Seating Arrangements (36 page)

Except for the baby. The baby was the snag. Sure, women were getting pregnant all over the place; people got married years after having kids; people skipped marriage altogether; people got married a hundred times and accumulated a thousand stepchildren; people shook their gametes like a martini in a shaker and poured them into a stranger’s womb. (A perennial ad in the
Crimson
had informed Livia that plenty of loving, upstanding, barren couples would pay $30,000 for her eggs, provided she was white, athletic, and met their minimum SAT scores.) People shuffled the order of love, marriage, and baby carriage all the time, but not people who had grown up under the contiguous roofs of Winn Van Meter, Deerfield, and Princeton.

Daphne was passing around a print of her last ultrasound. The latest technology: a close-up of the baby’s face, yellow and waxy, its eyes partly open. Livia did not like the picture, which reminded her of a death mask, nor had she anticipated how Daphne’s burgeoning belly
made her feel a corresponding void in her own. After New Year’s, she had stayed home for the first few days of reading period to have, as they said, the procedure. Biddy drove her a few towns over to where there was a clinic in a plain brown office block. A lone protester stood out front in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the two-lane road zipping with commuter traffic. His dented green hatchback was parked nearby, decorated with an abundance of bumper stickers: “It’s a child, not a choice”; “
LIFE
”; “Abortion is murder.” “Good morning!” he called out in a jolly voice, holding out a pamphlet.

“That asshole,” Livia muttered to her mother.

Biddy put an arm around her shoulders. “I know. We can just ignore him. We won’t change him, he won’t change us.”

“It’s seven a.m. on a Friday,” Livia said, and when they reached the glass doors, she spun around and shouted, “Get a job!” In response, the man held aloft a lighted candle in a jelly jar. Livia gave him the finger.

“Livia!” her mother said, pulling her inside. “Don’t engage!”

“He’s an asshole,” Livia said again, but she wondered what it would be like to stand there every day, praying and praying for the vaporous stream of unborn spirits rising from the brown brick office building.

She gave her name to a speaker box and electronic eye in a heavy door. A buzzer buzzed and a lock clicked open. A guard ran a metal detector over her and Biddy and searched their bags before he let them through another heavy door to the waiting room. They asked her name and took her back to have her blood drawn. When she returned, she sat beside her mother and pretended to read a magazine while she studied the other people in the room. A pair of girls in sweatpants. A middle-aged couple reading the classifieds together. An elderly Asian man and a very young girl whom Livia hoped was his granddaughter. The man stood up, stretched his arms up in the air, and rocked his torso from side to side. He kept standing there, gazing vacantly down at the coffee table with its colorful fans of magazines until the guard told him to sit down. Livia’s name was called.

The room was like an ordinary doctor’s office except for a rolling table against one wall that held an apparatus the size and shape of a
small water cooler covered with a quilted, strawberry-printed sort of tea cozy. Was there some booth at a craft fair that sold cheerful, handmade accessories for abortionists? A nurse told her to take off all her clothes except her bra and her socks and put on a gown patterned with daisies. Another nurse covered her lap with a sheet, pulled up her gown, and squirted cold blue jelly onto Livia’s stomach. Briskly, all business, she ran the curved mouth of an ultrasound through the jelly. “I see it,” she said, snapping the screen shut. Livia had wanted to ask to see it, too—simple curiosity, not a desire to punish herself or a fear that she would see something human in the pulsating wedge of her womb—but she thought asking would be morbid and weird. She also wanted to see the thing under the cloth cover, the machine, but could not ask. She would seem like a tourist. Her interest should be in moving forward, not in the procedure itself. After all, she had chosen to be put completely under. Some chose twilight anesthesia, the woman who scheduled her on the phone had said. Others chose no anesthesia at all, but that was not recommended. Who would do that, Livia wondered, staring up at a mobile of yellow and blue circles revolving near the ceiling tiles in the breeze from the air-conditioning. Who would choose to know so much?

“Just a little pinch now,” said the nurse, sliding a needle into her arm. The doctor and the anesthesiologist, both women, came in.

“You’ll only be out for five minutes or so,” the doctor said, businesslike, sliding on a rolling chair to the end of the table and positioning Livia’s feet on metal stirrups. “Scoot down. All the way to the end. Here we go.” Livia felt the cold pressure of a speculum.

The anesthesiologist snapped a line into her IV and fit a plastic mask over her face. “You might experience a metallic taste,” she said. “And a tingling in your fingers.” The mobile revolved slowly. Livia would go to the gates, but she would not see inside. “Count backward from a hundred.” She tasted aluminum. She thought of the number ninety-nine and ninety-eight and then nothing.

•    •    •

WINN, LEAVING
a gray flap of fish skin behind on his plate, escaped from the flickering, wind-rattled room and made his way to the bathroom. He stood at the urinal and then washed his hands, watching himself in the mirror. He had the impression of large eyes, a vague face. Everything seemed slow and indistinct. There was a pulse of air as the door swung open, and Jack Fenn’s reflection appeared, his shaggy red eyebrows lifting.

“Hello again,” Winn said.

“Winn,” said Fenn. “Fee said you were here. Enjoying your dinner?”

At the table, Winn had barely been able to hold still and eat, electrified as he was by animal agitation. Glass after glass of wine disappeared down his gullet, enough that the smiling, portly man of indeterminate Duff origins seated across from him had joshingly asked if he was the one getting cold feet. Over the salad, he had caught Agatha’s eye and given her his wink and a small nod. He thought she had understood. “Yes,” he said to Fenn. “I think the new chef is all right. You?”

“No complaints.”

Fenn faced a urinal and assumed the stance. Winn dried his hands and listened to the other man pissing. “Say,” he said, “while I’ve got you here, there was something I wanted to mention.”

“Fee told me about the incident with—”

“I was just thinking today,” Winn interrupted, “when I was waiting to get my leg sewn up, about the Pequod and how much I’m looking forward to being a member.” Fenn did not say anything, nor did he break stream. Winn blundered on. “I was also thinking how unfortunate it would be if something from the past, our past, was getting in the way. This is my third summer on the wait list, as you know, and that’s starting to seem like an awfully long time, long enough that I’m starting to wonder if the holdup isn’t something personal, and I’d like to know everything
uncomfortable
has been put behind us. Especially after this business with the caddy.”

“Hmm.” The last of Fenn’s piss drip-dropped onto the porcelain. He zipped and flushed. “I’m not sure what you mean, Winn,” he
said, pumping soap into his hands and scrubbing them under the tap. “I’d hate to think you’d try to leverage this accident with Otis to your advantage. My advice to you—knowing the club the way I do—would be to let that alone. The accident will be noted, but you won’t do yourself any favors by harping on it. As for the rest, I’d hate to think you’re alluding to what happened between our children. Teddy’s had a hard time, and I’d guess, from what he’s told me, that Livia’s had hers, too. I’d hate to think you’d think I’d keep you out of a golf club because … because why, exactly? To punish you? Or to show solidarity with my son? Teddy doesn’t have hard feelings toward you or Livia. He wishes Livia all the best.” He tugged a paper towel from a dispenser and leaned against the counter, drying his hands.

Winn was taken aback. “No, I didn’t mean Livia and Teddy.”

“What then?”

“Maybe for how I treated Fee?” he posited.

“Fee? Winn, let me tell you, she’s over it. We’re both glad you let her go. She wouldn’t have married you anyway.”

“I’m fairly sure she would have, Fenn.”

The other man only smiled tolerantly.

“Well,” Winn said, irritated, “I guess I meant the Ophidian, too.”

“The Ophidian?” Fenn was still smiling.

The door opened and a young man came in. He sidestepped between Winn and Fenn to the urinals.

“Look,” Winn said, glancing askance at the interloper’s back, “I’m sorry you didn’t get in, but that was more than thirty years ago, and I think it’s time to let go of the grudge. You were going to Vietnam anyway. You wouldn’t even have been around to enjoy the club. Yes, some of the guys thought we should take you anyway because of the legacy, and I admit I opposed that, but I hardly think I can be held accountable.”

Fenn, usually so placidly affable, looked astonished. “Hang on, there. You think I’ve made it my personal mission to keep you out of the Pequod because thirty years ago I didn’t get into the Ophidian?”

“You’ve always disliked me because I kept you out of the club.”

The boy at the urinal hurriedly finished up and, eyes lowered, left without washing his hands.

“Winn, I never cared about the club.”

“Of course you did.”

Fenn shook his head, almost mournfully. “I never cared about the club.”

“That’s convenient, since you didn’t get in.”

“I didn’t want to get in.”

“What? But you punched. You wanted to join. Everyone wants to join.”

“No. I wanted to please my father, but when I didn’t get in, it turned out he didn’t give a shit either.”

“He didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t. The Ophidian wanted the Fenns; the Fenns were happy to oblige. The Fenns wore the special ties and sang the songs and sent back swords and snakes because the Fenns love a good time. And I’m sure the Ophidian
is
a good time. Part of me was sorry to miss out, but Winn, the thing you’ve never understood about the Ophidian is that it doesn’t matter.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Fenn.” Winn’s hand with its admonishing finger rose feebly and then fell back to his side. His heart wasn’t in it. “Why,” he began, struggling to put all the pieces together, “why, if you didn’t care about the Ophidian, and Fee didn’t want to marry me, then why aren’t you letting me join the Pequod? I don’t understand it.”

Fenn tossed his balled-up paper towel in the trash and put a paternal hand on Winn’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “you might as well have some peace of mind. I don’t think your chances of joining the Pequod are very good. I think you should let go of the idea.”

“What do you mean?” Winn said.

“It’s just not in the cards.”

“Why not?”

“Tough to say. Chalk it up to bad luck.”

“No,” Winn said. “There’s no luck involved. This isn’t a raffle.”

Fenn hesitated. “Look, if you really want to know, the committee doesn’t think you’d be a good fit, socially. I put in a good word, but this is out of my hands.”

“I don’t understand.” Sluggishly, his mind trailed after Fenn’s words, but nothing added up.

“No one can be universally popular,” Fenn said. “Don’t take it personally. The Pequod’s stuffy anyway. Play on the municipal course. You’ve got a great family, you know, lots to be thankful for.”

“The municipal course?” Winn demanded, incredulous.

Fenn held his eye. He gave Winn’s shoulder a farewell squeeze. “Say hello to Biddy for me. And Livia,” he said, slipping out the door.

ON HIS WAY BACK
to the table, Winn encountered Mopsy standing in the bar and turning in a slow, suspicious circle. “I’m trying to find the manager,” she said. “It’s so cold in this restaurant. I don’t know why you chose it.”

“I didn’t choose it,” Winn said. “Dicky and Maude did.”

“They wouldn’t have. They know I don’t care for the cold.”

“Maybe,” Winn offered, “you’re feeling the chill of approaching death.”

She gave him a long, gloomy squint. “This family is falling into the middle class,” she said.

He left her there and went back to the party, catching a glimpse of the Fenns at their table, everyone except for Fee with that ostentatious red hair, the bunch of them looking so pleased with themselves even though Fee was having to lean over and cut Meg’s food for her. “What’s wrong?” Biddy whispered when he returned to the table, but he just frowned at her. By the time Mopsy reappeared and Greyson jumped up to pull out her chair, the time had come for toasts. Francis was first to his feet, chiming his butter knife against his wineglass while waitresses hovered around like white moths, filling coffee cups, setting down ramekins of crème brûlée, and pouring the dregs from the wine bottles. “I would follow my brother into battle,” said Francis,
“and after what I went through today, I have a better idea of what that would be like.”

Laughter. Christ, thought Winn, enough with the whale. Francis said he would follow Daphne anywhere because she was so darn pretty. Winn poured cream into his coffee, and it bloomed up like a white rose. What did Fenn know anyway? Fee had loved him, would have married him, he was certain. He had even felt a
frisson
of attraction when he kissed her cheek in the bar, a gravitation of the scattered iron filings of an old passion. Her body was the same body he had once possessed, and yet it wasn’t. Time had wrought its changes, but the difference was not only age. She seemed fundamentally different, transformed by his lack of ownership. He had always thought that when sex was over, everything was over between two people. Nothing was taken or left behind, with the obvious biological exceptions. Two partners disengaged and went their separate ways. No psychic filaments hung between them, stretching through the miles and days that took them farther and farther from their last encounter. If such things existed, the world would be meshed over with them; no one would be able to move; everyone would be held fast, like flies caught in a web. He wanted to think he had taken nothing from Fee and vice versa. But those amorous little filings, that magnetic rust that had responded to her presence might actually be decades-old particles of Ophelia Haviland lodged in his inner workings.