[Fiction] Scarpetta

Read the winning entry for our week of May 11 contest, Untranslatable

Scarpetta
by Oliver Mayne

Scarpetta - the act of mopping up the last of the sauce on the plate

The plates are nearly empty. The sun has gone down but your skin is still hot to the touch, embers from the last of the gold over the hill. The chairs are mismatched, the plates porcelain and chipped from years of tradition and use. You’ve spent the evening crossing arms over the table to get to the dips, breads, meats and the wicker from your chair digs into the middle of your back, pinching but familiar.

There’s never any silence. Even if there’s an ebb in conversation, the insects and birds fill the space. The evening started with the formalities, the children directed this way and that, the adults clinking plates and glasses to make space for the food, the choreography of laying the table now a well practiced dance. Everyone to their positions.

You spent the evening smiling at your mum’s rosé blush in her cheeks, cousins one upping each other, your Gran’s wrinkled hands resting on everyone’s shoulders. These details you remember, but it’s the feeling that sticks. You can focus on it, if you try. If you close your eyes it fills you up, it washes over you like one of the sunset beams. It’s not that the evening is full of life, brimming over, it’s that this is all the life you need.

There’s four generations at the table now, but really it’s more than that. You can see Gran’s mother in the burnt terracotta bowl, and her mother in the pesto recipe that now fills it. You can see the family’s ongoing joke about one side liking white wine and the other red in the violet rings on the white tablecloth. And you can see your future, sitting around the same table, the same hands, same food, same smiles.

You feel full. On all of it. You lean into the middle of the table, past the laughing and wine, for the last of the bread. There’s just enough for you to sponge the remaining green from the terracotta. The sky darkens, but you stay at the table. Everyone does.

About Oliver Mayne

Oli has worked in bars all his life and now runs one. He also writes on all things hospitality @olimayne

This piece was written in response to the prompt Untranslatable.