Wolf at the Table, page 7
“It smells extraordinary in here,” Ed says.
“Wait till you taste it,” Lexy says. “My mother’s cooking secrets go back to the Old Testament.”
In the foyer they shed their coats and hang them on the few available pegs along the wall. Lexy removes her red wool beret and stuffs it in the pocket of her coat. She peers into the living room, where Joan sits in front of the television on the old oval rope rug. The glow from the TV makes her face appear lifeless, sallow. Even from the foyer Lexy can see that Joan has gotten heavier. From certain angles, in certain lights, she looks like one of the many overweight middle-aged men in the neighborhood. As soon as Joan sees Lexy, she stands and bounds toward her, surprisingly light on her feet. During their embrace Lexy is shocked by Joan’s weight, the concentrated density of her body.
“Hi, Joan,” Ed says to Joan, who hides her face in Lexy’s baby blue cashmere sweater, which was an early Christmas gift from Ed. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
Joan peeks out at him. “I’m going to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” she tells him, still holding on to her sister. “There’s a snow monster and a lumberjack and an elf who wants to be a dentist. Fiona is coming with a boy named Sky. Myra’s in the kitchen with Mother.”
“Is Dad around?” Lexy asks, curling a strand of Joan’s hair behind her ear.
“He’s at the grocery store,” she says. She peeks at Ed again, who sends her a winning smile, which causes her to completely bury her face in Lexy’s sweater.
“What about Alec?” Lexy says.
“Myra says he’s in Kansas being a nincompoop. Will you please kiss my head?”
Lexy kisses her sister on her forehead, which inspires a grin so unabashed that it causes Ed to laugh.
“Lexy has magic kisses,” Joan tells Ed, and then turns and bounds back to the living room.
She plops down in front of the behemoth Magnavox Console color TV, whose volume has been turned down. Two years ago, after his beloved Zenith Porthole’s picture slipped off-center, Donald splurged for the combination television-phonograph-radio. The enormous entertainment system seems to take up more floor space than the sofa. It is dense, indestructible, a thing to be ridden into battle. On-screen is a commercial for the new white Ford Thunderbird featuring a sunroof and many automotive refinements. Joan is instantly transfixed by the ad’s smooth images. Her thumb is in her mouth, a habit she has carried past her twenty-first birthday. With her free hand Joan kneads at the edge of the rope rug as if it might cause Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to appear on the screen sooner than its TV Guide listing.
“That’s some tree,” Ed says, nodding toward the corner of the living room, where the Larkins’ Christmas tree pulses with blinking lights and colored ornaments and looping strands of popcorn.
Lexy takes his hand and leads him toward it. It excites her to feel his large wide palm, its warmth, its strength. Ed is her first lover. They’ve spent the past few days in a motel room in Poughkeepsie, making love and drinking peach schnapps and taking hot baths together. Lexy told her mother it was a mandatory volleyball tournament that kept her on campus until today and Ava seemed to accept the lie without suspicion.
“Is that Mickey Rooney?” Ed asks, pointing to the angel at the top of the tree.
Lexy laughs. The familiar angel, with its vast feathered wings, seems too large for this tree, which is almost a foot smaller than usual. Every year, since Lexy can remember, her father drives up to his brother’s nursery in the Catskills the week after Thanksgiving and cuts down a Douglas fir. It used to be one of the big family outings where they would all vote on the perfect tree, drink hot cider, and chase each other through the snow, but now her father goes alone.
Up close, the angel seems mildly amused, as if hoarding a dirty secret.
A smattering of presents has already been arranged under the tree. Per the Larkin tradition, the majority of gifts will be sneaked into place while everyone’s asleep.
Lexy reaches into her weekend bag and sets her small wrapped offerings among the others: a Vassar collector pen for Myra, a leather-bound diary for Fiona, a Mickey Mantle bobbing-head doll for Joan, a pair of wool socks for her father, a knitted scarf for her mother.
“It smells like oranges,” Ed says, leaning toward the tree.
Lexy stands beside him, lightly grazing his exposed forearm with her fingers. In the motel room, she explored his body in ways she never thought possible; her hands touched hidden places, primitive parts of the flesh where carnality and pleasure wait to be coaxed from the body. It briefly thrills her to think of those long slow hours of sex and sleep. They used protection, of course, and despite all the pleasures they shared, this special time with Ed wasn’t completely devoid of a wheedling Catholic guilt that seemed to faintly ring in her left ear each time she excused herself to use the bathroom. The only thing that made it go away was when she turned the light off so she couldn’t see her reflection in the medicine-chest mirror.
She picks off a few pieces of stringed popcorn from the tree and tosses a couple of them into her mouth. The other she places in the center of Ed’s large hand.
“Go on,” she dares him.
“Billy goat,” Ed teases, then slips the popcorn into his mouth and chews.
“Rebel,” Lexy teases back, easing her thigh into his groin.
Ed is Jewish, but in the car Lexy asked him not to mention this to anyone. “They don’t need to know that yet,” she said.
DURING DINNER CHRISTMAS MUSIC drifts in from the living room.
Fiona and her shaggy-headed boyfriend, Sky, are seated across from each other. They arrived in a tan ’59 Bonneville convertible with many rust splotches. Lexy is seated to the left of Sky, who sports a butterscotch threadbare corduroy suit and a black Kinks concert T-shirt. His pale blue eyes are keen, intelligent. His wild nest of brown hair smells of clove cigarettes and some sort of musky oil. To Sky’s right is Joan, who has grown so shy since Lexy’s arrival that she wonders if her sister has been sedated.
On the other side of the table, opposite Lexy, seated right to left, are Myra, Fiona, and Ed, who has changed into a collared shirt and a crewneck sweater. Fiona wears a thin mustard-yellow turtleneck with brown and red stripes. She is not wearing a bra and Lexy can’t help but notice her nipples pressing through the thin polyester fabric. She’s certain that Ed can see them as well. A class move by her sister, forever the provocateur, always trying to make people notice her. She arrived with a bad cough—she says it’s hardly anything—and Ava has asked her to please cough into her napkin or the crook of her elbow.
Kitty-corner from Lexy sits Myra, who wears a simple red cardigan sweater over a white blouse. A thin gold crucifix rests between her collarbones. Lexy has always thought Myra to possess the kind of beauty that takes hold of one’s gaze after a third or fourth glance, a beauty that slowly, almost imperceptibly, gains strength and never weakens. Without question Myra is the most consistent of her three sisters, the one who will outlast everyone else with her slow, steady demeanor and quiet confidence.
At opposite ends of the Larkins’ ancient, claw-foot mahogany table are her mother, seated near the archway leading into the kitchen, flanked by Joan and Myra, and her father, positioned before the five-pound ham with his back to the living room, near Lexy and Ed. Her father is wearing light blue shirtsleeves with a festive plaid V-neck sweater vest and a knit tie. His hair has been combed neatly, with its customary precise side part. Her mother has changed into a long skirt and a green sweater. The recently refurbished portrait of Christ looms over her right shoulder, as if her conspirator.
During grace, which is led by her father, Lexy steals a glance at Ed, who meets her gaze. While everyone else’s eyes are closed she mouths the words “I want you.” Ed smiles and closes his eyes. She will sneak into Alec’s room when everyone is asleep. They have not discussed it but this is her plan.
After grace, steaming serving dishes are passed around while her father carves thick slices of ham onto another plate. His hands are worse than they were during Thanksgiving, trembling as he grips the knife and fork. Though his expression is steady, the knobs of his jaw pulse ever so slightly. He’s learned how to clench his teeth and not give too much away. At forty-seven, he’s only recently started to go gray at the temples, and there are very few lines at the corners of his eyes. In high school Lexy’s girlfriends all had crushes on him. His gnarled, afflicted hands are the one thing that belies his age.
After Fiona’s plate lands in front of her, she coughs fiercely into her napkin and clears her throat. She and Lexy meet eyes. They’ve hardly said a word to each other since Fiona arrived with Sky.
“Anyone heard from Alec?” Fiona asks, her eyes still locked on Lexy, her voice husky, dehydrated.
Fiona has been, without a doubt, the most freely sexual of Lexy’s siblings. She was far more adventurous than the other girls in Elmira, losing her virginity to a college boy when she was sixteen. His name was Rusty Bales. He was a sophomore at Syracuse University and during spring break he’d picked her up at the restaurant where she was hostessing in nearby Corning. She didn’t come home for an entire weekend. Worried that her daughter had been kidnapped, Ava Larkin called the police and that Sunday she even filed a missing persons report, but then Fiona showed up at the evening Mass as if nothing had happened. The following week in school, the rumor about Fiona and Rusty Bales spread through the cafeteria like the flu, and far from refuting it, Fiona defiantly owned up to it. Her girlfriends stopped speaking to her and between classes students started calling her a slut and a whore and a hussy. But the ridicule seemed only to embolden her. If anything her autonomy grew fiercer. She’s the only Larkin sister who would dare to attend Christmas Eve dinner braless. Lexy would never admit it to Fiona, but she has always admired the way her sister dresses and wears her makeup, although tonight her eyes are naked. She looks younger, thinner than normal.
“Myra says he’s in Kansas,” their mother says of Alec’s whereabouts, heaping a large serving spoon of greens onto Joan’s plate.
“He got a job working road construction,” Myra says from the other side of the table.
“You talked to him?” Lexy asks.
“He calls Myra whenever he’s drunk or needs money,” Fiona says.
“Fiona,” their mother warns, cutting Joan’s ham into small squares.
Fiona smiles to herself and shakes her head as Sky sends her a look of admonishment across the table and mouths the word “stop.” Through the chaos of Sky’s hair Lexy can see that his left ear is pierced, though he doesn’t wear an earring. The piercing has been torn through the lobe. She wonders if this is an affectation, part of his renegade costume. She imagines him ripping his own earring out, first staring in the mirror, counting to three, and then yanking.
“It’s good that he’s working,” her mother says, tending to her own plate now.
“I told him he was invited to Christmas,” Myra says. “That Mom and Dad said it was okay.”
“You said he could come home?” Fiona says to their mother, as if in disbelief.
“We did,” she says. “Your father and I talked it through and we think it’s been long enough.”
“He sounded good,” Myra says. “He likes his job. He’s renting an apartment, near Wichita.”
Something passes over Fiona’s face. She seems suddenly far away. Her mouth goes slack and her eyes slide a bit. Is it regret? Lexy wonders. A memory? Is she jealous of Alec’s unexpected clemency? Or is it some unexpressed feeling for her only living brother?
When their mother rises and exits to the kitchen, Fiona seizes one of the dinner rolls from Ed’s plate and tosses it across the table at the mysterious Sky, who catches it, sets it beside a pile of greens, and then second-guesses himself and winds up offering it back across the table to Ed, a preemptive armistice.
“You have it,” Ed says. “But thank you.”
The subject of Alec—the unspoken shame and sadness of his life—seems to have cast a heavy silence over the table. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s rendition of “Silent Night” floats in from the living room. Lexy can feel Fiona’s eyes on her again. She looks across the table and sure enough she’s staring at her.
“What?” Lexy says.
“Nothing,” Fiona quips.
“Why do you keep staring at me?”
“How’s school?” Myra asks Lexy, clearly trying to be a buffer.
“It’s good,” Lexy says.
“Have you thought about a major yet?” Myra asks.
“I’m considering economics.”
“God,” Fiona says. “Why?”
“Gosh,” their mother says, reentering the dining room with her mother’s crystal decanter of red wine, one of the Larkins’ few beloved heirlooms. “Or good grief.”
“Good grief, why?” Fiona says without missing a beat.
“There’s something certain about numbers,” Lexy says.
“She means money,” Fiona says.
Their mother hands the decanter of wine to Fiona. “Please pass this down to your father.”
“Why not accounting?” Fiona says, handing the decanter to Ed, who in turn gives it to Donald.
“Because accounting is just a lot of adding and subtracting,” Lexy replies. “Economics is more than that.”
“How so?” Fiona says.
“Accounting doesn’t necessarily deal with the marketplace. Or the politics of business.”
“She’ll be on Wall Street in no time,” Fiona says to Sky, who smiles politely but doesn’t take the bait.
“She’s reading an interesting novel,” Ed offers, a clear attempt to steer the subject away from Lexy’s potential career.
Myra takes it up. “What book?” she asks.
“The Stranger,” Lexy says.
“Ooh,” Fiona says, “Camus. Do you like it?”
“I do,” Lexy says.
“What about it do you like?” Fiona asks.
“I don’t know. The main character isn’t like anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Meursault,” Fiona says with an exaggerated French accent. “The Algerian enigma.”
“You’ve read it?” Myra says to Fiona.
“‘How had I failed to recognize that nothing was more important than an execution; that, viewed from one angle, it’s the only thing that can genuinely interest a man?’” Fiona says, quoting the lines effortlessly. “My favorite part is where the chaplain asks him if he’s seen the face of God in the wall of his cell and Meursault admits that he’s been looking at the wall for months and waiting for a face to emerge and it wasn’t the face of God he’d hoped to see, but the face of his girlfriend.”
“Is he spiritually deviant?” their mother asks.
“I think he finds the idea of God to be absurd,” Fiona says.
“Or indifferent,” Lexy says.
“Do you find the idea of God to be absurd?” their mother asks Fiona.
“I don’t know,” Fiona answers. “The jury’s still out on that one.”
“And what about you?” their mother asks Lexy.
Lexy can’t answer. It’s as if there’s a fishhook caught in her lip. She’s never expressed such things in front of her mother.
“What does he do to get himself sent to prison?” Myra asks, rescuing Lexy.
“He kills an Arab man on the beach,” Lexy says, thawing from her brief freeze. “He shoots him in self-defense.”
“The first bullet is in self-defense,” Fiona says. “But then he unloads his revolver. He shoots him four more times.”
“That sounds grisly,” their mother says.
“Why does he shoot him more than once?” Myra asks.
“It’s not entirely clear,” Sky offers out of nowhere.
It’s the first time Lexy has heard him speak, and his voice is surprisingly gentle, not at all what she expected. Everyone turns to him.
“And I don’t think the action is meant to be easily interpreted,” he adds. “It’s implied that the jury ultimately finds him guilty because he didn’t openly mourn at his mother’s funeral. Even though there’s probably not enough evidence to suggest that it was a blatantly malicious act and not one committed in self-defense.”
Lexy is struck by the ease with which the words leave Sky’s mouth.
“In the end,” he continues, “he’s sentenced to death. I think what Camus is getting at is the indifference of the state.”
“And God,” Fiona adds.
“Not to mention the stupidity of the courts,” Lexy says.
“The folly of the justice system,” Sky says, nodding in agreement.
“Folly,” Fiona says. “Exactly.”
“Did you study the book in school?” Myra asks Sky.
“I never finished school,” he says.
“So you came to these conclusions on your own?” Lexy asks.
“More or less,” he says.
Their mother, letting the comment on God’s indifference pass unremarked, rises and helps Joan scoot her chair closer to the table, presumably so she won’t spill any more food in her lap. “And what do you do for work?” she asks Sky.
“I’m actually between jobs at the moment,” he says, swiping a strand of hair away from his forehead. “I was plastering walls for a few months but that gig ended. There’s lots of buildings getting renovated in the city, though, so I like my chances of finding something else soon.”
“He’s an amazing artist,” Fiona says. “His paintings are like dreams. He’s self-taught. Like all the best painters.”
“Do you live in the city?” Lexy asks.
“He rents a loft in SoHo,” Fiona says.
“With a few friends,” Sky says. “We’re sort of a collective.”
“Interesting,” their mother says. Lexy notices her share a look with her father, who raises an eyebrow.
“There are six of us,” Sky explains about his roommates. “We pool our resources, give what we can to the rent, the electric bill, food.”
