The young man in the suit pulled a photograph of a newborn baby out of his envelope and held it up for the whole brunch to see.
Mrs. Ashford, he said, you said somebody has to work the steam table. Let me tell you what the woman at that steam table did for me.
In April, he said, my daughter was born three months early, and I lived in that hospital for weeks, sitting in the cafeteria every night because I could not bear to leave and could not afford to eat. I never asked anyone for anything. And a cook noticed me, and every single evening she brought me a hot plate and set it down and never said a word, never made me feel like charity. She kept me standing when I had nothing left. My daughter came home healthy. This is her. I came today to find the woman who fed her father.
The restaurant had gone silent. Renee had set down the coffee pot.
Mrs. Ashford said somebody has to slop the mashed potatoes, and the woman she mocked fed a starving father every night for weeks so he could stay beside his dying baby.
The young man had learned, through a nurse, where the cook from the VCU cafeteria would be that Mothers Day, and he had come in his best suit to say thank you in front of whoever was there.
I am Renees mother. She poured the coffee and said happy Mothers Day, Mrs. Ashford, and took the joke, because a woman who fed a grieving father for weeks does not need a garden club president in white gloves to tell her what she is worth. Mrs. Ashford looked at the photo of that healthy baby, and she took off her gloves, and she did not have one more word to say.