A Place at the Table: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  The eighteen months of alimony I received, plus my share of the profits from the sale of the Connecticut home, make for a small nest egg that won’t last long. Finding a full-time job was a necessity, and once again Aunt Kate stepped in, securing a place for me as a junior editor at PML, with a focus on what Kate calls literary cookbooks. Not just recipes, but the stories that go along with them. Like the story that accompanies Bobby’s recipe for his grandmother’s pound cake, how she sold ten a week for years, tithing the profits and saving the rest, which she eventually gave to Bobby, so he could move to New York and try to be free.

  I am lucky to have the job. I enjoy the work. I wish I were paid more.

  • • •

  I think of what Daddy said, in his rueful way, about winning the prestigious award for advances he made in genetic research. That all it cost was everything. I think of how his words apply to me. How there has been a steady burning away of all I once knew: my marriage, my financial stability, even my whiteness. I am no longer white, exactly, but what of being black can I claim? What of being black can my daughters claim? What of being black do we really know? What is it to be black if you were raised white in Connecticut? And yet a part of me always knew. A part of me always knew that something didn’t quite add up in our family, that something was off. But the adults all around me whispered, “Shhh, shhh, shhh. Everything is fine.” All the while Daddy smeared zinc oxide on me all summer, insisted I wear long-sleeved shirts at the beach. All the while my hair curled and kinked, and a small cut on my arm blossomed into a raised scar, which I now know is a keloid, common to African-Americans, one of the reasons black girls’ ears are often pierced early, since keloid scarring is much less likely to occur before puberty.

  My own body knew my identity long before I ever did.

  • • •

  I have started going to church with Bobby. Cradle Baptist that he is, he has not been able to give up God completely, which is a blessing for me, as he is watering the small seed of faith that sprouted after my divorce. We attend a small Episcopal church in my upper Upper West Side neighborhood, near the Hungarian Pastry Shop, where we often go after services for coffee and strudel. The priest at Church of the Epiphany, Father Cappey, is an old hippie who still wears his hair in a ponytail, even though it is now completely gray and he has a bald spot on the back of his head. Bobby would prefer we went to the more refined services at St. John the Divine, the grand cathedral only a few blocks away. But I begged for us to commit to this small, raggedy church, and Bobby tolerates it because he likes my company and the bread served at communion—offered to whoever wants to take of it—is homemade and sweet.

  I think I might have a little crush on Father Cappey, despite the ponytail. I love his exuberance, love how he will spontaneously shout, “Rejoice!” from the pulpit, in response to nothing more than being alive. How he is out on the streets nearly every morning, talking to the homeless, buying them cups of coffee, handing out sandwiches, directing them to shelters. There is nothing academic or removed about Father Cappey’s work, and yet his sermons are intellectually engaging. My favorite was his sermon on living in New York. How living in this teeming city, a city of a multitude of cultures, a city that is constantly shifting in its identity, provides us with a profound opportunity to embrace impermanence. How those of us who are renters are perhaps in a better position to recognize that our time here on earth is a borrowed gift. That it’s not ours to own, though it is ours to relish. That it’s still worth beautifying, even though it’s temporary. So paint the walls, plant tomatoes in pots on the fire escape, but don’t cling. Because eventually we will all be asked to move on.

  Today Bobby and I arrive late, slipping into a back pew during the first Scripture reading. Bobby and I are both a little hungover, having attended a dinner last night at Aunt Kate’s, which included multiple courses and multiple wine pairings. Jack had invited a friend of his to the dinner, a veteran war photographer, rugged and masculine, though twenty years my senior. Kate thought he might be a good match for me. I enjoyed his company but felt no romantic spark. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t linger through the evening, letting my wineglass be refilled again and again.

  And so this morning I have a dull headache and am fighting feelings of nausea. It is no small feat that Bobby and I made it to church at all, but somehow, attending services once a week has become a touchstone for me. It’s not about belief exactly. It’s about the ritual, the hymns, the communion. I lean my head back on the pew, shut my eyes. And then I notice a particular smell, almost like wet fur. It started drizzling as we arrived at the church. Perhaps Bobby’s sports jacket has wool in it and that is what I am smelling. Eyes still closed, I hear a fast panting, almost grotesque in its rapidity. I glance at Bobby, trying to figure out if the panting is coming from him. His eyes are also closed, head leaned back against the pew. He is hungover for sure, but breathing regularly.

  Where is the noise coming from? I look down the aisle at the people to the right of us. No one seems to be breathing particularly loudly, but somewhere there is panting. Strange. And then I hear a cat’s meow, and suddenly I am aware of the different energy all around. An energy that is low and close to the ground. And so I look down, and not a foot away from where my feet rest on the wooden floor is a beautiful golden retriever, head on its paws. I look to my left and the woman sitting in the pew across the aisle has a fat cat, white with gray markings, sitting on her lap, a leash attached to its collar. (A cat on a leash!)

  Now that I know what to look for, I realize there are animals everywhere. Up ahead are two parakeets in a wire cage; three pews down is a white bunny quivering in a woman’s lap. I lean into the aisle, bending so I can glimpse the bottoms of all of the pews. Dogs abound. And in the laps of fellow congregants are all kinds of creatures: a goldfish in a bowl, a snake in an aquarium, a ferret on a leash, a hamster in a cage, and even, perched on the shoulder of one man up front, a brown-and-white-speckled hen. Like my father’s pet chicken when he was a boy.

  I lean into Bobby and whisper, “Today must be the Blessing of the Animals!”

  “Of course,” he says. “They announced it last week.”

  I must not have been paying attention when the announcement was made. My whole life it seems I have not paid attention.

  I have never been to an animal blessing before. I’ve heard about them but could never quite conceive how all of those different creatures could abide each other’s company in such close quarters. Is it the spirit of this place that keeps this menagerie of animals in peaceful proximity to each other? Or perhaps it is simply that the people who bring their animals are responsible and only bring pets that can handle such stimulation.

  I am stimulated. I look and look and look, seeing more and more animals within the walls of this holy place. And then I hear a commotion behind me and I turn to see a single woman, a latecomer to the service, her silver hair pulled back by old-fashioned combs, wearing a black-ribbed turtleneck and cat eye glasses, accompanied by a bright blue peacock, a plume of soft feathers undulating behind. When they reach the very front pew, where the only empty seats remain, the bird pauses dead center and spreads his long plume, revealing a glorious fan many times the size of his body. Each outstretched feather is dotted with vibrant green eyes, a thousand eyes filling the church. I feel myself grow still as I take it all in, as I allow myself to feel wonder, awe. I am surrounded by heartbeats, some rapid, some slow. Some inside furry bodies, some inside winged ones, some inside our own imperfect skin.

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thanks to Claudia Ballard and Suzanne Gluck at William Morris Endeavor. Thanks also to Rebecca Oliver, who helped launch this project. Thank you to the Touchstone imprint at Simon & Schuster, led by the fabulous Stacy Creamer. Touchstone has been championing my books since the beginning of my career, and I am deeply grateful for their rock-solid support. Special thanks to the lovely Sally Kim. And thanks to the amazing and intrepid Marcia Burch. Thank you to my edit
or, Trish Todd. Trish, thank you for giving me permission to go dark and deep. This is not always something a nice southern lady wants to do, but it was something I needed to do. I wrote this book during the most challenging period of my life thus far, and I quite literally couldn’t have done it without your steady encouragement and faith in my ability.

  While Alice Stone is a fictitious character, the seeds of inspiration for such a formidable woman came from the late, great Edna Lewis, raised in a vibrant community of freed slaves near Charlottesville, Virginia, who later became chef at the now shuttered Café Nicholson, an eastside literary salon legendary for its food and famous clientele. Though Alice and Edna share some biographical details in common, early on in the writing of this novel Alice morphed into an original character with her own story to tell, a story that was born from my imagination, including the story of Alice’s relationship with her brother James.

  Bobby Banks in turn was inspired by several brave and wonderful men: a friend of my mother’s who spoke to me of growing up gay in Georgia in an era before “pride” was ever associated with homosexuality; a friend who came of age in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had the thrill of watching Balanchine’s dancers fly across the stage; and a southern friend who was indeed a Royal Ambassador—not to mention an Eagle Scout—and had to figure out which parts of his background to hold on to and which to jettison once he matured fully into his authentic self. And of course I was also inspired by the cross-generational, cross-racial friendship between Edna Lewis and the inordinately talented chef Scott Peacock. Scott Peacock has his own amazing story to tell about his relationship with Miss Lewis, but I hope my characters Alice and Bobby honor the transformative example that Scott and Edna set.

  I read so many books in preparation for writing this one. Hundreds. I want to point to a few that were especially helpful: Isabel Wilkerson’s stunning The Warmth of Other Suns taught me so much about the Great Migration and the brave souls who fled the Jim Crow South, not because they wanted to leave their homeland but because it was life-threateningly dangerous to stay. Edna Lewis’s The Taste of Country Cooking is an American treasure, chronicling the farming life of a community of freed slaves in Virginia, as is Scott Peacock and Edna Lewis’s collaborative effort, The Gift of Southern Cooking. Mary Cantwell’s Manhattan When I Was Young put me smack dab in the middle of New York at midcentury, as did the stunning collection of photographs by Karl Bissinger, The Luminous Years. Judith Jones’s The Tenth Muse showed me the culinary evolution America has gone through over the past sixty years. Charles Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis helped me better understand gay life in the 1980s, especially the devastation wrought by the AIDS epidemic and the pernicious silence surrounding it. There is a short film that has had a long-lasting influence on my life, Southern Family by Keith Wilson. Southern Family is Keith’s tribute to his grandma and great-grandma, both Southern Baptists from Georgia who refused to believe that their gay grandson was anything but precious in God’s eyes. I have never forgotten those two women’s shining examples of unconditional love, and I tried to pay a small tribute to them through Bobby Banks’s meemaw.

  I have an incredible community of writers in my life. Thanks to them all, especially Todd Johnson, who read parts of this novel along the way and offered great insight. Thank you to my tireless writing group, Sheri Joseph, Jessica Handler, Beth Gylys, and Peter McDade. Thanks to Patti Callahan Henry for her spirit, her warmth, and her talent. Thank you to Joshilyn Jackson, one of the most remarkable women I know—a damn fine writer with dead-on storytelling instincts who is also in possession of a big, generous, truthful heart. Joshilyn, I’m going to go all Baptist on you here and say that you are truly a blessing in my life.

  Alan, our paths have split, but I am grateful for the time we walked together. I am grateful, too, for the friends who stepped in and offered a safety net when I fell from the nest: Ellen Sinaiko in San Francisco; Katharine Roman, Kasey Foster, and Christa Thomas in New York; Peter and Bruce when I returned to Atlanta. Peter and Bruce were truly my guardian angels of divorce, offering me their light-filled carriage house for five months while I regrouped. Their beautiful little girls would visit me nearly every afternoon, insisting we don costume jewelry and have a dance party. Thank you, beautiful girls. You saved me. Thank you, also, to Sarah Enders, wise and wonderful friend. And thanks to Gannon Murphy, fellow seeker.

  Thank you to Johnny Nicholson for talking to me about the golden days of his café, and thank you, the Fales Library at NYU, for access to the Café Nicholson archives. I drafted a lot of this book in the main branch of the New York Public Library. What a beautiful space. Thank you to all who make public libraries happen. Thank you to Greg Johnson for his grandmother’s pound cake recipe. Thanks to Steven Soba, Frederick Brooks, and Addie “Louise” Williams for talking to me about their formative experiences—Steven’s in New York, Louise’s and Frederick’s in Georgia. Thank you to Brett Gadsden of Emory University for reading the prologue of this book and giving me invaluable suggestions on how to improve it. All mistakes are mine. Thank you also to my writing students at Emory and SCAD. It is a common trope for each generation to bemoan the one that follows, but working with y’all leads me to the opposite conclusion: The future looks bright.

  Thank you to my family, which constitutes a truly diverse mishmash of backgrounds and beliefs, yet can still gather in affection over pizza and beer (Coca-Cola for the teetotalers among us). Special thanks to my parents, Ruth and Tim White. Never have they said, “Shhh, shhh. Don’t say that,” about anything I’ve ever written, but instead have responded to my books with love and pride. Thank you to my sister Lauren Myracle for her boundless love and support. Thank you to Wendy Palmer Patterson, my lighthouse in the storm. And finally, thank you to Sam Redburn Reid for gracing me with the Sam-ness of Sam. You make me feel, to quote Kathryn Calder, safe, safe right here.

  MITTIE CUMBIE WADE’S SOUR CREAM POUND CAKE:

  I don’t have a meemaw known for her pound cake, but my friend Greg Johnson’s grandmother, Mittie Cumbie Wade of Cairo, Georgia, was famous for hers. Greg says his relatives would line up to get a slice of this cake anytime it was served. It makes a cake with a wonderfully moist crumb and a crackly, sugar-cookie-like crust.

  2 sticks unsalted butter*

  3 cups sugar

  6 eggs*

  1 teaspoon good quality vanilla extract

  Small pinch of salt (I use 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt to good effect)

  3 cups all-purpose flour (I sift it, though Greg says it’s not necessary)

  1/2 teaspoon baking soda

  1 cup sour cream*

  *Ingredients note: Before you get started, let your eggs and butter come to room temperature. This is crucial. I also premeasure the cup of sour cream and let it come to room temperature, too.

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

  2. Butter and flour a tube pan.

  3. In a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. I do this for a good 3 to 5 minutes, letting the mixture get light in color and fluffy.

  4. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after adding each one.

  5. Add the vanilla extract and a pinch of salt and mix.

  6. Stir together flour and baking soda, then add dry ingredients to wet ingredients just until it is about half mixed.

  7. Add sour cream. Mix until all ingredients are combined and batter looks creamy, but don’t overmix.

  8. Pour into the buttered and floured tube pan and bake on the center rack at 325°F for about 90 minutes. It may need to cook a little longer (5 minutes or so) in a gas oven.

  Variations:

  1. Add 1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract to the batter along with the vanilla.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest to the batter along with the vanilla.

  3. Seal cooked cake with a warm lemon-sugar glaze. (Really delicious!)

  Turn the page for

  A SOFT PLACE TO LAND

  Now available from Touchstone<
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  Chapter One

  Spring 1993

  When the call came from Grand View Flights in Arizona, Ruthie was in the kitchen fixing dinner while her grandmother—stepgrandmother, really, but she had served as Phil’s mother since he was three—was sitting in the sunporch, sipping from an Amaretto sour that Ruthie had prepared.

  Ruthie loved to prepare and serve food. She had been doing it since she was a little girl and would squish Cool Whip between Nilla wafers and invite Julia to a tea party. More often than not Julia said no, preferring that the time she spent with her little sister be on her own terms. Naomi would come to Ruthie’s tea parties, when she wasn’t too busy cleaning up around the house or fixing dinner. Some Saturdays when Naomi was off getting her nails done, Ruthie was able to talk her father into joining her, though he often acted bored, and would bring the newspaper to read while she poured tea and served him Nilla sandwiches.

  Mother Martha, who had a black maid named Gwen in Tennessee who prepared and served her meals, was delighted for Ruthie to fill Gwen’s place. Indeed, the meal Ruthie planned to serve—chicken breasts cooked in cream of mushroom soup, baked beef rice, and steamed broccoli with cheese—was not all that different from what Gwen would have fixed.

  Using the back of a wooden spoon, Ruthie spread the soup over the skinless chicken breasts, which she had arranged in an eight-inch-square Pyrex dish. The soup was so gelatinous that when Ruthie first plopped it out of the can a ringed indentation remained around its middle. Ruthie knew from past experience that once heated the soup would loosen and turn into a yummy sauce.