Table for Seven: A Novel

by Whitney Gaskell

  “ARE YOU TALKING TO me?” Fran asked when Audrey answered the phone.

  “No,” Audrey said.

  “Will you at least listen while I apologize?” Fran said.

  There was a pause. Fran wondered if Audrey was so mad, she’d actually hung up.

  “Are you there?” Fran asked.

  “I’m waiting for my apology,” Audrey said.

  “Oh good, I’m glad you didn’t hang up. I’m sorry I told you Coop is gay,” Fran said.

  “And that you humiliated me?”

  “You weren’t humiliated, were you?”

  “Of course I was humiliated. I spent the entire evening trying to talk a straight man into having a homosexual relationship with one of my spa clients,” Audrey exclaimed.

  “Well, yes, I can see how that would be slightly embarrassing.”

  “I’m still not clear why you lied about his sexuality in the first place.”

  “I didn’t want you to think it was a set up. I know how you feel about that.”

  “Are you really going to take the position that you lied to me in order to spare my feelings?” Audrey asked.

  “No,” Fran said. She smiled. “Well, yes, sort of. It was Will’s idea, I swear. Back when I wanted to invite both you and Coop to our New Year’s Eve party. I told Will you’d think it was a set up, so he said to tell you that Coop was gay. It all seems so stupid now.”

  “Yes,” Audrey agreed. “Very, very stupid.”

  “I know.” Fran sighed. “It was all part of some weird revenge plan Will had cooked up. Something to do with Coop telling a girl that Will only had one testicle.”

  “Will only has one testicle?”

  “No, he has two.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “It’s not important,” Fran said.

  “Except for my public humiliation.”

  “Right. And just so you know, I would never have tried to set you up with Coop.”

  “Why not?” Audrey asked. “You try to set me up with everyone.”

  “I can’t see the two of you together. You’re a much more serious person than he is.”

  “Serious? That makes me sound like a drip.”

  “No, not at all. It’s more that he’s never serious about anything. And besides, you’re a go-out-to-a-nice-restaurant-in-heels kind of woman. Coop is more of a beer-and-chips-on-the-boat kind of guy,” Fran said.

  She was sitting on the living-room couch, her bare feet tucked up beneath her, a worn purple chenille pillow clutched to her chest. She’d always thought the purple had been a mistake, a discordant note in a room that was dominated by heavy brown leather sofas and an ugly sage green rug they’d gotten on sale years ago.

  I want to live in an all-white room, Fran thought. Tailored sofas with crisp white slipcovers. One of those furry white rugs. Maybe a small punch of orange here or there, a pillow or a small round stool. Modern and stark and completely impractical for a family that liked to lounge in front of the television with their bare feet up on the furniture.

  Fran looked down and noticed a smear of something—it looked like chocolate—on the pillow. She sighed and put it to one side.

  “I don’t know. I thought Coop was interesting,” Audrey said thoughtfully.

  Fran’s attention snapped back to their conversation. “You think he’s interesting?”

  “Sure. How often do you meet someone who directs oceanographic documentaries?”

  “But he’s not at all your type,” Fran said.

  “Do I have a type?”

  “I don’t know, do you?”

  “Hmm,” Audrey said. “I’ve always liked Jeff Goldblum.”

  “The actor.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Really?”

  “You don’t think he’s attractive?”

  “No, not really. And is he a type?”

  “He could be a type. Funny, dark hair, sexy glasses.”

  “I guess. Nothing like Coop, though.”

  “No,” Audrey agreed. “But I never said I was interested in Coop. I said I thought he was interesting. Big difference. Besides, Coop seemed full of himself.”

  Fran tried to ignore the trickle of relief she felt at these words. “Yeah, he can be. And when it comes to women, he has a short attention span. He’s had a lot of girlfriends.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. A lot of girlfriends,” Fran said again. “We need to find you someone who’s ready to settle down.”

  There was a huff of impatience on the other end of the phone.

  “First of all, as I’ve told you about five hundred times, I don’t want you to find me anyone. And second of all, why do you assume that I would only be interested in someone who wants to settle down? Maybe I want to sleep around. Sow my wild oats. Have wild sex with anonymous strangers.”

  “Mmm. That sounds exciting.”

  “Really? You think so? Because I think it sounds exhausting,” Audrey said. “The entire idea of dating is exhausting.”

  “Speaking as someone who has been in a relationship with the same person forever, I think it sounds like fun.”

  “Please. And first dates are the worst. They’re so awkward. You spend the evening trading boring bits of information back and forth, while the entire time you’re making constant superficial judgments. Like, why did he choose to wear a T-shirt and flip-flops on the first date? Does he have bad taste, or just not care about making a good first impression? And you know he’s making the same sort of judgments about you. Thinking that your breasts are too small or your ass is too big. It’s all too hideous. I’ve tried it, and frankly, I’d rather just be alone than go through it again.”

  “But what about those amazing first dates? The ones where you have that great immediate connection, and you’re both leaning forward across the table, wanting to know everything about the other person there is to know. Even the minor stuff, like whether they like licorice or if they played an instrument when they were a kid,” Fran said dreamily. “And the entire time, there’s this energy vibrating between you, so that every time your arms brush up against each other, you feel a shock of excitement.”

  “You,” Audrey said severely, “have been reading too many romance novels. It’s completely warped your memory. First dates are dreadful. Or maybe it’s just me. I think I’m missing the romance gene.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been married.”

  “What does that prove? Dating, love, romance, whatever you want to call it, might just be one of those things that some people are good at, and some people aren’t. Besides, when was the last time you went on a first date?”

  Fran tried to remember. Her last first date had been with Will. “I was twenty-one,” she said.

  “There you go. Trust me, a first date with a forty-year-old is completely different,” Audrey said. “First, you have to hear all about his career—how great he is at what he does, how everyone he has to deal with at work is an asshole, his future plans for being even more wildly successful than he already is. This takes up a good ninety percent of the evening. Then, maybe, if you’re very lucky, your date will stop talking about himself long enough to ask you a question or two about what you do for a living. And then, after about five minutes of barely listening to you, he’ll wrench the conversation back to himself, usually at this point introducing the subject of past relationships. If he’s the angry, bitter sort, he’ll start complaining about what a bitch his ex is. If he’s not, he’ll go on and on about how his ex is a beautiful person who changed his life for the better, but they just reached a point where they realized they’d be better off without each other, but don’t worry, they are still the best of friends. Which always makes me wonder if the guy is really just auditioning to be my future ex-boyfriend. Like I should be all reassured that someday he’ll be telling some other woman he’s on a first date with that I have a beautiful soul. And then he picks up the check—”

  “Wait,” Fran interrupted. “I thought men always wanted
to split checks these days.”

  “No, never. In fact, I think that’s a lie circulated by men, so that women will be so grateful that they’re not being asked to pony up for the bill, they won’t mind that they just spent the last ninety minutes listening to how grueling it is to run an optometry practice,” Audrey said. “Anyway, then once dinner is over, there’s the whole good-night-kiss debacle.”

  “See, that’s where you lose me. First kisses are amazing,” Fran said.

  “With someone you like, maybe. Someone you’re attracted to. But those are few and far between. News flash: Good kissers are few and far between. Most grown men are terrible at it,” Audrey said. “I think it’s laziness. Or lack of practice. Mostly I try to get out with a handshake. Maybe a cheek peck.”

  “This is so depressing. I have such fond pre-marriage memories of spending hours and hours kissing boyfriends. Of being in a haze of lust and losing all track of time,” Fran said dreamily, cuddling the ugly purple pillow closer.

  “Get a grip. It’s nothing like that at our age,” Audrey said. “Which is why I have no interest in dating anyone at the moment. So please stop trying to set me up.”

  “I told you, I really wasn’t trying to set you up with Coop.”

  “How about this? No more trying to set me up, and no more telling me that the men you don’t want to set me up with are gay,” Audrey said. “Is that specific enough?”

  “That’s pretty specific,” Fran said.

  “Good,” Audrey said.

  “Are you still coming to next month’s dinner party club?” Fran asked hopefully. “It’s going to be at our house.”

  “Didn’t you just host last month?”

  “That wasn’t an official Table for Seven dinner party. Tell me you’re coming.”

  Audrey hesitated.

  “Audrey?”

  “I’ll be there,” Audrey said with a sigh.

  Fran couldn’t be sure, but she thought it sounded like Audrey was smiling.

  march

  CHOPPED SALAD

  CABERNET-BRAISED SHORT RIBS WITH MIXED HERB GREMOLATA

  GORGONZOLA POLENTA

  LEMONY GREEN BEANS

  MIXED BERRY TART

  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  Will started at the sound of Fran’s voice. He looked up sheepishly at his wife, feeling like a kid who’d been caught sneaking a peek at his dad’s dirty magazines. Of course, he was doing nothing of the kind. He had simply taken advantage of his wife and daughters’ absence—Fran had taken Rory to her soccer game, and they’d dropped off Iris at the mall on their way—to spend ten minutes making some needed adjustments to his new Rammer bot.

  “What happened to Rory’s soccer game?” Will asked.

  “It got rained out,” Fran said.

  “It’s raining?” Will looked out the garage-door window. The panes were streaked with water. “I hadn’t noticed. Anyway, I thought soccer players were supposed to be tough and play through extreme weather conditions. The ref called the game over a little rain?”

  “First of all, it’s thundering and lightning out.” As if to prove her point, a loud explosion of thunder rumbled just then. “And second, Rory is eleven, and the coaches are all parent volunteers. No one wants to stand out on the field in the middle of a storm.”

  Will shook his head sadly. “No wonder kids these days are so soft.”

  “You’re deliberately avoiding my question,” Fran said.

  This was true. Will was avoiding her question. Mostly because he knew the direction the conversation was headed.

  Fran had been on a home improvement kick lately. It had something to do with the upcoming dinner party they were hosting, and, Will suspected, anxiety on Fran’s part that their home was nowhere near the showplace that Mark and Jaime’s house was. So far, her list of chores for him—which she insisted on calling a Honey-Do list just to annoy him—included painting the living room, replacing the faucet in the half bath, and installing a new kitchen countertop.

  “A new countertop?” Will read aloud when she handed him the list. Or, more accurately, the first version of the list. It had grown extensively since then, as Fran found more and more home improvement projects. Pictures that required hanging. Carpets that needed steam-cleaning. A pergola that had to be built in the garden. “I don’t think I’m qualified to put in a new countertop.”

  “You build robots that fight other robots. I’m sure a countertop will be easy in comparison,” Fran had said breezily.

  Fran’s nickname among her family growing up was the Drill Sergeant, or Sarge for short. It was a personality mixture of bossiness and steely-eyed determination that she would get her way, no matter what. Will had devised a number of coping methods over the years. Usually, he just gave in, which was easier than being steamrolled into submission. Other times, when—like now—what Fran wanted was infeasible, he opted for gentle persuasion with a mild passive-aggressive chaser.

  Using this strategy, Will had been trying to whittle down the list to a manageable size. The pergola was too big a project to start, he’d explained. There was no way he’d be able to finish it in time for the dinner party. And even if he could figure out how to install a countertop, they simply couldn’t afford to buy one now. But he’d been slowly chipping away at the rest of the list, or at least those items that he couldn’t talk his way out of. This morning’s project had been to repaint the living room. Fran had bustled off to the Home Depot first thing, returning with paint, rollers, brushes, paint trays, and blue tape.

  “If you paint, I’ll take Rory to soccer,” she’d bargained.

  Will had agreed, although in truth, he liked going to Rory’s soccer games. It gave him a kick to see how focused his youngest became out on the field. She was fast, too, the way she darted in and hooked the ball away from larger, older girls.

  But just when he had finished moving all of the furniture into the center of the room and taping off the trim, and was about to pour the paint—an unremarkable shade of white that the paint manufacturer called “Crescent Moon”—he’d decided his new battle robot—nicknamed Iggy by Rory—needed a lighter casing to help with mobility. Will figured he could sneak in a few minutes’ at his workbench and still have plenty of time to get the painting done before his family returned home. But he hadn’t counted on the rain.

  Will now considered giving a smart-ass answer to Fran’s question. I’m baking a blueberry pie, or, I’m contemplating the unbearable lightness of being. But Fran didn’t seem like she was in a very jokey mood at the moment, so he decided to go with the truth instead.

  “I’m reworking Iggy’s outer casing,” Will said.

  “What I meant was, why aren’t you painting?” Fran asked.

  “I was just taking a short break,” Will said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it done. The living room will be painted by the end of the day. You have my word.”

  “It’s not just painting the living room! The dinner party is next weekend. This is our last chance to get everything on the list taken care of,” Fran said. “I was just looking at the front hedges, and I think they’re practically dead. We’re going to have to dig them up and replace them.”

  Will contemplated how he would fit this new chore—which sounded simple enough, but would almost certainly entail hours of dirty, sweaty, back-straining work—into a weekend that he was already scheduled to spend painting and steam-cleaning all of the carpets in the house. It was time to take a stand.

  “There’s no way I’m going to have the time to tackle the front shrubs,” he said, shaking his head with what he hoped looked like regret. “Not with everything else you want me to do.”

  “It’s not what I want done,” Fran said. “It’s what needs to be done.”

  Will didn’t agree. The living room certainly didn’t need to be repainted. Although Fran might have a point when it came to the carpets, which had been in the house when they bought it and were now worn and tatty.

  “Honey, these are our friends who
are coming over. The house doesn’t have to be perfect.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Fran’s face hardened into the stubborn expression.

  “Yes, it does,” she said. “I want everything to look nice.”

  “It will look nice. But I don’t think you should get so worked up about this,” he said, convinced that Jaime’s perfectionist insanity was rubbing off on Fran.

  “I’m doing all of the shopping and the planning and the cooking,” Fran said. “The least you can do is help with everything else. There’s no way I can get it all done on my own.”

  Will stood and went to his wife, wrapping his arms around her waist. “It’ll be fine,” he said soothingly. “Don’t worry, we’ll get the house shaped up and you’re an amazing cook. It’s going to be a great night.”

  Fran turned, moving out of his embrace. “Maybe I can dig up the hedges myself,” she said. “Do you have a shovel in here?”

  IT WAS STILL EARLY—too early to be awake, he could tell from the weak light just beginning to stream in through the blinds—when Coop woke up. The girl lying beside him had insisted on spending the night, and Coop never slept well when he had to share his bed. And this girl—wait. What was her name again? Mena? Mindy? Coop felt a surge of panic. He didn’t want to be that guy, the one who couldn’t remember the names of the women he brought home. Then, with a surge of relief, Coop remembered. Misha. That was her name. He remembered mentioning, when he’d first been introduced to her the night before at a wine tasting, that he’d heard Misha was Mikhail Baryshnikov’s nickname. She’d looked at him blankly.

  “The Russian ballet dancer?” he’d said. “He was also in that movie White Nights. Although that might have been before your time.”

  “I know who you’re talking about,” Misha’s friend had said. Coop also couldn’t recall the friend’s name, but as he hadn’t slept with her, he felt no guilt about this. “He was on Sex and the City. He was Carrie’s boyfriend. The old guy who asked her to move to Paris with him.”

  “Oh,” Misha had said, comprehension dawning on her pretty face. “I know who you mean. That guy’s a ballerina?”