‘I was there two weeks ago. It was lovely to see her, thank you.’
I sat between Tab and Agnes, watching Agnes drink too much white wine and Tab flick mutinously through her phone and occasionally roll her eyes. I sipped at the pumpkin and sage soup, nodded, smiled, and tried not to think longingly of Ashok’s apartment and the joyful chaos there. I would have asked Tab about her week – anything to move the stuttering conversation along – but she had made so many acid asides about the horror of having ‘staff’ at family events that I didn’t have the nerve.
Ilaria brought out dish after dish. ‘The Polish puta does not cook. So somebody has to give up their Thanksgiving,’ she muttered afterwards. She had laid on a feast of turkey, roast potatoes and a bunch of things I had never seen served as an accompaniment but suspected were about to leave me with instantaneous Type 2 diabetes – candied sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping, green beans with honey and bacon, roasted acorn squash with bacon drizzled in maple syrup, buttery cornbread, and carrots roasted with honey and spice. There were also popovers – a kind of Yorkshire pudding – and I peered at them surreptitiously to see if they were draped with syrup too.
Of course only the men ate much of it. Tab pushed hers around her plate. Agnes ate some turkey and almost nothing else. I had a little of everything, grateful for something to do and also that Ilaria no longer slammed dishes down in front of me. In fact, she looked at me sideways a few times as if to express silent sympathy for my predicament. The men kept talking business, unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the permafrost at the other end of the table.
Occasionally the silence was broken by the elderly Mrs Gopnik demanding somebody help her to some potato or asking loudly, for the fourth time, what on earth the woman had done to the carrots. Several people would answer her at once, as if relieved to have a focus, no matter how irrational.
‘That’s an unusual dress, Louisa,’ said Veronica, after a particularly long silence. ‘Very striking. Did you buy it in Manhattan? One doesn’t often see fur sleeves these days.’
‘Thank you. I bought it in the East Village.’
‘Is it Marc Jacobs?’
‘Um, no. It’s vintage.’
‘Vintage,’ snorted Tab.
‘What did she say?’ said Mrs Gopnik, loudly.
‘She’s talking about the girl’s dress, Mother,’ said Mr Gopnik’s brother. ‘She says it’s vintage.’
‘Vintage what?’
‘What is problem with “vintage”, Tab?’ said Agnes, coolly.
I shrank backwards into my seat.
‘It’s such a meaningless term, isn’t it? It’s just a way of saying “second hand”. A way of dressing something up to pretend it’s something it’s not.’
I wanted to tell her that vintage meant a whole lot more than that, but I didn’t know how to express it – and suspected I wasn’t meant to. I just wanted the whole conversation to move forwards and away from me.
‘I believe vintage outfits can be quite the fashion now,’ said Veronica, addressing me directly with a diplomat’s skill. ‘Of course, I’m far too old to understand the young people’s trends these days.’
‘And far too polite to say such things,’ muttered Agnes.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Tab.
‘Oh, now you are sorry?’
‘I meant, what did you just say?’
Mr Gopnik looked up from his plate. His eyes darted warily from his wife to his daughter.
‘I mean why you have to be so rude to Louisa. She is my guest here, even if she is staff. And you have to be rude about her outfit.’
‘I wasn’t being rude. I was simply stating a fact.’
‘This is how being rude is these days. I tell it like I see it. I’m just being honest. The language of the bully. We all know how this is.’
‘What did you just call me?’
‘Agnes. Darling.’ Mr Gopnik reached across and placed his hand over hers.
‘What are they saying?’ said Mrs Gopnik. ‘Tell them to speak up.’
‘I said Tab is being very rude to my friend.’
‘She’s not your friend, for crying out loud. She’s your paid assistant. Although I suspect that’s all you can get in the way of friends, these days.’
‘Tab!’ her father said. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’
‘Well, it’s true. Nobody wants anything to do with her. You can’t pretend you don’t see it wherever we go. You know this family is a laughing stock, Daddy? You have become a cliché. She is a walking cliché. And for what? We all know what her plan is.’
Agnes removed her napkin from her lap and screwed it into a ball. ‘My plan? You want to tell me what my plan is?’
‘Like every other sharp-elbowed immigrant on the make. You’ve somehow managed to convince Dad to marry you. Now you’re no doubt doing everything possible to get pregnant and pop out a baby or two, then within five years you’ll divorce him. And you’re made for life. Boom! No more massages. Just Bergdorf Goodman, a driver and lunch with your Polish coven all the way.’
Mr Gopnik leant forward over the table. ‘Tabitha, I don’t want you ever using the word “immigrant” in a derogatory manner in this house again. Your great-grandparents were immigrants. You are the descendant of immigrants –’
‘Not that kind of immigrant.’
‘What does this mean?’ said Agnes, her cheeks flushed.
‘Do I have to spell it out? There are those who achieve their goals through hard work and there are those who do it by lying on their –’
‘Like you?’ yelled Agnes. ‘Like you who lives off trust-fund allowance at age of nearly twenty-five? You who have barely held a job in your life? I am meant to take example from you? At least I know what hard work is –’
‘Yes. Straddling strange men’s naked bodies. Quite the employment.’
‘That’s enough!’ Mr Gopnik was on his feet. ‘You are quite, quite wrong, Tabitha, and you must apologize.’
‘Why? Because I can see her without rose-coloured spectacles? Daddy, I’m sorry to say this but you are totally blind to what this woman really is.’
‘No. You are the one who is wrong!’
‘So she’s never going to want children? She’s twenty-eight years old, Dad. Wake up!’
‘What are they talking about?’ said old Mrs Gopnik, querulously, to her daughter-in-law. Veronica whispered something in her ear. ‘But she said something about naked men. I heard her.’
‘Not that it’s any of your business, Tabitha, but there will be no more children in this house. Agnes and I agreed this point before I married her.’
Tab pulled a face. ‘Oooh. She agreed. Like that means anything at all. A woman like her would say anything to marry you! Daddy, I hate to say it but you are being hopelessly na?ve. In a year or so there will be some little “accident” and she’ll persuade –’
‘There will be no accidents!’ Mr Gopnik slammed his hand on the table so hard the glassware rattled.
‘How can you know?’
‘Because I had a goddamn vasectomy!’ Mr Gopnik sat down. His hands were shaking. ‘Two months before we got married. At Mount Sinai. With Agnes’s full agreement. Are you satisfied now?’
The room fell silent. Tab gaped at her father.
The old woman looked from left to right, and then said, peering at Mr Gopnik, ‘Leonard had an appendectomy?’
A low hum had started somewhere in the back of my head. As if in the distance I heard Mr Gopnik insisting that his daughter apologize, then watched her push back her chair and leave the table without doing so. I saw Veronica exchange looks with her husband and take a long, weary swig of her drink.
And then I looked at Agnes, who was staring mutely at her plate on which her food was congealing in honeyed, bacon-strewn portions. As Mr Gopnik reached out a hand and squeezed hers my heart thumped loudly in my ears.
She didn’t look at me.
17