oven than this? Because somehow I doubt it.” So did I. Ruth could make three things: toast, scrambled eggs, and grilled cheese. That was okay because she and I both liked those three things, although sometimes she would put sweet pickle slices in the grilled cheese and I would squeeze them out. Pickles shouldn’t be warm. That’s just not right.

“We could carry everything up there. It’ll be nice.”

“Nice for her,” said my mother. “Besides, I already had Mimi set the table.”

“I didn’t do it yet.”

Tom picked up the roasting pan. I picked up the stack of dishes. My father came downstairs. “What’s going on here?” he said.

“We’re all going to eat at Ruth’s house,” Tommy said.

“That’s a nice idea,” my father said.

“Nice for you,” said my mother. I could tell she wanted to balk in the worst way, but Tommy was smiling his Tommy smile at her, his head on one side, and even without the bangs dropping down on his forehead it worked. “If you drop those chickens you’ll be in trouble for sure,” my mother said to him.

“This is so nice,” said Ruth. I set out to go back for silverware, but Ruth said she had plenty, and she took a big mahogany box out of the bottom drawer of a chest against one wall. The box was filled with tarnished silver.

“I never knew how you wound up with that,” my mother said.

“My mother gave me this for my hope chest,” Ruth said to me, as though her sister hadn’t said a word. “She started piece by piece when I was thirteen. Your mother was in nursing school and she said, Ruthie, your sister is going to be a professional woman, she’ll never marry. I’m going to give this to you for when you make dinner for your husband. It just goes to show.”

“Did you want it?” I asked my mother.

“I don’t see the point, to be honest. Stainless is easier. When we were kids all these women would spend a whole day with a chamois cloth and baking soda polishing the silver. They never used it anyway.”

“Mother used hers for holidays.”

“I stand corrected. They used it three times a year. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter.”

“Birthdays, too,” said Ruth.

“Your grandmother was a fine cook,” my father said to me.

“Buddy, you are so right about that. She appreciated you, too. When you first started coming down, when Miriam wasn’t the least bit interested in you—”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” said my mother.

“—she would always say, That Buddy Miller,