Emma's Table

by Philip Galanes

  “Oh,” she cried, nearly bumping into Bobby when she pushed though the swinging service door—its useless little porthole window about six inches too low for her, or anyone other than a smallish child, ever to see through properly.

  “Sorry, dear,” he said.

  He held his palm flat against the far side of the door. He wouldn’t let her push another inch until he’d gotten himself out of its swinging path.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

  She hadn’t heard him come back in.

  Emma watched him gazing at the dining table. It was beautifully set, of course, but she knew Bobby well enough to know that he wouldn’t care about that. She watched a mystified look take hold of his handsome face. He wasn’t worried about serving pieces, or whether she’d remembered the bread plates. Emma didn’t have the faintest idea what Bobby was doing in the dining room then, but she knew with certainty that they were on different errands there.

  “Who’s coming to dinner?” he asked finally, smiling like a child—her answer the toy surprise waiting for him at the bottom of a cereal box.

  “It’s Sunday,” Emma said—to remind him.

  But Bobby looked puzzled still. She gazed at his strong features—the deep-set eyes and Roman nose; she watched him worrying his lower lip with his two front teeth. He had no idea.

  “Cassy,” she told him, only slightly surprised by the chill in her voice. “Your daughter comes to dinner on Sunday nights.” Emma’s surprise led quickly to hurt, which was just a brief pit stop on the road to anger.

  “Honestly!” she huffed.

  She didn’t want to make too big a fuss about it, but Cassy had been coming to dinner every Sunday night since Bobby moved back in.

  Emma needed to change the subject.

  She began surveying the table instead, counting the number of settings she’d laid. But she couldn’t quite turn the page. Look at him, she thought, taking her husband in—that luxurious mane of curly hair.

  Does he even care? she wondered.

  She hoped he did.

  Maybe he was confused? She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Emma checked the napkins then, scouting for wrinkles. She liked a crisp fold. Checking the table always made her feel better.

  But how do you forget a thing like that, she wondered—the same dinner, with the same people, every single week? She felt her anger rising up like a tide, its undertow of sadness eddying right beneath the surface.

  He probably has to cancel a date with one of his little cupcakes, she thought, her anger seeping out.

  Emma had a strong desire to speak again, though she had nothing particular to say, nothing that Bobby wouldn’t have heard a thousand times before. She only wanted the feeling of something sharp passing her lips.

  Not now, she decided, dragging herself back from the edge of speech, gripping her anger and drawing it close—a silent bride with a fiery bouquet.

  Emma felt proud of her tact.

  Back in the old days, she used to give way to cyclonic temper tantrums, earth-changing eruptions she hoped might force her husband’s hand. Why can’t he give me the respect I deserve? That’s all Emma wanted to know. It was like the title track of a well-worn record album with her. She knew its flip side just as well: I should have left him first. But Emma didn’t want to leave Bobby—not at all. She was delighted to have her husband back, and she knew very well that no material changes in him would be forthcoming.

  So what was the use of a temper tantrum?

  She didn’t even let herself fantasize about them anymore. All they ever did was swing the power over to his side of the ledger. They never got her what she wanted—which was ironic really, because she wanted so little from him.

  Emma wasn’t one of those wives looking for a soul mate.

  God, no, she thought.

  The prospect of all that talking made her seriously tired. She could hardly bear to have women friends, in fact, for all the constant sharing they required.

  No, Emma had always wanted something quite different from her husband, and from their marriage: a thorough immersion in each other’s daily lives. It might not sound like much, but it sounded perfect to her. Calendars synched up, and appointments doubly confirmed, whereabouts forever known. That was all she’d ever wanted—for him to know about her auctions on Saturday morning, and the family dinner on Sunday night.

  Is that too much to ask, she wondered, for intertwined minutiae, no messiness at all?

  Of course, Emma never asked for anything—not outright anyway. For her, expressing need of any stripe, especially one so naked as that, would be worse than whistling out on the street, or letting her shoes clap loud against the pavement when she walked.

  She looked up from the dining table.

  It was no use. She was too distracted to check the table settings properly. She’d have to come back later. She looked over at Bobby again; he didn’t look chastened in the least.

  That’s the problem, she thought, feeling so defeated, as if she’d waged a ten years’ war without speaking a single word. He didn’t feel guilty.

  Emma knew that wasn’t the whole problem. Once upon a time, Bobby had wanted a different kind of marriage with her too: all freewheeling and sexy and close. He wanted to talk about their troubles, and he wanted regular sex. He wanted to be there for her—like a cheesy love song come to life. She supposed it was romantic, in a way, but Emma couldn’t have a marriage like that; it would be much too much for her. She wouldn’t even try, and since the details of her engagement calendar didn’t interest him in the least, no one was getting what they wanted in the Sutton household.

  And the damned thing still won’t die, she thought, nearly smiling as she shook her head.

  “You look nice,” Bobby told her.

  Emma laughed at the ridiculousness of it: missing all her cues, as usual—the scowling face and steely voice, her erect spine, all gone to waste. She looked down at her gray wool slacks and the matching cashmere sweater, all plain and perfect.

  And I don’t look any nicer than usual, she thought, as a matter of fact.

  “Thank you,” she replied, smiling back at him.

  “I’m going to go in to finish the paper,” Bobby said. “Before Cassy gets here,” he added, walking out.

  Emma didn’t believe him for a second. He probably has to cancel whichever chippie he has lined up for tonight, she thought. She knew she was being irrational. They spent their evenings together.

  “Damn tarts,” she spat, in spite of her strong suspicion that there weren’t any.

  She felt frustrated and foolish both, but sometimes she just had to vent.

  Her gaze landed on a sterling wine coaster at the far end of the table. “The wine!” she cried, clapping her hands and charging like a bull through the swinging service door. She’d forgotten the wine for the table and the backup bottles for the sideboard. She bent down to the wine cooler beneath the counter and brought out three bottles of her favorite red.

  It’s lucky he made me so mad, she thought.

  Otherwise, she might have forgotten the wine.

  Emma opened a bottle and poured herself a glass, then sat down at the kitchen island. She knew it was foolish, but she really meant it: she’d rather be angry than forget to decant the wine.

  She took a sip, and wrinkled up her nose. Needs to breathe, she thought, standing up again.

  Emma opened the second bottle, but not the third. She only wanted that one close by, in case she needed it later. She tasted the wine again. It was better already. She surveyed her immaculate kitchen, wanting to ferret out any problems in advance. But everything was just the way she liked it, gleaming with the shine of religious scrubbing. You’d certainly never know that anyone was cooking, she thought proudly—all the pans and pots and measuring cups cleaned and stowed the moment she was finished with them.

  Emma sat down again and took a long sip of wine.

  Sometimes she wished she were the type to cry.


  “WE DON’T HAVE TO GO,” MELORA SAID. “NOT IF you’re feeling pressed for time.” They were standing in front of the Whitney Museum.

  Now she tells me, Benjamin thought.

  She must have seen him checking his watch—which he’d only done a thousand times. “We’re here now,” he said, with a cheerful sort of resignation. “We might as well go inside.”

  Benjamin rarely held a grudge—or not for long anyway. He was much too busy running toward the next hurdle to carry much baggage from the ones that came before. “And I want to see those pictures you were telling me about,” he said, smiling at Melora when he caught her eye.

  He just wanted everyone to be happy—with him, mostly.

  Benjamin had half an hour still before he needed to be at Emma’s place, just a few short blocks away. There was plenty of time to look at the photography exhibit. He could swing through in a jiffy, then hustle over to Emma’s apartment to make his weekly status report, and to help with any last-minute dinner preparations.

  Or offer his help, at least. She never actually required it.

  Melora walked into the museum, and Benjamin followed, close on her heels. They showed their outdated college IDs to the ancient man at the entry desk. Students were exempt from paying for admission, and neither of them could afford the twenty-dollar charge.

  That’s nearly an hour of work, he thought—before taxes.

  The old man waved them past, his eyes too blurry with age or boredom to notice that their cards were ten years out of date. Benjamin looked at his picture before he put it away. The boy on the card didn’t look like his son exactly—more like a kid brother, he thought, or some kind of nephew. He and Melora rode the escalator, hand in hand—up one flight, and then another—two grifters floating up to the third floor, to a photo gallery that was off to the back.

  It was a long room, thirty feet, at least, and scarcely ten feet wide—like an oversized shoe box, or a roomy grave. Not a window in sight, just twenty-five photographs, hanging cheek by jowl: a straight line of three-foot squares running all around the room, and no one there but them.

  I’ll be out of here in no time, he thought.

  The pictures were all black and white—sepia-tinted and simply framed. Even from a distance, Benjamin could see how nostalgic they were. He felt their soft focus before he made it out with his eyes. They were pictures of children—idealized, beautiful children—all towheaded and sun-kissed and slim. They were naked, for the most part, just one child to a frame, and their long, rangy limbs were captured in halfhearted pursuit: a small boy pulling lightly at a slingshot, a little girl dragging listlessly on a candy cigarette. It may have been the same boy, he thought—the naked back of him anyway—skipping stones on a fuzzy lake; an older girl, with bare buds of breasts, sitting pretty on a smooth velvet couch.

  The pictures were meant to be provocative. Benjamin could see that right away. The photographer—the children’s mother—had cast them in a vaguely sexual light, her gaze a little hungrier than a mother’s ought to be. A couple of the pictures showed the children mildly injured—a beautiful black eye on one, the graceful arc of a long scratch mark down the arm of another.

  Benjamin dismissed the “danger” out of hand. Nothing bad would happen to these lovely children, he knew that, nothing worse than posing for these pictures anyway, and discovering, at some later date, what whopping advantage their mother took.

  The children looked forthrightly at the camera.

  Why wouldn’t they? he wondered. What could these beautiful specimens have to hide?

  Benjamin looked at Melora. He wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t like the pictures at all. There are dangers enough in the world, he thought, without staging artificial ones. He knew, too, that he didn’t like the photographer either—a mother subjecting her children to pictures like this; but what surprised him even more was his suspicion that he didn’t like the children themselves—so handsome and perfect and confidently entitled to their mother’s gaze.

  “Aren’t they great?” Melora said.

  Benjamin thought of Gracie.

  He remembered the first time he’d seen her, standing at his office door—as wide as a penny that had been left out on the train tracks, flattened to twice its normal size by the force of a locomotive roaring through.

  He motioned her into his office.

  One of the third-grade teachers at Benjamin’s school—Alice Watson—had come to him just after Christmas, a month or so before. She had a student, she said, who was terribly fat, and who was being taunted by a wolf pack of fifth-grade boys. She’d seen it happen herself, on the playground at recess the day before, and she’d heard it was happening in the lunchroom too. The boys made squealing animal noises at the girl, and pushed her roughly onto the ground.

  He could picture their glittering eyes.

  Alice put a stop to it, of course, but when she spoke to the little girl about it, only wanting to comfort her really, Gracie denied that anything had happened. Alice told her she’d seen it happening, but the girl wouldn’t budge.

  It didn’t, she insisted.

  Benjamin met with Gracie the very next day.

  He asked Alice to send her down to him at recess. That was the perfect time, he thought—killing two birds with one stone: taking care of the girl and keeping her off the playground.

  She was huge, he saw, when she appeared at the door.

  “Hi, Gracie,” he said, in a friendly voice—smiling at the girl, but not too much. Benjamin didn’t like to come on strong. “My name’s Mr. Blackman,” he told her.

  “I know that,” she said softly, checking her impulse to smile back at him. Still, he thought he saw one peeking through.

  He asked her into his office and ushered her to a small table he’d set up in the corner, just two or three children’s chairs scattered all around it.

  They each took one.

  “Do you know why Miss Watson wanted me to see you?” he asked.

  Gracie shook her head, but Benjamin didn’t believe her. He could see the budding shame on her face like small pink blossoms on an apple tree. She knew what he was talking about. She was a wise child, he could see that too.

  “She told me that some older boys were mean to you on the playground.”

  “They weren’t,” Gracie told him—“not to me.” She looked away from him then, casting her eyes down as she lied.

  “Really?” he asked, as gently as he could.

  “They didn’t do anything,” she said, sounding determined.

  Benjamin watched her fat hands gripping the sides of her backpack, the purple kitten on her T-shirt pulled wider than any kitten ought to be. He knew it would be no use to push. He didn’t want to back her into a corner, after all.

  He thought carefully about what he ought to say next.

  “That’s good,” he told her, finally.

  Gracie looked up at him again. She hadn’t expected that. He saw the confusion he’d wrought on her face.

  “I’m glad they weren’t mean to you,” he said.

  He watched her confusion turn to relief.

  Benjamin was glad for that, at least. He was going to have to take things slowly with her. He stood up from his little chair and walked to the supply closet on the far side of his desk. He found a bin of colored pencils inside—all loose and dull and pointing in every direction. He began humming softly. Then he found a handheld pencil sharpener, and the empty box the colored pencils came in.

  He brought them all back to the table with him, certain that Gracie was watching him close. He was careful to keep his eyes off the girl.

  He sat down again, smiling lightly as he went about his work. He chose a pencil from the plastic bin—bright apple green. He sharpened it carefully, twisting the pencil in the plastic sharpener, pulling it out slowly to admire his handiwork—all apple green sharpness where the dull tip had been. He laid the newly sharpened pencil in the empty pencil box, placing it in one of the carved-out gullies where the pe
ncils were meant to lie.

  Only forty-nine to go, he thought, looking at all the gullies that remained.

  Benjamin inhaled deeply and let the breath out slow.

  He picked another pencil—this one tomato red—and sharpened it like the one before. He handed it to Gracie when he was finished, without a word. She looked at the pencil for a moment, and then back up at him.

  Benjamin was prepared to wait for as long as it took.

  Finally, she laid the red pencil into another of the empty gullies, right next to the apple green.

  They sharpened a few more pencils, working in silence all the while.

  “I don’t really care about those boys,” he said, picking up another pencil, watching intently as the sharpener did its work—like peeling an apple with a shiny silver blade. He marveled at the long trail of skin that dangled down.

  He peeked back at the girl, on a slightly higher alert.

  “I don’t,” he said. It had the benefit of being true. Benjamin really didn’t care about the mean boys, not for the moment anyway. “Getting them in trouble is Miss Watson’s job.”

  Gracie extended her hand to him, waiting for Benjamin to give her the pencil, so she could do her job and put it away.

  “I only care about you,” he said.

  He didn’t let her take the lavender pencil until his eyes met hers. He hoped she believed him.

  Benjamin handed Gracie the pencil sharpener then.

  “Which one next?” he asked, pointing to the plastic bin in front of them, letting Gracie choose. She peeked in and picked out a bright pink pencil—the color of Pepto-Bismol. He watched her sharpen it carefully, furrowing her brow as she pushed the pencil in, twirling the sharpener all around it. She pulled it out and examined it with pride, then handed it to Benjamin, who laid it safely away.

  “I can help you,” he said. “If you want me to.”

  Gracie looked at him cautiously. She knew he wasn’t talking about the pencils anymore; he could see that. The girl was quiet for longer than he would have expected—thirty seconds, at least.