"Samuel, please," Grandma Olivia said. "He didn't live here."
"Well, he was here enough, wasn't he, Nelson?" Grandpa Samuel asked the judge.
"When Kenneth was younger, I had less of a fix on him than I have now," the judge said mournfully. Everyone sipped their champagne, but the judge and Grandma Olivia gave each other that sideways glance again. I took the lemonade from the maid, thanked her, and took a sip. I still wasn't sure why I had been invited to this luncheon, but I knew from everything I had been told and everything I had observed that Grandma Olivia didn't do anything unless it had a purpose.
"I hope you're hungry," Grandpa Samuel said. "We've got a small feast. Cold lobster, some of those wonderful fried potatoes I shouldn't eat, hickorysmoked ham."
"From the way he talks, you'd think that's all he cares about these days is food," Grandma Olivia said with a sigh. "I guess we had better get to it before he chews the arm off the chair." She started to rise.
"That is all he cares about," the judge quipped, and stood. Grandpa Samuel held out his arm for me to take and we followed the judge and Grandma Olivia into the house to the dining room, where the luncheon had been set out in smorgasbord style. The maid stood beside the table, waiting to hand us each a plate. Grandma Olivia went first and the judge stepped back for me to follow. The lobster meat had been shelled and dressed on a platter. Beside the potatoes Grandpa Samuel favored, there was a variety of vegetables, cranberry sauce and apple sauce. The hickory-smoked ham looked delicious.
Aunt Sara had warned me not to fill up my plate at Grandma Olivia's luncheons. That was something Grandma Olivia believed real ladies didn't do. It was proper to have something else afterward, a second helping of ham or vegetables, but not to fill the plate again. I saw how she watched out of the corner of her eye as I moved behind her, and I took a lot less than I wanted. The judge and Grandpa Samuel loaded their plates to the brim. We sat at the dining room table.
"As usual, wonderful, Olivia," the judge said. She nodded slightly, as one who expected
compliments would nod.
"You seem to have adjusted well to your new home," Grandpa Samuel said to me.
"What choice did she have?" Grandma Olivia snapped. "What you have to do, you do."
"Well, sometimes you can be lucky and you can like the things you have to do, too," he offered, without any hint of contradiction in his voice. He winked at me and we ate in silence until the judge and Grandma Olivia exchanged another one of those quiet looks filled with question marks.
"What do you do while Kenneth works in his studio?" Grandma Olivia asked.
"Sometimes I use the time to clean the house or walk Ulysses and sometimes I watch Kenneth work. He doesn't mind as long as I don't break his concentration," I added. "Once, he asked me to play my fiddle while he worked."
"He's not very talkative then?" she asked.
"When he talks about his art, he is," I said. I tilted my head, wondering why, if Kenneth had practically grown up here and this was his father who was sitting across from me, they were asking all these questions about him? They all acted as if they barely knew him and they should have known him far better than I did.
"Is that all he talks about?" the judge asked me insistently. He seemed impatient.
"Let the girl eat," Grandpa Samuel said. Grandma Olivia shot darts at him from her eyes, causing him to shake his head and return his concentration to his food.
I swallowed what I was chewing and replied.
"No. Sometimes he talks about the past," I said. The judge's eyes widened and Grandma Olivia held her fork frozen between the plate and her mouth.
"Oh? And exactly what has he told you about the past?" the judge followed.
"Just a little bit about what it was like to grow up here in Provincetown," I said.
Grandma Olivia put her fork down and looked at the judge, shaking her head in the slightest, but just discernable way. The judge returned to his food and the topic of conversation changed to what would happen to the country's economy if the Republicans didn't win control of the Senate.
After we had eaten, Grandma Olivia proposed something that made my eyes bulge with surprise.
"While you two idiots go have your cigars, Melody and I will walk out to the gazebo and have a private talk," she said. "Come along," she told me as she rose from the table.
"We'll be there shortly," Grandpa Samuel said.
"Don't rush your filthy habit on my account," she replied. The judge laughed and Grandpa shrugged. I followed Grandma Olivia out of the house and down the back steps. She paused and waited for me to walk alongside her.
"Did you enjoy the lunch?"
"Oh yes. Thank you. Everything was wonderful."
"Later, we'll have some tea and some petit fours. Tell me more about this summer job of yours," she said and continued down the pathway toward the gazebo.