Seating Arrangements. Maggie Shipstead
any.”
“I can’t even wrap my head around … what if I was his only chance?”
The premise, simple enough on its surface, gave way beneath Winn’s consideration, dropping him into a feminine thicket of improbable hypotheses and garbled cause and effect. He clapped her knee. “Now, listen. I don’t want you thinking this army business has anything to do with you.” He drove around the oval and back down the driveway. Livia was obscured by pink and orange flowers and curls of green, leafy things, a tiger in the grass.
“What if Teddy and I get back together?” she said.
“I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Thanks a lot!”
“Do you think you’re going to get back together?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying.” She pulled the vase even closer to herself. “What would you have done if I had been born like Meg Fenn?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I would have gotten used to it.”
“Really?”
“I think when something like that happens you rise to the occasion.” In truth, Winn could not imagine holding the hand of his grown daughter as she bellowed beside a pyramid of tomatoes.
“If Daphne had been born like that, would you have had another child?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Would you have wished you had never had children?”
“This is a silly conversation.”
At the Enderby, Livia jumped out with the flowers and took them inside. When she returned, she looked naked without her portable jungle, and the car felt empty.
After he’d parked in front of the house, Winn said, “Tell your mother I’ll be in in a minute.” Livia took two of the grocery bags and went inside, and Winn walked along the driveway past the garage and down a path shaded by trees and padded with a russet layer of pine needles. Unseen birds burst into a chorus of jabbering laughter as he passed. He paused beside his garden, peering through the deer fence in consternation. Dominique had chosen the right word: sad. The plants were all smaller than they should have been and drooped on rubbery stems: dwarfish melons, bloodless tomatoes, cucumbers that had not come up at all. There were some acceptable-looking green beans, but he saw no sign of the chervil or hyssop he had requested. Mint, which would grow in the crater left by a nuclear blast, was the only thing flourishing. The idea occurred to him that the caretakers could be sabotaging his little agricultural oasis, mistreating the soil or planting in adverse weather conditions. Poking his fingers through the fence, he rubbed a few leaves of mint together and walked away, farther into the trees. He held his fingers to his nose and sniffed the weed’s sharp, sweet smell.
He walked until he could no longer see the house, and then he looped back, coming to the edge of a dense clump of trees and brush and spotting, through the branches, Agatha sunning herself on the grass near the house. She was lying on a blue and white towel, and he recognized her polka-dotted bikini as the one from his study. She must have gone in there to retrieve it. Perhaps she had left him something else, a hair clip or a scarf. The afternoon sun was dropping lower in the sky, and a serrated front of tree shade advanced across the grass toward her bare toes. Daphne came out the French doors from the kitchen and crossed the deck and then the lawn, carrying a towel. She wore a black bikini, her huge, naked belly protruding brazenly between the two halves. Piper followed, turning to shut the doors behind her and giving Winn a view of wishbone thighs and a derriere so nonexistent that the blue fabric of her bathing suit hung in flaccid wrinkles. As Daphne shook out her towel, Agatha reached up and patted the side of her bare leg in a friendly way. Piper settled crossed-legged on the grass, her face obscured by massive sunglasses like ski goggles. Daphne eased herself down so her feet were facing Winn and the hummock of her pregnancy hid the top half of her body. Her shadow, humped like a camel, drew a smooth, dark curve over Agatha’s flat stomach and golden hipbones.
Watching them, he became aware of the elasticity of his lungs, the hard ridges of tree roots pressing into his feet, the muscular, rippling action of swallowing. His heart raced with stealth and vitality. That was another man’s house, another man’s daughter and her friends. He was a stranger, a prowler, a hunter, a wood dweller excluded from their world. The girls’ obliviousness transformed them, although he couldn’t pinpoint how. He couldn’t decide if they seemed more innocent when left to themselves, or more unabashedly sensual. Or were they unreal, like mermaids caught basking on a rock? They were only sitting—but there was something about them. Daphne, distorted by pregnancy, could not be reconciled with the little girl he remembered. Piper sat erect and unmoving, a sphinx. Agatha was lying on her back with her knees bent, and she moved her legs in a slow rhythm, bumping her thighs together and then letting them fall apart. A narrow strip of polka-dotted material concealed her crotch, and it tightened and slackened as she moved her legs, lifting slightly.
Close in his ear, a voice said, “Boo!”
Biddy stood with her hands on the edge of the kitchen table, leaning over a slew of guest lists, place cards, and seating charts. She felt like a general planning an offensive. Beside her, Dominique, faithful aide-de-camp, mirrored her posture.
“What if,” Dominique said, switching two cards, “we move these like this. Situation neutralized.”
“No,” said Biddy, “because then I’ve got exes sitting at the same table. Here.” She touched the paper.
“They wouldn’t be okay?”
“It’s not ideal.”
Dominique tapped her lips with one long finger and considered. Biddy, seized by affection, patted her on the back. She missed Dominique, especially during the holidays, when she had been a household fixture all through high school and college, Cairo being so far away. Dominique had been the sort of worldly kid who sought out the company of adults and who, at fourteen, had considered herself all grown up. When she stayed with the Van Meters, she behaved more like Daphne’s indulgent aunt than her friend and spent most of her time helping Winn in the kitchen and running errands with Biddy while Livia, little duckling, followed wherever she went and Daphne lay indolently in front of the television. Agatha had spent a few holidays with them, too, but her presence was less comfortable. Biddy was always finding cigarette butts in the flower beds and catching Winn staring and waking up to the sound of Agatha laughing and drunkenly thumping the walls while the others shushed her and tried to convey her to bed. Once Biddy had gotten up and flipped on the light at the top of the stairs, surprising them—Daphne, Dominique, Livia, and Agatha—like a family of possums in the sudden brightness. Agatha was lying on her side and inexplicably clinging to the balusters while Dominique worked to pry her fingers loose and Livia and Daphne grasped her ankles to keep her from kicking.
“What if,” Dominique said, pointing at the seating chart, “we move him to the leftovers table?”
“Yes,” said Biddy. “Perfect. But I feel bad calling them leftovers.”
Dominique pushed the place card across the table with the authority of a croupier. “Le mélange, then.” She stood back and looked at Biddy, her long eyebrows kinked and her long, sad mouth pulled quizzically to one side. “How are you? I mean—really.”
Biddy was so surprised by the question that her eyes began to water. “I’m fine,” she said, fussing with the cards to indicate the unimportance of her tears. “I’m great. I’m so happy for Daphne—I want everything to go well.”
“Of course you do,” said Dominique. “This is an insane amount of work. You’re handling it like a champ.”
Biddy was forced to take a tissue from the box on the counter. She never wore mascara, but she dabbed carefully nonetheless, coming up under her lashes the way she remembered her mother doing. To be seen,