Emma's Table (17 page)

Her mother stood up right away, but the little girl kept her head down low.

It was nearly ten thirty. They'd been waiting at the Free Clinic for a long time that morning.

“Let's go, sweetie,” her mother said, reaching her hand down to her.

Gracie had watched her grow impatient long before: crossing her legs, then uncrossing them fast, flipping quickly through the big stack of magazines. Now that they'd been called at last, her mother was ready to get going.

Gracie hadn't minded the wait at all.

There was a big chest in the corner, filled up with toys. She'd studied them leisurely before making her careful choice, carrying Mr. Potato Head back to where they sat.

She liked the way people kept to themselves here.

Much nicer than at school, she thought, where people always seemed to be butting in. She could have gone on waiting, in fact, and she wasn't thinking of school then, or not
only
of school anyway—of waiting long enough to miss an entire day, or maybe gym class and recess, at least.

She wasn't trying to avoid a shot either.

No, Gracie would simply have liked to go on waiting. She liked being left alone.

“Sweetie,” her mother said, a little louder that second time, wriggling her fingers down at her, like squirmy bait at the end of a fishing pole. She was trying to hurry her along.

Gracie looked up at the woman who had called their name. She was standing in the doorway that led back to the treatment rooms, a serious face to match her hard voice, and a clipboard held tightly in her hands.

She's old, Gracie thought, looking the woman up and down.

She was dressed all in white—like a lady snowman—with curly white hair and a loose white smock, a pair of pants that looked like pajama bottoms. I'll bet her shoes are white too, Gracie thought—resigning herself to her unhappy fate. She knew it didn't matter that the woman's shoes were blocked from view just then; she'd have her chance to see them soon enough.

“We're over here,” her mother called, standing tall, all ready to go. Then she raised her hand like a teacher's pet, so quick to volunteer.

Gracie began gathering her things from the floor as slowly as she thought she could get away with, collecting the plastic potato head and all its colorful features. She placed them neatly in the cardboard box.

“I'm ready,” she said finally, rising to her feet.

Gracie kept studying the woman with the clipboard in her hands. The more she looked, the less she worried. This might not be so bad, she decided, her nervousness melting like a strawful of Pixie Dust on her outstretched tongue.

“Let's go, sweetie,” her mother said, sounding tense. She began walking toward the door, pulling Gracie behind her.

The woman in white was fat.

Sometimes that's all it took, Gracie found.

She was confident in her judgment too. Gracie was a real expert at reading people. She'd had to be—with grown-ups especially. Their looks told her a hundred times more than their words ever did. Gracie kept a book of them at home, in fact—a book of looks: a black-and-white notebook with white spills running down the front, and a circle at the center with two lines printed through. Gracie had written her name in between them, painstakingly careful not to let a single letter touch. Inside, there was a pair of long columns—page after page of two long columns: one of
X
's, another of
O
's. They'd begun as a log of every compliment and criticism the girl received—an
X
for every admirer of her pink-and-white sneakers, or the cartoon book bag she carried down the hall; an
O
for every mean boy who called her “fatty” on the playground.

The
O
's outweighed the
X
's by a large margin.

But that didn't dissuade her from her work.

Gracie was scrupulous at keeping track, and her record-keeping had grown subtler over time. She still logged all the overt comments, of course, but she'd begun tackling trickier exchanges too; her notebook had become a catalog of nearly inscrutable looks: an
X
, she decided, for the man on the subway, who'd pointed his finger at her and whispered to the lady beside him—all bad signs, she knew, but overridden somehow by his kindly smile; an
O
for the nasty woman with them in the waiting room, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf. Gracie wasn't sure those heaving breaths were meant for her, but she was sure enough.

The woman in white hadn't given herself away.

Not yet anyway, Gracie thought, studying that chubby, neutral face—neither an
X
nor an
O
at the moment.

The woman led them back to a room with a black leather bed at the center. She asked Gracie to take off her clothes—her sweater and her T-shirt, her beige corduroy pants. “You can leave your panties on,” the woman said, just to be clear.

She opened the girl's file and began to read it.

Gracie hated the sight of naked flesh—her own especially.

She looked down at her feet as she began to undress, and she hoped her mother and the woman in white were doing the same. She folded each article of clothing the moment she removed it, then she laid it neatly on the chair before she took the next piece off.

“So you know Benjamin Blackman?” the woman said, closing the file and looking at the two of them.

“Yes,” her mother responded. She didn't sound particularly happy about it though. “He was the one who suggested we come to see you.”

“Mr. Blackman?” Gracie asked.

She was surprised to hear his name spoken here, so far away from school. Her mother hadn't mentioned anything about him. Gracie felt even more embarrassed of her nakedness then, as if Mr. Blackman might somehow see her.

The nurse nodded back at her. “Yes,” she said, “Mr. Blackman.”

“He's my friend at school,” Gracie said.

Her mother looked surprised at that.

Gracie knew her mother didn't like Mr. Blackman at all. She'd known that for a long time already, but she suspected that her mother would change her mind once she got to know him better.

“He's very nice,” Gracie said, to underscore the point. “We
make puzzles together sometimes,” she reported. “And once he let me wear his hat.”

Her mother didn't look impressed.

Gracie didn't say a word more; she wasn't usually so chatty.

“I think he's nice too,” the woman added, nodding her head in agreement.

Gracie didn't like to see her mother in the minority, but it was clear that she'd been outvoted where Mr. Blackman was concerned.

“Gracie?” the woman said, calling her back to business then. “Can you skip around the room for me, please?”

Of course I can, she thought.

She kept quiet though; she didn't like to brag. It was a good start, she suspected, that the woman in white liked Mr. Blackman, but that didn't guarantee she'd be nice to her.

Gracie began skipping around the room, in just her underpants. She tried to do it as nicely as she could—lifting her feet high, the way they taught her to at school. She tried keeping the woman in sight, but she lost her for half of every skipping turn.

“That's fine,” the woman said, once she'd made two complete laps around the room.

Gracie knew it wasn't a compliment, just a sign that she could stop her skipping. She was breathing hard.

“Can you come over here, please?” the woman asked.

She placed a chilly metal disc onto Gracie's naked chest. The disc connected to a black cord that snaked up around the woman's neck. She placed the earpieces into her ears.

“Do you know what I listen to with this?” she asked.

“My heart,” Gracie replied. She looked down at the floor when she spoke, then back up at the woman.

“That's right,” the woman told her, nearly smiling then.

Gracie studied the woman's chubby cheeks, the light-colored fuzz that sprouted all around them. She watched her squinting eyes. They seemed to look right past her as she listened to her heart. Gracie didn't mind at all.

“That's fine,” the woman said, pulling the pieces from her ears and looping them around her neck again.

Gracie looked at her mother, hovering behind the woman in white. She watched her open the file folder that the woman was reading earlier. She looked a little sneaky about it.

“Can you step up on the scale for me?” the woman asked.

Gracie knew to be ashamed right away.

She wished she could go back to her skipping, but she knew she didn't have any choice in the matter. She walked to the scale and stepped right up, her white socks looking extra bright against the black metal tray she stood on. She watched her feet spread out wide.

Gracie liked shoes; they kept her feet in place.

The woman slid a chunky black weight across a silver bar, then inched a smaller one forward—tap, tap, tap—until she'd settled them both into little notches. The weights were staring Gracie in the eye. She wished this part would be over.

“That's fine,” the woman said.

Gracie stepped off the scale quickly.

Her mother was turning pages in the folder still, scowling as she went.

At least she didn't see how much I weigh, Gracie thought. She felt grateful for that.

The woman turned around and caught her mother with the file. “That's not for you,” she said angrily, snatching the folder from the table. She closed it roughly and huffed out a breath.

Her mother was in trouble.

“That's crazy!” her mother shouted back.

She was just as angry as the woman in white. “Where does Blackman get off,” she said, “making accusations like that?”

My
Mr. Blackman? Gracie wondered. She didn't make a peep.

“Why don't we discuss this outside?” the woman said calmly.

Gracie wasn't sure what to make of this development. She knew it couldn't be good—nothing so hidden ever was. She knew better than to ask.

“Why would he say such a thing?” her mother asked. She was very upset.

“You can get dressed now, Gracie,” the woman said, giving her shoulder a gentle nudge.

It looked like she was getting away without a shot.

She pulled her T-shirt and sweater back on as fast as she could. She felt almost safe again with her arms covered up. She pulled her pants on too, just in case.

“We came here for
help
,” her mother said, only slightly less agitated than before. “Not for abuse.”

Gracie couldn't understand what had gone so wrong.

It wasn't her weight, at least; her mother hadn't seemed to notice that. Did she
want
her to have a shot? Gracie wondered.

She knew to keep quiet. It was the only way she learned anything: by disappearing and listening in.

“Why don't you come with me?” the woman said to her mother. “We can go to my office.”

Her mother nodded.

“Will you wait for us here?” the woman asked, smiling at Gracie at last.

I knew it! she thought.

Gracie smiled back at the woman and nodded her head. She had nothing to fear from the woman in white.

Her mother left the room without another word.

I hope she doesn't need a shot, Gracie thought—though she knew by then that a shot couldn't sour her mother's mood much more than it already was.

 

BY ONE O'CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON, AND TWO
small puddles of urine later, Cassy was settled into a conference room at her mother's offices. Russet was sitting in her lap, his furry chin resting on the arm of her swivel chair. Cassy combed her fingers through the soft crown at the top of his head.

She'd be happy to sit like this for a very long time.

There was a knock at the door, and the puppy sat up tall.

The two of them—dog and girl alike—stared, wide-eyed, at the homely stranger who was ushered in, summoned there from God-knows-where by her mother's trusty lieutenant, Ruth—a middle-aged woman of deep complaint, with a busy career and not much else to occupy her time.

“This is Pete Peters,” Ruth said by way of introduction, wrinkling her nose at the silly name. “He's
supposed
to be the best dog trainer in town.” It was no compliment though, not the way Ruth said it, with all her skepticism seeping out.

And right in front of him too, Cassy thought.

Ruth closed the door behind her as she left.

To Pete's credit, he acted as if he hadn't heard a thing. He let the rudeness roll right off. It may have been what made him the best.
That
, she thought, and his poor, poor face—which only a dog could love. It was deeply pitted with acne scars, and topped off with a massive nose. His skin seemed to be stretched a little tighter than it ought to be.

Maybe it's the scarring? Cassy wondered.

It looked painful to her, in any event.

Pete shook her hand firmly and nodded pleasantly.

He was about her age, she decided—somewhere between thirty-two and thirty-six. Cassy liked to keep track.

“So who do we have here?” Pete asked, smiling brightly and crouching down low, homing in on the puppy in Cassy's lap.

She offered the dog up gingerly, as if he were made of spun sugar—her thumbs and forefingers wrapped lightly around his middle, those little legs dangling down. Cassy was afraid of hurting him.

“Let me show you how to pick him up,” Pete said, sounding genial.

He held the dog's stomach firmly in one hand, and let its bottom rest in the palm of the other. “He's more comfortable like this,” Pete said, matter-of-fact, and smiling still.

Cassy had to admit, the dog looked happier with him. Maybe this wasn't going to work out after all?

“So what's his name?” Pete asked, handing the dog back to her.

Cassy was surprised.