“Oh, for God’s sake,” Peter said. “Does anybody work here?” He waved at a waitress who carried a large tray overflowing with plastic baskets of food.
Claire’s cheeks grew hot. He was always short, even rude, with people in service jobs: waitresses, the washing machine salesman at Sears, Roebuck, bellboys and meter readers. It embarrassed her, the way he snapped his fingers and ordered them about. Even on their first date, a romantic steak dinner at Frankie & Johnnie’s on West 45th Street in Manhattan, he’d acted like that. Claire had two brandy Alexanders and French wine and crème de menthe afterwards. She’d blamed the drinks for the flush that crept up her chest and neck when he complained about the temperature of their soup, that his steak was overdone. When he’d snapped his fingers at the busboy, she’d looked down and sipped her cocktail.
The waitress delivered the food to a large rowdy group of men and boys, all wearing red shirts with logos, a team of some kind. When she was done, she came over to their table. Her uniform was splattered with ketchup and brown gravy and she looked exhausted.
“Two fried clam dinners,” Peter said, snapping his menu shut. He didn’t even glance at the waitress.
“Oh, just one,” Claire said.
He frowned, confused. “You just told me you wanted the fried clams. You said you loved them.”
In her wet boots, Claire could feel her feet swelling. She looked at the waitress, a tired woman with rings of smeared mascara beneath her eyes and a drooping ponytail.
“Just a grilled corn muffin for me,” Claire said. “And a hot dog for Kathy.”
The waitress wrote the order on her pad.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “And a high chair?”
“Right,” the waitress said. She lumbered off in her white nurse’s shoes.
“Why do you do that?” Peter said.
“Do what?” Claire lowered herself to the very edge of the booth, the only place her belly and the sleeping child could fit.
“Apologize,” Peter said, leveling his gaze directly at her in a way that made her look away. “For everything.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“You did it just now. Apologized for asking her to get a high chair when that’s part of her job.”
In the booth behind her, two men argued about how Kennedy’s Catholicism would affect the country. The pope’s our new boss, one man said. You’ll see.
“Claire?” Peter said.
“It’s just politeness,” Claire said. “That’s all.”
“Well, it’s annoying.”
Claire nodded. Since Peter had walked into that room that day, the traits of hers that annoyed him had multiplied. She touched her hair too often. She wasn’t a good listener or a careful shopper. She could not parallel-park. Claire did not argue with him when he attacked her this way. It was her guilt that kept her silent. She knew that. Her guilt and her foolish idea of how to be a wife. Of course, she reminded herself, if she truly believed that foolish idea, she would not have slept with another man.
The waitress arrived with the high chair, banging into tables as she did. The high chair was covered in vinyl with a cowboy pattern. Claire stood to put Kathy into the seat. The waitress helped her to hold the child while she buckled the strap and slid the tray in place. Gently, Claire lowered her daughter’s head onto the tray, smoothing her tangled brown hair.
“Where’s our coffee?” Peter said.
“You didn’t order coffee,” the waitress said, flipping the pages of her pad until she found their order. “Two fried clams, then one fried clam, a grilled corn muffin, and a hot dog.”
“And coffee,” Peter said.
The waitress didn’t answer him. As she walked away, she squeezed Claire’s shoulder.
We’ll all have to become Catholics, the man behind her said. You know that, don’t you?
Claire leaned across the table. “Can you hear this?” she whispered, motioning with her head.
Peter nodded. “Foolish, isn’t it?’ he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“What do you know about it?”
“Well,” Claire said, “for one thing, I know we won’t all have to become Catholics.”
Peter laughed. “Some people worry about what’s next. If we have a Catholic president, then who knows? We might even have a Jewish one someday.”
“Or Negro,” Claire said.
Peter grinned. “There will be no stopping anyone.”
With the tension diffused momentarily, Claire relaxed a bit. How ironic, she thought, that Miles had been the man to talk these ideas out with her. And now this was what her husband found interesting. Four years earlier, on Election Day, Peter had told her as he left for work, “Remember to vote for Stevenson,” as if she wouldn’t know who to vote for. But they were newlyweds then, and she’d found it charming, how he liked to think for her.
“I thought when you worked on the campaign it was just out of boredom,” Peter was saying, watching her face.
“I told you I believed in John F. Kennedy. I told you it was a passion.”