Nobody's Fool

her that he’d issued the invitation, surely to vex her. But she told herself that God would not be so cruel to her as to allow this, at least not today.
    Half an hour before dinner, she got Ralph to help her slip the leaf into the dining room table, and together they covered it with the white linen tablecloth she saved for holidays. She set the table with the family silver she had inherited from her mother, who had died when Vera was a child. At each end of the table she set two candles, which she lit, then dimmed the lights before calling the family to the table. She instructed each person where to sit, an annoyance, she could tell, Peter and Charlotte exchanging glances, Wacker refusing to vacate a chair at the head of the table until horsey Charlotte physically removed him. She could tell that Peter disapproved not only of the concept of a seating plan in general but of her seating plan in particular, which called for her father to take the head and Peter the foot, and leaving Ralph, whose table it was, somewhere in the middle, though Ralph could have cared less, provided he was close to the platter of turkey.
    And so, when the table was full of food and Vera’s family had come together, and Vera herself had the satisfaction of knowing that she’d skillfully accomplished a difficult task, when the image she’d borne in her imagination had been replicated as faithfully as possible in her dining room, her father, looking healthier than she’d seen him in months and having left his oxygen set up in the next room, anchoring one end of the table and Peter, looking handsome and only a little imperious at the other, when the family had begun to pass in the candlelight the food she’d prepared, only then when the doorbell did not ring and Sully did not show up at this perfect moment and spoil everything, only then did Vera have the leisure to note that the perfect moment, so long awaited and planned for, was a lie. As the platters of food got passed, Vera felt the truth rise in her throat, and she knew she would not be able to swallow so much as a mouthful. Only Ralph, who never noticed anything, seemed oblivious to this truth as he ladled gravy over everything on his plate, including the cranberries. Her father, she suddenly realized, had left his oxygen behind not because he didn’t need it but because he thought it would spoil everyone’s dinner. She could hear him wheezing, gasping really, as he awaited the turkey, and when it came, his hand shook so that he was unable to spear a slice and had to be meted a portion by horsey Charlotte, who gave him dark meat, not knowing his preference for white, and he was too tired to say anything. “Everything is delicious, Mom,” Peter said, looking down at his plate. Twice that day he and Charlotte had gone into the bedroom they used during these visits, and Vera had heard their angry, lowered voices and understood fully what she’d suspected for some time, that theirs was a worse-than-loveless marriage and that it would not hold together another year, maybe not even another month. “Yes … Vera,” her father managed. “Very … fine.” But he hadn’t the strength to say more, and she felt powerfully that he would not last the year, either. Neither of the men in her life had looked at her when he spoke, and she understood that neither was able to face her, or wanted to face her. What they needed from her was for this to be over, and neither looked up even when she did not respond to their compliments, her throat constricting with bitter truth, rising dangerously. Only Will, her grandson, seemed aware of her distress, and he watched her so fearfully that she wished there was a way to reassure him that this feeling would pass, that truth was something she’d always been able to swallow and keep down.
    She was not surprised when her father pushed back his chair and rose unsteadily. “I’m … so … sorry … Vera,” he said, turning away from the table and heading for the living room.
    She rose quickly to help him, but with the leaf in the table the room was crowded and horsey Charlotte and the horrid little Wacker were between them, and anyway, he didn’t need her. What he needed was oxygen. Air.
    Outside Vera’s kitchen window the pickup truck at the curb continued to belch thick fumes, though it had grown dark enough now that the pollution was