From the Corner of His Eye

with a lace-trimmed tablecloth, the good china, crystal wineglasses, and fresh flowers.
        Serving a formal dinner was Agnes's way of declaring-to herself more than to anyone else in attendance-that the time had come for her to get on with life for Bartholomew's sake, but also for her own.
        Maria arrived early, expecting to assist with final details in the kitchen. Though honored to be a guest, she wasn't able to stand by with a glass of wine while preparations remained to be made.
        Agnes at last relented. "Someday, you're going to have to learn to relax, Maria."
        "I am always enjoy to being useful like a hammer."
        "Hammer?"
        "Hammer, saw, screwdriver. I am always to be happy when useful in such way like tool is useful."
        "Well, please don't use a hammer to finish setting the table."
        "Is joke." Maria was proud of correctly interpreting Agnes.
        "No, I'm serious. No hammer."
        "Is good you are joke."
        "It's good I can joke," Agnes corrected.
        "Is what I say."
        The dining table could accommodate six, and Agnes instructed Maria to set two places on each of the long sides, leaving the ends unused. "It'll be cozier if we all sit across from one another."
        Maria arranged five place settings instead of four. The fifth-complete with silverware, waterglass, and wineglass-was at the head of the table, in memoriam of Joey.
        As she struggled to cope with her loss, the last thing Agnes needed was the reminder posed by that empty chair. Maria's intentions were good, however, and Agnes didn't want to hurt her feelings.
        Over potato soup and an asparagus salad, the dinner conversation got off to a promising start: a discussion of favorite potato dishes, observations on the weather, talk of Mexico at Christmas.
        Eventually, of course, dear Edom held forth about tornadoes-in particular the infamous Tri-State Tornado of 1925, which ravaged portions of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana.
        "Most tornadoes stay on the ground twenty miles or less," Edom explained, "but this one kept its funnel to the earth for two hundred nineteen miles! And it was one mile wide. Everything in its path-torn, smashed to bits. Houses, factories, churches, schools-all pulverized. Murphysboro, Illinois, was wiped off the map, erased, hundreds killed in that one town."
        Maria, wide-eyed, put down her silverware and crossed herself.
        "it totally destroyed four towns, as if they were hit by atom bombs, tore up parts of six more towns, destroyed fifteen thousand homes. That's just the homes. This thing was black, huge and black and hideous, with continuous lightning snapping through it, and a roar, they said, like a hundred thunderstorms booming all at once."
        Again, Maria crossed herself "Six hundred ninety-five people were killed in three states. Winds so powerful that some of the bodies were thrown a mile and a half from where they were snatched off the ground."
        Apparently Maria wished that she'd brought a rosary to dinner. With the fingers of her right hand, she pinched the knuckles of her left, one after the other, as if they were beads.
        "Well," Agnes said, "thank the Lord, we don't have tornadoes here in California."
        "We have dams, though," said Jacob, gesturing with his fork. "The Johnstown Flood, 1889. Pennsylvania, sure, but it could happen here. And that was a one, let me tell you. The South Fork Dam broke. Wall of water seventy feet high totally destroyed the city. Your tornado killed almost seven hundred, but my dam killed two thousand two hundred and nine. Ninety-nine entire families were swept from the earth. Ninety-eight children lost both parents."
        Maria stopped praying with her knuckle rosary and resorted to a long swallow of wine.
        "Three hundred and ninety-six of the dead were children under the age of ten," Jacob continued. "A passenger train was tumbled off the tracks, killing twenty. Another train with tank cars got smashed around, and oil spilled across the flood waters, ignited, and all these people clinging to floating debris were surrounded by flames, no way to escape. Their choice was being burned alive or drowning."
        "Dessert?" Agnes asked.
        Over generous slices of Black Forest cake and coffee, Jacob at first held forth on the explosion of a French freighter, carrying a cargo of ammonium nitrate, at a pier in Texas