My mother sets him a plate

Saturday we pulled a gun safe out of a basement in Magna. Seven hundred pounds empty and the stairs turn twice, so you go down sideways and you don't say nothing to nobody until it's on the dolly. My uncle Sio won't bid a job like that unless I'm on the sheet. Weekends with Sio are half of what I bring in. The airport covers the apartment and that's about all the airport does.

Tanner came out to do the wrap. He's five six and he's a hundred and fifty pounds with his boots on, so his job's the shrink wrap and the little bolts in a Solo cup so they don't roll off into the grass. And he gets to the door first. Every time. I could be coming through with a dryer on my back and he's under my arm holding the screen. My cousin Fetu about died the first time he saw that, and he still does the bit where he opens a door for me and bows.

So anyway. Sunday my mom does dinner and it's not a normal amount of food. She got a turkey marked down at Macey's and cooked it in the roaster out on the patio because the oven had the panipopo in it. Two pans of panipopo. Chop suey with the long rice and she throws the celery in at the end so it still snaps.

Potato salad with the egg in it and more mayo than any doctor would sign off on. Palusami. The taro. Oka in the big Tupperware with the blue lid, which is the one everybody fights over and pretends they're not fighting over.

One year my auntie Loi took the whole Tupperware out to her car and sat in it with the door open. So anyway. There's a Costco cheesecake up on the microwave every single week and I couldn't tell you who buys them.

Tanner didn't know what taro was. First Sunday he ever came he thought it was a potato and put butter on it in front of the whole table. My mom laughed so hard she had to go sit down on the couch. He eats palusami now. Took him about four years and I want that on the record.

She sets the table before anybody shows up. Doesn't ask how many and doesn't call anybody to check. She just puts them out, and there's one more down than there's people who said they were coming.

Three weeks from Saturday my brother Tavita's boy turns eight, so there's the baptism at the stake center on 4100, and Tavita asked me to do the confirmation. Asked me in the parking lot after church, leaning on his van with his tie already off, and he asked it the same way you'd ask somebody to bring ice.

Tavita's the one who brought Tanner home in the first place. They were companions in Sacramento in 2006. There's a picture in my mom's hallway of the two of them on bikes in Rancho Cordova, white shirts, both of them about nineteen and burnt red across the nose. She's had that picture up longer than she's had the couch. So anyway. Tanner moved down here in 2015 for a job with a window company and Tavita said come to dinner, my mom cooks.

For a confirmation the men stand in a circle around the kid and everybody puts a hand on his head and one guy says the words. You get named into that circle. There's no list on a paper. My mom gets on the phone and says so-and-so is standing, and then that's who's standing, and if you've got a problem with it you can go ahead and call her yourself.

Tanner did the same two years my brother did. At my grandpa's dedication my cousin Lani's husband stood in the circle, and he'd been in the family about six months and was still calling my mom ma'am. Tanner was back by the coat rack holding somebody's baby.

Nobody's said whether he's standing at the baptism. I haven't asked Tavita. And my mom, who tells me what my cousin paid for her Tahoe and what the bishop's wife said about it, hasn't put one word on it either way.

So anyway. Coming back from Magna on Bangerter, Sio had the country station on and the AC that only works on four. He goes, you got the twenty-seventh. I said that's the baptism. He said right. Then about a mile and a half of nothing but the radio. Then he goes, tell the little one to bring his own gloves if he's coming out to the Kearns job, them house ones tear. And he turned the radio up.

I'm out the door at four for the belt and in July that ramp'll cook you right through your boots. Guy I work with put a thermometer down on it one time and I don't even want to say the number. So anyway. He freezes four water bottles the night before and puts them in the cooler on the floor of my truck so they're still slush at ten. Nine years of that too. I've never once asked him to do it.

His mail comes to my place. He's got two drawers and the whole left side of the closet, and he owns about six shirts, so I don't know what he's doing with all that room. His car's on my insurance because it came out cheaper that way and we did the math at my kitchen table with the calculator on his phone. Nine years in November.

My auntie Loi got about half a sentence out at my grandpa's funeral. She said, you two have been— and then somebody put a plate in her hand and asked her where the folding chairs went, and she went and dealt with the chairs.

In three weeks there's the program, and the food, and where the long tables go in the cultural hall, and who's got the key so somebody can open it up early. No, the key's my cousin Junior. It's always Junior. So anyway. My mom's already got the envelope going, the back of a Rocky Mountain Power envelope with everybody's name on it and what they're bringing, in that pencil she keeps by the phone.

Tanner's name is on the envelope. He's got the rolls and the drinks. Been on that envelope for every funeral and every baptism since 2016, and both weddings, and that whole thing when my auntie Loi turned sixty, and he goes to the Smith's on 3500 and buys the rolls.

He fell asleep on the way back from Magna with his head on the window, and I got off at 5600 and took the long way through Hunter so he'd get the extra ten minutes, and then I had to wake him up anyway to get the gate.

Sunday night my mom walked me out. She had two bags. She gave me the light one and then took the heavy one in both hands. Turkey and chop suey and a whole pan of panipopo, and then a small container off to the side with blue tape on the lid. She said, the blue tape one don't leave it in the truck, it'll turn.

The program's a different piece of paper. Tavita's wife does it on the computer and they run the copies off at the church on the Friday. I haven't seen the program.