Emma's Table

by Philip Galanes

  “Acne and blotchy patches,” he read, in tall black letters.

  He was mesmerized by the man’s strange hairline. It looked as if it had been drawn on with a coarse orange marker. “Skin cancers and lesions,” he read, in slightly smaller letters, on the next line down.

  Emma had told him that Melora’s name sounded vaguely cancerous to her, the morning after he’d first introduced them, on the sidewalk in front of her building, about three months before. “That’s melanoma,” he’d replied, angrily enough, but he knew she was a little right too.

  Emma had been after him to bring the girl to dinner ever since, but Benjamin knew from experience—with his own rough mother—that it wasn’t out of any Welcome Wagon instinct. Emma wanted to biopsy the girl and put her cells under a microscope. He’d managed to skirt the invitation, on Melora’s behalf, up until now anyway—concocting flimsy excuses and prior engagements for his elusive girlfriend—but Emma wasn’t one to relent.

  “Bring her,” she told him, “on Sunday night.”

  He’d never considered bringing Melora to meet his own mother, ensconced in her pretty Cape on the tip of Cape Cod, and she’d never requested the pleasure either. Still, he wondered at his knack for turning mothers up. He seemed to find them everywhere he went.

  Like lice, he thought.

  Benjamin gazed at Melora, sitting on the subway bench beside him. She looked back at him, with just the hint of a smile on her beautiful face, a little hopeful maybe. He’d told her that Emma was wild about her, of course—after their chance meeting on the street—but she was no fool. She’d rolled her eyes and shaken her head. “Like I care,” she told him.

  But how could you not? he wondered.

  Benjamin had begun to suspect that his time with Melora was drawing to a close—the pleasant phase of it anyway. They’d been going out for just over six months. He’d met her on a ticket line at the Film Forum, when Emma was finishing up her house arrest. He’d had more time for matinees back then. They were the only two adults waiting to see the three o’clock show of The Yearling. He’d chatted her up while they waited in line, and managed to sit near her in the theater. He’d spent almost as much time gazing at her strong profile—entirely suitable for Mount Rushmore—as he had marveling at the ice water that ran through Jane Wyman’s veins, refusing to let her son keep that lovely pet deer.

  Benjamin asked for her number after the show.

  And Melora beguiled him at the start—with her yoga-teacher charm and live-and-let-live air. She didn’t seem at all the kind of girl who’d be bossing him around. Benjamin had enough experience in that department; he knew it didn’t work for him. He had a real knack for pleasing women—for figuring out what they wanted, and for giving it to them too. It gave him tremendous pleasure to be that man. But Melora needed to take things one step further, always insisting on one thing or another—the restaurant, the movie, the taxi route even. He gave her what she asked for still, but he felt the pleasure of it stripped away. He could feel a strong resentment building up inside him, like dust accumulating on a window ledge.

  He didn’t complain about it. That would be too hard for him, but he suspected, as he sat there, that if he’d been able to elude Emma’s invitation for a little longer, skate by for just a few more weeks, he might have avoided having to bring Melora around for good.

  Benjamin looked away from the advertising placard.

  He hadn’t breathed a word since Twenty-third Street—nearly three stops now. He didn’t want to be rude, but he didn’t feel like dreaming up conversation-starters either. He flashed a glance in Melora’s direction, then looked away fast.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, looking back at her again. “I wish we were on our own tonight,” he said. “I’m feeling a little tired.”

  “It’s no wonder,” she replied. “With all the caffeine you’ve had today.”

  Caffeine was one of Melora’s hot buttons. It stunned him how often she could work the subject in. “Your metabolism must be like a roller coaster,” she told him.

  Benjamin regretted having to bring her along.

  He’d informed Emma, over the phone, about her strict vegan diet—no meat, no fish, no poultry, no cheese.

  “Eggs?” she’d asked, hopefully—picturing God-knows-what.

  “Nope,” he replied. “No eggs or dairy either.”

  He’d wanted to avoid any difficulty at the table. Melora wasn’t the type to take things onto her plate politely and push them around. But he heard the long pause on Emma’s end of the line. He knew his girlfriend didn’t leave her room for much in the way of culinary magic. All she ever seemed to eat was brown rice and some kind of mushy, orange vegetable that he didn’t recognize from any visit he’d ever made to a grocery store. Root vegetables, she called them.

  Melora was going on about caffeine still.

  “You don’t say?” he said, in mock fascination. He’d heard it all a million times before.

  “But it’s true,” she insisted, refusing to give in. “You’d be amazed at the improvement in your energy level,” she said, “if you could just cut out the caffeine and white sugar.”

  The subway lurched to a stop at Fiftieth Street, and Benjamin’s stomach lurched along with it. He’d forgotten to tell Emma that she wouldn’t eat sugar either.

  He shook his head and hoped for the best.

  His stomach felt a little nervous to him, as if a shot of brown booze—bourbon maybe, or scotch—were swirling around inside him, burning away as the subway barreled over ancient tracks and took its turns too fast.

  At the end of every weekend, before Benjamin was finished with his duties, Emma required a status report on all his various projects: tracking down that rare silver orchid in the swamps of Florida, and booking her Christmas holiday with frequent-flier miles alone; supervising the wallpaper hanger in the guest bedrooms, and checking the references of the new housekeeper. He’d be embarrassed to admit it, but it was his favorite part of the job—hands down. He prepared himself for it extravagantly, with beautifully organized lists that he wrote out longhand, each page flowing neatly to the next, all indexed and cross-referenced and updated to the very latest state-of-play.

  Benjamin liked his moment in the sun.

  Emma might ask a million thoughtful questions, or barely grunt at him in reply. He’d nearly learned to take her moods in stride, and for the most part, he knew that she was pleased with his work. Never more so, he suspected, than when she could cross an item off her list, nearly stabbing the paper through with the sharp nib of her pen, a wild flourish to signify completion. Emma liked to get things done. It was a welcome change for him too—working on jobs that could be finished, just by pressing forward and following up. Such a relief, he thought, compared with the intractable problems he wrestled all week in his work at school: the fractured families and financial struggles, the knots of unemployment and abuse, so many people at the breaking point. No amount of list-making ever seemed to improve things down there, and Benjamin rarely got to cross a single child off his list.

  He reached for Melora’s hand. He found himself wanting to.

  Melora was always supportive of his work at school—interested in his cases, and the career he’d chosen for himself. He could tell that she was proud of him, and he didn’t take that lightly. In a city of investment bankers, he knew that finding a beautiful woman who approved of social work was something of a coup. He rested the soft knot of their fingers against his churning stomach.

  He felt the soothing relief of light pressure right away.

  In the past few months, since Emma had come home from prison, Benjamin’s Sunday presentations had grown to include dinner. He was slightly mystified by the development. He even had his own place at the table, as if he were a member of the family. He hated those dinners.

  Whatever flush of pride he felt, first sitting down to dine, was long gone by now. Emma’s strange indifference to him, followed by
sudden bursts of interest, had progressed beyond confusing straight to tiresome. Worse, Benjamin was forced to suffer her daughter’s fury at his inclusion, and Emma’s strange ex-husband too, so jovial and irrelevant all at once. They were as bad as dinners with his own family—except that with Emma, attendance was mandatory.

  He felt a flash of worry that Melora might become a regular guest. He didn’t see how he could possibly handle Emma and Melora both, not simultaneously anyway.

  Benjamin turned to her in his seat. He caught her studying him beneath the glare of the car’s fluorescent lights.

  “I have an idea,” she said, her eyes lighting up as she wrinkled her nose.

  Benjamin’s heart sank. Melora thought she looked cute this way, with the nose-wrinkling and all. It usually signaled her wanting something.

  “Let’s go to the Whitney,” she said—the art museum in Emma’s neighborhood. “It’s practically next door,” she added. “And I’d love to show you those Sally Mann photographs.”

  Benjamin checked his watch.

  He had plenty of time before his meeting with Emma, so he couldn’t say that he was running late. He couldn’t tell her that he needed more time to prepare either; he’d already told her he was ready. Still, a museum visit was about the last thing on earth he wanted.

  He wondered if he could tell her about his nervous stomach, roiling like a tumbler of poisonous whiskey.

  She’d probably want him to be honest.

  Then she could go to the Whitney on her own, or they could arrange to visit some other time. But just then, Benjamin noticed that Melora had applied a light coat of pink lipstick in honor of the occasion: dinner with Emma, her boyfriend’s boss. It was so faint he really had to look to find it. Melora never wore makeup, and Benjamin thought his heart might break—at her small gesture of support, and all the outsized forces that worked against it. He wanted to tell her that the pretty lipstick wouldn’t make a jot of difference where they were going—about as useful as tying a bright red bow on a curly lamb that was already on the truck to the slaughterhouse.

  He didn’t say anything of the kind.

  He just nodded his head and agreed to the museum visit—wanting to please her, on the one hand, and feeling resentful, on the other.

  “Great,” she said, sitting a little taller on the subway bench beside him.

  Look at her, Benjamin thought, with annoyance flaring through him, like ancient newspaper taking fire from a match. Sitting tall as a mountain in that stupid winter coat of hers, trying to intimidate me with perfect posture.

  He used to think that she was showing off, sitting ramrod straight like that—the way ballet dancers walked around on the street, with all that phony turnout, their legs swinging high from wide-open hips: look at me, they screamed, look at me. He felt a surge of anger rising up, but he tamped it down fast. He made a quick excuse instead: She is a yoga teacher, after all. He tried to convince himself that her perfectly straight back—her neck and chest lifted high—weren’t meant as any criticism of him, or indifference to him either.

  It’s just the way she sits, he thought.

  Benjamin had so much experience with demanding women. They’d been washed and combed into his head since he was a boy—turning to him briefly and bathing him in light, only to turn away again for much longer stretches, leaving him alone in the dark. He might have been better off, he thought, if they never looked at him in the first place.

  Benjamin gazed down at the floor, focusing on the hem of Melora’s strange winter coat; it came down in front like two toast points. He was sure that Emma would have something to say about that.

  “Benny?” she said, a little insistently, the nickname dwarfed by a strict note in her voice.

  Benjamin slumped a little lower on the hard orange bench, like a scarecrow in ratty overalls, no spine at all once it’s taken down from those tall wooden pilings. He leaned into Melora like a child, taking shelter beneath her flaring shoulders and that strong, straight back, unfurled so wide.

  “Sit up,” she told him, as curt as a mother. “You’ll hurt your back slouching that way.”

  Benjamin recognized the tone; he knew he’d put it there himself.

  Still, he didn’t do what he was told for a change. It wasn’t easy for him either. He had to will himself to keep slumping down, to disregard the command of a determined woman.

  A LITTLE LATER THAT AFTERNOON, EMMA PADDED into her brand-new kitchen, the kidskin soles of her soft Belgian loafers scarcely whispering against the wide planks of the wooden floor.

  The room was all done up in navy and white: shiny blue appliances with brushed chrome trim, and matte white cupboards with blue porcelain pulls. Emma didn’t begin to notice her pretty view of Central Park, or the winter sun that was fading back. She was much too distracted for that.

  All I need is a little white sailor’s cap, she thought, wincing as she studied her kitchen, which suddenly looked ridiculously nautical to her.

  She grew nearly panicked over the color scheme.

  Emma liked to get out in front of criticism, to nail herself hard before anyone else could.

  She’d only had the apartment for six months; she bought it when she finished her house arrest. Ready for a change, she supposed, but it turned out that Emma didn’t know much about changing course or reversing direction. What she knew was empire-building and muscling through—digging out Grand Canyons with ordinary kitchen spoons. So she shuffled her real estate instead, selling the sprawling place in Cold Spring Harbor. No more grounds or outbuildings for the tarnished queen of interior design, no more chicken coops either. She came to New York City and bought this place instead—a swank twelve-room affair on the corner of Park and Seventy-first, all crisp casement windows and burnished oak paneling.

  The blue was definitely a mistake.

  Emma looked all around her, as if her immaculate kitchen were filled with toxic waste. She hated errors. She always had, of course—who didn’t?—but lately she’d come to fear them too, as if an inferior paint job, or the wrong kitchen tile, would betray some terrible lack inside her. Back in the old days, before her legal woes, Emma had been much better at pushing straight past her worries. She’d choose a tile and move along; she had faith in herself. But she was at sixes and sevens lately, almost herself again, but not—like an egg with a shadowy crack running down its shell, just a little more prone to danger and rough handling of every stripe, from the frontal attacks in the media to the rolling eyes of total strangers. She seemed to have lost her knack for muscling through.

  She’d tried it that way, she supposed.

  She saw where it led. In her case, to federal prison and an avalanche of nasty press, a warehouse full of canceled contracts and a near-perfect catalog of every tag-sale line she’d ever cut, a virtual roll call of every cherubic assistant she’d ever reduced to tears.

  Emma wanted to find a different way—she needed to, really—but she hadn’t the vaguest idea where to look.

  She walked to her fancy Miele oven—a prototype model that wasn’t even in production yet, its slippery blue enamel like a fresh coat of paint. She pushed a small silver button that illuminated the inside and peered in at her pork loin, roasting plump on a silvery wire rack, an enamel pan positioned beneath it to catch the fatty drippings.

  Emma felt prickly heat at the nape of her neck.

  “Old habits,” she grumbled, turning quickly from the oven.

  She massaged the back of her neck and felt the tingling dissipate like a pat of butter in a warm sauté pan—all wavy edges at first, then spreading out wide.

  I’m just being ridiculous now, she thought, knitting her lips together and turning back to her Sunday roast. These oven lights had been around forever, for twenty-five years at least, and turning them on didn’t disturb the meat at all. Still, Emma had been down this road often enough to know that rational thinking didn’t scratch the surface of the way she really felt.

  “Leave the meat alone, Emmy.” That’
s what her mother always said, back in those far-flung days before oven lights, scolding her daughter for opening that heavy door once too often. “Let it cook already, will you?”

  But somehow Emma could never leave a roasting pan alone, or a cake pan either, for that matter. Something in her needed to open the oven door wide, to supervise her handiwork in the light of day—on a minute-by-minute basis sometimes.

  It wasn’t so complicated really: nothing she cooked ever came out the same way twice, no matter how scrupulous she was about repeating the recipe—every step exactly like the last time, that last time precisely like the time before. Her results were phenomenal, of course; anyone would be thrilled to give a dinner like Emma Sutton—except for Emma Sutton, it turned out. She wanted things more dependably perfect than they ever turned out to be: the roast cooked to medium rare after precisely eighteen minutes a pound, the potatoes browned to golden after just so many minutes more. But cooking wasn’t like that, she’d found, so she was obliged to look and look and look.

  Of course, oven lights should have changed all that—letting her look all she liked without troubling the meat at all.

  Well, they didn’t, she thought, a little harshly.

  She turned away from her roasting pork and took stock of her exquisite kitchen—as if to verify she really was a million miles and thirty years from her mother’s little Cape in North Adams, Massachusetts—that squeaky old oven door.

  She wasn’t satisfied at all.

  “That blue,” she groaned, the failure vibrating deep within her. Nothing she ever made, or built—no matter how wonderful to the rest of the world—ever seemed to satisfy her. She could never seem to make things turn out right.