Absolutely not.”

“I don’t want to be on the floor.

I want to be in the pantry.

I’ll plate, I’ll run trays to the door, I’ll wash.

I’m not going out among them.”

“And what does that get you?”

“It gets me thirty feet from a landing where people go to have conversations they don’t want at the table,” I said.

“Ev, I have been the last person to know things in that family for nine years.