A Place at the Table (25 page)

I find myself splitting into two women while he screams, the one crying and overwhelmed, the other separate and analytical, floating above the scene, noting the spit on the sides of this man’s mouth, noting how flushed his face is, trying to piece together how this night, which began with such good intentions, disintegrated into something so ugly, so mean. I think of the underwear I carefully put on before dinner, a taupe-colored bra and panty set, made in Paris, expensive and frilly. I had been planning to seduce my husband after dinner. It occurs to me that perhaps I should still attempt to do so, that maybe everything would be all right if we just had sex. (It
has
been a long time.) But the thought of intimacy with this furious man makes me want to cover my most vulnerable parts with my hands.

•  •  •

I do not sleep in our room but instead crawl into Lucy’s old bed. I am restless and agitated, but I must finally doze off because I am awoken by loud and incessant noises coming from Cam’s and my shared bathroom. I wait for them to cease, but they do not, and so finally I go to investigate, tying my robe around my middle as I make my way to the bathroom where Cam stands in boxers and a white undershirt, opening the medicine cabinet and slamming it shut, over and over again.

“Oh my God, did you take pills?” I ask. I have this vision sometimes of Cam downing a bottle of Tylenol. What I don’t know is whether the vision is a fear or a fantasy.

“I’m furious with you, Amelia. I’m just furious.”

I bring my hand to my forehead, rub my temples. I breathe in and out, trying to stay calm. “I really need you to calm down. We both need to sleep.”

“I need you to apologize,” he says.

“For what?” I ask. I am not trying to be petulant, exactly, I just want him to tell me what to apologize for, so I can do it and then go back to Lucy’s room, away from him.

He grabs a plastic bottle of Pepto-Bismol out of the medicine cabinet and throws it to the floor, where it lands with a small bounce in the corner of the room. He grabs his razor off the shelf and throws it. The blade pops off as soon as it hits the ground. He follows this by throwing the can of shaving cream, as if the razor blade needs a companion. While I am startled, a small voice in my head says wearily,
Such drama.

“If you don’t know what I’m upset about then we are in real trouble.”

I take a deep breath, hold up my hands, surrendering. “Look. I’m sorry I was careless about the dog. I’m sorry I let myself go. I’m sorry we did not have sex when I got back in town last night.”

I feel nauseated saying the words, but I need him to calm down. All I want is to return to Lucy’s bedroom, to lock the door behind me and burrow under the covers. To allow sleep to take me away from here, away from this house, this man.

“What else?” he asks. His voice is tight and mean, the voice of a stubborn little boy.

“I have to go to bed,” I say. My eyes feel sandy I am so tired.

“I’m so upset with you,” he says again. “I’m just steaming.”

He says this almost as if it is a point of wonder, something the two of us should be very, very interested in, as one might be interested in watching some other natural phenomenon: a solar eclipse, a chick hatching from its soft shell, an autumn moon, round and maternal.

•  •  •

I return to Lucy’s room. There is a lock on the door and I turn it. I lie in bed, so tired but unable to relax enough to sleep. Finally I pull
a novel from Lucy’s bookshelf,
Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner. I read and read and read, losing myself in the sane, quiet lives of good, decent people, people who try to do well by each other despite their innate failings. When I finally fall asleep I dream that Cam enters the room, carrying a wooden hairbrush, much like the one Mother used to spank me with as a child.

“All you have to do is lie there and take it,” he says.

And in my dream I think:
I can do that. I can lie here and take it, and nothing will have to change.

•  •  •

When I wake the next morning Cam has already left for work. I try to imagine that I dreamed the whole fight, but I spot
Crossing to Safety
on the pillow beside me and I know that I did not.

Attempting to go about my morning routine, I make my way down to the kitchen for cereal and coffee. My hand shakes as I try to measure the grinds into the coffeemaker. Is this really my life? I let Sadie out, but not before first walking through the wet, dewy grass and checking the back gate to make sure it is closed, pulling hard on the handle again and again, unsure of my very perception, until a voice much like my own but older, wiser, maternal, speaks to me, saying,
It’s closed; it’s closed. Just walk away, Amelia, it’s closed.
I am spooked. I am fundamentally shaken. I wonder what would have happened had the girls been home. Surely Cam would not have behaved that way, would not have screamed and thrown toiletries in the middle of the night. And then a terrible thought enters my mind:
Now that there’s no one else around to witness, he can do whatever he wants.

I have to talk to someone. I am close with Lucy, but of course I cannot tell my daughter about this. Mother is useless, pickled in our old home in Roxboro, doing God knows what all day (nothing) before beginning her evening cocktails. Daddy is in Palo Alto, in a time zone three hours behind, and besides, he and I never talk about
anything personal. Sarah, my best friend from boarding school, lives in Brooklyn. I could call her, but . . . I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed to tell her what happened, embarrassed to let her know how much my marriage has deteriorated. Sarah—who never married—would not let a man yell at her the way Cam yells at me. She would knee him in the balls first. I sip my coffee. Try to think of who might best guide me through this. And then the answer comes to me. Of course. I’ll call Aunt Kate.

Kate is Mother’s sister, younger by over a decade, who lives in Manhattan and works as an editor at Palmer, Long and McIntyre. She was the rogue of Mother’s patrician clan, renting an apartment in the West Village when she first moved into the city (later she settled on the Upper East Side), boldly declaring that while she liked children, she had no intention of ever having any, and marrying a boisterous Jewish writer. (“And not one of the good German Jews,” my bigoted grandmother was rumored to have said, “but one of those –
skis
from Poland.”)

As I girl I vowed to emulate Aunt Kate’s enthusiastic approach to life, rather than Mother’s bipolar one, Mother who swings from overeager to sullen. And I began by choosing an exuberant man to marry—albeit a backslapping southern boy rather than a Brooklyn Jew. Still, both my husband and Kate’s are known for being hotheads. Meaning Kate, more than anyone I know, will understand what I’m going through.

Though it’s just a little past nine, I dial Kate at work. I know she likes to get there earlier than everybody else so she can read manuscripts uninterrupted. She picks up the phone on the second ring, and I ask if she has a moment, telling her that Cam and I fought and I need to talk about it. She tells me of course, that she has a 9:45 breakfast, but I’m all hers until then. I try to be thorough but succinct in my telling of last night’s events. I am surprisingly unemotional, only tearing up once, when I recount how Cam told me
I had let myself get fat. She murmurs sounds of affirmation, so I know she is listening, so I know she is there. When I finish I hear her exhale, and I know that she is thinking of how to respond. I know that I have been heard. After a moment of silence, she suggests that I come stay with her and Jack for a few days in the city, just until Cam cools down.

“Who would take care of Sadie?” I ask.

“A kennel, maybe?”

“I just can’t imagine telling Cam, ‘Guess what? I’m locking up your dog at great expense while I go and stay with Kate in the city.’ ”

“Bring her to the apartment then. She and Lulu can play.”

“And take Cam’s dog from him?”

“You’re awfully concerned about Cam,” she says.

“Well, he’s clearly in a bad place.”

“Yes,” she says. “I agree with you on that.”

“Look,” I say, already feeling calmer just from having told the story aloud, “We all know marriage is hard. We all know that sometimes you burn the house down and have to start all over. Stay married even a year and you know that.”

“Forgive my bluntness, dear, but if you are locking your bedroom door at night so that your husband can’t get to you, that is not okay.”

“You and Jack fight.”

“No. Not like that. I’m sure we could if we let ourselves, but we choose not to.”

I snort, wanting to say something like “Well, three cheers for you.” Instead I try to clean up the mess I have spread before her. “Look. I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. I’m sad about the girls leaving. And Cam’s been struggling at work a lot. And I’m thinking that both the girls having left for school is probably affecting him more than he realized. And also, I only got together with Taffy for one night when I was down in Atlanta, and I bet she gave him all sorts of hell for
that. I know she was hurt that Lucy and I weren’t staying with her and the Judge in Brookwood Hills, that we got a hotel room near the college.”

“You do a wonderful job finding excuses for his appalling behavior,” she says.

“Kate. This is my life. This is my husband. What am I supposed to do? Divorce Cam after twenty years of marriage? What would I even do?”

“There’s an editorial assistant position opening up at PLM. It’s yours if you want it.”

I let out a little bark of a laugh, though I’m not amused. “Do you think that’s realistic? That I’m going to start answering the phones along with the other twenty-two-year-old assistants? That I’m going to move into a converted railroad apartment on Eighty-first and Second and share it with four other girls? Kate, I’m forty-three.”

“You can stay with us. For as long as you need, dear.”

I start to cry. I might want to leave my husband, but I do not want to leave my comfortable house, my good, loyal dog, my well-equipped kitchen, outfitted with everything I need to make fabulous meals. I do not want to have to depend on the kindness of Kate, who has started lecturing once again, saying things I am only half listening to.

“. . . is going through an emotional disturbance that is putting you in danger. I don’t think it would have been unreasonable for you to call the police.”

Call the police? On Cam? Over a fight? Over a bottle of Pepto thrown in the night? I can just imagine our neighbors coming to their front doors to see about the blue lights flashing in our driveway. I can just imagine the questions I would be fielding today:
Was there a break-in? A theft? Did you hear something? Are the girls alright?

“Look, I need to go,” I say.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m really worried about you.”

“I wish you could just listen. Be supportive.”

“How supportive is it for me to listen, knowing that you don’t recognize the danger you are in?”

“My husband is not dangerous!” I say.

“Listen,” says Kate. “I have to get off. I don’t want to, but I’m already running late for this breakfast and I simply must be there. My apartment is open to you if you want it. I love you and I’m worried for you and I think you are running hard from the truth of your situation. I think you need to look at how your husband made you feel last night. I think you need to consider how you would feel were he to treat one of your girls this way. I think you should consider being as protective of yourself as you are of your daughters. And now I have got to go. I love you.”

She hangs up on her end, and I am alone in my house again. I hold the phone until it starts beeping angrily at me, and then I keep holding it, waiting. By the time the line is dead, I understand the following:

1) Kate always tells the truth.

2) If Kate is telling the truth, I have to leave my husband.

3) I don’t want to leave Cam. Not now. Not yet.

And so I resolve to stop speaking to Kate, taking a grim satisfaction in knowing that I’m certainly not the first in my family to come to this decision.

(Old Greenwich, Connecticut, 1989)

M
other is only on speaking terms with Kate about half of the year. The other half she proclaims that her little sister is too much of a judgmental prude to have anything to do with, this because Kate repeatedly tells Mother she drinks too much.

Whereas Mother vacillates between speaking with Kate and giving her The Silent Treatment (a punishment I’m not at all sure Kate minds), when Daddy and Kate had their falling-out—years ago—that was that. At least, I presume that was that. I can’t imagine Daddy bothered to reconcile with his estranged wife’s little sister after he moved to Northern California.

Before their falling-out, Kate and Daddy were good friends. Indeed, I imagine Mother felt they were too friendly with each other. Daddy was loose around Kate, looser than he was with anyone else. She could tease him, could poke at his pretensions, like how he held a sip of wine in his mouth for what seemed like
forever, all the while sucking in, “aerating” it, he said, to bring out its full flavor.

“The full flavor of your saliva,” Kate would say. Daddy would arch his left brow at her but smile slightly. Kate also needled Daddy about his refusal to eat a fresh tomato unless it was summertime, and even then he was really picky, insisting it had to be from some nearby garden or farm.

“I hear you, I really do,” Kate said. “But c’mon, isn’t it
sometimes
okay to buy a supermarket tomato? I mean, one from D’Agostino’s if you’re craving a BLT?”

“A pale comparison to the real thing,” intoned Daddy, and Kate would snort.

Often when Kate and Jack visited she and Daddy would cook dinner while Jack and I played chess and Mother drank cocktails and smoked. It was impossible for Daddy and Kate to actually cook a dish together; their styles were too different and they would have fought. Their strategy was to divide and conquer. Usually Daddy would fix the main course and Kate would make an appetizer and dessert. Daddy approached his kitchen the way a scientist approaches a lab: with careful observation, exact measurements, and fanatical hygiene. (Daddy was always washing up.) Kate had an aversion to washing dishes and was forever finding ways to use fewer and fewer bowls and utensils. Early in her marriage to Jack, she dedicated an entire afternoon to figuring out an accurate way to measure by hand. She would start with a quarter of a teaspoon and go up from there, measuring that amount of salt into her hand, throwing it out, measuring that amount again, throwing it out, doing it again and again and again until her hand was as reliable as a ring of measuring spoons.