Strangers at the Feast (37 page)
Read Strangers at the Feast Online
Authors: Jennifer Vanderbes
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Family Life, #Literary
“Priya,” she said.
The bowl of oatmeal was almost empty, but Priya quietly scraped her spoon around the edges, refusing to look up.
“Priya.”
The toothy woman reached for the bag, and in an instant Priya grasped the handle. Priya looked at Ginny, who recognized for the second time the look of someone pleading for life. Ginny held Priya’s stare—it was like holding the hand of a person dangling from a ledge. Slowly the weight overcame Ginny and her gaze slipped helplessly to the floor.
“For now,” the woman said.
Priya pushed back her chair and lifted the suitcase. Her face settled into a blank expression that made her look, for a moment, like an entirely different person. In a trick of light, Ginny was suddenly certain that Priya’s face belonged to another child. It was not until Priya stepped through the door, not until Priya stood outside carrying her suitcase, glancing back at Ginny for the last time ever, that Ginny felt the full and stunning force of losing her daughter.
An odd assortment of people—her entire department, former students, even Ratu—leapt to Ginny’s defense. Petitions were circulated. The possibility loomed that another person or family could apply for guardianship, but Priya was a mute seven-year-old who witnessed the Thanksgiving Day Massacre. Ginny kept her room ready, should the Indian courts decide it was best to return her to the only mother she had ever known. But it became clear that Priya would likely end up right back in the same orphanage.
But not with Ravi.
Ravi and Safia had been dismissed for doctoring Ginny’s 1-600A form.
Amid Ginny’s sadness, Douglas’s companionship provided a merciful distraction. That winter, the two spent many late nights sitting on her couch, drinking wine, trying to trace the origins of everything that happened. Neither of them was sleeping well, so sometimes until 2:00 a.m., Douglas would explain his work at Obervell, the eminent domain issues, and what he knew of Kijo Jackson. At moments they had to pause in their conversations, recognizing the silent boomeranging of blame. Ginny pitied her brother for all that had been taken from him (he kept an array of photographs of his children on his nightstand, and each day he e-mailed Denise, begging her to return), but also felt, at times, that his greed had brought the disaster upon them, upon those boys. He, in turn, believed that if she had just served the meal as planned, everyone would have been fine. At times, they each blamed themselves. But they were entirely unable to speak of what their mother had done. Their silence about her actions drew them even closer, as did the painful knowledge that since Thanksgiving, she had sealed herself away in Westport, withdrawing from the world. If Ginny called, it was her father, now, who answered the phone. They weren’t sure if Eleanor would ever return to her former self. So Ginny and Douglas were desperate, as they had never been before, even as children, for each other’s love and for acceptance of each other’s mistakes. They stood together in the dark truth of what
happened that night. Before turning in, they always shared a fierce and silent hug.
By March, when Ginny had to attend the West Coast conference, Douglas said he was concerned about her flying across the country by herself; he didn’t want her stranded alone at some stuffy academic gathering. In fact, she suspected it was he who feared solitude. The Thanksgiving Day events had triggered a barrage of attacks on Obervell Construction, which finally let Douglas go. For the first time in years, his days were empty.
Ginny was not giving the keynote address that day. In light of everything, she decided not to call undue attention to herself.
In the auditorium, people took their seats, silencing their cell phones and settling their bags on the floor; the auditorium was crowded, but the mood was somewhat grim. Near the coffee-and-donut table, a television playing CNN reminded them that it was the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, reporting the casualty statistics and offering a montage of grisly images from Baghdad.
Now the conference organizer stood at the podium and welcomed everyone to the Fourth Annual Feminist Geography Conference.
And then, from behind a blue curtain, a young Indian woman walked onto the stage. She looked to be twenty-three or twenty-four and approached the podium with her shoulders held like a ballerina’s. As Ginny watched the woman slide the paper clip off her speaking notes and survey the auditorium, her heart tripped. She was convinced this was precisely the woman Priya would have grown into. Ginny realized Douglas must have had the same feeling, because suddenly his hand was touching her elbow.
Ginny glanced at her program, flipping through to the biographies. Beena Sengupta, a PhD candidate at Harvard, had immigrated to the United States at age eighteen. As Beena adjusted her microphone, her eyes met Ginny’s, triggering the awful memory of Priya’s final, pleading stare. Except this woman wore an expression that seemed strangely like an accusation. As Ginny often did in those months after
the incident, she imagined strangers knew the story, had read the details in the paper.
“Hello, and thank you,” Beena said.
She had only a trace of an accent. Her hair was thick and brilliantly shiny, her eyes large and walnut colored. She was beautiful and poised; Ginny could hardly look at her.
“I was asked today, as the youngest speaker at the conference, to say a few words in my keynote address about American youth, as pertains to trends in women in the shifting urban landscape of the United States. But I want, instead, in light of today’s anniversary, to speak about the youth of America… that is, America the child.”
Beena turned her page, rattling the gold bangles on her thin wrist. Her nails, painted maroon, splintered the overhead light.
“The United States is but a mere two hundred and thirty years old, the baby of the world. Too young to remember crusades and plagues…”
The words flowed from Beena’s mouth and Ginny was mesmerized by the gentle smile that accompanied her fierce indictments. As Beena calmly flipped through her notes, Ginny grew certain that this girl, this woman, would succeed. And Ginny tried to imagine that this was the path her daughter would take, that Priya would leave the orphanage; that she would be loved and fed and clothed; that she would be whisked off to Bombay as Ravi and Safia had been; that she would learn to speak and read and go to London for college. She would fall in love and whisper stories late at night to her boyfriend of how she was taken to America by a woman who had broken many rules, but meant only to love her. How one day, she would find this American woman, would ring Ginny’s doorbell, and over tea she would explain what she had seen of the world. And she would tell Ginny that despite Ginny’s mistakes, everything had worked out all right, that Ginny was forgiven.
“We must stop and we must repent,” Beena said, her voice intensifying.
“The mistakes, the offenses. Only then will America repair itself… We must mourn the fallen, the slain, the sacrificial lambs who suffered at our hands.”
Douglas leaned close and Ginny turned to look at him. Life had worn on him; loss had carved papery lines along the edges of his eyes. But she clasped his hand and felt a deep warmth in it, a familiar strength. His palms were callused from his recent work—he was building new doors for her house, sanding the floors, stripping away the rotted windowsills and thresholds, and mounting thick new cedar planks.
Together, now, they slid forward in their seats, remembering, regretting, awaiting the return of hope.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In researching this novel, the following texts were of great assistance:
Streetwise
and
A Place on the Corner
by Elijah Anderson,
The Way We Never Were
and
The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600—1900
by Stephanie Coontz,
Past, Present, and Personal
by John Demos,
Blood Rites
by Barbara Ehrenreich,
Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned from Vietnam
by Bob Greene,
Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution
by Donna Hart and Robert W. Sussman,
Cities in a Race With Time
by Jeanne R. Lowe, and
Bulldozed: “Kelo,” Eminent Domain, and the American Lust for Land
by Carla T. Main.
For answering my endless questions, I’m grateful to Detective Bob and the men of Vidal Court.
For their invaluable feedback on this book, I would like to thank Eric Bennett, Alex Berenson, Stuart Blumberg, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Justin Cronin, Sarah Funke, Olivia Gentile, Steve Kistulentz, Daniel Mason, Dan Pope, Timberwolf, Josh Weil, and my parents. A special thanks to the brilliant Kurt Gutjahr.
This novel would not exist without the generosity of the following institutions: the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ledig House International, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the Stamford Historical Society.
Two extraordinary guardians have been watching over this book: my agent, Dorian Karchmar, who helped bring it to life and find it a home; and my editor, Alexis Gargagliano, who gave me the perfect guidance and encouragement.
The entire Scribner family has been wonderful. Thank you to Rex Bonomelli and Stephanie Evans for their patience and perfectionism, and to Nan Graham and Susan Moldow for their support.
An interesting aside regarding the
Kelo v. New London
Supreme Court decision mentioned in this novel: in November 2009, Pfizer announced it was closing its New London research facility; the land on which Susette Kelo’s home once stood remains an undeveloped lot.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Vanderbes is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a New York Public Library Cullman Fellowship. Her debut novel,
Easter Island
, was translated into sixteen languages and named one of the best books of the year by
The Washington Post
and
The Christian Science Monitor.
Her essays and reviews appear in
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post
. She lives in New York City. Visit her website at
www.jennifervanderbes.com
.
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