The Ghost at the Table: A Novel

by Suzanne Berne

  “Tell stories like that about people.”

  “I’m not telling stories.” The back of my throat ached. “I’m telling a story. I’m writing a book for girls.”

  “I know—,” began Sarah.

  My voice was starting to rise. “I can only write the story one way. There’s a formula we have to follow. I’m not Mark Twain, I’m not trying to be Mark Twain.”

  “But what’s the point,” insisted Sarah, “of what you’re doing?”

  “I thought points were for arguments,” murmured Jane by the coffee table.

  “Everything’s got a point,” Arlen said, a little too wisely.

  The heels of my hands were pressed so hard against the wooden seat of my chair that my thumbs hurt. “Fine,” I said, releasing my hands and focusing on the red haze of Arlen’s track suit. “You want a point? Okay. Here it is. The point is that Mark Twain’s daughters had every reason to expect better lives. They were good girls. They were good enough.”

  I’d turned to face my father again, speaking slowly and carefully, the way Frances spoke to him, as if he were deaf.

  “Everything started out right for them, but their mother got sick and their father couldn’t do anything about it. He tried, but he only made her worse. Then she died. He said he loved his daughters, he said he’d take care of them, but he didn’t. He was too selfish and irresponsible. He was a genius but he was also an idiot—he was like everybody else, only more so. And so what happened to them was even sadder and more pathetic than what happens to most people.”

  The faces around me had started to blur.

  “It’s a joke,” I said loudly, “what happened to Mark Twain’s daughters. But no one wants to hear a bad joke, do they? No one wants an ugly sad story with a lousy ending. So you rewrite it. You redecorate. You make it a nice story. And then little girls will read it and feel that history is a nice place, full of nice families with nice sisters who loved each other. And even if their own lives aren’t so nice, they’ll believe everything will get nicer someday, because history always repeats itself. That’s the point.”

  No one said anything. The candles wavered atop the organ, while another log broke up in the fire.

  At last Walter stirred from his place on the sofa and gave an exasperated sigh.

  “Okay then,” he said, clapping his hands together, then turning them inside out and stretching out his arms, “that’s it for me.” As if the credits had finally started to roll after an overlong movie, through which he’d sat dutifully. He dropped his arms and leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees. “It’s late. Don’t you agree, Frances? It’s getting late and our guests need to get on the road and the rest of us need to get to bed.

  “Frances?” he repeated, standing up.

  “Yes,” she said, not looking at him.

  Everyone but me and my father stood up, too, and rubbed their eyes and straightened their clothing. Almost immediately there followed the general self-conscious bustle that always accompanies guests’ leave-taking, the business of finding coats and hats and remarking on the temperature outside, Such an early winter, isn’t it a shame, I heard we’re in for another cold snap, Jane wheeling my father into the hall so that he could say good-bye as well, and Mary Ellen not being able to thank Frances enough, and Frances saying she hoped Mary Ellen’s uncle felt better soon, then Wen-Yi saying his own stilted good-byes, while Sarah and Arlen wished him good luck with string theory and his doctoral dissertation, Don’t get tied up in knots! before coming back wordlessly into the living room to collect dessert plates and teacups, careful not to look at each other, and through it all I sat alone by the fire, which was now only embers, and tried to remember exactly what it was that I had just said.

  Jane announced that she was going upstairs to watch television in her room. Sarah and Arlen were still in the kitchen, drying and stacking dishes, wiping counters, putting the last of the Fareeds’ pies into plastic containers. “Here I’ll get that,” they kept saying, seizing a dish towel or a plate, “I can do that.” When I offered to help they smiled obliquely and said not to bother, they would take care of it. Finally I sat down at the table and began drying Frances’s Blue Willow platters and serving dishes by hand, because Sarah and Arlen had not been thorough, and china, especially old china, should not be put away damp.

  After Walter had wheeled my father off to get him ready for bed, Sarah told Frances that she should go to bed, too. “We’ll take care of everything,” she said. “We’re almost done.” If Sarah and Arlen were ignoring me, they were treating Frances as some sort of invalid, taking plates out of her hands, refusing to let her help wash the wineglasses.

  “Go to bed, Mom,” Sarah repeated. “You’re worn out.”

  “Well, I am tired,” she agreed reluctantly. “All right. Thank you, dear. You’ve been such a help.” She leaned toward Sarah to give her a kiss.

  “And why don’t you sleep late tomorrow.” Sarah stepped back, hugging a large oval aluminum tray in front of her. “There’s no reason to get up. We can take care of our own breakfast. Stay in bed.”

  Frances froze and looked at Sarah and the aluminum tray. Then suddenly she did seem exhausted. “I guess I will then. That’s very thoughtful of you, Sarah.”

  Without acknowledging me, she turned and left the kitchen. A moment later we heard her go slowly up the stairs. Sarah and Arlen went back to moving around the kitchen, rinsing a few last cups and setting the roasting pan to soak in the sink. I continued to dry those fine old dishes by hand with a soft cloth, as Frances herself would have done, losing myself for a few minutes in a calm blue intricacy of pagodas and bridges and curving willow trees.

  “Can I make you some tea, Aunt Cynnie?” asked Sarah. I shook my head, then watched as she and Arlen prepared cups of chamo-mile tea for each other, giggling slyly over some reference to dorm life that I didn’t understand. At last, yawning and stretching, they told me good night, said they hoped I’d sleep well, and went upstairs to watch television with Jane.

  After they left I returned to the living room, intending to turn off all the lamps and blow out the candles before going up to bed. But it was so quiet in there, after the earlier tumult of guests and conversation, so restfully quiet, that after switching off the lamps I left the candles burning and settled onto the sofa. I poured myself a little of what was left in the sticky bottle of Calvados, still sitting on the coffee table amid Jane’s unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Outside, the wind had picked up, racketing around the north side of the house, making the windowpanes rattle.

  I’d been sitting there for perhaps a quarter of an hour when I heard Walter walking around downstairs, turning off lamps. He came into the living room and paused, noting the candles and my presence on the sofa. He came a few steps farther, then stopped by the fireplace and picked up the tongs to poke at the smoldering logs, at last coaxing a flame out of the embers. The sofa cushions sagged under his weight as he sat down beside me.

  “Hi,” he said.

  When I didn’t answer, he reached under his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, closing his eyes for a moment. At last he smiled and leaned back, twisting his face toward mine.

  “An okay Thanksgiving, I thought.”

  “Yes.”

  “It turned out all right.”

  “All things considered.”

  “Do we have to consider all things?” he asked quietly.

  I reached out to brush away a fragment of piecrust that had fallen onto the sofa cushion between us. “I suppose not,” I said. “The turkey was good,” I added, “even though it was toxic.”

  That’s when he took my hand between both of his.

  It was so welcome to feel the warmth of Walter’s hands around mine. I was so grateful that I almost wept. Grateful, too, for his kindness in sitting in the living room with me, though it was late and he must have been tired. I had done an unforgivable thing. I had tried to ruin Frances’s Thanksgiving. And yet Walter seemed to unde
rstand that I was not myself in this house. Also that my mistakes were probably punishment enough and that what I needed most at the moment was not reproach but simply company.

  For a while longer we sat together on Frances’s sofa, neither of us speaking. Outside the wind roared. Once more the fire died down to embers. And as we huddled in that cold room, listening to the wind and watching the fire, I began, idly at first, to imagine Walter’s laying the palm of his hand against my cheek.

  The pads of his fingertips would be slightly chapped, the dry hands of a doctor, who washed his hands often. I imagined his fingers lightly stroking my cheek.

  Hush, he would whisper.

  Again and again I pictured this: his hand rising to cup my face, his voice gently urging me to hush.

  Until finally, somewhere in the middle of this small fantasy, I realized that Walter was no longer watching the fire, but was instead looking at me, and had been looking at me for some time. When at last I glanced up and met his eyes, I was not entirely surprised to see that the expression on his face did not say hush at all. Instead it was an expression I knew well enough—too well, perhaps—a look of attention rapidly deepening into consideration, which is less focused than attention, but hungrier.

  The candles on top of the organ had burned low, lighting the room with the murky glow of an old Dutch painting. Walter’s breathing had become shallow. Confusion dulled his big face as he gazed back at me; I suppose I looked enough like Frances in that indefinite light, and enough not like Frances in my red dress, to allow him to obscure what was going on in his mind. My own mind had grown suddenly clear and sharp, even as my arms and legs had gone heavy, and my heart began to run fast with the thin peculiar triumph that comes to me in moments like these, an exultancy wavering between arousal and disgust. But of course I wanted him to want me. It would be warm and comforting, and also vindicating, to be desired by Walter, decent upstanding Walter, to have him groan and pull me against his chest and run his hands through my hair, and say that he couldn’t help himself. As his hands dampened around mine, I thought of his shirts hanging on the back of the study door. His black socks balled on the desk.

  I’d been in this deliberately vague charged-up situation often enough to predict what would happen next: his stubbly cheek rasping against mine, the sour smell of alcohol on his breath as our mouths met, then his tongue probing, my neck craning back until it ached. That prediction was almost enough to make me stand up and say good night.

  But Walter was still holding my left hand between both of his, looking at me intently. I glanced down at the back of his hand, which was broad and hairy; the nails were very clean. When I laid my right hand on top of his I could feel his bones under his skin. Gently, very gently, I began circling the base of his thumb with the pad of mine.

  He made a small hissing noise between his teeth.

  For a long moment the two of us sat there, staring at each other, until once more I began that gentle circling with my thumb. His palm moistened, arched. But as I leaned in toward him, Walter moaned and pulled his hands away.

  “No,” he said.

  Around us the living-room furniture emerged from the shadows to loom over us. My face was so hot that it felt scalded—it must have looked scalded. My hands were freezing. Ravening maw, I repeated to myself silently, with scornful detachment. You are a ravening maw. How could you be such a ravening maw?

  Eventually I heard myself say, “I guess we got a little carried away tonight.”

  “You’ve had a lot to drink,” he said hoarsely.

  From far off in the woods, a high-pitched howling began.

  “I think it might be better if I left tomorrow instead of Sunday.”

  “You don’t have to go, Cynthia.”

  “I think I should.”

  “Frances won’t want you to.”

  “I’ve had enough of what Frances wants.”

  Two or three votive candles guttered on top of the organ, their saucers filling with wax. The howling continued.

  “And if Frances knew—,” I began with a little laugh.

  “Knew what?” he said shortly.

  “What you and I—”

  “Forget it. It wasn’t anything.”

  “Frances wouldn’t forget it,” I said.

  He gave me a flat look. “Nothing just happened, Cynthia. Do you understand? You are drunk.”

  We sat surrounded by the dark shapes of Frances’s beautiful things. Then Walter’s beeper went off. He unhooked the beeper from his belt, glanced at it, then turned it facedown on the coffee table. Watching him, I recalled his apprehensive expression when his beeper had gone off in the car, and it came to me that I’d probably been fooled by Walter, too, dependable Walter, so solid and reliable in his blue Oxford shirt. That he might be as big a liar as Frances.

  Those new trendy eyeglasses, the restlessness, the casual pressure of his hand on my arm, my shoulder, lingering a few moments longer than necessary. What had nearly happened just now on the sofa. He wouldn’t want calls on his home or office phone; his beeper number would be the best choice.

  “So who are you sleeping with?” I asked. “One of your patients?”

  Walter stared at me. Then he sighed and passed his hand over his face.

  “Come on,” I said.

  Evidently Walter had drunk too much that night as well. Or maybe he felt he owed me something, after rejecting me. Most likely he just had to confess to someone, the way guilty people always do.

  Because finally, unwillingly, he looked at me over the top of his glasses and said: “It wasn’t a patient. And it was only once. Frances and I have never had problems that way, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He paused and glanced away, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.

  “But you cheated on her.”

  He flinched. “It was a misjudgment I made,” he continued after a moment.

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “It wasn’t anything,” Walter said crossly. “It didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Just physical?”

  He frowned. “Men and women are different.”

  “That’s a cliché, Walter.”

  “So what,” he said brutally.

  Suddenly I felt so tired that I could hardly summon the energy to add, “And by the way, Frances knows.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “I heard you two arguing the other night.”

  “Oh, that.” He gave a dismissive shrug. “What you heard,” he said grimly, “is Frances being worried.”

  “She suspects you, though. And it turns out she’s right.”

  “She’s not right. There’s nothing to be right about.”

  I considered this statement for a moment. “So you don’t want to sleep with Mary Ellen?”

  Walter made an irritable gesture with his hand. “God no. I don’t know why Frances is so obsessed with that woman. Or why she insisted on inviting her tonight.” Now his face was screwed up in angry perplexity. “Who the hell knows what she wanted to prove.”

  Then his face cleared. “Anyway, she knows I’d never leave her.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked at me sternly. “Because I wouldn’t. I’m married to Frances. People can act badly in a marriage and still want to stay married. That’s pretty elementary, Cynthia. I’m not excusing what I did, but I didn’t do it to hurt my marriage.”

  Such a sap, I thought. Walter is a sap. Even in cheating, he’s a sap. Going out and sleeping with people who don’t matter to him, pretending Frances would understand.

  “I love Frances,” he was saying.

  “Of course you do,” I replied. “That’s why you lied to her.”

  “People lie to each other all the time, for all sorts of reasons, some of them good. For godssake, Cynthia,” said Walter, losing his temper. “What do you know about it?”

  “You’d be surprised at what I know. Especially what I know about Frances and lying.”

  “Suc
h as?” said Walter tensely. He must have been thinking of Wen-Yi. Men like Walter can’t imagine being betrayed by their wives except for a younger man.

  “Did you know that my father was a card shark? A con artist?”

  “What?” Walter looked bewildered.

  “Nothing big. Before he met my mother and got into the insurance racket.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “He’s half Jewish, though he pretends to be such a WASP. I bet you didn’t know that, either.”

  “Cynthia,” said Walter. “What are you telling me this stuff for?”

  “Because you don’t know anything,” I said. “You don’t even know what you think you know. Frances hasn’t told you anything. She doesn’t think our father killed our mother. She thinks she did. And she thinks our father set her up to do it.”

  “Why would she think that?” Walter looked horror-struck.

  I stared back at him.

  “You’re exhausted,” he told me. Shrewdness had come back into his eyes. “And you’ve had too much to drink.”

  “So have you.”

  A muscle jumped in his cheek. Even in such poor light, I could see that he was struggling to say the right thing, to climb out of the dangerous position he’d put himself in by sitting too close to me on the sofa, and breathing hard, then offering up his confession. Probably he’d never found himself in this sort of moral quicksand before, not even with his cheating, his one “misjudgment,” which to his mind was probably no worse than forgetting to defrost the turkey. But what could he say that wouldn’t sink him further? He must have been quite frightened.

  “I’m sorry, Cynthia.”

  “Not as sorry as you should be. She doesn’t care about you half as much as she cares about him.”

  Walter stood up so abruptly that he bumped against the coffee table, hard enough that several of Jane’s jigsaw pieces fell onto the carpet. For a moment he stared down at them, unable to decide whether to pick them up or leave them there.

  “Worry about yourself,” he said unsteadily. “Frances will be fine. Frances is fine.”

  Behind his heavy glasses his face looked elderly and querulous, as if I’d glimpsed Walter ten or fifteen years from now, at a time when he himself was no longer well.