Strangers at the Feast (13 page)

“He’ll know, Eleanor.” She looked at her belly with confusion, then alarm. “The baby’s going to be black.”

Eleanor was silent. Ever since freshman year of college, when she and a group of her friends drove thirty miles to see
In the Heat of the Night,
she’d found Sydney Poitier dashingly handsome. She had fleeting daydreams, little romantic scenarios in which Detective Tibbs needed her help with an investigation. But Sydney Poitier was a celebrity. It was a harmless, exciting crush. One didn’t just hop into bed with the black housepainter.

“You need to fix this,” she said. “Richard will leave you.”

“Maybe I wanted an excuse to get out of that massive, lonely house. It’s like a tomb in there with all that marble.”

“You got curious. You got swept up in some bad ideas. You can deal with it legally and safely now. And if you want someone to go with you…” Eleanor imagined the two of them riding the train to the city, Martha leaning gratefully on her shoulder. “I’ll go with you.”

“How long before I show?”

“Three months.”

Martha slipped her feet out of her sandals and toed the grass. She touched her stomach. “I always wanted a baby. Maybe Dexter wants one, too.”

“
Dexter?
Martha, have you lost your marbles?”

Eleanor realized there was no helping her. She seemed the sorriest, most doomed creature she’d ever laid eyes on.

“Ellie, swear you won’t tell anyone about this.”

Eleanor gave her word.

Martha slipped on her sandals, offered a hug. That was the last Eleanor saw of her.

Weeks later, after her husband had gone into the city, Martha left town, taking only a small suitcase. The neighborhood swirled with gossip. Other women said that she had mentioned all sorts of wild escapades. Alice Voddner, who, unbeknownst to Eleanor, also spent quite a few afternoons with Martha, marched into the police station and demanded an investigation. Apparently, Martha had alluded to Richard working for the CIA. Alice was convinced that Martha had
gotten close to blowing his cover and been made to disappear by some rogue government agency.

“What would the CIA want with an operative in Westport?” asked Gavin, who found the story of Martha’s disappearance melodramatic and irritating. “Alice needs a hobby.”

Richard, who quickly put his house on the market, said that his wife had a long history of mental problems, that she had been in and out of hospitals, which was why she was not allowed to work. He thought she would be safe in Westport, that the quiet of the suburbs would soothe her. But maybe, he said, burying his face in his hands (Eleanor insisted on having him over for tea while the Realtor was showing the house), there was only so much you could do to help another person, that sick was sick and love, it seemed, could not conquer all. Martha was an impossible burden. Eleanor studied his expression for artifice.

Who knew what to believe? Maybe everyone had been sworn to a different secret. Maybe Martha had toyed with them all, mocking what she thought of as their suburban imprisonment. Or maybe she was, in fact, crazy. It seemed impossible to Eleanor that there was a black baby, that she was the only one who knew the truth.

Something was
off,
something Eleanor couldn’t pinpoint. Whenever Martha’s name came up, she felt a knot in her stomach.

Eventually the gossip subsided. Richard sold the house at an outstanding profit, which became a much more popular topic of conversation than the whereabouts of his mysterious wife. Gavin and Eleanor discussed selling. Everybody began reading the real-estate pages. Eventually Eleanor forgot about Martha, until one day, in the mailbox, she found a letter from Indiana.

Ellie,

God I miss our afternoon talks, lemonade, and bourbon. It’s been a rough few years but Jayson is walking and talking now and he’s the cutest thing. I wish you could see him. It may have seemed strange to you, but it was the right thing I did in leaving Richard. In leaving that town. Anyway, I know you and I know you’ve kept my secret and for that I’m grateful. It was a confusing time, and I’m sorry for dragging you into it. You were a better friend than I deserved.

Much love,

Martha

Indiana?
Eleanor didn’t recall Martha having family there. Perhaps she was locked up in some mental hospital, loopy on sedatives. Or maybe she
did
have a baby, but it was Richard’s. Again, the thought of Martha left her deeply uncomfortable.

Dear Martha, So nice to hear from you after all this time. Yes, I’ve kept your secret. Best of luck. Warm regards, Eleanor

Eleanor didn’t want to get too friendly. Frankly, she didn’t want to hear from Martha again. Eleanor then did something painful but necessary. She dug into the bag of hairpins, where she kept her allowance savings, and took out five one-hundred-dollar bills. She slid them into the envelope and sealed it.

GINNY

Ginny tugged open the oven to baste the turkey, and warmish air, summer sidewalk air, came at her. The bird sat in its roasting pan, plump and pale, its puckered yellow skin thick with olive oil and herbs. A shallow pool of golden broth was topped with a few parabolas of lard.

She looked at the clock—it had been cooking for five hours!

She had seen enough movies, had been to enough Thanksgivings, to know that things were supposed to be browning and crisping, juices were supposed to sizzle and pop. She spun around the roasting pan. She thumbed through the sticky pages of her cookbook to the section on poultry, and cranked the oven up to 475 degrees. She could carve off the burned part. Better than turkey sashimi. She lifted the lid off the carrots and saw that the water wasn’t boiling. She jabbed her finger in—bathwater.

“Jesus! Nothing’s cooking!”

Shaking off her oven mitts, Ginny looked at the wreckage: mixing bowls and cutting boards, gravy-speckled cookbooks and dented broiler pans. The counter was nowhere to be seen. The small sink hugged a mound of carrot and potato and beet scrapings. The floor was sticky with something—gravy?—and nothing was close to being done.

From the living room came the din of hunger and restlessness. The twins’ feet thudding in laps around the sofa. Her mother’s high-pitched
voice trying to draw everyone into a conversation about E. coli infections. Laura whimpering. Ginny could already hear the impending complaints: Didn’t she defrost? Didn’t she know turkey took longer to cook than tofu? Couldn’t she even cook carrots?

For weeks she had been plagued by a feeling of ineptitude, as if at any moment she might iron a grilled cheese sandwich, or hose down the kitchen. It bothered her that she had a PhD and could not figure out all her dishwasher settings. But Jesus, how many different things could you do with water and detergent?

There was a long comic tradition of the bumbling father—Dagwood Bumstead, Mr. Mom. But nobody laughed at a mother’s ineptness. They called child services.

Priya had climbed on a stool and was probing the dirty Cuisinart with a meat thermometer that clicked noisily against the blade.

“Honey, please don’t do that.”

She slid the thermometer into her mouth.

“Don’t do that either.” Ginny took the thermometer and lifted her off the stool, her legs tangling in her purple dress so that her foot upended a pitcher of water.

“It’s not enough of a sty in here already? Priya, you have to be careful!”

Priya’s face reddened in despair. She plucked a potato scrap off the counter and wrapped it tightly around her finger and bared her teeth defiantly.

Oh, no, not again. “Sweetie, I love you. Mommy loves you.”

Ginny knelt and papertoweled up the water.

She had desperately wanted the day to be perfect. She wanted her mother to end her second-guessing. She wanted Douglas and Denise to relax. She wanted her father to engage. And she wanted everyone to quit thinking of Priya’s adoption as some crazy, impulsive do-gooder gesture that was more than a single woman could
handle. But the truth was, and her breath caught in her chest as she realized this, she was starting to think Priya
was
more than she could handle.

What had happened?

Never had Ginny done anything as impulsive or selfless, or risky—they could arrest you for falsifying documents!—as bringing Priya home. But she had believed it was an absolute good.

They had gotten along wonderfully in the orphanage. Once home, Ginny had taken the semester off and had bought a house practically within a month, just as she’d been instructed. She cooked Priya vegetable casseroles and read aloud from
Little Women
each night before sleeping with her arms around her, telling her how wonderful and angelic she was. Maybe she’d hoped, unfairly, that some small word—
hi? Ma? yes?
—would finally escape from Priya. And Ginny now knew for certain that Priya could make sound because Priya often woke crying in the night.

Priya clearly tried hard to pretend that she was happy. She grinned forcefully whenever Ginny entered the room. At the foot of her bed she had neatly arranged all the stuffed animals Eleanor sent, although she never played with them. At the end of every meal, having entirely cleared her plate, she rubbed her stomach in circles.

Sometimes, the degree of Priya’s politeness worried Ginny. The way Priya tiptoed around, sat only on the edges of chairs, wiped down the sink after brushing her teeth, and made her bed each morning—Ginny’s bed, too, if Ginny forgot—seemed like Priya didn’t believe this was her home. As though she was on her best behavior so as not to get sent away.

And every once in a while, when the politeness cracked, Ginnny could see the depths of Priya’s frustration. Unaccustomed to such hot water, Priya would shake her fist at the faucets. At the sound of a neighbor’s leaf blower, she hid beneath a blanket. She once had trouble turning on the bedside lamp in her room because the bulb had blown,
and after flicking the switch a dozen times she tearfully slapped the lamp to the floor.

Priya knew the world of the orphanage well. In her years there she’d learned what every door opened onto, what every cupboard and closet held; she knew the nurses, the cooks, the janitors, the teachers. She was the champion of lunch-hour hopscotch, the queen of jacks. She sat on a dirty wooden floor and shuffled cards like a Vegas dealer. But here, in Ginny’s world, she knew nothing.

Like a prisoner released after decades, she missed her regimen, her limitations; sometimes Ginny heard her playing jacks by herself on the bathroom floor. Part of Priya clearly wanted to go back, but she also feared being sent away.

Every night Ginny said, “I love you, sweetie, tell me what to do to make you happy.”

It sounded like a dysfunctional marriage.

“You should think about having one,” Denise had always said. “They bring you so much meaning.”

Ginny had always laughed at
meaning
as a noun. As a verb it worked, a thing could mean something else. But you couldn’t stuff the vague concepts of love and happiness and spirituality into one word and expect anyone to take you seriously.

And yet she
had
taken it seriously. She
had
thought motherhood would bring her happiness and contentment. Instead, it brought her exhaustion, confusion, and a deep sense of failure.

Was it all a trick, then? Had all those women in gym locker rooms, those classmates at college reunions flashing pictures of their daughters riding ponies and their sons perched bravely on diving boards—women who for years had made Ginny feel as though her life was inferior—had they all been putting on a show?

In the supermarket, as Ginny watched other women wrestle overflowing aluminum carts down the cereal aisle, children jumping at their sides, she could now see their fatigue. Now she understood the fears that mothers carried, the fear that they might fail their children,
that their children would suffer, or that life without children was, frankly, easier. And she recognized the need to convince everyone else you were wonderfully happy, because if others believed it, you might, too.

KIJO

Kijo worked the room alone. The walls were dark blue. The carpet was gray and shiny and thick. Four large windows were bright with sun, the thick windowsills made of caramel-colored wood. A large bed had been made up tight, the headboard crowded with bright white pillows stitched with golden anchors and knotted rope. The room looked like a boat.

A wooden desk was topped with a flat-screen monitor, flashing an aquarium-themed screen saver. Beside that, an actual aquarium stood on a pedestal. Goldfish and white fish striped like zebras swam beneath a purple light. A small treasure chest sat on bright blue pebbles, and a fat yellow fish rammed the fake gold coins.

Kijo didn’t like fish. Eating them or even looking at them. Something about a creature that never closed its eyes made him uneasy. Even the biggest pit bull on the block had to close his eyes and sleep sometime.

From the closet door hung a small black wet suit—child’s size.

A kid’s room.

He thought of the room he’d had in the house on Freedom Avenue, half this size with a metal bed. Grandma Rose wouldn’t let him have carpet so that she could hear when he was moving around, could make sure he wasn’t up to trouble. He hid his prize possession in the bottom drawer of his dresser; underneath his comic books lay five piles of license plates he’d stolen as a kid. Forty-eight. He’d never snagged Hawaii or Alaska, but Kijo told himself if he ever saw those,
even now, in broad daylight, he’d get out a screwdriver. A collection wasn’t anything unless it was complete.

By the doorway, Kijo saw an empty box:
BOSE WAVE SOUND SYSTEM
. He thought of Grandma Rose cutting her boxes into bits, throwing out one piece at a time so no one in Vidal Court got the notion she had something new. Window bars wouldn’t stop a man with electronics on his mind.