Slide - Kyle Beachy [19]
“Well, it's a thoughtful gift,” my mother said, and went into her bathroom to shower. I continued to examine the picture, searching for either a flaw or message within the shapes. Ten minutes later she came back to the kitchen and began rummaging through the freezer for pieces of things to turn into that night's meal. I was still looking at the picture.
“There's plenty of food, son, if you'd like to eat at home tonight?”
“Yeah. Think I might.”
I took a seat at the kitchen counter and watched her move from stove to fridge to cabinets, opening the oven to check on the chicken. Carla's cooking was simple but rewarding, the sort that succeeded by sheer repetition and basic heartiness. Thawed boneless chicken breasts in simple sauce. Croissants that burst from within cardboard tubing when she unpeeled the wrapper. These meals contributed to my sense of our wealth as a bit junior-varsityish. It was also partially geographical—we were privy to neither that snobbish entitlement of the Northeast's aristocracy nor the whimsical grandeur of California's recent rich. Nor did our wealth have the history and blemish of the South's. Like St. Louis itself, we had our heels planted fast in the soil of the middle ground.
Not that my father had ever failed to work as hard as he possibly could for his salary. He was the director of St. Louis Hooray!, a publicly funded consulting project conceived to revitalize, invigorate, and elevate the city of St. Louis back onto the national stage—what amounted to nothing short of a metropolitan makeover. Before that he'd spent thirty years at the law firm of Cave-Bryant-Newman, which would have been Cave-Bryant-Newman-Mays had he not asked to remain silent in his partnership. He took a junior position with the firm immediately out of law school and, with steady and dutiful grit, ascended. Under the aegis of former Missouri Senator John L. Dunleavy SLH! selected my father as their founding director for his deep local roots and unfaltering dedication to the city's future. Born in South City to German parents, skin and soul toughened by the rigor of immigrant life in Middle America and the early loss of his father to cardiac arrest, Richard's story was one of real trial and actual hardship, a protracted struggle to MAKE ENDS MEET. He won scholarships to the University of Missouri and Washington University Law School. His mother succumbed to breast cancer within a week of his passing the bar, at which point he watched two younger brothers depart for coastal pastures, one to Boston, the other to Charleston. Through it all, Richard Mays remained. He'd never worked a job out of state and had dedicated himself to the city he loved deeply. Enough to win widespread local respect, even a certain kind of regional fame.
General consensus was that I looked more like my mother.
She maneuvered through her kitchen with almost musical precision, reaching here for this while balancing this over that. Eventually I stood and began opening my own sequence of drawers and cupboards and set out three place settings around the circular glass table in the dining room. I straightened napkins and made sure the spoon was outside the knife. The house was filling with the fragrance and sounds of mealtime, vegetable odor, the clatter of pots, creak of oven door.
My father entered through the side door wearing a gray suit. Briefcase leaned against wall just inside the new computer room. Son high-fived, wife kissed on cheek. Tie loosened in a two-step pull—down, down—as habitual as his steps across carpet.
Next the wife, with her own acquired and polished habit: “Day go well?”
“The day was fine, actually. The meeting with