Страница 24 из 79
Earlier there had been a little huddle in the kitchen, where most of them had retreated soon after being introduced to Atta. When Abby made the mistake of walking in on them, they drew apart to glare at her. “Mom, how could you?” Amanda asked, and Jea
“Doing what?” Abby asked. “Honestly, if you all can’t show a little hospitality toward a stranger …”
“This was supposed to be just family! You’re never satisfied with just family! Aren’t we ever enough for you?”
By now, though, things had settled down to a simmer. Amanda’s Hugh was making his usual production of the carving (he had taken a special course, after which he always insisted on doing the honors), although Red kept muttering, “It’s boneless, for God’s sake; what’s the big deal?” Nora glided in and out of the kitchen, quieting the children and mopping up spills, while Mrs. Angell, a sweet-faced woman with a puff of blue-white hair, did her best to draw Atta into conversation. She inquired about Atta’s work, her native foods, and her country’s health-care system, but Atta slammed each question to the ground and let it lie there like a dead shuttlecock. “Will you be applying for American citizenship?” Mrs. Angell asked at one point. “Decidedly not,” Atta said.
“Oh.”
“Atta has been finding Americans unfriendly,” Abby told Mrs. Angell.
“My heavens! I never heard that before!”
“Oh, they pretend to be friendly,” Atta said. “My colleagues ask, ‘How are you, Atta?’ They say, ‘Good to see you, Atta.’ But do they invite me home with them? No.”
“That’s shocking.”
“They are, how do you say? Two-faced,” Atta said.
Jea
De
“I just suddenly thought of her; I don’t know why.”
Amanda snickered, and Stem gave a groan. They knew why. (B. J., with her strident voice and her grating laugh, had been one of their mother’s more irksome orphans.) De
“Oh?” she said. “ ‘Two-faced’ is an incorrect term?”
“In this situation, yes. ‘Polite’ would more accurate. They’re trying to be polite. They don’t much like you, so they don’t invite you to their homes, but they’re doing their best to be nice to you, and so that’s why they ask how you are and tell you it’s good to see you.”
Abby said, “Oh! De
“What.”
“And also,” Atta told him, apparently unfazed, “they say, ‘Have a nice weekend, Atta.’ How should I do that? This is what I should ask them.”
“Right,” De
“Behold!” Amanda’s Hugh crowed, spearing a slice of beef with his carving fork. “See this, Red?”
“Eh?”
“This slice has your name on it. Observe the paper-thi
“Oh, okay, thank you, Hugh,” Red said.
Amanda’s Hugh was famous in the family for asking, once, why there seemed to be a diploma under the azalea bushes. He’d been referring to the white PVC drainage pipe leading from the basement sump pump. The family never got over it. (“Seen any diplomas out in the shrubbery lately, Hugh?”) They liked him well enough, but they marveled at how astonishingly impractical he was, how out of touch with matters they considered essential. He couldn’t even replace a wall switch! He was trim and model-handsome and accustomed to admiration, and he kept seizing on new careers and then abandoning them in a fit of impatience. Currently, he owned a restaurant called Thanksgiving that served only turkey di
Jea
At the moment, he was asking Elise all about her ballet, which was considerate of him. (She’d been left out of the conversation up till then.) “Is it on account of ballet that you’re wearing your hair so tight?” he asked, and Elise said, “Yes, Madame O’Leary requires it,” and sat up taller — a reed-thin, ostentatiously poised child — and touched the little doughnut on the tippy-top of her head.
“But what if you were frizzy-haired and couldn’t make it stay in place?” he asked. “Or what if you were one of those people whose hair will only grow so long?”
“No exceptions are made,” Elise told him severely. “We have to have a chignon.”
“Well, shoot!”
“And also these flowing skirts,” Amanda told him. “They tie them on over their leotards. Everyone expects tutus, but tutus are just for performances.”
Abby said, “Oh, Jea
“Do I!” Jea
“Your mom had asked us to babysit,” Abby told Elise. “It was the first time she was leaving you and she felt safer starting with family. So we told her, ‘Go on! Go!’ and the instant she was gone we stripped you down to your diaper and started trying clothes on you. Every single piece of clothing you’d gotten at your baby shower.”
“I never knew that,” Amanda said, while Elise looked pleased and self-conscious.
“Oh, we’d been dying to get our hands on all those cu
“Of course I remember,” Jea
“Well, we were sort of punch-drunk,” Abby explained to Atta. “Elise was the first grandchild.”
“Or else not,” De
“What, sweetie?”
“You seem to be forgetting that Susan was the first grandchild.”
“Oh! Well, of course. Yes, I just meant the first grandchild who was close; I mean geographically close. I wouldn’t forget Susan for the world!”
“How is Susan?” Jea
“She’s good,” De
He ladled gravy over his meat and passed the tureen to Atta, who squinted into it and passed it on.
“What’s she doing with her summer?” Abby asked.
“She’s in some kind of music program.”
“Music, how nice! Is she musical?”
“I guess she must be.”
“Which instrument?”
“Clarinet?” De
“Oh, I figured maybe French horn.”
“Why would you figure that?”
“Well, you used to play French horn.”
De
“What’s Susan doing over the summer?” Red asked.
Everyone looked at him.
“Clarinet, Red,” Abby said finally.
“Eh?”
“Clarinet!”
“My grandson in Milwaukee plays the clarinet,” Mrs. Angell said. “It’s hard to listen to him without giggling, though. Every third or fourth note comes out as this terrible squawk.” She turned to Atta and said, “I have thirteen grandchildren, can you believe it? Do you have grandchildren, Atta?”
“How would that be possible?” Atta demanded.
Another silence fell, this one heavy and muffling, like a blanket, and they all turned their attention to the food.
After lunch Atta took her leave, carrying with her the remains of the store-bought sheet cake they’d served for dessert. (She’d barely touched the tuna salad—“Mercury,” she had a