Not a Single Place Setting

The whole room is booked; seating by place cards: Jacob “on Priscilla’s right, across from her father, diagonal from his own.” The tuxedo “fit like a uniform and was a uniform: his father’s tailor, his father’s bill.” “To the union of our families.” — “And to heirs,” Priscilla’s mother adds, “softly, with a smile, the way you add salt.” The word is said in front of the waiters, “and no one at the table had found anything in it that needed discussing.” Then — the land beyond the factory fence, for which the city “is waiting to be asked properly.” “The land over the fence was settled over dessert. The heirs — at the first toast. Everything had been arranged in advance, and in that arrangement there wasn’t a single place setting for the person he was thinking about.”

This is how a script nobody chose operates: marriage as a merger of assets, children as a clause in the contract, and the son’s wishes as a variable left out of the calculation because the form has no field for it. The violence of this table is bloodless and polite: it does not forbid Jacob to be himself; it simply leaves him no place in the arrangement. The body does everything on its own — “Stand when the women stand. Sit after your father. Second fork from the left” — he learned that “before he learned how to hit.” The hand under Priscilla’s palm lies like a stone; he does not pull it away, “and the table had seen what it was supposed to see.” For now.