A Place at the Table (29 page)

I settle on Parrin as my “No.” I don’t really know the other couple, and besides, I am pretty sure Parrin is my best bet. She is just so sweet and southern and wifely. Or at least, that’s how she presents, how she looks in her portrait. Meaning that even if she wanted to answer another way, I can’t imagine her saying anything but “No.” And I’m certainly not going to call her on her bluff if she does, because I want to win and I don’t need to know her secrets.

“I call on Parrin,” I say. “Would you cheat if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?”

“Heck no,” she says.

I flip over my card, and everyone sees that it matches her answer. She and I smile at each other, woman to woman.

“We’ve got ourselves some good wives,” says Bo, raising his Scotch glass toward Cam’s.

Cam does not raise his glass, which is full of amber liquid, having been steadily refreshed by Bo through the night.

“Parrin’s bluffing,” says Cam.

“Cam,” says Parrin, and for the first time that evening she doesn’t look in control.

Cam is drunk. This, along with so many other things, I had not fully realized. And as he drawls, “Cause I know there’s a naughty girl beneath that sweet exterior,” she reddens, and the answer to a question I’ve been avoiding all night long slides right into place. It is like solving my daughter’s Rubik’s Cube, when you look and look and look at those mismatched colored squares and suddenly you realize if you turn it like this, then twist it like that, then turn it one more time, all of the colors on all six sides will match up perfectly and the puzzle will be solved.

Cam’s fury toward me, his nights of rage, his inability to see anything from my side—I’ve been looking at it from the wrong perspective. I’ve been looking at it as if I’m central in this drama. But if I twist and turn myself out of the center and look at the situation from the outside, it all makes a sudden and awful logic: Cam and Parrin are having an affair. This dinner is a setup, a naughty game they are playing, displaying their cuckolded spouses for the other to evaluate. I imagine they have met in the bathroom to grope and to gossip, with neither Bo nor I aware of what they are up to, until this, this (intentionally?) careless move on Cam’s part that reveals the exquisite fire these two are playing with, neither of them concerned about whom the flames might lick and burn.

I look around the room. No one but Cam, Parrin, and I seems to realize what is going on here, but clearly Cam wants his affair out in the open, wants to make a scene. And I’ll be damned if I give him that pleasure.

“Oh, I don’t believe that for a minute,” I say, my voice hardy. “Parrin might be naughty, but she’s not
nasty
. When you’re naughty you wear black lace panties beneath your conservative clothes. When you’re nasty you engage in a cheap, cavalier affair. And that’s not like Parrin, is it?”

Parrin gives Cam a pleading, desperate look. He looks at her, then looks at me, then looks at her again.

“Of course not,” he says. “Challenge withdrawn.”

“Amelia, darling,” booms Bo, seemingly oblivious to all that just happened. “Looks like you just won!”

(Old Greenwich, Connecticut, 1989)

F
ifteen minutes after four and I am halfway out the door, headed for the Old Greenwich train station, where I will catch the 4:33 that will take me through the Connecticut suburbs and into the city. Beneath my heavy down coat I am wearing what I think of as my “fancy pants” (velvet, wide legged, elastic waistband), topped with a luxurious and oversized wraparound cashmere sweater that obscures my thickening middle. The phone rings. I, who am always convinced that
this
call is going to be the one with terrible news about one of my children, turn back inside and answer it.

It is Cam. Of course. On the one day I wasn’t thinking about him.

“How ya doing, Ame?” Cam asks, using his old nickname for me, pronouncing it “aim,” like what you do with a dart.

I hate that I am excited to hear his voice. “I’m fine,” I say. “Just headed to the train station, actually. I’m having dinner with Sarah in the city. That is, if her project manager ever lets her leave the office.
She’s working for this crazy boss who thinks an ad campaign is good only if she stays up half the night finishing it. But she promised me she’d find a way to sneak out.”

Cam sighs. Our entire married life he has always scolded me about how I need to get to the point faster, to not babble. Our entire married life he has always scolded me.

“I was hoping I could come over,” he says. “I’d like for us to talk. But it sounds like tonight’s no good.”

I have been waiting for this call. It’s not that I want to reconcile, at least I don’t think I do. It’s just that as soon as the girls left for school his anger got so out of hand, and then I realized he was having an affair with Parrin (which he admitted to after we returned home from the McClouds’ party), and suddenly he was gone, moved into one of those ticky-tacky new apartment complexes built for divorcés. We never even had the chance to catch our breath. We never had a chance to look at the scorched earth around us and say, “What the hell just happened?”

I glance at my watch. I’m going to miss the 4:33. My plan was to take an early train to the city, then the subway downtown, where I would walk around and maybe have a drink and some of those wonderful spiced cashews at the Union Square Cafe before walking over to Sarah’s ad agency, also near Union Square. But I can catch a later train. Hell, I could even ask Sarah for a rain check. It matters that I talk to Cam. He is, after all, still my husband.

“I’ve got a little time to spare. Do you want to come over?”

“Oh, that’s great, just great. Thanks for your flexibility, Ame. I really appreciate it. I’ll head out now.”

“You know how to find the place?” A joke. Gallows humor.

“I’ll manage,” he says, trying to sound playful but only managing to sound a little constipated.

•  •  •

Does Cam want to come home? Has he had his fill of Taffy Two? Surely a thirty-seven-year-old former Buckhead housewife is more demanding than I ever was, plus she’s got those two little girls, and I am not at all convinced Cam wants to enter active daddyhood again, especially with another man’s children. Surely Cam, who likes his comforts, misses our house, misses our dog, misses my cooking. Were he to come to me truly contrite, were he willing to go to counseling, were he willing to give his entire, broken self to me, could I forgive him?

Funny, it seems easier to forgive his dalliance with Taffy Two than the rage that came before the revelation. I am not sure I will ever forgive him for that. I am not sure I should. And yet the other half of my brain is buzzing with what to offer when he arrives. I have a wedge of Brie and some crackers in the pantry, and I could slice a pear or an apple and drizzle the fruit with some orange blossom honey. That always makes a nice accompaniment for cheese. I’ve got some olives, too, Lucques. I wonder if I have time to make cheese sticks. I use store-bought puff pastry, roll it out, sprinkle it with salt and red pepper flakes and grated Parmesan, then cut the dough into strips, twist them, and bake. They are particularly delicious with a glass of Champagne, especially when you serve the cheese sticks warm.

But there’s no Champagne in the refrigerator. Although there is that bottle of Taittinger I bought last week, marked five dollars off its regular price. I suppose it’s a little much to serve, being that Champagne is romantic, but it’s so crisp and delicious and would go so nicely with the cheese sticks that I decide to serve it anyway. I walk to the kitchen, take the bottle out from the wine rack beneath the counter, and stick it in the freezer, setting the timer for 45 minutes lest I forget and it explodes.

Since Cam left I have had to be very careful with alcohol. It is easy to let drinking a second glass of wine slip into finishing the
whole bottle, and then I become weepy and despondent. My biggest fear is that I might call Taffy Two in such a condition, ask her to please send back my husband, that surely she’s had her fun by now and surely he is exhausted.

I return to the freezer, pulling out the package of Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry dough and placing it in the fridge. It only needs to defrost for a few minutes, just enough time for me to grate some Parmesan and pull seasonings from the cabinet. I find the grater buried beneath a plastic spatula and a pair of poultry shears in the drawer beneath the counter where I have rolled out a thousand piecrusts, scooped endless balls of cookie dough onto metal trays, attempted to knead bread dough—the one culinary art I never quite mastered. I put on an apron to protect my nice clothes. I am an old pro at cooking while dressed for a party. Cam and I used to entertain often.

•  •  •

Cam is half an hour late. Which is not unusual. At least not when he’s meeting me. I go ahead and open the Champagne, pour myself a glass. Lift it up and say, “Cheers,” ever the ironist, even when alone. The cheese straws are cooling quickly. They are still tasty at room temperature but no longer superb. You can taste the hardened fat, whereas warm they just melt on the tongue. Oh, but who am I kidding? Cam probably won’t eat any of this food anyway. What he will do is look at me, then look at the food spread before us, then look at me again, thinking:
This is why you’re fat.

God, do I know that man. You don’t spend twenty years married to someone without at least accomplishing that.

I walk through my house as if it is a museum I am visiting. A museum of our old life. I have not yet taken down any of the family photos. Generations fill the walls, from the black-and-white images of my maternal grandparents as newlyweds, about to set sail for Europe, to Mandy’s freshman portrait from Hotchkiss. I marvel
once again at the fact that there are no photos of Daddy as a child. He told me his family was too poor to ever have any made. “Your mother didn’t even have one baby picture taken of you?” I asked. Daddy reminded me that his mother was an illiterate immigrant with no money. And then his parents died when he was only sixteen, one after the other, and he was left an orphan.

Daughter of an orphan, I have displayed my own family with pride. There is the picture of Taffy in the white dress she wore as a debutante back at the Piedmont Driving Club in Atlanta, 1938. The height of the Depression and Taffy’s family could still afford for their daughter to come out. Taffy was so beautiful, with her finger curls and her wide, innocent eyes. Mandy looks a lot like her. There is the picture of Mother and Aunt Kate as girls at the lake, in swimsuits down to their knees, Kate still a child, Mother teetering on womanhood. There are framed photos of my beautiful girls all up and down the stairwell, posed school pictures as well as candid shots. Cam must have taken the ones with me and Mandy and Lucy in them. God, look at me in this one: twentysomething years old and effortlessly thin, my hair long and curly, my mouth thrown open in delight as I hold stout Lucy by the waist.

When Cam arrives perhaps I will point to the picture of Lucy and me as if I am a lawyer in court and it is Exhibit A, proof that we were once happy.

Except, of course, Cam is absent from the image. It is only of mother and child.

•  •  •

The bell rings. Finally. I check my reflection in the hallway mirror. It matters that I look good on this of all nights. Matters that Cam recognizes what he is losing. I smile to make sure there are no red pepper flakes stuck in my teeth, twist an errant curl around my finger to make it behave. Without inquiring as to who it is (there is no
one else it could be), I open the door. And there is my husband, still handsome in his jowly way, though there are more grays in his dark hair since the last time I saw him. He wears jeans, a green cashmere sweater I bought for him at Brooks Brothers, and a black leather bomber jacket I’ve never seen before, weathered and formfitting.

“Why, look. It’s the Rebel without a Cause,” I say, the words flying out of my mouth, unchecked.

He presses his lips together, a sign that he is annoyed.

“Hi, Amelia. You’re looking good.”

“Oh thanks. It was this or my leather pants.”

I’m joking of course, but Cam doesn’t smile.

“You look very pretty,” he says dutifully.

He could be a teller at the bank, telling me to have a nice day after processing my deposit.

“Well, come in. Let’s not let all the warm air out.”

(Nag, nag. I sound like a nag.) I try again. “Come in, don’t come in, whatever you want! I’m easy.” I bark out a nervous laugh, which sounds like I’m coughing up something rather than making any sort of sound of merriment.

Cam steps inside formally, as if he were visiting an unfamiliar house, as if he has not lived here for half of his life.

“I’ve got some snacks in the kitchen, and I opened a bottle of Champagne.” I snap my fingers, remembering. “But you’ll want a Scotch, won’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Why didn’t I think to have a glass poured for him at the door? Taffy Two probably greets him each evening with a Scotch. Hell, she probably greets him topless: a Scotch in one hand, a can of whipped cream in the other, a helium balloon tied around each tit.

“Just a splash,” he adds.

I go to the liquor cabinet and retrieve the bottle of Dewar’s and a cut-glass tumbler, given to us for our wedding. I slosh in a generous
pour and bring the glass to the kitchen, where he is waiting for me. I decide, what the hell, I don’t have to stick to my one-drink rule tonight. I’m not drinking alone, after all. I take the bottle of Champagne out of the fridge and give myself a refill.

“Cheers,” I say, tapping the rim of my flute to his tumbler.

“Cheers.”

“Have a cheese stick,” I say. “Or just have some Brie. It’s delicious with a little of this apricot jam.”

“I’m good. I had a late lunch.”

“Oh. Well, do you want something sweet? I’ve got a bag of Mint Milanos.”

“No. I’m not hungry. Listen, I have something I have to tell you. It’s big. We weren’t planning to talk about it yet because, well, it’s pretty early. But, well, do you know Gail Ferguson?”