A toast

This vignette has been simmering on the back burner for years. I dug into it a bit during Unfold (led by the phenomenal Tristan Richards) and found my way back to it the other day. It's forever in progress and always on the chopping block as I continue to struggle with making up my mind about inviting strangers to my family's dinner table.

Gravy congeals on the plates — the good ones, with the scalloped edges and the gold trim. When you hold them up to the light, they glow, like small moons in your careful hands. Their place in the hutch yawns beside the teapot, with its hand-painted roses. When you were young, you decided that the tea set must be bone china, and you would roll your feet delicately across the dining room carpet, ease yourself onto the plush seat of a good chair. The door of the hutch always stuck, resisting the pull to open. But you knew how much pressure, how much time, where to place your other hand, when to breathe. The belly of the teapot filled the bowls of your small hands, you turned it slowly from side to side, looking for the impressions of filled eye sockets, the shadow of a spiny ridge of a jaw. 

The champagne — remnants of a toast — shimmers in the flutes. Your glass is just under half-full with the remains you saved for dessert. The others are down to shallows, the few drops that never fully drain, just huddle at the bottom like the wet gleam of your mother’s eyes. Not crying. Not yet.

Footsteps overhead set the china shivering in the hutch. Teacups dance nervously on their saucers; wine glasses shimmy and chime. The orchestra warming up. 

You listen, but only halfway, only out of habit. You gaze at the teapot gleaming from the center shelf, trying to see where it keeps its teeth. 

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