At the Supper Table

AT EXACTLY FIVE O’CLOCK EVERY DAY, ELLIE’s MOTHER had supper on the table. They had exactly forty minutes to eat and twenty minutes to wash the dishes before “The Channel 4 News” came on. Okey never missed the news unless he was in bed recovering from a drinking bout the night before. Even those evenings, he sometimes staggered out to lie on the couch while Dick Strange gave the report and then staggered back into bed when it was over.

When Ellie was small, suppertime had been the best part of being a Farley. That was when Okey was still working. They had supper late then, almost seven, to give him time to come home from the mine and wash up. Ellie’s mother would be frying some pork chops at the stove, Eunice would be cutting up potatoes, Martha would be setting the table, Wanda and Linda would be bickering over who washed dishes last and Ellie would be hiding under the kitchen table, beneath the heavy brown cloth, smelling and listening and waiting for Okey.

It was hard on them all when those days ended. Hard in different ways for each of them. But hardest for Ellie. For she just hadn’t had the time the other girls had had to know that kind of suppertime before it all stopped. And it seemed just as she had crawled out from under the table to become part of it all, Okey got hurt and the Farley family, the one she had known, was gone.

And so now suppertime was a somber affair. No one came home for dinner. They were all already there. No worker to come through the door tired and dirty and hungry. By the time supper was put on the table, the seven of them had been in the house together a good two hours, usually, with little left to say to each other. Or if one of them had thought of something to tell, it was usually forgotten by five o’clock. Having an outsider (Okey, when he was working) at the table had opened them up to talk. But now there was no outsider, and they all felt too much the heaviness of being alike.

And so the talk at the table was of more practical matters. “Pass me some of them beans, Linda,” or, “I don’t know about that beef Mr. Facemire is raising—this stuff’s pretty tough,” and such as that.

It seemed also to Ellie that as her sisters grew older, they grew even quieter at suppertime. Ellie wondered if each of them had some large secret spreading out inside her body which had to be held tightly from five o’clock to six. Now that her sisters had all turned into teen-agers, Ellie wondered how much they knew about important things and how much they were unwilling to tell her, only eleven. Eunice, the oldest, and Wanda, the next, sometimes gave each other a look over the mashed potatoes, and Ellie never missed it. It usually followed some remark Okey had made.

So there were the silence and the secrets of four teen-age girls at the supper table.

Ellie’s mother had always been quiet. She was a nervous woman with a nervous laugh, and though she had been welcoming with her warm arms when the girls were all small, she had withdrawn those arms more and more as the girls grew. Now Ellie couldn’t remember the last time she had been hugged by her mother. And she saw, when she looked at her, a woman with a thin, set mouth and a wall around her. Okey sometimes broke through that wall when he was drunk and gave her a hard knock on the shoulder. But mostly the wall was there and solid.

After Okey got Bullet, though, the supper table changed some. First, there started some talk between Ellie and him about the dog and about the hunting over on this mountain or that ridge. Ellie loved this talk with Okey in spite of the food and her silent sisters. She actually began to look forward to suppertime and during the day thought of things she could bring up with Okey about the dog or hunting.

And Bullet affected the way the meal ended, too. They all gave the dog table scraps, so when they finished and began scraping the plates over the scrap bowl, there was some talk among them of Bullet’s treats:

“Bullet sure better be thankful for this chunk of fat I saved him.”

“You think Bullet’11 eat these greens?”

“I swear, that dog eats better than most people.”

And saying these things, talking, finally, to each other, they all left the table feeling that it had been a good meal—and that there had been a lot of talk among them, after all.

They all watched “The Channel 4 News” together then, and though the program bored Ellie and probably her sisters, it was worth sitting through to hold that warm feeling that had come from filling Bullet’s scrap bowl together.