Chapter 1 - The Platter on the Porch
The porcelain handles dug deep into the meat of my palms, pressing bone against ceramic until my fingers throbbed. Twenty-two pounds of brined, basted meat, plus four pounds of heavy white stoneware, felt less like dinner and more like an anchor dragging me straight through Brenda Hendrick’s polished linoleum.
“Margo,” Graham said again.
His voice had that specific, measured cadence he reserved for tense client calls and toddler tantrums. It was the tone of a man trying to talk a jumper down from a ledge, except the ledge was his mother’s kitchen island, and the jumper was his wife holding a roasting dish. His hand stayed clamped around the neck of a bottle of pinot noir. The corkscrew dangled from his other fingers, its silver spiral catching the glare of the overhead recessed lighting.
“Put it down,” he said, softer this time. “Don't do this right now. Not over a comment.”
“It wasn't a comment,” I said. My voice sounded thin to my own ears, like paper tearing under tension. “It’s never just a comment.”
Brenda hadn’t moved from the threshold of the pantry. She stood with her arms folded across her heather-gray cashmere cardigan, her chin tilted up just enough to let her bifocals catch the light. She looked bewildered, but it was the brittle, manufactured bewilderment of someone who had never once had to defend her manners in her own house.
“I only meant that large birds dry out around the wings, Margo,” Brenda said, her tone smooth and reasonable, designed to make the room sound small and me sound unhinged. “Heaven forbid anyone make an observation in this family. You’ve always been so defensive about your cooking.”
Behind her, Renee didn't look up from arranging the linen napkins into silver rings. She smoothed a crease out of an ivory cloth with the side of her thumb, her law school ring flashing. “Let her walk it out to the car if she wants to pout, Mom. She does this every holiday. If we don’t fawn over whatever she brings, she shuts down for three hours.”
That was the sentence that unlocked my knees.
For seven years, I had stayed in rooms where people spoke about me as if I were a piece of faulty furniture that had arrived unvarnished. I had swallowed sighs, laughed off jokes about my clinical salary, and apologized for the sound of my son’s voice when he played too loudly near Walter’s reading chair. Every single time, I had looked at Graham, waiting for him to step between us, waiting for him to say, That’s my wife. Don't speak to her like that.
He never did. He just opened the wine.
“Excuse me,” I said.
I didn't yell. I didn't slam anything. I simply turned on the balls of my boots and walked through the kitchen door.
The hallway was narrow, lined with framed photographs of Graham and Renee: their graduations, their tennis tournaments, their childhood summers on Lake Simcoe. There were no pictures of me. There was one picture of Theo, tucked onto the bottom shelf of a walnut bookcase near the coat closet, framed in a cheap five-by-seven cardboard matte Brenda had never bothered to replace.
I hit the heavy oak front door with my hip, shoved it open, and stepped out onto the wraparound porch.
The cold hit me like a slap of wet wool. November in southern Ontario didn't play around; the air smelled of chimney smoke, damp cedar leaves, and impending sleet. Walter was leaning against the painted railing near the hydrangeas, an unlit cigar between his yellowed teeth, staring out at the manicured lawn. He glanced over his shoulder as the storm door clicked shut behind me.
“Heavier than it looks, eh?” he mumbled, barely taking his hands out of his down vest.
I didn't answer him. I walked down the three wide wooden steps, my boots slipping slightly on the wet treads, and crossed the gravel driveway toward our Subaru.
Behind me, the front door didn't open. Nobody called out from the porch. No footsteps followed me down the gravel.
I popped the rear tailgate with my elbow, set the roasting pan down onto the nest of fleece blankets and bath towels I’d arranged that morning at six o'clock, and pulled the tailgate down until the latch clicked. The steam was still rising from under the aluminum foil, fogging the rear window from the inside.
I stood there in the gravel for twenty seconds, my breath coming in ragged white plumes, waiting for Graham to come down the steps. I waited for him to come out without his coat, to grab my arm, to say, Get back inside, I’ll handle my mother.
May you like
The front door stayed shut. Through the frosted glass of the living room window, I could see the golden glow of the chandelier and the silhouette of Renee carrying a basket of warm bread toward the dining room.
I walked around to the driver’s side, climbed in, locked the doors, and turned the key.
