The Oakdale Dinner Club

by Kim Moritsugu

  There was a short silence during which Kate and Tom searched in vain for any sign of the bones, then Alice said, “Did I start lecturing there? Sorry. It’s a bad habit of mine. I’m a teacher.”

  Kate said, “Where do you teach?”

  “I’ve been teaching in England for the last twenty years, but I start at NYU this fall.”

  “Not in architecture, by any chance?” That was Tom.

  “No. Freshman Ancient History, heavy on the Greek and Roman.”

  “May we ask what happened to the railroad line hereabouts?”

  “It disappeared sometime in the nineteen forties, after the lines were consolidated and service to Oakdale was discontinued. Though you can still find some old railway ties around, tucked away in people’s yards.” Alice looked back at the stroller. “It’s not like Lavinia to sleep this long. I’ll go check on her.”

  She stepped away, and Kate said to Tom, “I take it back. Coming here today is more interesting than it would have been to sit at home.”

  Alice wheeled the stroller over beside them and sat down again. “She’s still breathing.”

  Tom said, “So this building is a relic of Oakdale’s former glory?”

  “The only relic remaining. You should see the photographs in the county archives of what Main Street used to look like, in its heyday. There was a big town hall and a fancy hotel — the locals used to dress up and promenade down the street on Sunday afternoons.”

  “Until the decline.”

  “Since then, Oakdale’s become not much more than a bedroom community for New York City.”

  Tom said, “The building would be glorious, restored.”

  “It would, but the local historical society can’t afford it,” Alice said. “Neither can the county. I’ve checked.”

  Tom walked to the glass door, looked out at the street. “There are ways, of course.”

  “Tom,” Kate said.

  Alice looked at her. “What does he mean?”

  “Tom develops real estate.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “No. Friends of ours from Philadelphia have moved into the neighbourhood. We came out to visit them.”

  “And how would building condos help restore the station?”

  Tom turned around. “Not condos. Or only a few. In the existing houses on Main Street, the untenanted ones. We could save the façades, spruce them up, gut the insides, turn them into townhouses for young professionals who yearn for the simpler life and are willing to work from home, or commute. We could install a few small businesses along there too, and fix up the retail strip. A proper coffee shop would be a good addition, a bank branch, a business supply store with mailboxes and photocopying. The small grocery we passed could be converted into a gourmet fresh market. And there should be a real bakery.” He gave the untouched doughnut a dirty look. “A bakery that sells goods made from scratch, not from a food-service mix.

  “We could divert a portion of the profits from the sale of the condos and the retail spaces to restore this building completely, right down to the tile floor. We’d get rid of that false ceiling and open up the space — it must have been twenty feet high originally. We’d find antique train station benches and fixtures, and bring in plasterers to rebuild the walls and recreate hand-carved mouldings. We’d install a new clock in the tower. And when the building was brought back to its former grandeur, we’d find a use for it. It wouldn’t be an empty museum, but a living thing. A bookstore, perhaps. Is there a bookstore hereabouts? Of course not. A library? No? Well then, a library.”

  Kate spoke up. “The Tom Gagliardi Library?”

  Tom said to Alice, “Kate is telling me, in her gracious way, that I am building castles in the air. I have that tendency. But I was merely trying to demonstrate that it can be done. There are ways.”

  Lavinia started to stir in the stroller, and Alice bent down to untie her. Before she did, Lavinia began screaming, full blast. Zero to loud in two seconds. Alice picked her up, jiggled her up and down, and shouted over the din to Kate, “Could you hand me that receiving blanket there, in the diaper bag side pocket? Thanks. Oh, Lavinia, for god’s sake.”

  Alice threw the blanket over her shoulder, adjusted her clothing underneath, and directed Lavinia’s wailing head to her breast, a move which silenced her cries and replaced them with sucking noises.

  Kate stood up. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Alice. Thank you for telling us about Oakdale.”

  “I liked meeting you guys, too. Not my everyday experience around here.”

  “Happy to oblige,” Tom said.

  “And let me know if your air castles turn into concrete ones, will you? Because if they do, I’d like to be involved.”

  In the car on the way to Hallie’s house, Tom said, “That woman was laughing at me.”

  Kate smiled. “I liked her.”

  “Do you think all the inhabitants are of her ilk? Erudite university lecturers? Or are you sticking to your golf-playing, scotch-swilling theory?”

  “If Alice belongs to a country club, I’m a religious Catholic.”

  After a leisurely drive around the area, Kate and Tom came to Hallie and Sam’s stately Federal-style house, parked in front of the wide, expensively landscaped lot, and went inside. They had drinks, admired the two Orenstein girls until they were led away by a nanny, and sat down to eat in the dining room.

  “I’m pleased to report,” Hallie said, from the head of the table, “that I cooked nothing you see before you. Sam grilled the fish and the vegetables, the nanny made the potatoes, and I bought the salad ready-made. I know Tom doesn’t approve, but we can’t all be master chefs, now can we, Kate?”

  “It’s all delicious,” Kate said. “The snapper is cooked perfectly, Sam.”

  “Thank you. I’ve rediscovered the satisfactions of cooking since I sold the business.”

  Kate said to Hallie, “And the house looks fantastic, everything in its place and all settled in. How did you do it?”

  “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you’re willing to write a cheque. And having Sam here all day to take deliveries and deal with the tradesmen makes everything so much easier.” Hallie smiled prettily at Sam when she said this, and drank her wine, and Kate wondered if she was the only person present who heard the resentment in Hallie’s voice.

  “How are you adjusting to being at home?” Tom asked Sam. “How’s the writing going?”

  “I haven’t done any writing since a month before the move.”

  “I’m sure you’ll establish a routine now that you’re settled,” Kate said.

  “I hope so.”

  Hallie was up refilling their wine glasses already, though Kate had hardly touched hers. “So what do you two think of Oakdale?” Hallie said. “Isn’t it charming?”

  Kate exchanged a glance with Tom. “You might as well tell them.”

  “Tell us what?”

  “About my plan for Main Street,” Tom had said.

  And so had Tom’s Oakdale involvement — what Kate was starting to think of as his own mid-life crisis — begun.

  5

  September 2010

  Mary Ann had hoped she would run into Sam Orenstein when he was dropping his girls off at school, so she could casually invite him to the dinner club as if his presence weren’t essential to its success. But she hadn’t seen him, so she had to call him. Now, when the kitchen was tidied up after dinner and the kids were occupied upstairs. Now, when Bob wasn’t home. Now now.

  She picked up the phone, put a smile on her face so there’d be one in her voice, and dialled the Orenstein house. The phone rang three times, then went to voicemail, to Sam’s relaxed voice on the outgoing message. There was the beep. Go. “Hi there, it’s Mary Ann Gray calling, to invite you to the first meeting of a small dinner club I’m starting up — a glorified potluck, essentially, but we’d love you to be part of it. The first meeting’s at my place, on September 25th. Come alone — no spouse, no kids. Call me to confi
rm, and we can discuss menu. Talk to you soon.” Whew. That hadn’t been so bad. She’d sounded cheerful and innocent, not like someone with designs on a married man.

  When Sam had sold Samosa King, his little food company made good, and decided to try his hand at writing a mystery, he hadn’t considered himself a stay-at-home dad. When the family moved from Philadelphia to Oakdale, and Hallie took the high-profile job at Morris Communications, Sam still thought of himself as a working man — one who wrote out of a home office.

  At the beginning, to perpetrate this myth, Sam tried to keep regular office hours in his study, and he employed a full-time nanny/housekeeper whom he spent most of the day avoiding. She cared for the girls when they weren’t barging into his office after school and demanding he settle an argument, give a hug, or help with some homework.

  After that nanny quit to go work for an employer who wasn’t home all day, Sam told Hallie he didn’t want to hire another full-time person. Instead, he took over meal preparation, and child-ferrying and minding duties. He still had plenty of time to write while the girls were in school, and a cleaning woman came in twice a week to clean and do laundry during the hours when Sam was out walking Chutney the family dog, or buying groceries.

  He hadn’t intended to become a househusband, yet now he was on a joshing basis with the other moms and some of the nannies, he arranged play dates, he was up on little girls’ fashion, TV shows, and music of choice, and he had a good grasp of playground gossip.

  On the day Jessica and Annabelle had their first evening gymnastics class of the fall season, Sam picked them up from school at three-thirty, fed them dinner, calmed Annabelle’s pre-class jitters, readied their gym clothes, cleaned up the kitchen, and made it to the community center in good time to cadge a seat on the sidelines with the other moms. With the other parents.

  When he brought the girls home an hour and half later, Hallie had come home from work and was sitting in the family room, still dressed in her suit. She had a glass of wine in her hand, the TV was tuned to CNBC, and Chutney was asleep at her feet.

  Annabelle sat down next to Hallie and leaned against her. “Mommy, Laura Wright was mean to me today at school, and I don’t want to invite her to my birthday party anymore, but Daddy says I have to.”

  Sam straightened up the shoes and bags thrown down in the front hall while Hallie kissed and hugged the girls and listened to their stories about the day, and said most of the right things. When they’d gone upstairs to play on their computers, Hallie caught Sam’s eye and said, “Another meeting was added to my itinerary in L.A. I have to leave tomorrow instead of Wednesday.”

  “But Jessica’s soccer league starts tomorrow.”

  “What can I do?”

  Sam and Hallie didn’t have a chance to talk further until after Sam had supervised the girls’ bedtime rituals and said goodnight. By then Hallie was on her second glass of wine and nibbling on her usual dinner fare — a breadstick or a carrot stick or a celery stick (anything but his stick, Sam thought). And other than complaints about a too-long meeting she’d attended that afternoon, and some details about her upcoming trip, the only other news she had was that she’d taken a phone message from Mary Ann Gray, who had invited her to join a dinner club.

  Sam was on his hands and knees on the floor searching for the TV remote when Hallie told him this. “She invited you?” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t she? She’s probably tired of all the soccer moms around here.”

  Sam must have spent too much time with the kids lately, because his first thought was that Mary Ann was supposed to be his friend.

  “I checked my schedule and I should be home that night,” Hallie said. “So I just may attend this occasion, take a walk on the dull side.”

  Sam gave up on the remote. His back hurt from bending over. Unless that ache was a prick of annoyance. From what? Some kind of childish jealousy of Hallie?

  Hallie stood up. “I’m going to review my notes for my meetings tomorrow. Go to bed without me if you’re tired.”

  “Don’t go yet. Stay awhile and talk to me.”

  She sat back down. “About what?”

  “I came up with a new idea for my novel today.”

  Chutney made a loud snuffling noise from where he lay asleep on the rug next to Sam.

  “Feel like a brandy?” Hallie said.

  “Sure.”

  She walked over to the bar they had set up on the far side of the room. “What’s your new idea?”

  “I’m still going with the restaurant cook main character, the guy who finds the body in the diner where he works, but —”

  “Are you still setting the story in Philadelphia?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I think New York is a more exciting locale.”

  It wasn’t enough that he’d agreed to her demand that the family move to the New York area when he’d sold his business, he was supposed to set his novel here, too? “A million novels are set in New York. And I know Philly better.”

  She brought over his glass of brandy, took a swallow of hers before she sat down. “Keep talking.”

  “Remember the hero’s back story? That he’d taken a year off from college and gone to live in Nepal and teach English?” Similar to what Sam had done, when he was young.

  Hallie didn’t answer, just stared into her brandy glass.

  “Do you remember his back story, or not?”

  “Yes, I remember. I just said I remembered.”

  “No, you didn’t. You didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes, I did. You didn’t hear me.”

  Oh. Maybe. “I was thinking today I might have him stay in southeast Asia after the teaching gig and spend some time in an ashram in India, in thrall to a maharishi. Did you ever know anyone like that? I did, in college. This guy went away one summer and came back a total convert, dressed head-to-toe in orange clothes. Which could be great background for the terrible secret that drives the mystery, don’t you think?”

  Hallie yawned. “What’s the terrible secret, again?”

  “I haven’t decided. But it’s definitely related to the samosa special that Simon —”

  “Who’s Simon?”

  “He’s the main character, the cook.”

  “I thought his name was Raoul.”

  “I changed it to Simon. But I still think the whole story should hinge on the samosa special that he offers on Fridays, off the menu, to impress the pretty young medical resident who drops in for breakfast after her all-night shifts at the hospital.”

  “Do you know anything about medical residents? About what they do, I mean?”

  “Not really, but I might change her profession. Yeah, I probably will.”

  Hallie finished her brandy. “What’s your title this week?”

  “I’m debating between Murder in the Kitchen and Samosa Special. But what do you think about the maharishi idea?”

  “It’s not bad. Adds some cultural colour, makes your story more original. Are you going to work on it tonight?”

  “I thought I might.” He walked over to his desk, powered on his laptop. He’d stay up for a couple of hours and try for eight new pages. Or six. Four, even.

  “Goodnight, then. That brandy really took the edge off. I think I’ll pack and go to bed, review my notes on the plane.” She got up, padded barefoot down the hallway, placed her glass in the kitchen sink, and left Sam alone with Chutney and the blank page on his computer screen.

  Melina Pappas had grown up in the ranch-house subdivision part of Oakdale. She’d attended school with kids from the older, richer part, and befriended some, but she hadn’t truly entered their world until she was fourteen and began babysitting for Mrs. Gray. Perky supermom Mrs. Gray, who liked her babysitters to be friendly and playful with children, and alert and competent with adults. Who said, the first time Melina came over, “Please call me Mary Ann.”

  Melina helped Kayla with homework, played video or computer games with Griffin, knew to leave Josh — who
was only a year younger than her, and awkwardly so — alone. She served the kids meals like supermarket barbecued chicken, cut up, with mashed potatoes and frozen peas, ate a little herself, loaded the dishwasher after, rinsed the dishes first, wiped the kitchen table clean, and took neat, accurate phone messages.

  With skills like these, Melina became a trusted and valued employee who kept babysitting the Gray kids even after she turned sixteen and could get a real job. And only partly because Mary Ann paid her double the going babysitting rate and gave her a hefty annual Christmas bonus. There was also the benefit that after the kids had gone to bed, Melina could do her homework in peace and quiet on an enormous dining table in an enormous dining room. And it helped that Mary Ann hadn’t freaked out the day Melina showed up with her right eyebrow pierced.

  Mary Ann had touched her own eyebrow. “Did it hurt?”

  Melina wavered. She already regretted the piercing but she wouldn’t be able to admit that for a while. Not after the scene her parents had made. “It hurt a little at the actual moment of piercing,” she said. “But it doesn’t hurt now.”

  Mary Ann came closer, examined the black-beaded ring. “A much better place for a ring than the nose, I’d say. I’ve never understood how people with nose rings deal with snot.”

  “I know. Or a tongue ring. How would you eat?”

  Kayla came into the room then, and Mary Ann said, “Look, Kayla, see what Melina’s done to her eyebrow? Isn’t it cute?”

  That kind of attitude made Mary Ann Melina’s favourite babysitting mom, apart from Alice Maeda. Alice’s daughter, Lavinia, was on the stubborn side, but looking after her was worth the effort, if only to get a taste of Alice’s life, a life different from the Oakdale norm.

  To start with, like Melina, Alice had a mixed ethnic background, being half-Asian and half-white. Unlike Melina’s father though, she wasn’t obsessed with her parents’ cultures. Melina’s father had never taken the family to Greece, but he made everyone shut up when anything Greece-related came on the news, and had insisted Melina learn Greek folk dancing when she was little. Melina doubted there’d be any heritage-related folk dancing in Lavinia’s future, unless Lavinia demanded it.