Three
Clara!” Bess jumped out of her seat as Clara appeared at the threshold of the dining room. “Look at you! So grown-up.”
“Hi, Mrs. Pfeiffer,” Clara said as Nina came back from the kitchen carrying Honey’s Sanka.
Nina didn’t know where to look first. At Bess, whose wraparound skirt had come undone—since her divorce Bess only bought clothes at a boutique downtown that was half head shop, half gauzy clothes in batik prints—or at Clara, who was wearing—what was Clara wearing?
The dining room lights were dimmed and the candles Nina had lit hours ago mostly spent, some flickering.
She vaguely recognized Clara’s top and its flagrantly low neckline, and were those her breasts glowing in the candlelight?
“Bess,” Nina said, “retie your skirt.”
“Oh my,” Bess said, laughing. “I loosened it before dessert.” She casually and completely unwrapped her skirt. Honey Finnegan gasped.
“Bess!” This was too much, even for Nina.
“Oh, relax. There’s a whole leotard under here,” she said while removing the skirt to reveal a burgundy bodysuit that still showed way too much of Bess below the waist. Nina put the Sanka on the table in front of Honey.
“Yum,” Honey said, lowering her face to the bitter brew.
Nina turned to her daughter. “Clara? What can we do for you?”
“I wanted to say hello.” Clara could tell her mother was annoyed, so she made her voice extra breezy. “What’s everyone talking about?”
“Your dad is telling us about all the exciting developments around here,” Finn said.
Clara crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Developments?”
“From the big conference in Boca Raton. Futures Day! Apparently, Xerox is going to start giving out personal computers like candy.”
“I wish,” Sam said, pulling out one of the empty chairs and motioning for Clara to sit. Clara hesitated and looked at her mother, who nodded.
“What do you think about these computers, Clara?” One of the things Clara liked about Mr. Finnegan was that he spoke to her like an adult, like he was interested in her thoughts, but what did she know about computers and offices and what all these men did when they hurried out of the house every morning?
Her father was in charge of the marketing strategy for Xerox’s new products.
She had no idea what marketing strategy meant or what he did all day.
Even Mr. Finnegan was a mystery. He ran grocery stores—his job should be pretty straightforward, but what did he do?
“It sounds cool,” Clara said. “Mom got to try one.”
“You did?” Finn asked Nina.
“I did. All the products coming out of Palo Alto were on display and all the wives got a chance to try them out. Want to guess why?”
“Manners? Ladies first?”
“We were the only people in the room who could type.”
“Ah, that’s not entirely true,” Sam said as everyone else laughed.
“I’m not counting the engineers who invented the things,” Nina said. “And you’re right, it wasn’t just about typing. All the executives stood around acting embarrassed and looking for a secretary to rush in and assist.”
“You have a point,” Sam said. “We are all going to have to learn how to type.”
“I type,” Finn said.
“You do?” said Bess. “Finn Finnegan, president of Finnegan’s Grocer, types.”
“My father insisted. Invoices, schedules, inventory. I mostly hunt and peck, but nothing’s faster than a typewriter.”
“Not for long,” Nina said. “You are not going to believe what these machines can do or how lightning quick they are. The engineers in Palo Alto were sending documents to the computers in Florida and we could edit and send them back with the touch of a button.”
“This is what terrifies me,” said Honey. “Things moving too fast. One wrong command or code or whatever you call it, one wrong message sent out into the universe and that’s it!” She snapped her fingers. “Nuclear mayhem.”
“What?” Clara said, alarmed.
Sam put a reassuring hand on Clara’s arm and said to Honey, “Last I checked, Xerox wasn’t in the nuclear warhead business,” but Honey continued to shake her head. She pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders and gave a performative shudder.
“The computers have something called a universal undo,” Nina said.
“Like backspace?” Clara asked.
“Sort of, but better. The word processer can reverse any action in perfect order. If you make a mistake or change your mind, you can undo it in a second. For writing and editing, well, it’s going to change everything. No scissors or tape or Wite-Out or eraser ribbon. One button and—”
“Undo it,” Clara said.
“Exactly.” Nina smiled at her daughter.
“Wow,” Bess said. “Like God.”
“Bess, please don’t say that.” Honey crossed herself rapidly in case, Nina guessed, God was watching this dinner party slowly unravel.
“Okay, everybody,” Nina said, avoiding Sam’s eye. “Clara, time for you to go to bed and it’s past my bedtime, too. I’m beat.”
“The general has spoken,” Sam said, an edge to his voice. Clara looked at her mother, worried. Nina resented when Sam called her the general, but she smiled and winked at Clara and started clearing the table.
“Undo,” Bess said, pressing an imaginary button on the tablecloth, inordinately pleased with herself.
“Clara?” Nina motioned to her daughter. “Want to grab a few plates and help me in the kitchen?”
“Undo!” Bess said a little louder, like a kid going for a bigger laugh on the same joke.
“I’ll walk you home, Bess,” Sam said.
“Undo! Undo! Undo!” Bess pressed the tablecloth over and over.
Everyone else stood and pushed their chairs back. Nina and Clara walked through the wooden swinging door into the kitchen and Clara started rinsing plates.
Clara had enthusiastically helped Nina cook earlier in the day, much to Nina’s delight and surprise.
Like her father, Clara tended to be moody, and the teen years had sometimes been hard.
But the best way to quiet Clara, even as an irritable toddler, was to engage her with a task in the kitchen.
Three-year-old Clara had loved to pound dough and crack eggs into a bowl and beat them with a whisk.
At four, she would hold the electric hand mixer and help Nina cream butter and sugar.
At five, she could sloppily frost a dozen cookies or more, her brow knit with concentration wanting to get the edges just right.
By junior high, Clara could cook simple meals—grilled cheese, omelets, pancakes—on her own and she became an able assistant for Nina in the kitchen, especially when Nina held her classes.
They were a team. Until sophomore year of high school, when Clara’s time and attention were co-opted by academics and all her extracurriculars, which Nina understood and didn’t quite take personally.
But here Clara was now, helping to scrape plates into the sink and looking for all the world like she was twenty-two.
“Clara?” Clara turned and looked at Nina and smiled, a faraway smile, one Nina knew wasn’t meant for her.
Sometimes Clara looked like Sam, but most of the time Nina saw her own face in her daughter’s.
She and Clara had nearly the same dark almond-shaped eyes, and it could be unnerving for Nina to gaze into them, almost as if too much knowledge was at the ready.
That Clara was beautiful was no reflection on Nina; the bit of Sam she’d inherited—his angular jaw, high forehead and cheekbones—made her so lovely.
And even though Nina didn’t want her wearing makeup yet, whatever she’d done to her face tonight worked. “You look nice, honey,” Nina said.
“Thanks.” Clara screwed up her mouth, biting back a satisfied smile. Nina pointed to Clara’s top. “Where did that come from?”
“This?” Clara shrugged. “I don’t remember. The laundry room?” She lifted her chin, ready to argue.
Nina nodded. “It’s late, don’t you think?” She sensed both Clara’s relief and disappointment that Nina was too tired to start an argument over the purple top. As Clara headed upstairs, Finn came into the kitchen carrying dessert plates. “You can put those on the counter.” Nina gestured to her left.
“How come this kitchen is so much more appealing than mine?” he said, scraping the remnants of baked Alaska into the sink.
“Probably because my kitchen has actual food in it.”
Finn laughed. “Maybe. Does it seem a little nuts to you that Honey married into a family of grocers and hates to eat?”
“One of life’s little tricks. My mother was the same. Some people don’t have much of an appetite.”
Finn turned off the water and picked up a dry dish towel from a stack on the counter. “But not you.” It wasn’t a question. The door between the two rooms swung open again and Sam came in wearing his overcoat. “I’m walking Bess home.”
“Over my strenuous objection!” Bess called from the other room.
“My undo button needs a repair!” Walking Bess home because she was divorced was a bit of theater on the part of the good husbands of Cambridge Road, clothed in ostensible concern for Bess’s safety on this very safe dead-end street.
Shepherding Bess to her front door as they would a teenage babysitter was a reminder of her status as formerly coupled, currently alone.
“Finn?” Honey stood in the door now with her coat on, looking pinched. “Shall we?”
“You go,” Finn said. “I’m going to help with some of these pots.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Nina said. “Sam will be back any minute.”
“Happy to help with the big pans.” He waved Honey off. “Home in a few.”
“Okay,” Honey said, pulling her belt tighter around her waist. “Don’t dawdle.”
“I’ll kick him out in ten,” Nina said to Honey. “Promise.” Finn and Nina worked side by side in silence. She washed; he dried. “So, what would yours be?” he finally said.
“My what?”
“Your universal undo?”
She handed him a large ceramic platter. “Aren’t we supposed to know better than to try to undo? I’ve read ‘The Monkey’s Paw.’”
“I can tell you mine,” he said quietly.
Nina turned off the faucet. “Don’t.”
“We need to talk.”
“Now? The girls are upstairs. Sam will be here any second.”
“I would undo a lot of things,” he said, taking one of her fingers in his hand and lightly tugging her closer, “but not us.”
“Finn. There is no us. We decided. Us is unsolvable.” They stood for a minute, allowing themselves to occupy a space they’d been avoiding for months.
They’d been avoiding one another for months.
His fingers grabbed her wrist and Nina thought she would burst if he didn’t take her in his arms, which he did.
“Nina Larkin,” he whispered into her ear. “What are we going to undo?”