Seating Arrangements (7 page)

After he’d parked in front of the house, Winn said, “Tell your mother I’ll be in in a minute.” Livia took two of the grocery bags and went inside, and Winn walked along the driveway past the garage and down a path shaded by trees and padded with a russet layer of pine needles. Unseen birds burst into a chorus of jabbering laughter as he passed. He paused beside his garden, peering through the deer fence in consternation. Dominique had chosen the right word: sad. The plants were all smaller than they should have been and drooped on rubbery stems: dwarfish melons, bloodless tomatoes, cucumbers that had not come up at all. There were some acceptable-looking green beans, but he saw no sign of the chervil or hyssop he had requested. Mint, which would grow in the crater left by a nuclear blast, was the only thing flourishing. The idea occurred to him that the caretakers could be sabotaging his little agricultural oasis, mistreating the soil or planting in adverse weather conditions. Poking his fingers through the fence, he rubbed a few leaves of mint together and walked away, farther into the trees. He held his fingers to his nose and sniffed the weed’s sharp, sweet smell.

He walked until he could no longer see the house, and then he looped back, coming to the edge of a dense clump of trees and brush and spotting, through the branches, Agatha sunning herself on the grass near the house. She was lying on a blue and white towel, and he recognized her polka-dotted bikini as the one from his study. She must have gone in there to retrieve it. Perhaps she had left him something else, a hair clip or a scarf. The afternoon sun was dropping lower in the sky, and a serrated front of tree shade advanced across the grass toward her bare toes. Daphne came out the French doors from the kitchen and crossed the deck and then the lawn, carrying a towel. She wore a black bikini, her huge, naked belly protruding
brazenly between the two halves. Piper followed, turning to shut the doors behind her and giving Winn a view of wishbone thighs and a derriere so nonexistent that the blue fabric of her bathing suit hung in flaccid wrinkles. As Daphne shook out her towel, Agatha reached up and patted the side of her bare leg in a friendly way. Piper settled crossed-legged on the grass, her face obscured by massive sunglasses like ski goggles. Daphne eased herself down so her feet were facing Winn and the hummock of her pregnancy hid the top half of her body. Her shadow, humped like a camel, drew a smooth, dark curve over Agatha’s flat stomach and golden hipbones.

Watching them, he became aware of the elasticity of his lungs, the hard ridges of tree roots pressing into his feet, the muscular, rippling action of swallowing. His heart raced with stealth and vitality. That was another man’s house, another man’s daughter and her friends. He was a stranger, a prowler, a hunter, a wood dweller excluded from their world. The girls’ obliviousness transformed them, although he couldn’t pinpoint how. He couldn’t decide if they seemed more innocent when left to themselves, or more unabashedly sensual. Or were they unreal, like mermaids caught basking on a rock? They were only sitting—but there was
something
about them. Daphne, distorted by pregnancy, could not be reconciled with the little girl he remembered. Piper sat erect and unmoving, a sphinx. Agatha was lying on her back with her knees bent, and she moved her legs in a slow rhythm, bumping her thighs together and then letting them fall apart. A narrow strip of polka-dotted material concealed her crotch, and it tightened and slackened as she moved her legs, lifting slightly.

Close in his ear, a voice said, “Boo!”

Three · Seating Arrangements

B
iddy stood with her hands on the edge of the kitchen table, leaning over a slew of guest lists, place cards, and seating charts. She felt like a general planning an offensive. Beside her, Dominique, faithful aide-de-camp, mirrored her posture.

“What if,” Dominique said, switching two cards, “we move these like this. Situation neutralized.”

“No,” said Biddy, “because then I’ve got exes sitting at the same table. Here.” She touched the paper.

“They wouldn’t be okay?”

“It’s not ideal.”

Dominique tapped her lips with one long finger and considered. Biddy, seized by affection, patted her on the back. She missed Dominique, especially during the holidays, when she had been a household fixture all through high school and college, Cairo being so far away. Dominique had been the sort of worldly kid who sought out the company of adults and who, at fourteen, had considered herself all grown up. When she stayed with the Van Meters, she behaved more like Daphne’s indulgent aunt than her friend and spent most of her time helping Winn in the kitchen and running errands with Biddy while Livia, little duckling, followed wherever she went and Daphne lay indolently in front of the television. Agatha had spent a few holidays with them, too, but her presence was less comfortable. Biddy was always finding cigarette butts in the flower beds and catching Winn staring and waking up to the sound of Agatha laughing and
drunkenly thumping the walls while the others shushed her and tried to convey her to bed. Once Biddy had gotten up and flipped on the light at the top of the stairs, surprising them—Daphne, Dominique, Livia, and Agatha—like a family of possums in the sudden brightness. Agatha was lying on her side and inexplicably clinging to the balusters while Dominique worked to pry her fingers loose and Livia and Daphne grasped her ankles to keep her from kicking.

“What if,” Dominique said, pointing at the seating chart, “we move him to the leftovers table?”

“Yes,” said Biddy. “Perfect. But I feel bad calling them leftovers.”

Dominique pushed the place card across the table with the authority of a croupier. “
Le mélange
, then.” She stood back and looked at Biddy, her long eyebrows kinked and her long, sad mouth pulled quizzically to one side. “How are you? I mean—really.”

Biddy was so surprised by the question that her eyes began to water. “I’m fine,” she said, fussing with the cards to indicate the unimportance of her tears. “I’m great. I’m so happy for Daphne—I want everything to go well.”

“Of course you do,” said Dominique. “This is an insane amount of work. You’re handling it like a champ.”

Biddy was forced to take a tissue from the box on the counter. She never wore mascara, but she dabbed carefully nonetheless, coming up under her lashes the way she remembered her mother doing. To be seen, really looked at, the way Dominique had fixed on her, was unsettling. Her family barely noticed her, but she couldn’t blame them: she had changed so little over the years that people were never reminded to reconsider her. “It
is
a lot of work,” she said. “It really is.” Making the confession gave her a small thrill, and she went on, feeling her way. “And sometimes it feels like a natural conclusion to raising a daughter, that you run yourself ragged to make this one day as perfect as possible, even though, for you, the day is bittersweet because she’s leaving—I mean, she’s been living with Greyson, but somehow this is different, more official. I don’t know how those overbearing beauty pageant mothers do it, you know, keeping track of someone else’s whole physical being: hair, clothes, makeup, all that.”

“Yeah, right?” Dominique concurred. “I think—well, I don’t know, but it seems to me the real backbreaker is being in charge of manifesting someone else’s idea of perfection. Not necessarily Daphne’s, just this
idea
floating around out there about what a wedding should be.”

Biddy squared a place card with the edge of the table. “Manifesting someone else’s idea of perfection. Hmm. That’s well put.” She wondered if the younger woman was talking about more than just the wedding. Certainly Biddy was no stranger to laboring under another person’s vision for life. Abruptly, her enjoyment of her own honesty peaked and fell away. She had wilted quickly under the spotlight. “I don’t know,” she said. “All I mean is that I don’t want anyone to be disappointed.”

“Well, sure,” Dominique said, switching to an offhand tone, “but there’s only so much you can control. Perfection is overrated, anyway. I’m all about meeting basic needs and seeing what’s left over from there.”

Laughing in embarrassment, Biddy balled up the tissue and hurried to throw it away under the sink. “But you! I want to hear about
you
,” she said. “You have the most interesting life. Tell me everything about Belgium.”

“Oh, it’s all right. I don’t think it’s my forever home. I just kind of live there. In a way, it could be anywhere. You should see my apartment—it’s completely barren. Every time I think about buying something, like nice sheets or something to hang on the wall or even fancy hand soap, I think, well, no, because I won’t be here for long, and it’ll be one more thing to get rid of.” She gave Biddy another searching look. “Are you sure you don’t want to take a break? You could run away for an hour somewhere. Have some time to yourself. I’d cover for you.”

“No, no,” Biddy said, shaking off the last of her tears. “I’m really fine. It’s not the
amount
of stuff I have to do, really, it’s—you’re so sweet to ask. I just—where
is
your forever home, do you think?”

Dominique’s eyebrows climbed a notch higher, but she said, “I’m not sure it exists. Not Egypt, not Belgium. Not France—that’s where my parents live now. They moved a couple of years ago. I don’t know
if Daphne told you. I like New York but it exhausts me. Not Deerfield. Not Michigan.”

“That still leaves a lot of places,” Biddy said. “Maybe you’re supposed to live in the Bahamas.”

“I hope so. In a hammock.” They giggled.

“How will you find it?” Biddy asked. “Your home?” She was curious; she had never chosen where to live.

“I think probably I’ll look for a job first. But—I don’t know. In theory I could work most places. You’d think it would be fun, being able to pick more or less anywhere in the world, but when I think about the freedom I usually just end up feeling lonely. There’s nothing pulling me to any particular spot except vague preferences. And sometimes I wonder what it says about me that I can drift like this.” She gave a quick, wry roll of her eyes. “Total first-world problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like, oh, woe is me, I’m so exhausted and alienated by my globe-trotting life of preparing expensive food.”

“Don’t you have a boyfriend in Belgium? What about him?”

“I don’t think he’s permanent.” Dominique made a slow, sheepish shrug, her shoulders lingering around her ears for several seconds until she abruptly let them fall. “It’ll all sort itself out. Where do you think I should live? Where would you go?”

Biddy was caught off guard not so much by the question as by her inability to process it. She couldn’t think of a single place she might live where she had not already lived. She thought: Connecticut. Waskeke. Maine. Connecticut. Those weren’t answers for Dominique. They were shameful in their timidity, their lack of adventure. But she could not imagine living on a tropical island or in the Alps or in Rome or Sydney or Rio. She could not imagine living in Delaware. “I think you’ll know it when you find it,” she said. “I think you’ll find the perfect place. Or at least one that meets your basic needs.”

The side door slammed, and Livia appeared in the hallway, balancing a paper grocery bag brimming with corn on each of her hips. “Teddy joined the army,” she announced.

“Teddy
Fenn
?” Biddy asked.

Livia set the bags on the counter. “Teddy Fenn.”

The boy’s name, so familiar, sounded foreign to Biddy when Livia pronounced it all by itself, like the Latin name for a rare species, some kind of wetlands bear. “How do you know?”

“We ran into Jack at the market. He said Teddy just went down to some recruitment center or wherever and signed up. He’s not coming back to school. He’s not graduating. I don’t know why Jack couldn’t stop him. What kind of father would let this happen?” Biddy thought Livia sounded like her own father, though Livia would be offended to be told so. The two of them had the same wrongheaded belief in the power of parents over children. A bag of corn tipped over, and the heavy ears thumped onto the floor. Livia gazed heavenward and flapped her arms in defeat.

Biddy was relieved not to be the object of any more scrutiny. “Easy does it,” she said, approaching her daughter even though she knew her consolation would not be welcome. Since Livia could not admit defeat and accept that Teddy really was lost, she would tolerate no pity. Biddy kept waiting for her to simply get over the boy. As a toddler Livia had been inseparable from her pacifier until the day she was put down for an unwelcome nap and ripped the rubber nipple from her mouth and hurled it to the floor, never to suck on it again.

“Dad was in rare form,” Livia said after allowing Biddy a brief hug and then stepping away. “He got all, you know, forceful and cheerful, and tried to bring up the Pequod and was weird with Meg, and then,
then
, he goes, ‘How is Teddy?’ Like he was talking about some random acquaintance. And Jack says, ‘Oh, funny you should ask. He’s made a big decision. He’s joined the army.’ And Daddy says, ‘Well. Well, well, well, well, well.’ Like that. ‘Well, well, well, well, well.’ ”

“Did Jack say why?”

Livia bent to gather up the corn. “No. I’m not sure he knows.”

“Where does he go? Does he go to … boot camp?” Biddy spoke tentatively, uncertain of the expression.

“I don’t know. I have no idea where or when or how. I don’t know. Why would I know? Did he just wake up one morning and decide,
Oh, none of this is really working for me? I’d like a one-way ticket to Iraq, please.”

“They’ll give him a round-trip ticket,” Dominique said. She, too, came to hug Livia, and this time Livia seemed grateful, wrapping her arms around Dominique’s strong back and hiding her face in the young woman’s shoulder. Biddy noticed a strand of corn silk on the tiles and bent to pick it up.

“He might have to come back as cargo,” Livia said, muffled. “Why can’t he just finish college?”

“Livia,” said Biddy, “I don’t want you to think this has anything to do with you.” She reached in from the outskirts of the embrace to squeeze her daughter’s shoulder.