"Eighty years," Marcus said. He held the glass toward the end of the table where their father sat. "Eighty years and the man still won't admit he can't parallel park."
The laugh came easy, the way it always did. Karen snorted into her wine. Diane's husband Paul shook his head like he'd been waiting for it. Even the grandchildren joined in — they didn't know why it was funny, but they knew it was.
Their father lifted his glass without standing. "I can parallel park fine. It's the cars on either side that are the problem."
More laughter. Marcus sat down. Karen leaned over and squeezed his arm, which meant good toast. Diane started clearing salad plates because Diane always started clearing salad plates.
Later, in the kitchen, Marcus found his father studying the photographs on the refrigerator. Some were new — Diane's kids at a swim meet. Some had been there so long the magnets had left small rust circles on the door.
"Good party," his father said.
"Yeah."
"Your mother would've liked the cake. Not the flavor. She'd have liked that Karen made it instead of buying one."
Marcus nodded. His mother had been gone four years. Four years and the fridge still held a photo of her in the garden with a hat she'd hated and worn every Saturday.
"The parking thing," his father said. "You know where that started?"
"You took out Mrs. Kimball's mailbox. I was eleven."
"I took out Mrs. Kimball's mailbox, her azalea bush, and one of those little garden gnomes." His father adjusted a magnet that didn't need adjusting. "Your mother said it was the only time I'd successfully merged with nature."
Marcus laughed, and for a moment it was just the two of them and the hum of the refrigerator and forty years of the same joke in different rooms.
"I actually can't parallel park," his father said. "Never could."
"I know, Dad."
"Your mother taught me to back in at an angle and pretend the spot was too small. I've been doing that since 1974."
From the dining room, Paul called something about coffee. Karen's voice answered. A chair scraped. The house was full of people doing small things that didn't need to be done, which was the whole point of gathering.
His father pulled a photograph free — not the garden one but a smaller print tucked behind a dentist's appointment card. Their mother at the kitchen table in this same house, mid-sentence, one hand blurred with a gesture no one would ever finish. The kind of photo you take by accident and keep on purpose.
"Eighty years," his father said, looking at it. He wasn't giving a toast. He was just saying a number out loud, trying to make it real.
He put the photo back, slightly off from where it had been. Marcus didn't fix it.