Free The Birthday Lunch by Joan Clark

notes.
    “The new doorbell. I got rid of the damn buzzer. It drove your mother crazy.”
    Claudia goes down the front stairs and opens the door. A guy she vaguely remembers kissing at a high school dancestands on the doormat. For the life of her she cannot remember his name, but he remembers hers. “Sorry for your loss, Claudia,” he says and hands her a cellophane wrapped vase of flowers. Claudia thanks him and carries the flowers upstairs to the kitchen. Hal asks who they are for. “For us, Dad,” she says.
    Hal nods. Of course. When there is a death in the family, people send flowers.
    Claudia unwraps the cellophane and hands her father the card but he waves it back. “You read it.”
    “My deepest sympathy to you and your family. Clive,” Claudia reads. “Who is Clive?”
    “Clive Alyward. He owns the funeral parlour four doors away from Better Old Than New.”
    “The undertaker sent flowers?”
    “Clive and I are friends,” Hal says. “We often sit together at Kiwanis luncheons.”
    Luncheons
, a word Claudia remembers hearing Grandmother Grace use. She asks her father where he wants her to put the flowers.
    Hal waves his cigarette. “Anywhere,” he says, and Claudia carries the vase of carnations, baby’s breath and ferns into the living room and places it on her grandmother’s rosewood desk.
    The bell chimes and this time when Claudia opens the front door, there is Sophie Power, the woman who lives in the apartment below her parents’, a tall, long-jawed woman somewhere in her seventies, a woman her mother liked, a bashful woman who keeps her head down as she speaks.
    “I made supper for you,” she says, handing Claudia the basket. “Mind the chicken. It hasn’t been long out of the oven.”
    “Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Power.”
    Sophie mumbles a you-are-welcome and ducking her head, she bolts into her apartment and closes the door. There. She did it. Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Yes, it was hard but she got through it without blubbering about Lily being the nicest person in town, how much she will miss their chats, how she can’t believe she won’t see her again, how sorry she is for the family. Sophie remembers that after the final stroke took Rolf, people kept repeating how sorry they were for her loss until she thought she would scream to the heavens for them to stop. “Say something else, talk about the weather, the crops, the cows, anything,” Sophie wanted to scream, “but don’t say I am sorry for your loss.”
    Since then she has come to understand that the words were spoken out of kindness by neighbours who couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say; the plain truth is that when a loved one dies, there isn’t much you can say, especially to a family struck down by sudden death. Better to be doing rather than saying. Speak less, do more is Sophie’s motto, which is why she got busy in the kitchen this morning. At some time or other, the McNabs will get around to eating and it will be easier for them if a home-cooked meal is waiting. Every day this week she will put the food basket on the doormat, ring the bell and be back inside her own apartment before someone answers the door.
    Claudia turns on the television. She knows her father rarely watches daytime television but he might be interested in the late-morning show. Hal isn’t interested but he agrees to watchit until Matt arrives. Claudia slips away and telephones Laverne. “Good morning, Auntie,” she says. “Would you like to join us upstairs?”
    “I don’t think so,” Laverne says.
    “But you’re down there by yourself.”
    “I prefer being by myself.”
    Claudia perseveres and tells Laverne that Matt will be arriving soon. If anything can persuade her aunt to come upstairs, it will be the news that Matt will be arriving soon. Matt has always been her favourite. It was Matt who accepted Laverne’s offer of a trip to France as a high school graduation present. Three years later when Laverne made