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been admitted, the school had phoned and invited him on a class retreat. Arch had had a fantastic time. He had made a slew of new friends who now invited him to skate, play guitar, or just hang out, something he had never, ever been asked to do by any student at Elk Park Prep.
And then my son had started required community work in a Catholic Workers’ soup kitchen. Chopping fifteen pounds of onions on Saturday mornings to go into stew he then helped serve to two-hundred-plus homeless people — this had changed his materialism, but quick. Now he put away half his allowance for the Catholic Workers and begged me for paid work so he could help more people eat.
Well, I was all for helping people eat. I mean, just look at this lunch! It might be costing me a mint, but it was happening. Right from the start. Liz and Julian had commandeered Arch into an assembly line that would have left Henry Ford in the dust. They’d zipped around the kitchen prep table, placing slabs of creamy Port Salut cheese beside delicate rosettes of spicy imported salami. Because I was hurting, they’d given me the meager job of rolling the delicately smoked Westphalian ham into thing cylinders. They’d placed these next to slices of a heavenly homemade goat cheese Liz had nabbed at the farmers’ market. We’d all pitched in to pile Liz’s salad — crisp, tender field greens mixed with crunchy slices of hearts of palm and coated with her scrumptious vinaigrette — into pyramids in the middle of each assiette just as the first cars wheeled into the gravel driveway. Right before the lunch had commenced, when we’d been finishing the last of the plates, Dr. Ted Vikarios had burst into the kitchen. Apparently, Arch wasn’t the only one with matters religious on his mind.
“Jesus God Almighty!” Ted Vikarios yelled.
The four of us had jumped. After recovering, I’d reminded him of who I was. Goldy, from the old days, remember? Limping along, I’d led him back out to the dining room and asked him what I could do to help him. When he’d mumbled microphone and podium, I’d carefully shown him where he’d be giving his speech after the meal. Seeming preoccupied, he’d wandered off.
After that inauspicious kickoff, however, the lunch itself had been stupendous. The guests had devoured every morsel of food, right down to the baguettes, the butter — even the gherkins. Moving through the tables, I’d noticed a few members of the crowd making sandwiches from leftovers and tucking them into purses and sacks — a sure sign of success, if not good manners.
And now the guests were devouring the swoon-inducing slices of the flourless chocolate cake I’d made for Marla. We’d topped them with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, quickly purchased by Julian as our homemade batch had melted when the compressors were shut off. Julian had handed the portable mike — at least I’d set that up the previous day — to Albert’s widow, Holly. Short, gray-haired, as vibrant and energetic   at fifty-five as she had been at forty, she’d given an enthusiastic thanks to everyone who’d come. She’d added that there would be one tribute only, from Albert’s old friend Ted Vikarios.
As Ted now proclaimed into the microphone, his wife, Ginger Vikarios, smiled nervously at the crowd. Like her husband, Ginger, slender and overly made up, had taken unsuccessful steps to look as if she had not aged. She’d dyed her hair orange, the lipstick on her downturned mouth was orange, and she had bright spots of orange blush on each cheek. She looked fragile and unhappy, like a sad clown. I certainly hoped Ginger had not heard the insensitive comments on the way her curly orange hair matched her unfashionable orange taffeta dress. Whatever had happened to people wearing black to funerals? they wanted o know. I hadn’t the foggiest.
John Richard Korman’s late arrival with his blond, nubile new girlfriend, Sandee Blue, had caused a ripple in the crowd. Sandee, her platinum