In her haste, the drapery cords tangle. Jack finishes in the bedrooms and den and comes to help her. He gestures toward the double doors. “The dining room?”
“Oh. Yeah,” she says. “But it’s probably empty. Jack, um, I think we could use some extra spoons. Should we look through the kitchen drawers again?” She reaches for his hand as if to lead him there but is too late. He crosses the room and opens the dining room doors.
“Saffee. Look at this table. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
She continues to walk away. “Right. Come on, Jack, let’s get going.”
“No. Come here, Saffee.”
“Jack, I . . .” Reluctantly she joins him. The Norway table still wears the multicolored splatter of four years ago, when she had compared it to a Jackson Pollock. Today it seems closer to some putrid disease.
“Oh, you told me,” he says. “This must be the table your mother—”
“Yes.” She tries to sound dismissive. “Let’s get going.”
Jack, not listening, is down on one knee. “Saffee, I can’t believe they left this unusual table. Look at the carving on the side.”
His interest irritates her. Does he think she has never seen it before? She tries to sound offhanded. “Well, it’s big. They moved into a trailer, you know.” She suggests they get back on the road in time to do something special with the afternoon.
“If your parents don’t want it, our dining room is completely empty. We could take this leaf out—”
“No!” She stamps her foot. “I don’t want this table.”
He looks up, startled by her change in tone. “Why not?”
“It’s ugly, Jack. Really ugly.”
“Well, I don’t think so.” He crawls under. “There’s no paint on the underside,” he calls, as if she is far away. “It’s beautiful wood! Light-colored. Ash, or maybe birch. Hey! Here are some words burned into the back of this side piece, but they’re not English. Norwegian maybe?” He begins to read, laughing as he guesses the pronunciation. “‘Din hustru er som et frukbart vintre der inne i ditt hus . . .’”
Saffee stands with knees locked and arms crossed over her chest. Why is she so tense? It’s just a table, an inanimate object with history . . . lots of history.
Jack continues to muddle through the inscription. “‘. . . dine barn som oljekvister rundt om ditt bord. Salmenes 128:3.’”
Why is he reading those funny words? When he finally finishes, she thrusts her hands into her pockets and takes a deep breath. “Jack,” she says deliberately, trying to contain rising impatience, “I have bad memories associated with this old table. I never realized the extent of how much it affected me until now. Listen to me. I don’t want it.”
He backs out and stands up, giving her a questioning look.
She struggles to find the right words, tries to explain how it had been frightening to see her mother obsessed with painting. That it seemed as if someone or something compelled her. She laments that her family was baffled by Joann’s irrational mind. Was she trying to cover over her trauma? Some secret sins? Pain that was never shared?
“I never understood her, Jack. All I know is that I hated to come home from school and smell paint.”
“So, if this table caused her so much grief, why didn’t she just get rid of it?”
“Good question. And I don’t know the answer. It seemed to have some kind of power over her. At times it seemed something to fear. At other times she treated it as if it were a gift from God that had sheltered her during that fire.”
She takes his arm as she speaks, gently trying to pull him out of the room, but he resists. “At any rate,” she continues, “painting was probably her attempt to expunge bad memories, real or imagined, and I have bad memories too—of being surrounded by her misery. Frankly, it was sometimes scary in this house.”
She leans against a wall, scans the room, then looks at him imploringly. “Now can you see why I don’t want it around? Let’s leave it here for my dad to take care of. Please. It’s not my problem.” The lump in her throat can no longer be put down. The dam bursts. Hating herself, she burrows her head in that comfortable place just below his right shoulder and cries. He holds her close and rubs her back.
“Saffee. Look at me.” He tilts her chin. “All this emotion says that it is your problem. I think the best thing to do is to take the table home with us . . . and conquer it.”
She pulls away. “Jack, surely, now you understand why we’ve got to leave it. I don’t want to ever see it again!”