Equal Affections (29 page)

The house was quiet, except for the sound of beaters, as April whipped egg whites into a froth. From Nat's bedroom, the faint voice of a television. (April had shut
The People's Court
off.) Then Walter calling: “Danny.”

April turned the beaters off, held them in midair, dripping foam.

“What is it, Walt?”

“Could you come here? To the living room?”

“Okay!” Danny got up, and April, wiping flour onto the thighs of her jeans, followed him. Walter was sitting on the living room sofa, Louise's knitting bag between his knees.

“Walt, what's wrong?” Danny asked.

“I'm sorry,” Walter said. “I know I shouldn't have been snooping in your mother's knitting bag, and there's no excuse for it, but I found something I thought you'd want to see.”

“What?”

He reached into the bag and pulled from it a yellow baby bootie patterned with ducks. “I guess she hadn't finished them, because—here's the other one.” He fished out a second bootie, still intricately webbed to the needles, like an embryo born before its time.

“Let me see it,” April said impatiently, and Walter handed her the finished bootie.

Nat came in, buttoning his pants. “What's wrong?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

“We found this in Mama's knitting bag,” Danny said, handing the half-finished bootie to Nat.

“Oh,” Nat said. “Oh.”

“Do you know who she was making them for?” April asked.

Nat shook his head.

“Well, could it be possible they were for me? I mean, don't you think that's possible?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think probably she was.”

April scrutinized the half-finished bootie, then handed it back to Danny, who put it on the table. No one seemed to be able to hold it for very long.

“She was always knitting things for people,” Nat said. “So many sweaters. You know, she gave Rose Henninger a cardigan in exchange for piano lessons. She was always making bargains like that. I can bet you, half the people tomorrow will be wearing something Louisy knit for them.”

“I left mine in New Jersey,” Walter said, blowing his nose.

“I'd like to finish it,” April said. “The bootie, I mean.”

“You don't knit, April,” said Danny.

“Then I'll learn,” April said.

___________

That night there was more news of Hurricane Louise. The threat to the East Coast was becoming more serious. Danny and Walter sat at the foot of Nat's bed, watching as, on the screen, a computer image of the storm menacingly stalked the sleeping heart of Manhattan.

“I hope our house will be okay,” Danny said.

“Don't worry,” Walter said, “my mother will batten down the hatches if she has to. Anyway, it's only supposed to graze New Jersey in the coastal areas, and even if it does pass over New York, it'll be pretty much weakened by then. Just a storm.”

“So why is everyone making such a big deal out of it?”

“Because it was a huge hurricane. Hurricanes almost never get that far north in any version.”

“The word in New York now is this,” the weatherman said. “Louise is coming and she's mad as hell. Over to you, Chuck.”

Nat, who was lying sprawled over his half of the big bed, in boxer shorts, aimed his remote control at the television and switched the channel. On the screen now, the drones of a termite colony marched silently to satisfy their enormous, pregnant queen; then
Wheel of Fortune
came on; then a talk show, on which a woman with streaked red hair was crying; then
The Flintstones
. “Not much to choose from,” Nat said, returning to the termite colony, and Danny and Walter settled, stretched, getting comfortable as Danny and April had gotten comfortable all through their childhoods, to watch the meticulous activity of the insect world.

But in the kitchen April stirred and mixed and beat. Bowls dripped batter onto the countertops, spatulas and whisks filled the sink, flour dusted the stove and floor. Any minute Louise might have come through the door from the grocery store, crossed her arms over her chest, and asked April just what on earth she thought she was doing, but she did not; neither did she pull rubber gloves onto her hands and start filling the sink with water, or go into the bedroom to ride the exercycle, or settle down on the living room sofa with a book and her knitting. She did not answer the phone, and she did not vacuum the rug. She did not dunk her hands in wax. She did not watch the news.

Sitting there in front of the television, Danny closed his eyes and for a moment saw his mother standing in a room somewhere high in the celestial spheres. Apparently she had wriggled through the machinery of Dr. Thayer's watch and, upon emerging, found herself in an afterlife not unlike a mental hospital. She wore a white hospital gown, and her arms were held back by angels dressed as psychiatric orderlies, standing on either side of her as she looked down at the doings of the earth. She seemed to want to say she saw it all: She saw April dirtying three pans where one would do; she saw Nat eating jam with a spoon, then leaving the spoon on the counter. She was cursing, pulling to free herself from the tight grip of the angels, but they only smiled. They held fast with infinite patience, infinite sympathy. They had all the time in the world.

In the laundry room someone had unplugged the vat of wax; its contents was hard as candles. When, later, Danny ran a fingernail over the cloudy surface, lines appeared like those a skater leaves on an iced-over pond.

___________

In the morning Eleanor arrived early to set up for the party. She had put herself together, for once, put on lipstick and had her hair
done. With the help of Sid and Joanne she carried into the kitchen six platters of cookies, four elaborately decorated cakes, two roast turkeys, and ten loaves of rye bread. “I thought I told you, Eleanor, nothing fancy,” Nat said when he saw Sid bringing in the last of the food. “Just cookies, coffee cake. For God's sake, this isn't a Christmas party.”

“Oh, pish,” Eleanor said. Putting her crutch aside, she eased herself into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “None of this is that fancy, Nat, and anyway, you're going to have a lot of mouths to feed. As my dear ma used to say, nothing makes people hungrier than a funeral.”

Nat looked away. “Why everything in this family has to be food, food, food, I have never understood.”

“Oh, Natty,” Eleanor said, reaching out her hand toward him, “I'm sorry if I overdid it. But you know me. Everyone does what they can; what I do—”

“Is cook. I know.”

“Anyway, think of it this way: You all are not going to be in any mood to make dinner for the next couple of days, and this way you'll have all the leftovers—if there are any leftovers, that is.”

“I just didn't envision it this way,” Nat said. “I wanted something simple.”

“It
will
be simple. Don't worry so much.”

Across the kitchen Joanne was unloading cookies; in a drill sergeant voice, Eleanor instructed her which of Louise's platters would be best for which cake, and how to garnish the turkeys. April came in and upon request from Eleanor unveiled the chocolate peanut butter cake, lemon torte, Black Forest cake, tollhouse cookies, and walnut balls she had made the night before. “April, you're turning into a first-class baker,” Eleanor said. “I'm proud.”

“It doesn't matter, does it, April?” Nat said. He was skulking in a corner, near the washing machine.

“What, Dad?”

“That I said simple. Nothing too fancy. No, you just go right ahead and do what you want.”

“But, Dad—”

“Forget it, just forget it. Tell me if you need me to do anything, will you?”

“Dad!”

But he had retreated to his bedroom and turned on the television. Soon he was staring at a soap opera in Japanese.

“Do you know what this show is about?” Danny asked when he passed by later.

“No,” Nat said.

“Well, that must be sort of fun,” Danny said. “Guessing everything from intonation. I'll bet that old lady is the mother of the younger one, and they're fighting about—maybe her marriage to that other guy?”

Nat kept his eyes on the television, his hand on the remote control.

“What do you think?” Danny said. “Am I right?”

“I don't know, it's in Japanese,” Nat said. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“I was just asking,” Danny said. He considered saying more, then changed his mind and headed into the kitchen, where Clara, bedecked in black polyester, was unwrapping the same loaf of dense, inedible fruit bread she had given the Coopers every Easter and Christmas since 1966.

“Isn't that nice,” Eleanor was saying. “Clara brought something as well. Certainly won't be any food shortage today, will there?”

Clara smiled, pulled on rubber gloves, and was about to start hand washing when she noticed Joanne putting an expensive glass bowl in the dishwasher. “Mrs. Cooper says never put that one in the machine,” she cried, grabbing the bowl away from Joanne, who immediately looked to her mother for guidance.

“Oh, I've washed many a bowl in my day, Clara,” Eleanor said. “Believe me, it can go in.”

Clara looked distraught. “Mrs. Cooper always said no.”

“But, Clara, I'm a professional cook, and I'm sure that bowl can go in the dishwasher.”

Clara shrugged then, and Eleanor shrugged, in a way that made Danny suspect both of them of having, for a long time, nurtured dreams of control in this kitchen.

“Well, if you insist,” Eleanor said. “I don't care really, just wash it by hand.”

“No, no,” Clara said, “I'm sure you're right, Mrs. Friedman. The dishwasher it is. Mrs. Cooper always was peculiar about things.”

They smiled at each other, and Joanne put the bowl in the dishwasher.

___________

People started to arrive around eleven: colleagues of Nat's, women from the Mothers Against the Draft, nurses who had remained close to Louise after her various hospital stays. Danny remembered his mother saying, once, that she had no friends, that they were all really Nat's friends, but he saw today that it wasn't true: People had loved her. He greeted half-remembered wives of half-remembered retired physics professors, and couples whose children had been in his class in high school, and elderly women who approached him, open-armed, crying, “Danny, little Danny, how you've grown!” in hoarse voices. Soft, spotted hands touched him, arms draped in dark silks. “I remember you, darling, but I'm sure you don't remember me!”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Ah, the young people! You don't remember your old friend Goldie Silvers, who made you that pudding cake you liked so much when you were a little boy!”

“Ah, of course! Mrs. Silvers! But your hair's shorter.”

“Twenty years under the hair dryer next to your mama, you can bet it's shorter! It all fell out! Why, I remember you when you were just a baby, it was yesterday, and now look at you. What do you do?”

“I'm a lawyer.”

“A lawyer! I knew it before, I just forgot. Your mama was so proud of you, she talked all the time!” Then, in a lower, more somber tone: “Danny, it's a terrible thing, her being gone, but you know she had a lot of suffering, and there was only more suffering in store. So maybe it's not the worst tragedy, is it?” Nodding.

“No,” Danny said. “Maybe not. No.” Nodding together.

“You're a good boy,” Goldie Silvers said. “A real special one. And I still make that pudding cake, if you ever want one!”

“Thanks,” Danny said. They parted. The doorbell rang and rang.
Nat, as always, answered it, greeting now a woman named Dixie Watkins, who, like Goldie, had for years sat next to Louise at the hairdresser's. She worked at the House of Humor, selling whoopee cushions and glasses with pictures of women who undressed as you drank. Her husband, Benny, had caused a scandal years before by arriving at a New Year's Eve party in a Nixon mask; Oscar Lowell, the provost of the time, had walked out in a huff. Now Benny shook Nat's hand somberly while Dixie looked on, dabbing a purplish smear from under her eye. Altogether Louise's most unsuitable, most tacky friends, but among the ones Danny liked best. Dressed in tiger stripes, her eyeliner running, Dixie kissed Danny on the cheek and in her brassy Texas accent asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, honey?” almost like a generous-hearted madam.

“Thanks, Dixie, but no,” Danny said. “We're okay.”

Over her shoulder he saw another familiar-looking woman approaching him, one whose name he couldn't recall, a woman with white hair and a powdered, teacherly face. “Danny,” the woman said, “hello, dear,” and shook his hand.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you?”

“Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, never mind about me. How are you all doing?”

“We're okay, thanks.” He remembered a trick of his mother's for correcting just such a social embarrassment. “Ah, this is my mother's friend Dixie Watkins.”

“I'm Nancy Needham,” said the powder-faced woman, shaking Dixie's hand. “I was this boy's librarian in elementary school, though I'll bet he doesn't remember.”

“Doesn't remember!” Danny said. “Mrs. Needham, of course I remember!” And laughed perhaps too loudly. Her husband had once been a colleague of Nat's.

More commiserations were exchanged. Dixie Watkins asked what Danny was doing with himself lately and nodded favorably when he told her. Then Nancy Needham asked if he might have any advice for her son Nicky, who was applying to law school. “Tell him he's going to have to absorb so much useless information he'll think his head's going to fall off,” Danny said, and she laughed. “That's not so different from being a librarian, is it?”

“Honey, I couldn't do it, my mind's a sieve,” Dixie said. “In one ear,
out the other with me. I can barely pass the driving test. Oh, gee, I'm just going to say a word to Nat over there.”