triangles.
And there were sandwiches. Chicken salad on soft bread, cut into small triangles with the crusts cut. A bowl of grapes. A pitcher of iced tea with lemon slices floating in it.
I stood in front of this kitchen door and just looked at her.
“Sit down”, said Mrs. Whitaker. “I know you usually eat lunch in your car.”
I stopped.
“You knew it?”
“Every Thursday for eight years”, she said. “Twelve o’clock. Peanut butter, mainly. Sometimes turkey. You sit in the front seat and look at the oak tree.” She took out a chair for me. “I looked at you from the upstairs window. Every week I thought, This time I’m going to go down and ask him in. And every week I didn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
She sat across from me. She unfolded her towel and placed it carefully on her knees.
“Because I’m a stubborn
old woman who doesn’t know how to say things,” she said. “Ask Susan. She will tell you.”
I sat down. I unfolded my towel. My hands were shaking a little.
We ate chicken salad sandwiches. They were good. She said she made them herself, from her mother’s recipe, with grapes and nuts. We talked. I really spoke, for the first time in eight years. About moving. About his new apartment in Oregon, which has a window overlooking a mountain. About Susan’s children, who were now in college. About the young family who bought the house.
“Three little boys”, she said. “I told them about the bird’s nest in the attic window. The father said he would leave him.”
We talked about Willa. About his final year. About the regional competition and his little house with fourteen windows.
“She’s applying to the architecture program”, I said. “At State University. This is
