A Place at the Table (33 page)

Beside Alice stands a tall boy with something on his shoulder. It takes me a moment to decipher what it is, but then I realize it’s a chicken, staring straight at the camera, as if posing. Funny. I look closely at the boy. He is taller than Alice but looks a great deal like her. Same almond-shaped eyes, same sharp cheekbones, same full mouth. For some reason I am drawn to this boy. There is something so familiar about him. It’s a little like being at a party and spotting someone you know across the room but not being able to remember his or her name and so spending the entire evening awkwardly avoiding that person out of embarrassment.

Did this boy—Alice’s brother or cousin, surely—grow up to be famous? Is that why he looks so familiar?

Perspiration springs to my face, a sudden hot flash. What is it? What am I seeing here? My body is reacting to something I don’t yet understand: my heart rate increasing, my mouth going dry. The wild flower of sorrow is growing, reaching toward air, as if on speed release, growing so fast it is coming out of my mouth, pushing itself into the light, pushing itself out of me so that, in order to breathe, in order to breathe at all, I must open my mouth and say aloud the thing my body has already recognized:
Daddy.

The boy in the photograph is my father.

How the hell is the boy in the photograph my father? Why is my father in this book? Did my father know he was in this book? Yes, surely. Surely that is one of the reasons its publication upset him so. But why is he there, standing beside Alice on a black farm? He should have been in California, standing by his own broken parents, before their sad, short lives ended, back when they worked in the fruit trees. Was the photo taken after Daddy left California? I flip to the back, find the photography credits, which say the picture was taken in 1928. But didn’t Daddy’s mother die during the Depression, sometime in the 1930s? I should know the exact year, but Daddy was so reticent about his history. So reticent about everything. Maybe he was younger than I realized when his mother died, leaving Daddy an orphan. Maybe Daddy had already started train hopping, making his way across the country to where he would eventually end up, in New York, where he would undergo a quick transformation from farm boy to city slicker.

Could he possibly have stayed at the Stone family farm on his way across the country? Apprenticed there, helped out during harvest in exchange for room and board? But how would he have landed on a black farm? Did they somehow think he was black? Mistake his Italian skin for colored? But why in the world would a white man pretend to be colored in the Jim Crow South?

Maybe if he was starving. Truly starving. Daddy must have been
starving. Daddy was starving and so he did whatever he needed to do to get by. And he met Alice on the farm and fell in love with her, all those years ago, in 1928. Daddy would have been thirteen. Can you fall in love when you are thirteen?

I carry the book with me into the kitchen, where the phone is, dial Daddy’s number again. Once again I get the goddamn answering machine. “Daddy, it’s important; call me,” I say, then hang up. I am breathing heavily, pacing around the kitchen, reminding myself of Cam, releasing his pent-up rage.

I consider calling Kate at the office, but something stops me from doing so. Frustration that she did not tell me the full story the night before. Frustration that she has kept this story from me for so very long. My whole life, people have kept things from me. Daddy and his history with Alice Stone, Mother and her alcoholism, Cam and his affair and, before that, all of his little deals and negotiations, investing in companies I did not know about, coming home with a brand-new car before we ever discussed whether we should get one. Am I so much a child? Am I so much a child that difficult things must be kept from me?

I remember something our chaplain at Rosemary Hall used to say, probably when referencing the Honor Code: “The truth never hurt anyone.” During assemblies Sarah and I used to snort in derision at his earnestness, but the truth of those words now resonates.

There is nothing more belittling than being lied to.

And just then I notice a bright piece of paper stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet. I see the word “Alice” printed on it. I pull the invitation off the fridge. It is for an Open House at Bobby Banks and Alice Stone’s apartment, dated over a year ago. Yes, that’s right. Aunt Kate told me about that when it happened, that it was a strange but fitting alliance. And here is their address, 320 Riverside Drive, an easy one for me to remember because, oddly, it’s the month and day of Cam’s birthday, March 20.

I will take a cab to the West Side, and I will meet Alice face-to-face. I will bring her book with me. I will point to the boy in the picture beside her, and I will ask her to explain this man to me, to explain my father.

•  •  •

Three-twenty Riverside Drive is between 106th and 107th, a stately if run-down stone building overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson. It occurs to me that while only a few miles apart, Kate’s building watches over one river while Alice’s watches over another. Alice’s side of the city is messier; there is trash on the street and the buildings look tired.

I ring the bell marked “A. Stone and B. Banks #4D” and wait. A man’s voice comes on over the intercom.

“No solicitations, please.”

I press the “talk” button. “This is Amelia Brighton, Kate Pennington’s niece. Is this Bobby Banks? We spoke last night at the café.”

The intercom garbles his voice, but I believe he says, “Are you here about the book?”

“Um, yes,” I answer, even though I’m confused. I
am
here to talk about the book,
Homegrown
, but how would he know that? Then I remember what Kate suggested last night, that I help Bobby out with a cookbook he is working on. So he thinks I’m here for another reason. Well, fine. That might even help me gather more information. The door buzzes, I push against it, and I am inside the lobby, its former elegance apparent in the brass mailboxes, the elaborate molding, the curved banister of the stairwell.

There is no doorman, but there is an elevator, thank God. I push the “up” button and wait. I’ve got so much energy zipping through me that I don’t even feel nervous, not really. I’m more keyed up than anything. I am going to meet a woman who can tell me about my father.

Kate says my father loved this woman.

When the elevator arrives, I take it to the fourth floor. The central hallway smells of sulfur, as if someone in one of the apartments is preparing hard-cooked eggs. I find 4D and knock on the door. Almost immediately, it is answered by Bobby. He is even better looking in the daylight, out of his chef’s clothes, wearing jeans and a pale blue Shetland sweater.

“Well, hello,” he says. “I didn’t realize Kate was sending you over today. And to be completely honest, I’m not sure if I’m ready to commit to anything yet. But this is good; it will give us a chance to get to know each other and see if we’re a good fit before signing on to work together.”

I follow him inside the apartment, which is flooded in light and redolent of cinnamon. Once again I choose not to disabuse him of the notion that I am supposed to be here. In fact, I feel that I am. Supposed to be here, that is. Just not for the same reasons that he thinks I am.

“Is Miss Stone here?” I ask.

“She’s at the market, but I imagine she’ll be back shortly. May I get you something to drink? A glass of iced tea? Wine?”

It is twenty degrees outside and he is offering me iced tea. How southern. Taffy would ask for a glass of iced tea during a snowstorm. In fact, she once did. While visiting us in Connecticut.

I glance at my watch. It’s a little past noon. If it were still morning, I wouldn’t allow myself to do it. “Wine would be lovely,” I say, adding, “Kate told me you were a southerner, but I forgot, where are you from exactly?”

“I’ve actually come to think of myself as a New Yorker. I’ve been here since 1981.”

Funny. Only a non–New Yorker would think of himself as a native after living here for
eight whole years
.

“Yes, but where did you move from?” I ask. He has stepped
inside the galley kitchen and is pulling a bottle of wine from the refrigerator.

“Chardonnay okay?”

“Great,” I say.

“I grew up in Decatur, Georgia. It’s a little town just outside of Atlanta.”

“My oldest daughter is at Emory! And my husband is from Atlanta. We visit his family there at least twice a year.”

He grimaces while pulling out the cork from the perspiring bottle. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in Georgia. A very long time.”

“Well, we love Emory. Though it’s tough having my daughter so far away. Especially now. My husband and I are divorcing, actually.”

I don’t know why I’m telling him this.

“Should I say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘congratulations’?” he asks.

“A little from column A, a little from column B,” I say.

He walks out of the kitchen carrying our wineglasses and a handful of cocktail napkins. I follow him to the brown velvet couch in the living room. He waits until I sit before handing me my glass and a napkin.

“So, this is terrible. I know that you’re Kate’s niece, and I know that you’re here to discuss potentially helping with the book, but I don’t remember your name. Forgive me. I know you told me on the intercom, but my memory is worse than Alice’s, and I’m only twenty-nine.”

“Oh God, don’t apologize. I’m Amelia. Amelia Brighton. Kate is my mother’s sister.”

I take a sip of my wine, making a conscious effort not to gulp it, though it goes down so easily I am tempted to drain it in one sip.

“How much has Kate told you about the book?”

“Not much,” I answer, playing dumb, wanting to find out as much from him as I can.

“It’s the recipes I really need help with. They all make sense to
me, of course, but that might just be because I’ve prepared them a million times, both at the café and at home.”

The phone rings, but Bobby ignores it, letting the answering machine pick up. When it does, a deep southern drawl fills the room. “Bobby, it’s your mother. Listen: Baby Troy is supposed to do a project on New York City for social studies, and I thought it might be fun if you could send down some little trinkets for him to bring to class. You know, just silly stuff—a little Statue of Liberty or Empire State Building, something like that. I’m going to make some candied apples for him to bring for his presentation—which we’ll call the Big Candied Apple. He’s real excited about it, and I told him to make sure to tell his class that he has an uncle who has turned into a genuine New Yorker who has twice been in
The New York Times
. Anyway, call and let us know if you plan on sending down anything. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you.”

The message ends with a beep. Bobby is staring at the floor, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s my mama,” he says.

I smile. “I gathered. She’s still in Decatur?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“She sounds sweet,” I say.

“Do you remember Lacy Lovehart?”

“That name is really familiar.”

“Save Our Sons? Crusader against the Homosexual Agenda? Spokeswoman for the Central Georgia Peach Growers?”

“Didn’t someone throw a vanilla milk shake in her face on national TV? And she said something to the effect of, ‘Well, at least they picked my favorite flavor’?”

“You got it. Back in the day my mom helped her organize concerned citizens all over the Southeast against homosexuals, because, you know, we can’t procreate, so we recruit!”

Oh. This sweet man is a homosexual. Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize that immediately.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “That must have been incredibly painful for you.”

“Thanks. It was. It is. And then Alice kept pushing me to try and reconcile with them. Told me that it’s too easy to lose track of family, to just let people disappear from your life. So last year I wrote them a letter, offered an olive branch. They took it, sort of, on the condition that I not actually tell them anything real about my life. They have embraced the adage ‘love the sinner, not the sin,’ which is a step up from where they were—Mama at least—but which still means the real me is unacceptable. But as long as we keep our conversations light we can ignore that fact.”

He grimaces, shakes his head, and then smiles at me. “I bet you’re a good mom. Do you have other kids besides your daughter at Emory?”

“One other daughter, away at boarding school.”

“Fancy.”

I shrug. “I guess. I’m not sure how fancy my life is going to be after the divorce. We’ll see.”

“You’ll be fine,” he says. “I can tell.”

I don’t really know what to say in response to that. “So what is it like living with Ms. Stone?”

“It’s a little unconventional, I suppose, but we enjoy each other’s company. I moved in a little over a year ago. I had to move out of my place—long story—and she needed help with her rent. Somehow it works. We cook a lot.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“And what about you? Kate says you’re an excellent cook. Did you train professionally, or did you just pick it up?”

I shrug. “I’ve read
Mastering the Art
cover to cover, both volumes, and I’ve cooked pretty much every recipe from
The Silver Palate
, but that’s about it for my training.”

This is not at all what I came to talk about, and yet I find myself
excited at the prospect of helping Bobby test recipes. It sounds like an adventure.

He studies me for a moment, lips pursed, discerning. And then something shifts and he turns chipper and solicitous. “Would you like some spiced pecans? I made some earlier. I always like a little something to eat with a drink.”

“Sounds great,” I say.

While he retrieves the nuts from the kitchen, I look more closely around the room. It’s a pleasant space, designed for comfort, nice and bright. There’s a lovely handmade quilt hanging on the yellow wall, in the wedding ring pattern. And there are brightly colored throw pillows, covered in an ikat print, on the couch. There’s a side table with a bunch of framed photos propped on top of it. I scoot to the end of the couch to look at them more closely. And there, framed, is the photo of Alice and her family with my father in it, the same one from the book.