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Donal’s father and his wife didn’t talk much, but Kathleen piped up frequently to tell funny family stories or ask Erin questions about her own family. I listened to Erin’s answers with interest, learning a great deal more about her parents and childhood than she’d volunteered previously.
Occasionally I’d glance over at Donal, sitting on the other side of his mother. When he wasn’t wincing at an embarrassing anecdote his mother had shared about him, his expression settled into a fond half-smile as he watched his three children interact.
After about an hour, Kathleen excused herself to put the finishing touches on dinner, and I volunteered to assist her. A mouthwatering smell had filled up the house, which I discovered was the pot roast cooking in the oven. While Kathleen heated up the mashed potatoes she’d made earlier, I was put to work slicing vegetables for the salad. When Donal wandered in for another beer a short time later, he was conscripted to open a bottle of wine and call everyone to the table.
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d sat down to eat a home-cooked meal with so many people. As an only child without much in the way of local extended family, holiday dinners had been quiet affairs in my house. In more recent years, as my father’s condition had declined, Sherry and I had abandoned them altogether. Last year I’d spent Christmas alone, eating Chinese takeout on my couch and watchingDie Hard.
We were crammed in three to a side at the table, and once grace had been said, a noisy free-for-all of plate-passing and dish-serving commenced. As before, I remained mostly quiet, listening to the conversation around me more than participating in it.
Apparently, Maddy had recently become a vegan, and Kathleen had made vegan mac and cheese just for her. Jack turned his nose up at it, ranting about the blasphemy of fake cheese until Donal gently chided him to leave his sister’s dietary choices alone.
When Maddy started talking about the boyfriend who’d inspired her lifestyle change, I sensed Donal tense beside me. I glanced at him, but his attention was completely absorbed by Maddy as she chattered about Tyler, who it sounded like she’d been dating for quite some time.
“What are Tyler’s college plans?” Kathleen asked her granddaughter.
“He doesn’t have any,” Maddy answered breezily as she helped herself to more mac and cheese. “He says college is a waste of money.”
“Does he now?” Kathleen’s eyebrows lifted slightly as she exchanged a glance with Donal. “What does he plan to do after high school?”
Maddy shrugged. “He’ll probably keep working at Jewel-Osco while he builds up his art portfolio.”
“What kind of art does he do?” Erin asked.
“Mostly pencil and ink, although he’s starting to practice more with watercolors. But what he really wants to do is become a tattoo artist.”
Kathleen’s smile didn’t slip, but it did freeze in place a little. Meanwhile, a vein was now visibly throbbing at Donal’s temple.
“Now I understand why he thinks college is a waste of time,” Donal’s father mumbled, reaching for his wine.
“He thinks it’s a waste ofmoney,” Maddy corrected. “The days when a college education guaranteed a better job are long gone, Grandpa. Now all it buys you is crushing debt for the rest of your life while you’re stuck working minimum wage jobs that you could have gotten without a degree.”
I glanced at Donal and saw a muscle tighten in his jaw. When he opened his mouth—to argue, presumably—I laid my hand on his leg beneath the table. His gaze jumped to mine, and I gave a tiny shake of my head. Attacking Maddy and her boyfriend’s opinions would only drive her farther away, and might very well drive her closer to Tyler just to spite her father.
“Isn’t it nice you don’t have to pay for college yourself?” Kathleen said cheerfully, filling the awkward silence. “Not everyone’s lucky enough to have parents who can afford to pay for their education outright.”
Erin gave Maddy a thoughtful look. “I remember when I was eighteen and I’d just gotten accepted to UIUC, one of my mom’s friends asked me what I wanted to major in. I started complaining about how hard it was to get a job after college and telling her how I was still trying to figure out which major would give me the best chance in the job market after I graduated. And do you know what she said?”
“What?” Maddy asked, listening with interest.
“She said ‘You don’t go to college in order to get a job. You go to college to learn how to think.’ I’d never thought of it like that before, but it’s always stuck with me.”
Maddy gave her a skeptical look. “Do you think that’s really true? Did college teach you to think?”
Erin’s brow furrowed as she gave the question serious consideration. “I feel like it did, yeah. I’m not saying every single class was a golden font of knowledge, but enough of them were that it opened my eyes to things I might not have appreciated otherwise. Going to college changed my understanding of the world and the people around me, but more than that it helped me figure out who and what I wanted to be.”
“So you didn’t always know you wanted to be a teacher?” I asked her.
She smiled and shook her head. “No, definitely not. In fact, I was dead set against it, determined to walk my own path instead of following in my mom’s footsteps. But because of what her friend said, I signed up for a few classes I might not otherwise have taken, just because they sounded like something I wanted to know more about. After trying a few different things on for size, what I figured out was that I really liked science—but more than that, I liked helping other people understand it. So I decided to become a science teacher, not because it was my mom’s path, but because it was mine too.”
“That’s cool,” Maddy said, smiling at Erin, and I heard Donal exhale a long breath.
* * *
After dinner, there were cookies and blueberry pie for dessert. Once everyone had stuffed themselves, the party migrated back to the living room and Kathleen brought out a stack of family photo albums.
As everyone was poring over them and swapping family stories, I gathered up the last of the dessert plates and carried them into the kitchen. While I was loading them into the dishwasher, Maddy came in to get another soda pop from the fridge.
“Grandma likes to have the fork tines pointing up,” Maddy commented, glancing my way. “She’s really particular about it.”
