Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  “I’m sorry about it,” Marshall told her. “There wasn’t anything she could do to get out of it. She’s thinking about marrying him. I’m afraid she might.”

  “You can’t like him.”

  “I don’t want him as a stepfather.”

  “Do you like my party?” Alice said suddenly.

  “It’s great,” he said.

  “You’re not sorry you came?”

  He looked at her.

  “You don’t wish you were with that pretty German girl?”

  “What?”

  “Wait here,” she said and then moved off.

  A moment later, a man walking on his hands came through from the hall, followed by another who was scuttling along like a crab, on all fours. There was a loud bump, and a roar of laughter from the next room, and the man walking on his hands came back through, followed by a woman who carried a drink in either hand and looked annoyed. Marshall followed them into the small side porch, where a woman with an absurd hive of sparkling red hair sat reading palms. She looked at Marshall, and without warning reached over and took him by the wrist, turning his hand ceilingward. “A short life line,” she said. “Not necessarily tragic.” The man standing next to her looked down at Marshall’s hand.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “What month were you born in,” the woman asked Marshall. It was spoken in the tone of a command.

  “April,” he said.

  She looked at his palm again. “You have ambition,” she said.

  He was pleased. “Yes.”

  She studied the palm, then smiled up at him. “Do you want children?”

  “Someday,” he said.

  Again, she looked at his palm, traced something with a red fingernail, a thin thread of ticklishness along the inside of his hand, at the base of the fingers. “You want to rise up in the world and do important things.”

  Marshall glanced at the man, then nodded at her.

  “Did you ask to have your palm read?” the man wanted to know. He seemed vaguely agitated; a face full of bumps and tufts of hair, jaws that seemed puffed with something unpleasant.

  The woman let go of Marshall’s hand while speaking to the man. “Don’t lose it, Fred. It’s a party, for God’s sake.”

  “You’re making an idiot of yourself, Margaret.”

  Marshall backed out of there, into the room where Alice had asked him to wait. People crowded past him, some carrying little plates of finger food and glasses of wine.

  Across the room, Albert stood, holding a mug of beer. Emma had her hands wrapped around his elbow, and seemed to be listening raptly to everything around her. Marshall went over to them, and Albert shook hands—as though they had not come in together in the first place. Emma said, “Get him to talk, Walter. He’s so quiet tonight.”

  “Alice looks beautiful,” Albert said.

  “Do you know what just happened here?” Marshall asked him.

  “No.”

  “Some guy went through there walking on his hands. I followed him in there and a lady read my palm.”

  “I didn’t see,” Albert said. “What did she say?”

  “I have a short life line.” Marshall looked at his own palm, then dismissed the thought as a temptation. “I don’t believe in that stuff, of course.”

  “Of course not,” Albert said.

  They were quiet, watching the swirl of faces.

  Emma said, “Usually he talks my ear off. Especially in a gathering like this. He likes to tell me what he sees. What everyone looks like and what’s on the walls. But not tonight.”

  “To tell the truth,” Albert said, “I’m feeling a bit tired.”

  “Here they are,” said Alice, leading her father into the group. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up, exposing thick, muscular forearms covered with dark hair. He was a big man, with heavy shoulders and a hulking way of standing, as if he were carrying some invisible weight. “Daddy, these are some dear friends of mine. Albert and Emma.”

  Her father’s greeting was somewhat perfunctory, and there was a slight hesitation when he offered his hand to Emma. Then, evidently realizing the situation, he reached down and took Emma’s hand briefly. “Very nice to meet you,” he said.

  “And you remember Walter.”

  “I do. I suppose congratulations are in order,” Patrick Kane said, shaking hands. His grip was almost painful. Alice put her arm over his shoulders, and kissed the side of his face. He wiped the kiss off without appearing to be aware that he had done so, and she kissed him once more. “Well,” he said to them, rubbing the side of his face again. “I understand your mother’s here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” This seemed to have satisfied him. “Well, you people enjoy yourselves.”

  “You have to meet Walter’s mother. She’s here somewhere.”

  “Well, then, suppose you go and get her,” Mr. Kane said simply.

  “Don’t move.” Alice walked off through the crowd, and in a second two men edged in to speak to Mr. Kane. One of them Marshall recognized as the man on all fours who had been following the hand walker. He and Mr. Kane and the other man were apparently golf partners. They made their way to the other side of the room so Mr. Kane could get another drink.

  When they had gone, Albert wondered aloud if there might be a place nearby to sit down, and Marshall led him and Emma down a corridor of entrances to other crowded rooms, until they came out into a brightly lighted space that turned out to be the kitchen, where the bottles of liquor were laid out and the dinner buffet was being prepared.

  Everyone here was colored. They were all busy keeping things going. Marshall watched them, not sitting down. Emma had taken a chair at the table, and had her hands folded in her lap. Albert looked at her, and then he looked at Marshall.

  “Crowds can get her down a little, sometimes,” he murmured.

  The head person in the kitchen was a big woman with upper arms the size of barrels, and small, delicate-looking, bony wrists. Her skin was a deep, smooth brown, and her hair was in a tight ring around her face. She held out a cookie to Albert. “For the young lady.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Albert said.

  She shooed this away. “Look lak she feelin’ this mess.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Big mess o’ people. Makes me nervous, too.”

  Albert nodded.

  “She’s pale as a ghost. Honey, you wont some wata? Sonthin’ warm?”

  “No,” Emma said, smiling. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Look lak a li’l slip of a ghost. Prutty as a June day, tho.”

  “She’s always a little pale,” Albert said.

  “I can shore see that, honey.”

  The others laughed.

  “But ain’t you prutty, tho,” she said to Emma, who smiled.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Albert said.

  “An’ ain’t you a tall, hansome young man, suh.”

  “I think you need some glasses,” Albert said to her. “I’m tall, all right.”

  “You a good man, I can see that.”

  “Well,” Albert said, “I’m good and ugly.”

  She laughed. “Honey, Minnie don’ mean nothin’. You know that.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Albert said, smiling.

  “You as tall as I’m big aroun’, honey.” Her laugh was high and loud, and it made the others laugh, too, though Albert’s joke about eyesight had made Marshall uneasy.

  “Y’all just set, an make yourself comfy,” the colored woman said. Then she turned and began speaking to one of the other kitchen workers. There were trays of drinks to be carried into the next room. “Git on wid yuh. Do like I say, na. You ain’t gwine spend the evenin’ settin’ roun’ lak de whorl owes you no livin’.”

  “Alice certainly has a lot of friends,” Emma said when Albert had given her the cookie. She sat there chewing contentedly, holding it between her index finger and thumb as though it were as delicate as a soap bubble. A few crumbs had broken off
and fallen into her lap.

  When Alice came back, she casually reached down and brushed the crumbs away as Emma put the last of the cookie in her mouth. “Thank you,” Emma said.

  “My father’s going to announce us,” Alice said to Marshall. “Hurry.”

  Emma stood, and Albert took her by the arm.

  “You certainly have a lot of friends,” she said.

  But Alice had moved off, was already partway across the next room, waving at them, gesturing for them to hurry. In another room, the one beyond this one off the kitchen, one voice was speaking. Alice parted the backs in the doorway, pushing through with small pleadings for tolerance. Marshall was being pulled along now, and he felt exposed, rushed, the object of all these staring eyes. The engagement would really be out in the open now, and it was as though he had to steel himself to the idea all over again, master all over again the sense that the whole thing was a kind of playacting, a fraud. He looked back and saw that Albert and Emma were left behind. “Alice,” he said, “hold it.” When Alice realized what had happened, she stopped and hurried back to where Albert and Emma waited. Albert looked confused now, his deep-set eyes glazed over with indecision. His hand had come to the bony cheek under one eye, and he seemed to be picking at something there.

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything—” he began.

  “Oh, Albert,” said Alice, taking his wrist. “Come on.”

  They all pushed through the throng, holding hands, led by Alice, with Marshall holding Emma’s hand now. At the center of this large room, under the bright ceiling light, Mitchell Brightman stood talking. He had one hand in his pocket and was wavering a little, managing to hold his balance but slurring his speech. He was talking about a little baby girl toddling around a newsroom during the reporting on D day, the sixth of June 1944.

  Through the small space between his crooked elbow and his rumpled sport coat, Marshall saw a face staring at him fixedly, and realized with a shock that it was the toy man, Marcus. He blinked, and looked again, and the face was gone.

  “That man is here,” he said to Albert.

  “What?” Albert said, bending down. “What did you say?”

  “The guy. The guy who was threatening Mrs. D’Allessandro. He’s here.”

  Albert looked at Mitchell Brightman. “Where?”

  “Shh,” Alice said.

  Marshall started toward the other side of the room, but she took hold of his wrist. “Come on,” she said. “He’s introduced us.”

  Everyone was applauding. People stepped aside to allow them to move into the center of the circle, and now a cheer arose. Alice held his hand up, a victory gesture, as though they had just been introduced at one of the political conventions, and the applause grew louder. Her father stepped close and poured a glass of champagne for her, then handed the bottle to Marshall, who searched the faces for that of the toy man, and saw instead Clark Atwater with his arm around Loretta’s shoulder, kissing the side of her face. Someone was calling for a speech; it was Brightman, who held a glass of whiskey up as if to show its color under the light.

  Alice stepped right into the role. “Well,” she said, swinging Marshall’s hand, “I’m so happy to be my father’s girl, among all these friends.”

  There was another cheer.

  “That’s good,” Mr. Kane said, applauding loudly. “Let’s quit while you’re ahead.”

  “I know my father thought I’d never do it,” she said. And then repeated it, talking over him as he tried again to interrupt her. “I know he was getting tired of having a spinster for a daughter.”

  “Not true,” Mr. Kane said.

  “And I know he’s happy for me because he knows I won’t be under his feet anymore—”

  Everyone applauded.

  “But mostly he’s worried because he knows I’ve picked a young man who reminds him of himself, thirty years ago.”

  Cheers and whistles, and everyone was looking at Marshall, who kept searching among the faces for the one face.

  “I used to say that the worst thing any young man could do is remind me of myself at that age,” said Mr. Kane, and then in the laughter that followed, he took a big swallow of the champagne.

  “Where’s Mrs. Marshall?” Alice said. “Mrs. Marshall—”

  The young man saw Atwater force Loretta into the circle. Alice took her by the wrists and completed the motion, so that now the four of them were standing there while the others applauded and cheered. Loretta shook hands with Mr. Kane, who seemed anxious to remove himself, looking around at the crowd and drinking from his glass again. Alice asked for and was given a glass, into which she got Marshall to pour some of the champagne. She handed it to Loretta, and then led everyone in another toast. “To the new family,” she said. For a few seconds they were all lined up there—Marshall, Alice, Marshall’s mother, and Alice’s father. The people in the room applauded again.

  Alice turned to her father and said something, smiling, and indicated Loretta, who also smiled. Mr. Kane gave the subtlest bow of his head, then patted Loretta’s shoulder and headed away, across the room.

  “Bless you all,” Alice said.

  There was more applause, but the moment had ended, people were wandering off into different groups. The line had started for the buffet. Several people were already eating, sitting with plates in their laps on chairs around the room. Marshall recognized the man who had been walking on his hands and pointed him out to Alice. “Who’s that?”

  “That’s one of Everett Dirksen’s speechwriters. Or he used to be.”

  “Everett Dirksen, the senator from Illinois? That Everett Dirksen?”

  “Mmm-hmm. He quit because Dirksen tried to block the Civil Rights bill. And now it looks like he might go to work for CBS. I don’t remember his name.”

  “He was—”

  “I know,” Alice said, interrupting him. “He’s had too much whiskey.”

  Mitchell Brightman had dropped down on a couch near the windows looking out on the backyard, and Clark Atwater had seated himself at his side. Loretta stood before them, holding two drinks. When she saw Marshall, she smiled and indicated with a tilting of her head that he should kiss her cheek. He did so.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Alice’s father.”

  “He’s nice.”

  Marshall waited. “And?”

  She shrugged. “We said hello. I had the feeling he might’ve preferred a more formal occasion for us to meet, before this kind of—festivity. It’s hard to say much—” She broke off.

  “India and China are the two to worry about now,” Atwater was saying. “Because of the populations. Not Russia at all. Surely you’ve read Toynbee?”

  Mitchell Brightman had his drink resting on his abdomen. He lifted his head and drank, then let his head fall back. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “Toynbee sees this as the last living civilization.”

  “Yes. Interesting.” The broadcaster’s tone was not quite magisterial. He lifted his head and sipped his whiskey again, then looked at Marshall with eyes that did not take him in or appear to recognize him. What the eyes communicated was exasperation with this Atwater fellow, who had apparently been stalking him from the earliest part of the evening. A moment later, Mr. D’Allessandro stepped into the circle, edging Marshall to one side. “Excuse me,” he said. He put cushions out of the way and got himself seated on the other side of Brightman. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he began.

  Brightman had turned toward Atwater. “Why is it,” he said with a brittle smile, “that everywhere I turn at this festive occasion, with all these people, from all these different walks of life, why is it that everywhere I turn you’re there, too. Are there six of you? One for every room?”

  Atwater laughed too loudly, reaching up to take one of the drinks from Loretta, who leaned down and said, “Come on, Clark.”

  Mitchell Brightman seemed to be agitating somehow, as though he wanted to shake t
he couch out of its place, but then it was clear that he was trying to stand. When he gained his feet, he put one hand on Marshall’s shoulder to support himself, then walked unsteadily away. Atwater had stood, too, and he leaned into the young man. “Follow him, boy. Your father knew him.”

  “Clark,” said Marshall’s mother, “can’t we go now?”

  Atwater looked at her. “We just got here, L’retta. We haven’t even got our food yet. There’s people here with a lot of influence, famous people, and you’re not mixing with them.”

  She put her drink to her lips and turned a bit, someone trying to get out of a column of bad air. Stepping to the wall, she gazed back at her son. Mr. D’Allessandro hadn’t moved from the couch, and he looked crestfallen. “Did I say something to offend?” he said.

  “Mr. D’Allessandro,” said Marshall, “Marcus is here, isn’t he?”

  D’Allessandro looked around. “Where?”

  “I saw him.”

  “Is my wife here?” he said.

  “I haven’t seen your wife.”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. D’Allessandro said. “I shouldn’t have come.” He had gotten to his feet and started off in the direction of Alice’s father, who was standing on the other side of the room listening to some woman talk. The woman spoke with sweeping hand gestures, somehow keeping her wine from spilling. Marshall watched them for a few seconds, then went through all the rooms, looking for the little man named Marcus and for Mrs. D’Allessandro. He saw Albert and Emma in a corner of one room, seeming to stare out. Emma was holding his hand, and he had the other, as usual, up to his face. He had that aghast look again. “Aren’t you going to eat?” Marshall asked him.

  “I’m waiting for cake,” Albert said.

  “Do you know the D’Allessandros are here?”

  He nodded. “I saw.”

  “Did you see Mrs. D’Allessandro?”

  “I saw him, not her.”

  In another room, Alice and Mitchell Brightman sat in a window seat. Alice was pouring wine for him. An elderly woman wearing bright, metal-framed half glasses introduced herself as Alice’s great-aunt Arlene, cornering Marshall on the side porch. She began talking about Alice as a little girl. Always so precocious, she said, gazing above the lenses at Marshall’s chest. It was as if she couldn’t lift her head any higher. “We all thought she’d end up running off with a sheik or something.”