Мэгги Шипстед – Seating Arrangements (страница 11)
Watching them, he became aware of the elasticity of his lungs, the hard ridges of tree roots pressing into his feet, the muscular, rippling action of swallowing. His heart raced with stealth and vitality. That was another man’s house, another man’s daughter and her friends. He was a stranger, a prowler, a hunter, a wood dweller excluded from their world. The girls’ obliviousness transformed them, although he couldn’t pinpoint how. He couldn’t decide if they seemed more innocent when left to themselves, or more unabashedly sensual. Or were they unreal, like mermaids caught basking on a rock? They were only sitting—but there was something about them. Daphne, distorted by pregnancy, could not be reconciled with the little girl he remembered. Piper sat erect and unmoving, a sphinx. Agatha was lying on her back with her knees bent, and she moved her legs in a slow rhythm, bumping her thighs together and then letting them fall apart. A narrow strip of polka-dotted material concealed her crotch, and it tightened and slackened as she moved her legs, lifting slightly.
Close in his ear, a voice said, “Boo!”
Biddy stood with her hands on the edge of the kitchen table, leaning over a slew of guest lists, place cards, and seating charts. She felt like a general planning an offensive. Beside her, Dominique, faithful aide-de-camp, mirrored her posture.
“What if,” Dominique said, switching two cards, “we move these like this. Situation neutralized.”
“No,” said Biddy, “because then I’ve got exes sitting at the same table. Here.” She touched the paper.
“They wouldn’t be okay?”
“It’s not ideal.”
Dominique tapped her lips with one long finger and considered. Biddy, seized by affection, patted her on the back. She missed Dominique, especially during the holidays, when she had been a household fixture all through high school and college, Cairo being so far away. Dominique had been the sort of worldly kid who sought out the company of adults and who, at fourteen, had considered herself all grown up. When she stayed with the Van Meters, she behaved more like Daphne’s indulgent aunt than her friend and spent most of her time helping Winn in the kitchen and running errands with Biddy while Livia, little duckling, followed wherever she went and Daphne lay indolently in front of the television. Agatha had spent a few holidays with them, too, but her presence was less comfortable. Biddy was always finding cigarette butts in the flower beds and catching Winn staring and waking up to the sound of Agatha laughing and drunkenly thumping the walls while the others shushed her and tried to convey her to bed. Once Biddy had gotten up and flipped on the light at the top of the stairs, surprising them—Daphne, Dominique, Livia, and Agatha—like a family of possums in the sudden brightness. Agatha was lying on her side and inexplicably clinging to the balusters while Dominique worked to pry her fingers loose and Livia and Daphne grasped her ankles to keep her from kicking.
“What if,” Dominique said, pointing at the seating chart, “we move him to the leftovers table?”
“Yes,” said Biddy. “Perfect. But I feel bad calling them leftovers.”
Dominique pushed the place card across the table with the authority of a croupier. “Le mélange, then.” She stood back and looked at Biddy, her long eyebrows kinked and her long, sad mouth pulled quizzically to one side. “How are you? I mean—really.”
Biddy was so surprised by the question that her eyes began to water. “I’m fine,” she said, fussing with the cards to indicate the unimportance of her tears. “I’m great. I’m so happy for Daphne—I want everything to go well.”
“Of course you do,” said Dominique. “This is an insane amount of work. You’re handling it like a champ.”
Biddy was forced to take a tissue from the box on the counter. She never wore mascara, but she dabbed carefully nonetheless, coming up under her lashes the way she remembered her mother doing. To be seen, really looked at, the way Dominique had fixed on her, was unsettling. Her family barely noticed her, but she couldn’t blame them: she had changed so little over the years that people were never reminded to reconsider her. “It is a lot of work,” she said. “It really is.” Making the confession gave her a small thrill, and she went on, feeling her way. “And sometimes it feels like a natural conclusion to raising a daughter, that you run yourself ragged to make this one day as perfect as possible, even though, for you, the day is bittersweet because she’s leaving—I mean, she’s been living with Greyson, but somehow this is different, more official. I don’t know how those over-bearing beauty pageant mothers do it, you know, keeping track of someone else’s whole physical being: hair, clothes, makeup, all that.”
“Yeah, right?” Dominique concurred. “I think—well, I don’t know, but it seems to me the real backbreaker is being in charge of manifesting someone else’s idea of perfection. Not necessarily Daphne’s, just this idea floating around out there about what a wedding should be.”
Biddy squared a place card with the edge of the table. “Manifesting someone else’s idea of perfection. Hmm. That’s well put.” She wondered if the younger woman was talking about more than just the wedding. Certainly Biddy was no stranger to laboring under another person’s vision for life. Abruptly, her enjoyment of her own honesty peaked and fell away. She had wilted quickly under the spotlight. “I don’t know,” she said. “All I mean is that I don’t want anyone to be disappointed.”
“Well, sure,” Dominique said, switching to an offhand tone, “but there’s only so much you can control. Perfection is overrated, anyway. I’m all about meeting basic needs and seeing what’s left over from there.”
Laughing in embarrassment, Biddy balled up the tissue and hurried to throw it away under the sink. “But you! I want to hear about you,” she said. “You have the most interesting life. Tell me everything about Belgium.”
“Oh, it’s all right. I don’t think it’s my forever home. I just kind of live there. In a way, it could be anywhere. You should see my apartment—it’s completely barren. Every time I think about buying something, like nice sheets or something to hang on the wall or even fancy hand soap, I think, well, no, because I won’t be here for long, and it’ll be one more thing to get rid of.” She gave Biddy another searching look. “Are you sure you don’t want to take a break? You could run away for an hour somewhere. Have some time to yourself. I’d cover for you.”
“No, no,” Biddy said, shaking off the last of her tears. “I’m really fine. It’s not the amount of stuff I have to do, really, it’s—you’re so sweet to ask. I just—where is your forever home, do you think?”
Dominique’s eyebrows climbed a notch higher, but she said, “I’m not sure it exists. Not Egypt, not Belgium. Not France—that’s where my parents live now. They moved a couple of years ago. I don’t know if Daphne told you. I like New York but it exhausts me. Not Deerfield. Not Michigan.”
“That still leaves a lot of places,” Biddy said. “Maybe you’re supposed to live in the Bahamas.”
“I hope so. In a hammock.” They giggled.
“How will you find it?” Biddy asked. “Your home?” She was curious; she had never chosen where to live.
“I think probably I’ll look for a job first. But—I don’t know. In theory I could work most places. You’d think it would be fun, being able to pick more or less anywhere in the world, but when I think about the freedom I usually just end up feeling lonely. There’s nothing pulling me to any particular spot except vague preferences. And sometimes I wonder what it says about me that I can drift like this.” She gave a quick, wry roll of her eyes. “Total first-world problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, like, oh, woe is me, I’m so exhausted and alienated by my globe-trotting life of preparing expensive food.”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend in Belgium? What about him?”
“I don’t think he’s permanent.” Dominique made a slow, sheepish shrug, her shoulders lingering around her ears for several seconds until she abruptly let them fall. “It’ll all sort itself out. Where do you think I should live? Where would you go?”
Biddy was caught off guard not so much by the question as by her inability to process it. She couldn’t think of a single place she might live where she had not already lived. She thought: Connecticut. Waskeke. Maine. Connecticut. Those weren’t answers for Dominique. They were shameful in their timidity, their lack of adventure. But she could not imagine living on a tropical island or in the Alps or in Rome or Sydney or Rio. She could not imagine living in Delaware. “I think you’ll know it when you find it,” she said. “I think you’ll find the perfect place. Or at least one that meets your basic needs.”
The side door slammed, and Livia appeared in the hallway, balancing a paper grocery bag brimming with corn on each of her hips. “Teddy joined the army,” she announced.
“Teddy Fenn?” Biddy asked.
Livia set the bags on the counter. “Teddy Fenn.”