“Mom!” June looked at her lap, not smiling.
“Your mother went through college,” Mr. Richards said, “I went through college. Bobby’s going to go. If nothing else, it’s a place to get married in.”
“Bobby reads more than June,” Mrs. Richards explained. “He reads all the time, in fact. And I suppose he is more school-minded.”
“That Junior College is an awful place,” June said. “I hate everybody who goes there.”
“Dear,” Mrs. Richards said, “you don’t know everybody who goes there.”
Kidd, with his middle finger, was exploring the countersinking about some flathead screw, when Madame Brown said:
“Mary, how close are we to the second course? Arthur up there looks like he’s about to eat the bottom of his bowl.”
“Oh, dear me!” Mrs. Richards pushed back in her chair. “I don’t know what I’m thinking of. I’ll be right in—”
“You want any help, mom?” June said.
“No.” Mrs. Richards disappeared into the kitchen. “Thank you, darling.”
“Pass me your soup plates, everybody,” June said.
Kidd’s hand came up from under the tablecloth to join his other on the china plate to pass it—but stopped just below the table lip. Knuckles, fingertips, and two streaks on the back of the hand were smudged black.
He put his hand down between his legs and looked around.
Anyway, people were keeping their plates and just passing their bowls. He passed his with one hand, his other between his knees. Then the other joined it and he tried, without looking, to rub his fingers clean.
Mrs. Richards came in with two steaming ceramic bowls. “I’m afraid we’re vegetarian tonight.” She went out, returned with two more. “But there’s nowhere to get any meat that you can trust,” and returned again.
“You do that nice tunafish casserole,” Mr. Richards called after her. “That’s very good.”
“Ugh,” Bobby said.
“Bobby!” June said.
“Yes, I know, Arthur.” Mrs. Richards returned with a gravy boat, set it on the table, and sat. “But I just feel so funny about fish. Wasn’t it a couple of years back all those people died from some canned tuna that had gone bad? I just feel safer with vegetables. Though Lord knows, they can go bad too.”
“Botulism,” Bobby said.
“Really, Bobby!” Madame Brown laughed, a hand against her sparkling chains.
“Oh, I don’t think we’re doing so badly. Mashed potatoes, mushrooms, carrots—” Mrs. Richards indicated one and another of the bowls—“and some canned eggplant stuff I’ve never tried before. When I went to that health-food restaurant with Julia—when we were in Los Angeles?—she said they always use mushrooms and eggplants in place of meat. And I’ve made a sauce.” She turned to her husband, as though to remind him of something. “Arthur…?”
“What?” Then Mr. Richards too seemed to remember. “Oh, yes…Kidd? Well, we’ve taken up this little habit of having a glass of wine with our meals.” He reached down beside his chair, brought up a bottle, and set it beside the candle at his end of the table. “If it it isn’t something that appeals to you, you’re perfectly welcome to have water—”
“I like wine,” Kidd said.
Mrs. Richards and Madame Brown had already passed their wine glasses up. So Kidd did too; though the water glass at the head of his knife seemed the better size for wine drinking as he was accustomed to it.
Mr. Richards peeled away gold foil, pulled loose the plastic stopper, poured, passed back the glasses.
Kidd sipped; it was almost black in candlelight. At first he thought his mouth was burning—the wine was bubbly as soda pop.
“Sparkling burgundy!” Mr. Richards grinned and bobbed his glass. “We haven’t tried this one before. 1975. I wonder if that’s a good year for sparkling Burgundy?” He sipped. “Tastes okay to me. Cheers.”
The candle flame staggered, stilled. Above and below the ornate label, green glass flickered.
“I put a little wine in the gravy,” Mrs. Richards said. “In the sauce, I mean—it was left over from last night’s bottle. I like to cook with wine. And soy sauce. When we went to Los Angeles two years ago for Arthur’s conferences, we stayed with the Harringtons. Michael gave Arthur that shaving soap. Julia Harrington—she’s the one who took me to that Health Food restaurant—made absolutely everything with soy sauce! It was very interesting. Oh, thank you, Arthur.”
Mr. Richards had helped himself to mashed potatoes and now passed the dish. So had Madame Brown.
Kidd checked his fingers.
The rubbing had not removed any dirt; but it had divided it fairly evenly between both hands; the rough strips of nail back on the wide crowns were once more darkly ringed, as though outlined, nub and cuticle, with pen. He sighed, served himself when the dishes were passed to him, passed them on, and ate. His free hand, back beneath the tablecloth, found the table leg, again explored.
“If you’re not a student,” Madame Brown asked, “what do you put down in your notebook?—none of us could help noticing it.”
It was inside, in the kitchen, on the table by the chair; he could see it beyond her elbow. “I just write things down.”
Mrs. Richards hung her hands by the fingertips on the table edge. “You write! You’re going to be a writer? Do you write poetry?”
“Yeah.” He smiled because he was nervous.
“You’re a poet!”
Mr. Richards, June, and Bobby all sat back and looked. Mrs. Richards leaned forward and beamed. Madame Brown reached down with some silent remonstrance to Muriel.
“He’s a poet! Arthur, give him some more wine. Look, he’s finished his glass already. Go on, dear. He’s a poet! I think that’s wonderful. I should have known when you took that Newboy book.”
Arthur took Kidd’s glass, refilled it. “I don’t know too much about poetry.” He handed it back with a smile that, on a college football player, would have purveyed sheepish good will. “I mean, I’m an engineer…” As he took his hand away, wine splashed on the cloth.
Kidd said, “Oh, hey, I—”
“Don’t worry about that!” Mrs. Richards cried, waving her hand—which knocked against her own glass. Wine splashed the rim, ran down the stem, blotched the linen. While he wondered if such a thing were done on purpose to put strangers at ease (thinking: What an uncomfortably paranoid thought), she asked: “What do you think of him? Newboy, I mean.”
“I don’t know.” Kidd moved his glass aside: Through the base, he could see the diametric mold line across the foot. “I only met him once.”
At the third second of silence, he looked up, and decided he’d said something wrong. He hunted for the proper apology: but, like a tangle of string with a lost end, action seemed all loop and no beginning.
“You know Ernest Newboy? Oh, Edna, Kidd’s a real poet! And he’s helping us, Arthur! I mean, move furniture and things.” She looked from Mr. Richards to Madame Brown, to Kidd. “Tell me—” She spilled more wine—“is Newboy’s work just—wonderful? I’m sure it is. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I just got the book yesterday. I sent Bobby down to get it, because of that article in the Times. We have this very nice little book-and-gift shop down the street. They have just everything like that—But after the article, I was afraid they were going to be all out. I think it’s very important to keep up with current books, even if it’s just bestsellers. And I’m really interested in poetry. I really am. Arthur doesn’t believe me. But I do—I really do like it.”
“That’s just because you went to that coffee shop with Julia in Los Angeles where they were reading that poetry and playing that music.”
“And I told you, Arthur, the evening we came back, though I don’t pretend I understood it all, I liked it very much! It was one of the most—” she frowned, hunting for the right description—“exciting things I’ve…well, ever heard.”
“I don’t know him very well,” Kidd said, and ate more mushrooms; that and the eggplant weren’t bad. The mashed potatoes (instant) were pretty gluey, though. “I just met him…once.”
“I’d love to meet him,” Mrs. Richards said. “I’ve never known a real writer.”