Family Dancing (17 page)

The guests begin to arrive around two. There is no sign of the morning’s chaos; flowers have been placed strategically around the patio, and the youngest of the caterers’ girls are standing in clean white aprons, holding trays of hot hors d’oeuvres, at the four corners. The first guests to arrive are a couple named Barlow, who live about thirty feet away, but have nonetheless driven over. They greet Suzanne and Bruce warmly, smile, comment on the beautiful day, the beautiful wisteria, the beautiful pool. Suzanne accepts their gifts from Mrs. Barlow, while Bruce sternly shakes hands with Mr. Barlow.

“He looks better in a suit,” John says to Lynnette. The two of them are sitting on the diving board of the pool, far enough away from the patio that they can comment on the guests without being overheard. “Some people do, you know. Look incredibly silly until they put on a suit. Your stepfather looks quite dapper now, actually. He looks like someone to be reckoned with.”

Lynnette smiles, watching her mother crumple in deference to a second couple. “He’s worth a few good laughs,” she says. “Bruce can tell good jokes. Mannish ones.”

John has twisted his legs one around the other, as if they were pieces of pipe cleaner. “I see there’s a kiddie table,” he says.

“There is. For once, Seth won’t have to sit there.”

“When I was a kid,” John says, “I hated kiddie tables. Sometimes I refused to eat at all if it meant sitting with babies.”

“Well, don’t worry. Mom didn’t have us at the kiddie table, but close enough. We were supposed to eat at the young adult table, with some of my cousins and these people from Queens. But I switched the placecards. Now we’re sitting with Daddy and Miriam and Seth.”

“Does your mother know you switched the cards?” John asks.

Lynnette smiles. “She’ll find out,” she says.

“Seth’s disappeared again,” John says, looking once again toward the house. “I hope we get a chance to talk. It’s so strange seeing him in this context.”

“Well, he’ll be in New York soon. Then we’ll see a lot of him, I’m sure. Still, I’d just love to drop it casually to Mom. You know. Seth and John are friends, Mom. They go to this club on Avenue A .
.
. you probably haven’t heard of it. She’d die.”

“Don’t do anything cruel, Lynnette,” John says.

She looks at him, surprised. “What does that mean?” she asks.

“I’m serious. I’m sorry to have to be so blunt, but it bothers me, all of this aggression toward your mother. Switching the placecards and all. The point is not to be pointlessly cruel. The point is different.”

“I’m not being pointlessly cruel,” Lynnette says. “I’m talking self-preservation. There was no way in hell I was eating lunch with my cousins after all this time.”

John looks at the diving board, the still pool below. “Perhaps we should go socialize,” he says.

“What is your problem today?” Lynnette says. “Angry one minute, the next everything is just hunky-dory.”

“Look, I said what I had to say. Let’s go socialize. A lot of people are arriving.”

He stands up, brushing some leaves from his lap, and offers Lynnette his hand. “Shall we?” he says.

“All right,” she says. She gets up and takes his arm, and they promenade up the grassy slope of the lawn to the patio.

“Oh, Lynnette,” Suzanne says once they’re in hearing range, “you’re just in time to see the Friedlanders. You remember Steve and Emily Friedlander, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” Lynnette says. “I babysat for you in junior high.”

“I remember. I do,” Mrs. Friedlander says, and shakes Lynnette’s hand.

“And this is Lynnette’s roommate, John Bachman,” Suzanne says.

“I work in publishing,” John says, in response to Mr. Friedlander’s query.

“Not much money there, is there?” Mr. Friedlander says. “But I suppose someone’s got to do it. Emily and I are avid readers. What’s the company?”

John names it. “Steve,” Emily says, “don’t we own that?” She laughs.

“Champagne cocktail,” announces one of the young girls with the trays. “Fish mousse,” says another. “Mini egg rolls,” says another.

Lynnette and John head for the champagne cocktails. They take two each. Suzanne takes one, and drinks it quickly and subtly. Only Bruce says no. He doesn’t drink. Someone runs inside to get him some sparkling cider.

In the foyer, the graduation gifts pile up—silver ribbons and designer wrapping papers and huge, ornate bows which glitter in the sunlight.

Seth finally makes it outdoors around three, still looking rumpled, though he’s wearing a new pressed suit. Almost immediately he is engulfed by a circle of grandmothers and aunts and great aunts, arrived by taxi from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Yonkers. “Sethela,” Pearl says proudly, “you look handsome as a man. How old are you?”

“Almost eighteen,” Seth says. Over the heads of these small women he exchanges a glance and a nod with John, who motions with his eyes toward the pool house. Seth watches his friend whisper goodbye to Lynnette, and make his way down the grassy slope to the pool.

“So what are your plans?” Pearl asks. “Tell us all, tell us your plans, you great big graduation man, you.”

Suzanne sees Seth talking from the kiddie table, where she is setting up paper plates and special placemats. Bruce’s children, Linda and Sam, will sit at the kiddie table, along with two babies, some pubescent nieces, and the seventeen-year-old son of Concetta, the ex-maid. Suzanne can see Linda and Sam, standing glumly on the porch, surveying this party full of strangers. She thinks they are menacing children. She feels a little tipsy after two drinks, and thinks she will have more.

And there, across the porch, is Lynnette, who, in the midst of looking for John, has been swept up by a stronger urge to find her father. Discovering he hasn’t arrived, she has sat down and decided to analyze her mother, who is having another drink. Her prognosis: Things are turning over on Suzanne (a turnover which will be completed when she sees the switched placecards). And then Lynnette remembers what John has said, and feels a stab of guilt. It is not her fault, she tells herself, if Suzanne is still in love with Herb, if Bruce is a weak, inferior person. Perhaps there is something wrong with her taking such pleasure in her mother’s sad predicament. And yet she takes pleasure in so few things, and if she tells no one, and does nothing to make things worse for Suzanne than Suzanne has already made them for herself, who can fault her? In the long run, Lynnette decides, she is doing her mother a favor by switching the placecards, saving her from the pain of sitting with Herb and Miriam, who are genuinely in love, and would only make Suzanne envious and unhappy.

Where is John? He has disappeared somewhere. Seth is still surrounded by the circle of old women. Her mother is drinking, laughing, chatting. Bruce holds his wife’s hand with a kind of tentativeness—the hold of a man who isn’t sure what he’s clinging to.

No one—not even Lynnette—notices when Seth slips away from his relatives, and makes his way toward the pool house.

Suzanne is standing in the kitchen, holding on to the counter so hard her knuckles are turning white as the marble. She is biting her lower lip and she is fighting back a wave of nausea. Because suddenly, inexplicably, standing with her husband, she felt as alone and bereft as the first day she got out of bed after Herb’s departure and stood in the living room on her wobbly legs and cried. There is no need for this, she tells herself. She is in a new house, she is a new person, and she is surrounded by friends and relations, she is having a party. Yet none of it seems real to her. Why now, when she has no time to control it, must the pain return?

She breathes deeply, counts her breaths. Next to her on the counter is a half-empty martini. Without thinking she gulps the drink down, before noticing that someone has extinguished a cigarette butt in it. A pleasant warmth seeps through her, and seems to numb her. She wants desperately to disappear, to watch television, to go to the grocery store. But she cannot, she must not.

And strengthened—at least for the moment—by her drink, she goes back outside.

Suzanne knows Herb has arrived when she gets outside because his name hums in the background, on the lips of all the guests. He is wearing a black-striped suit and a red tie, and he is standing with a pretty blond woman in her thirties who is wearing a white dress: Miriam. Herb has spoken of her, over lunch. They may be married in the spring.

“Daddy, Daddy!” Lynnette shouts, abandoning her search for John and Seth. And she runs from where she is sitting to where he stands, nearly knocking Suzanne over in the process.

“Hi, baby doll,” Herb says, sweeping heavy Lynnette up in his arms, clear into the air, as if she is weightless. Miriam stands next to him, her hands crossed over her stomach, holding a small gift. She is the kind of woman who knows how to stand and look comfortable while she is waiting to be introduced, while she is being assessed.

“Hello, Miriam,” Lynnette says. “I’m glad you could come.” And she whispers something to Herb which no one can catch.

“Hello, Herb,” Suzanne says, walking to greet him. If she didn’t know about Miriam, she could say something sultry, like, “Who’s your friend?” Because she is drunk, she has no idea how she actually sounds.

“You’re looking radiant as usual,” Herb says. Miriam smiles.

“Oh, Miriam,” Herb says, suddenly remembering his companion. “Suzanne, this is Miriam. Miriam, Suzanne.”

“Hello, Suzanne,” Miriam says. “Herb’s told me so much about you.” She reaches out her hand, graciously.

“Likewise,” Suzanne says.

“Hello, Herb!” A small man suddenly appears by Suzanne’s side, and shakes Herb’s hand. “Good to see you, buddy,” he says. Suzanne looks at the man, a little puzzled, and then she remembers that he is her husband.

“I’ll leave you all to talk,” Suzanne says. “A hostess’s duties call.” And she slips off to the kitchen. Suzanne does not usually drink much, and when she does, it’s for a reason. On those rare occasions—like today—the power of alcohol impresses her tremendously, and she wants to recommend it, like a wonder drug. She wants to do commercials advertising its effectiveness. Perhaps she can tell Mrs. Ferguson. It is amazing what this stuff can do, she might say. We are all chemicals, after all. And suddenly, her body feels as if it is nothing but chemicals—entirely mechanical, a vat of interaction, immune.

The caterers are carving several legs of lamb. “We’re ready to serve if you are, ma’am,” shouts the old lady in the chef’s hat.

“Oh, I’m ready,” Suzanne says. “I’m ready for anything.”

She is only surprised, in fact, when she sees her name on a placecard at a table with her cousins from Queens. She remembers arranging things differently. No matter. The Queens cousins can be fun. Anyone can be fun as long as she looks at them, listens to them the right way.

Just as the appetizer is served, Seth and John reappear, somewhat out of breath.

“Where were you?” Lynnette asks.

“We took a walk,” John says, and they sit down at the table, with Herb.

“Was it fun?” Herb asks.

“Oh, yes,” Seth says. “Quite fun. Hello, Miriam.”

From behind them, at another table, Suzanne raises a glass of wine and says, “
Mazel tov
, everybody.” Safely ensconced between Herb and John, Lynnette doesn’t even smile.

“Suzanne,” Bruce says, sitting down next to her. “Suzanne, are you all right? Your eyes are all red.”

By dusk, the tables have been cleared.

The caterers are cleaning up the kitchen, to the hum of the dishwasher. The old lady in the chef’s hat, once so irritable, is sitting in a corner, polishing a copper skillet and humming “God Bless the Child.” Near the diving board, Suzanne watches purple blotches of cloud move and crash against one another. She is dimly aware that somewhere behind her people are talking, relatives mostly. (The Barlows and the Friedlanders left hours ago.) It is hard for her to identify any one voice. Yet she does not feel weak. In some perverse way, she feels strong—strong enough to bulldoze her way through dinner, to keep Myra from talking the whole time about dentistry. Once again, she has gotten past despair. She only wonders how long it will be until the next bout, and if the gulf will have widened.

A roar of laughter is rising above the patio, and a voice—John’s voice—says, “Come on, please, dance with me, please.” Suzanne gets up and stumbles toward the house, to see what’s causing the commotion. It seems that Seth has put a dance tape on the stereo—one he made for a party at school—and a disco song with lyrics in German is blasting out the family room windows. The person John is trying to entice into dancing with him is Pearl, and she is shaking her head, no, no, and throwing back her neck, laughing as he reaches out his hands to her and implores her.

“Come on, Pearl,” an uncle says. “You used to love to dance with the young men.” Yes, the family roars. Dance. And quite suddenly she relents, a smile widening on her face.

Pearl dances with amazing energy. She kicks up her heels, and her sisters and cousins and grandchildren—gathered in a circle—applaud loudly, and cheer her on. Even Seth jumps and whoops with glee. Lynnette sits with Miriam and Herb outside the circle, at a small patio table. They observe this spectacle with polite smiles on their faces, like tourists who watch a native dance and wish they, too, could be primitive and join in. Lynnette gazes at Miriam, whose face is a model of perfect composure. What a contrast, she thinks, to her mother’s freak show of a party; how good it feels to be in the company of kind and well-mannered Miriam. Lynnette cannot help but smile, and move her hand toward Miriam’s, which lifts slightly off the table, then falls back perfectly in place.