If Only by Judith Arnold

Author:Judith Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fiction Studio Books
Published: 2021-07-15T18:06:33+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

If Only I’d Become a Concert Pianist…

Ruth was exhausted. Maddie had worn her out last night, spreading a seating diagram across the dining room table and penciling, and then erasing, the names of her wedding guests. Not that she’d sent out invitations yet, let alone received RSVP’s, but she seemed to assume that anyone she invited to what she viewed as the greatest social event of all time would gladly rearrange their lives so they could attend.

Ruth thought Maddie could organize the seating chart herself, but no. She wanted her mother’s insights and input. “I hate round tables,” she lamented, staring at the circles penciled onto the broad sheet of paper. “I wish we could have long, rectangular tables, like they have in castles and manor houses. Remember that show set in the Regency era? They always ate at long, rectangular tables.”

“Round tables are easier for conversing,” Ruth pointed out. “At the long tables, you can really only talk to the people sitting on either side of you or directly across from you.”

Maddie considered this and frowned. “But the long tables are classier. And then you have servants serving from the left and clearing from the right, and walking around the table with a gravy boat.”

“I thought you were going to have a buffet,” Ruth said.

“Servers are classier.”

“If you’re going with servers, you’ll have to ask everyone on their RSVP cards whether they want beef, fish, or vegan,” Ruth pointed out. “With a buffet, everyone can help themselves to what they want.”

Maddie frowned again. “I guess,” she said doubtfully. “But then people will be standing in line, waiting to fill their plates, instead of sitting at the table. It’ll be like a cafeteria. Like in a hospital or a high school.”

True enough. “What does Warren think?” Ruth asked. “Buffet or sit-down dinner?”

“He says I should do whatever I want.” Maddie seemed less than pleased with this.

The discussion of the seating for her wedding dinner lasted until eleven o’clock without reaching any conclusions, other than her insistence that Noah and Laura would sit together because the entire wedding party would be seated at one table, and if Noah didn’t like it, he could fuck himself. By the time Maddie rolled her paper into a scroll and fastened it with a rubber band, Ruth was weary enough to sleep standing up.

She’d climbed the stairs to bed and slept horizontally, however—and then arose at six-fifteen the next morning. Barry, who’d been spared Maddie’s angst about the demographics of who sat where and in what configuration, had gone to bed at ten and awakened appallingly chipper while Ruth staggered around the bedroom, stubbing her toe on her closet door while she flung her arms into the sleeves of her bathrobe and fastened the belt with an uneven knot. Maddie woke up soon afterward, neither as energized as Barry nor as bleary as Ruth. Her neon-bright scrubs seared Ruth’s sleep-deprived eyes. “I’ve got to run,” she announced, filling her travel mug with coffee and racing to the door.

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