Isabelle had been planning, at this point, to hold up three fingers at Beverly to signify that she should bring three of these sandwiches. She kicks her father under the table as so often she has seen her mother do when trying to silence him, or to prevent him from picking at Isabelle’s own food. He looks under the table; his legs are outstretched and he pulls them back toward him. “Sorry, dear,” he says absently. She pulls her chair in closer to the table, hard and fast so that it shrieks loud against the floor. Her mother glances her way over the rim of her coffee mug as she takes a sip, and Isabelle tries to catch her eye, to hold it with her own long enough to impart meaning, but her mother has turned to ask Beverly for a refill when she gets the chance, and a glass of water.

“Anything else?” Beverly asks.

Isabelle looks from her mother to her father. Her chest pounds in panic, and she feels suddenly hot.

“I think that ought to do it,” her father says.

“All right,” Beverly says. “I’ll place your order and come back with more coffee.”

Isabelle grits her teeth so tight that her jaw begins to hurt, but there is something pleasing about the pain. Her father lifts yesterday’s paper from the table. He hands a section to her mother and the business section to Isabelle before disappearing behind his own section. Isabelle sits rigid in her seat, breathing quickly through her nose, the business section untouched on the table before her. She doesn’t care today to check how her stocks are doing. She hears the blind man clear his throat behind her and push his chair back from the table. She hears the woman he is with telling him the time, and saying how they’ll have to hurry back if they’re going to catch the game on the radio, and she wonders if the woman, if she were alone, would watch the game on television instead. She hears the tapping of the blind man’s pole against the floor, and she badly wants to turn and watch him as he makes his way to the door, but she will not give herself that pleasure. She does not deserve it.

She stares into the hot chocolate before her, the whipped cream that remains soft now, without definition, the steam just a thread of its former self, and she pushes it away. She does not deserve this, either.

II