by Warren Adler
One or twice over the years Anne and Jack had the Sanborns in for cocktails, and the Sanborns had politely reciprocated, but it was all pro forma and quite stiff socially since they had little in common. Arnold Sanborn was a Wall Street corporate lawyer and his wife was, according to Anne’s assessment, one of those WASP garden club type ladies who talked funny and seemed distant and superior.
Besides, Anne, a pediatrician, and Jack, a manufacturer’s rep, were at least a generation younger. Their only child was working on the West Coast. The Sanborns apparently had grown grandchildren. Except for an occasional greeting and polite pleasantry when they met in the elevator or on the landing, neither family showed any personal curiosity about the other. There was no animosity between them, just disinterest. Actually, it was typical of New York apartment dwellers.
Mrs. Sanborn had been dead nearly a year and although the Bentons expressed their condolences to Mr. Sanborn, they did not attend the funeral. They did, however, note that Mr. Sanborn apparently had retired from law practice. They saw him rarely.
“I thought it would be a nice gesture,” Anne said when she tendered the invitation to Mr. Sanborn, sending the formal printed invitation through the mail when she could have simply slipped it under the door of his apartment. Mr. Sanborn accepted, responding through the mail as well.
The Bentons had invited two other couples along with Mr. Sanborn, Sam and Mary Connors and Charley and Susan Lieberman. All were longtime friends; the wives were sorority sisters who graduated from Brown. The husbands had bonded through the women. They all shared similar views on most things including politics, although while nominal Democrats, both Connors couldn’t care less.
“They’re all a bunch of phonies, the lot of them,” Sam Connors was fond of saying, always with a crooked boyish grin. “It’s a question of choosing between a rotten apple and one with a worm living inside.”
Anne, who was the most activist about her politics, thought him cynical and indifferent and had told him so on numerous occasions. Both Liebermans were as passionate as she on the subject, but all four considered themselves confirmed Democrats, and agreed on all the hot button issues of the day, including the right to choose, school prayer, expanding stem cell research and reining in what they deemed threats to their civil liberties.
All four were unalterably opposed to the war in Iraq and, while supporting the war on terror, they thought it was being exaggerated and used for political advantage by the Republicans. In general Republicans were anathema and, in their minds, manipulated by right-wing fanatics as exemplified by the sitting president. In fact, these were the views held by almost everyone in their social circle. Birds of a feather, one might say. But then this was, after all, New York and the old gray lady of the New York Times was their principal informational outlet. They considered themselves acutely aware, informed, wise, knowing, liberal, tolerant and open-minded.
Since Anne liked things especially festive, she wanted the girls to dress in cocktail dresses and the men in jackets, although she allowed they could eschew ties, which they did.
Arnold Sanborn arrived precisely on time, which was somewhat earlier than the Connors and the Liebermans. He wore a double-breasted pin-striped formal suit with a handkerchief carefully folded in his jacket pocket and a dressy gray and blue tie which adorned a white on white shirt that looked slightly ill fitting, as if he had lost weight since she had last seen him. His shoes were shined to mirror brightness and his pinkish face was freshly shaven. Anne noted that he seemed somewhat shrunken in stature than she remembered, but then she had hardly observed him the last time she stood next to him in the elevator.
“He seemed to have aged since his wife died,” Jack whispered to Anne as he poked around the refrigerator for a lemon to slice a peel for Arnold Sanborn’s gin martini straight up.
“I guess tragedy shows more when you pass eighty.”
Arnold accepted his martini, lifted his glass in an imaginary toast, and took a sip.
“Excellent,” he said with a half smile. He looked about the apartment, perhaps seeking some focal point to use as an entry into conversation. Anne noted that he was not exactly a loquacious personality and was already regretting having invited him. She was concerned suddenly how she would make him part of the dinner group. Clearly, observing Mr. Sanborn, it was going to be a challenge. The man seemed stiff and overly formal.
While waiting for the others, Anne and Jack felt obliged to entertain their guest.
“So how is the legal eagle business doing these days?” Jack asked, determined to bridge the silence with light small talk.
“Oh, I’ve been retired, put out to pasture a few years ago.”
“Really. And now?”
Thankfully, they were interrupted before Sanborn could answer by the simultaneous arrival of the Connors and Liebermans.
“We met in the lobby,” Mary Connors said as they hugged and chattered in the manner of old friends comfortable with each other and happy to be together.
Anne took great pains to introduce Arnold Sanborn, who did indeed, much to her dismay, look totally out of place. If there was any discomfort on his part, he did not show it, even as the conversation swirled around him. The Connors and the Liebermans chatted among themselves, mostly about their children and their various activities and the usual New York small talk about shows and movies they had seen.
“Have you seen any good plays recently, Arnold?” Anne asked deliberately trying to shoehorn Sanborn into the conversation.
“Not really,” Sanborn replied. “Elizabeth was the playgoer of the family.”
“His wife passed on,” Anne explained using a euphemism she had rarely used before, hoping he would consider it appropriate.
“I’m so sorry,” Mary Connors said. The others nodded or whispered condolences.
“How long were you married?” Susan Lieberman asked, her large brown eyes under a shelf of bangs expressing obviously sincere sympathetic feelings. Of the three women, she was the one most easily moved, always the first to cry and the first to vocally defend the downtrodden.
“Fifty-three years,” Sanborn said, casting his eyes downward for a brief moment, before looking up again.
“How wonderful,” Susan said. “A most unusual situation these days.”
She glanced toward her husband who shrugged. It was the second marriage for both of them. Sam Connors had been married before and had a son by his first wife. He exchanged glances with his wife but made no comment.
“You must miss her,” Susan pressed.
Anne could see that Sanborn was slightly discomfited by the remark.
“I do,” he whispered, turning away. It was obviously a subject not open for discussion. Seeing his reaction, Susan desisted and turned the conversation to other matters. Again, Anne noted that Sanborn drifted out of the social chitchat. He still held his now-empty martini glass. Noting this, Jack asked if he wanted a refill. He looked blankly at the diminished liquid.
“A splash,” he nodded. Ann surmised his consent to have another martini was an escape from his ostracism. He was quite definitely a fish out of water. Before calling them all into dinner, Anne, who liked to place her guests carefully, switched place cards and put Arnold Sanborn next to her, mostly to spare Susan his company or, she chuckled to herself, vice versa.
Making conversation with Sanborn was more than a challenge. It was a chore. She steered away from personal matters reasoning that perhaps, in his obviously WASPish corporate culture, the very personal might be a restricted subject. Not that she ever thought in these terms since she, as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant herself, might qualify for such an appellation. But then, she was from the Midwest originally and Sanborn, with his noticeable broad “A,” was obviously from Boston or somewhere in the New England area. She was, of course, well aware that she was reacting to a stereotype, but he did seem so typical of the genre.
Jack over-generously poured the wine and by the time dessert rolled around, the conversation of the well-oiled guests shifted to politics.
“We have got to dump this administration,” Sam Connors said. “Aside from bankrupting us, they have totally screwed up our foreign policy. They hate us all over the world now.”
“It is beyond belief,” Mary chimed in. “Our president is an idiot. I mean, really, how could we have possibly elected such a blundering incompetent fool. Never mind that we’re going broke, that damned useless war was the biggest blunder in history.”
“Those kids are dying for nothing, absolutely nothing,” Susan said. “I can barely read the papers and watch the news on television. I want to cry. We have got to get rid of these people before it’s too late.”
“And this war on terrorism,” Jack chimed in. “It’s being used as a political ploy. I tell you it is being deliberately used to keep these sons of bitches in power, scaring the hell out of all of us. We should pull out of that fucking Iraq hellhole and let the bastards kill each other.”
“I’m for that,” Charley Lieberman said, his tongue slightly slurred but still coherent, his anger well stoked. “Let them all behead each other. We’ll stand by and watch.”
“That’s so bloodthirsty, Charley,” Susan said, berating her husband. “You sound like some right-wing nut.”
“Don’t tell me you feel sorry for those monsters?” Charley said.
“They’re human beings,” Susan said emphatically.
“Well, why don’t they act that way?” Mary said.
“One thing I know,” Charley said. “War is never the answer.”
“Not with the weapons available today,” Sam Connors said, as if he were the voice of reason.
“This administration keeps it up, we’re all going to be pulverized,” Jack said. “Kaput. One little bomb right here and it knocks out the whole East Coast.”
“And all of us,” Susan said. “And our kids.”
“Now there’s a gloomy prospect,” Sam Connors said.
“That man in the White House thinks he has a pipeline to God. He’s absolutely convinced he’s on the right path,” Charley said.
“Yeah, the path to hell,” Jack muttered. “Shoot first. Ask questions later.”
“We should never stop talking to our enemies,” Anne said joining in. “Diplomacy is the only civilized way.” From the corner of her eye she observed Arnold Sanborn, who had remained silent, although she did note that his cheeks were beginning to flush. Suddenly, she realized that he had been totally left out of the conversation.
“Bottom line,” Charley said, “we have got to get rid of the idiots running things. They have to go and the faster the better. They have made all the wrong decisions. The war was stupid. And this terrorism scare. Sure, there is terrorism, but why should they use it to scare us?”
“Because it’s true,” Arnold Sanborn said suddenly.
He reached for his wineglass, sipped and studied the faces around the table as they looked toward him, then exchanged glances with each other. Anne felt her stomach lurch.
“I’m sorry,” Sanborn said quietly, “but mine is not the prevailing view around the table.”
“Really,” Charlie began. Anne could sense the beginning of belligerence.
“Don’t tell me,” Sam said, his words more slurred than ever. “A Republican.”
“An American,” Sanborn said. His remark seemed measured, without any hint of belligerence.
“We’re all Americans,” Charlie said nervously playing with the stem of his wineglass, then emptying it. Jack filled his glass again.
“Are you saying you agree with…” she paused,”…with them?” Susan began, then exchanged glances with Anne, who was getting agitated.
“Everyone is entitled to their view,” Anne said, taking a deep breath. She could sense the hostility rising in her guests.
“War is not always the answer,” Sanborn said quietly, his speech cadence lawyerly. The flush in his cheeks had spread further. “Although it was in my day.” He nodded as if receiving some information by a voice inside of him. “If we hadn’t gotten rid of Hitler, we would all be watching goose-stepping parades up Fifth Avenue.”
“That chestnut again,” Charley said, his tongue making a hissing sound.
“Four hundred thousand brave men died to make that so-called chestnut a reality,” Sanborn countered politely.
“So what are you saying?” Charley asked.
There was a long pause as all eyes turned toward Arnold Sanborn. Anne, although aware of the hostility, felt herself siding with her other guests and not with Sanborn, who struck her now as a self-satisfied sanctimonious right-wing prig. But he is a guest in my house, she asserted to herself and for a brief moment she weighed the consequences of propriety. The hell with him, she decided. He’s on his own.
“I’m saying that the president and his team are the canary in the mine shaft,” Sanborn said. “It is the early warning of things to come. The Sudetenland, Spain, Czechoslovakia. As it was then, so it is today. Those people, in this case the radical Moslems out there, like the Nazis, want to kill us. They want to crush our civilization, establish a Caliphate and reduce our way of life to the level of the Taliban.”
Although his words were militant, he was surprisingly calm and measured.
“Word for word,” Sam said. “Right from the bully pulpit.”
“The fact cannot be contested,” Sanborn said. “The war has been going on for years and we are losing it. We are not heeding the tea leaves. We are still asleep. We are on the verge of a cataclysm.”
“War-mongering,” Charlie sneered.
“How can I possibly make you understand?” Sanborn said.
“You can’t,” Susan said.
“You know what I think?” Charley said. Anne could see he was winding up for a blow. Although the conversation still verged on the cusp of politeness, she could sense it was about to be getting out of hand and she was becoming slightly panicked. There was no point in having a confrontation, especially with a neighbor, whom she would inevitably have to face. But it was too late.
“I think you’re one of those right-wing nuts we were just talking about.”
Anne could feel everyone in the room bracing themselves. Goose pimples broke out on her skin.
“More wine, anybody?” Jack said, a futile gesture, although he did pour more wine into those glasses that were empty.
“Do you really?” Sanborn said calmly.
“How can you support those fools?” Susan said.
“Everyone is entitled…” Anne began, but by then Charley was revved up.
“It’s people like you that are bringing down our country. People like you who are choking off our civil liberties, our freedoms, everything we stand for as a people. That idiot in Washington is bringing ruin on our country.” His eyes reflected his rising hostility. “It’s you and your ilk that are killing us as a people.”
Ilk? Anne thought. It was getting nasty.
“I have to agree with you, Charley,” Sam said. “At some point you have to make a choice.”
“I have,” Sanborn said, rising, still calm.
He is leaving in a huff, Anne thought, wondering if she would be regretful and embarrassed when she met him on their joint landing.
“May I beg your indulgence?” he said, folding his napkin and putting it beside his dessert plate. “I’ll be right back.”
He left the room and they heard the door to the landing open. They looked at each other stunned.
“What is that all about?” Charley asked.
“He’s gone into his apartment,” Jack said. He had gone to check.
“Typical right-wing moron,” Charley said.
“Sanctimonious prick,” Sam chimed in.
“I’d say people like him
are more a threat to our way of life than the terrorists,” Susan said.
“She felt guilty,” Jack said. “Him having lost his wife and we not having anything to do with him.”
“Guilt will do it every time,” Mary said.
“No matter what, Anne did the right thing,” Susan said.
“With the wrong outcome,” Charley said.
Anne sucked in a deep breath.
“Please, no clichés about what the road to hell is paved with.”
“Okay then,” Mary giggled. “How about no good deed goes unpunished.”
“It’s like relatives,” Jack said smirking. “You can’t choose your neighbors.”
“But you can bar the door, Bill Bailey,” Sam chuckled.
They heard movement across the hall and Arnold Sanborn was back. He was holding something in his hand.
“What is that?” Sam asked.
“A CD. It was a tape and I had it converted.”
“A CD of what? Some propaganda bullshit,” Charley said.
“You’ll see,” Sanborn said looking at Jack. He handed him the CD.
“Really Sanborn, if this is some scammy right-wing crap, forget it. We’re not stupid.”
“You won’t change any of our minds,” Charlie said.
“How can I possibly convince you?” Sanborn said.
Sanborn exchanged glances with Jack. Then shifted his gaze to Anne.
“What’s on it?” Anne asked.
“Some pictures I took,” Sanborn said.
“Of what?” Jack asked.
“You’ll see. I watch them again and again.”
