Invitation, first draft
Sunday at one. The usual. Come hungry. Love, Mum.
Ruth deleted the usual. There would be nothing usual about it. She had sold the sideboard on Thursday, and the man who bought it had taken the gravy boat by mistake. He said it had been in the drawer. Ruth said that did not make it part of the drawer. He promised to bring it back.
Invitation, second draft
Sunday at one. Last meal here before the move. Please bring a chair. Love, Mum.
Her daughter called within four minutes.
“You don’t need to do a last meal. We’ll have everyone here.”
“I’ve bought the meat.”
“Freeze it.”
“The freezer’s sold.”
“Then we’ll collect it.”
“You’ll eat it on Sunday.”
Her daughter, Celia, exhaled as though somebody had set a heavy box in her arms. Ruth knew the sound well. She had made it herself for most of Celia’s childhood.
“And don’t worry about chairs,” Celia said. “I’ll bring our folding ones.”
Reply from grandson, Ben
We can be there at twelve to help. Do you want dessert?
Ruth replied yes. Then she looked at we and wrote, Does Alex eat custard?
Ben took longer to answer this than he had taken to answer the invitation.
Yes.
She added two plates to the stack. For the first few months she had thought Alex was an abbreviation for the football club Ben watched on Sundays. By the time she understood, asking seemed like admitting she had spent a year not listening. She had kept waiting for an introduction that Ben no longer offered.
Reply from son, Martin
We’ll come, but you’ll need to tell us how many. Celia says you’re coming to hers after the sale. You know we’ve got the downstairs room if the stairs become a problem.
Ruth typed The stairs are already a problem. I have to go up them to get the curtains down. She erased it. She had asked Martin about the curtains twice. His offer concerned a different sort of problem, one in which he could give her a room instead of forty minutes of his Saturday.
She replied, Nine, possibly eleven. One o’clock.
Reply from daughter-in-law, Fran
I’ll bring potatoes. Martin says nine. Why does Celia say seven?
Ruth counted on her fingers. Herself. Celia and her husband. Martin and Fran. Ben and Alex. Two great-grandchildren, who belonged to a granddaughter working Sunday and would arrive with Martin. Nine.
Seven meant somebody had not counted Ben and Alex. Eleven meant somebody had counted the granddaughter and her husband despite being told they were working. Ruth found she was cross with all four absent people on principle.
She replied, Nine. Thank you for potatoes.
On Saturday evening, the gravy boat returned wrapped in a towel. Its buyer brought two chairs in his van.
“These were in my garage,” he said. “You mentioned chairs.”
“I have chairs coming.”
“Well, keep them until you’ve had your dinner.”
Ruth put them beside the table. They were low, with woven seats. One had a dark stain shaped like a boot. She thanked him, then asked if he had time to get the curtains down. He had. She found the stepladder and stood at the bottom holding the bag for the hooks.
Unsent message to Celia
I haven’t asked to live with you.
Ruth left it unsent because it sounded as though she would rather live with Martin. She would rather live above a railway station than negotiate every Sunday over who had the better downstairs room. The new flat had one bedroom, one shallow step at the entrance and a window looking onto a wall where a neighbor had fixed a row of flower boxes. She had not told anyone because she wanted to see it a second time without their help.
She had seen it three times now. The keys lay in her handbag. The movers were coming at eleven on Sunday, which was a mistake she had made when looking at two pages of her calendar at once.
Invitation, addition
Small change. The table will be going before lunch. Could anyone come early?
Ben and Alex arrived at ten. Alex carried a cake in a metal tin and apologized for the bicycle helmet. Ruth said a helmet was a sensible thing to wear on a bicycle. Alex looked relieved, which made her wonder what sort of conversation he had expected.
They found the roasting pan, the plates and the bag of cutlery. Ben asked which boxes went to Celia’s. Ruth told him none did.
He stood holding a box labelled LIVING ROOM, a phrase that had become optimistic since the sofa left.
“Where do they go?”
She showed him the keys.
“Does Mum know?”
“Your mum is working. Your aunt doesn’t.”
“Ah.”
He put the box down. Alex asked whether the flat had an oven. It did, and the oven had the same number of shelves as the one Ruth had just emptied. He called the movers from her phone and asked them to take the kitchen boxes first.
Ruth would have kissed him if she had known him longer than twenty minutes. Instead she asked him to peel the carrots.
Celia arrived at eleven fifteen with no chairs. Her husband said they had thought the message about the table meant lunch was cancelled. Celia saw the moving van and asked why Ruth had booked it today.
“Because I made a mistake.”
“Mum.”
“I can still do that. It hasn’t been sold.”
The movers carried the table out between them. Celia followed Ruth into the empty dining room.
“What’s the address on the order?”
Ruth told her.
“You’ve rented somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“Before one.”
Celia turned away. In the front room her husband was trying to fold a lampshade into a box. She told him to stop. Her voice shook, and Ruth’s certainty shook with it. She had wanted to avoid a negotiation. She had also avoided telling her daughter something her daughter had reason to care about.
“I’m sorry I left it,” Ruth said.
“You let me buy a bed.”
“I said I wasn’t coming.”
“You said we’d see.”
That was true. Ruth had used we’ll see as if it were a locked door. To Celia it had been an open one.
Outside, the movers needed a signature. Ben came looking for Ruth, stopped in the doorway and asked whether now was a bad time. Both women said yes. He stayed there until they laughed, unwillingly, and then handed over the pen.
At twelve thirty, Fran arrived with cooked potatoes wrapped in every towel she owned. Martin took one look at the van and asked what he had missed. One great-grandchild began crying because the house had no sofa. The other walked into the empty dining room and shouted to hear the echo.
“Lunch at the new place,” Ruth announced.
“There’s no room,” Celia said.
“You haven’t seen it.”
“One bedroom.”
“We’re eating, not lying down.”
They traveled in three cars. Ruth sat with Alex, holding the hot roasting pan inside a cardboard box. The new flat smelled of paint and somebody else’s onions. The movers had set the table in front of the window, leaving too little room to walk behind it. Nine people fitted if two sat on the borrowed low chairs and one took the desk chair from the bedroom.
Martin suggested moving the table against the wall. Celia said nobody would be able to reach the inside places. Ruth handed them plates before they could measure anything.
Ben said grace, stumbling over the unfamiliar address when he tried to include it. The younger child whispered that God would know which building. Fran laughed into her napkin. Ruth passed the carrots to Alex and asked how long he and Ben had been together.
“Four years,” he said.
Four years. She looked at Ben. He shrugged with only one shoulder, as he had when he was small and trying not to need anything.
“I’m glad you came,” she told Alex.
“So am I.”
After lunch Celia washed the roasting pan in a sink just too small for it. Ruth dried the end she could reach. They discussed the new bedroom without discussing the bed at Celia’s house. Not yet.
“Do you want us next Sunday?” Celia asked.
“Ring first. I might be out.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. That’s part of it.”
Celia handed her the pan. The far corner was still greasy. Ruth wiped it, gave it back and said she would telephone on Thursday.
That evening she opened the family thread to write her new address. Ben had already posted it. Beneath it was a photograph of Alex on the low chair, his knees almost touching his chin, offering cake to the child beside him. Ruth saved the picture. Then she wrote a message of her own.
The two chairs belong to Mr. Webb from the sideboard. Could someone take them back? Not tonight. I’ve put my feet on one.
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