“Not at all,” Graham said.
Elspeth was washing the cranberries in the sink when the kitchen door swung open and Audra entered with Mrs. Bellamy. Mrs. Bellamy was a short lady in her late seventies, so stout that she appeared to have no breasts and no waist, like a giant pincushion covered in blue fabric. She had fluffy white hair, which curved back from her face in two smooth wings. She was carrying a platter of deviled eggs.
“You remember Mrs. Bellamy,” Audra said. “This is my husband, Graham.”
“Of course,” Graham said. “And this is Elspeth.”
“Hello, dear,” Mrs. Bellamy said, shaking Elspeth’s hand. She looked at Graham. “And aren’t you smart, hiring a caterer!”
“I’m an attorney,” Elspeth said coolly.
“I’m not sure what you’ll make of my deviled eggs,” Mrs. Bellamy said, oblivious, “but I always take them to parties. It’s my signature dish.”
“And we appreciate it,” Audra said. “Let me just grab some napkins and we can go on into the living room.”
After they had gone, Graham put the butter and milk for the mashed potatoes into a small saucepan and placed it on one of the back burners.
“Oh, do you heat the milk for the potatoes?” Elspeth asked.
“Yes,” Graham said. “Some people skip it but I think it makes a difference.”
“I use a potato ricer,” Elspeth said. “Though for years I used a hand mixer.”
What a pleasure it was to have this conversation, thought Graham, who also used a potato ricer. He could remember that when he was having an affair with Audra, he could barely sit through dinner with Elspeth—she struck him as so maddeningly calm and deliberate. Always his mind would turn to what Audra might be doing at that moment, what she might be saying, and to whom. In fact, he couldn’t sit through dinner with Elspeth, and his main memory of those last few months was a constant restlessness at meals, hopping up and down to refill his glass, fetch the butter, look for pepper. Audra showed none of that restlessness; she seemed as deeply content with her life as she always had.
And yet—and yet—it had begun to seem to Graham that Audra had less time during the day than she used to. All through their marriage, Audra had run countless errands during the week: going to the liquor store for wine, to the dry cleaner’s for Graham’s shirts, to the post office for stamps, to the pharmacy for cough syrup, to the bakery for bagels, to the gourmet shop for truffle oil. But lately they seemed to run low on everything, and Audra would say, “The day got away from me! I’ll pick up your prescription tomorrow.” Or mail your package. Or deposit that check.
But could you really believe your wife was cheating on you because you ran out of truffle oil? Audra didn’t even like truffle oil. She said it smelled like feet.
As though his thoughts had summoned her, Audra pushed open the swinging door of the kitchen at that moment. “I’m sure it won’t be any trouble at all,” she called gaily to someone over her shoulder. She looked at Graham and Elspeth and said in a lower voice, “Apparently, Manny only eats food that’s white.”
Then she backed out of the kitchen and the door swung shut behind her.
Elspeth and Graham looked at each other for a moment.
“Is your life always like this?” Elspeth asked.
“Yes,” said Graham.
But the truth was more complicated than that. Because although Audra did make preposterous statements at least twice a week (more frequently than that if she had PMS), the truth was that Graham liked it. Or at least, he liked it and he disliked it in equal measure. But he didn’t tell Elspeth any of that. He let her think that life with Audra was maddening, and nothing more.
—
Graham had to admit it: he’d nourished a very small hope that this Thanksgiving would be a success. He had thought it was possible—or well, more accurately, he had thought that it was not impossible—that this eclectic mix of people would gel into a party. But when he finally took a break from the kitchen and joined his guests in the living room, the atmosphere was less like a party and more like a group of strangers stranded at a bus station.
There was even the equivalent of a drunken homeless person—Dr. Moley was nearly horizontal on the sofa, his drink balanced on his stomach. Pearl was perched on the other end of the sofa, speaking to him along the length of his body. “Clayton rearranged my recipe box,” she said. “He organized the recipes by frequency of use instead of alphabetically, and I have to say, I find it extremely efficient.”
(Graham felt an embarrassing thrill of interest in this, although he chalked it up to the extreme stress of the holiday.)
Doug was stuck talking to Mrs. Bellamy about her cats.
“Now, Arlo,” Mrs. Bellamy said in a happy, relishing voice. “Arlo I have to have professionally groomed because otherwise we run into a bit of a hair ball problem. But Iris from kittenhood has always kept herself impeccably clean.”
Audra, Lorelei, and Elspeth were sitting together, discussing Starbucks stock performance. Audra said, “The whole Starbucks experience has just been ruined for me since they started listing the calories next to all the drinks.”
There was no conversation here that Graham wanted to take part in and, even worse, no conversation that seemed to want him in it. It was dark out now and he could see his reflection in the windows, a lone figure looming over all the others.
He helped himself to one of Mrs. Bellamy’s deviled eggs, so it would look like he’d come out just for that, and went back into the kitchen.
—
The table groaned with food, and despite himself, Graham’s spirits rose. The turkey rested on the platter in golden brown splendor, garnished with sprigs of rosemary and wedges of lemon and bright red pomegranate seeds. All of their flowered serving dishes were out, filled with the mushroom and walnut stuffing, the white-wine gravy, the roasted carrots with dill, the pears and red onions, the maple-whipped sweet potatoes, Elspeth’s cranberry relish. The pure decadence and plentitude of Thanksgiving dinner had always appealed to Graham, and he took no less pleasure in it this year just because he had prepared it for people he didn’t especially like.
“Everyone, come to dinner!” Audra called. Then she said to Graham in a lower voice, “Why did you switch all the name cards around?”
“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting next to Pearl,” he answered, but that was not the truth. Graham had rearranged the seating on a sort of Asperger’s continuum, with Lorelei at the head of the high-functioning end, and Manny and the rest of the Origami Club at the low-functioning end. Doug sat on Lorelei’s left, Graham on her right, Audra, Elspeth, Bitsy, and everyone else in the middle. Matthew was seated next to Graham because Graham couldn’t bear to see him down at the other end.