I stayed in Faith’s son’s bedroom, she would say, and I imagined what it would have been like to have had Faith as my mother.
Complicated, I bet, Cory would reply.
Yes, definitely complicated.
Greer saw herself now as if through Cory’s vision; she imagined herself seen by him from the doorway, the light in the room gilded. And then her hand, cutting onions with new, slightly reckless assurance, slipped, and the blade of Faith Frank’s knife slid deep into her thumb.
“Oh shit, oh shit!” Greer cried, jumping back, as though she could escape her own injury.
They were all upon her, and distantly she heard Evelyn murmur, “Look at all that blood. Oh, I’m not good with blood.” Everyone rushed around but no one knew where anything was except for Faith, who calmly took charge, finding a very old, yellowed tin first-aid kit in the back of the drawer beside the refrigerator.
“No one has ever left here thumbless,” Faith assured Greer, who was so mortified and furious at herself for ruining the moment that her eyes streamed with real tears, not onion tears.
“Really? What about Thumbless McGee?” asked Tad, and the comment was followed by silence, and Tad quickly saying, “Sorry. I make bad jokes when I’m nervous.”
Faith turned to them and calmly said, “Why don’t you all go take your drinks into the next room. Greer will be absolutely fine. I will tend to her.”
“Are you sure?” asked Iffat, going into assistant mode. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
“I’ve got it under control. Thank you, Iffat.”
Faith stood beside Greer over the deep stainless-steel sink, where she ran a thudding flow of cold water down upon the bloody thumb and then dried it, keeping pressure on the wound, and then squirted on some antibacterial ointment, and wrapped Greer’s thumb in a swaddling of gauze and adhesive. The light touch of this powerful woman was profound. So too was her choice to use her power in this tender way. Maybe that’s what we want from women, Greer thought as her thumb pulsed and percolated with blood. Maybe that’s what we imagine it would be like to have a woman lead us. When women got into positions of power, they calibrated and recalibrated tenderness and strength, modulating and correcting. Power and love didn’t often live side by side. If one came in, the other might go.
Faith was saying, “Let’s keep it like this for a while and see if it stops. Hold it up; keep it above your heart. I don’t think you’ll need a stitch.”
“I can’t believe I cried like that.”
“What’s wrong with crying? I think it’s underrated,” said Faith.
“But right now I feel like a little girl whose mother is fixing her boo-boo. It’s so embarrassing.”
“Not for the mother. I remember doing that when my son was little.” Faith pushed her hair back from her face and said, “In my experience, the rewards don’t necessarily come when you think they will with your kids. And sometimes they come very, very infrequently.”
Greer thought again of the pee wee soccer trophy up in the bedroom, and the highly cooperative boy who had won it, now in his thirties and off somewhere else. “So when do they come?”
“Oh, let’s see,” said Faith. “When they’re happy, isn’t that what everyone says? Or when they’re asleep. Sometimes I was ashamed of how much I liked it when he was asleep. He was a good kid, but it was just so much work. And at least when he was asleep I knew where he was and exactly what was happening with him.”
“And what about now?” Greer asked lightly. “What’s he like?”
“Now? Now I don’t know all that much. His life is his life. He’s a tax attorney, and he’s very different from me. Not sure he needs me too much. And I never get to watch him sleep. I’ve decided that there should be a national holiday once a year, when grown children have to let their parents tuck them in one more time.”
She was silent, and Greer didn’t rush in to speak. Faith was revealing herself, opening up, becoming slightly more known. There was a glimmer of mutuality, and Greer didn’t want to do anything to discourage it. They were standing together in silence at the sink, by the window that overlooked the dark yard, which was lit with a single floodlight, into which now pranced a deer, as if on cue. It stopped in the cone of light, looking around.
“Ah. My occasional visitor,” said Faith.
The deer had one leg tipped up as though it had been making its way across the grass when suddenly it became lost in thought, maybe thinking about berries, or leaves, or about the curious figures of the older woman and the younger one who stood framed inside a small window. Faith moved slightly, and the deer startled, then dashed away.
* * *
? ? ?
A little later, after Greer had recovered and was being treated by everyone as if she were a minor heroine, the grill was lit and the question of the steaks came up again. “I assume that no one has a problem with meat?” Faith said. “If you do, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
“Your piece of tempeh, you mean,” said Iffat.
Greer was about to mention her vegetarianism, which everyone else knew anyway, after all those times when they’d ordered lunch, but none of them looked expectantly toward her now. Apparently people never really paid as much attention to you as you thought they did. Having so recently had that moment of intimacy with Faith at the sink, she thought about Faith’s apparently mildly disappointing son, and somehow she felt sure that turning down Faith’s meat would also be a disappointment to Faith. Greer fervently did not want to disappoint her, so she didn’t say anything.
“All right,” said Faith. “Even though it’s a little brisk out there, I’m still up for firing up the grill. Everyone likes it rare, I hope?”
“Yes!” came the chorus, including Greer, who surprised herself.
Through the window Greer saw Ben and Marcella mime a quick, flirty sword fight with grill implements. Tonight probably they would share a bed, and maybe their lovemaking would even be heard through the walls, to everyone’s general embarrassment and awe. The grill smoked and sputtered and began to give off the smell of meals once cooked and now half-conjured.
At the table, a steak was speared up by a long fork and dropped with a thud onto Greer’s plate by Faith herself. “Voilà,” said Faith. “These came out well, I think. Hope they’re not too bloody.”
“Bloody good,” said Tad.
Greer glanced with a fixed smile at the enormous slab of steak, which was already pooling in blood, as if it were the head of a person who’d just jumped off a roof. Faith deposited a lump of herb butter on top of Greer’s steak, and it immediately spread its arterial death over the stingray-sized surface.
“Dig in, Greer, even with your war injury,” said Faith.
“Yes, my stump,” said Greer.
“And please, none of you wait for me.” Faith went to tend to the next person.
Greer picked up the fork with her injured hand and clumsily held it; she sat with fork and knife at the ready, wondering how she could possibly eat this steak. It was a dark reddish blue inside, unnatural, even perverse. Cool, she had heard that was called.
All around her, people were eating and exclaiming. “Oh my God,” Marcella moaned quietly, and Greer imagined her in bed with Ben. “This is amazing, Faith.”
“Best fucking steak I’ve ever had,” said Tad.
“You know, Faith, if the foundation doesn’t work out,” said Helen, “you could open a restaurant and call it Faith Frank’s Feminist Steakhouse. Every steak would come with roast potatoes, creamed spinach, and the promise of equality.”