Grace's Table Read Free

inspected the leg of lamb she’d bought two days earlier. It was paler than the ones Mother had prepared. And though she hoped this one would be tender, she doubted the flavour would stack up as well. Mother had a deft hand for making the ordinary sublime.
    It was through food that Mother’s love was given voice, and just as well because in other ways it was mute. Grace marvelled at how something warm or sweet could speak like this. How a mouth stuffed with soft, freshly-baked scone, sweet jam and cream could take hurt into the stomach and lose it there. It proved to her that food, so taken for granted by some, was a powerful thing.
    But Grace had learnt a trick or two over the years to bring out the best flavours. Susan might raise an eyebrow at the salt she used to achieve it, although it was a lot less now Des wasn’t around.
    Grace cut slits in the roasting joint until the knife’s tip hit against bone; miniature pockets she planned to fill with garlic and fresh rosemary. Mother wouldn’t have made such a fuss. She’d have grabbed it by the knuckle without ceremony, dropped it in her old blackened baking dish and slid it into the oven of the wood stove on the way out the door to church. It was the pinch of nutmeg and pat of butter she added to the julienned carrots later, the tiny thyme leaves she scattered across the roasted potatoes before serving, that showed Grace her mother cared.
    Nowadays, Grace catered for a crowd who liked modern twists. She sealed each rosemary-filled slit in the lamb with a clove of garlic. Grace thought whether anybody would notice the pockets had been filled once the meat was cooked. Would her guests believe what they tasted when they ate the meat or would they need their eyes to see something of the garlic and rosemary, for them to trust their tongues? She doubted it. Such was the truth of cooking.
    She poked the last of the garlic into the slits, grabbed it by the knuckle, just as Mother would have, and placed it in the baking dish. With her back to Susan, Grace sprinkled the leg generously with salt and rubbed it into the meat with her hands.
    Grace studied her hands as they moved across the meat. They looked much like any others the same age – veined, lined, the backs stained with tea-coloured spots. But they’d felt their way through the past seventy years in unique ways. Much of their work had been to the benefit of others, some not. She’d known them as still, listening hands, but also as hands that moved with urgency and madness. For a while they’d been careful nurse’s hands. Then hands that cradled three babies and clapped, tickled and taught in turn. She’d bruised, burnt and cut them; some scars suggested badly. They’d dismissed, beckoned, pleaded over the years, and not always successfully. Their goodbyes were too many to recall.
    She held out her arms and studied the flat platter of her palms, red now from salt and friction. She turned them over, looked at the backs again. Her fingers were long and slender as her legs still were; the nails neater at seventy than they had been in her fifties – back when she’d had to scrub beds and bodies in the nursing home. She was fond of them, she decided, attached, beyond the obvious. She’d rather lose an eye or a foot than either of these two old friends. She’d miss the feel of one against the other as they rested in her lap, cupped comfortably like a successful marriage. Not that Grace could give anybody tips on that.
    Her relationships, even now, were as problematic as they were when she was younger. She hadn’t thought it unreasonable to expect she’d have them down pat by now. And she probably would have if it wasn’t for her children. Unfortunately, they were determined to stand like a nagging conscience between her and Jack, forcing them to conduct their romance like sly adolescents.
    â€˜They’ll all be coming?’ Jack had asked her last