“You should really try to take better care of yourself,” Elaine said.
Barbara smiled because smiling had been her first language in that family.
She smiled when she was hurt.
She smiled when she was embarrassed.
She smiled when she needed money and when they made her feel small for needing it.
She smiled when Jeffrey took credit for things other people made possible.
She smiled so often around them that sometimes, driving home, her jaw hurt.
Robert lifted his glass before Barbara had even unfolded her napkin.
“To Jeffrey,” he said.
Jeffrey looked down with a false little shrug, already pleased.
Elaine’s face lit up.
“Three-point-two million in revenue,” she said, turning toward Barbara like she was announcing a national holiday. “Can you believe it?”
Barbara looked at her brother.
He nodded once, humble enough to be unbearable.
“It was a strong quarter,” he said.
Robert clapped him on the shoulder.
“Our boy built something real,” he said.
Barbara felt something tighten under her ribs.
Their boy.
She looked at Jeffrey’s hand resting near his phone.
He had a watch Barbara recognized from a photo he had posted the month before.
Her mother had commented, So proud of the man you’ve become.
Barbara had been at work when she saw it.
A child had vomited on her shoes that morning.
A father had screamed at the intake desk.
A grandmother had handed Barbara a sandwich because she said nurses never ate enough.
Barbara had liked the photo anyway.
She had always liked the photos.
That was the kind of daughter she had trained herself to be.
Elaine turned toward her.
The smile changed.
Barbara saw it before the words came.
Her mother had different smiles for different uses.
There was the church smile, the neighbor smile, the waitress smile, the Jeffrey smile, and the Barbara smile.
The Barbara smile was soft enough to look kind from across a room.
Up close, it had teeth.
“Barbara,” Elaine said, “how does it feel being the one who never quite keeps up?”
The waiter stopped pouring water.
It was not dramatic.
It was worse than dramatic.
It was ordinary.
The kind of cruelty that had been allowed to become familiar because nobody at the table ever called it what it was.
Jeffrey laughed under his breath.
Robert did not look embarrassed.
He took his butter knife and spread butter across his toast with careful little strokes.
Barbara looked at her mother.
Her hands were still raw from hospital soap.
The room had that strange restaurant brightness where nothing could hide.
Forks hovered.
A spoon chimed against a cup, then stopped.
Champagne bubbles climbed in narrow glasses like the table had not just split open.
The waiter stared at the white tablecloth, trying to become invisible.
Nobody moved.
Barbara breathed in once.
The air tasted like coffee and humiliation.
Then her phone buzzed beside her plate.
At first, she almost ignored it.
Hospital people learned to live with buzzing.
Everything buzzed.
Pagers, monitors, phones, alerts, alarms.
But the screen lit up beside her fork, and the notification at the top was not from work.
It was from her bank.
Scheduled transfer: $12,000.
