Emma's Table

by Philip Galanes

  She hummed that it was.

  “What’s the matter with—” But he stopped himself in plenty of time, checking his impulse to ask what was wrong with the one they had.

  Emma squinted back at him, waiting for his conclusion.

  He smiled at her instead, silent as a stone.

  What difference does it make, he thought, as long as the damn thing isn’t mirrored? Bobby despised the old mirrors she’d installed on the dining room walls. It was like a carnival fun house, those wavy distortions all freckled with black. He kept working the puzzle of cutlery, its pieces strewn across the defunct table.

  “The auction you went to last weekend?” he asked.

  Emma nodded back at him, her eyes a little wider.

  “With Benjamin?” he added, grinning slyly.

  She was surprised that he could marshal so much detail, but Bobby had always seen more than he’d let on.

  “That’s right,” she replied, smiling as she nodded.

  “Tell me about it,” he said, starting in on the spoons—his brow furrowed and his back a little tight. He was concentrating on his work and feigning interest in the table too—so many new activities all at once.

  “It’s Nakashima,” she said.

  He heard the trace of thrill in her voice.

  Bobby knew that Nakashima was a Japanese designer; he could even summon up a vague image of a chunky-looking thing—the kind of table that looked as if the tree trunk were built right in.

  “That’s wonderful,” he said. “I know you’ve been looking for one.”

  Emma smiled at him again.

  Bobby was as determined to accommodate her new table as she was to tolerate his clumsy help with the settings—not to mention his egregious behavior, earlier in the week. They were a pair of red foxes, it turned out, only recently spared from that steely trap, a little bruised and timid, but sticking together all the same.

  It was less than a week since Emma had discovered his secret apartment.

  Bobby couldn’t fathom that he was standing there still. He was sure that he’d destroyed their fledgling reconciliation, that it had been dashed into as many pieces as a porcelain teapot slipped from soapy hands.

  But Emma had gone a different way instead.

  He’d been frightened to come home that night—the Monday before—once he knew that Emma knew. So he’d killed time at the secret building, hunting for the super and a spare set of keys.

  I’ll be needing them, he’d thought.

  But the super had gone home for the night, and the surly doorman told him he’d have to wait until after the dinner rush, so Bobby headed back to Emma’s place, bracing himself for the very worst. He pictured china flying and drinks splashing wet, his suitcase packed and ready to go, but he found his ex-wife in a calmer state: her face drained of color, and looking every one of her sixty-two years. Emma was tired and hurt, not raging at all. She looked as if she’d walked all the way home from his secret building—via mainland China perhaps.

  “Are you in this?” she asked him, when he walked in the door. Her voice was quiet. “Are you in this or not?” she asked. “That’s all I need to know.”

  It was a simple question, he supposed, but he studied her carefully, as if she might have buried a card trick deep inside it. Was she really leaving the answer up to him? He stared at her intently, as if to catch her sleight of hand, to see for himself how the trick was done, but all he saw was her navy ensemble, and a fair bit of sadness around the eyes.

  “It’s a yes-or-no question,” she said.

  “Yes,” he told her. “Definitely, yes.” He meant it.

  Emma nodded back carefully, as if she were contemplating a roast in the oven. “So what’s this all about then?” she asked, opening her fist and producing the secret keys.

  Bobby looked down at his feet. There was nothing to do but apologize—which he did, again and again.

  “I’m in this,” he swore, more persuasively than before.

  Emma looked a little skeptical, but she kept nodding.

  “It’s just that I need a little room sometimes,” he told her.

  “We have fourteen of them here,” she replied briskly.

  “And you’ve filled up every one of them,” he said, more aggrieved than he would have expected. He was surprised to find his anger at such an inopportune moment.

  Bobby was hurt at how little she’d taken him into account.

  “I’m here too,” he said.

  She nodded back as if she understood; he thought it was unlikely though. “You’re here too,” she mumbled, repeating it back as if she were trying to remember it for a later date.

  “I know I should have said something,” he told her. “But…”

  “But what?” she asked. She didn’t sound angry; she only wanted to know.

  “I didn’t think you’d care,” he said.

  But Emma cared plenty, and she proved it too: the very next day, she had her driver ferry them to the West Side. They walked the secret rooms of Bobby’s apartment as if they were tourists—or better yet, shoppers, choosing which pieces to ship across town.

  “Anything you want,” she said. “Within reason.”

  Bobby smiled at that.

  Emma complimented his eye, and she deferred to him too, only sticking yellow Post-its onto everything he liked. They were solicitous of each other—like children at a scary movie, keeping each other close.

  “Are you sure?” he asked hesitantly, circling the kilim-covered chair.

  “Absolutely,” she said, sounding certain.

  It was as big a gesture as she’d ever made, and by the time he got home from the office that night, the pieces were already sprinkled through the apartment—like a greatest hits album of Bobby’s secret life, all his furniture married up with hers.

  And now she was letting him set the table.

  Would wonders never cease?

  “I know who’s coming to dinner,” he said, a teasing note in his voice.

  “You do?” she said, playing along.

  “Well, it is Sunday night, after all,” he told her. “What more is there to know?”

  AS BENJAMIN CLIMBED THE STAIRS FROM THE SUBWAY and onto the street, he watched the sun sinking low in the afternoon sky. He’d only been underground for twenty minutes, riding the train uptown again. But there’s no arguing with a sunset, he supposed. He saw trails of orange and gold streaking through the sky, leading straight to the sun that hovered off in the west, burning orange and red through the gaps in Central Park.

  He felt nostalgic for the weekend already.

  It was colder now. He pulled a brown woolen cap over the crown of his head. He was on his way to Emma’s place to make his Sunday presentation and join the Suttons for dinner.

  Melora had pleaded a previous engagement.

  He’d left her at home, watching The Virgin Queen on television.

  He screwed up his courage and walked into Emma’s building, smiling at the liveried doorman in bright white gloves and brassy buttons as big as golden doorknobs. The old man greeted him like he always did, clapping him hard on the back and crooning a line or two from some topical song.

  “Don’t change a hair for me,” he sang, “not if you care for me.”

  Benjamin paused a moment, as if he were thinking hard, but he knew right away it was a hopeless case. He never knew the doorman’s songs.

  “Stay, little Valentine,” the doorman sang, even louder, “stay.”

  “Sorry,” Benjamin said, shaking his head. “You got me again.”

  “Jesus,” the old man moaned. “Don’t you know any songs at all?”

  Benjamin shrugged his shoulders and walked sheepishly on. Everyone knew where he was headed. He found a younger man in the elevator, dressed just like the first. This one’s job was to press the button for Emma’s floor, and keep him company on the ride upstairs.

  He couldn’t be trusted to go alone.

  He let himself into Emma’s place through the back
door, just like always, walking straight into her big white kitchen, all clean and clear and swabbed down with disinfectant—those bright white tiles as ready for an emergency appendectomy as any bowl of corn flakes.

  He smelled an herb roasting in the oven.

  Rosemary, he thought, or maybe thyme.

  Benjamin turned up at four thirty every Sunday, biding his time until Emma came to collect him. Sometimes he rehearsed his weekly report, but he didn’t need to today. He was thoroughly prepared already. He wasn’t much interested in the rest of the apartment: her high-tech library and the countless formal rooms, all that Bauhaus like so much upholstered currency—only traded at auctions, but never sat in at all.

  Benjamin preferred the kitchen by far.

  He’d always preferred kitchens, ever since he was a boy; and he was hopeful still of stumbling onto the kitchen of his dreams: a snug little room no bigger than a minute, with flowery paper on the walls and steamy windows from the everlasting warmth—a batch of muffins in the oven maybe, or a pot of soup on the boil.

  It must have been from a movie, or some television show.

  He could picture the nook where the family took its cozy suppers. It wasn’t about architecture though; he knew that.

  Benjamin resigned himself to Emma’s breakfast table—a chilly sea of white Carrera marble in the corner of the room.

  He found Tina Santiago sitting on the navy banquette.

  “Whoa!” he cried.

  Tina rolled her eyes as if he’d made a bad joke.

  Benjamin couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d found his own mother sitting there—or June Cleaver, raised up from the dead. “Jesus, Tina,” he said. “What are you doing here?!”

  She couldn’t possibly have any business with Emma, could she?

  “Are you here for me?” he asked.

  “Why would I be here for you?” she replied.

  He heard the trace of backbone in her voice; he saw it in the set of her mouth too, as if she’d applied a steely coat of lipstick. Benjamin was confused, and impressed by her nerve. He felt more than a little guilty at the sight of her: he’d thought so often of her yellow papers since their difficult meeting at the beginning of the week—Tina’s battered food log. They came back to him, over and over; he couldn’t get them out of his eyes, those six wrinkled pages with their pale blue lines.

  He’d begun to second-guess himself almost as soon as he’d gotten home that night. Tina was clearly the likeliest source of Gracie’s junk food—he wasn’t discounting that—but he’d behaved as if it were a foregone conclusion. He owed his clients better than that—the benefit of the doubt, at least.

  Benjamin knew he’d fallen down on the job.

  He’d let himself become identified with Gracie, turning the girl into a chubby little version of himself, and Tina into his own mother—her attention fixed firmly on herself. His compassion had evaporated like a puddle of water in high desert air. But Tina was suffering too, her scrupulous food log should have made that plain, and his proposed solution—shuttling her off to a shrink with a sharp elbow of blame—had no doubt hurt her even more.

  He pledged to make it up to her.

  “Are you here to see Emma?” he asked her kindly.

  “Didn’t she tell you?” Tina replied.

  “Tell me what?” he said. “Who?”

  He heard a laugh track tumbling out of the maid’s room next door, all saccharine and canned. He peeked in, expecting to find the housekeeper, but he saw Gracie instead, sitting cross-legged in an easy chair, watching cartoons in a shiny yellow dress. She looked like a taffeta piñata, stuffed to bursting with sweets.

  Nothing was making any sense.

  “I work here now,” Tina announced.

  Benjamin wondered if she was lying. But there she was, as plain as day. She’d never have made it past Emma’s building security if it wasn’t true.

  But doesn’t she work at a candy factory? he thought.

  He was sure she did, that he’d read it in Gracie’s file.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked finally, staring at her as if he were lost in the forest and she a vaguely familiar elm.

  “Didn’t she tell you I was coming?” Tina asked.

  He shook his head from side to side.

  But he’d heard the ring of truth in her voice. Benjamin didn’t say another word; he waited for Tina to explain.

  “After our last meeting,” she told him, her eyes flashing at the memory of it, “I was crawling out of my skin. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Benjamin nodded his head.

  He could picture that. He hadn’t been nice to her at all.

  “It was after hours,” she told him. “So I called your emergency number, the one you wrote on the back of your card. I had to speak to you.”

  Benjamin could understand that too, but it still didn’t account for her turning up here.

  “I called four or five times,” she said, “and finally a woman picked up. She said she was your boss.”

  But Spooner’s my boss, he thought.

  It took him a moment longer to understand: it was Emma—his tiny cell phone in her capable hands. He remembered the night she’d found it.

  “I told her everything,” she said, “and she offered to meet us the next day.” Just my luck, he thought. “I couldn’t believe it was Emma Sutton,” she told him, cracking a smile, in spite of herself. “And she believed me,” Tina said. “She knew I didn’t do anything to Gracie.”

  She paused then—waiting for him to jump in.

  “I didn’t, you know,” she said, looking straight at him.

  “I know,” he mumbled—so softly that she might not have heard him.

  The expression in her eyes was the final argument in her favor. No one could fake despair like that. “I know,” he repeated, a little louder that time.

  Better safe than sorry, he decided. He didn’t want to hurt her any more than he already had.

  “She promised to get to the bottom of it,” Tina said.

  He heard the blind faith in her voice. He didn’t blame her. If he were in her place, he might feel just the same.

  If anyone can fix a problem, he thought, it’s Emma.

  He gazed across the table at her—trim and pretty in a black sweater, her wavy hair long and loose. It was as if he hadn’t seen her since that very first day at the principal’s office, when he tried to pick her up on that long wooden bench.

  He smiled at the thought of how differently all this might have turned out.

  “She gave me a job too,” Tina said.

  “As what?” he asked. Now she was hitting close to home.

  “Her assistant,” she said, smiling up at him.

  My job, Benjamin thought, the resignation weighing him down. He’d been sacked already by the sound of things. His feelings were hurt, of course, but he couldn’t help seeing the justice of it.

  “I gave notice at the plant already,” she told him.

  Benjamin looked across the room, gazing deep into Emma’s fancy oven—a light glowing softly from the inside. It looked like a long tunnel to him—like a passage to China, or the end of the world. He wished he could crawl inside it.

  “Congratulations,” he said, trying for cheerful. He wouldn’t go down as a poor loser, at least.

  “And she’s made an appointment for us already,” Tina said. “With the best endocrinologist in town.” She rolled right past him, like a rubber ball down a red dirt road. “He’s going to run every test there is,” she added, her pure excitement shining through. “And if that doesn’t work,” she said, “Emma promised that we’ll keep going until we find the thing that does.”

  Benjamin walked to the sink for a glass of water.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said, letting the cool water run over his fingers. He looked down the drain as he spoke.

  “You think?” she asked, dripping with sarcasm.

  “I know you won’t believe it,” he said, turning back to her
, “but I was only trying to help.”

  Tina’s look confirmed that he was right: she didn’t believe him at all.

  Benjamin stayed right where he was—in watery exile at the stainless steel sink. This kitchen was Tina’s kingdom now. They looked each other up and down, neither of them knowing quite what to do—not until Gracie settled the question for them, walking in with a big crystal bowl in her hands. It was filled up with candy.

  “Mr. Blackman!” she said, walking straight up to him and presenting the bowl. “The reds are sweet,” she explained, “and the greens are sour.”

  Benjamin saw her fingertips dyed to match—sweet and sour both.

  He took a green one.

  “Where did you get those?” Tina asked sharply.

  “From the lady,” Gracie said, sounding a little vague. She looked down at her patent leather shoes.

  “Put them back where you found them,” Tina said. “Please.”

  Gracie pouted her way out of the room. “And no more candy,” Tina added, turning back to Benjamin and blushing fiercely.

  “I didn’t give them to her,” she said, looking guilty all over again.

  “I know that,” he told her.

  “You do?” she asked, a little surprised.

  “Of course I do,” he said. He watched the relief washing down her face. He studied it for a moment longer. “I made a real hash of it with Gracie,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.”

  Tina walked to the oven and peeked inside.

  He felt a pang of nostalgia: he’d probably never set foot in this kitchen again.

  “We’re a tough case,” Tina told him, gazing into the oven still. “I know that.”

  “Who isn’t?” Benjamin replied.

  She smiled a little.

  “I don’t know what scares me more,” Tina said, turning around to face him then. “The prospect of your beating up on me still, or your leaving us alone.”

  She leaned up against Emma’s fancy blue oven.

  “I don’t know how to help her,” she admitted.

  Benjamin couldn’t believe he’d ever doubted her. He saw then—as plain as day—that Tina felt guilty because she couldn’t fix her daughter’s problems, not because she’d caused them.

  “Stick with Emma,” he told her. “She’ll get you the help you need.”