“Fries,” Denise agreed. “And the soup, if the soup is the kind that arrives.”
“The soup arrives,” Emily said. “Sometimes it arrives with an apology already attached. I’ll skip the apology if I can skip the delay.”
She put the order in. The rush was a milder animal than it had been three weeks ago. Rain ticked at the window and made the highway a dark ribbon. When she returned with the plates, Caleb had taken the number off his shirt and set it on the chrome, a small paper surrender. He ate. He talked, between bites, about a girl who had finished early and put her head on the desk, and about a proctor who had sneezed so hard the front row lost a minute, and about the feeling, which he did not have words for and therefore described twice, of knowing a path and walking it while the clock did its violence. Denise listened. She corrected nothing. Once she opened her mouth and closed it, and Emily saw the effort, and respected it, and did not praise it, because praise would have made the effort a performance.
Near the end of the meal Denise said, “The committee meets in January. I have not written to them. I am telling you the calendar, not handing you a pen. If you want the spring Saturdays, tell me in December, so I am not a person who surprises you with a favor. If you don’t, we will come here, and we will order badly, and we will not mention it. Caleb has agreed to this treaty. He wants it noted that he agreed under duress, the duress being that I am his mother and I control the sedan.”