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Sunday Dinner is for Families
February 19, 1989. It is a Sunday, Sophie is five years old, and Grampa Lou’s spot at the table is empty. Sophie is having dinner in the early afternoon with her family and Grammaggie because her mom says that’s what families do on Sundays. Her dad’s mom and dad can never come because they live all the way in Arizona and today Grampa Lou can’t come because he passed.
Sophie’s dad explained it all to her and her brother, Stevie. He sat them down on his bed and they were wearing their nice clothes because they had to go to the funeral. Steven hooked a finger into the collar of his shirt and pulled it away from his neck.
“Grandpa Lou passed,” Dad said. “That means that we won’t get to see him again. We’re going to his funeral to say goodbye.”
“He died,” Stevie said. Stevie was eight, so he understood.
“Yes,” Dad said. “He will be buried in a cemetery, where we can go visit and remember him.”
Now it is Sunday a day later and the rest of the family is sitting around the table with a pretty white tablecloth on it. Sophie’s mom is bringing out the dishes of food from the kitchen and laying them on the table. They are all wearing lots of black, except Sophie has on a navy blue sweater that Mom thought was black when she picked it out in the morning.
“Should we say grace?” Mom asks.
“Grace,” Sophie says.
“That’s not what it means, stupid,” Stevie says. Sophie tries to kick him under the table but her legs are too short and she only catches air. “It means you hold hands and pray.”
Mom holds out her hands to Dad and Grammaggie and they hold out their hands to Sophie and Stevie. When Stevie takes Sophie’s hand he squeezes her fingers hard and she thinks her bones will break in half.
“Ouch,” she says. Mom hushes her. The grown-ups close their eyes and put their faces down, and Stevie copies them but Sophie just watches. Her mom says some nice things about how they are grateful for food, which Sophie thinks is a little weird because she’s had food all her life and never had to be grateful about it before. Then she says some nice things about Grampa Lou and when she finishes they all drop each other’s hands and Mom serves Grammaggie food first.
“Mom?” Sophie says.
“Yes?”
“Are there dead people buried under the house?”
Mom drops the serving spoon into the bowl and it gets mashed potatoes on the handle. She puts her hands on her face.
“No, Sweetie,” Grammaggie says. “People are only buried in special places. Only in cemeteries.”
“And we can visit them there,” Sophie says because she remembers that Dad told her that.
“Yes,” Grammagie says. “We can visit your grandpa there.”
“But we still can’t talk to him,” Sophie says.
“We can talk to him,” Grammagie says. “We can talk to him whenever we like.”
“He can’t talk to us,” Stevie says.
That’s when Mom takes her hands off her damp face and picks up the potatoes. “That’s enough,” she says. She holds the spoon and gets mashed potatoes on her hands. When she scoops some for Sophie she hits the spoon against the plate hard. Sometimes Sophie can’t understand why Mom is angry.
“I’m just saying that I think it could have been handled differently,” Dad is saying. He is always very careful with his words.
“Leave it alone, Jim. She’s not your mother,” Mom says.
“She’s my mother in law, she’s been at Sunday dinner every week for over ten years, and I just think we should have asked her to move in here instead of putting her in assisted care.”
“It wasn’t your decision to make, it was mine and I made it.”
Sophie pushes ice cream against the roof of her mouth with her tongue. It melts and leaks into the rest of her mouth. Steve is sitting across the table from her. She looks up at him and he sticks his tongue out. She wrinkles her nose and sticks her tongue out back. He crosses his eyes, which she can’t copy and he knows that and that’s why he did it.
Mom and Dad are still arguing and Sophie wants to listen to what they’re saying but Steve is kicking her under the table because he doesn’t want to listen and so she starts kicking back.
“Stopop bopeeoping sopuch op boputhopead,” she says in the secret language that Grandma Maggie taught them when Sophie was nine, where all you have to do is slip “op” into every syllable of every word. She’s just told Steve to stop being such a butthead, but he doesn’t. He keeps kicking her and starts taunting now, only Mom and Dad can’t tell what he’s saying because he’s using their secret language against her. Sophie bites her tongue because she’s angry and kicks back hard.
“Will you two cut it out!” Mom says. “You’re behaving like little kids!”
Sophie and Steven snap their arms and legs neatly into their chairs so they are sitting up like good children. They look at their mom.
“Oh this is ridiculous,” Mom says, and she stands up. She drops her napkin onto her plate, where the edges dip into the ice cream that melted out of the cake and pools around it like a stain.
After she’s stomped away out the door and into the car, Dad stands up too. He paces back and forth across the dining room one time with his hands on his head. And then he walks back into his bedroom.
Sophie and Steve are sitting nice and straight still. They are being good children.
Dad is not here because he is in a hotel across town. He is fed up and he cannot take Mom’s mood swings and nagging and control. He told her that he didn’t love her and Sophie wasn’t supposed to hear but she did. She cried when Dad left but Steve didn’t. She’s been sleeping on the floor of his room all week and even though he’s sixteen he lets her.
Sophie spreads peanut butter onto her bread, white bread that’s so soft that her fingers leave dimples in it even after she’s let go, and wishes that it would spread as evenly as it does in commercials. She stands up to go to the kitchen because Mom forgot jam.
“Where are you going?” Steve asks.
“I want jam,” she says.
“Will you bring me mayo, tomatoes and lettuce?” he asks.
She rolls her eyes because Steve never does anything for himself. “Yeah,” she says. When she is in the kitchen she sees Dad’s car pull into the driveway. She runs through the living room and out the front door. Steve asks her where she’s going but she doesn’t answer because she’s clinging to Dad like a magnet.
“Hey Soph,” Dad says.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I thought I’d have dinner with you guys. Is that okay? Sunday dinner, right?”
“Yeah.” Sophie is smiling. There is suitcase on the passenger’s seat of his car. “Are you coming back?”
“I think I might,” he says. He smiles and puts a knuckle against her cheek. “I can’t be away from you guys,” he says. Sophie holds his hand and takes him inside.
“Dad’s here,” she says, presenting him as if she is introducing him for the very first time.
“We should say grace,” she says.
“Grace,” Steve says. He is mocking her with an uneven smile. She doesn’t remember saying that, but Dad has told the story.
“Okay,” Mom says. Everyone holds out their hands and ducks their heads and Mom talks about Grandma Maggie’s spirit and her soul and her crinkly eyes. When she is finished she looks up.
“Steve, are all your applications ready?” she asks.
Steve blinks a couple of times because he hasn’t even let go of Sophie’s hand yet. “Yes,” he says. He doesn’t like this topic. Whenever Mom thinks she should talk to him, the only thing she can think of to talk about is school. “I’m mailing them all tomorrow. I told you that, remember?”
“Oh yes of course,” she says.
“You’ll pick something close, won’t you?” Sophie says.
Steve gives her a lingering look. He will try not to pick something close. He will try to pick something very far away, and Sophie knows that but she doesn’t want him to miss Sunday dinners.
“We’ll see,” he says. “I don’t even know where I’ll get in.”
“You should go east coast,” Mom says. “Schools are better over there. It’d be great if you got into Columbia.”
Steve looks at his plate quickly.
“Don’t worry about it, Marti,” Dad says. “He’ll end up in a good place.”
“I’m not worried,” Mom says.
“You’re fixating,” Steve says.
“Don’t gang up on me,” she says. She takes a breath. “I feel like I’m being attacked.” It is something Dad taught her to say. He taught her to say “I feel” a lot so that she could voice her thoughts without saying “you” or accusing. She still does that, though, if she gets angry enough.
“Mom,” Steve says.
No, Sophie thinks. No, no, no. Not at Sunday dinner.
“I’m not applying to Columbia,” he says.
She lets go of her fork and stares at him. Her eyes bulge in that way that irritates Sophie so much that she wants to push them back into Mom’s head. “What? You told me that you were going to apply to Columbia. You told me that was one of your top choices.”
“I don’t have the grades for Columbia,” Steve says.
“Well you should have worked harder. How did this happen?” Mom is not talking to anyone anymore, really. She is talking to her peas and corn. “This is terrible. I can’t believe this. What did I do wrong? I always said that work was important when they were children. Don’t they listen? Why is this happening? How can this happen to me?”
“Mom,” Steve says. He will try and correct what he’s done but he can’t rewind the whole conversation like everyone at the table is wishing he could. “It wasn’t what I wanted. You always said I could do anything I wanted.”
“I meant you could be something great! I meant you could be smart! I didn’t mean anything as in ‘you can be a bum on the street’!”
“Marti, calm down,” Dad says. “We should try to be supportive.”
“I’m not going to be a bum on the street,” Steve says.
Sophie lays here arms on the table and puts her face in them so that all she sees is dark. Why is this happening? she thinks and then she remembers that her mother just said that and tries to take it back. She presses her face down until her nose is pushed again the tablecloth and she can feel the stitched pattern leaving indentations in her skin.
“I don’t have to do whatever you tell me to do just to be smart. I can be smart and be my own person at the same time. You don’t know everything, Mom,” Steve is saying.
Sophie can hear him push away from the table and stand up. When his legs straighten, he sends his chair to the floor. She hears him stomp out of the room. She looks up as her mom follows.
“Mom is stressed because Grandma Maggie just died,” Sophie says.
“You don’t have to justify her behavior,” Dad says. “She’s being mean, she’s being controlling. You shouldn’t have to live with this.”
Sophie doesn’t know what to say.
“I don’t want to be living with this,” Dad continues. He leans closer to Sophie, as if he is telling her something urgent. “But I can’t leave you and your brother. I love you two so much that I will stand it. You deserve better, Sophie. I don’t want you to ever think that you don’t deserve more. I hate living here, I hate living with her, but—”
“Stop it,” Sophie says. “We are supposed to love her.”
“So, the U-Dub,” Steve says.
Sophie knows that he is judging her. She has chosen to go to the University of Washington, in the middle of Seattle, so she can be close to home. She is not like him; she can’t cut herself off like that. She would miss this too much.
“Yeah,” she says. “I sent them a letter yesterday.”
“I think it’s a great choice,” Mom says.
Sophie glances at Steve, hoping that he won’t notice her looking. His eyebrows have dropped a little bit as he stares at Mom. She never would have approved of him enrolling in the University of Washington, but now it’s okay for Sophie. He remembers all the other evidence that Sophie is the favorite child.
“Are you sure you want to stay around here?” Steve asks.
She briefly considers the fact that Sunday dinners would be better if no one in her family spoke during them. It was dumb, she realized. There would be no point, and sometimes they had good conversations. Sometimes they made jokes. Sunday dinners would be better if her family were on TV, if they were in a sitcom. Then Sunday dinners would be a hoot.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m completely sure.”
Steve is still looking at her. Sophie knew that he would disapprove. He thinks, like Dad, that she needs to get out from under Mom’s thumb. She doesn’t think it occurs to either of them that she loves Mom’s thumbs. She doesn’t always, but even then Mom is still her mother.
“Now that you’ve picked your major,” Mom says to Steve, “have you thought about what you’ll do after graduation?”
Steve shakes his head. “Not really,” he says. “I’ve still got time.”
“It’s never too early to consider these things,” Mom says. “You should seriously consider graduate school.”
“I’ll think about it, Mom.”
Dad doesn’t talk much at dinner anymore. Coming back home has never changed the fact that he was fed up years ago and so now he sleeps in Steve’s bed or on the couch every night. It is like he is a boarder in Mom’s house. Sophie has almost forgotten that this isn’t how all families are.
Sophie still goes home on Sundays and Mom still cooks a big meal and usually it’s too much for the two of them to finish. Mom always packs some up for Sophie, in Tupperwares that she always returns the next week, but Sophie never lets Mom put in more than half of what’s left. This way, she thinks, Mom will have something to eat for the rest of the week.
Mom has made lasagna today and it makes Sophie think of Steve because it was his favorite dinner. She hasn’t talked to Steve in a while and so she’ll call him later today.
“I got flowers yesterday,” Mom says.
“I see them. They’re very nice,” Sophie says. They’re in a vase in the middle of the dining room table. The bouquet is huge, and Sophie is very pleased with it.
“There was no card,” Mom says. She reaches out and touches one of the flowers.
Mom is sitting at the head of the table and Sophie tries to remember what it would look like if she were four years old again. Mom would be in that same spot, Dad and Grandma Maggie would be next to her, then there would be Grandpa Lou and Steve, and Sophie would be all the way across the table from Mom. She and Mom could sit in their old seats and stare over the flowers at each other and feel the gaps between them, but Sophie has been moving one seat closer every time someone has left.
“I think your father sent them,” Mom says. Sophie presses her tongue hard against the backs of her teeth. “He wouldn’t have put a card because he wouldn’t want me to know he was sending them. But it was very nice of him, don’t you think?”
She has driven everyone away, Sophie thinks dramatically. It’s not really true. It wasn’t Mom’s fault that Grandma and Grandpa died. But she contributed to Steve’s need to be far away from home, and Dad left because he couldn’t stand her anymore.
Sophie will not leave her. Sophie will sit calmly at Sunday dinner once a week, and when she gets married she will bring her husband and when she has children she will bring them and the table will fill back up. Even after Mom dies, Sophie will sit at Sunday dinner with her family, which will be her new family, and she will say grace about her mom, and she will be Mom now but she will not be like her mom.
Sophie nods. Her finger traces a stitched swirl on the pretty white tablecloth. “Yeah, Mom. That was really sweet of him.” Dad didn’t send the flowers. Sophie sent the flowers. She is the only one left.
