Emma's Table (10 page)

Now
she tells me, Benjamin thought.

She must have seen him checking his watch—which he'd only done a thousand times. “We're here now,” he said, with a cheerful sort of resignation. “We might as well go inside.”

Benjamin rarely held a grudge—or not for long anyway. He was much too busy running toward the next hurdle to carry much baggage from the ones that came before. “And I want to see those pictures you were telling me about,” he said, smiling at Melora when he caught her eye.

He just wanted everyone to be happy—with him, mostly.

Benjamin had half an hour still before he needed to be at Emma's place, just a few short blocks away. There was plenty of time to look at the photography exhibit. He could swing through in a jiffy, then hustle over to Emma's apartment to make his weekly status report, and to help with any last-minute dinner preparations.

Or offer his help, at least. She never actually required it.

Melora walked into the museum, and Benjamin followed, close on her heels. They showed their outdated college IDs
to the ancient man at the entry desk. Students were exempt from paying for admission, and neither of them could afford the twenty-dollar charge.

That's nearly an hour of work, he thought—before taxes.

The old man waved them past, his eyes too blurry with age or boredom to notice that their cards were ten years out of date. Benjamin looked at his picture before he put it away. The boy on the card didn't look like his son exactly—more like a kid brother, he thought, or some kind of nephew. He and Melora rode the escalator, hand in hand—up one flight, and then another—two grifters floating up to the third floor, to a photo gallery that was off to the back.

It was a long room, thirty feet, at least, and scarcely ten feet wide—like an oversized shoe box, or a roomy grave. Not a window in sight, just twenty-five photographs, hanging cheek by jowl: a straight line of three-foot squares running all around the room, and no one there but them.

I'll be out of here in no time, he thought.

The pictures were all black and white—sepia-tinted and simply framed. Even from a distance, Benjamin could see how nostalgic they were. He felt their soft focus before he made it out with his eyes. They were pictures of children—idealized, beautiful children—all towheaded and sun-kissed and slim. They were naked, for the most part, just one child to a frame, and their long, rangy limbs were captured in halfhearted pursuit: a small boy pulling lightly at a slingshot, a little girl dragging listlessly on a candy cigarette. It may have been the same boy, he thought—the naked back of him anyway—skipping stones on a fuzzy lake; an older girl, with bare buds of breasts, sitting pretty on a smooth velvet couch.

The pictures were meant to be provocative. Benjamin
could see that right away. The photographer—the children's mother—had cast them in a vaguely sexual light, her gaze a little hungrier than a mother's ought to be. A couple of the pictures showed the children mildly injured—a beautiful black eye on one, the graceful arc of a long scratch mark down the arm of another.

Benjamin dismissed the “danger” out of hand. Nothing bad would happen to these lovely children, he knew that, nothing worse than posing for these pictures anyway, and discovering, at some later date, what whopping advantage their mother took.

The children looked forthrightly at the camera.

Why wouldn't they? he wondered. What could these beautiful specimens have to hide?

Benjamin looked at Melora. He wasn't sure what to say. He didn't like the pictures at all. There are dangers enough in the world, he thought, without staging artificial ones. He knew, too, that he didn't like the photographer either—a mother subjecting her children to pictures like this; but what surprised him even more was his suspicion that he didn't like the children themselves—so handsome and perfect and confidently entitled to their mother's gaze.

“Aren't they great?” Melora said.

 

Benjamin thought of Gracie.

He remembered the first time he'd seen her, standing at his office door—as wide as a penny that had been left out on the train tracks, flattened to twice its normal size by the force of a locomotive roaring through.

He motioned her into his office.

One of the third-grade teachers at Benjamin's school—Alice Watson—had come to him just after Christmas, a month
or so before. She had a student, she said, who was terribly fat, and who was being taunted by a wolf pack of fifth-grade boys. She'd seen it happen herself, on the playground at recess the day before, and she'd heard it was happening in the lunchroom too. The boys made squealing animal noises at the girl, and pushed her roughly onto the ground.

He could picture their glittering eyes.

Alice put a stop to it, of course, but when she spoke to the little girl about it, only wanting to comfort her really, Gracie denied that anything had happened. Alice told her she'd
seen
it happening, but the girl wouldn't budge.

It didn't, she insisted.

Benjamin met with Gracie the very next day.

He asked Alice to send her down to him at recess. That was the perfect time, he thought—killing two birds with one stone: taking care of the girl and keeping her off the playground.

She was huge, he saw, when she appeared at the door.

“Hi, Gracie,” he said, in a friendly voice—smiling at the girl, but not too much. Benjamin didn't like to come on strong. “My name's Mr. Blackman,” he told her.

“I know that,” she said softly, checking her impulse to smile back at him. Still, he thought he saw one peeking through.

He asked her into his office and ushered her to a small table he'd set up in the corner, just two or three children's chairs scattered all around it.

They each took one.

“Do you know why Miss Watson wanted me to see you?” he asked.

Gracie shook her head, but Benjamin didn't believe her. He could see the budding shame on her face like small pink
blossoms on an apple tree. She knew what he was talking about. She was a wise child, he could see that too.

“She told me that some older boys were mean to you on the playground.”

“They weren't,” Gracie told him—“not to me.” She looked away from him then, casting her eyes down as she lied.

“Really?” he asked, as gently as he could.

“They didn't do anything,” she said, sounding determined.

Benjamin watched her fat hands gripping the sides of her backpack, the purple kitten on her T-shirt pulled wider than any kitten ought to be. He knew it would be no use to push. He didn't want to back her into a corner, after all.

He thought carefully about what he ought to say next.

“That's good,” he told her, finally.

Gracie looked up at him again. She hadn't expected that. He saw the confusion he'd wrought on her face.

“I'm glad they weren't mean to you,” he said.

He watched her confusion turn to relief.

Benjamin was glad for that, at least. He was going to have to take things slowly with her. He stood up from his little chair and walked to the supply closet on the far side of his desk. He found a bin of colored pencils inside—all loose and dull and pointing in every direction. He began humming softly. Then he found a handheld pencil sharpener, and the empty box the colored pencils came in.

He brought them all back to the table with him, certain that Gracie was watching him close. He was careful to keep his eyes off the girl.

He sat down again, smiling lightly as he went about his work. He chose a pencil from the plastic bin—bright apple
green. He sharpened it carefully, twisting the pencil in the plastic sharpener, pulling it out slowly to admire his handiwork—all apple green sharpness where the dull tip had been. He laid the newly sharpened pencil in the empty pencil box, placing it in one of the carved-out gullies where the pencils were meant to lie.

Only forty-nine to go, he thought, looking at all the gullies that remained.

Benjamin inhaled deeply and let the breath out slow.

He picked another pencil—this one tomato red—and sharpened it like the one before. He handed it to Gracie when he was finished, without a word. She looked at the pencil for a moment, and then back up at him.

Benjamin was prepared to wait for as long as it took.

Finally, she laid the red pencil into another of the empty gullies, right next to the apple green.

They sharpened a few more pencils, working in silence all the while.

“I don't really care about those boys,” he said, picking up another pencil, watching intently as the sharpener did its work—like peeling an apple with a shiny silver blade. He marveled at the long trail of skin that dangled down.

He peeked back at the girl, on a slightly higher alert.

“I don't,” he said. It had the benefit of being true. Benjamin really didn't care about the mean boys, not for the moment anyway. “Getting them in trouble is Miss Watson's job.”

Gracie extended her hand to him, waiting for Benjamin to give her the pencil, so she could do her job and put it away.

“I only care about you,” he said.

He didn't let her take the lavender pencil until his eyes met hers. He hoped she believed him.

Benjamin handed Gracie the pencil sharpener then.

“Which one next?” he asked, pointing to the plastic bin in front of them, letting Gracie choose. She peeked in and picked out a bright pink pencil—the color of Pepto-Bismol. He watched her sharpen it carefully, furrowing her brow as she pushed the pencil in, twirling the sharpener all around it. She pulled it out and examined it with pride, then handed it to Benjamin, who laid it safely away.

“I can help you,” he said. “If you want me to.”

Gracie looked at him cautiously. She knew he wasn't talking about the pencils anymore; he could see that. The girl was quiet for longer than he would have expected—thirty seconds, at least.

“Maybe,” she replied.

Benjamin nodded. He knew it was a start.

“We can talk about that later,” he said, sounding cheerful.

He stood up again and walked back to the supply closet. For some reason, he felt determined to give the girl a gift. He knew that he shouldn't, that she might mistake it for a reward—for going along with him just then, agreeing to his help—but he couldn't stop himself. He found a coloring book with a shiny paper cover and elaborate line drawings of horse-drawn sleighs and bundled-up passengers inside, a village of houses with smoke curling off from every cross-hatched chimney. It looked as if it might take an army of Belgian nuns to color those pictures properly.

Benjamin wanted the girl to know he liked her.

“I have a present for you,” he said, extending the coloring book to her.

Gracie took it from his hands. She thanked him shyly and unzipped her backpack, slipping the coloring book inside.

He saw a large box of cookies in her pack.

That's not good, he thought—not for a girl who's already obese.

Gracie looked up at him quickly.

“Did your mother give those to you?” he asked.

“No,” she said softly, looking straight down into her lap again, just as she had when she lied to him the first time.

So there it is, he thought.

Pork Roast and
Cardamom Chutney

CASSY LIKED THESE NIGHTS MUCH BETTER BEFORE
Benjamin started coming around. She glared across the table at him, sitting at her mother's right hand like a perfect little lap dog. Emma sat at the foot of the table, and Cassy's father at its head; she and Benjamin were placed on either side—just like always. Even so, there were sterling silver place-card holders, shaped like tiny acorns—gleaming nuts to mark their spots. The placement never varied here, but her mother set out acorns every time.

And now we've got Benjamin's crunchy girlfriend too, Cassy thought.

She felt aggrieved.

Her mother had seated Melora between Benjamin and her father. Cassy was all alone on the long left side of the table—like a little orphan girl.

“That's the craziest thing I've ever heard!”

It was her father's voice, booming out with good cheer.
He was homed in on Melora, as he had been for most of the evening.

“Something tells me you've heard crazier,” the girl replied, sounding cagey.

Melora was smiling at Cassy's father, egging him on. She'd been explaining her vegan diet—which seemed to take up half the night, everyone worrying whether the girl was getting enough to eat. Her father was playing it willfully obtuse, as if he'd never heard of vegetarianism before.

“Don't you miss a good steak?” he asked, a little louche.

Cassy felt embarrassed for him, until she saw Melora wriggling to the edge of her seat—all wide-eyed and perfectly erect—as if she were aroused by the old man's pervy banter.

“I always found steak a little overrated,” Melora said, looking Bobby straight in the eye. Cassy could hear the wink in her voice. She suspected they were both half drunk. The bottle of red wine in front of her father was drained to its dregs, and the one beside Melora was only half full.

“You just haven't had the right cut yet,” Bobby said, staring at Melora as if he were famished. He hadn't taken his eyes off the girl since the soup bowls were cleared away.

Cassy felt invisible.

Still, she was careful not to stare. She let her gaze wander back to the antique mirror—one of four large panels her mother had installed on the dining room walls—with fancy beveling all around the edges and splotchy patches of black where the ancient silver had worn away. Those mirrors freckled just about everything they reflected with dark age spots. Cassy let the mirrors do her staring for her. She fixed on Melora's reflection in the panel across the table, studying
the girl's profile—her puffy lips and ample cheeks, nearly everything about her just slightly engorged.

She was luscious. Cassy had to give her that.

She'd tried entering into their conversation a little earlier, while Melora was explaining the spiritual aspects of her yoga practice, but Cassy had felt like an intruder. She saw, in a flash, how it would all play out—the unmistakable twinkle in her father's eyes.

She withdrew on the spot, before she lost outright.

Cassy's father hadn't so much as glanced in her direction since.

“And red meat's a terrible waste of energy,” Melora said, striking a more serious tone. “Did you know it takes eight pounds of corn to produce a single pound of beef?” she told him. “That's a huge waste of resources.”

“But I like meat,” Bobby said, grinning like a fool.

Cassy couldn't remember the last time he'd joked with her.

She thought back to those ancient Sunday nights, when it was just the three of them around the dining table—her mother and father and little-girl self—before her father left them, all those years before.

He hadn't had nearly so much to say back then.

Of course, they hadn't had these brilliant conversationalists at the table with them either. Benjamin and Melora were like a couple of tag-team lotharios—claiming her parents from the moment they sat down, regaling them both with endless talk.

“So eat meat then!” Melora told him, as if she were exasperated. She threw her hands up in frustration, even as she smiled. “Be an energy hog, if that's what you want.”

“Careful, young lady,” Bobby replied, mock strict. “You're not too old for me to take you over my knee,” he said.

“Don't you wish?” Melora shot back, and the two of them dissolved in gales of laughter, their boozy red faces growing brighter with every guffaw.

They were loaded.

Cassy watched her father lean into the girl, placing his hand lightly on her upper arm.

“Oh, God,” Melora groaned, as their laughter subsided. “You're a funny one, Bobby,” she said. She seemed to mean it too.

Cassy watched her father leaning closer in.

She wanted this foolishness to stop right now. She was surprised, in fact, that her mother hadn't put an end to it already, but Cassy saw that her mother was thoroughly engaged with Benjamin, at the other end of the table, going over some business from the office, no doubt.

She wondered why she bothered coming to these dinners at all.

Cassy wanted to be patient, but she was breathtakingly tired—operating on about ten minutes' sleep from the night before. She looked down at her wristwatch peeking out from the cuff of her turtleneck sweater, but she couldn't quite make out the time; she brushed her fingers across her green sleeve, lifting it just high enough to see the face.

As if anyone else cares, she thought.

No one had spoken to Cassy in a long, long time.

It was almost nine thirty. She'd been there for three hours already, and they weren't finished yet. Cassy began to dread her Monday. Having to go back into her mother's offices and begin another stifling week, suffering the worst fallout from
her debauched weekend too, sadness falling all around her like thick velvet drapes—the inevitable result, she supposed, of her sleep deprivation, and the copious disco drugs.

Her father seemed to be growing even more animated.

It made her angry, and hurt her feelings too. She turned to her mother at the other end of the table, hoping to commiserate over what a bastard Bobby Sutton was.

“Take some chutney,” she heard her mother say, offering the gravy boat to Benjamin. She sounded strangely cheerful about it, Cassy thought—as if the chutney were some kind of unexpected good news.

“I came up with it today,” she added—all hopped up, like a hostess on speed. Emma held the sterling gravy boat aloft, just waiting for Benjamin to dip the silver ladle in.

“I'd love some,” he said, spooning a hearty serving onto his plate.

Benjamin dipped his index finger into the lumpy red pool, and brought it straight to his mouth. “What
is
that?” he asked, humming ecstatically, as if he'd flown straight to heaven.

“Cardamom,” Emma whispered, her eyes opened wide. “Isn't it wonderful?”

Their ridiculous animation was nearly enough to make Cassy turn back to the pole dance at the other end of the table. She wondered what ecstasies they'd reach with a pinch of allspice thrown in.

“Have you tasted the chutney, Cassy?” Benjamin asked.

She must have been staring.

Cassy shook her head.

“It's sensational!” he said.

“Cassy doesn't like chutney,” her mother told him, a tight little smile etched onto her face. “Do you, dear?”

Cassy couldn't think of
anything
she liked at that moment.

“More for us then,” Benjamin said, beaming at Emma, who smiled right back.

Emma popped up from her seat at the table. “I'll be right back,” she announced. “I want to get the recipe for you, before I forget.”

Cassy watched her mother circling the room.

“Everything all right down here?” Emma asked, looking at her husband through slightly squinted eyes.

“Jim dandy,” he replied, smiling back up at her.

Cassy watched her mother push briskly through the swinging service door. She gazed down at her plate. She hadn't eaten much.

She knew these dinners were a waste of time. Her mother had her precious meal to obsess over: the staging of the courses and all her various sauceboats, decanting more wine than they could possibly drink; her father floating off at the first opportunity—just like always.

His coming back hadn't changed a thing.

Cassy heard the housekeeper pushing through the service door—on the return swing from her mother, it seemed—as if they were running a relay race: one efficient woman passing the baton to another; this second one stacking dishes on the sleeve of her plain white blouse.

 

As a little girl, Cassy had been responsible for clearing the dishes and loading them into the dishwasher, for scrubbing the pots and pans—just like kids all over America, she supposed. But her mother always turned it up a notch: standing guard, like a sentry on the sidelines, studying the girl through
a rifle scope. Her mother had strict ideas about clearing up, from the scraping of the dishes to the filling of the sink. She wanted clockwise spongework on the enameled pans, and special handling of her good knives. She wouldn't stand for deviation.

“Put some muscle into it” was her standard refrain.

Cassy knew it was crazy, but she felt a nostalgic tug for the olden days, for those years when it was just them—their lurching talk and all the tense silences that followed.

They weren't so bad, she thought.

For Cassy, those awkward spells were all suffused with hope, like a backlit doorway—glowing with invitation, holding out the quiet possibility that she might finally reach the place she wanted to be. Cassy wanted to love her parents, not just deep down, beneath it all, but in a daily way too—and she wanted them to love her back. She wanted to talk to them—
really
talk—but something in her simply wouldn't allow it. The girl could never just reach across the table and begin. There always seemed to be some impediment, some mild annoyance or petty jealousy. And when it came right down to it, she couldn't find a single pathway leading back to them that wasn't blocked up with rage—at her mother, who chose her public life over the girl at every turn, and her father too, loving her indifferently, until the day he ran away.

“I couldn't disagree with you more,” Benjamin said heartily.

Cassy snapped her head up, as if he were disagreeing with her, but she saw that he was merely joining in the fun with Melora and Cassy's father. She listened in on their conversation—which might have turned to global warming.

“Something, something, overheated Gulf Stream,” she thought she heard Melora say.

That explains the summer top, Cassy thought, begrudging Melora her loveliness, not to mention the hold she had over Cassy's father. It was nearly enough to make her wish she read the newspaper; she scoured her brain for something brilliant to toss into the conversation. She knew the long odds she was facing, wanting to claim her father back.

She suspected, in fact, that it was hopeless.

Cassy didn't know a thing about the environment, and she couldn't compete on the real battleground either—not for her father anyway. She'd watched him eyeing Melora's plump breasts all night, as if they might pop straight through the gauzy fabric of her cheap peasant blouse.

Cassy fiddled with the soft wrists of her modest turtleneck.

She wished for a plunging neckline too, but she knew she couldn't beat her in that department. “Melora,” she grumbled, beneath her breath—as if that's her real name even.

“I see you're as crazy as your girlfriend,” Bobby called out merrily, to Benjamin this time. They were all three grinning like idiots.

No more awkward pauses, Cassy noted—not with these two chatterboxes around.

“You're missing the point completely,” Benjamin said.

Will you shut the fuck up?

Cassy wanted to scream it down the table—at Benjamin and his beautiful girlfriend—neither of whom, she knew, had a thing in the world to do with the unbridgeable gaps around that table.

 

GRACIE FLOPPED DOWN ONTO THE WINE-RED RUG
that covered up most of her bedroom floor. She counted the number of tiles she could make out still, the alternating squares of black and white that circled the room; they were only visible at the edges though, peeking out from beneath that big burgundy rug.

It used to be a giant checkerboard in here.

The little girl missed the covered-up tiles beneath that rug—even the loose ones that moved when she stepped on them, and the ones she could pick right up off the floor.

Fifteen, she counted, then checked her work.

Gracie made herself a bargain. She'd count straight up to fifteen, then backward down to one again, and if she did it just right—without one tiny mistake—her mother would open the door on the very last count, just as she whispered “one” that second time, all finished with her reverse-counting. Her mother would have the bag of swim things over her shoulder, her winter coat buttoned up tight.

It seemed almost possible to the girl—her choreographed waltz of backward counting and opening doors, the seedling hope that perfect behavior might bring perfect control—especially when she considered all the things that had to go right before anyone actually opened that door. She stared hard at it then, wooden and white, closed up tight.

She knew how hard it was to count backward.

Still, she began. She counted straight up to fifteen, and perfectly too, but that was no surprise. Counting up is the easy part, she thought, taking a breather before the trickier descent, and wondering, in fairness, if she ought to have made the target number a little higher.

“A deal's a deal,” her grandfather always said.

“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen,” she whispered, knowing that the hardest part was just around the corner, when she waved those “teens” good-bye. “Twelve,” she whispered, struggling, then “eleven”—but the little girl was losing heart. She stopped counting then, abandoning the effort altogether, and just when she'd gotten to the easy part too—the ten-nine-eight.