that Mrs. P knows what I do and who I am even as she politely pretends otherwise. Not long after Benton and I moved to Cambridge, her husband was killed in a car accident literally in front of their house, and I took care of him. Now it’s as if that never happened, and what I remember most about her husband’s case is his widow Mrs. P’s refusal to talk to me. She insisted on going over her late husband’s autopsy report with one of my assistant chiefs, a man.
But then Mrs. P started at the Faculty Club in a day when things were very different for women. You could be on the faculty here and find yourself relegated to the ladies’ dining room or discover there’s no place in the dorm and you’re not welcome in the same libraries or housing as your male classmates. When one of the greatest legal minds of our time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arrived for her first year at Harvard Law School she was asked to justify her taking up a seat that could be occupied by a man.
“I think you need your head examined if you go outside in this,” Mrs. P is saying to Benton, and he widens his eyes, staring at her with mock disappointment. “You’ll melt like a candle,” meaning that’s what she thinks I look like.
Benton says to me with a shrug, “I guess that’s a no. Sorry, Kay. It would seem Mrs. P thinks you still look like something the cat dragged in.”
“I would never say such a thing!” Mrs. P laughs her soft self-conscious laugh, placing three fingers over her pink lips, shaking her head as if my husband is the naughtiest human being on the planet.
She’s quite fond of Benton, who of course is teasing both of us. If you don’t know him it would be difficult to recognize because his humor is as subtle as a cobweb you can’t find but keep brushing from your face. He knows damn well my appearance isn’t greatly improved. I don’t have hose on, and the leather insoles of my unstylish scuffed shoes feel as slimy as a raw oyster that’s been sitting out for hours.
“Let’s not rub it in,” I say to him as Mrs. P gathers two menus and the thick black notebook, the extensive carte des vins. “I realize it wasn’t your intention to have dinner tonight with something the cat dragged in.”
“Depends on the cat.” Benton opens his briefcase with bright springy snaps of the clasps.
He trades his sunglasses for bifocals, the kind you get in the drugstore. I shoulder my messenger bag again, and we follow Mrs. P into the north dining room with its tall arched windows and exposure to the front lawn, which is cloaked in darkness.
Our feet are quiet on deep red carpet as we pass beneath exposed dark beams in the white plaster ceiling, through a sea of white-cloth-covered tables beneath brass chandeliers with small red shades over their candlelike lights. We’re the only guests so far, and Benton and Mrs. P chat amicably as she shows us to our usual corner.
“Not until closer to eight tonight,” she’s telling Benton that the Faculty Club is going to be quite slow until then. “We have two private dinners upstairs but not much down here. It’s too hot, you know.”
“What about power outages?” Benton asks. “Have they affected you?”
“Now that’s trouble when it happens. The power goes out and stays out, and you can’t stay inside but can’t go outside either. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again, especially not while you’re in here trying to enjoy a nice quiet dinner.”
Mrs. P then begins to update us on Felix the Cat. That’s his real name but she just calls him Felix for short, and apparently Felix hasn’t fared well during the heat wave.
“He did very poorly the last time the power went out, which was just yesterday at noon, at least that’s what I found out later because I was here at the time. Where I live is one of the worst areas on the grid map or something like that,” she explains to both of us. “And you know Felix is old with all the problems that go along with it. I don’t always know if the power’s out in the house, you see. I might be fine here and have no idea poor Felix is suffering with no air-conditioning.”
“Maybe there’s a neighbor or someone who can check on him?” I suggest.
“My neighbors are in the same boat if the power goes out,” she says. “And my children don’t live nearby. Now my grandson’s working part-time here while he tries to make it as a musician, and he helps out when he can. But he’s twenty-three and allergic to cats.”
“Could you bring Felix to work?” Benton asks, and Mrs. P just laughs.
“Why couldn’t you?” Benton is serious.
“Well I couldn’t.” She looks across the dining room, making sure no one else has come in.
Our corner table is to the right of a big fireplace framed by a burled-wood mantel that reaches from the carpet to the ceiling. Perpendicular to it the gold-damask-covered wall has been arranged with fine British, Dutch and Italian art that wasn’t here when we were last month.
The new exhibit includes a seascape, a religious allegory, and a still life that has a skull in it. There are oil portraits of stern men in colonial dress, and powdered women with corseted waists too cinched to be anatomically possible without bruised ribs and crowded organs. I never know what I’m going to see from one visit to the next because most of the art is on loan from the surrounding Harvard museums, which hold one of the finest collections anywhere.
The paintings constantly rotate, and this appeals to Benton in particular because it’s not dissimilar to how he grew up. His wealthy father invested in art and constantly moved priceless paintings in and out of the Wesley home, a brownstone mansion not so different from the Faculty Club.
How amazing it must be to pick a Pieter Claesz this week and a J. M. W. Turner or Jan Both the next. And maybe a Johannes Vermeer or a Frans Hals while we’re at it, I think as I scan our private gallery, each painting illuminated by a museum light and framed in gold.
It’s difficult to imagine growing up the way Benton did when I compare it to the minimalist and decidedly nonglamorous conditions of my Miami upbringing. He comes from Ivy League New England stock while I’m the only one in my second-generation Italian family who went to college. As hard as it was to have so little in every sense of the word, I’m grateful that when I was growing up I didn’t get what I thought I wanted.
Benton was deprived in a different way. He got everything his parents wanted. He lived their dreams, and in many ways it only made him more impoverished and lonely. I imagine I was sad and isolated at times when I was a child. But what I remember most is feeling driven, having no choice but to learn to make do, whether it was the way I dressed, what shampoo I could afford or how long I could make something last.
I became adept at experiencing the world through books, photographs and movies because there was no such thing as a vacation or traveling anywhere for any reason until I finally began visiting colleges in my midteens. Benton on the other hand lacked for nothing except attention and a normal boyhood. He says he never felt rich until we met, and it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.
He moves the table a little, angling it as he pleases, as if the dining room belongs to him. “I’m worried you’re going to be cold.”
“So far I’m all right. Other than the way I look.”
“Which is beautiful.
