Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(55)

But there were problems. First, Bunny refused to sit next to Pyotr. She walked into the dining room and took one look at the place cards and said, “I am not sitting anywhere near that person. Trade seats with me, Uncle Barclay.”

Uncle Barclay looked surprised, but he was good-natured about it. “Sure thing,” he said, drawing back his chair for her, and then he settled himself in the chair next to Pyotr’s. “Looks like sister-in-law troubles ahead for you, my friend,” he murmured to Pyotr.

“Yes, she is very enraged at me,” Pyotr said equably.

Kate leaned closer to her father, who was unfolding his napkin. “What is she enraged about?” she whispered. “I thought you didn’t press charges.”

“It’s complicated,” her father said.

“Complicated how?”

Her father merely shrugged and smoothed his napkin across his lap.

Then Alice didn’t like her seat assignment, although she was less emphatic about it. She was supposed to sit on the long side opposite Kate and Pyotr, but she sidled up to Aunt Thelma and said, “I hate to ask this, but could I be moved to an end place, please?”

Aunt Thelma said, “An end place?”

“I’m going to have to nurse my baby at some point, and I’ll need some elbow room.”

“Certainly,” Aunt Thelma said. “Richard, dear?” she called. “Could you trade seats with Alice?”

Richard wasn’t as accommodating as Uncle Barclay had been. “Why?” he asked.

“She needs room to nurse her baby, dear.”

“Nurse her baby?”

Aunt Thelma slipped gracefully into the seat on the other side of Kate’s father. Richard, after a significant pause, stood up and moved one seat over, next to Mr. Gordon, and Alice settled at the end of the table and held out her hands for her baby.

Kate was beginning to develop a certain grudging respect for Aunt Thelma. It was something like her second, grown-up viewing of Gone with the Wind, when Melanie had all at once struck her as the true heroine. In fact, she almost regretted not inviting her aunt to the wedding. Although probably that was just as well, in view of what a disaster it had been.

Pyotr and Kate were sitting close enough so that he could nudge her with his elbow anytime he wanted her to share his appreciation of something. And he found plenty to appreciate. He liked the vichyssoise that was served at the start—anything that featured potatoes or cabbage made him happy, Kate had learned—and the rack of lamb that came next. He liked the Bach partita that was playing over Uncle Barclay’s sound system, as well as the sound system itself, with its four discreet speakers positioned in the four corners of the crown molding. He especially liked it when Alice’s baby spit up just as Alice raised her high in the air to show her off. That made him actually laugh out loud, although Kate gave him a nudge then, to shut him up. And when Uncle Theron told Mrs. Gordon that his choir director had been “phoning it in” lately, Pyotr was ecstatic. “?‘Phoning it in!’?” he repeated to Kate, jostling her as she was slicing her lamb. The knob of his elbow against her bare arm felt warm and callused.

On her other side, her father suddenly bent over. He seemed to be trying to crawl underneath the table. “What are you doing?” Kate asked him, and he said, “I’m looking for that bag of yours.”

“What do you want with it?”

“I just need to slip these papers in,” he said. Briefly, he displayed them—several sheets folded in thirds like a business letter. Then he ducked his head under the table again. “Papers for the immigration people,” he said in a muffled voice.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Kate snapped, and she stabbed a bite of meat more forcefully than she needed to.

“Louis? Have you lost something?” Aunt Thelma called.

“No, no,” he said. He sat up. His face was flushed from his effort, and his glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose. “Just putting a little something in Kate’s bag,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” Aunt Thelma said approvingly. She probably thought he meant money; that was how little she knew him. “I must say, Louis: you’ve done comparatively well with these girls,” she told him. “All things considered.” And she inclined her wineglass toward him. “I’ll have to hand you that much. I know I told you at the time that you should give them to me to raise, but I see you might have been right to insist on keeping them with you.”

Kate stopped chewing.

“Yes, well,” Dr. Battista said. He turned to Kate and said, in a lower tone, “I suppose all the bureaucratese will seem a bit daunting at first, but I’ve included a business card with Morton Stanfield’s phone number on it. He’s an immigration lawyer and he’s going to help you through this.”

“Okay,” Kate said. Then she patted his hand and said, “Okay, Father.”

Alice was asking Bunny to cut her meat up for her, since she was nursing her baby now under cover of her draped cardigan. Jeannette was trying to catch Richard’s eye; he had just poured himself what must have been at least his third glass of wine. She kept leaning forward and holding up an index finger like someone wishing to propose an amendment, but he had his gaze trained studiously elsewhere. Mrs. Gordon was telling Pyotr how sorry she was to hear that the Mintz boy had kidnapped his mice. She was seated on the other side of the table from Pyotr and several places down, so she needed to raise her voice. “Jim and Sonia Mintz should really step up to the plate,” she called, and Kate flinched, because Bunny had to have overheard her.