Chapter 11 - The Gray Bucket
Dad said we had to go back to the party room after dinner. The chandelier was on low and the banquet table was empty except for the stacked plates. The marble felt cold through my socks because he told me to leave my party shoes by the door. He carried in the gray bucket himself and set it down by the right side of the table.
Mom stood by the column with her arms crossed. She wasn't wearing her maroon dress anymore, just black pants and a sweater, but her hair was still in the low bun. She watched Dad move one of the chairs and lay it on its side.
"This is ridiculous," she said.
Dad didn't look up. He picked up the white cloth from the bucket and laid it on the floor. Then the dark one a little farther out. "We are just putting things where they were," he said. "So we remember right."
The maid stood near the double doors. She still had her uniform on. Her hands were twisted together in front of her. Dad waved her over. "Show me," he said, soft. "Don't worry about anything else."
She took a small step forward and pointed to the spot in front of the bucket. "I was here," she said. "Bent over. I had been wiping." She bent at the waist to show him, her back rounded, her head down. "Mom— Mrs.— she was here by the table."
Mom let out a breath. "I don't remember exactly where I was standing. It all happened fast."
Dad righted a second chair and then knocked it back over. The sound was loud on the marble. "Try," he said.
I stayed by the wall holding my pink sash because I didn't want it to drag. I watched the white cloth. Dad had put it too close to the table. On the party night it had been kicked farther out when Mom stepped forward. I remembered because I had stared at it while they yelled.
The maid pointed to where I had been. "She was over there, by the end of the table. Watching."
Mom shook her head. "She was behind me. She couldn't have seen anything clearly."
That wasn't right. I looked at Dad. He looked at me and nodded a little, like it was okay to talk.
"No," I said. My voice sounded small in that big room. "I was by the table. I saw."
Mom stared at me. "You are six. You don't remember positions."
Dad held up his hand. "Let her finish."
I walked out onto the cold floor. My socks slipped a little. I stopped at the end of the banquet table and pointed down at my feet. "I was here," I said. Then I looked at the white cloth. My stomach felt tight, but I made myself go over to it. I bent down and dragged it with two fingers about a foot farther from the table, near the overturned chair leg.
"It was here," I said. "Not there."
Nobody talked for a second. The chandelier hummed above us.
Dad looked from the cloth to the maid, then to where I stood. He nodded slowly. "That matches where you said you were bent?" he asked the maid.
She nodded. "Yes. She could see around. If she was there."
Mom pushed off the column. "This is not evidence. You're moving rags around on the floor and asking a child to play detective. I said I don't remember."
"You remember enough to say she was behind you," Dad said. His voice stayed flat. "You remember enough to tell her what she saw."
Mom's mouth opened, then closed. She looked at the bucket, the cloths, the chairs on their sides. She looked at me standing next to the white cloth I had moved. For a minute she just stood there alone by the column while the three of us were grouped in the middle of the marble.
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"I am not doing this walkthrough," she said finally. She picked up her sweater sleeve and pulled it down over her hand. "I have nothing more to say in this room."
Dad didn't stop her when she walked toward the double doors. He just looked down at the floor, at the line from the bucket to the bent-over spot to Mom's spot to mine, and I could tell he was taking a picture of it in his head.
