MargenIn my grandmother's dining room hangs an old painting: a long table with the family eating, painted by a great-great-uncle with more patience than talent.
I always counted six chairs. I remember because as a girl I used to sit and copy it: six chairs, five faces, a dog underneath.
At my grandfather's funeral, while the house filled with people and coffee, I looked again.
Seven chairs. Six faces.
—Grandma, the painting...
—The painter was very fond of detail —she cut me off, without looking at it, pouring coffee with the steady hand of someone who has spent years not looking at one entire wall of her own house.
The years have passed. Aunt Carmen died: I counted eight chairs. Her husband died: nine. The painting arranges things so that nobody else notices; the new chairs always sit a little in shadow, as if just brought in from another room.
Yesterday we buried my grandmother. Today I walked into the dining room with my heart in my throat, and I counted.
Ten chairs. Nine faces. And at the head of the table, for the first time in a century, someone is serving the soup: a woman with a steady hand, who at last looks straight ahead.