Then he had asked his mother to prepare “something proper and homemade, like before” for the anniversary. He said that his stomach and liver were already protesting against takeout, convenience meals, and eating on the run.
And Margaret had tried.
She had risen at six that morning. She made yeast dough for little pastries filled with egg and green onions, prepared eggplant rolls with walnuts, seasoned the fish, and baked it beneath a golden layer of cheese.
But in that family, her help had long ago stopped being treated as kindness. It was considered her duty.
When Daniel and Emily needed money for the down payment on the car, Diane had been the loudest person insisting that parents were supposed to help their children get established. Yet she herself had contributed not a cent.
Margaret had withdrawn almost all of her savings and handed the money to her son.
When the couple needed someone to take their little boy to the country house for three weeks while the other grandparents vacationed by the sea, Margaret had stepped in again. She watched the child, tended the garden beds, cooked fresh meals every day, and made homemade fruit drinks.
Thank-you was something she rarely heard.
Afterward, Diane complained that the boy looked too pale. Margaret’s strawberry jam, in her opinion, had turned out too runny. And once, with a grimace, she announced that Margaret’s apartment always smelled like old books.
Even so, Margaret made one more attempt to steer the conversation toward peace.
“Let me serve you some fish, Diane,” she offered, reaching for the wide serving spatula. “It’s fresh pollock. I simmered it slowly with carrots and onions. It came out very tender.”
“Pollock?”
Diane threw up both hands. She laughed loudly, as if Margaret had delivered the funniest joke of the evening, then turned toward her daughter.
“Emily, did you hear that? They served us pollock for an anniversary! Good Lord, that is cat food. We used to eat so much of that fish that I still can’t stand the thought of it. Just imagine inviting people over for a celebration and putting frozen pollock on the table!”
Thomas, who had remained silent until then, cautiously reached for one of the pastries.
“It’s perfectly good fish, Diane. Don’t be so hard on her.”
Diane snapped her head around.
“You be quiet. Now we have a food expert. You only care about filling your stomach. You never care what you’re eating.”
Then she turned back to Margaret.
“Don’t take offense, dear. I’m a direct person. I don’t lie or flatter anyone. But this is not a festive table. It’s practically an insult to your guests.”
An oppressive silence settled over the room.
A car moved along the road outside with a soft rush of tires. The cuckoo clock on the wall counted the seconds in a steady rhythm.
At last Daniel looked up from his phone and shifted uneasily on the sofa. Still, he did not defend his mother.
Instead, he said with irritation, “Mom, honestly, you could have ordered prepared food. Every restaurant offers anniversary packages. Why did you spend two days exhausting yourself in the kitchen if people were just going to complain? We were expecting something a little more modern.”
Margaret slowly turned to face him.
“Delivery costs money, Daniel,” she answered, her voice calm and almost emotionless. “On Tuesday you were sitting right here telling me that, after the car payment, you barely had enough left for gas. Everything on this table was paid for with my laboratory salary and my pension. Every last cent.”
Diane let out a loud sigh, rolled her eyes, and deliberately placed her fork beside her plate.
“Oh, wonderful. Now we’ll spend the entire evening hearing how much every pickle cost and how many pennies went into the salad. We came to visit family, and instead we’re being handed an accounting report over dinner. If I had known this was going to be such a poverty-stricken table, Thomas and I would have gone straight to a restaurant. At least we could have eaten properly. Now we’re expected to choke this down out of politeness.”
Margaret placed both hands in her lap.
And suddenly, something inside her went completely still.
The pressure in her head disappeared. The old, familiar hurt that had been squeezing her throat only moments earlier no longer burned behind her eyes.
In its place came a cool, even calm—and a strange feeling of freedom.
Margaret rose from her chair.
Without rushing or making a single sharp movement, she went into the kitchen. She pulled on thick oven mitts patterned with bright sunflowers and opened the oven door.
A wave of hot steam rolled over her.
The apartment quickly filled with the deep scent of garlic, baked apples, bay leaves, spices, and roasting meat.
At the back of the oven sat a large, heavy cast-iron roasting pan.
Inside it, Margaret had baked an entire pork shoulder weighing nearly seven pounds. Its surface was covered with a glossy honey-mustard crust. Around the meat lay young potatoes, browned at the edges, and wild mushrooms she had gathered the previous autumn.