A Place at the Table: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  16

  Seed

  (Old Greenwich, Connecticut, 1989)

  Fifteen minutes after four and I am halfway out the door, headed for the Old Greenwich train station, where I will catch the 4:33 that will take me through the Connecticut suburbs and into the city. Beneath my heavy down coat I am wearing what I think of as my “fancy pants” (velvet, wide legged, elastic waistband), topped with a luxurious and oversized wraparound cashmere sweater that obscures my thickening middle. The phone rings. I, who am always convinced that this call is going to be the one with terrible news about one of my children, turn back inside and answer it.

  It is Cam. Of course. On the one day I wasn’t thinking about him.

  “How ya doing, Ame?” Cam asks, using his old nickname for me, pronouncing it “aim,” like what you do with a dart.

  I hate that I am excited to hear his voice. “I’m fine,” I say. “Just headed to the train station, actually. I’m having dinner with Sarah in the city. That is, if her project manager ever lets her leave the office. She’s working for this crazy boss who thinks an ad campaign is good only if she stays up half the night finishing it. But she promised me she’d find a way to sneak out.”

  Cam sighs. Our entire married life he has always scolded me about how I need to get to the point faster, to not babble. Our entire married life he has always scolded me.

  “I was hoping I could come over,” he says. “I’d like for us to talk. But it sounds like tonight’s no good.”

  I have been waiting for this call. It’s not that I want to reconcile, at least I don’t think I do. It’s just that as soon as the girls left for school his anger got so out of hand, and then I realized he was having an affair with Parrin (which he admitted to after we returned home from the McClouds’ party), and suddenly he was gone, moved into one of those ticky-tacky new apartment complexes built for divorcés. We never even had the chance to catch our breath. We never had a chance to look at the scorched earth around us and say, “What the hell just happened?”

  I glance at my watch. I’m going to miss the 4:33. My plan was to take an early train to the city, then the subway downtown, where I would walk around and maybe have a drink and some of those wonderful spiced cashews at the Union Square Cafe before walking over to Sarah’s ad agency, also near Union Square. But I can catch a later train. Hell, I could even ask Sarah for a rain check. It matters that I talk to Cam. He is, after all, still my husband.

  “I’ve got a little time to spare. Do you want to come over?”

  “Oh, that’s great, just great. Thanks for your flexibility, Ame. I really appreciate it. I’ll head out now.”

  “You know how to find the place?” A joke. Gallows humor.

  “I’ll manage,” he says, trying to sound playful but only managing to sound a little constipated.

  • • •

  Does Cam want to come home? Has he had his fill of Taffy Two? Surely a thirty-seven-year-old former Buckhead housewife is more demanding than I ever was, plus she’s got those two little girls, and I am not at all convinced Cam wants to enter active daddyhood again, especially with another man’s children. Surely Cam, who likes his comforts, misses our house, misses our dog, misses my cooking. Were he to come to me truly contrite, were he willing to go to counseling, were he willing to give his entire, broken self to me, could I forgive him?

  Funny, it seems easier to forgive his dalliance with Taffy Two than the rage that came before the revelation. I am not sure I will ever forgive him for that. I am not sure I should. And yet the other half of my brain is buzzing with what to offer when he arrives. I have a wedge of Brie and some crackers in the pantry, and I could slice a pear or an apple and drizzle the fruit with some orange blossom honey. That always makes a nice accompaniment for cheese. I’ve got some olives, too, Lucques. I wonder if I have time to make cheese sticks. I use store-bought puff pastry, roll it out, sprinkle it with salt and red pepper flakes and grated Parmesan, then cut the dough into strips, twist them, and bake. They are particularly delicious with a glass of Champagne, especially when you serve the cheese sticks warm.

  But there’s no Champagne in the refrigerator. Although there is that bottle of Taittinger I bought last week, marked five dollars off its regular price. I suppose it’s a little much to serve, being that Champagne is romantic, but it’s so crisp and delicious and would go so nicely with the cheese sticks that I decide to serve it anyway. I walk to the kitchen, take the bottle out from the wine rack beneath the counter, and stick it in the freezer, setting the timer for 45 minutes lest I forget and it explodes.

  Since Cam left I have had to be very careful with alcohol. It is easy to let drinking a second glass of wine slip into finishing the whole bottle, and then I become weepy and despondent. My biggest fear is that I might call Taffy Two in such a condition, ask her to please send back my husband, that surely she’s had her fun by now and surely he is exhausted.

  I return to the freezer, pulling out the package of Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry dough and placing it in the fridge. It only needs to defrost for a few minutes, just enough time for me to grate some Parmesan and pull seasonings from the cabinet. I find the grater buried beneath a plastic spatula and a pair of poultry shears in the drawer beneath the counter where I have rolled out a thousand piecrusts, scooped endless balls of cookie dough onto metal trays, attempted to knead bread dough—the one culinary art I never quite mastered. I put on an apron to protect my nice clothes. I am an old pro at cooking while dressed for a party. Cam and I used to entertain often.

  • • •

  Cam is half an hour late. Which is not unusual. At least not when he’s meeting me. I go ahead and open the Champagne, pour myself a glass. Lift it up and say, “Cheers,” ever the ironist, even when alone. The cheese straws are cooling quickly. They are still tasty at room temperature but no longer superb. You can taste the hardened fat, whereas warm they just melt on the tongue. Oh, but who am I kidding? Cam probably won’t eat any of this food anyway. What he will do is look at me, then look at the food spread before us, then look at me again, thinking: This is why you’re fat.

  God, do I know that man. You don’t spend twenty years married to someone without at least accomplishing that.

  I walk through my house as if it is a museum I am visiting. A museum of our old life. I have not yet taken down any of the family photos. Generations fill the walls, from the black-and-white images of my maternal grandparents as newlyweds, about to set sail for Europe, to Mandy’s freshman portrait from Hotchkiss. I marvel once again at the fact that there are no photos of Daddy as a child. He told me his family was too poor to ever have any made. “Your mother didn’t even have one baby picture taken of you?” I asked. Daddy reminded me that his mother was an illiterate immigrant with no money. And then his parents died when he was only sixteen, one after the other, and he was left an orphan.

  Daughter of an orphan, I have displayed my own family with pride. There is the picture of Taffy in the white dress she wore as a debutante back at the Piedmont Driving Club in Atlanta, 1938. The height of the Depression and Taffy’s family could still afford for their daughter to come out. Taffy was so beautiful, with her finger curls and her wide, innocent eyes. Mandy looks a lot like her. There is the picture of Mother and Aunt Kate as girls at the lake, in swimsuits down to their knees, Kate still a child, Mother teetering on womanhood. There are framed photos of my beautiful girls all up and down the stairwell, posed school pictures as well as candid shots. Cam must have taken the ones with me and Mandy and Lucy in them. God, look at me in this one: twentysomething years old and effortlessly thin, my hair long and curly, my mouth thrown open in delight as I hold stout Lucy by the waist.

  When Cam arrives perhaps I will point to the picture of Lucy and me as if I am a lawyer in court and it is Exhibit A, proof that we were once happy.

  Except, of course, Cam is absent from the image. It is only of mother and child.

  • • •

  The bell rings. Finally. I chec
k my reflection in the hallway mirror. It matters that I look good on this of all nights. Matters that Cam recognizes what he is losing. I smile to make sure there are no red pepper flakes stuck in my teeth, twist an errant curl around my finger to make it behave. Without inquiring as to who it is (there is no one else it could be), I open the door. And there is my husband, still handsome in his jowly way, though there are more grays in his dark hair since the last time I saw him. He wears jeans, a green cashmere sweater I bought for him at Brooks Brothers, and a black leather bomber jacket I’ve never seen before, weathered and formfitting.

  “Why, look. It’s the Rebel without a Cause,” I say, the words flying out of my mouth, unchecked.

  He presses his lips together, a sign that he is annoyed.

  “Hi, Amelia. You’re looking good.”

  “Oh thanks. It was this or my leather pants.”

  I’m joking of course, but Cam doesn’t smile.

  “You look very pretty,” he says dutifully.

  He could be a teller at the bank, telling me to have a nice day after processing my deposit.

  “Well, come in. Let’s not let all the warm air out.”

  (Nag, nag. I sound like a nag.) I try again. “Come in, don’t come in, whatever you want! I’m easy.” I bark out a nervous laugh, which sounds like I’m coughing up something rather than making any sort of sound of merriment.

  Cam steps inside formally, as if he were visiting an unfamiliar house, as if he has not lived here for half of his life.

  “I’ve got some snacks in the kitchen, and I opened a bottle of Champagne.” I snap my fingers, remembering. “But you’ll want a Scotch, won’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  Why didn’t I think to have a glass poured for him at the door? Taffy Two probably greets him each evening with a Scotch. Hell, she probably greets him topless: a Scotch in one hand, a can of whipped cream in the other, a helium balloon tied around each tit.

  “Just a splash,” he adds.

  I go to the liquor cabinet and retrieve the bottle of Dewar’s and a cut-glass tumbler, given to us for our wedding. I slosh in a generous pour and bring the glass to the kitchen, where he is waiting for me. I decide, what the hell, I don’t have to stick to my one-drink rule tonight. I’m not drinking alone, after all. I take the bottle of Champagne out of the fridge and give myself a refill.

  “Cheers,” I say, tapping the rim of my flute to his tumbler.

  “Cheers.”

  “Have a cheese stick,” I say. “Or just have some Brie. It’s delicious with a little of this apricot jam.”

  “I’m good. I had a late lunch.”

  “Oh. Well, do you want something sweet? I’ve got a bag of Mint Milanos.”

  “No. I’m not hungry. Listen, I have something I have to tell you. It’s big. We weren’t planning to talk about it yet because, well, it’s pretty early. But, well, do you know Gail Ferguson?”

  “What do you mean do I know Gail Ferguson? She’s been our next-door neighbor for eighteen years.”

  “Well, this afternoon Parrin ran into her at Alpen Pantry, and, well, she pretty much collided into Gail as she was racing into the bathroom, because, well—”

  “Oh my God. Taffy Two is pregnant,” I say.

  “Who?” he asks.

  “Your girlfriend—God, what is her name? Peyton? Peyton is pregnant. And she had to throw up at lunch, and she ran into Gail Ferguson in the process, and Gail guessed what’s going on, so now you have to tell me. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Parrin, her name is Parrin. For Christsakes, Amelia, you need to learn her name. And yes, you are right. Parrin is pregnant.”

  He looks distinctly disappointed that I guessed his news, that I did not allow him to luxuriate fully in the drama of his revelation.

  “Did Gail already call you?” he asks.

  “No. But I know you.”

  He looks at me for a moment, his eyes holding mine, and I am remembering the first time we made love, how quickly he came, how embarrassed he was afterward and how I reassured him that we were going to have a lifetime to practice, to learn each other.

  And then we are back in the present and he cannot see me.

  “It’s terrible timing, I know,” he says, his eyes bright and happy again, now that he is once more in control of the news. “And it wasn’t planned, I promise you that. Parrin didn’t even think she could get pregnant again. They had to do all sorts of test-tube stuff to get those twins, so she just figured she wasn’t capable of having a baby au naturel. Honestly, it’s kind of a miracle that this happened.”

  I can’t say anything.

  He is looking at me with this shit-eating grin on his face, like he wants me to agree with him, like he wants me to celebrate that he and his girlfriend beat the fertility odds.

  “So she’s going to have an abortion?” I ask, knowing she is not. Only saying it to make him spell out his plan, to make him—he who has always chosen the path of least resistance—take some responsibility for the choice he is making.

  He smiles inwardly, as if remembering a joke that he and Parrin shared. “Look, it’s really crazy timing, I know. But I hope you can see this is a good thing, Amelia. I want us both to be happy in our next stage of life, and I’m really excited about being a dad again. You know, I could have done it better the first time around. I could have been more present. I know that now. And I’m going to try and do right by this baby, I really am.”

  I am filled with rage, yet speechless. I want to rain down condemnation, but I find myself having a hard time putting the words together. Nothing makes sense. This thing with Taffy Two, it was supposed to be a dalliance, a temporary acting-out. Now he is linked to her forever. My God. Cam was never one for cleaning up messes, was he? And now he’s made another before the divorce papers are even drawn. And he expects me to be happy about it. And the thing is, he’s got me trapped. I can’t wish ill on this baby who is about to be born. I can’t wish anything but for them to have a healthy baby and to raise it well, because any other desire would poison me, would turn my insides black and bitter. There is a baby on the way. Everything has changed. My revved-up fury sputters into exhaustion. Suddenly, I am so exhausted.

  • • •

  I don’t break down until after Cam leaves. And then I wilt. Just wilt. I am aware of a great sorrow rooted deep within me. I am aware that I only have access to a tiny bit of it. God, it’s going to hurt when I pull it out. God, am I broken. I cry fiercely for about fifteen minutes, and then the tears subside. I walk gingerly to the kitchen, afraid the crying will catch up with me once more. I need to not cry anymore tonight. I need a drink. I need twenty drinks. I need to leave this house. I quickly pour myself another glass of the Taittinger. How nice and dry and cold it is, how perfectly delicious.

  After finishing the bottle of Champagne, I decide to take the train into Manhattan after all. For where else but among the tumult of New York might my own heartache, my own sorrow, seem small compared to the rest of the great, wide world?

  • • •

  Sitting in a window seat, my head leaned back, a steady vibration underfoot as the train zips along the track, I try to remember driving from the house to the station. I can’t. It’s a short distance, less than a mile, and I imagine I drove slowly, but oh God, I shouldn’t have driven. Shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have. So many things I shouldn’t have done. I feel dizzy beneath my closed lids. I drank too much. The night is only beginning and I drank too much, as if I’m a freshman in college, getting drunk to work up the nerve to go to a party.

  Taffy Two is pregnant. My God. Taffy Two is pregnant with Cam’s child. Please, please, please, please, God, don’t let them send out Christmas cards with pictures of the new baby or, even worse, little inky footprints. Before Cam left the house this evening he told me that the baby is due in August. Oh God, make it be a hot summer. Make it one of those drippy, claustrophobic, heat-wave summers during which people in New England rethink
their decision not to have air-conditioning. And make Taffy Two’s ankles swell.

  So we’re not a whole family after all. I wanted that for my girls (my girls, my girls, we are going to have to tell the girls), wanted us to be a complete unit, wanted us to be the type of family that takes no explaining, just Mommy, Daddy, and the kids. So different from the fractured family I grew up with, Mother in a state of perennial grief over her firstborn son, Daddy first emotionally absent and then literally gone.

  But surely at one point there was something good between Mother and Daddy. Surely at one point they shared something sweet. Mother spoke most fondly of their brief courtship, before their courthouse marriage. Daddy used to have Mother over to his little garage apartment in New Haven, where he would cook for her. Mother said she had never known a man to cook, other than barbecuing on the grill or serving burnt scrambled eggs on Mother’s Day like her own father used to do. But Daddy said in Italy there was no shame in a man cooking. And he was good at it, and he enjoyed it, so he cooked for Mother, and then when I came along he cooked for all of us: bread every Sunday, tomato sauce from the garden, which he canned for the winter. Wonderful tarts filled with fruit from the pick-your-own orchard down the street. Roasts and braises and lasagnas on weekends when Aunt Kate and Jack came up, before everything fell apart between Daddy and them.

  But he never taught me. He never showed me his tricks. He never let me lay hands on the springy, elastic bread dough, never let me punch it down after it had risen. I have tried to make bread myself, but it never tastes as good as my father’s. It occurs to me that with every loaf I bake, I’m searching for him.

  He never shows.

  And as I press my forehead against the train’s cold glass windowpane, passing through the desolate landscape of a Connecticut winter, I find myself tearing up again and I feel the sorrow that is in me burgeon, like a hardy seed planted in deep, rich dirt, exploding open, pushing through. The dirt rolls and crumbles as the devastating flower of my disappointment pushes up, catching in my throat, making it tighten and ache. I am not thinking of my husband and the life he has gone on to have without me. I will grieve that more, I know, but for now Cam’s choices seem . . . almost irrelevant. He is gone, and on some deep level I know that this is as it should be. It is an older desertion I am thinking of. That cold, reticent man who only showed his love through the loaves of bread he baked for us each week. I try to believe it was enough, but in the end, it was only crumbs.