The Ghost at the Table: A Novel by Suzanne Berne Page A

distracted. She had barely spoken during dinner. But as I watched her hesitate over whether to use dessert forks or spoons, it struckme that she was trying to figure out how to pretend that my father was an ordinary houseguest instead of an intruder.
    Once we sat down to dessert (a store-bought pumpkin pie bought by Walter, with vanilla ice cream), conversation in the dining room faltered, until finally it stopped altogether. A minute ticked past. I found myself locking eyes with the Common Ancestor, turning my head from side to side.
    Then Frances said abruptly, “Cynnie’s book is wonderful.”
    “My book?” I said, caught off guard.
    Everyone had turned toward me, even my father.
    I smiled deprecatingly and picked up my wineglass. “It’s still mostly just an outline. Frances read a few pages today in the car.”
    “Oh, come on,” she cried, her face suddenly animated. “It’s wonderful. You can tell them something about it, can’t you?”
    “It always sounds stupid when I start talking about it.”
    “Cynthia is writing about Mark Twain’s daughters,” Frances explained to Dad, who was across the table from her. She spoke slowly and loudly, although as far as I knew his hearing hadn’t been affected by his stroke. “About him and his daughters and their life in Hartford.”
    “Well, that sounds great,” Walter said kindly to me.
    “Cynthia does a beautiful job of capturing them,” continued Frances. “There were three girls, just like in our family, and they used to put on plays. They even did a play of Twain’s
Prince and the Pauper,
as a surprise for him. And it was so good he made them do it again for all the neighbors and insisted on being in it himself.”
    “Well, I think he kind of
took over
the play,” I interjected. “I’m not sure how the girls felt about it. There’s this one bizarre photograph”—I turned to Jane, thinking she might appreciatesome of the stranger aspects of the Clemens family—“of Twain dressed in drag, with a bonnet on his head. He’s kicking up one leg and holding on to Susy, the oldest girl, who looks horrified. Actually, she looks more resigned—”
    “Tell about Twain dressing up as Santa Claus.” Frances’s face was pink as she poured herself a second glass of wine. “It’s the sweetest thing.”
    Walter shifted in his chair. “I heard Cynthia’s going to go down to Hartford to see his house while she’s here.”
    “I was hoping to go tomorrow—”
    “A trip down memory lane,” Frances said, fingering the stem of her wineglass. “Get Cynthia to tell you about the crazy notes the girls used to carry back and forth between the parents.”
    “They weren’t crazy,” I said, looking at her.
    “Funny, I meant. His were funny.”
    I was beginning to feel dazed and immobilized, the way I imagine people must feel when they are about to be overcome by an allergic reaction to something they didn’t realize they were allergic to.
    “Twain was funny as a
writer,
” I said stiffly, after a moment. “But at home he was kind of a monster.”
    “Oh, I’m sure he was difficult. But not a
monster
—”
    “Mom,” muttered Jane. “It’s her book.”
    “But he
loved
those little girls. You have it all in your outline, Cynnie. The Christmas presents. The stories he made up for them—”
    “Frances,” said Walter gently.
    Frances was usually the most diplomatic of conversationalists, perfectly attuned to other people’s discomfort and restlessness, adept at switching to new topics, even if she had to resort to making fun of herself to do so. Which she did at just that moment byslapping a palm to her forehead and saying, “Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’m sorry, Cynnie. Here I am going on and on like an old kook. I just got so excited. Their story just seems so
real
.
    “It must be fabulous,” she went on, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight, “to get to sit at home and figure all this out and choose what you want to tell from what