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"""My daughter-in-law slid a two-page menu across our kitchen table at 5:17 on Friday and told my wife she needed all thirty-eight dishes by three the next afternoon.
Gloria adjusted her reading glasses and looked down the page. Her thumb stopped beside the handwritten note for gluten-free rolls, moved past three kinds of macarons, then rested on a line calling for vegan stuffed mushrooms with no garlic.
“Seventy-five people?” she asked.
“Probably closer to seventy,” Tiffany said. “But you always make extra.”
She said it the way someone might remind a hotel clerk to leave towels in the room.
Kevin stood behind her near the refrigerator, scrolling with one thumb. Our son had been in our house ten minutes and had not taken off his jacket. He glanced at the menu once, then lowered his face to his phone again.
Gloria turned the page over, perhaps hoping the blank side would offer some explanation.
It did not.
There were smoked chicken quarters, two trays of baked ziti, roasted salmon, pulled pork sliders, garlic-free green beans, scalloped potatoes, vegan potatoes, macaroni and cheese, dairy-free macaroni and cheese, three salads, two soups, fresh lemonade, sweet tea, handmade dinner rolls, croissants, miniature fruit tarts, chocolate cake, vanilla cake, peach cobbler, macarons in lemon, raspberry, and pistachio, and enough special instructions to make the list look like a pharmacist’s notebook.
Tiffany placed one manicured finger on the top page.
“Mom, I just need you to handle the food.”
Gloria’s eyes moved to Kevin.
His phone made a small clicking sound as he locked the screen, but he still did not look up.
I waited for him to say something. I was not asking for a speech. One sentence would have done it. Something about the time. Something about the money. Something as small as, This is too much.
Instead, he slipped the phone into his pocket and said, “Kayla really wants Grandma’s cooking.”
That was how he made it sound reasonable.
Our granddaughter was turning eighteen. Gloria had been talking about the birthday for months, though nobody had asked her to plan it. She had already bought Kayla a silver bracelet with a tiny book charm because Kayla had once said she wanted to study journalism. The bracelet was hidden in a box beneath Gloria’s winter scarves. In the safe at the restaurant was an envelope containing a letter about the college money we had saved for her.
Tiffany had not mentioned either gift. She knew about the account, though. Kevin had told her years earlier, during one of those conversations he later claimed he could not remember.
“What time are people arriving?” I asked.
“Three-thirty. Four at the latest.”
“Tomorrow.”
Tiffany smiled without warmth. “That’s usually what ‘the next afternoon’ means, Hank.”
Gloria touched my wrist under the table.
The gesture was light, but after forty-two years I understood it. Don’t start. Not here. Not before I’ve decided what I can survive.
She looked at the list again.
“Okay,” she said.
Tiffany brightened immediately. “Perfect. I knew I could count on you.”
She gathered her purse, reminded us that one guest could not have red meat, then stopped at the doorway.
“Oh, and we may need a vegan entrée. Not anything fancy.”
The door shut behind them.
Through the front window, I watched Kevin open the passenger door of their white SUV for Tiffany. He used to do that for Gloria when he was seven, back when opening a car door made him feel like a grown man. Tiffany climbed in without pausing. Kevin walked around the hood, glanced toward our house, and saw me watching.
For half a second, he stood still.
Then he got behind the wheel.
Gloria folded the menu along an existing crease.
“You shouldn’t have said yes,” I told her.
“She’s eighteen once.”
“So you’re going to cook thirty-eight dishes in twenty-two hours?”
“Twenty-one and a half.”
I stared at her.
A tired smile touched one corner of her mouth. “You’re the one who taught me to be accurate.”
She had been awake since four that morning. Fridays at Gloria’s Corner began before sunrise because the hospital order had to be packed by seven. Forty breakfast sandwiches, two urns of coffee, and a tray of blueberry muffins went to the overnight nursing staff every week. She normally came home after lunch and slept for an hour with the television on low.
That afternoon, the sleep had not happened. The main oven at the restaurant had stopped holding temperature, and she had spent three hours waiting for a repairman who arrived late, removed the back panel, and told her the control board needed replacing.
The estimate was $1,460.
Gloria had nodded, thanked him, and said she would call.
She had been saving her tips in an old red coffee can for eleven months. There was enough in it to cover most of the repair.
Until Tiffany brought the list.
“We’ll buy what we need,” Gloria said. “Then I’ll figure out the rest.”
“The rest being the oven?”
“The oven has been limping for six months. It can limp another week.”
“And you?”
She began sorting the menu into categories, making little marks beside dishes that could share ingredients. She did not answer.
The rain started while we were at the first grocery store. Chicago rain in October does not always fall hard. Sometimes it hangs in the air and finds its way into your collar. By the time we reached the car, the paper bags had dark spots spreading across their bottoms.
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The first store did not carry dairy-free cheese in the quantity Gloria needed. The second had it but was out of gluten-free flour. We found that at a specialty market twelve miles north, along with vegan butter that cost more than some cuts of meat.
Gloria moved fast, but not carelessly. She checked labels twice. She changed brands when she saw an allergen warning. She stood in the produce aisle squeezing peaches while a stock boy pushed a mop around us.
