Rose looked tentative at first, like she was dipping her big toe into a huge vat of saturated fat that might swallow her up if she weren’t careful. But even she couldn’t resist the allure of the macaroni salad, the ultimate comfort food. When she reached for the salt shaker—iodized rather than sea salt, for once—Todd took her hand in his. Cholesterol be damned, this was love.
Maureen was inhaling her dinner, as usual, to get to dessert as quickly as possible. Max was lining up his potatoes in two rows of four. He had pushed his corn and ribs to the side without bothering to fling them from his plate. Either he was making progress or they were linear enough to meet his criteria of acceptable shapes. One of his rows was complete. The second was two potatoes shy of being perfect. Inconceivably, Rose had served him six rather than eight potatoes. His face registered unspeakable terror, which Todd noticed just in time. He spooned two more onto Max’s plate, and the crisis was averted.
“What were you thinking?” Todd asked.
“Must have been distracted,” Rose said. She gave him one of those guess-what’s-for-dessert looks, turning her head so that Maureen couldn’t see. Apparently the adults were having more than just ice cream with their chocolate cupcakes.
Todd sat back to take in the glory of it all before serving himself seconds of everything. This was it, the moment that made it all worthwhile. His sexy wife oversalting her food. His autistic son serenely lining up his potatoes. Even his daughter seemed to be living in the moment, enjoying her corn rather than focusing exclusively on the promise of chocolate things to come. She flashed him a big smile with what looked like an entire ear stuck between her teeth. He wanted to say something meaningful, to commemorate the occasion. Language failed him again. Words couldn’t possibly capture what he was feeling. No big loss. They would just break the spell anyway.
“Pass the potatoes, please,” Todd finally managed to say.
Maureen shoved them across the table, almost upsetting the bowl. Todd spooned eight potatoes onto his plate. He finished the first row of four by the time anyone noticed what he was doing.
“Don’t encourage him,” Rose said.
“They taste better this way,” Todd said.
Maureen laughed so hard she choked on a rib. “Pass the potatoes,” she said when she recovered.
“Please,” Rose said.
“Please.”
There were only six potatoes left so Maureen had to improvise. For the sake of symmetry, she opted for two rows of three.
Rose looked from one plate to the next. This was the fruit of all her labors of love, the way her husband and children spent quality time together. Max’s potatoes were the most perfectly aligned, but Todd’s were a close second. Maureen’s configuration looked more like controlled chaos than actual order. But she had made the effort. A family that stims together stays together.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Todd said.
Fortunately, Rose still had four potatoes left, all bunched together in the center of her plate. She scraped her rib bones onto a side dish to give herself room to maneuver. Two rows of two would have formed a square, which was completely unacceptable. She prodded her potatoes into a single, elegant row of four. She used a spoon instead of a fork to avoid puncturing them. Her spacing was impeccable.
When everyone’s potatoes were lined up like so many ducks in a row, they looked at Max, if not for approval then for something, anything. He was staring, they thought, at nothing in particular. His peripheral vision included the rectangular table and the round grill. Suddenly he started clapping his hands. Todd was the first to respond. Then they all clapped with him. Something was better than nothing.
The Home Front Page 21
