A Place at the Table: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  Cleo, our little Houdini of a poodle, must have somehow gotten out of the fenced backyard and, while I wasn’t looking, jumped into the car.

  I didn’t realize she was in there. I was distracted. Cam and I had fought the night before, and I could not get some of the things he said out of my mind. That he was tired of our lives. That he was bored. That he wondered if maybe we should call it a day, leave the messy past behind, start over. (I argued with him in my head: I thought you liked our messy life, the comfort of it, the ease of not having to be perfect all the time, like you were expected to be when you were a child, of letting the dogs get on the couch, of eating ice cream from the carton, of leaving the Sunday Times scattered over the couch so you can settle in and read whenever you want.)

  After cleaning out the Volvo I had gone inside, taken a shower, blow-dried my hair, puttered around. Hours later I returned to the car. Mandy had spent the night at a friend’s house, and I was running late to pick her up.

  The moment I slid into the driver’s seat I was overwhelmed by a terrible odor, a smell that reminded me of the time Mandy forgot to take in her container of leftovers from the restaurant and her half-eaten roast chicken stayed in the hot car all the next day. I glanced over my shoulder to see if there were any telltale take-out containers. And just as it occurred to me that there couldn’t be, because I would have already cleaned them out, I saw Cleo, my sweet puppy, curled in a semicircle on the floor mat below the backseat. I did not need to touch the animal’s body to know that she was dead. She had shrunk and was lying in a shallow pool of water, water from her own desiccated body. I reached out my hand to touch her anyway. She was stiff, her curly hair hard and lacquered.

  Oh God. Oh God.

  I opened the door of the front seat, jumped from the car, crying, wailing. Oh God, my poor dog. I imagined her bounding into the car, so happy to surprise me—and then becoming confused when she realized I was not coming to get her. Growing hotter and hotter. Starting to pant she was so hot. Jumping to the floor to get out of the awful heat, but the heat would have been unrelenting.

  It was June. It was an unusually hot day for Connecticut.

  I needed to go pick up my daughter. I was late already. But I could not bring myself to touch Cleo’s body again, to remove her from the car. And besides, it would be cruel to pick Mandy up in a car smelling of our animal’s death. I could take Lucy’s car, the wood-paneled Wagoneer we’d had since she was born. But that would mean leaving Cleo in the Volvo for longer, untended to. And though Cleo was and would remain dead, it seemed wrong to leave her in the spot she had died for any longer than necessary.

  But then I remembered: If Lucy’s car was there that meant Lucy was home. And if Lucy was home that meant she could pick up Mandy at her friend’s house. I felt hysterical for one more moment, but as is often the case when I am in crisis, I went into survival mode. Went inside, dialed the home of Mandy’s friend, spoke to her mother. Held back my tears while I explained that I was running a little late, that there was a crisis I had to attend to, that my older daughter, Lucy, was actually coming in my place and would be there as soon as she could.

  The woman on the other line simply clicked her tongue and said she hoped everything turned out okay. That’s the thing about Daughters of the American Revolution types—they value reserve above all else. A patrician matron will never pester you for personal details. Such reserve has always driven Cam crazy, he who was born and raised in Atlanta by the effusive and gossipy Taffy. (Give my husband one drink and he’ll launch into a litany of complaints about living “up north.” Connecticut winters top the list, with “Yankee manners and mannerisms” falling close behind.)

  I went to Lucy’s room, asked my lithe, limpid daughter if she would pick up her sister, gave her twenty dollars so the two of them could stop for a treat, then shut myself in my bedroom, where I watched from the window until I saw Lucy’s car turn out of the driveway. Once the car disappeared from view, I sat on the edge of the bed and dialed Cam at his office. The instant his secretary put him through I started crying again, crying hard enough that Cam had to ask me several times to slow down, to take a breath, to repeat myself until he finally understood what it was I was trying to say.

  Once he did I heard him take a deep inhale, and then I heard a sudden exhale, and I knew that he was crying, too.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and as the words came out of my mouth it occurred to me that neither of us had apologized for the terrible things we had said to each other the night before.

  “Oh, honey,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

  His tenderness rushed over me, a balm that soothed my still open wounds.

  “I was careless,” I said, starting to cry afresh. “I was not paying attention. I was lost in my head.”

  “You didn’t see her. She jumped in the car when you weren’t looking. There’s no way you could have predicted that was going to happen. She wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  I thought of Cleo eagerly waiting for me in the car, wagging her tail in anticipation of a ride. I thought of the black leather interior, how it matched her hair, how disguised she was against it. I thought of how hot she must have been, how she must have suffered. I started crying those great, rolling sobs, the ones that take over your body, like when a plane flies through turbulence, only internal. So instead of passing through the rough air, you must let the disturbance pass through you. You must wait until the intensity of the grief lifts.

  “Look, it’s a fairly light day at the office. I can cut out early. Why don’t I come on home?”

  “Yes, yes, please. She’s still in the car and I just don’t know if I can bear to move her. I’m so sorry, Cam.”

  “Okay, sit tight. I’m coming.”

  • • •

  God bless him, when Cam showed up he took over. Got an old towel, scooped up the dog, rolled her in it like a shroud. He tried to dig a hole in the backyard so we could bury her, but it had been a dry summer and the ground was too hard. So Cam put Cleo’s body in a cardboard box, the kind you pack books in, and we taped it up and left it in the outermost area of the backyard while he called around looking for a crematorium that could take her remains. He found one and drove the body there that afternoon. (Later, when I went to pick up the ashes, I was given a squat tin box filled with sticky gray dust, littered with bits of white bone.)

  I fixed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner that night, serving them with milk and Lay’s potato chips. As we were finishing our meal I told the girls Cam and I had some news to share that wasn’t going to be easy to hear.

  “You’re getting a divorce, aren’t you?” said Mandy. She held her fork in front of her, studying its tines casually, looking bored.

  Cam and I looked at each other and I saw the answer clear in his eyes. No. No, we were not.

  • • •

  In bed that night Cam held me tight, and his holding led to us making love, and it was more tender and affectionate and fun than it had been for a very long while. I felt he was present in that room with me, at that moment. I felt that we were connected bone deep, pelvis to pelvis and beyond. I looked down at his soft green eyes while I rocked on top of him, and he murmured my name with such warmth, such openness; it broke my heart. It broke my heart to think of how detached we had become from each other. Afterward I rested my head on his shoulder, and he told me what a good life we had given Cleo, how Cleo enjoyed every minute of her existence, our cute black poodle who loved nothing more than to roll in the warm dirt.

  Cam was so tender with me that I came to believe that Cleo had died to save our marriage, that Cleo had become a sort of canine Christ figure. Ridiculous, I know, but because of her death, and Cam’s generous reaction to it, our union was renewed. For a long time I had felt so very alone in my marriage. For a long time I had felt unseen, just a middle-aged woman with no one’s focus upon her.

  But now this: resurrection.

  • • •

  And yet wit
h Cam eventually you pay.

  “I’m sorry I left the gate open,” I say, burying my own sense of injustice, thinking that if I could unearth all that I’ve buried I would have something very lethal on hand. “Let’s not fight. Please. I just got back in town. Let’s find something good to watch on TV. Or if you want, we could go into town, get ice-cream cones.”

  “Fine,” he says, walking into the living room and turning on the television. I am both surprised and relieved that he backed down. We watch junk until L.A. Law comes on, a program we both love. We sit side by side on the sofa. At one point I stretch out and put my feet in his lap, as we have done for countless nights of our marriage. During a commercial I make microwave popcorn, splitting the bag between two bowls. I keep glancing at him, smiling, trying to get him to connect with me, but he stares straight ahead, his jaw locked. He doesn’t have to say anything to let me know he is still angry. When the show ends I stand to take our empty bowls to the kitchen. He follows me.

  “I’m extremely upset with you,” he says.

  It is now eleven at night. Yesterday I left my older daughter in a city over a thousand miles away.

  “Cam. I’m exhausted. I need you to consider that maybe I’m going through a hard time right now with both Lucy and Mandy gone.”

  “You don’t think I go through a hard time every day?”

  Oh Jesus. Here we go again. I must have rolled my eyes, because it is as if suddenly someone struck a match and let it drop on the spilled gas all around us. He starts screaming.

  “You don’t think I miss my daughters, too? And then when I call in my dog, she is on the loose, could have been run over, could have gotten lost.”

  “You found her!” I yell. “She was at the Fergusons’! She’s always at the Fergusons’. She digs up their compost pile; you know that.”

  “And you know that, too! How could you leave the gate open knowing that? I need better from you, Amelia. I need you to take some responsibility. Notice if the dog jumps in the car. Notice if the back gate is unlocked. Notice when the bills are due, dammit. When I came home tonight I saw a stack of unopened mail on the counter, from days back. It was the electric bill, the water bill, the mortgage. Jesus, Amelia. Keeping up with this shit is part of your job.”

  “I was away!” I scream, the sound so primal Sadie jumps up and trots out of the room, allowing Cam to give me a look of absolute reprobation. I lower my voice. “I was taking our daughter to college. God, what is wrong with you?”

  He lowers his voice. “You want to know what’s wrong with me? You want to know what’s wrong? When was the last time you looked in the mirror, Amelia? You’re twenty-five pounds overweight. You are. You can wear oversized sweaters and scarves all you want, you can bandy about words like ‘earth mama’ and ‘goddess,’ but the truth is, you let yourself get fat. It’s like, you’ve given up. You’ve stopped trying. But you know what? Just because you’ve stopped trying doesn’t change the fact that I’m still a man and I still have needs. Yes, Amelia, you may not want to acknowledge it, but I still have needs. And I’m not ready to sign on for celibacy for the rest of my life just because you’ve given up. You didn’t even look at me when you returned home from Atlanta last night. You just went upstairs and started unpacking your bags, as if I were nothing. As if I were a piece of furniture in the house. But I’m not. I am a man and I need sex. I do! I need it, Amelia. I need sex! I need sex!”

  I find myself splitting into two women while he screams, the one crying and overwhelmed, the other separate and analytical, floating above the scene, noting the spit on the sides of this man’s mouth, noting how flushed his face is, trying to piece together how this night, which began with such good intentions, disintegrated into something so ugly, so mean. I think of the underwear I carefully put on before dinner, a taupe-colored bra and panty set, made in Paris, expensive and frilly. I had been planning to seduce my husband after dinner. It occurs to me that perhaps I should still attempt to do so, that maybe everything would be all right if we just had sex. (It has been a long time.) But the thought of intimacy with this furious man makes me want to cover my most vulnerable parts with my hands.

  • • •

  I do not sleep in our room but instead crawl into Lucy’s old bed. I am restless and agitated, but I must finally doze off because I am awoken by loud and incessant noises coming from Cam’s and my shared bathroom. I wait for them to cease, but they do not, and so finally I go to investigate, tying my robe around my middle as I make my way to the bathroom where Cam stands in boxers and a white undershirt, opening the medicine cabinet and slamming it shut, over and over again.

  “Oh my God, did you take pills?” I ask. I have this vision sometimes of Cam downing a bottle of Tylenol. What I don’t know is whether the vision is a fear or a fantasy.

  “I’m furious with you, Amelia. I’m just furious.”

  I bring my hand to my forehead, rub my temples. I breathe in and out, trying to stay calm. “I really need you to calm down. We both need to sleep.”

  “I need you to apologize,” he says.

  “For what?” I ask. I am not trying to be petulant, exactly, I just want him to tell me what to apologize for, so I can do it and then go back to Lucy’s room, away from him.

  He grabs a plastic bottle of Pepto-Bismol out of the medicine cabinet and throws it to the floor, where it lands with a small bounce in the corner of the room. He grabs his razor off the shelf and throws it. The blade pops off as soon as it hits the ground. He follows this by throwing the can of shaving cream, as if the razor blade needs a companion. While I am startled, a small voice in my head says wearily, Such drama.

  “If you don’t know what I’m upset about then we are in real trouble.”

  I take a deep breath, hold up my hands, surrendering. “Look. I’m sorry I was careless about the dog. I’m sorry I let myself go. I’m sorry we did not have sex when I got back in town last night.”

  I feel nauseated saying the words, but I need him to calm down. All I want is to return to Lucy’s bedroom, to lock the door behind me and burrow under the covers. To allow sleep to take me away from here, away from this house, this man.

  “What else?” he asks. His voice is tight and mean, the voice of a stubborn little boy.

  “I have to go to bed,” I say. My eyes feel sandy I am so tired.

  “I’m so upset with you,” he says again. “I’m just steaming.”

  He says this almost as if it is a point of wonder, something the two of us should be very, very interested in, as one might be interested in watching some other natural phenomenon: a solar eclipse, a chick hatching from its soft shell, an autumn moon, round and maternal.

  • • •

  I return to Lucy’s room. There is a lock on the door and I turn it. I lie in bed, so tired but unable to relax enough to sleep. Finally I pull a novel from Lucy’s bookshelf, Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. I read and read and read, losing myself in the sane, quiet lives of good, decent people, people who try to do well by each other despite their innate failings. When I finally fall asleep I dream that Cam enters the room, carrying a wooden hairbrush, much like the one Mother used to spank me with as a child.

  “All you have to do is lie there and take it,” he says.

  And in my dream I think: I can do that. I can lie here and take it, and nothing will have to change.

  • • •

  When I wake the next morning Cam has already left for work. I try to imagine that I dreamed the whole fight, but I spot Crossing to Safety on the pillow beside me and I know that I did not.

  Attempting to go about my morning routine, I make my way down to the kitchen for cereal and coffee. My hand shakes as I try to measure the grinds into the coffeemaker. Is this really my life? I let Sadie out, but not before first walking through the wet, dewy grass and checking the back gate to make sure it is closed, pulling hard on the handle again and again, unsure of my very perception, until a voice much like my own but older, wiser, maternal, speaks
to me, saying, It’s closed; it’s closed. Just walk away, Amelia, it’s closed. I am spooked. I am fundamentally shaken. I wonder what would have happened had the girls been home. Surely Cam would not have behaved that way, would not have screamed and thrown toiletries in the middle of the night. And then a terrible thought enters my mind: Now that there’s no one else around to witness, he can do whatever he wants.

  I have to talk to someone. I am close with Lucy, but of course I cannot tell my daughter about this. Mother is useless, pickled in our old home in Roxboro, doing God knows what all day (nothing) before beginning her evening cocktails. Daddy is in Palo Alto, in a time zone three hours behind, and besides, he and I never talk about anything personal. Sarah, my best friend from boarding school, lives in Brooklyn. I could call her, but . . . I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed to tell her what happened, embarrassed to let her know how much my marriage has deteriorated. Sarah—who never married—would not let a man yell at her the way Cam yells at me. She would knee him in the balls first. I sip my coffee. Try to think of who might best guide me through this. And then the answer comes to me. Of course. I’ll call Aunt Kate.

  Kate is Mother’s sister, younger by over a decade, who lives in Manhattan and works as an editor at Palmer, Long and McIntyre. She was the rogue of Mother’s patrician clan, renting an apartment in the West Village when she first moved into the city (later she settled on the Upper East Side), boldly declaring that while she liked children, she had no intention of ever having any, and marrying a boisterous Jewish writer. (“And not one of the good German Jews,” my bigoted grandmother was rumored to have said, “but one of those –skis from Poland.”)