Emma's Table (14 page)

That didn't take very long, she thought.

Emma supposed she should start in on her work. They'd be taping the home-office segment that afternoon.

Maybe next time, she thought, you could miss a trick or two?

But there was a soft note of sadness built into her tune that time. Emma knew very well that she'd be the prime victim of her discoveries that morning: the cell phone, that checkbook, those keys.

 

WHEN TINA WOKE UP, SHE FELT NEARLY INSPIRED,
from the moment she opened her eyes practically, shielding them fast with the crook of her arm. She smelled the chlorine that was lingering on her skin, the residue of their swim outing the night before. Not even a long, soapy shower had erased it entirely.

Smells like medicine, she thought. And then she knew!—before she'd thrown back the covers even, inspiration coming straight through her nostrils.

We're going to the Free Clinic, she thought.

At her meeting with Benjamin the Friday before, he'd
recommended that she take Gracie to see a particular nurse there, a woman he'd worked with several times. Tina had her name stowed away in her purse, written on a piece of notebook paper in Benjamin's tiny hand. He'd promised to call ahead, to let the woman know that they'd be coming.

Maybe now we'll get somewhere, Tina thought.

She woke Gracie up the way she always did—standing by her bedside and whispering her name. “Gracie Grace,” she called. Her daughter always pretended to be sleeping a little longer than she was—clamping her eyes shut, as if to fool her.

“Gracie Grace,” she called again, a little louder this time, a swirling loop-de-loop built right in. Gracie closed her eyes even tighter as a smile broke out on her pudgy face. Tina smiled too.

“We're going to the doctor's today,” she said—softly still, though her daughter was wide awake by then. She tried to make it sound like good news—opening her eyes as wide as she could—but Gracie wasn't fooled for a second.

“Are you sick?” she shot back. Gracie was terrified of needles.

Tina could hear that she was on the lookout for one already, hoping it might be meant for her mother instead.

“No, sweetie,” she said, “I'm fine.”

“Am I fine too?” Gracie asked, a little nervously.

“Yes,” Tina told her. “You're fine too.”

She jostled her daughter's shoulders, hidden beneath the covers still. “It's just a checkup, silly,” she said, smiling down at the girl. But Tina could see that she wasn't convinced; Gracie studied her closely, as if searching for clues.

“It's time to get up now,” she said. “Okay?”

She got her daughter dressed quickly and served up milky
bowls of cereal all around, without so much as a teaspoon of sugar on top—the way she herself would have liked it. Then she called in sick, which she hated to do.

They were just finishing up the January invoices.

“Don't worry,” she told her boss—a pleasant enough man who owned the place. He sounded concerned. “I'll be fine,” she promised, twinging with guilt before she hung up the phone, and coughing once more after she had—as if sickness really were a possibility.

She could already picture the mess she'd return to the very next day—her desk piled high with papers, and littered with errors that her well-meaning colleagues would make. Her just deserts, she supposed. Tina liked to do things right, but there'd be plenty of time to deal with her work, she thought, shrugging into her heavy winter coat. She was taking care of Gracie today.

She bundled the girl up, and herded them out the door.

I'm getting to the bottom of this, she pledged, closing the door so firmly behind her that anyone else might have mistaken it for a slam. Her mind was made up. She now had the name of Benjamin's nurse in her hip pocket, and determination enough for an army of men. Tina was ready to go—and fast!—all fueled up with that propulsive will that only comes first thing in the morning, before anything like a roadblock has had time to appear.

This is
not
about what I'm feeding her, she thought.

“Come on, Gracie,” Tina said, prodding the girl, who was already walking as if she were destined to fall behind. “Let's go, go, go,” she called, swinging her arms briskly as she walked down the subway platform.

Tina pretended not to hear the rustling of Gracie's labored
movements—the endless swooshing of puffy sleeves against that nylon trunk of coat, or the lower-pitched rubbing of thigh against thigh, the sound track of friction that accompanied her daughter's every step.

Tina just wanted a sensible explanation of what was wrong with the girl.

It was all she'd ever wanted—for someone to explain why Gracie was so fat—and Benjamin's nurse might be the answer to her prayers. Tina pledged to start off on the right foot with her too. Make it absolutely clear that her daughter wasn't overeating. She could almost picture the long, sad chapter brought to a merciful end: a diagnosis and prescription—a sharp needle maybe or a handful of pills. She'd take any solution though, so long as it included an explanation, and a course of treatment that shrank her daughter down to normal size again.

Her fantasy unspooled like a reel of silky ribbon beneath her feet.

And what's more, her brave, new mood held, even as she pushed through the clean glass doors of the Free Clinic—sauntering in, like the new cowgirl in town.

Tina headed straight for the reception desk and checked them in.

“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.