A Place at the Table: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  With growing interest Kate read about the gentle slope of land upon which Alice’s family built their farm and how in the mornings the dew looked like steam rising from the grass. She read about the pigs Alice’s family raised, how they were finished on acorns, making their meat unbelievably silky. Kate read about Alice’s mother’s cooking, how she could turn the humblest ingredients into something magical: creamy chess pies, tender squirrel stew, butter nut cookies at Christmas time that were both salty and sweet.

  Kate was captivated by Alice’s story and at that point was high enough on the Palmer, Long and McIntyre totem pole that she was able to get a little bit of advance money for Alice so that she could turn her notes into a book. But when Kate told Alice the good news, that PML was going to publish Alice’s memoirs, Alice balked. She did not want just anyone reading about her life. She had wanted to share her story with Kate, specifically. She felt an affinity toward Kate and thought she would appreciate hearing about Emancipation Township. Kate told Alice that a lot of people would appreciate hearing about Emancipation Township, but Alice remained wary. It wasn’t until Kate assured Alice that no dirty laundry need be aired that Alice grew enthusiastic, excited to share memories of a simpler time when people relied on the land and closely followed the four seasons. And recipes. There would be lots and lots of recipes, and Kate would help Alice discern which to use. It would be a project they would take on together—the cooking part, at least. Kate was happy to work with Alice in her kitchen, and Alice, whose husband was out of the country, enjoyed the company.

  Kate was so proud of how the manuscript came together; she brought it to Connecticut to show off to Mother and Daddy. To Daddy, really. Kate wanted the two of them to cook our Saturday evening meal from it. When she and Jack arrived that Friday evening, after cocktails were poured, Kate pulled the galley out of her L.L.Bean canvas bag. She had wrapped it in one of Jack’s clean undershirts to ensure no errant sand or dirt, trapped at the bottom of the bag, got in its pages. She unwrapped the T-shirt from around the book and handed it first to Mother, to be polite, though I’m sure it was Daddy whom she wanted to show it to. He was the intellectual. He was the cook. Plus, Mother was perennially dulled by alcohol.

  “I didn’t realize she was colored,” said Mother. “Do you think that might hurt the book’s chances?”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Susan,” said Kate. “In the first place, it’s a great American story. And in the second place, I don’t really care about its ‘chances.’ I just love this book.”

  Daddy was quiet during this exchange. He sat next to Mother on the chintz sofa, reading from Alice’s introduction. When he looked up his eyes were glassy.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” said Kate, smiling shyly.

  Daddy looked at her, then rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger. He breathed in deeply, the sides of his nose flattening with the great intake of air.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say it’s great.”

  “I don’t think it’s appropriate that you are publishing this.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It seems opportunistic. You’re idealizing what was clearly a hardscrabble existence. You’re publishing this for a largely white audience who will read the book and say, ‘Oh, things weren’t so bad in the South for Negroes. Look at this. This woman grew up on a lovely farm cooking lovely meals.’ ”

  “We should only publish books about oppression? Alice can’t celebrate where she came from? That privilege is only granted to white people? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying this is not a true story. I’m saying there is no way a Negro family living in the South during the 1920s had a happy time of it. I’m saying this minimizes what was a painful time in history for colored people. That is what I’m saying.”

  “Jesus, what a jackass you’re being,” said Kate. “This is a beautiful book about the life of an amazing community, an amazing woman. I can’t believe you. Do you not understand that I really care about this? Why are you attacking it?”

  “I’m not the one calling people jackasses,” said Daddy. “And I’d like you to refrain from such crude language in front of my daughter.”

  Everyone looked at me, scrunched up in the wingback chair, my knees pulled to my chest, trying to pretend I wasn’t there so the grown-ups wouldn’t send me away.

  “Forgive me,” Kate said. “I shouldn’t talk that way. But I don’t think you have any idea how much time and effort Alice put into this. How much effort I put into it.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me that I can’t pretend this piece of propaganda is anything short of offensive.”

  “Has he lost his mind?” Kate said, turning to Mother for backup.

  “Oh dear,” said Mother. “Jack, we’ve got two hotheads on our hands, don’t we?”

  Jack had been silent during this whole exchange between Daddy and Kate. But when pressed, he stood up for his wife.

  “I think it’s a wonderful book,” he said.

  “Well, I think it’s horseshit,” said Daddy.

  “Benjamin!” cried Mother as Kate stood.

  “We’re leaving,” Kate said.

  “Don’t forget your book,” said Daddy.

  “God, you’re a piece of work,” she said.

  “Now, Kate,” said Mother.

  “Oh, Susan, go have your eight-hundredth martini and shut up,” said Kate.

  And then things got even uglier. Daddy stood and told Kate to get out of his house, and Mother, drunkenly, said he had no right to talk that way to her sister. Daddy told her to shut up, that he was defending her, and by that time Kate was already upstairs packing her bag. She and Jack left right then, driving Jack’s little MG convertible back to the city, leaving me with a brooding father and a drunk mother. I escaped to boarding school a month later, and Daddy left for Palo Alto the following spring. As far as I know Daddy has never seen Kate again, although after Daddy moved across the country Mother did try to reconcile with her. But when she returned to Roxboro after a lunch in the city with her sister Mother vowed never to speak to Kate again.

  “But why not?” I asked, from the shared phone in my dorm’s lounge. “She’s all the family you have left. You should talk.”

  Mother sighed dramatically. “You know Kate,” she said. “She thinks she understands the world just because she’s read a bunch of books.”

  15

  A Question of Scruples

  (Old Greenwich, Connecticut, 1989)

  The nights all follow the same routine. Cam and I have dinner, clean up, watch television, eat popcorn, and try to pretend things are normal. And then, around 11:00 p.m., he can no longer contain his agitation. Some nights he simply paces. Some nights he lectures, listing the ways that I have failed him. Some nights he screams, and each time he does I think of the bag of Orville Redenbacher I popped earlier that evening. How at first you only hear the steady drone of the microwave. And then, ping! A kernel pops. Ping! Another. Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! A sudden fury of explosions.

  Once Cam has worn himself out, he goes to our bed and I retreat to our daughter’s empty room.

  Books comfort me. I pull the ones Lucy was assigned in high school off her shelves: Anna Karenina, Franny and Zooey, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I might not be able to leave my physical home, but I can temporarily escape into the world on the page. I read until exhaustion takes over, and when it finally does, usually around four in the morning, I enter vivid and disturbing dreams. In one Cam comes to me, contrite, and we begin kissing. We are in our kitchen, in Greenwich, only it isn’t quite our kitchen, in the way that things never match up exactly in dreams. He kisses me urgently with his big, supple lips, and then he turns me around, presses into me from behind. I am hungry for him. I want this. He walks me toward the kitchen table until its edge presses into my abdomen. He lifts my hands above my head, holding them there while he presses deeper into me. I am turned on; I am wet. And then I detect the distinct s
mell of metal, a dried-blood smell. In an instant I know that I am in danger. I can all but feel a set of metal handcuffs locking around my wrists, allowing him to do what he wants, to hurt me in whatever way he chooses. But the handcuffs do not come. Instead he wraps his arms around me from behind. It is comforting for one second, before he plunges a thick, rusty knife into my chest.

  I awake with a gasp.

  During the day I walk around in a daze. This is not my life. How can this be my life? I keep waiting for Cam to snap to, to return home from work bearing a bouquet of peonies, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot—my favorite—and a profound apology. I carried peonies at my wedding; ever since they’ve been Cam’s go-to flower for his most egregious fuckups. Like the time he stranded me on our anniversary. I had hired a babysitter, put on a sexy dress, and taken the train into the city to meet him at La Grenouille. I let myself be seated though Cam had not yet arrived. I ordered a glass of Champagne, anticipating the evening to come. Except Cam never showed. After I had been waiting for nearly an hour, the maître d’ finally came to my table, saying there was a phone call for me at the bar. It was Cam. An emergency had come up at work. There was nothing he could do. All I could think was, Why wait an hour to call? Or the time he allowed an old friend from high school—an attractive, newly divorced, female friend—to stay overnight at our home while the girls and I were in the city for the weekend visiting Aunt Kate. Or the time he gave me a used set of Jane Fonda workout videos for my birthday, which I am almost positive he bought from a neighborhood garage sale.

  • • •

  I completely forgot about the dinner party we are supposed to attend tonight, even though it’s been scheduled for weeks. I’ve been preoccupied; I’ve been a little on edge. Of course I will cancel. I cannot imagine presenting ourselves at someone’s front door. What a horror for the host. Surprise! We’re here! Your very own traveling performance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  But when I tell Cam I’ll get us out of the party, he is emphatic that we go. He has been looking forward to an evening out. It might relieve some stress. And anyway, the hosts are from Atlanta and somehow connected to Taffy, who will be furious if she finds out we backed out on the night of an intimate party, leaving the hostess in a lurch. A mortal sin.

  Under normal circumstances I would have questioned why Cam’s mother, thousands of miles away in Atlanta, is directing our social life. But right now I only want peace with my husband, and so I get on board, say, “All right then, let’s go,” thinking that maybe the party will force Cam to get it together. He is a product of the Atlanta elite, after all, and from my observations of that crew, being good-natured and entertaining at a social event is about as sacrosanct as baptizing your child at the Episcopal church and throwing a luncheon afterward at the Piedmont Driving Club.

  I dress for the party with care, wanting Cam to be reminded of my attractiveness. If nothing else, I want other men looking at me, affirming my desirability. I may have gained some weight, but I carry much of it in my chest, squeezed into a hundred-dollar double D bra. I wear an emerald green wrap dress—purchased from Bendel’s—that shows off my cleavage nicely. The dress has an almost scandalously low neckline, and the heels I wear are almost scandalously high, making me exactly even with Cam in height. I apply more makeup than usual and spend an hour with a hair dryer and a brush so that my hair hangs straight and silky instead of seizing into the wild curls I inherited from my southern Italian ancestors. (Oh, Daddy. As much as you tried to be the consummate WASP, your humble, immigrant past shows on my head.)

  • • •

  I do not know the couple—the McClouds—whose home we are going to. All I know is that the wife grew up in Brookwood Hills and, like Cam, also attended high school at Coventry Academy. But she’s in her midthirties, so she was years behind my husband. The only other thing I know about the McClouds is that Mr. McCloud supposedly paid for their house with cash.

  After the McClouds moved in this summer, Taffy phoned every day until I finally sent Cam over there with a welcome basket of wine, cheese, fig preserves, and a baguette. (It was just after Cleo died; I was not up for socializing, and Cam was still being tender with me.) Cam said that the wife, Parrin McCloud, was sweet and enthusiastic about moving up north, but he could not help but feel sorry for her, a southerner about to face a Connecticut winter.

  Cam and I don’t talk much on the drive over to the McClouds’. The few exchanges we do have are polite and excessively formal: “Do you mind if I turn up the heat?” “Do you think this bottle of Merlot will be good?” “Should I get the car washed tomorrow, or do you think it might rain?”

  The exterior of the McClouds’ home is stunning. It was built in 1928, during the height of the Robber Baron era, when railroad and oil tycoons were showing off their wealth by building beautiful manors. This one is made of a cool gray stone, Italianate in style. Two stone eagles perch atop a rock wall at the foot of the driveway, causing me to feel as if we are on our way to visit the Godfather, to kiss the ring and ask a favor. Cam parks, and he and I approach the house side by side, not touching until we get to the three stairs leading up to the front door, at which point Cam holds his arm out for me to steady myself against as I make my way up in my impractical heels. When we ring the bell, Mr. McCloud immediately answers.

  He has thick, snowy, patrician hair and a head too large for his body. He wears dress pants and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. No tie, though he looks like the type of man who should be wearing one. He is considerably older than Cam and me (in his early sixties?), and this confuses me for a minute until I remember that he and his wife don’t have to be the same age, especially if he is rich enough to buy this stunning house with cash.

  “Well, hello!” he bellows. “Bo McCloud. And you must be—”

  “Cam and Amelia Brighton,” Cam interjects, reaching out his hand for a hearty shake.

  “I’m sorry to say you’re being greeted by the lesser of the two McClouds, but Parrin says to forgive her, she’s just finishing getting ready. Now y’all come on in. Let me fix you a drink!”

  Cam shoots me a look of irritation, then immediately returns his attention to Bo McCloud, who, after pulling Cam in by the shoulder, is now slapping him aggressively on the back and beginning a game of “Old Atlanta Geography,” throwing out names of people they might know in common.

  Cam looked at me with irritation because it was I who insisted that we arrive by 7:30, the time Parrin McCloud called for. Cam always says it’s best to show up a few minutes late to a dinner party, allowing the host time to finish up with everything. I say it’s rude to arrive late, that the host might have something hot and ready to eat at 7:30 on the dot. In this particular case, I should have listened to Cam, trusting his instincts about the hosting rituals of southerners.

  Another fuckup I will surely pay for later.

  • • •

  The McClouds’ home is beautiful, stately and established, looking nothing at all like the dwelling of people who moved in only a few months before. It reminds me a lot of the interior of Taffy’s house in Brookwood Hills: the same liberal use of color, the same elegance of furnishings, mostly wooden and antique. There are softly faded Oriental rugs on the hardwood floors and lamps everywhere, so we are not assaulted by direct overhead light. The staircase, which curves like a question mark, dominates the foyer, with its wide wooden planks, its curved wooden railing, its wrought-iron balusters. It is archetypal, what you might imagine your daughter descending on her wedding day. I imagine the real estate agent conjured up just that fantasy when she showed the home to the McClouds, who have two young daughters, twins, of whom I see no evidence, save for the portrait I spy in the living room. The portrait is of a beautiful brunette in a white dress with a white lace collar, her arm around two girls, similar in appearance but not identical, also in white dresses with lace collars, oversized white bows clipped to their sandy blond hair.

  And then the beautiful woma
n from the painting, Parrin McCloud, comes gliding down the stairs wearing a simple little beige shift and matching heels. Her jewelry is also simple but substantial: diamond studs in her ears and a stone the size of a skating rink on her ring finger. As she makes her way to us I observe that her makeup is so lightly applied you can still see the freckles across her cheeks. Her eyes are hazel, her nose straight. Looking at her, I see the type of girl I always wished I were, the girl I was able to befriend at Rosemary Hall—more like follow around—but could never quite become. I was too curly, too booby, too uncomfortable in my skin.

  But Parrin is the southern WASP ideal: the type whose silver pattern was picked out for her before she was even born, who knows how to make a tomato aspic and owns a deviled-egg plate, who, if called upon, can host a last-minute dinner party for twelve. She’s athletic, too, plays a good game of tennis, surely, skis on both water and snow, knows the Charleston and the cha-cha, learned in social dance class, which her mother enrolled her in at age twelve, just as Taffy enrolled Cam. Parrin is elegant as hell, but her minimalist approach to makeup implies a certain tomboyishness underneath, a willingness to slug a shot of bourbon with the boys before donning an old pair of jeans and her bid day T-shirt from Kappa, tissue soft from countless washes, to go on some backwoods adventure.