The Blizzard Party

by Jack Livings

  Dutch, my mother said, took a drink, smiled in apology.

  Oh? the wife said.

  That’s right! Of course, the husband said. Dutch.

  And, my mother said, grimacing.

  What? Oh shit. What? said the husband, laughing at his impending execution.

  It’s reversed in the southern hemisphere. Sorry.

  Flush a toilet in Australia? the other man said, but no one bit.

  So you drowned us all within sight of Madagascar, you asshole, the fox hat said, slapping at the husband, who cowered, laughing.

  Leave it to me to find the climatologist in the crowd, he said.

  Just a crusty old sea dog, my mother said.

  The fox hat said, That man over there, bald, tweed, don’t everyone look at once, come on, guys. You’ll never believe it, but that’s Lee Warshaw.

  Where? said the husband.

  There, bald, tweed jacket.

  The guy who?

  Speaking of drowning within sight of Madagascar.

  The second man looked at my mother, shot his eyebrows, shrugged.

  Um—he was—do you want to? my mother said to the hat.

  Lee Warshaw. Lee Warshaw? No?

  The man laughed and shook his head. I don’t follow sports.

  Oh dear god, what sport would Lee Warshaw play? HA! the fox hat said. She did not laugh so much as bark the word itself.

  Distance swimming? the husband said.

  For Christ’s sake, Terry, the wife said, slugging him in the arm. He’s standing right there.

  Paging Warshaw! Warshaw to the lifeboats! the husband announced in the direction of Lee Warshaw, who did not indicate that he’d heard.

  Oh my god, shut up, you fuckwit! his wife said, pounding him on the chest while he laughed and dodged, wiggling his drink overhead like a maraca. The other three members of the group all leaned back. Lee Warshaw did then turn slightly, having caught sight of the lofted drink, and he smiled and waved his glass, and my mother saw that he had the eyes of a beagle, trustworthy but mournful. He raised his free hand to the woman in the fox hat, who waved back and gave him the teeth.

  Lee Warshaw, she said. Lee Warshaw? The banker? Come on, she said, all before she’d even dropped her hand. He was on that charter flight that went down in the Caribbean. She turned her attention back to the second man. How did you not read about this, you dummy?

  I’m functionally illiterate, he said.

  Fox hat laughed again: HA!

  He was the only survivor, the fox hat said. His firm’s entire executive suite was on the plane.

  Domestic executive suite, the husband corrected.

  Yes, because that’s important to the story, the wife said.

  The fox hat, undeterred, said, So the plane goes down and somehow, by some miracle, he’s not killed. He survived. Him! Can you imagine?

  He extricates himself from the fuselage, the husband said, which is filling with water, and presumably he tries to save the other passengers, but the thing goes down to Davy Jones’s before he can get anyone out. He climbs onto some wreckage, a wing or something, and floats around until eventually he washes up on an island.

  Five months he was on the island, the wife said.

  Three, I think, the husband said.

  Five, the fox hat said.

  Not a soul but him on that island. Five months! And sea snakes! the wife said.

  You’re making that up. There were no sea snakes, her husband said.

  Should I fucking go ask him? Hm? she said. Should I go over and fact-check it?

  He foraged for grubs and roots. Learned to spearfish, the husband said.

  Unbelievable, said the second man. I should buy him a drink.

  He ate bats. And eels, the wife said.

  A fishing boat picked him up, the husband said. Dominicans.

  Cubans! the wife said. My god, how do you mess that up?

  He winds up in Havana, the wife said. Havana, Cuba? Heard of it? He meets Castro. And do you know what Castro says to him?

  The second man shook his head.

  He says, You should have flown Cubana de Aviación!

  They all laughed.

  Sí, el Comandante, the husband said.

  Five months on a desert island, said the fox hat, and he’s just as boring as he was before the crash. Everything I know about it, I know from the papers. And I’ve had dinner with the man. That story in New York? That’s the one that had the eels in it, right?

  He had to dive for them at night, said the wife.

  The second man said, Fire? He figured out how to make fire?

  Yep, said the fox hat. Five months by himself. I go a Sunday morning without seeing someone for brunch and I’m suicidal.

  There was a hurricane. A hurricane completely blew away this little hut he’d built, said the wife.

  Jesus, said the second man. Are you making this up?

  How in the world do you not know about this? the fox hat said.

  I’ve been in Hong Kong? the second man said.

  I’ve had dinner with the man, the fox hat said, and do you know he’s never spoken a word about it? Not a single word. Like it never happened. I don’t understand people like that, she said. But then there are so many things I don’t understand. She fluttered her eyelashes and swooned.

  Oh my, said the second man.

  People who don’t make reservations, said the husband. That’s what I don’t understand.

  I realize this will sound idiotic, said his wife, but I’ve always wondered what he did about his nails? I guess he just bit them off? But if you’re alone all day with nothing to do, that’s the sort of thing that could really push you over the edge. Do you know what I mean? Maybe it’s just me. I can’t stand my nails being too long.

  The Volkswagen Beetle, said the second man.

  Say what? said the husband.

  That’s what I don’t understand. The Beetle.

  What the hell’s wrong with the Beetle?

  Here in the colonies we’re having a gas crisis, you know, said the fox hat. Or do the papers in Hong Kong only cover the chow mein markets?

  I hope no one has a Beetle, the second man said. Sorry. I should have kept my mouth shut.

  No! said the wife. No. No. No. You say your piece.

  So you’re the one! said the husband. The voice of the anti-Beetle lobby! I’ve heard so much about you!

  We have a Lincoln, said the wife.

  It’s nothing profound. I just find them aesthetically displeasing, the man said. I like to think I’m a practical person, and I could generally care less about what things look like, but something about a Bug just drives me nuts. It’s nebbishy.

  Well, it’s more Nazi, isn’t it? the husband said, which invited a new fusillade from his wife.

  It’s no Carrera, that’s for sure, said the fox hat.

  Well, bravo, said the wife. Bravo, I say. Everyone’s afraid to have an opinion about anything anymore. We’re all so afraid of offending everyone else. I say down with Beetles!

  And Nazis, said the fox hat.

  Aren’t you full of political fire tonight, said the husband.

  It’s Lee Warshaw, said the fox hat. I get this way whenever he’s near.

  May I just ask, when did this Warshaw thing happen? the second man said.

  Oh, a year, two years ago, said the husband.

  How did I not know this? You all knew about this? said the second man.

  They all nodded.

  It was two years ago, the fox hat said. Moira had a funeral, for god’s sake. It was awful. She thought, you know, shark food. The wreckage washed up two hundred miles outside the flight path. She buried a casket with his photo in it. I was there.

  Astonishing, said the second man.

  Two weeks to recuperate, said the fox hat. He goes from the desert island to Castro to New York. A week at Mount Sinai, a week at home. And then he’s back at work.

  Firm was decimated. They lost the entire domestic executive suite! It
’s a miracle the place didn’t collapse, the husband said. He didn’t have any choice but to run back into the fray.

  Isn’t that remarkable, said the second man.

  And still just as boring as ever, said the fox hat. The man will talk golf until your tits fall off.

  Everyone laughed.

  But it’s true. And you wish they would, just so you have an excuse to get up from the table, she said. It’s just golf golf golf, for hours. I bet the first thing he did on that goddamned island was build a putting green.

  Or a sand trap, said the second man. The fox hat smiled. HA.

  My mother’s drink was gone and she raised her glass to signal that she was taking her leave. Have to go check on my daughter, she said.

  She’s tending bar? the husband said.

  I hope not. She makes a crappy martini. She’s probably out on the terrace getting stoned, my mother said.

  A little bit she wished my father were there, if only to insert his cranky old man routine between herself and these people, to put on the Erwin Saltwater show. He’d have an admirer or two in the crowd. But getting him out of his study for anything less than a nuclear event required negotiations—endless negotiations—and since he’d only days earlier done his worst at the Vornados’ Montauk house, it was, for everyone’s sake, better for him to take the night off.

  At parties, my father tended to moor himself by the bar. My mother was better at working the crowd, and could convince him to pull up anchor, but platonic flirtations bored him, the requirements of engagement and polite interest made him crazy, and his manner—he tended to leer, hanging just outside the edge of a conversation, so that no one knew whether to address or ignore him—could unbalance even the most carefully calibrated group of small-talkers.

  During his serious drinking days, he’d gotten a reputation as a sawtooth blade, an inveterate dismantler of psyches, but that wasn’t anything more than a reputation, one he’d cultivated by venting to journalists, whose attention wandered if he spoke reasonably on any subject for too long; as far as keeping strangers at bay, it happened to work to his favor. He was like a contaminated landmass observed from a passing ferry, off-limits by government decree. In a public setting, only the most ardent young fans were willing to risk it. Old hands who knew a duck blind when they saw one might consider approaching, but to what end? It was easier to find someone they actually wanted to talk to. Obviously he wanted to be left alone, but being alone in public was as bad as the spotlight. It was the spotlight.

  Never had he himself been able to approach a stranger and strike up a conversation. Once, when my father was young, after observing him ineptly navigate a book party for the better part of a Saturday night, Kurt Vonnegut grabbed his arm. Son, don’t take this wrong, he said, but it’s like watching a bird fly into the same damn window over and over, and you’re breaking my heart. Here’s some advice: Find the piano. Sit down. Shoot your cuffs. Play. It’ll at least give you something to do with your hands.

  I don’t play the piano, my father said.

  Call it jazz, Vonnegut said. These people will believe anything.

  What he learned to do with his hands was hold drinks, which found their way down his throat so quickly that by the time my mother had dropped off her coat, stopped to peck the cheeks of a couple of friends, and swung back around to find him, he would often be gearing up for his third scotch. Regardless of where it shows up, bartop bender or wake, a third scotch is the opening scene of a long drama that no one wants to hang around to see the end of.

  My father drunk was a good impression of a snowbank: silent, immemorial. Adequately dulled, he could bear almost any line of conversation, though he’d perk up a little if the subject turned to the designated hitter or Berryman. It almost turned him into a piece of furniture my mother could maneuver around the room.

  Almost. Except when he got so drunk he dismantled her friends to their faces.

  Definitely better, she thought, that he’s not here.

  To get to the bedroom where I was watching TV, my mother had to cross the packed dining and living rooms, spaces as large as the foredeck of a cruise ship. She dipped in and out of various ecosystems, the haze of Cohibas lingering over a pack of men in ski sweaters, the dark and light of French perfumes, Charlie, Estée, aftershaves that dropped the needle on jingles in her head, backslapping, roaring laughter, groin to satin ass as she squeezed through the narrow channel beside the baby grand, nods, waves, I’ll be back, pointing at glass, the only respectable reason to be on the move, an act of weirdness, tacking into the wind, atop it all the noise of Iggy Pop dedicating “Rich Bitch” to the Hebrew ladies, and atop that, trilling soprano laughter, glass clashing, and near one of the bar tables, positioned by the doors that led to the foyer, she had to decide, Get a refill or check on the kid first? Priorities, old girl.

  Franklin was behind the bar wearing his lightly toasted shirt and clip-on bow tie, and she wondered what they’d had to pay him to come out in weather like this. Not enough; he was doleful as ever. Ma’am, he said, and she ordered another rum and Coke. She turned back to the crowd, which was whitecapping now that the Stooges were back in the throes.

  Her drink came to her two-handed, fluttering napkin skirt, a mournful smile, another signal, she understood, that it was early, he was still fishing for tips. What was it to be without your spouse at a party? A relived experience? A journey into the past, to the days before Erwin? She knew women who wouldn’t even leave the house by themselves for a cup of coffee, but, then, they’d been brought up somewhere else, in those places where a lone woman was a meal, an invitation to get up to mischief. It didn’t matter that she understood. She still couldn’t stand them.

  She turned toward the foyer, sliding sideways through the crowd, changing course to avoid Sonia Kasgard, who would get your forearm like a bear trap and whose eyes would bore into yours until you submitted to her crumbling eyeliner and bloodshot, crazed whisperings—in a room where you couldn’t hear your own voice—drawing you closer, closer, until those waxen red lips were intimately involved with your ear. She was New York batshit crazy. Checked all the boxes. Health-food nut. Cats. Dressed like a bag lady. Millions in the bank. Never shut up about real estate. It was never anything but what was up for sale at the Dakota and how she really felt that just a little more space, just one more bedroom, a tad more square footage … She had a three-bedroom in the Apelles and six on twenty acres in Westport, next to the Lindberghs, no less. Space was an infection, and you didn’t want to catch it from her.

  Arriving unassailed in the foyer, a marble-floored gallery space big enough to execute a three-point turn in, yes, a Volkswagen Beetle, an advertisement to anyone entering the apartment that the residents were urbane, rich, thoughtful collectors of modern art, my mother encountered a man still wearing his parka, water pooling around his boots. He was facing the large canvas opposite the door and muttering to himself, a bridge troll between her and her daughter. As she approached, he addressed her with his attention still focused on the painting.

  They put it right here to slap you when you walk in.

  She narrowed her eyes. It’s exactly what she’d thought when she’d first come in. Yet another painting they’d bought instead of hers.

  I suppose so, she said. How often did the city subject her to the free associations of men who had her captive attention for ten seconds in an elevator, ten minutes in a cab? Five times a day? Fifteen? You plied them with affirmations until you were set free. The cabbie, the suit and tie, the doorman at the building next door, a man she passed multiple times a day, Hey, momma.

  Ha! the man exclaimed. There it is, he said, stabbing his finger at the canvas. There it is, goddamnit. Look. Right there. A goddamn question mark. He nodded ruefully, having made short work of the incomprehensible painting so cruelly thrust upon him without an instruction manual, without an apology for being something that existed beyond the scope of his imagination.

  My mother had the feeling he was the sor
t who did battle with abstraction in all its forms. What redeeming quality could possibly exist in someone who sought out punctuation from a Joan Mitchell, who took a piece of art as a call to arms, its mere existence a direct challenge to his supremacy? He was one of Bo’s friends, obviously.

  Perhaps it was the rum, perhaps it was the only sane response, but she said, That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

  The man, his eyes still trained on the painting, said, Well, stick around, because I’m just getting started. He unzipped his coat and dug around inside until he’d located a pack of Camels. He shook them and presented to her the extended finger of a filter, which she waved off. Without remark, he brought the packet to his mouth and caught the cigarette with his lips, replaced the packet, lit the cigarette, and dropped the match to the floor, where it sizzled in his boot puddle. All the while, studying the painting as though it were a plaque affixed to a building in a foreign city, written in a language he didn’t speak. He leaned closer, exhaled smoke, squinted, flexed his teeth.

  See this patch here? He waved the cigarette. Indecision. Couldn’t figure out whether to let the blue dominate or soften it with white, and what she ends up with is this purple morass, but instead of painting over it there’s this little wedge of red over here, and it looks like an accident but it’s a lifeboat. It keeps that purple from bringing down the whole painting. She left that mark of confusion in on purpose. It’s pretty bold to leave the question mark right there for everyone to see.

  What? my mother thought. Um, she said.

  No, you’re absolutely right. A stupid criticism. The indecision is what makes the painting. The rest of the painting’s smoke, and there’s the fire, right there.

  Could be, my mother said.

  Ah well. Nice knowing you, Joan Mitchell, the man said to the painting. For the first time since they’d been talking he looked away from the canvas. I tell you another thing, he said. I had a painting like this, I’d put it in a room with a chair in front of it, and I’d close the door and watch it move in the light.

  Would you? my mother said, taking a sip and crossing her arms.

  You better believe it. Having it out here where you pass it on the way to the can? Philistines.