The Dining Room

Lyrics

Down from the heart of the house.
The second floor landing breathes out the scent of lavender and mothballs.
Past the silent judgment of the Portrait Hall.
Past the locked door of the Wife's Sitting Room, where the air is still thin with sighs.
The main stair groans on the seventh step. Always the seventh.
First floor. The air thickens, cools. Smells of brass polish and old paper from the Library.
I won't look into the Drawing Room today. All that velvet suffocates.
A quick step past the Butler's Pantry, that narrow space of held breath between the clatter and the calm.
And here. The double doors. Heavy oak.
This is the room they called the stage.
The performance space.
Where laughter was rehearsed and fortunes were displayed like polished silver.
The Axminster carpet, thick enough to swallow a dropped word.
The gasolier, a dozen glass moons waiting for a flame that never comes.
And the dumbwaiter, hidden behind its damask screen like a secret accomplice.
We knew its rattle and hum better than any dinner bell.
But the real story is here. In the table.
This black sea of mahogany, seven leaves long.
It never reflects the ceiling. It never shows you your own face.
It reflects the kitchen.
It reflects steam rising from a pot, a hundred feet away.
It reflects the hands of the cook, the one they only called Cook, plunging a goose into the roasting pan.
It reflects the gleam of sweat on the dishwasher's brow, the man from the valley they never named.
I see the dinner of 1907. The fog of goose fat on the window panes.
I see the cold meal of 1972, eaten off trays while a box on the sideboard flickered with news of a war.
I see the room now, empty, holding the shape of every chair that was ever pulled out.
And on the curved side of a single silver spoon, left behind, the whole room appears again, tiny and perfect, with a table set for ghosts I can't quite see.
That smell. Beeswax and lemon oil.
It has a sound. It's the precise F-sharp of the dumbwaiter cable pulling a heavy load from the basement kitchen. A sound of pure tension.
And I feel the phantom weight in my hand of the iron crank.
The one they say was never installed here.
To lower the center of the world through the floor, into the cool, silent earth below. I remember turning it. The difference closed a long time ago.
The real story is in the table.
This dark mirror of mahogany.
It never reflects the ceiling. It never shows your own face.
It reflects the kitchen.
It reflects the clatter of plates in the scullery.
It reflects the hands of the cook, stirring a sauce nobody at the table could name.
It reflects the gleam of soap on the dishwasher's arms, the man from the valley.
The performance is over. The audience is gone.
The dust settles on the polish.
But the reflection is still there, deep in the wood.
Held in the grain.
A memory the room can't forget.