Dark and beautiful, my dining room table stands stately on British turned legs. Two leaves coax the table wide to hold a maximum capacity family, hungry for ancestral treats of creamy pecan pie and egg noodles slathered in butter and milk.  Four rigid-backed chairs guard each table-side with armchairs at the helm. Red satin fabric, weaved with gold and lavender stretch across deep foam seats, The sideboard, keeper of the family ware and cherished linens, smells of buffed orange oil.

My mothers crisp, white, china waits in the upper cabinet for my hands to take it to the table. Three less plates this year for those who earthly appetites have quelled. Three less plates for those too old, too tired to make the journey.

The leaves must come out. Chairs pushed to the wall.  I take a small tablecloth and whip it quickly across the smooth wood. It falls like a loose sheet across a twin bed. There will be no room in the center for my Currier and Ives Christmas platter, not if we set the gold chargers and Nana’s stemware. I leave the platter in the kitchen.

Chad and family will sit here.  Easy access to the sink for plates still filled - snubbed by toddlers whose taste-buds haven’t discovered the savoriness of sugar-coated ham, broccoli drenched in cheese sprinkled with rice, and green beans marinated in a rich mushroom sauce topped with brown-baked onions.  Bites of mashed potatoes and corn satisfy tiny tummies who would rather feast on candy canes and gum.

I bake the pumpkin pie longer, ignoring it’s darkened crust. My new oven swindles time and cheats me of a perfect pie every time. Not this day. Too much is lost; to lose the pumpkin pie would tilt the scale to trauma.  And Grandma’s pie, thick with bubbles, scraped until you see the pan, must cook longer, stirred harder, to solidify its core. Or we shall serve it with a spoon.

Six adults share this Christmas feast, sweetly haunted by those who miss this meal.
Children who cannot comprehend the loss mush their meat and drop green beans down to dogs who gladly co-conspire the goal of “clean your plate.”

My prayer for family first, good season spent, controlled tolerance, is taken from my lips like sweet meringue dabbed by a clean linen cloth. Sweetest smiles say please, pull my arm to play. I take a tiny hand and point to Santa Clause. Giggles pull away from hugs to trample through discarded wrappers. I smile at my weary daughter; my traveller. She lays her head against her arm content.

    
    “This is a freakin parkin lot, man!” The two men stepped out of Allen Morrell’s bright red Lincoln Continental onto the concrete of an oversized driveway. The pavement stretched from the front of the Morrell’s double car garage some 30 feet across the front of the house to the neighbor’s drive on the south.  A bloated right triangle, the space was more appropriate for the front of a retail store.    
    “No, shit. We can park at least 14 cars here. This house was built for entertaining,”  Allen Morrell said as he swung an arm around his old friend and high school buddy Joe. Like a man sinking a hole-in-one, Allen preened in the glory of his creation. Together they surveyed the massive house he had built for his wife of 18 years, Grace, and 12 year old daughter Melanie.  
     The Morrell house sat on top of Golf Ball Hill overlooking the eighth fairway in a smart, suburban housing addition of Tulsa.  It was contemporary and modern, the way Grace wanted it. Sleek cream brick on an imposing tri-level frame, painted white, the house with it’s massive drive and tiered retaining walls was totally unique in a neighborhood mostly composed of traditional one story ranches.
    As they walked up the stairs to the front porch, Joe turned to look at the view. Nothing but pasture land to the west and south; miles and miles from the cramped turn-of-the-century, shotgun houses they had lived in as boys. This was the edge of town in 1966, where the affluent sought refuge from their downtown offices.
    “Impressive,” Joe  grinned, “Ya done well, buddy.  Ya done well.”    
    
 1977

    The morning of her husband’s funeral Grace Morrell dressed automatically as though heading to a luncheon at the country club: a classic two-piece tan suit that buttoned up the front and matching heels. Thanks to her hairdresser’s expert hands and helmet hair spray, not one frosted hair out was out of place.  It wasn’t until she stood in front of the bathroom mirror to put on her earrings did she see herself as a widow: eyes raw from crying, hands quaking, gulping air like she was about to drown.  She painstakingly applied her make up. Like four garlic cloves slipped under the skin of a Thanksgiving turkey, her bloated lids could not be camouflaged. Buck up, her mother had said at her own husband’s funeral. At 39, Grace had broken down and sobbed on Ruth’s shoulder in the kitchen of the farmhouse where she had grown up. Buck up and honor your father’s memory by being strong, her mother had said.
    Grace’s chin fell and another unwanted tear collapsed on the counter top. She mustered a buck-up breath and smudged copper eye shadow over her watery blue eyes. Today she would be strong; save face before those whose whispers at the funeral passed the story that Allen had died at the home of another woman. Today she would buck up and honor herself.
    
    The Morrell’s massive driveway filled with cars for Allen’s last party: neighborhood friends, relatives, golfing buddies, and dark suited gentlemen who thought Allen Morrell was the glue that held their businesses together.  One by one they paraded in to offer a hand to Grace. She sat stiff-backed in a brown suede chair in the great room she and Allen had designed, going through the motions of hostess, her perfect suit and hair were a gallant but unsuccessful attempt to hold herself together.
    “Thank you for coming. Yes, yes he was,” her voice a sad tape stuck on rewind.
    Those who spoke to Grace gratefully glanced away from her sedate expression toward a more comfortable view. Over her shoulder, nineteen foot windows made up the east wall of the entire Morrell house providing postcard views of Southern Hills golf course. Not 25 feet from the wall of windows, a green flag marking the hole at the second green flapped in the unyielding Oklahoma wind. Lush and wooded for a quarter of a mile, cart paths bordered each side of the fairway dotted with sand traps.  Off to the north a large creek (or water hazard as it was listed on the score card map) percolated over river rocks. A foursome teed off from the third tee box as two golf carts sputtered up the fairway trail toward the green.
     “He could turn a dime into a dollar quicker than anyone I ever knew.”
    “You shoulda seen him handle that commissioner. We got that permit in no time.”
    “...could he ever tell a joke!”
    “I’ll never forget how he sunk that 20 footer in Nassau...”
    “Hell of guy.”

    At the far side of the living room stood Melanie Morrell Denham.  At 21, she had not experienced grief, wasn’t familiar with loss. She knew what it was to cry and she knew how to get angry. She knew happiness, joy, and in her careless high school days--the dull contentment procured from a bag of weed. Many times she had laughed so hard she had wet her pants. You act like your father, her mother had said. She also knew the frustration and despair of disappointing her parents by marrying the wrong man for the wrong reasons. Her marriage to Ben Denham marked the end of her cash flow.
    In the past two years Melanie Morrell Denham had learned to accept responsibility for her actions, to put away her self-indulgent desires and take proper care of her one-year-old son, Christopher. You’ll be a good mother, just like your mother, her father had said. She would prove him right. No more parties, no more of anything that would jeopardize her little son. This day, Melanie Morrell Denham learned that no amount of crying, no amount of anger and no amount of pleading would bring her Daddy home.  
     Christopher slept fretful, heavy, on her shoulder as she leaned against the dining room door frame and watched the condolence line penetrate then purge from the great room out to the entry hall and back down the front porch stairs to the drive.  Each time the front door opened and closed, Chris turned his head from her shoulder and nuzzled down into Melanie’s neck then back to her shoulder, unhappy with his bony pillow. His breath was warm and faint like a puppy. Melanie gently rocked her weary son. It had been a long day void of his routine. An incongruent laugh from the kitchen startled Chris. He whimpered and unconsciously grabbed a handful of Melanie’s long blonde hair. Toe head, Allen called him, beautiful and blue eyed like his mother. Melanie stroked his soft white curls and skillfully pulled her hair out from his hand. Christopher’s milk-breath, gentle and rhythmic, warmed her neck. Laying her head on top of his, careful not to hug him too hard lest he waken and cry, Melanie watched as Allen’s business partners from the First Petroleum Bank and the Carlisle Inn and Convention Center diplomatically extended an arm to Grace.
    “Don’t you worry,” Red Chestor, bent down to Grace. A piece of his fiery hair slipped across his forehead. “Don’t worry.  We’ll vote you on the board. You’ll take his place. It’ll all be fine.” Grace nodded, but never spoke. Red turned toward his wife, Tracy, who hugged Grace as though it was she who needed comforting.  Red pulled the sleeve of Tracy’s black crepe chemise to loosen her awkward grip as Edward Payne stepped forward.
    “Grace, Listen. Allen was a good man in spite of his faults. A good man,” Edward’s declamation resonated bittersweet. Grace nodded and sponged her eyes with the handkerchief her brother J.K. had given her as they sat in the pew enduring her husband’s eulogy.
    Richard Underman, Hank Ronnge and their wives, Sweetie and  Rita Faye respectfully, made a brief appearance, brusquely shaking hands, muttering sympathies. Melanie watched as the men left her mother and huddled in the middle of the great room oblivious to the other mourners. Edward’s sons Marvin and Marcus joined the circle.  Their huddled conversations, hands on hips or stuffed in suit pockets, thumbing unlit cigarettes, shuffling feet and strategic expressions of grief seemed more contrived than sincere.  
    They are like vultures circling, Melanie thought. The angry thought perplexed her. Why did she think this? She did not know. They all seemed nice enough the few times they had run into each other at the hotel; a holiday, a birthday, an anniversary dinner, all marked their passages in the dining room of the Carlisle Inn and Convention Center. She didn’t know any of them personally. They never came out to the house to play golf or bring their kids to swim. They were just the hotel people and she only knew them from her parents conversations.
    Today not one of them spoke to her, not one offered a look of compassion in her direction. If they thought of it at all, it must have had little consequence. Compared to Richard’s rambunctious brood of six, Hank’s three boys, and Red and Tracy’s infant twins, Allen Morrell left little legacy. Not one of her father’s business partner’s acknowledged the grief felt by Allen’s only child, and a girl at that.     
    They are like vultures circling. That is the memory Melanie Morrell Denham would carry with her of the day she buried her father and the board of the Carlisle Hotel and Convention Center accepted her mother into their realm.