“Well done,” Mr. Fahey had said to Jamie at least half a dozen times. “I knew I saw something in you.”
Even with the windows open, the dining room was sweltering. Sweat dampened the women’s temples. Mr. Fahey kept mopping his brow with his napkin. The second-eldest Fahey sister, Nora, the art history student, had just returned from Europe, and Penelope had come over with her husband and infant and nanny. There was talk that Jamie must draw Nora after dinner to complete the pantheon in Mrs. Fahey’s parlor.
“Don’t forget Daddy!” Alice said.
“I wouldn’t dream of inflicting this mug on Jamie after such a parade of beauties,” Mr. Fahey said. He was in high spirits, pinker and shinier than ever.
The first course was oysters, then cold consommé, then poached salmon.
Nora was full of observations about Europe. “On the crossing there was always a breeze. One gets used to the cooling effect.”
“Does one?” Alice asked, putting on a queenly accent and looking down her nose.
Jamie had eaten the oysters and, despite misgivings, the salmon, had vainly hoped by some miracle the meal would not involve beef. When the inevitable steak was placed in front of him, a thin, crimson liquid pooling around it, he looked surreptitiously for Jasper, but the dog must have been shut away somewhere.
“I’m interested in this young man’s plan for the future,” said the art expert, turning to him.
Everyone looked at Jamie. “I have another year of high school,” he said, “and then I’ll probably go to the University of Montana.”
“To study art,” said the expert.
“I’m not sure,” Jamie said.
Mr. Fahey leaned back in his chair, chewing. “How is the art department at Montana?”
“I think it’s good enough,” Jamie said. “My uncle taught”—he caught himself—“teaches in it.”
Mr. Fahey pushed more steak into his mouth, took a gulp of wine, and said, “I think you ought to come to Seattle. Either to UW or Cornish College. Talent like yours, you shouldn’t be stuck in a backwater.”
Jamie almost laughed at the idea that he could afford such a thing.
“Furthermore—” said Mr. Fahey
“Some would say Seattle is the definition of a backwater,” Nora observed. “Compared to Europe.”
“Nora,” said Alice, “don’t be stupid.”
Sarah said, “It’s snobbery, not stupidity.”
“Furthermore,” said Mr. Fahey again, raising his voice, “I would like to help you.” The Fahey women looked at one another.
“I don’t think I understand,” Jamie said.
“I’m saying I’ll pay for your schooling and expenses, boy! You’d continue working for me, of course, in one way or another. Maybe with the art, depending on how things shape up with this museum idea, or maybe with my business.” He pointed his knife at Jamie. “I’m a self-made man myself.” This in a tone of light interest, as though he had not already said so many times already. “I like to give others a leg up when I can.”
Jamie, flabbergasted, didn’t know what to say. He longed to accept, to fall back into the Faheys as though into a feather bed. If he did, incredible as it seemed, his vision of himself as a husband to Sarah, the father of her children, a prosperous citizen of a Pacific city, might plausibly come to pass. But ambivalence stopped him. There were the slaughterhouses, and, yes, he liked to draw, and over the summer he’d grown vain about his talent. But what if there was a latent Wallace in him? What if, by becoming an artist, he would create the right conditions for dissolution and anarchy to spread through him like a fungus?
He needed to think more, and not in this hot room, at this table full of Faheys and their plates of bleeding beef.
“You’ve left him speechless, Daddy,” said Penelope.
Mr. Fahey said, “Finish up your steak, and we’ll have some champagne to celebrate.” Then he looked more closely at Jamie’s plate. “Why, you’ve barely eaten anything. Are you ill, boy?”
Jamie glanced at Sarah, who looked back with perplexity. “Aren’t you hungry?” she said.
It didn’t matter, he realized, whether or not he wanted to be an artist. He said, “I don’t eat meat.”
“What?” Mr. Fahey appeared genuinely confounded.
“I don’t eat meat.”
“No meat?”
“No.”
“Is it some kind of religious belief?”