The New Yorker Stories Part 35

Billy said, when he was eating his shrimp, "My parents had a New Year's Eve party the last time I visited them, and some woman got ripped and took my father's shoe and sock off and painted his toenails." At this point I cracked up, and the waiter, who was removing my plate, looked at me as if I was dispensable. "That's not it, that's not the punch line!" Billy said. Atley held his hand up in cop-stopping-traffic style, and Billy made a fist and hit it. Then he said, "The punch line is, a week later my father was reading the paper at breakfast and my mother said, 'What if I get some nail-polish remover and fix your toes?' and my father said, 'Don't do it.' She was scared scared to do it!" to do it!"

"I had such a happy childhood," I said. "We always rented a beach house during the summer, and my mother and father had one of each of our baby shoes bronzed-my sister's and mine-and my parents danced in the living room a lot. My father said the only way he'd have a TV was if he could think of it as a giant radio, so when they finally bought one he'd be watching and my mother would come into the room and he'd get up and take her in his arms and start humming and dancing. They'd dance while Kate Smith talked or whatever, or while Gale Storm made her My Little Margie My Little Margie noise." noise."

Atley squinted and leaned against the table. "Come on, come on, come on-what do two people who have money do all day?" he whispered. That was when Billy kissed me, which made it look as if what we did was make love all day, which couldn't have been farther from the truth. In the back of my mind I thought that maybe it was part of some act Billy was putting on because he'd already figured out what to do about the birthday. The waiter was opening a bottle of champagne, which I guess Billy had ordered. I knew very few facts about Billy's ex. One was that she really liked champagne. Another was that she had been in Alateen. Her father had been a big drunk. He'd thrown her mother out a window once. She'd gone back to him but not until she'd taken him to court.

"I'll tell you something," Atley said. "I shocked the h.e.l.l out of one of our summer interns. I took him aside in the office and I told him, 'You know what lawyers are? Barnacles on a log. The legal system is like one big, heavy log floating downstream, and there's nothing you can do about it. Remember every time one of those judges lifts a gavel that it's just a log with a handle.' "

The cork took off right across the restaurant. We all looked. It landed near the pastry cart. The waiter said, "It flew through my fingers," and looked at his hand, as surprised as if he'd been casually counting his fingers and found that he had seven of them. We were all sorry for the waiter because he was so shocked. He stared at his hand so long that we looked away. Billy kissed me again. I thought it might be a gesture to break the silence.

The waiter poured champagne into Atley's gla.s.s first; he did it quickly and his hand was shaking so much that the foam started to rise fast. Atley held up his hand to indicate that he should stop pouring. Billy punched Atley's hand again.

"You son of a gun," Billy said. "Do you think we don't know it's your birthday? Did you think we didn't know that?"

Atley turned a little red. "How did you know that?" he said.

Billy raised his gla.s.s and we all raised ours and clinked them, above the pepper mill.

Atley was quite red.

"Son of a gun," Billy said. I smiled, too. The waiter looked and saw that we had drained our gla.s.ses, and looked surprised again. He quickly came back to pour champagne, but Billy had beaten him to it. In a few minutes, the waiter came back and put three brandy snifters with a little ripple of brandy in them on the table. We must have looked perplexed, and the waiter certainly did. "From the gentleman across the room," the waiter said. We turned around. Billy and I didn't recognize anybody, but some man was grinning like mad. He lifted his lobster off his plate and pointed it at Atley. Atley smiled and mouthed, "Thank you."

"One of the best cytologists in the world," Atley said. "A client."

When I looked away, the man was still holding his lobster and moving it so that it looked as if it were swimming through air.

"The gentleman told me to bring the brandy now," the waiter said, and went away.

"Do you think it would be crude to tell him we're going to leave him a big tip?" Billy said.

"Are we?" I said.

"Oh, I'll leave the tip. I'll leave the tip," Atley said.

The waiter, who seemed always to be around our table, heard the word "tip" and looked surprised again. Billy picked up on this and smiled at him. "We're not going anywhere," he said.

It was surprising how fast we ate, though, and in a little while, since none of us wanted coffee, the waiter was back with the bill. It was in one of those folders-a leather book, with the restaurant's initials embossed on the front. It reminded me of my Aunt Jean's trivet collection, and I said so. Aunt Jean knew somebody who would cast trivets for her, to her specifications. She had an initialed trivet. She had a Rolls-Royce trivet-those cla.s.sy intertwined R Rs. This had us laughing. I was the only one who hadn't touched the brandy. When Billy put his credit card in a slot in the book, Atley said, "Thank you." I did too, and Billy put his hand over mine and kissed me again. He'd kissed me so many times that by now I was a little embarra.s.sed, so to cover up for that I touched my forehead to his after the kiss so that it would seem like a routine of ours to Atley. It was either that or say, "What are you doing?"

Atley wanted to have his chauffeur drop us, but out on the street Billy took my hand and said that we wanted to walk. "This nice weather's not going to hold up," he said. Atley and I realized at the same moment that two young girls were in the back of the limousine.

"Who are they?" Atley said to the chauffeur.

The chauffeur was holding the door open and we could see that the girls were sitting as far back in the seat as they could, like people backed up against a wall who are hoping not to be hurt.

"What could I do?" the chauffeur said. "They were lit. They hopped in. I was just trying to chase them out."

"Lit?" Atley said.

"Tipsy," the chauffeur said.

"Why don't you proceed to get them out?" Atley said.

"Come on, girls," the chauffeur said. "You get out, now. You heard what he said."

One got out and the other one, who didn't have on as many clothes, took longer and made eye contact with the chauffeur.

"There you go," the chauffeur said, extending his elbow, but she ignored it and climbed out by herself. Both of them looked back over their shoulders as they walked away.

"Why do I put up with this?" Atley said to the chauffeur. His face was red again. I didn't want Atley to be upset and his birthday lunch to be spoiled, so I pecked him on the cheek and smiled. It is certainly true that if women ran the country they would never send their sons to war. Atley hesitated a minute, kissed me back, then smiled. Billy kissed me, and for a second I was confused, thinking he might have intended to send me off with Atley. Then he and Atley shook hands and we both said, "Happy birthday," and Atley bent over and got into the back of the limousine. When the chauffeur closed the door, you couldn't see that it was Atley in there, because the gla.s.s was tinted. As the chauffeur was getting into the front seat, the back door opened and Atley leaned forward.

"I can tell you one thing. I was surprised that somebody remembered my birthday," he said. "You know what I was just thinking apropos of your story about your mother and father dancing to the television? I was thinking that sometimes you go along in the same way so long that you forget how one little interlude of something different can change everything." He was grinning at Billy. "She's too young to remember those radio shows," he said. "Life of Riley and things like that." He looked at me. "When they wanted to let you know that time was pa.s.sing, there'd be a few bars of music, and then they'd be talking about something else." Atley's foot, in a black sock and a shiny black oxford, was dangling out the door. The chauffeur pulled his door shut. Then Atley closed his door too, and the limo drove away. Before we had turned to leave, though, the car stopped and backed up to us again. Atley rolled down his window. He stuck his head out. " 'Oh, Mr. Atley,' " he said in falsetto, " 'wherever are you going?' " He whistled a few notes. Then, in a booming, gruff voice, he said, " 'Why, Atley, back at work after your and things like that." He looked at me. "When they wanted to let you know that time was pa.s.sing, there'd be a few bars of music, and then they'd be talking about something else." Atley's foot, in a black sock and a shiny black oxford, was dangling out the door. The chauffeur pulled his door shut. Then Atley closed his door too, and the limo drove away. Before we had turned to leave, though, the car stopped and backed up to us again. Atley rolled down his window. He stuck his head out. " 'Oh, Mr. Atley,' " he said in falsetto, " 'wherever are you going?' " He whistled a few notes. Then, in a booming, gruff voice, he said, " 'Why, Atley, back at work after your surprise birthday lunch surprise birthday lunch?' " He rolled up the window. The chauffeur drove away.

Billy thought this was nice weather? It was March in New York, and there hadn't been any sun for three days. The wind was blowing so hard that an end of my scarf flew up over my face. Billy put his arm around my waist and we watched the limousine make it through a yellow light and swerve to avoid a car that had suddenly stopped to back into a parking s.p.a.ce.

"Billy," I said, "why did you keep kissing me all through lunch?"

"We've known each other quite a while," he said, "and I realized today that I'd fallen in love with you."

This surprised me so much that as well as moving away from him I also went back in my mind to the safety and security of childhood. "You make a trade," my mother had said to me once. "You give up to get. I want a TV? Why, then, I let him make me dance every time I come into the room. I'll bet you think women are always fine dancers and men always try to avoid dancing? Your father would go out dancing every night of the week if he could." As Billy and I walked down the street, I suddenly thought how strange it was that we'd never gone dancing.

My mother had said all that to me in the living room, when Ricky was at his wit's end with Lucy on television and my father was at work. I sympathized with her at once. I liked being with my mother and thinking about something serious that I hadn't thought about before. But when I was alone-or maybe this only happened as I got older-puzzling things out held no fascination for me. The rug in the room where my mother and I talked was patterned with pink cabbage-size roses. Years later, I'd have nightmares that a huge trellis had collapsed and disappeared and I'd suddenly found the roses, two-dimensional, on the ground.

Lofty

Kate could think of nothing but how she had cheated when she and Philip lived in this house. She had put little daubs of glue on the back of peeling wallpaper and pushed it back into place; she had stuffed the big aqua urns at the back door with rags-they were deep enough to hold twenty pounds of earth-and then poured a foot of soil on top. The pansies, pounded deep into the urns by summer rain, had shot up and cascaded over the rims anyway.

The house belonged to Philip's Great-Aunt Beatrice, and she had come in person every month for the rent check, but all Kate's worrying about their tenancy had been for nothing. The woman rarely looked closely at anything; in fact, in winter she often kept her car running in the driveway while she made the call, and wouldn't even come inside for coffee. In the summer she stayed a few minutes to cut roses or peonies to take back to the city. She was a tall old lady, who wore flowered dresses, and by the time she headed for her ancient Cadillac she herself often looked like a gigantic flower in motion, refracted through a kaleidoscope.

In retrospect, Kate realized that the house must have looked perfectly presentable. When she and Philip first moved in and were in love with each other, they were in love with the place, and when they were no longer in love the house seemed to sink in sympathy. The sagging front step made her sad; a shutter fell from the second story one night, frightening them into each other's arms.

When the two of them decided to part, they agreed that it was silly not to stay on until the lease was up at the end of summer. Philip's young daughter was visiting just then, and she was having a wonderful time. The house was three stories high-there was certainly room enough to avoid each other. He was being transferred to Germany by his firm in September. Kate planned to move to New York, and this way she could take her time looking for a place. Wadding newspaper to stuff into the urns for another summer, she had been shocked at how tightly she crushed it-as if by directing her energy into her hands she could fight back tears.

Today, ten years later, Kate was back at the house. Philip's daughter, Monica, was eighteen now, and a friend of Monica's was renting the house. Today was Monica's engagement party. Kate sat in a lawn chair. The lawn was nicely mowed. The ugly urns were gone, and a fuchsia plant hung from the lamppost beside the back door. A fuzz of green spread over a part of the lawn plot that had been newly plowed for a garden. The big maple tree that encroached on the kitchen had grown huge; she wondered if any light could penetrate that room now.

She knew that the spike in the maple tree would still be there. It had been there, mysteriously in place, when they first moved in. She walked up to the tree and put her hand on it. It was rusted, but still the height to allow a person to get a foot up, so that he could pull himself up into the nearest overhead branches.

Before the party, Philip had sent Monica a note that Monica showed to Kate with a sneer. He said that he was not going to attend the celebration of a mistake; she was too young to marry, and he would have nothing to do with the event. Kate thought that his not being there had less to do with his daughter and more to do with Kate and him. Either he still loved her or else he hated her. She closed her hand around the spike in the tree.

"Climb up so I can look up your skirt," her husband said.

And then he was surprised when she did.

Ignoring the finger she'd sc.r.a.ped on the bark pulling herself up, she stood on the first high branch and reached behind to tug her skirt free, laughing and letting the skirt drift away from her body. She went one branch higher, carefully, and leaned out to look down. She turned and leaned against a higher branch, facing him, and raised her skirt.

"O.K.," he said, laughing, too. "Be careful."

She realized that she had never looked down on him before-not out of a window, not in any situation she could think of. She was twelve or fifteen feet off the ground. She went one branch higher. She looked down again and saw him move closer to the tree, as quickly as a magnet. He was smaller.

"Birds used to peck birdseed from a seeded bell that dangled from there," she said, pointing to the branch her husband could almost touch. "This tree used to be filled with birds in the morning. They were so loud that you could hear them over the bacon sputtering."

"Come down," he said.

She felt a little frightened when she saw how small his raised hand was. Her body felt light, and she held on tighter.

"Sweetheart," he said.

A young man in a white jacket was coming toward her husband, carrying two drinks. "Whoa, up there!" he called. She smiled down. In a second, a little girl began to run toward the man. She was about two years old, and not steady on her feet where the lawn began to slope and the tree's roots pushed out of the ground. The man quickly handed the drinks to her husband and turned to swoop up the child as she stumbled. Kate, braced for the child's cry, exhaled when nothing happened.

"There used to be a tree house," Kate said. "We hung paper lanterns from it when we had a party."

"I know," her husband said. He was still reaching up, a drink in each hand. The man standing with him frowned. He reclaimed his drink and began to edge away, talking to the little girl. Her husband put his drink on the gra.s.s.

"Up in the tree!" the little girl squealed. She turned to look over her shoulder.

"That's right," the man said. "Somebody's up in the tree."

The gla.s.s at her husband's feet had tipped over.

"We didn't," Kate said. "I made it up."

He said, "Shall I come up and get you?" He touched his hand to the spike. Or else she thought he did; she couldn't lean far enough forward to see.

"You're so nice to me," she said.

He moved back and stretched up his arms.

She had never been daring when she was young, and she wanted to stand her ground now. It made her giddy to realize how odd a thought that was-the contradiction between "standing your ground" and being balanced in a tree. There could have been a tree house. And who else but she and Philip would have lived in such a place and not had lawn parties? She didn't think Monica was wrong about getting married; her fiance was charming and silly and energetic. Her own husband was very charming-demonstrative only in private, surprised by her pranks to such an extent that she often thought he subtly encouraged her to act up because he admired people who could do such things. He was modest. It wasn't like him to say, "Climb up so I can look up your skirt."

"I'll fly," she said.

He dropped his hands to his sides. "A walk in the woods," he said.

At the back of the lawn, where the lawn tapered into the woods, the man and his daughter were crouched, looking at something in the gra.s.s. Kate could hear piano music coming from inside the house.

"A drive," her husband said. "We'll walk out on the celebration for a few minutes."

She shook her head no. Then her ribs felt like a tourniquet, and she decided to start down before she was in more pain. She was embarra.s.sed that there was nothing courageous about her careful, gingerly descent. She felt the sweat above her lip and noticed, for the first time, a streak of blood along the side of her hand-the cut on her finger that had now stopped bleeding. She put her finger to her lips, and the salty taste brought tears to her eyes. She put her feet on the ground and faced her husband, then made the dramatic gesture of raising her arms and fanning them open for a second, as wide as a trellis, before they closed around him.

One Day

Henry was twenty, and for almost fifteen years of his life he had understood that he didn't like his older brother, Gerald. His father, Carl, didn't care that Henry didn't get along with Gerald, but his mother, who thought the boys would grow into affection for each other, now asked more often what was wrong. Whenever Henry admitted that he disliked Gerald, his mother said, "Life is too short not to love your brother." On this particular visit, Henry had told her that he didn't actually dislike Gerald-he was indifferent. "This is no time to be indifferent," she had said. Gerald was in the process of getting divorced. He had been married to a woman named Cora. Probably the nicest thing Henry could remember about her was that she had once praised him excessively and convincingly for changing a tire. The most embarra.s.sing thing happened the time he shared a canoe with her on a water ride at an amus.e.m.e.nt park; thrown against her as the canoe turned and tilted, he had twice reached out reflexively to steady himself and made the mistake of grabbing her breast instead of her arm.

Henry and Gerald had just arrived, separately, at their parents' house in Wilton. Gerald was already stretched out on a chaise, with his shirt off, drinking a gin-and-tonic, getting a tan. After Henry had done a little work around the yard, he reverted, as always, to being childish: he was drinking c.o.ke and putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

It was Carl's birthday. Henry had given his father a pair of swimming trunks patterned with a mishmash of hibiscus, hummingbirds, and something that looked like brown bananas. His mother had bought his father more weights for his barbell. Earlier in the day, two boxes had been delivered from the store. After the delivery boy lowered them to the kitchen floor, he had shaken his hands and then examined his palms. "G.o.d help me," he said.

"Henry, darling," his mother, Verna, said now. She had come out of the house and stood in front of the picnic table, where he was a.s.sembling a puzzle that would be a pizza all the way when he finished. She put a mug of iced tea next to him on the table. There were no gla.s.ses in the house-only mugs. He had never asked why. When she said "Henry, darling," it meant that she was announcing her presence in case he wanted to talk. He didn't. He pushed two pieces together. An anchovy overlapped a piece of green pepper.

"Thank you for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the hedge," she said.

"You're welcome," he said.

"I think that Gerald is more upset about the divorce than he lets on. A friend of Daddy's called Gerald this morning to play golf, and he wouldn't."

Henry nodded. More to get away from Verna than to commiserate with his brother, he got up and walked across the lawn to where Gerald lay stretched out on the chaise, eyes closed. Gerald was only twenty-seven, but he looked older. There was a little roll of fat around the belt line of his khaki jeans. Henry knew that Gerald knew that he was standing there. Gerald didn't open his eyes. An ant was running around the rim of Gerald's gin-and-tonic. Henry brushed it in.

"Feel like going down to the driving range and hitting a couple of buckets?" Henry said.

"You know what I feel like?" Gerald said. "I feel like going to bed with somebody who's beautiful and eighteen years old and who doesn't ask a million questions."

"You care if it's a girl?" Henry said.

"Ha, ha," Gerald said.

"What questions?" Henry said.

"About everything I ever did or thought before I got into bed with her, and what I'm going to act like and what I'm going to think the minute I stand up."

Henry sat on the gra.s.s, pulled a blade, and chewed on the end. Then he tossed it away and walked down the sloping lawn to where his mother stood, shaking insecticide onto rose leaves.

"He's pretty sad," Henry said. "But he's been thinking about things. He says he's going to church on Sunday."

"Church?" his mother said.

The sun shone through the green visor his mother was wearing. Her face was yellow.

Henry went back onto the porch to get out of the sun. Through the front screen he saw the newly cut gra.s.s, the level privet hedge that bordered the front lawn. In front of the walk, the street was empty. He tried to imagine Sally's rusty beige Ford parked there.

No one in the family approved of Sally, the woman he loved. She had been his graphic-design teacher. She was thirty-three, divorced, and had an eight-year-old daughter named Laurel, who wasn't at all charming; the girl wore thick gla.s.ses and usually stood behind, or right alongside, her mother. The child's skin, in full sun, was as pale as sand. She often had rashes and mosquito bites that she scratched until they got scabs. Henry and Sally had become lovers a few months ago, and recently he had been staying with her at the loft she was subletting in SoHo. This week, she and Laurel had gone to visit her sister in Providence, but they were coming back for Carl's birthday party, and in the morning the three of them would drive back to New York.

Henry looked out the other side of the porch. Gerald had gotten up and, with his gin-and-tonic mug in one hand, was fanning water out of a garden hose onto the roses.

"No!" Verna screamed, coming around the side of the house from the garden with a basket of freshly picked vegetables in one hand. Verna screamed, coming around the side of the house from the garden with a basket of freshly picked vegetables in one hand.

"Didn't you see the white powder? For the aphids aphids, Gerald. Don't-"

Gerald turned the hose on Verna.

"Gerald!" she shrieked.

"How come you call him Henry darling and I'm just Gerald?" he said. "Showing preference damages children."