"Quantity is the problem now, Mr. Ransom. They can't stay in business if they don't increase production, take some shortcuts on quality, and get the prices down. The Japanese are killing us."
"I don't know why in hell you and Winslow haven't sold the damn place to some conglomerate ages ago. Everything merges, Arthur, everything is drawn into the whole. Drink okay?" Ransom rattled the ice in his glass.
His future son-in-law smiled. "Could be, could be. But the thing is, Aunt Ramona holds as many shares as Mom does. I mean Mom could care less what we do, I mean she's always trusted our judgment, but you know how Ramona feels about the rest of the world coming into Dingley Falls or taking anything out of it. I just don't see her giving us her proxies to sell O.I." Arthur rattled the ice in his glass.
His fiancée, Ransom's daughter , had sat in a mauve satin armchair throughout their talk. She crossed her glossy legs and leafed through Harper's Bazaar and finished her Gibson. Emerald had heard both sides of the Optical Instruments conversation a number of times before.
From outside, her sister, Kate, banged through the french doors into the room. "Hey. I hooked the speakers up next to the pool. Rock out!" She grinned and whipped her pelvis back and forth in a current dance. Arthur looked at the carpet.
"I don't know how the rest of Elizabeth Circle is going to feel about outside amplifiers," cautioned Mr. Ransom.
Kate shrugged. Slouching across the rug to a coffee table, where Wanda had placed a tray of hors d'oeuvres, she scooped up a fistful of cashews, which she tossed into her mouth as she spoke. "Okay, we'll keep it down. But crap, some nights I can hear those bullshit operas of Evelyn's up in my room with the window shut. Where's Mother?" She looked at Emerald, who shook her curls in the direction of the stairs.
"Oh. Well, look," Kate said, with a glance at her father, "you guys are welcome to join in, Emerald, Arthur. No hard drugs, promise."
Emerald was not amused. Arthur offered to come, perhaps, sometime after dinner, which he had promised to eat at his father's house.
"Fine, nobody's coming 'til eight. Will you make me a Scotch, Daddy?"
"Scotch isn't a woman's drink. Why don't you let me make you a martini or something like that?"
"Crap Almighty, I don't believe it. That is so dumb, Daddy! Just never mind!"
"Well, I'm not sure you ought to talk like that. Anyone for seconds? No?" Ransom closed the cabinet. "Well excuse me, then. I guess I'll go watch the news. Katie, you let me know when it's time to start the charcoal." He went into his library and wondered if his daughter was really angry at him. He didn't like to think so. But she flared up as if she hated him.
Kate smiled at the closing door. Then she said, "In five minutes he'll be asleep on the couch. He always is, and he always says he isn't." She ate three celery stalks stuffed with Boursin, opened the liquor cabinet, and poured herself a Scotch. "You know," she grimaced, "I don't even much like this crap, and because of dumb remarks by chauvinist pigs like Daddy, I'm going to have to drink it forever."
Emerald Ransom stood to see herself in the coiled gold mirror on the wall. With both hands she brushed her hair back off her bare shoulders. Arthur and Kate watched her. She was easy to watch. She was a woman at ease with her image.
In Dingley Falls on Thursday evening, meals were being prepared, for the most part by women. At six Joy Strummer ate her pork chops under the constabulary eye of her mother. Though not at all hungry, she felt compelled to feign the ravenous appetite Mrs. Strummer associated with good health. Joy's plans were in jeopardy. Just before she'd announced the proposed visit to the library with Polly, Mr. Hedgerow had appeared at the screen door to ask them where Polly was. Joy's heart sank. If she weren't able to go to the party with Lance, she was going to double-k kill Polly for disappearing. "Have some more stewed tomatoes, baby. Daddy, pass her the tomatoes."
Joy's father handed the girl a bowl sticky with juice running over the sides. The red spoonful plopped onto her plate and seeped into the macaroni. Sweat drops formed a diadem across Joy's temples. She smiled at her mother.
At 6:15, in her Alice-blue dining room, Evelyn Troyes served soupe à l'oignon to Father Fields, with apologies that it was, of course, but a poor imitation of the onion soup she had so much enjoyed at Lasserre's in Paris. He apologized in return that his obligations to the academy choir that evening forced them to eat at such an uncivilized hour. The young curate was always enchanted with his hostess's culinary reminiscences, sometimes recounted in French so that he could practice the language. He longed to travel to Europe someday, to dine at the Savoy and stand before the great cathedral doors of Chartres.
Mrs. Troyes now mentioned the osso buco they served at the Hotel Danieli Royal. Was that Venice? Yes. In a rose sunset, Jonathan saw himself walking through the Piazza San Marco with Walter Saar.
Walking to dinner, and then, and then…He blushed. "And once Blanchard and I ate in the Tivoli Gardens, the most cunning way they had of folding their napkins. Yes, the food was delicious. And the Belle Terrasse, I think was its name. Copenhagen, because I remember they sent up fireworks after dark, and the sea there was such a blue, just the color of your eyes. Blanchard was a great eater. He adored food, I'm afraid, to excess, and brought on his stroke. Very different from Hugo, who never noticed if there were any food on the table or not, and quite often there was not. Especially after Paris fell."
Jonathan hurried through his strawberries with a feeling of goodwill: he had actually, and without resentment, enjoyed listening to Mrs. Troyes talk. Maybe God, after all, would enlarge his heart to make room for others, as he daily prayed. It had been so good of her to buy him that Rachmaninoff autograph in New York. It was so awful of him to be thrilled by how much it must have cost.
At 6:30, in the shabby roominess of her kitchen, Prudence Lattice cooked in a wok, which she had never done before. Under Chin Lam's supervision, the small white-haired woman nervously poked a chopstick at vegetables and pork slivers with a concentration so intense that Chin laughed for the first time since she'd come to work at the Tea Shoppe. Hearing the childish giggle, Miss Lattice thought with a jolt of pleasure that, if Chin were to live there with her, perhaps they could do each other good. Then guilt snatched the thought away. Did she hope that the girl's husband would go to prison and leave her his wife? Did she think she could fill her solitary old age by taking in this young woman like a homeless cat found outside her door? Really, thought Prudence, there was no excuse for such a selfish, silly fantasy. "Now, Miss Lattice, quick, all finished.
Take off heat now. Yes, yes, yes. Doing very well!" Chin smiled, nodding at the old woman, who, overcome with goodwill, turned to feed pork bones to the insatiable Night.
In Madder, at a round, yellow, vinyl-topped table, and at a card table, and in a high chair, the MacDermotts ate spaghetti off multicolored plastic plates. Judith Haig, guest of honor, had the sole china setting, from a service for eight depicting scenes of English country life, which Sarah was purchasing week by week from the A&P.
"Anyhow, Monday I get the cups, and a week later the saucers. I told you, you should have gotten in on it at the beginning. Well, the rolls are done, better late than never. Here, Joe. Where in the world is Orchid? That's what I'd like to know. I don't know whether to let Jimmy eat her share or not. Just one, Eddie, just put that right back!
'Course, Judith, you can back-order any pieces you miss, and extras.
Like I got the cream pitcher but then it's regular price. Jesus bless us, if you don't want the meatballs, Tommy, then don't eat them, but leave them on your plate. Did you hear me? All right, then, just get up from the table and go put on your pjs and get your homework done, excuse yourself to Judith. No, I don't hate you either. Joe, tell Tommy he has to. Francis! Stop teasing the baby! Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I can't hear myself think!"
On High Street, Mrs. Mary Bredforet said to Dr. Ruth Deeds, "When Nancy's gone, we usually just walk across to the Prim and eat.
I never did learn how to
cook, I must admit, and William is so obnoxious if a dish happens to go a little awry." Mary poked dubiously at her boiled potatoes, as Ruth forked four charred steaks out of the broiler.
"I'm pretty bad myself." The doctor laughed. "I hate cooking. I'd even rather eat the mess they serve at the hospital. Some of the junk I munch on, I don't even want to think about what it's doing to my insides. But I love to eat; I'm just going to have to marry a gourmet, that's all."
A clump of cards in hand, Bredforet poked his head through the door, looked around, and said, "We should have gone out."
"Just a few more minutes," his wife vowed. The door swung shut.
She sawed a head of lettuce into quarters and spooned mayonnaise onto each. The two women surveyed their handiwork. "It doesn't look very promising, does it?" sighed Mrs. Bredforet.
"Don't talk like that. They can take it or leave it," admonished Dr. Deeds. "If they don't want this, let them eat pizza. They're old enough to feed themselves. Men just pretend to be helpless."
Mrs. Bredforet giggled. "Why, yes! Let them eat pizza. Why, yes."
On Glover's Lane the Sniffells dined with the Hayeses, because the Hayeses had dined with the Sniffells in May. In the kitchen, June Hayes leaned on the counter with her fingers pressed against her eyelids. Her little radio above the sink played the waltz from Sleeping Beauty. She turned it up as loud as it would go. Almost immediately her husband, A.A., slipped through the door and shut it quickly behind him. He snapped the radio off and caught her hand when she reached for the dial again. He felt a thick weight on his chest as he let his breath out before he quietly said, "Honey? What's going on?
You've been in here ten minutes. Where's the dessert? They're just sitting out there. Okay, okay, I'm sorry I asked them," he hissed, "but I don't see how we could have decently…" Hayes set out coffee cups on a tray. "I'll take these out. Would you cut the pie?"
When Hayes returned, June still stood at the sink. "June!
Where's the pie?" He had thought his luck was going to hold. He had managed to bribe his son, Charlie, into taking his younger siblings out for hamburgers and a movie. He had gotten through the meal—
Ida talked so much it didn't matter that June wouldn't open her mouth. He had almost made it. And now this.
She stared out at darkness. "There isn't any pie."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It was burned. I threw it away.…Don't give me that look of yours."
"What look?" Again Hayes let out all his breath. "How do you know how I'm looking? You've got your back to me. What look?"
"I don't have to see it, Alvis. The look of how it breaks your heart that I'm hopelessly insane." Her face squirmed in the distortion of fury. The Medusa, thought A.A. Hayes, was probably just somebody's wife. "June, please. Could we not get into this now? There are guests out there. Let's go back."
"You go. I'm not going to."
Hayes jerked open the freezer. "You have to," he said, but he knew she wouldn't. She might even start screaming. As always she had defeated him. Those who will not abide by the rules of the game cannot be beaten by those who do. The only alternative the latter have is to decline to play with them at all, and leave the stadium for good. That was not an option for Hayes. He spooned ice cream into bowls and took them with a smile into the dining room.
It was long after seven when Ramona Dingley returned Polly, with profuse apologies, to Glover's Lane. Around the Hedgerows' paint-cracked table Miss Dingley, Luke, Polly, and her father now sat among white opened boxes of giant pizzas, cans of beer, cans of Coke.
Mozzarella stuck to their fingers, anchovies fell to the floor.
"Ridiculous food. Marvelous, ain't it, Cecil?" Ramona asked happily.
"I remember when I first saw one of those wonderful wretched TV dinners. Always felt liberated eating out of cartons and cans.
Nothing tasted better than chow mein in a cardboard container, except hot dogs in a napkin."
"If you think this is good," Luke told her, "it's too bad Mama Marco's closed for that funeral, because hers make these taste like a rubber tire."
"Pphht!" she snorted. "I see you two have ingested a tire and a half. While we old fogies babble away and pick at our crusts." There was a quarter of a century between Cecil Hedgerow and his elderly guest, but she bridged the years with a wide grin. "Astounding. Look at those two, totally recharged after what they went through. Were we ever that young, Cecil?"
"Younger," replied the widower.
It was a pleasure to Miss Dingley to sit in this family kitchen, to watch (after her worry and remorse) the awesome regenerative capacity of the young. Fatigue and corruption simply washes off them, she thought. They recover. They forget. That's why they can bear to rush headlong into so much more of everything—including passion, hope, and grief—than anyone even only thirty could stand to risk.
It was 7:30 when Evelyn Troyes, after driving Father Fields up to the academy, knocked at her friend Tracy's door. Mrs. Canopy was embarrassed to be found in a butcher's apron, dining on prepackaged shrimp newburg still in its tinfoil square. She had her television set atop her dining room table, which, except for the clearing where she sat, was covered with newspapers, clay, paints, and a row of wobbly coffee mugs fresh from the kiln. "Oh, my, Evelyn, please pay no attention to this mess. Don't you look pretty! Is that a new blouse? I was watching the news. Funny how it can go on surprising you how horrible the news is. I really wonder what we're coming to."
"I'm so sorry to bother you, but I was feeling a little blue, sort of at loose ends," Evelyn apologized. "But I'm probably intruding, aren't I?"
"You've always been such a ninny, Evelyn. Of course you're not intruding. Do you think I have a lover hiding in the bathroom?" Mrs. Canopy made this joke in vigorous innocence; she had no desire for a lover, in the bathroom or elsewhere. But her friend Evelyn did harbor such longings, for herself, and, generously enough, for her friends. She would have been delighted had she glimpsed trousers slipping away up the steps. She was delighted, secretly, when in New York she had glimpsed Richard Rage kissing the inside of Beanie's wrist and palm, just as so long ago Hugo had kissed hers. Mrs. Canopy made coffee. Then she and her friend shared a box of Scottish shortbread as they watched a documentary on the invasion of privacy. Later, at Tracy's urging, Evelyn made a little clay ashtray and painted violets all over it. Loverless, they passed the time.
It was almost eight when Beanie cleared away stripped artichoke petals and the bones of chicken kiev. Dinner had been uncomfortably silent, her two sons and her husband murmuring from time to time into the quietness some talk of the world, law, money, and sports. Arthur spoke to Beanie as if she were housemother of a fraternity he didn't particularly wish to join. Lance wouldn't look at her at all. Winslow thought that the situation was unfair to Beanie, but felt caught in it and unable to change anything. Beanie felt it had been a mistake to come to the house. Once there, she had been stung by her neglected duty, by the sight of the full laundry hamper, the ill-made bed, the dust on her dresser, and the dried dirt in her plant pots. She (he) was low on butter and bread and out of milk. He (should she do it before she left?) ought to hire a house cleaner. It had been a mistake to prepare dinner, but everything in the refrigerator would have just gone bad if not used.
Now Lance shook his head at the offered coffeepot. "No, thanks, I guess I better shove off, going over to Kate's," he said to his placemat.
Beanie sat back down. "Lance, could you wait just a few minutes?
And Arthur. I'm sorry, but we need to talk a little bit. Your dad and I. This evening we decided something and want you to know.
Winslow?" She bit her lip and turned to him.
"Your mother," he said quietly as he folded his napkin, "and I have talked for a long time, and we've come to the decision, a painful decision, that it would be best," he cleared his throat, "if we separated for a while."
Lance threw himself up from his chair. "Oh, Jesus God, Mom!
Wh
at the hell!"
"Lance, sit down, please." Only Abernathy's eyes were angry; they were what Beanie called their "angry gray."
Lance leaned over the table "What are you trying to do, Dad?
Did you tell her to go?"
"No," Beanie said. "Please, Lance. It was me, I felt, because of everything, you see, it would be the best thing. It's not just what happened…this week, but many things between, over a long time, I've tried to explain. Arthur, I know all this is horrible for you, with your wedding plans this summer, and I feel awful, but please try to understand."
"It's not for me to understand, Mother." Arthur folded his napkin. "That's for Dad to say."
Beanie stacked salad plates in front of her. In the silence she could hear Lance's breath grow louder and knew he was going to erupt now, just as he had when he lay kicking on the floor as a baby. "Are you going back to him?" His face lunged at her, red and twisted. "Who is he? I'm going to beat the shit out of him!" Beanie began to cry.
"All right, all right, that's enough." Abernathy stood.
"He's going to get his teeth shoved down his rotten throat! What the hell does he think he's trying to prove?"
Arthur stood as well. "Would you please shut your mouth?" He pushed his chair into the table. "You're upsetting Mom."
Lance flung his long, tan arms over his head. "Oh man, oh man!
Upsetting her! You two are just going to sit around and let this guy get away with it. Aren't you? Just sit there sucking on your cheeks while some… hippie, some pervert, runs off with Mom! Jesus God, no way I can believe this is happening!"
"Do not yell at me, Lance." Winslow's voice had that stillness that Beanie dreaded. "It isn't your business to do anything. I know your mother appreciates that you feel strongly. But whatever choice she makes is hers to make. Whatever decisions she and I come to are between us. It simply is not your business."
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