we knew, by the time we were old enough to be seated at the long table, that our aunt did not speak at dinner. she ate, she nodded, she lifted her glass when our father lifted his; she handled the salt with both hands. but she did not speak. not to ask for the bread. not to answer a question. not even, the year a cousin tried it, to be teased.
we were told, by our mother, that this had been so since before we were born. we were not told the reason. we suspected, when we were thirteen, that there had been a quarrel; at fifteen, that there had been a man; at twenty, that there had not been a reason at all, only the slow accumulation of a quietness she had grown into the way a coat grows into the back of a chair.
after the meal she was, with us, the kindest person in the house. she would laugh, in the kitchen, with her hand at her mouth. she would speak to the cat at length. she would walk us, one at a time, to the gate. it was only the long table, and the candles, and the seven of us, that she could not, or would not, address.