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Tilly laughed. “It’s even more of a lie because our job is to keep Mom from busting into the kitchen and ‘resting’ by telling everyone what to do.”
“Trust me, there’s nothing restful about that task,” Renia said.
“I’ll be good this year,” Karl’s mother said, as she got up to walk over to the Sweiconka basket.
Miles stopped her. “You can start by letting me get out the eggs while you sit back down. Dan will get you coffee.”
“As the only male foodie in the group,” Dan said with his good-natured grin, “I think I should be responsible for the food. You’re married to the woman who searches the internet for intravenous coffee drip patents once a month. You can do the coffee.”
“And it begins,” Karl whispered into Vivian’s ear. He stood up straight and addressed the crowd. “I’m the oldest and only Pole with a Y chromosome in this crowd. I’ll decide what everyone does. Dan, you peel and slice the eggs. Miles, you make coffee. If you don’t have a Y chromosome, go sit in the living room.”
“I don’t think it’s very restful to be bossed about by my son,” his mother murmured, but she said it good-naturedly and while walking out of the kitchen on Tilly’s arm. The clamor in the room was cut in half, which Karl was grateful for, but Vivian was no longer in touching distance, which he wasn’t so grateful for.
Dan dug the hard-boiled eggs out of the basket and took them over to the sink. “What do you think the chances are they’ll stay in the living room?”
Karl felt rather than saw Vivian return to the kitchen. “Not good,” she said. “I came in to get a glass of water, but if you really want to keep us out, you can give me a bell to ring whenever we need something.”
“I’ll bring you a glass of water. Go back and sit with Mom before she gets any ideas.” He leaned over and kissed Vivian’s cheek, grateful she had come into the kitchen so he could see her again and smell her jasmine perfume.
When he turned back around, Miles and Dan were both looking up at the ceiling a little too obviously. Miles was whistling.
Sometimes life was easier without family.
Karl thought about his family members, dead on the side of the road or dying in the hospital, and reevaluated his thoughts. If Leon could be here in this kitchen, Karl wouldn’t mind any teasing his brother would subject him to.
The coffeepot and the other things he needed were in the same place they had been since the first Easter he could remember. The platter for the eggs was new—Babunia had dropped the original sometime when her hands had started to shake—but the silver coffee set had been a wedding gift from some family friend his mom didn’t even keep in touch with anymore.
Miles filled the coffeepot and gathered cream and sugar. Karl made several trips to the living room with coffee cups for everyone. Dan, foodie that he was, wasn’t satisfied with slicing the eggs and sticking them on a plate; he arranged a smorgasbord of Sweiconka foods decoratively around the eggs. Miles waited until Dan’s back was turned, then rearranged the food on the platter so that the sugar lambs looked like an army led by the butter lamb, ready to conquer the pile of sliced ham. Dan just sighed and rolled his eyes when he saw the platter again.
In the living room, Vivian was using her ultrasound images to successfully distract his mother from her normal “resting” state of offering helpful suggestions to the kitchen. Even though she’d seen the images many times before, his mother still cooed.
Karl could understand some of the amazement. At eleven weeks, the ultrasound images of the baby had so much more detail than they had just a few weeks ago. He couldn’t believe that the mouse he’d seen at Vivian’s first doctor’s appointment now looked something like a baby with a head, arms and legs.
He finally understood what people meant when they said pregnant women glowed. Sitting in his mother’s living room, surrounded by family, Vivian lit up his life. And he knew why he’d thought she didn’t look as though she’d belonged at his mother’s kitchen table. Karl didn’t want Vivian living with his mother. He wanted her back at his apartment, living with him. He wanted her to look as if she was visiting when she sat at his mother’s kitchen table, not as if she was home there.
