Emma's Table

by Philip Galanes

  “We’re here to see Mary Lane,” she said—the name of Benjamin’s nurse. “We were referred by Benjamin Blackman,” she added, smiling at the red-haired woman behind the reception desk.

  Today could be the day, she thought, sitting down to wait.

  Half an hour later, Tina wasn’t so sure.

  “She’d be pretty,” she heard an old woman mumble.

  The woman was sitting off by herself, but Tina heard her perfectly; she knew precisely where the woman was headed. She’d been down this road a thousand times before.

  “If she wasn’t so fat,” the old woman croaked, folding her bony arms like an indictment, and letting her voice grow louder as she went—as if daring mother and daughter to hear her.

  Tina looked down quickly. She saw Gracie in her big red coat, playing at her feet with the same old Mr. Potato Head set she always chose when they came here, poking a variety of candy-colored features—a yellow eye and a baby blue nose—onto a dull lump of plastic that was supposed to look like a potato.

  “Don’t you want to take your coat off, sweetie?”

  Gracie looked up at her, but Tina couldn’t tell whether she’d heard the old woman or not. Her face was as impassive as ever, like a costume mask from the five-and-dime, with its chubby cheeks of coated paper and heavy double chin, her eyes as mysterious to Tina as holes that were meant for peeking through.

  “Do I have to?” she asked, hugging herself and her puffy red coat.

  “Of course not,” Tina said. “I thought you might be hot.”

  She felt a stab of helplessness; she was never quite sure what the little girl was feeling. Still, Tina decided—right on the spot—that Gracie had heard the old woman. She was only pretending she hadn’t—her big red coat like a protective shield, keeping her safe from mean old women in waiting rooms and even meaner boys on macadam playgrounds.

  Tina glared at the old woman, sitting off by herself. For good reason, it turned out. She wasn’t reading a magazine or a newspaper, like the rest of them. The woman just sat there like a skinny old tuning fork, a torrent of mumbles humming out of her as if she were passing the time in lively conversation. Her face was puffy and purplish, and her skinny arms looked as brittle as fallen twigs. She was wearing an old black turtleneck, stretched to shapeless and faded to gray. But it was the belly that told the story, Tina thought—so big and bloated on her spindly frame, like a black warrior ant, all bulbous middle and threadlike limbs.

  Mean old drunk.

  She’d come in earlier with a younger woman and a pretty little girl in tow—her daughter and granddaughter, Tina supposed—not long after she and Gracie had arrived themselves. But the old woman’s kin had been ushered into one of the treatment rooms already, a smiling nurse to lead the way.

  No one ever smiles at us, Tina thought.

  They just sat there—mother and daughter—waiting patiently as Tina’s mood began to sink. She could feel the optimism leaching out of her like air from a punctured bicycle tire. She tried pretending it was the old woman’s fault—her mean comment like a handful of rusty nails, puncturing her straight through—but Tina knew better.

  In fact, she knew the old woman was right: Gracie would be pretty if she weren’t so fat; and once she made that single admission—her first of the morning—the others came at her hard and fast. It shocked her to tally up all the things she knew just then, the little truths raining down as hard as hailstones. She knew she’d been foolish to come to the clinic. Of course she did. No one there—including Benjamin’s nurse—was going to tell her anything she hadn’t heard a hundred times before—a thousand times, more likely. Tina knew something even more frightening: no matter what happened in those little treatment rooms that morning, no matter what the diagnosis or lack thereof, Gracie wouldn’t be shrinking down to normal anytime soon.

  There wasn’t any hope of that.

  Tina looked down at Gracie, playing still in her huge red coat.

  Soon that coat won’t be big enough, she thought, gripping the arms of her chair tight, her eyes darting up to the clock on the wall.

  Tina was running out of time, and she knew it.

  But time for what? she wanted to know.

  She saw the old woman trying to catch her eye.

  Tina wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of looking back, but she felt grateful to her all the same. The appearance of a real-life enemy—in flesh and blood—came as a small relief. She was only too happy to close the lid on her own box of demons, all nameless and shapeless and whirling so fast. The old woman was as welcome as a paperweight in a windy room; she kept Tina from blowing away.

  “That your little girl?” the woman asked—indifferent, in the end, to Tina’s refusal to meet her gaze. She didn’t sound so mean, at least, speaking in a normal tone of voice.

  Tina nodded, warily.

  “How old is she?” the woman asked, friendly sounding, smiling through crooked, yellow teeth.

  “Almost ten,” Tina told her, as nicely as she could manage. “Aren’t you, Gracie?” she said, placing her hands on her daughter’s puffy shoulders, pressing down through the marshmallow of coat to the fat girl beneath.

  Gracie nodded and looked back down at the plastic potato in her lap, its colorful features strewn all across the floor.

  The old woman looked away—satisfied, apparently.

  Tina was glad to have done her part, restoring peace to their little section of the waiting room. She looked back down at the magazine in her lap.

  “Looks a lot older than that,” she heard, a moment later.

  Tina snapped her head up fast.

  It was the old woman again—she was sure of it—returned to her nasty grumbling. She watched the woman wagging her head in hearty disapproval, a vicious smirk screwed onto rough lips.

  “God knows what she’s feeding her,” the woman croaked. “Fat little cow.”

  Tina was stunned.

  She felt her body surge with power, as if she were plugged into an electrical outlet, a million volts of energy careening through her.

  Hadn’t she just made up with the old woman?

  The room felt brighter, as if the wattage that was coursing through her had no option but to spill out into the room, blaring floodlights all around. Tina could see everything then: she saw herself—not two minutes before—forgiving the old woman, and tossing her annoyance down like a harmless match onto a pile of wet leaves. It may have smoldered for a second, but that match had gone out.

  So why this? she wondered.

  And why now—an even more aggressive insult, coming on the heels of their friendly chat?

  Tina’s body was blazing hot, as if she were the one who’d kept her parka on. She closed her eyes and took a deep, deep breath, wanting to tamp those flames back down, but she didn’t need to see the fire to know that it raged on still.

  What the hell am I going to do? she wondered.

  She looked back at the old woman, who was grinning like a loon.

  Tina saw that she was crazy. It helped her settle down.

  It’s not her fault, she tried to think.

  She didn’t believe it, not at first, but she felt the heat subsiding in spite of herself. It really wasn’t the old woman’s fault. She couldn’t have started a fire like that, no matter what kind of arsonist she might be.

  Tina’s body began cooling fast.

  She knew what everyone thought. Of course she did—the old woman in the waiting room, and the red-haired girl behind the desk. They all blamed her—Gracie’s teacher and Benjamin too.

  She could read their minds.

  She’d probably think the same thing herself, mulling over the unanimous vote against her. But it’s not true, she thought, wanting to shout it from the rooftops. She knew it wouldn’t do a bit of good.

  Tina would never convince a soul.

  Look at her, she thought, gazing down at Gracie again—the prime evidence against her, her daughter like a smoking gun. That mother must be force-feeding
her, she heard them think—like a poor veal calf in a tiny wire pen—not slicing up vegetables, the way she claimed.

  But I’m not, Tina insisted.

  She knew it was true, and even she had a hard time believing it. She kept gazing down at the girl in her big red parka, at that full-moon face with its features stretched out wide.

  Tina couldn’t stand what she saw.

  I’m not to blame, she thought.

  She couldn’t stand herself either, made up of selfishness and shame. She might not be to blame—not for the girl’s fat tummy or face—but she knew that her innocence was long gone too.

  BENJAMIN BEGAN TO GATHER UP HIS THINGS—AN armful of manila folders and a fresh legal pad, a mechanical pencil and a pen, just in case. He’d been waiting in his boss’s office for nearly ten minutes by then, in a creaky wooden chair whose wheels wouldn’t roll an inch—not on top of all that gray industrial carpeting anyway.

  Dick Spooner—the principal at PS 431—was chatting on the phone.

  Benjamin shifted in the guest chair and bumped his knee against the back of the metal desk. It made a hollow sound like a drumbeat.

  He’d made the appointment for nine o’clock, and he turned up at the stroke of the hour, all ready to go—but he found his boss on the telephone, with a coffee and bagel spread out in front of him, the New York Times, in sections, underneath. Spooner waved him in.

  Benjamin took a seat and waited.

  He let his eyes roam around the room.

  Spooner had worked in the public school system for nearly twenty-five years. And this is where you get, Benjamin thought: to a smallish office, with a respectably sized window, and a removable nameplate outside your door. “Principal,” it read—a nameplate without a name—just a plaque on a door in an elementary school in Queens.

  Maybe Cassy was right to turn up her nose?

  Spooner didn’t seem to notice him at all. He was much too busy quibbling over an apartment renovation he’d been planning for as long as Benjamin worked there.

  “That is not what we agreed,” he barked into the receiver.

  He was a middle-aged man who kept extra-fit.

  Benjamin watched him flex his biceps and admire it as he spoke. He pretended to be engaged with his file folders, as if he couldn’t hear a single word the older man was saying. He wanted to spare him the embarrassment.

  “In the master bath?” Spooner yelled.

  He didn’t sound embarrassed at all.

  Benjamin opened his folders, one by one, and began thumbing through the papers he’d organized so carefully, in reverse chronological order—punching three holes into the top of every page, pinning them down, safe and secure. He was only playacting though. He was entirely familiar with their contents already.

  Benjamin didn’t approve of personal calls at the office.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Spooner said, more softly then—fiddling with the ends of his navy blue tie, a pond’s worth of kelly green frogs embroidered on it. “That’s a big problem,” he said, his voice laced with something like sorrow.

  The change in tone reeled Benjamin in.

  He looked back at his boss with concern, in time to watch him turn away, placing his mouth on top of the receiver. “The dining room is so small,” he murmured—scarcely whispering his secret shame.

  Benjamin felt like a fool.

  He felt sorry for Spooner too. This was no racket for people who aspired to grandeur. He pictured the silvered mirrors in Emma’s dining room.

  Benjamin shifted forward in his seat, on the verge of standing up. Then he thought of the miserable dinner the night before. I suppose I can wait a little longer, he decided.

  He couldn’t afford to alienate both of his bosses.

  Benjamin felt responsible for Cassy’s rude behavior at dinner. He must have made her jealous. That’s how it worked with his sister anyway—if he made any kind of claim on their mother’s attention.

  He waited a few minutes more, but Spooner’s call seemed no more likely to end. That’s it, he thought, standing up to leave.

  His boss frowned back in annoyance and squinting confusion, as if he had no earthly idea why Benjamin would choose such an inopportune moment to stand. He shook his head briskly, and lifted his free hand, nearly touching thumb to forefinger: not much longer.

  Benjamin sat down again.

  He thought of Gracie—the reason he was there—of that cold afternoon, a month or so back, when he’d arranged to pick her up at her classroom.

  He’d poked his head inside, interrupting a lesson in long division.

  “Get your coat,” he whispered, when Gracie came to the door.

  She seemed confused, but went along with him all the same, plucking a bright red parka from the cloakroom at the back. Her classmates looked blind with boredom as the teacher scribbled on the blackboard, little explosions of chalk dust all around her.

  He hoped Gracie would like the reprieve.

  “Remember to carry the two,” he heard, as Gracie joined him in the hall.

  “Do you mind if we take a little walk?” he asked, starting down the long corridor. Gracie looked back at him, more warily than before.

  “Do we have to?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “We don’t have to, but I’d like to get a little fresh air—if you wouldn’t mind too much?”

  Gracie supposed she didn’t mind. “Not too much,” she told him.

  He smiled at her.

  They put their coats on, and Benjamin pushed down on the silver bar that opened the school’s back door, a gust of wintry air rushing in to meet them. Gracie looked up at him again, hopeful that the frigid weather might cause him to reconsider, but Benjamin soldiered on, guiding her back to the dangerous playground—where a small gang of boys routinely bullied her, pushing her onto the pavement and making squealing animal noises. And for some strange reason, none that Benjamin could work out anyway, Gracie refused to admit that it happened.

  He wondered what else she was denying.

  Benjamin made sure they’d be alone on the playground when he brought her outside, all the other students tucked safely into their classrooms—no one to bother her, for a change. He thought it might be useful.

  “Don’t you have a hat?” he asked, looking down at her bare head.

  It was a bitter afternoon.

  She shook her head. “I left it in my desk,” she said.

  Benjamin took the hat from his own head and handed it to the girl. “No cooties,” he said, smiling down at her. “Word of honor.”

  She took the hat from his hands. “It’s so soft,” she said, pulling it over the crown of her head—a navy cashmere watch cap, a Christmas gift from Emma.

  “It looks nice on you,” he told her.

  Gracie smiled up shyly.

  They began walking around the playground.

  The girl kept to its perimeter as if she might be safer there, beside the chain-link fence on two sides, and the school itself on the others. Benjamin let her choose the path and set the pace. She walked very slowly.

  “Did you forget your mittens too?” he asked.

  She nodded. “But I can use my pockets,” she said, as if to keep him from taking off his gloves.

  “We won’t stay out long,” he told her. “I just needed a little break.”

  Gracie looked as if she didn’t understand.

  “A break from what?” she asked.

  “Don’t you ever want to get away from all the people inside?” he said, canting his head back to the redbrick building. “Or is that just me?” he asked.

  Gracie smiled up at him again.

  “Sometimes,” she said, softly.

  They walked in silence for a few moments more. Benjamin heard their shoes touching down on the pavement, their leather soles clapping in perfect time.

  “I like it out here,” he told her. “When it’s quiet like this.”

  Gracie mulled it over. “Me too,” she said, nodding her agreem
ent. It looked like she meant it. They walked a few steps more, and the girl continued, unprompted: “I don’t like it at all during recess.”

  Benjamin kept on walking.

  “Why’s that?” he asked eventually, without any sense of urgency.

  Gracie didn’t reply right away.

  “It’s too…,” she started, but then her voice trailed off, as if she didn’t know how to finish.

  Benjamin was careful to keep looking straight ahead. He suspected she was on the verge of a painful admission, an acknowledgment—for the first time—of the terrible bullying she suffered there.

  “Too many kids,” she said finally.

  Benjamin nodded his head. He supposed she was right.

  When he looked down at her again, he saw she’d only put one hand in a coat pocket. Her other was exposed to the air, looking red and raw. Her left pocket was filled with something already. He saw it bulging.

  “Want me to hold what’s in your pocket?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  “So you can put your hand inside?” he offered.

  She shook her head. Benjamin decided not to press it.

  Once they’d made two complete laps around the playground, he ferried her back inside. That’s enough for one day, he thought. He knew that working with Gracie was going to take time. They took their coats off when they walked into the building. He headed them back in the direction of her classroom.

  “Can I go to the bathroom first?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll wait for you right here.”

  He took the coat from her hands. It was Benjamin’s responsibility to return the girl safely to her classroom. Gracie walked into the girls’ room, and Benjamin opened her coat pocket as soon as she did. It was filled with golden coins—just a little bigger than quarters—the kind that had discs of cheap chocolate inside.

  He knew that Gracie’s mother worked for an outfit that made these candy coins. He’d seen it in the girl’s file.

  He remembered the box of gingersnaps, tucked away in Gracie’s knapsack, and the girl’s halfhearted denial that her mother had given them to her.

  Benjamin shook his head. Strike two, he thought.