The.American.Word.

Food and prayer and sin centered in our family squarely around the din of suppers. I have seen my sister Alice sublime drinking can beer and eating cold pizza hours before her wedding, years after her divorce. Grace at our table was so long and inclusive the dead never made it to the past or the living futured. “Eat fast,” my father wised up the bewildered. The broiled hamburger hump on Tuesday nights, onioned, served with mixed boiled frozen vegetables and apple sauce still triggers tics: The trick: drop some on the floor, hide some in the napkin, store some in the mouth, mumble up excuses to the bathroom and flush some, camouflage the rest around the plate like stations of the cross, some art. Meanwhile, Nixon might roar from my father’s milk, the older brothers snort into their forks and swallow deferments, one kidney bean at a time. My mother must have been close to heaven, overcooked and overworked and dead each night at nine. All our sins must leave this world like grated cheese for good and live on in other udders, some grumpy hungers I pray, gnawing for pasta and a piece of hard bread, the heels.