The Last Supper #2

THEY'D DONE SOMETHING WITH THE TABLES, pushed them together and covered the seams with a single white tablecloth that almost hid how makeshift the whole arrangement was. Almost. If you looked closely, you could see where the edges didn't quite line up, where the chairs were mismatched, where the whole thing could come apart at any moment.

A pretty good metaphor for my life, actually.

Cheryl was there, arranging place cards she must have made herself—little tented pieces of cardstock with names written in her careful handwriting. She'd always been the organized one, the planner, the one who remembered birthdays and coordinated holidays while Danny and I stumbled through life making messes for her to clean up.

"You're not supposed to be here yet," she said when she saw me. "The guest of honor is supposed to arrive last."

"Guest of honor. Is that what we're calling it?"

"What would you prefer? The failure?”

"That's more accurate."

She stopped arranging and looked at me. Cheryl was two years older than me, which made her thirty-five, but she looked younger—something about her face had never quite aged, like she'd found a way to freeze herself at twenty-eight. Her eyes, though, told a different story. Her eyes looked ancient.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"Everyone keeps asking me that."

"Because we're worried and we don't know what else to say."

"You could say nothing."

"Michael." She said my full name the same way our mother did. It meant that I was being difficult and she wasn't having it. "I spent three weeks putting this together. I called everyone, begged the restaurant for a private-ish space, ordered that cake you like, convinced Ma to leave the house for the first time since October. The least you can do is pretend to be grateful."

"I am grateful."

"You have a funny way of showing it."

She was right. I was being an asshole, and she didn't deserve it. None of them deserved this. The only person who deserved my anger was me, and even that felt self-indulgent.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know how to do this.”

"Nobody knows how to do this. There's no guidebook for saying goodbye to your brother before he goes to prison. We're all just making it up as we go along."

Cheryl finished with the place cards and came around the table to hug me. She barely came up to my chest, and her arms around my waist squeezed harder than I expected, like she was afraid I might disappear if she let go.

"You're going to be okay," she said into my chest.

"How do you know?"

"Because you're my brother. And we don't quit."

She pulled back and looked up at me. "Grandpa did three years in Rahway for running numbers. Did you know that?"

"What? No."

"Before you were born. I only found out because I overheard Ma and Dad fighting about it once. He came out fine. Started his landscaping business, raised four kids, died in his sleep at eighty-two. Three years didn't define him. Eighteen months won't define you."

I didn't know what to say. The man used to fall asleep in his recliner watching golf. He kept butterscotch candies in his pocket. Prison didn't fit anywhere in that.

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Families have secrets, Mike. That's just how it is." She straightened my collar. "What you did was wrong. I'm not saying it wasn't. But you didn't do it for fun. You did it because you were scared and you couldn't see another way out." She smoothed the fabric down. "That's not nothing."

"The court didn't see it that way."

"The court doesn't know you. I do."

The door to the private area opened and Danny stuck his head in. "They're here."

Cheryl released me and stepped back, smoothing her dress. "Okay."

"Wait." I grabbed her arm. "Who else is coming? You never told me the full list."

She bit her lip. "The usual. Ma, Danny, his wife Linda, their kids. Denise and Maddie. Uncle Frank—"

"Uncle Frank? Are you kidding me?"

"He wanted to come."

"I bet he did. He's been waiting thirty years for one of us to fuck up this bad."

“He's Ma's brother."

"So?"

"So I couldn't tell him no."

"Yeah, you could have."

She didn't say anything for a moment. "He's family, Mike. That still means something. Even when they're assholes."

I wanted to argue, but there wasn't time. My mother was already coming through the door. She looked smaller than I remembered—shrunken, somehow, like the last few months had physically compressed her. She was seventy-five but had always seemed younger, full of energy. Now she just looked old.

"Michael." She released her escorts and came toward me, arms outstretched. "My boy."

I bent down to hug her, and she grabbed me with surprising strength, her fingers digging into my back like she was trying to memorize the shape of me.

"Ma—"

"Shh." Her voice was muffled against my chest. "Just let me hold you."

So I did. I stood there in the back room of the Olive Garden while my mother clung to me and cried, her shoulders shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The rest of the family filed in around us—Denise and Maddie, Danny and Linda and their three boys, Gary retreating to pour himself a drink—but I barely registered them. All I could feel was my mother's weight against me, the bones beneath her skin, the terrible fragility of a woman I'd always thought was indestructible.

"I'm sorry, Ma," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't..." She pulled back and looked up at me with wet eyes. “What’s done is done—“ Her voice broke. "You're a good boy, Michael. Whatever they say. Whatever happens. You're my good boy."

I didn't feel good. I felt like the worst kind of fraud—a man who'd stolen money and gotten caught, who'd let everyone down, who was about to abandon his family for almost two years while they struggled without him. But my mother's faith was an immovable object. Her belief was unconditional, absolute, and probably misplaced. But right now, I needed it.

"Thanks, Ma."

She patted my cheek, the way she used to when I was a kid.

We took our seats. The arrangement put me at the head of the table, facing the door—the position of honor, Cheryl said, though it felt more like a firing squad. To my right was Denise, stone-faced and silent. To my left was my mother, still dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. Beyond them, the family spread out like a receiving line at a funeral: Danny and Linda, their boys squeezed together on one side; Cheryl and Gary, looking exhausted; and at the far end, conspicuously empty, the seat reserved for Uncle Frank.

Maddie sat across from me, between her mother and her grandmother. She hadn't looked at me since she came in—hadn't said a word, actually, just handed off my mother and slid into her chair like she was trying to become invisible. She was wearing a sweater I didn't recognize, her hair pulled back in a style that made her look older, and something about the whole picture made my heart seize.

When did she grow up? When did my little girl become this stranger?

"Where's the menu?" my mother asked. "I want the chicken parmigiana."

"It's already ordered, Ma," Cheryl said. "Family-style. I got a little of everything."

"A little of everything. What does that mean? I want chicken parmigiana."

"There's chicken parmigiana. And lasagna, and spaghetti and meatballs, and—"

"Fine, fine. As long as there's chicken."

The waiter arrived, a nervous-looking kid with acne scars and a forced smile. He took drink orders and disappeared before anyone could ask questions.

My father had been gone five years and I still caught myself looking for him at family dinners. He never said much at these things, just sat at the head of the table and watched us all like he couldn't quite believe we were his. I used to think he was disappointed. Took me a long time to realize that was just his face when he was happy.

“I miss him too." My mother reached over and squeezed my hand. "Every day."

The drinks arrived. The wine was the house red, acidic and thin, but nobody complained. Danny raised his glass.

"To Dad," he said. "And to Mike."

We drank. Even Maddie, with her Diet Coke.

"Speech," Linda said, elbowing Danny. "You should give a speech."

"I don't give speeches."

"Come on. This is important."

Danny looked at me, eyebrows raised. I shrugged. What the hell. If there was ever a time for speeches, this was it.

He stood up, holding his wine glass like a prop. Danny had never been comfortable with attention—he was the quiet one, the worker, the brother who showed up and got things done without needing credit. Asking him to speak in public was like asking a fish to climb a tree.

"Okay," he said. "So. Mike's going away tomorrow. We all know that. And it sucks. There's no way to sugarcoat it. It sucks, and it's hard, and the next year and a half is going to be rough for everyone."

"Great speech so far," I muttered.

"Shut up. I'm not done." He took a breath. "Mike screwed up. Everybody knows it. He knows it better than anyone. But he didn't do it for himself. He did it to keep his family off the street when everything was falling apart." He stopped, looked down at his glass. "That's not nothing. I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it's not nothing." He looked back up. "This is the guy who taught me to ride a bike. Who broke Tommy Jensen’s nose because he wouldn't stop shoving me into lockers. Who gave me three grand when I started my business and never said a word about it again." He raised his glass. "So yeah. He's my brother. That's it. That's the whole thing."

He sat down abruptly, like he'd used up all his words. Linda rubbed his back.

"That was beautiful," Cheryl said.

The food came. Way too much of it, the way it always was at these places. The waiter set it down and got out fast.

We passed plates around without talking. I took some of everything. Wasn't hungry. The garlic smell that usually got me going just sat in my throat.

"Dad."

I looked up. Maddie was staring at me, her face unreadable.

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

Denise put a hand on her arm. "Maddie, maybe now isn't—"

"It's okay," I said. "What is it?"

"Why'd you do it?"

The question landed like a bomb. Everyone stopped eating. Even Danny's boys, who'd been kicking each other under the table, went still.

"Maddie—" Denise started again.

"No. I want to know." She wasn't backing down. "Everyone keeps talking around it. So I'm asking. Why did you steal the money?"

I set down my fork. This was it—the conversation I'd been dreading for months. I’d been putting it off because I didn't know how to make a thirteen-year-old understand choices that I barely understood myself.

"It's complicated," I said.

"Then uncomplicate it for me.”

"Maddie." Denise's voice was sharper now. "That's enough."

“Why? He's my father. I have a right to know why he's going to prison. Everyone at school knows. Everyone talks about it. I'm the only one who doesn't know the real story."

She was right. I thought I’d been protecting her, but really, I'd been protecting myself. Avoiding the look on her face when she finally understood what I'd done.

"Okay," I said. "You want to know?"

The table was silent. I could feel everyone's eyes on me.

"I worked for Kellerman for fifteen years. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was steady, and I was proud of it. I was providing for my family."

Maddie didn't respond. Her face was stone.

"Then things got hard. Your grandmother got sick, and the treatments weren't covered by insurance—do you know what that means? It means the hospital still wants their money, but no one's paying for it but us. And the mortgage went up, and the car broke down, and there were months where I had to choose between paying the electric bill and buying groceries. And I was working sixty-hour weeks but it still wasn't enough."

"So you stole money."

"So I moved money. That's what I told myself. I wasn't stealing it—I was borrowing it, from a company that could afford to lose it. Kellerman makes millions of dollars a year. They wouldn't miss a few thousand here and there. And when things got better, when I got a raise or a bonus or when Grandma's treatment ended, I'd pay it back."

"But you didn't pay it back."

"No. Because things never got better. They just kept getting worse. And the more I borrowed, the harder it was to stop. Every month, the hole got deeper. And eventually someone noticed, and they called the police, and here we are."

I spread my hands.

"I'm not going to pretend it was the right thing to do. It wasn't. I knew it was wrong when I did it, and I kept doing it anyway, because I didn't know what else to do. Because the alternative was watching everything fall apart."

Maddie was quiet for a long moment. The silence stretched so long I thought maybe she was done, maybe she'd gotten what she needed and would retreat back into her shell.

Then she spoke.

"That's it? That's your reason? You were trying to help?"

"Yes."

"And you don't think there was any other way? You couldn't have asked for a raise, or gotten a second job, or—I don't know—asked someone for help?"

"I tried. I tried everything."

"But you didn't try not stealing."

The words hit me like a slap. I saw Denise flinch; my mother brought a hand to her mouth.

"Maddie," I said carefully. "I know you're angry—"

"I'm not angry. I'm confused. Because everyone keeps telling me what a good person you are, how you were just trying to help, how this doesn't define you. But it does define you. You're a thief. You're going to prison because you stole money. That's who you are now."

"That's not who he is," my mother interjected. "That's what he did. There's a difference."

"Is there?" Maddie looked at her grandmother. "Because all I know is, he's not going to be at my soccer games. He's not going to be there when I start high school. He's not going to be there for any of it, because he's going to be in jail. And I'm supposed to just be okay with that because he had good reasons?"

"Nobody's asking you to be okay with it," Denise said softly.

"Then what are you asking me?"

I didn't have an answer. Neither did anyone else. We sat there, fourteen people around three tables pushed together; the ruins of a family dinner.

Then the door to the private area opened.

"Well, well," said a voice I recognized instantly. "Looks like I missed the toast."

Uncle Frank had arrived.