9781250816214

KEEPSAKE
The sun wriggles down between the green foothills that ring Arcadia
Gardens like a wedding band. Time passes without pressing its claim.
Oranges ripen on the tree, passion fruit on the vine, the wool on the backs
of hand-raised, heirloom-breed communal sheep lengthens by the barest
fraction of a centimeter, and Sophia sits down, alone at a laden table. She
watches the golden juice glisten on the breast of a roast chicken and roll
down the rich mound of meat to pool on the clean china plate beneath.
Her husband does not come home that night. Sophia accepts this as she
accepts the presence of gravity. As she accepts everything else. His work
often takes him far afield and into the next day. A freelancer knows not the
meaning of the words day shift or night shift! Perhaps Mrs. Lyon or Mrs.
Minke know how to dislike their lives and scold their husbands. Sophia has
never had the knack.
Once it is full dark outside, she lights the candles and eats her share
alone. She swings her legs back and forth under the chair like a small girl.
She will leave the larger portion for him, of course. It takes so little to fill
her up. Sophia admires her table setting, its symmetry and balance. Roast
chicken stuffed with pears and citron, buttered peas with mint and thyme,
fresh bread rich and yellow with extra eggs, salted cucumbers, and a figand-date
trifle lavished in pink pomegranate cream. Sophia savors each bite
mindfully, aware of its source and its aim, grateful for its weight in her
belly, its benefit to her body.
She has not thought of Mr. Semengelof for hours, since before she
began dressing the roast. Honest work banishes bad memories with such
efficiency!
Sometimes, on these nights she spends alone, Sophia looks at her
bountiful table and can almost see that something should be there that isn’t.
Not her husband or her friends, but others, others she cannot quite name or
even imagine, shadows, phantoms of a future unlike the present, somethings
to fill these eight chairs round the dining set. That has always seemed
strange to her. Eight chairs, when it’s always been just the two of them.
Sophia shakes her head. What has gotten into her today? She will ask
Mrs. Lyon’s little ones to supper on the weekend, and they will need the
chairs then. Goodness! How many times has she hosted their neighbors?