Strangers at the Feast (15 page)

“Mom, you’ve heard about the subprime crisis? No one’s building right now.”

Well, everything in the news was a crisis of some sort. Long ago, she had urged Douglas to become a Broadway producer. She thought this would be an excellent way to earn a living, as people always liked to go to the theater, and she would have happily used any free tickets, especially to musicals.

“I had lunch with Judith Redmon in Stamford the other day and I made sure we drove by Obervell Tower.
Twice
.” In fact, she only went once, but no one was listening and she hoped this would draw them in. “That tower is so large and, well,
towering,
and I said my Douglas built that. She said how much Stamford had cleaned up in the past decade, and she gave her thanks to you. Her son still lives at home, you know. A painter. Poor woman.”

“Large and towering,” Douglas said. “With a forty percent occupancy rate.”

“Oh, do you know who else drove by the tower and told me how glorious it looked? Margie Peterson. She said she thought it looked just like a big glass rocket. And she said Roddy even remarked—”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about the tower.”

What had she said wrong now? She was paying her son a compliment!

Denise set down her wineglass. “Does everyone remember that snowstorm a few weeks ago?”

They’d had a mild snowfall. Gavin had been out that morning throwing salt on the driveway and pulled a tendon.

“Yes!” answered Eleanor.

“Well, they kept the school open,” continued Denise. “Anyway, there was no snow day, because it was less than six inches, and so these boys, these black boys they bus in, started calling and complaining. It was over six inches where they lived. And, get this, one of them actually called the house of the school superintendent.”

“What does their race have to do with anything?” Ginny asked.

“The point is the superintendent’s wife nearly had a heart attack. ‘Oh my God, how did they get our number!’ She’s calling the principal’s office, shouting, ‘How dare you give out our number.’ She had entirely forgotten that their number is listed. She was terrified of these kids.”

“Because they were black?” asked Ginny. “Or because they knew how to use the White Pages?”

“Now she thinks because they know where she lives, they’re going to break into their home,” said Denise. “Or burn it down.”

“We had a lovely black girl at Wellesley,” Eleanor leapt in. “She was in my British literature class…”

“Ginny,” said Douglas, “these are boys that call one another”—he whispered for the sake of the children—“the N word. They wear Malcolm X T-shirts. It’s not their skin that’s black, it’s their identity. Hell, it would piss
them
off if you denied them their blackness.”

“Besides,” said Denise, “if I had said they were white, would you have taken offense?”

“If you are trying, even for a second, to equate the experience of whiteness with blackness in this country,” said Ginny, “you’ve got as much chance of winning this argument as Lee at Appomattox.”

Appomattox, Appomattox.
Eleanor knew she should know that. But she got all those names confused: Appomattox, Antietam, the Alamo. She disliked when her daughter did this, tossed historical references into casual conversation. Eleanor could only pretend to understand until she could look it up later, at home. She made a mental note to do this and then realized that thinking of Appomattox had cast her entirely out of the debate; it was moving so briskly she couldn’t find her footing.

“You
imply
something when you say that they’re black,” said Ginny.

“I’m just saying, if you saw these kids,” Denise added, “forget their race, they look tough, tough talk, have tough angry faces, and all that baggy clothing. It was just so utterly
ironic
that they were so put off by the snow!”

“Ginny,” said Douglas. “Fact: some kids have discipline problems. Fact: some of them are black. We’re not going to help them if we’re too damned politically correct to acknowledge that they have problems. Now, for God sakes, what does a man have to do around here to get a cooked turkey?”

“Fact,” said Ginny, pushing herself up and retrieving her pot holders from the corner, “we don’t live in a color-blind world.” Then she marched off to the kitchen.

In the silence that followed, Eleanor saw her opening; they couldn’t ignore a sensible question: “Why do you think these black children thought there was more than six inches of snow?”

“Who knows,” said Denise. “I don’t think they used rulers.”

“Did you ever consider,” Ginny hollered from the kitchen, “that those kids don’t have proper snow clothes? Waterproof boots?”

It was a fine point, thought Eleanor.

“These kids—white ones, black ones, purple ones—they’re always complaining about something,” said Denise. As Eleanor watched her daughter-in-law speak with great animation, she noticed
something weird about her face. “You should hear them whine about the food,” Denise went on. “And I overhauled that whole cafeteria and arranged for some of the best lunches in the state.”

Denise looked pretty, as usual, with a hint of a tan, but something looked a little
alien
. Something was missing. Eleanor stared hard, trying to put her finger on it.

“What on earth happened to your eyebrows?”

Denise touched her face. “What?”

“Mom, stop,” Douglas cut in.

“Well, what happened? They seem to be… falling out.”

“Nothing happened,” said Douglas, “she looks fine.”

“But you can see perfectly well—”

“Mom!”

Well, was there nothing Eleanor was permitted to say? No talking about Douglas’s building, no telling Ginny she looked nice, no asking why her daughter-in-law’s eyebrows were falling out. They might as well give her a list of what she could say—it wouldn’t take up more than a page! Rules for Eleanor! They might as well tape her mouth shut.

Eleanor crouched into her chair, grabbed the armrests, and took a deep breath. She imagined herself a rocket, about to launch.

“Denise,” she began, “it occurs to me that every time you talk about the school, you sound entirely miserable. I simply do not understand why on earth you want to work there. Wouldn’t you prefer to spend that time with your
own
children?”

Denise’s hand dropped from her eyebrows.

“Don’t you perhaps think,” Eleanor continued, “that Laura’s feelings for her tablecloth
might
be a sign she needs more time with her mother?”

Neither Denise nor Douglas stirred.

“A possibility. A little, perhaps?”

“Douglas?” Denise said flatly, utterly uninterested in what Eleanor
had courageously suggested. “Explain to your mother why I work at the school.”

Douglas briskly rubbed his cheeks, as though to wake himself up.

But at that moment, Ginny reappeared. Pink-faced and shimmering with sweat, she aggressively adjusted the shoulder strap of her black tank top. Her gaze fell on the platter of cracker crumbs and hummus on the coffee table. Eleanor saw a glint of tears behind Ginny’s purple glasses.

Eleanor’s annoyance with Denise vanished in a fierce rush of maternal protectiveness. It raced like blood to her head, almost made her dizzy. Poor overwhelmed Ginny! Eleanor recalled her own exhaustion the first time she cooked Thanksgiving, the orchestration of vegetables and starches, the fear of failure. She rushed to her daughter.

“Baby, let me give you a hand.”

DOUGLAS

Douglas looked over at his wife refastening her ponytail and staring stonily out the window.

“Sorry about that,” he called softly.

Denise didn’t answer; she didn’t even move.

His apologies got nowhere these days.
Doug, we can’t put your “sorrys” in the bank.

The boys, who had been anxiously watching their mother’s clash with Eleanor, each wrested a red cushion off the sofa. “The Westportonians have made encroachments into our territory,” said Brian. They set the cushions on either side of Denise. “We shall defend you, good woman!”

Laura shook her tablecloth on the floor, lay down, and tried to roll herself into a burrito.

“Daddy, can you seal up my ends?”

“Absolutely, kiddo.”

“Hey, Priya, want to play with Laura?” The girl had been examining the hem of her dress since Ginny returned to the kitchen. She looked sad, lonely.

“You can’t ask her, Daddy,” came Laura’s voice from inside her tablecloth. “She has to come on her own.”

Denise was still staring out the window.

Douglas shook the Monopoly box. “Come on, Priya, wanna give it a whirl?” Douglas began unpacking the board. “I’ll have you playing
neighborhood kids and taking their money. Here we have Chance and Community Chest. This game is what America is all about.”

The sight of the board and all the pieces seemed to overwhelm her. Priya scratched her calf and looked away.

“Well, this proves you are one hundred percent Ginny’s daughter. Anyway, your instincts are good. Definitely steer clear of real estate right now.”

He sealed the box and looked around for something else to do. His father had pulled one of Ginny’s academic journals off the bookshelf and was thumbing through it. This was his way of conversing with people: examining the things that belonged to them. Douglas pulled his chair across the room, climbed on, and tested the battery on her smoke detector. He then glanced around her desk for the inspection paperwork. All he saw was a messy pile of recipes and grocery receipts, a few bright yellow forms that looked like adoption documents. A butterfly screen saver fluttered across her laptop, and he considered going online to see the game score, but he’d developed a physical aversion to the Internet; all it brought were bad market updates and angry e-mails. The radio, however…

“Boys,” he whispered, fiddling with the stereo’s tuner. But his sons were studiously adding throw pillows to their fort. “Hey, Dad.”

His father pulled his chair alongside Douglas’s and closed the academic journal in his lap.

The score was 14—7, the Lions ahead, and it wasn’t yet halftime.

By the time Ginny and his mother reemerged from the kitchen, Ginny looked ragged. Her hair clung to her neck as though she’d just crawled out of a steam tunnel.

“Everyone, listen up,” Eleanor said. “Unfortunately, there is a problem in the kitchen. So we all need to be patient while we make alternate food arrangements.”

“The problem is that Ginny looks like she’s trying to roast herself.”

Ginny flipped him the finger.

“Douglas, stop picking on your sister. The problem is, nothing seems to be
cooking.
”

“Not even the carrots?” Denise asked flatly.

His mother closed her eyes and shook her head, too pained to speak of the poor dead carrots.

At worst, he thought Ginny would overcook the turkey. He’d been prepared, out of sibling loyalty, to drench slices of Ginny’s holiday char in his mother’s gravy and give a heartfelt
yum
. But he’d counted on stuffing, vegetables, dessert. Was this her plan? Deprive them of football and food and teach them some kind of history lesson?
See! This is what Thanksgiving was like for indentured servants in seventeenth-century Virginia!

“Gin, come on, first you think we shouldn’t be watching television, then, mysteriously, there’s absolutely no food…”

Her attention was caught by the noise from the stereo; she wrapped her lips over her teeth, sealing her mouth.

“Edison invented the lightbulb faster than this, Gin.”

“I’ve been in there all morning getting this meal ready! And I spent the last two days cleaning this house and shopping and”—she looked at her watch—“six grueling hours chopping and mixing!” Priya, in the corner, caught her eye and Ginny lowered her voice. “Look, I’m sorry. But what do you want me to do, Doug?”

“Ginny, what’s this?” His father waved the journal.

Ginny’s face went even redder. “Nothing, just an academic journal.”

“Yes, of the American Historical Society. That much I see. But what’s this article? ‘The Emasculation of the American Warrior’?”

“It’s for tenure, Dad. I have to publish articles for tenure. It’s dull academic stuff.” She took the journal and slid it back on the shelf. “Look, let’s just order pizza.”

“By the time we get a pizza here, the turkey will be done,” said Douglas.

“The oven is not working anymore, Doug.
No esta funcionando, comprende?
It was good and hot when I put the bird in, but now…”

“Did you check the circuit breaker? You probably tripped a breaker, Gin. Your wiring can’t handle everything going at once. Go turn off and unplug the oven and shut off everything in the kitchen.”

Douglas trudged back down to the basement, a cobwebbed stairway of rotted planks leading to a vintage washer and dryer set. Douglas was generally fond of basements; he associated them with pool and Ping-Pong tables, kegs and bongs. At age seventeen, he’d lost his virginity in Nelly McAllister’s basement, on a Ritz-Carlton beach towel laid over her father’s weight-lifting bench.

On the shelves sat a row of damp, overflowing boxes marked
FUCKHEAD, ASSHOLE, IRISH IDIOT, PROFESSOR PRICK.
The last he was certain was Dr. Blaise Langley, the subject of more than two dozen melodramatic aerograms from Africa years earlier. His sister was a pack rat, the adolescent kind—fuckhead?—though surely she had a highbrow name for it:
archiving
. It was sometimes hard to believe Ginny was the intellectual in the family.

The fuse box hung beside a set of shelves. He flipped open the door, but none of the breakers had been tripped.

“It’s your
Antiques Roadshow
oven,” he called, climbing the last of the creaking stairs. “You probably burned out the bake element.”

“Well, fix it, Dougie!”

Behind her, his wife stared dully at him; was she sneering?

Suddenly, the relaxation, the happiness, Douglas felt that morning went bust. Some things could not be fixed! A market implosion could not be fixed! A crappy electric oven from a half century ago could not be fixed! How many times could he apologize? He felt the sour bite of stomach acid at the back of his throat. He was burned out, plain and simple.