The Ghost at the Table: A Novel (21 page)

Arlen looked unconvinced. For a few minutes we pushed the turkey back and forth, dangling our wrists in the hot water. Eventually, he wanted to know what was wrong with old Mr. Fiske.

“A long life.” I sighed.

Arlen looked sympathetic.

“Plus he’s had a stroke.”

“That’s too bad.” Then he asked, “How’d your mom die?”

Long ago I made it a rule never to inquire about people’s bereavements, beyond the most commonplace questions. It seems intrusive, for one thing, to be openly curious about someone else’s afflictions, and also risky. In my experience, people’s sorrows are always in danger of bursting out; it’s only through careful inattention that they can be contained. But Arlen appeared to have no such reservations.

“Was it sudden?”

“Yes and no.” Reluctantly, I explained about my mother’s long illness, first the Parkinson’s, followed by the heart ailment. The respites and the relapses, which got progressively worse. Then the bad cold she contracted. The fishlike gasps. One night Frances
had taken her up some broth on a tray. The next morning, she was dead.

“So Frances was the last one she saw? That must’ve done a number on her.”

“Actually,” I said, “it was me.”

“Sorry?”

“I was the last one to see her.”

He shook his head. “It’s so hard on kids, when they lose their moms.”

“Not if they barely had one in the first place.”

Arlen winced, then paddled his plump hands in the water while the turkey bobbed up and down. After a moment he said softly, “How about your dad? Where was he? Wasn’t he there?”

“He was there. Part of the time.” Then I said quickly, “Frances tries to make him seem like a nice old guy, but he wasn’t so nice back then. In fact, he was cheating on her right up to the night before she died.”

We both listened to the bubbling of the jets. In the bright light of the bathroom, the tiny diamond in Arlen’s nose glinted and glittered. I was aware—I’d been aware all along—of where this conversation was going. Sarah must have asked Arlen to root out information about her mother and grandfather over the holiday, had perhaps even banked on the surprise of him to get everyone talking.

Or maybe not. Maybe the presence of Arlen was designed instead to shut everyone up. Maybe Sarah had dragged him along as a distraction, a deflection. Something to ward off her mother. (What assurances and promises had Frances tried to extract from Sarah, during those October phone calls?) The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Walter was probably
right, that Arlen had been brought along by Sarah for “protection” from her family. Except that Arlen’s own curiosity was getting the better of him.

I
N THE KITCHEN
, Sarah was peeling potatoes. Walter stirred the gingered carrots, while brussels sprouts roasted in the oven and a tall stainless steel pot of water simmered on the stove. Frances had prepared two kinds of stuffing, one with sausage, port, dried cherries, and hazelnuts; the other with corn bread and sage. Already the kitchen smelled savory and complex, a mix of butter and garlic and onions and different herbs. Exactly the way a kitchen is supposed to smell right before Thanksgiving.

As I walked in, Sarah was telling Walter that she was going to declare herself as premed, although this announcement did not seem to surprise Walter. Their differences of the night before seemed to have been forgotten. Neurology, Sarah was thinking, would be her specialty.

“What do you think, Dad?”

Frances was not taking part in the conversation. As I filled the kettle to make myself a cup of tea, Frances hardly glanced up from her station near the sink, where she was polishing her Waterford crystal goblets. Eventually, I noticed that she was polishing the same goblet over and over.

“Are you okay?” I said in a low voice.

“Of course,” she said, not turning around. “I’m fine.”

Uncharacteristically, Frances had given up on her centerpiece and let Jane take charge of the table, which she’d covered that morning with a heavy white damask tablecloth. When I looked into the dining room, I saw that Jane had again folded the napkins into fan shapes. She’d also done a clever thing with the striped
gourds, grouping them with the nuts and the Indian corn around the base of each of Frances’s six silver candlesticks, placed at intervals down the middle of the long table. For a centerpiece, she’d taken a fluted silver dish and filled it with pinecones, interspersed with a few sprigs of bittersweet she’d clipped from the spray on the front door. The pinecones carried a fresh lively scent of sap.

“That looks really nice,” I said as Jane hustled past me with forks and knives. “Very abundant.”

She nodded, moving around the table with her fists full of silverware. In the interim since she’d visited us in the bathroom, she’d twisted her red hair into a bun, bristling with bobby pins, and changed out of her black cargo pants into a tight moth-eaten black silk dress worn over torn fishnet stockings and her combat boots, to which she’d added a pair of elbow-length black gloves. With her hair in a bun, her tattoo was on full display.

“Very nice,” I repeated.

“Thanks,” she said, not looking up.

When I returned to the kitchen, Frances was still polishing goblets. I reminded her that we needed to prepare a rice dish for Arlen, and the Egyptians if it turned out they didn’t eat turkey. I also reminded her that, as a vegan, Arlen would not eat butter, and so we should serve margarine as well. Frances didn’t respond. Sarah and Walter were now discussing premed requirements and whether she should take Chem II in the spring or wait until next fall. Sarah had decided to quit playing JV field hockey, so that she could have more time to study. Walter wasn’t sure this was a wise idea. She was only a freshman, after all, and exercise was important. As far as I could tell, they still hadn’t asked Frances’s opinion about Sarah’s plan to become a neurologist or whether she should
quit playing field hockey. In fact, they seemed to have forgotten that she was there.

But just as I was going to mention the rice dish and margarine again, Frances put down the crystal goblet she was polishing and went to stand close beside Sarah. Sarah and Walter continued talking. After a moment Frances put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder.

Sarah stiffened.

“Whatever you do, darling”—Frances was smiling tensely— “just keep going.”

Sarah gave her a mystified look. I was startled myself to hear Frances use that particular phrase, until I realized that it must have been the most encouraging phrase she knew. Perhaps she was using it now to encourage herself as much as Sarah.

“You just
keep going,
” Frances repeated.

“Okay, Mom,” said Sarah in a humoring tone.

It had to be confusing for Frances, I thought, as I watched the three of them continue to stand awkwardly by the stove. Sarah withdrawing into her life at college, Jane so moody and critical. No longer little girls in handmade cotton smock dresses, clamoring to bake Christmas cookies or sew Halloween costumes. Even Walter was changing, now that he was head of his department at the hospital and had achieved more or less all that he was going to achieve. I had the impression that middle age was chafing at him and that what Frances saw as cantankerousness was his increasing restlessness, especially with her intense domesticity—the candles, the tablecloths, the Thanksgiving hubbub—which he’d once looked upon proudly but now found constrictive. And yet he must have recognized that to ask her to behave differently would not only be cruel, by now it would be impossible. Keep going, that’s what was left.

“You know, there’s probably still time for you to take a nap, Mom.” Sarah dropped her shoulder under Frances’s hand but in such a way that she might have just been shifting her weight. “You look totally done in.”

I hadn’t noticed before, but Frances did look exhausted. In fact, she looked like someone who hadn’t slept in days.

“Go ahead, Frances,” urged Walter. “We can handle the rest.”

Walter and Sarah smiled at Frances. Frances stood there for another moment, going pale, her hand hovering a fraction above Sarah’s shoulder.

“I’m
fine,
” she said.

“Ah So,” said Jane, spying the battered Datsun from the kitchen window. “Here comes Mr. Chopsticks.”

“Oh no, he’s early,” Frances cried.

But when Sarah and I opened the front door, it was to the deep elegiac blue of snow at dusk. Across the driveway, a line of tall junipers stood like the crenellated towers of a castle into which snow fell dreamily. A single light shone in the distance from a neighbor’s window. Against this tranquil backdrop stood Wen-Yi on the front steps, in a thin black coat, an orange wool watch cap, and black tasseled loafers that looked brand new but had already been ruined by his walk from the driveway through the snow. In one hand he carried a boxed pumpkin pie.

Fortunately, I’d just managed to put on lipstick and mascara and change into the long claret-colored velvet gown I had worn the Thanksgiving before, at a dinner at Don’s house. I had bought the gown one afternoon when Carita and I were shopping at a
vintage clothing store in Berkeley; it had tight sleeves and a low-cut neckline, trimmed in gold thread, which was flattering on me, and the dark velvet showed up the auburn highlights in my hair. Yet as I glanced down at myself now in the doorway, I realized that what had been charmingly vampy in San Francisco looked garish in Concord, and suddenly I worried that I was as ridiculously dressed as Jane.

Sarah had also changed, into a high-necked white blouse and a long black skirt made of some soft, knitted material, and a pair of black suede boots. Her smooth brown hair was swept back, held behind her head with a tortoiseshell clip.

Wen-Yi stared at us mournfully, then looked down at his soggy tasseled loafers.

“Would you like to take them off?” asked Sarah. “I could get you a pair of slippers. I’m sure my dad has an extra pair.”

He considered this offer for a moment, torn between comfort and propriety, or perhaps worried that the black dye from his wet loafers had bled onto his white socks. Then he shook his head and declared that he was “very happy.” I introduced him to Sarah and he surrendered the boxed pie to her, then handed me his coat and orange cap.

Arlen was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea and eating a handful of raw cashews, still clad in his track suit. Wen-Yi’s eyes widened at the sight of Arlen, who grinned in return. Walter had a dish towel slung over his shoulder and his sleeves rolled up. He was putting the turkey, thawed at last, into the oven.

“A small miscalculation.” Frances gave Wen-Yi a panicky smile as he entered the kitchen. “I’m afraid the turkey’s going to be a little behind schedule.” But as if to make up for this tepid greeting,
she made a show of bustling over to Wen-Yi and giving him a kiss on the cheek, then looping her arm through his. She hadn’t changed out of the clothes she’d been wearing since morning and they made an odd-looking pair, Wen-Yi in a blue suit and a yellow striped tie, Frances in sweatpants. Wen-Yi glanced nervously at Walter, whose eyeglasses had steamed up from the heat of the oven.

“Did you meet Sarah?” asked Frances animatedly. “And this is her good friend, Arlen. You know Walter, of course.”

“Of course,” said Walter, straightening up.

Walter had done some quick thinking. By calling a neighbor for advice, he had found out about a special plastic turkey bag in which the turkey would roast in half the usual time. Walter had walked through the woods to the neighbor’s house to get one of those bags while I was upstairs dressing. Roasting plastic would release toxins, Walter explained now to Wen-Yi, taking a pull from a bottle of beer, but what the hell.

Frances noticed Wen-Yi’s damp shoes and asked if he’d like to sit by the fire. I followed as she led him by the hand to the living room, where Jane was working on a jigsaw puzzle she’d spread out on the coffee table while my father watched. Frances must have asked Jane to find something to engage him. My father, too, was wearing a coat and tie; Walter had helped him get into them.

Jane said hello to Wen-Yi and my father nodded while Frances introduced them, then Frances found a plaid shawl on the back of a chair and insisted on winding it around Wen-Yi’s shoulders. She made him sit down on the sofa beside Jane.

“That should warm you up!” she exclaimed.

Wen-Yi looked relieved when Frances said that she had to get back to the kitchen. Gone was his usual pouty smolder, and I saw
that Frances had offended him with her fussing. In his new black tasseled loafers, he’d done his best to look debonair and sophisticated, a proper doctoral candidate. But now Frances had gone and bundled him in a hairy old plaid shawl. As she left the room, Wen-Yi was leaning over the jigsaw puzzle with his elbows on his knees, pointedly not watching her go.

T
HE
E
GYPTIANS ARRIVED
late because of the snow, toting their almond-colored baby, half swallowed in a white snowsuit and steadfastly asleep in his padded car seat. Walter introduced them as the Fareeds, Kamal and Amina.

Right behind them was Mary Ellen Gunderson, Frances’s assistant, Walter’s supposed inamorata, who drove up in her car at the same time they did. They’d already met out in the driveway.

“How nice!” said Frances, who had changed at last, into a Japanese-looking gray silk dress, made of several long filmy overlapping panels that floated diaphanously whenever she moved. A beautiful dress but in its own way as overdone and theatrical as mine. She seemed to be floating now as she greeted her guests, asking for their coats, cooing over the baby, hoping that they weren’t frozen from their trek across the driveway.

While she and Walter attended to the Fareeds, I took Mary Ellen’s camel’s hair coat and the pricey bottle of Calvados she’d brought Frances as a hostess present. Mary Ellen was less New Agey than I’d pictured her, about thirty-five, solid and muscular-looking, wearing a strand of seed pearls and a bright turquoise wool skirt and sweater set. Her dark hair was chopped at chin length, framing a square, sallow, good-humored face speckled with tiny brown moles. Her one startling feature was the color of her eyes, an unusual pale blue, which the turquoise outfit was obviously meant to enhance. Hovering in the doorway, she apologized
to Frances for being late, saying that she’d been on the phone with her aunt in New Jersey.