A Place at the Table
4
Seeking a Direction
Liam
I STOOD QUIETLY outside Meredith’s door at five minutes until nine in the morning. Whatever else she might think, I didn’t want her believing she had to wait for me.
“Oh!” she said, startled to see me standing there when she opened her door. “Mr. Cyning. You are prompt.”
“I find it best not to keep others waiting for me,” I laughed. “Are you ready for breakfast?”
“Yes. Coffee at least. A little something to eat would be good,” she said.
“Are your quarters satisfactory? I could inquire about something more suitable if you find this… possibly… I mean… I hope you are not upset that our rooms are so close on the same hall. I’ve been living alone up here for so long that it startled me to see you in the hall yesterday and I could see you were startled by my presence this morning,” I said. For the past eight years, I’d attended an all-boys school. Seeing a woman on a residence floor was somehow scandalous.
“The room is lovely. I’ve not even explored it all yet. I agree that it was disconcerting to find a man in the hall. I’ve been at Green Hill Women’s College for eight years. The only men we see are those coming to pick up their dates.”
“Do you…?”
“Please don’t make any other arrangements for me, Mr. Cyning. It is simply something we must get used to. The proximity will serve us well if we are to work together.” She was being particularly charming this morning and I was having difficulty maintaining an employer/employee detachment. Even though I’d had no use for girls at the time, our clutch of friends seemed always to be together. We would probably have become friends if we’d stayed at the same school. I wasn’t even certain what else I would say to her this morning. If there were five girls there, it wouldn’t be a problem. I wouldn’t need to relate to any one of them. But with just one, I was having trouble getting my thoughts together.
We reached the kitchen and I pulled a chair out for her. I’d called down to Cook to let him know there would be two for breakfast. My parents took nearly all their meals in their private dining room and Grandmother even had a small kitchen in her suite. Only occasionally had I eaten a meal she cooked, though. Usually when I dined with her, Cook sent Ricardo with our meals.
I grabbed two cups from the counter and filled them with strong black coffee.
“Do you take anything in your coffee?” I asked as I set Meredith’s coffee in front of her.
“I believe everything is on the table,” she said pointing to a creamer and a sugar bowl. I didn’t take anything in my coffee and couldn’t remember seeing those on the table before.
“Here we are, Mr. Liam. Miss Meredith. Enjoy your breakfast and let me know if you need anything. I’m just getting ready to prepare the evening meal. Will you both be here or with either of the elder families?” Cook asked.
“I believe we’ll take the meal here,” I said. “No one has invited us anywhere else.”
“Very well. As usual, there will be luncheon items in the refrigerator for your convenience.”
“Thank you, Cook.” The meal looked incredible. Bacon, ham, sausage, a mound of hash browns, pancakes, and eggs. I dug in and really had no time for a pleasant conversation while we were eating. Perhaps, in fact, I was focusing on my food in order to avoid talking. I was sure Meredith noticed.
By the end of breakfast, my plate was clean while Meredith’s still had half the food left on it. “Did the breakfast not suit your taste?” I asked.
“I shall—just this once—cross into a subject that would not normally be discussed in polite conversation. Liam, how much do you weigh?”
“Me? Weigh? I suppose around one-forty or one-forty-five. And you?”
“I repeat, that is normally not considered a polite question. However, I started this to give you precisely that information. I weigh about one-oh-five. Now, considering a forty-pound difference in our weights, the fact that you have burned over twelve hundred calories in a morning run, and your athletic metabolism, how could I possibly eat as much as you?”
“Oh. Oh! I see. I’ll discuss the matter with Cook.”
“No, please don’t. This is for me to discuss with Cook. We are both on staff. Getting you involved would make him nervous.” I could see Meredith’s point. I’d never be able to address the issue without stumbling all over myself anyway. “Now that breakfast is out of the way, why don’t we have another cup of coffee and chat for a bit?”
I couldn’t avoid it any longer. Meredith and I needed to talk and I had no idea what to say. Erich had talked me through a list of conversation starters before my first date. I figured that was as good a place to start as any. As far as I knew, we had no work to do, so we might as well get to know each other better.
“Meredith, where do you go to school?”
“I attend the Green Hill Women’s College where I have studied for eight years,” she said. “The women’s college starts as a middle school and goes through a baccalaureate degree if one stays there long enough. I fancy it is not much different than Elenchus for boys. And by the way, that was a great question. Would you like to know what I study?” When I’d asked that question of my date last spring, she’d looked at me blankly and said, “High school stuff, of course. This is my school.”
“Yes, please. I have no experience with schools other than Elenchus and the public school where we first met.”
“My major focus is now Social Studies.”
I was puzzled. “Is that like Sociology?”
Meredith laughed at my comparison. “Not quite. Sociology is a science, sometimes considered a part of Social Studies, that deals with the development, structure, and functioning of human society. Social Studies is a broader and less scientific study of social interaction and the various roles people play in society. It includes history, government, economics, civics, sociology, geography, class structure, and anthropology. Green Hill is the only school in the state that has a program defined as Social Studies. Years ago, it was called women’s studies but it was expanded to the broader topic since everything at Green Hill is a woman’s study of some sort.”
“I like your laugh.” That was totally inappropriate. I needed to find more questions. What was next on the list?
“Thank you. I find many things amusing that others don’t. I was afraid I might laugh and offend you and you’d ask me to leave.”
“Why ever would you think that, Miss Sauvage? Am I such an ass?”
“Oh, no. I just didn’t want you to think I was laughing at you. We’re very different people. And I’m sorry to say that before we were split up and sent to different schools, we never really had a chance to become friends, though it seemed we were always in the same group of friends,” she said.
“I have to take the blame for that. I was decidedly antisocial when it came to girls. I can’t believe how stupid I was. It took me about six months at Elenchus to realize that I really missed having girls around. And now that I’ve been there eight years, I find that I have no idea how to interact.” That was probably more than I’d said to her at one time since we met the day before. It seemed so strange to have been apart so many years and now be next-door neighbors.
“It is typical of that age group. You were right on the cusp of learning to appreciate girls and I’d already started wanting to be closer to boys. It was probably for the best that we were sent to boarding schools. In many ways, we’ve lived in different worlds.”
“How so?” I was learning a lot about Meredith in this conversation.
“You’re an only child raised by Promoters in a Leader’s household. I am the youngest of five—all brothers—raised by Creators.”
“Was that difficult?” I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have siblings. I rather thought it would be fun.
“I wouldn’t call it difficult, exactly. It was certainly interesting. I think having brothers helped shape my determination to stand up for myself. And contributed to the power of my right hook.” We both laughed at that. It was still embarrassing but I held no ill will toward her for disciplining me. “Much to my parents’ disappointment, none of us turned out Creators. I like things more dependable and smooth running. Not to the extent a Defender would require. But I never knew when ‘the mood’ would strike my parents. They called it inspiration. I thought of it as mood swings.”
“They became depressed?”
“No. Not usually. For example, I might be all dressed and ready to go to an event with them, or even out shopping, and suddenly they’d disappear. It might be two hours later that we left or we might not leave at all.”
“Where did they go?” I didn’t even know what her parents did. Creators were often artists, musicians, or performers. Vocation was not the same as class, though.
“Oh, to the studio, the garden, the kitchen, the bedroom. Their passion leaks all over everything.” She laughed again. I found I wanted to hear that sound often.
“Miss Sauvage, I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing in life. I have an interest in many things but nothing grabs and holds me with the passion you describe.” I took a deep breath and plunged on. “Do you suppose it will be possible to recapture that lost moment from our childhood when we could have become friends?” Her green eyes bored into my own and for a moment, I was afraid I’d offended her. Then her expression softened some.
“I should like that, Mr. Cyning. I should like that very much.”
We relaxed as we chatted over coffee. It wasn’t the first time I’d talked to a woman one-on-one but it was the first time I could remember not being completely tongue-tied. Except Grandmother. I never had difficulty talking to her.
“So, since we don’t have a packed agenda this week and are still working on figuring out what we’re doing, I won’t be spending every night and every day here, if that is all right. I made a commitment to help with the Children’s Hospital Auxiliary this weekend. They are having a fund-raising and awareness festival at Patriot Park,” Meredith said. That sparked something in me. I was on my vacation and seriously doing nothing. I’d just been thinking this weekend about volunteer activities.
“Could you use help? I’m not skilled at anything, but I could run errands or help with games. Whatever.” I looked at her rather anxiously. “I’m not trying to push my way into something you’re involved with. It just seemed like a good opportunity to do something useful.”
“Really? You’d really volunteer? That’s wonderful! I’m sure we could use another person when it comes to rounding up a few hundred children and getting them involved in games. I’ll gladly arrange for you to help!” Her enthusiasm sounded genuine and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what I should do this summer to discover my… whatever I’m supposed to do. This past weekend, I was thinking that I could volunteer for something but I had no idea what. This would at least get me started,” I said. My relief was not only at her acceptance, but at the thought of having found something useful to do.
“Mr. Liam,” Erich said as he approached the table. We’d been sitting there most of the day. “Your grandmother has extended an invitation to dine with her this evening if you do not have other plans. Both you and Miss Meredith.”
“Oh. We need to tell Cook we’ll be with Grandmother instead of still occupying this table tonight. Miss Sauvage, are you available to dine with my grandmother and me?” I asked.
“That would be lovely,” she said.
“I’ll let Cook know,” Erich said as he left.
“I’ll need to freshen up before dinner,” Meredith said. “Do we have more you’d like to cover this afternoon?”
“I think this has just been a getting to know you day,” I laughed. “And I am delighted to get to know you. Would you like a quick tour of the house before dinner?”
“Oh, that would be nice. I had no idea where to get breakfast this morning until you invited me.”
We walked through the lounge.
“Tell me, do you find our house too ostentatious? I’ve been looking rather critically at my lifestyle lately.” I led Meredith through the main rooms of the house—lounge, formal living room, library, dining room, a small ballroom I didn’t remember ever having been used. I pointed down the first-floor hall toward my parents’ suite and paused on the second floor to point out Grandmother’s suite and the opposite direction to the resident staff rooms.
“Are you uncomfortable here?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t say that so much as that recently, I’ve begun to question how our society is organized. Your specialty, I believe. I feel a bit embarrassed by my family’s wealth, which I have had nothing to do with acquiring but certainly benefit from. It is a shift in worldview I am struggling with.”
“If you are asking if I live like this, no, not at all. My parents do not have a suite separate from the rest of the house. I grew up with four older brothers. That might be why, when younger, I thought an appropriate response to an insult was to slug a boy in the face.” We laughed over that and I felt we had truly gotten past it. “If you are asking if I would like to live like this, my answer would be a bit more ambivalent. It’s hard to imagine myself in a setting like this, but the thought is somehow pleasant. I guess I will discover during my tenure here, how much I do or don’t like it.” We walked on up to the third-floor hallway that, until yesterday, had been my sole domain. We paused for a moment to finish our conversation. “Now, if you are asking if most people live like this, you must understand that it is not only your wealth that sets you apart, but your class. You would be of the same class even if you were penniless, but being a Leader is a natural magnet for wealth. It is in your character.”
“It seems so unequal. Or should I say inequitable?” I puzzled over the idea of wealth in the hands of only a few people. I accused Ferguson of being unemployed and living off the work of others. I am just as bad.
“Helping a class to prosper does not require another class to suffer. Prosperity is not a limited resource.”
“Welcome, welcome,” Grandmother said when we presented ourselves at her door. We joined her immediately at the table where salads had already been set. We politely waited for Grandmother to begin with the first bite before we started. “I’m not going to make a habit of prying but I simply wanted to check in on how your first day has been. Are you going to manage to get along or should I have a boxing ring put in the ballroom?” We all laughed.
“I believe Miss Sauvage and I will avoid coming to blows, Grandmother. I hope that was a lesson that needed to be taught only once,” I said.
“We have both learned better use of our words,” Meredith agreed. “We’ve had a good day getting to know one another. Mr. Cyning has volunteered to help with the hospital benefit Saturday.”
“Excellent. Well done, Liam. Have you made arrangements to go shopping yet?”
“I didn’t even think of that. I rather dread facing Monsieur LeFevre and trying to describe what I need for school. I’ll probably end up with much the same things as always.”
“Perhaps I could assist your endeavor,” Meredith said. She looked at me. I was certain she had chosen that word intentionally.
“Is helping me shop for clothes a part of your portfolio?” I asked. “I would love your assistance if it is available.”
“Shall we plan tomorrow afternoon? I’ll make arrangements with Erich to drive us so we don’t need to worry about where to put your packages.” She was in control. I was amazed.
“Liam, what do you think a personal assistant is for?” Grandmother asked. I admitted I had no idea. “It is good that Meredith is thinking in terms of what she can do to help smooth out the path you travel.”
“I somehow thought I would need to identify tasks and ask her assistance,” I said. “Frankly, the thought terrified me. I would never have thought to ask for help shopping.”
“You will undoubtedly need to direct me at times,” Meredith said. “I’m not a mind reader. I will try to keep ahead when tasks have been identified.”
“Thank you.”
“I will identify one or two tasks to have you work together on,” Grandmother said. “The volunteer idea is a good one. You should continue to look for other ways you can be of service in the community. You have led a rather sheltered life, Liam. I believe you respond well and deal with other gentlemen without difficulty. I threw the two of you together so you would begin to relate to a woman. You should consider what other ways you can engage with individuals and groups. Two that come to mind are dating and parties. Put your heads together to figure out what social events could be arranged. We have the pool, the stables, the tennis courts, the patio, and acres and acres of trails. They’ve been terribly underused since you started at Elenchus. Have a party!”
“Grandmother… That is a great… I don’t even know who to invite, let alone how to plan a party!” Meredith raised her hand to about shoulder level and waggled her fingers at me. “Miss Sauvage, would you assist me in organizing some simple party?”
“I would be delighted, Mr. Cyning.”
“And how long are you going to keep that up?” Grandmother asked. I turned a blank look to her.
“What?”
“You two are, hopefully, entering into a partnership that will last a long time. I know the probationary period is six months. I hope we will be able to measure your association in years. The time will be excruciatingly long if you continue to address each other as Mr. and Miss. Now, I don’t mean in public, of course. There is a time and place for everything. You should be able to plan a party and not be using last names.” She looked at us and I know I blushed. “Not now. This is something else for you to deal with in private. Is your office adequate, Meredith?”
“I’ve not even seen it yet, I’m afraid. I have an office?”
“Lupe will escort you to your room this evening and introduce you to your entire suite. I know you’ve scarcely brought anything with you so far but please understand that your rooms are yours for so long as you remain attached to Buxton House.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
I’m afraid I was pretty quiet through the remainder of the meal and through coffee and dessert in Grandmother’s sitting room. There was much more to this whole personal assistant thing than I imagined. I thought of my father and his assistant. I only ever associated him with the office. I suppose that might be more of a professional assistant than a personal assistant? An association that would last for years?
I needed to examine this carefully. If ‘years’ was the expectation, I needed to be very sure I could tolerate an association with Meredith for a long time. And the ‘personal’ part of personal assistant obviously meant something more… intimate than I had imagined. Not that she and I would ever be intimate in one sense. But she was going shopping with me for my fall wardrobe! She would know my measurements, my taste in clothes, the style of my underwear! Could I allow her to get that close? Only Erich knew me so well.
And what of these other plans? Did Grandmother actually tell me that Meredith should help me plan dates and events at which I might meet other women? That would be… I could almost imagine Meredith waiting up for me in a rocking chair, knitting when I got home from a date. What a motherly thing to do. Would she ask if I had a good time? What we did? If I like the girl?
How could I possibly ever talk to her about things like that?
“Liam, you look a bit feverish,” Grandmother said. “Are you well?”
“Yes, Grandmother. I just feel a bit flushed. If you will forgive me, I think I will retire early this evening. I’m sorry to drag you away…”
“I am going to ask Meredith to stay for a bit longer so we can chat some more,” Grandmother said. “I’ll have Lupe show her back to her room and give her a tour.” I rose and kissed my Grandmother on the cheek.
“Until tomorrow, then,” I said to Meredith. “Why don’t we plan to leave about eleven and have a bite of lunch before we shop?”
“That would be lovely. Until then.” I left and rushed to my room.
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