“Those were my mother’s,” Mrs. Richards said, on the other side of the table. She set down two bowls of soup for Arthur and Madame Brown, then went back to the kitchen. “I think old silver is lovely—” her voice came in—“but keeping it polished is awfully difficult.” She came out again with two more bowls. “I wonder if it’s that—what do they call it? That sulfur dioxide in the air, the stuff eating away all the paintings and statues in Venice.” She set one in front of Kidd and one in front of Bobby, who was just squeezing into place—more plates and silverware slid on the wrinkling cloth; Bobby pulled it straight again.
Kidd took his fingers from the tarnished handle and put his hand in his lap.
“We’ve never been to Europe,” Mrs. Richards said, returning from the kitchen with bowls for her and June. “But Arthur’s parents went—oh, years ago. The plates are Arthur’s mother’s—from Europe. I suppose I shouldn’t use the good ones; but I do whenever we have company. They’re so festive—Oh, don’t wait for me. Just dig in.”
Kidd’s soup was in a yellow melmac bowl. The china plate beneath bore an intricate design around its fluted lip, crossed by more intricate scratches that might have come from cleanser or steel wool.
He looked around to see if he should start, caught both Bobby and June looking around for the same purpose; Madame Brown had a china bowl but every one else’s was pastel plastic. He wondered if he, or Madame Brown alone, would have merited the spread.
Mr. Richards picked up his spoon, skimmed up some soup.
So he did too.
With the oversized spoon-bowl still in his mouth, he noticed Bobby, June, and Madame Brown had all waited for Mrs. Richards, who was only now lifting hers.
From where he sat, he could see into the kitchen: Other candles burned on the counter. Beside a paper bag of garbage, its lip neatly turned down, stood two open Campbell’s cans. He took another spoonful. Mrs. Richards has mixed, he decided, two, or even three kinds; he could recognize no specific flavor.
Under the tablecloth edge, his other hand had moved to his knee—the edge of his little finger scraped the table leg. First with two fingers, then with three, then with his thumb, then with his fore-knuckle, he explored the circular lathing, the upper block, the under-rim, the wing bolts, the joints and rounded excrescences of glue, the hairline cracks where piece was joined to piece—and ate more soup.
Over a full spoon, Mr. Richards smiled and said, “Where’s your family from, Kidd?”
“New York—” he bent over his bowl—“State.” He wondered where he had learned to recognize this as the milder version of the blunt What-nationality-are-you? which, here and there about the country, could create unpleasantnesses.
“My people are from Milwaukee,” Mrs. Richards said. “Arthur’s family is all from right around the Bellona area. Actually my sister lived down here too—well, she did. She’s left now. And so has all of Arthur’s family. It’s quite strange to think of Marianne and June—we named our June after Arthur’s mother—and Howard and your Uncle Al not here anymore.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Richards said; Kidd saw him preparing to ask how long he’d been here, when Madame Brown asked: “Are you a student, Kidd?”
“No, ma’am,” realizing it was a question whose answer she probably knew; but liked her for asking. “I haven’t been a student for a while.”
“Where were you in school, then?” Mr. Richards asked.
“Lots of places. Columbia. And a community college in Delaware.”
“Columbia University?” Mrs. Richards asked. “In New York?”
“Only for a year.”
“Did you like it? I’ve spent a lot of time—Arthur and I have both spent a lot of time—thinking about whether the children should go away to school. I’d like for Bobby to go to some place like Columbia. Though State, right here, is very good.”
“Especially the poli-sci department,” Kidd said. Mr. Richards and Madame Brown spooned their soup away from them. Mrs. Richards, June, and Bobby spooned theirs toward them. One, he remembered, was more correct; but not which. He looked at the ornate silverware handles, diminishing in size either side of his plate, and finally simply sank his spoon straight down in the soup’s center.
“And of course it’s a lot less expensive.” Mrs. Richards sat back, with a constrained laugh. “Expense is always something you have to think about. Especially today. Here at State—” (Four more spoonfuls, he figured, and the soup would be too low for his compromise technique.) Mrs. Richards sat forward again. “You say, the poli-sci department?” She tipped her soup bowl toward her.
“That’s what someone told me,” Kidd said. “Where’s June going to go?”
Mr. Richards tipped his away. “I don’t know whether June has thought too much about that.”
Mrs. Richards said: “It would be very nice if June wanted to go to college.”
“June isn’t too, what you’d call, well, academic. June’s sort of my old-fashioned girl.” Mr. Richards, tipping his bowl, apparently couldn’t get enough; he picked it up, poured the last drops into his spoon, and set it down. “Aren’t you, honey?”
“Arthur, really…!” Mrs. Richards said.
“It’s very good, dear,” Mr. Richards said. “Very good.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kidd said. “It is,” and put his spoon on his plate. It wasn’t.
“I’d like to go to college—” June smiled at her lap—“if I could go someplace like New York.”
“That’s silly!” Mr. Richards made a disparaging gesture with his soup spoon. “It was all we could do to keep her in high school!”
“It just wasn’t very interesting.” June’s bowl—pink melmac—moved, under her spoon, to the plate’s rim. She centered it again. “That’s all.”
“You wouldn’t like New York,” Mr. Richards said. “You’re too much of a sunshine girl. June likes the sun, swimming, outdoor things. You’d wither away in New York or Los Angeles, with all that smog and pollution.”
“Oh, Daddy!”
“I think June ought to apply to the Junior College next term—” Mrs. Richards turned in mid-sentence from husband to daughter—“to get some idea if you liked it or not. Your marks weren’t that bad. I don’t think it would be such a terrible idea to try it out, at the Junior College.”
“Mom!” June looked at her lap, not smiling.
“Your mother went through college,” Mr. Richards said, “I went through college. Bobby’s going to go. If nothing else, it’s a place to get married in.”
“Bobby reads more than June,” Mrs. Richards explained. “He reads all the time, in fact. And I suppose he is more school-minded.”
“That Junior College is an awful place,” June said. “I hate everybody who goes there.”
“Dear,” Mrs. Richards said, “you don’t know everybody who goes there.”
Kidd, with his middle finger, was exploring the countersinking about some flathead screw, when Madame Brown said:
“Mary, how close are we to the second course? Arthur up there looks like he’s about to eat the bottom of his bowl.”
“Oh, dear me!” Mrs. Richards pushed back in her chair. “I don’t know what I’m thinking of. I’ll be right in—”
“You want any help, mom?” June said.
“No.” Mrs. Richards disappeared into the kitchen. “Thank you, darling.”
“Pass me your soup plates, everybody,” June said.
Kidd’s hand came up from under the tablecloth to join his other on the china plate to pass it—but stopped just below the table lip. Knuckles, fingertips, and two streaks on the back of the hand were smudged black.