Wolf at the Table, page 8
“They’re all extraordinarily talented,” Fiona says. “One guy makes sculptures out of bicycle parts he finds all around the city.”
“And are you part of this collective too?” their mother asks Fiona.
“Fiona’s been helping me stretch canvases,” Sky says. “And learning how to mix paints.”
“Are you living there as well?” their mother asks.
“I am,” Fiona says.
Lexy watches their mother cast a look down the table toward their father again, who meets her eyes, though this time his expression reveals very little.
“And last month you were in Washington?” their mother says to Fiona, pouring herself a glass of wine from the decanter that’s been making its way around the table.
“Only for a few days,” Fiona says.
“Is that why you couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving?” Lexy says. “Because of the protests?”
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Fiona says.
“We’re glad you’re here,” their mother says. “And we’re glad to meet you, too, Sky.”
“Thank you for having me,” Sky says. “I’ve heard so much about all of you.”
“Eat your greens,” their mother says to Fiona, who complies by gently stabbing a forkful of them.
Fiona then coughs into her napkin. Three sharp, ragged hacks that sound painful.
“Have you seen anyone about that?” Myra asks her.
“It sounds like bronchitis,” Lexy says.
“Are you a doctor now?” Fiona says. “I’m fine. I get this every winter. It’ll go away.”
“Myra, what do you think?” says their mother, who has designated Myra the expert for all ailments ever since she went to nursing school.
“Do you have a fever?” Myra asks Fiona.
Their mother rises and places her hand on Fiona’s forehead. “You are a little warm,” she says, then exits to the kitchen.
“It doesn’t sound good,” Myra says. “You best get your rest. And drink plenty of liquids. Do you have any way of sitting in a steamy shower?”
Fiona shakes her head. “Not at the moment,” she says.
“There’s a shower upstairs,” Lexy says.
“I’d be wasting water,” Fiona retorts.
Lexy imagines her sister bathing in Sky’s SoHo communal loft, some paint-splattered industrial sink designed for the scrubbing of machine parts, the water rusty and septic-looking, then imagines her not bathing for days on end, her feet discolored and fungal, her scalp rampant with lice.
Their mother returns with two aspirin. “Take those,” she says.
Fiona puts them in her mouth and swallows them dry.
There is a brief silence, scored by the clinking of utensils on plates and the Christmas music. One song ends and the radio host announces another offering from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “‘O Little Town of Bethlehem,’” he says in his silky baritone.
Lexy glances across at Ed, who takes a drink of wine and wipes his mouth with his napkin. He’s been so quiet. She was so excited for everyone to meet her tall, handsome boyfriend. She thought he’d be fielding a litany of questions, but Sky appears to be the one who’s captured the family’s interest.
“You were protesting the war?” their father asks Sky from his end of the table.
Everyone stops eating and turns to him. It’s the first time he’s spoken since he said grace. He’s fixed his gaze on Sky, his large gray eyes expectant, unblinking.
“Yes, sir,” Sky says, “we were protesting Vietnam.”
“You don’t agree with it,” their father says.
“I’m afraid not. And I mean no disrespect, Mr. Larkin. Fiona told me how you served.”
“Do you not love your country?” their father asks.
“I do love it, sir. Very much. That’s precisely why Fiona and I went to Washington.” Sky seems to take a moment to gather his thoughts. He dabs at his mouth with his napkin and continues: “Like many others I feel like we’re not over there for the right reasons. It’s none of our business.”
“But stopping the spread of Communism is our business,” their father says.
“Thousands of lives are being lost,” Sky gently counters. “So many people are suffering. Women and children. I just don’t see the point.”
“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” their mother says.
“If it means anything,” Sky continues, “my father also served in World War Two. He was a gunnery sergeant in the Marines. He fought in Iwo Jima and I admire him very much.”
“How does he feel about you protesting?” their father asks.
“In all honesty, it’s complicated,” Sky says. “We haven’t spoken in a few years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” their mother says.
“His dad wanted him to go into the family business,” Fiona says. “Back in Wisconsin.”
“What kind of business?” Myra asks.
“Medical supplies,” Sky says.
“But he’s a painter,” Fiona declares to the entire table. “It’s what he’s been put on the earth to do. And his work is extraordinary. He recently finished a large canvas of a rainforest. When you stand before it you can almost smell the air. You can practically hear the insects. You can sense the creatures lurking behind the trees. It feels like you’re truly part of it. It’s as if the painting has imagined you.”
“It sounds so vivid,” Myra offers.
“Mr. Larkin,” Sky says, “I honestly don’t know what my father would say about my protesting.”
Their father nods and returns to his plate. Earlier in the evening, when he had entered the house with the groceries, he’d kissed Lexy on the cheek and said hello to Ed and shook his hand in a respectful, businesslike fashion, but to Lexy his actions seemed somehow muted. There was something quietly despairing about the manner in which he removed his coat and carried the bag of groceries into the kitchen. At Thanksgiving Lexy had noticed a seed of ache that had formed between his eyes, and is still there tonight.
After a silence, their mother fills her wineglass and says, “How’s the ham, everyone?”
“Delicious,” Ed says.
“Really good,” Sky adds.
“Well, there’s plenty more,” she offers. “Don’t be shy.”
“What about you, Ed?” Fiona says, twirling her own fork in a vortex of mashed potatoes.
Lexy is relieved. Now it’s his time to shine. Finally.
“What would you like to know?” Ed says.
“What are your interests?” Fiona asks him, performing extreme politeness, really articulating her consonants.
“I’m majoring in education,” he says, “with a minor in psychology. I’d like to someday teach high school and maybe coach basketball.”
At last Lexy glimpses her opening. “He’s on the varsity at Yale,” she brags. “He’s their second-leading scorer.”
“Wow,” Fiona says. “Yale.”
“Could I trouble you for another slice of ham?” Ed says to Myra, passing his plate to Fiona, who hands it along.
Is he dodging the spotlight? Lexy wonders. She didn’t expect him to be so shy.
“No trouble at all,” Myra says. She uses the serving fork to place another slice of ham on his plate and passes it back down the table.
“Did you go to school?” Ed asks Fiona. Lexy detects the slightest bit of derision in his voice.
“She started at the College of Saint Rose up in Albany,” Lexy says, “but she came home after a semester.”
“I had mononucleosis,” Fiona says.
“She dropped out,” Lexy counters.
“I was bedridden for a month!”
Lexy casts her silverware onto her plate and leans in to the table. “Fiona’s problem is that she can’t decide if she’s an artist or a revolutionary.” A rush of adrenaline heats her face. “One minute she’s silk-screening anti-apartheid T-shirts in some stranger’s attic in New Jersey, and then before you know it she’s living with a half-baked nudist quote-unquote photographer from Peekskill, supposedly employed as his quote-unquote assistant—whatever that means.” The words are tumbling out of her mouth now, her cheeks aflame. “And after that didn’t work out she found a job sweeping floors at some community food co-op on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but of course that didn’t last either—I guess that broom just got too heavy for her—and a month later she’s growing out her armpit hair and protesting the war in Washington.” She locks eyes with Fiona. “Pick a lane and stick to it, you might actually get somewhere!”
“Lexy, come on now,” Myra says after absorbing a grave look from their mother, who has kept her composure since the argument started.
Lexy can barely raise her eyes now. Their father is staring at his plate as if the ham will provide a solution.
Fiona’s face, bone-white, is utterly still. Her green eyes look pinned, feral. But then she seemingly regains herself. “Lexy suddenly has opinions,” she starts, speaking directly to Ed, “because she’s going to some fancy liberal arts college. Because she’s reading Camus.” Her head pivots sharply to Lexy. “Maybe I’ll pick the most upstanding lane, like you. A lot of fun that must be, playing by the rules, being the Model Young American Daughter. You really must get off on the pursuit of perfection, you stuck-up priss!” Her face is also pink now, inflamed. She turns back to Ed. “Although I doubt she has any idea what getting off feels like!” She gulps her wine and goes right back at Lexy. “And Graham wasn’t a nudist, he was comfortable with his body! And he didn’t live in Peekskill, he lived in Katonah! And just for the record, his photographs have been featured in magazines!”
“Take a shower—you stink!” Lexy lashes back.
“I smell real, you phony!”
“You smell like a goat!” Lexy seethes. She can feel herself baring her incisors. The heat from her face has moved down her neck. Her ears are on fire.
“And you smell as dull as that cashmere sweater you’re wearing! Who do you think you are—Jackie O?”
“Put a bra on, Sheena!”
“Girls!” their mother finally cries, rocketing out of her chair. Her height is towering, almost capital in its magnificence. “That’s enough!” she says.
Only the Christmas music from the living room. A children’s choir singing “The Little Drummer Boy.”
Joan drops her fork onto her plate, brings her fists to her eyes, and starts to cry, without sound, in a way that makes it look like her face is trapped inside a plastic bag. Her features are ghoulish, contorting in on themselves.
Fiona turns away and unleashes a coughing fit into her hands. Lexy takes pleasure imagining her sister plagued with some horrible respiratory infection, expelling puddles of brown phlegm.
“Go get her book,” Ava says to Myra, who scoots her chair away from the table and heads for the stairs.
Fiona coughs a few more times, then brings her napkin to her mouth, pivoting away from the table.
Still standing, their mother shakes her head. “For Godsakes it’s the first time we’ve all been together in over a year.” She looks to Fiona, to Lexy. “Can you two at least try to get along?… Fiona Marie, I’m talking to you!”
Fiona turns her head, gives their mother her profile.
“Is it that hard?” their mother says.
Their father reaches under the table and gently squeezes Lexy’s leg. These small moments of affection from him are few and far between, and she is always surprised at how desperately she needs them. Although she and her father rarely speak, her love for him is absolute, and despite his quiet demeanor, she knows it’s mutual. She can feel Ed watching her but she can’t possibly look up. She bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying. Her lower lip always betrays her. If she could only freeze her fucking lower lip!
The music continues to drift in from the living room, now with “Joy to the World” by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. Lexy casts her gaze past Sky to Joan, whose cheeks have gone blotchy. Their mother is standing behind her, stroking her back. Since she was little, Joan has been prone to spells of hyperventilating.
“Easy now,” their mother tells Joan. “Just breathe…”
Lexy can feel Fiona staring at her, gloating like a sated pig.
“Excuse me,” Lexy says, and sets her napkin on her plate and pushes away from the table.
When she enters the kitchen, Myra is speaking quietly into the telephone.
“Okay,” Myra says. “Everyone is thinking about you. Hang in there. Merry Christmas.” She hangs up the phone and turns. Under her arm she is holding Joan’s sketch pad and pencil box.
“Alec?” Lexy says.
Myra nods.
“Where is he?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“He wanted money again?”
Myra nods once more and asks her not to tell the others.
“Why do you protect him?” Lexy asks.
“I don’t know,” Myra says. “I guess because no one else believes in him.”
“But you do.”
“I want to,” Myra says. “I really do.”
IN THE MIDDLE OF the night, a few hours after the family has returned from the midnight Mass at St. John the Baptist, Lexy sneaks across the upstairs hall and enters Alec’s room. When she opens her robe to Ed, he sits up in the twin bed so quickly it’s as if he is seeing beyond this world for the first time. He reaches for one of her breasts and Lexy falls on him. They cling and stroke and taste each other. It has started to snow again and moonlight spills in through the window, silvering their figures. Making love in the house she grew up in—in her brother’s room, no less—feels dirty, like they’re being spied on through the keyhole; or worse yet, it’s as if Alec himself is hiding in the closet.
Before Alec was banished from the house, she walked in on him masturbating in the garage. He must’ve been fifteen or sixteen. It was the height of summer and the heat that day was extraordinary. As instructed by their mother, Lexy had entered the garage to retrieve a metal basin to fill with ice. Alec was in the corner, his figure in profile, masturbating with a milk bottle stuffed with canned tuna. The two opened cans of StarKist were on the floor next to his feet, along with one of the can openers from the kitchen. The smell was unmistakable. She watched him, frozen there, for what felt like a full minute. Needless to say, she never returned to their mother with the metal basin, and she could never bring herself to eat tuna fish again.
Now, Ed burrows between her legs. And then they switch positions and she moves over him. His body is slim, hairless. She traces the faint, raised segment of his appendectomy scar, which travels to his hip, his groin. She takes him in her hand, then in her mouth. He releases a moan and she forces her hand over his face. He bites her fingers and they nearly explode with laughter, driving their faces into the lone pillow. They regain their composure for a few breaths and almost lose it again. Lexy whispers to him that above all else they have to be quiet. The restraint is thrilling. When she uses her hand to bring Ed to orgasm, Lexy covers his mouth with her other hand again and he makes a noise that sounds like someone being smothered.
Afterward Lexy heads down to warm some of her mother’s eggnog. As she descends the stairs—on her tiptoes, so as not to make them creak—she overhears Fiona asking their father for money. From the stairs, there in the dark, she can see into the living room, where he is arranging presents under the tree. Fiona is standing behind him, still in her turtleneck and blue velvet pants, her arms crossed. Their father leans back on his haunches and removes his wallet. He reaches into it and offers her a twenty-dollar bill.
“That’s it?” Fiona says. She stares at the twenty-dollar bill in her hand. “But what about rent and groceries? What if I need medication for this cough?”
Their father gives her another twenty. Fiona just shakes her head, indignant, staring at the money.
“We’ve given you plenty this year,” their father says. “You need to start figuring things out on your own.”
Fiona turns and storms out of the living room, crossing into the dining room and then the kitchen. Lexy can hear her open the basement door, followed by her descending footfalls. She remains sitting on the stairs, watching her father, who has resumed arranging the presents under the tree. Now two sets of muted footfalls can be heard ascending the basement steps, and moments later Fiona and Sky cross through the dining room and the living room and then they’re in the foyer opening the door and exiting the house. Sky is carrying Fiona’s red suitcase that she inherited from Myra, and they don’t even stop to say farewell to her father on their way out.
Lexy descends the stairs and through the living room window can see them get into Sky’s Bonneville, parked behind Ed’s station wagon. Sky sets the red suitcase in the back seat, shuts the door, then clears snow off the windshield with his bare hand and does the same to the driver’s-side mirror. Fiona coughs loudly, spits phlegm into the snow, enters the passenger’s side, and slams the door shut. Sky gets in the driver’s side. The car starts with a roar and backs out of the driveway, thick gray exhaust billowing from the tailpipe.
Her father, seated on the floor before the Christmas tree, turns and sees Lexy.
“They just left,” Lexy tells him.
“I guess they did,” he says, as if they are merely two strangers who used the Larkin driveway to back in and turn their car around. In typical fashion he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.
“Classic Christmas Eve insomnia,” she offers, approaching him. “You’d think I’d have grown out of it by now.”
Next to her father lies a large box of candy canes, each one individually wrapped in plastic. The surprise Christmas-morning candy canes decorating the tree are a long-standing family tradition, Santa’s little personal flourish for the Larkins.
Lexy sits on the floor beside her father. “Don’t you ever get bored of this?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.
“I actually like it,” he says. “My own little ritual. It’s surprisingly calming… Your mother makes dinner all day and I stay up all night handling this.”
“You’ve always been a good team.”
