Emma's Table (11 page)

It wasn't that she couldn't finish. Gracie knew she could, in fact.

The little girl had a different concern: What if I do my counting, she wondered, and the door doesn't open? She was fearful that whoever she'd made her bargain with, whatever witch or good fairy controlled the opening of bedroom doors, wouldn't hold up their end of things.

That's why she stopped. Gracie would rather throw in the towel herself than be disappointed by somebody else.

“Please
hurry
,” she whispered—to her mother, she supposed, but she wasn't exactly sure. She didn't know where to send her prayers anymore.

Gracie looked up to the ceiling, then down at the floor. She saw her tummy folding in on itself, sitting cross-legged like that—like a fat staircase, she thought, gazing at the flight of flabby steps that led from her breastbone straight down to her hips. She tried sucking them in, but that didn't work. So she pulled her shirt taut—hiding every last stair. She knew they were there still, but at least she didn't see them now, hidden behind a veil of white cotton. That was almost as good.

Almost, she thought, but not quite.

She shifted onto her side and pulled her legs beneath her, sitting on her feet and ankles, raising her torso tall. “Ta-da!” she sang, like a tricky magician in a silky black cape: every step of fat had disappeared! Her torso was as smooth as glass.

Gracie propped her hands on either side of her then, burying them deep in the burgundy pile. Her grandfather had trimmed it from a larger stretch of wall-to-wall; its unfinished edges, cut as straight as he could make them with a razor blade and an old wooden yardstick, were forever sprouting strands that popped out sideways like weeds, as troubling to the little girl as coloring outside the lines, or that ugly lost-and-found bin at school: notebooks and shirtsleeves and lunchboxes in a jumble, a tossed salad of carelessness.

Gracie crawled to the edge of the rug and plucked a couple of wayward strands; she pushed them deep into her pants pocket.

The thought of school made her sink like a stone.

And Valentine's Day was just days away.

She had to go back to school tomorrow, become “Gracie S.” all over again—the fattest girl in the whole third grade. She tried putting the thought right out of her head, but she didn't get very far. Mondays were the worst of all—with five straight days to go—and Valentine's Day on Friday, when all the cards would be exchanged.

Gracie began raking her fingers through the shaggy carpeting on either side of her.

And it's not just the girls, she admitted to herself, her fingers scratching back and forth. She was the fattest one in the whole third grade. Boys included, she thought, shaking her head, as if she could scarcely take in her terrible luck.

She kept moving her hands back and forth, soothing herself with the rocking motion. She watched the rug turn a lighter shade when she pushed her hands away from herself. Scarlet, she thought, a little proudly. Gracie was a real expert at naming colors—nearly every crayon from the sixty-four-
pack at her immediate disposal. The rug turned dark again when she pulled her hands back to herself.

Pink would be her first choice.

She closed her eyes and dreamed up the palest shade, an accidental pink almost, as if a tiny red shirt had been laundered in a big load of whites. She'd seen it happen once, in the laundry room downstairs.

She kept her eyes closed just a beat longer—giving the magic time to happen—then she opened them again: the wine-red rug just as dark as ever.

Maybe even darker, she thought.

She didn't allow a trace of disappointment to register on her face.

We'll be going out soon, she thought, as light as a feather. Just as soon as her mother was ready—looking down at her hands again, and the dark red carpeting beneath her knees. She wanted to avoid the sight of any roadblocks that might be standing in her path.

She flipped onto her tummy, just killing time, and pretended that the rug was like the bottom of a pool: all pale, pale blue beneath a million cups of crystal clear water. She wriggled her legs straight out behind her and lifted her stocking feet high. She began flutter-kicking, as if she were in the pool already—slowly at first, and then a little faster. She concentrated on all the things she loved about the water: the lightness in her limbs when she swam underneath, and the way her curly hair grew long and silky. Gracie felt safe underwater, as if her ugly body were invisible beneath its clear skin.

Most of her fellow Beginners needed to be coaxed to wet their faces. The babyish ones wore water wings. She rolled her eyes at the prospect.

But not me, she thought. I dive down deep.

She brimmed with a bold stripe of confidence—lying facedown on a patch of red carpeting, her fat chin pressed into the scratchy nylon pile. She could touch the bottom of the pool whenever she wanted.

Gracie closed her eyes then, trying to keep some burgeoning unpleasantness at bay. She pictured herself racing through the pool instead. “Best in Class,” and she knew it. She was lit up from the inside out—as if a three-way lightbulb had been turned to its highest setting, as if it were blazing from deep inside her.

I wish I was jumping into that pool right now, she thought, letting herself get carried away.

And then it was gone: all her easy flutter-kicking overtaken, in a flash, by the showstopper that had taken clear shape in her mind. My bathing suit, she thought—one click more was all it took to turn that lightbulb off—the worst one in the whole world. It had been so long since she'd been swimming that the awful suit had slipped her mind: plain and large and navy blue. An unvarnished picture of the thing—as big as a tent—blazed across her eyes, her confidence dissolving into the pool's chlorinated water. The proud picture she'd had of herself, just a moment before, standing tall at the shallow end, turned out to be nothing but a watery illusion. The bottom of that pool was much deeper than it looked.

Gracie could picture its tag, sewn sturdily in—“14H,” it read, Fourteen Husky, and everybody knew it—its white stitches holding fast as the little girl sank deeper and deeper down.

Her bathing suit was nothing like the sweet little confections her fellow Beginners wore, with their pastel ribbons and
strappy straps. Nothing like the suits the Advanced Beginners or Intermediates wore either, for that matter. Gracie went stock-still with shame, just picturing that suit—the kind old ladies wore.

She felt a burning heat around her neck.

She began raking her fingers through the carpeting again: back and forth, back and forth. She had no sense of changing shades this time though; she didn't even bother looking down. Just moved her hands back and forth, like a machine, staring off into the middle distance.

She found another image there, an even worse one: her swimming lesson over, she stood in the big square room with concrete floors and gray metal lockers all around the edges. She had to change out of her ugly swimsuit then—clinging tighter to her body, all soaking wet, showing every last roll.

She had to change in front of the other girls.

She was surrounded by girls on every side.

So she waited and waited, for as long as she could—wrapped up in her big white towel, stalling in front of the open locker, just staring in. She didn't let her eyes wander, not even once; only pretended to be very, very busy with some time-consuming business on the gray inside. Gracie stood like that until the other girls had gone, or a critical number of them anyway; until the roar of chattering and giggling and whispering had died down into something that felt almost manageable to her; or until the swimming teacher came back in and told her she'd better hurry; or worst of all, until one of the other little girls—slim as a reed, of course—turned to face her, with a tight little smile, letting her know, in advance, that she was only asking to be mean: “What are you waiting for, Gracie?”

They all laughed at her then.

Those girls would never give her Valentine cards.

I'm so stupid, she thought—having almost convinced herself that they might. Of course they wouldn't, and still she'd made a card for every last one of them—cutting paper hearts and pasting pictures onto every single one.

Gracie caught fire then, in the middle of her bedroom, in the dead of winter. She felt the whoosh straight through her; and she thought she'd die of shame. She thrust her hand beneath her bed, reaching it back as far as she could—her fat arm waving like a searchlight on black water, her chubby fingers wriggling.

“Yes!” she hissed when she seized on her prize—as close to the wall as she could possibly manage, her fleshy shoulder pressed up hard against the wooden frame of the bed. She pulled the thing from underneath, the perfect cure for what ailed her: a package of chocolaty cupcakes, a pretty pair, in fact, with thick chocolate icing, and swirling giggles of white decoration on top of that—even the icing had icing!

She'd found them in the lunchroom at school, left there by some careless boy who'd been too busy rushing off to recess to understand the value of what he was leaving behind. Gracie knew to stash them for a rainy day, and here it was, just a few days later.

She tore into the plastic and pulled a cupcake out—
hurry
! She had to be quick about it; her mother would be coming any second.
Now
!—taking an enormous bite. The moist chocolate cake filled her mouth, its sweet, dark icing up toward the roof, and the airy white cream from the cupcake's deepest center sitting lightly on her tongue. Her mouth exploded with the pleasure of it all. She gobbled it up as fast as she could, and
swallowed it down even faster. Then she took another bite.
More
!—not a moment to lose, that second bite just as big and beautiful as the first. Then she licked every trace of chocolate from her fingers—so hungry.

And just like that, her horrible bathing suit was gone. It had disappeared without a trace, along with the wine-red rug that would never be pink, and the staircase of tummy she could never really hide, the Valentine cards that would never be delivered to her. All her aches and pains were buried away, for the moment anyway, in that moist brown cake—as far off then as the pool's damp changing room, its sharp smell of chlorine: the chemical source of so much pride, and even greater shame.

 

THE SUTTON PARTY WAS WINDING DOWN—THE
ebonized chairs pulled back slightly, the snow-white cloth dotted with errant droplets of Emma's spicy chutney. The table was mostly denuded by then of all the bone china and sterling silver that their hostess had laid out. Just one small plate left before each of them—like a game of musical chairs that was grinding to a halt.

Only this last one to go, Benjamin thought.

He felt as tired as if he'd been jitterbugging all night in one of those old-time dance contests from the Depression era, sweaty from exertion and nearly spent; still, he kept his feet shuffling. He felt a little euphoric too, the adrenaline of all that fancy footwork racing through his body still. He'd managed to keep Emma entertained, and Melora had been such a hit. He was foolish to have underestimated her appeal,
especially where Bobby Sutton was concerned—like a big bad wolf at the head of the table, ready to gobble her up.

He watched Emma push back in through the swinging service door, the large tray of coffee things in her hands.

We'll be out of here in no time, he thought.

Emma walked directly to Cassy's seat, just as she always did with that red lacquered tray. It was her daughter's job to help Emma serve the coffees. No words exchanged between them, none needed. He'd watched it happen a hundred times: Cassy taking the tray from Emma's hands and following her mother around the dining table, like a little kitten on the heels of an imperious cat; Emma lifting china cups and saucers from the tray and placing them down, without a sound, before each of her guests.

She made it her business to know who took decaf and who preferred tea.

But Cassy didn't stand up.

She just sat there, pouting like a sullen child, her mother standing right behind her. Benjamin watched Emma's face move from confusion to displeasure. He saw her eyes squinting and her lips begin to purse.

Bobby and Melora kept chatting at the other end of the table.

What's
wrong
with her? Benjamin wondered.

He kept staring at the girl as he jumped to his feet, scurrying to take the tray from Emma's hands. He liked to skirt trouble, where he could. Emma let him take it, but he could see she wasn't pleased. She didn't like unauthorized changes to her scripts; still, she tolerated this one—for the moment anyway.

Benjamin followed her around the table, holding the tray as steady as he could, while Emma served the coffees.

“Tired, dear?” she asked—pointedly, he thought—when she placed the cup and saucer in front of her daughter, pouring out the coffee from the silver carafe.

“Exhausted,” Cassy replied, smirking a little. “It's lucky you've got paid help tonight,” she said cheerfully. “Isn't it?” she added, smiling up at Benjamin.

Cassy had always reminded him of his older sister, Marie, and the epic battles she used to wage against him: the two of them grappling over his ball on the lawn or dunking heads in the swimming pool. “Truce,” she'd yell, but Benjamin knew not to believe her. “I swear,” she'd add, and he'd go along with her then—against his better judgment.

They were truces of a sort, he supposed—as soon as his sister got one last slug in, or kick, or pinch of tender skin between her sharp fingernails.

Cassy was a lot like Marie, he thought—his mere existence an affront to them both—unaccountably jealous of the three seconds of attention he might claim from their chilly mothers.

He knew to avoid them.

Benjamin walked quickly toward Bobby at the head of the table, the china clattering on the lacquered tray. He wanted to hurry Emma past the turbulence of her daughter's airspace.