Seating Arrangements (24 page)

After six months, on a hot summer night when the Vespasian’s windows were open in hopes of catching any torpid breeze that might happen by, Winn found himself playing pool with Ophelia’s father while the girl and her mother were in the attic attending a slide show put on by a member about his travels through the Soviet Union. Haviland had unbuttoned his collar and rolled up his sleeves in concession to the heat, but he was a tall, immaculate man who never seemed to suffer physical discomfort or indignity of any kind, and his face and shirt were perfectly dry. Winn, lining up a shot, was tormented by the dark circles under his arms and the sweat on his face that, as he focused on the cue ball, dripped off the end of his nose, leaving a dark spot on the green baize. He shot poorly and then turned to collect his drink from the windowsill and to mop his face with a cocktail napkin. Haviland marched around the table, chalking his cue with deadly focus, and knocked first the seven ball and then the three tidily into a corner pocket.

“I think you’ve got me, sir,” Winn said, standing against the window with his arms slightly raised in the vain hope that the muggy air would dry him.

“Hmm,” Haviland said. “Yes.” He moved to the end of the table and, after again attempting to drill his cue through the chalk cube, bent and reached out one long arm to line up the eight ball. Winn gazed up at the portrait of his grandfather. Frederick looked glum in the painting, jowly and frowning above his white tie.

“He was a queer, you know,” Haviland said casually. “Side pocket.” He shot the stick between his knuckles and sent the cue ball sailing into the eight ball with a clunk. The eight ball bumped off the cushions, narrowly missed the side pocket, and spun to a stop.

“Pardon?” Winn said.

“Your grandfather.” Haviland angled the cue back over his shoulder at the painting. “He was a queer.”

Winn half smiled, unsure what the joke was. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“How much more plainly can I say it? He was a queer, a fairy, a homosexual. Didn’t you know? It’s your shot.”

Winn stood rooted. “I think you’re confused. He was married. He had my father.”

A long, shaded lamp hung over the pool table, illuminating it like a stage. Haviland rested his hands on the edge and leaned forward into the light. He looked perfectly serious. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s not common knowledge, but it is the truth. Probably you’ve run across a few people who know, but your father has been very effective at making sure the whole story gets forgotten for your sake. I only know because I’ve become the unofficial club historian. A few stray clues in old letters caught my attention. I followed up. Even in Tipton’s day most people didn’t know. He was very discreet. My father knew him. I knew him well enough, too, and I would never have guessed. Do you know who Winn Cunningham was?”

“He was my grandfather’s uncle. He helped him get into business.”

Haviland grinned. “That’s the line? Well. Tipton’s wise to keep the story simple. No, Winn Cunningham was
not
related to Frederick. Cunningham owned a paper mill. Frederick and his father worked there. You see where I’m going. Your great-grandfather essentially sold Frederick to Cunningham when he was fifteen or sixteen. Naturally,
they were extremely poor. Desperate. Frederick was supposedly very handsome as a young man. Cunningham took him in and paid for his education and kept him in fashionable clothes, and then he was considerate enough to die while Frederick was still young. Cunningham had no family, or at least none who wanted to contest the will, and so Frederick inherited several mills, several ships, your house, whatever else there was.” Haviland regarded the table and then thoughtfully leaned over and sank the eight ball. After it disappeared with a soft
plunk
into the pocket, he recollected himself. “Oh, it was your shot, wasn’t it? I apologize. I didn’t even call the pocket. I don’t know what I was thinking. I concede the game. Rack them again, will you?”

“Wait,” Winn said. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Hold on.”

“That’s fine. Take a minute.” Haviland retrieved the triangle and began pulling the balls from the pockets. The sight of him moving so calmly around the table, sending the shining spheres gliding and clacking into one another with a flick of his wrist, infuriated Winn.

“Now, wait,” Winn said. Haviland stepped away from the table and stood with his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry, sir,” Winn said, “but you’re mistaken. Very mistaken. I don’t know what you—I don’t see what reason you could have to say these things. Vicious, disgusting things.”

“I don’t like being the bearer of bad news any more than the next fellow. But I can see you do believe me. That’s why you’re angry. You must have sensed something was off. Haven’t there been stray comments? Odd silences? Your grandfather was smart enough to go away for some years after Cunningham died, I think to Europe. Then he came back and started over. He lived respectably. It was easier for everyone to pretend to forget. Your father tries to erase the past, he tries admirably, but there are still people around who remember. Frederick should have gone to another city. You’ve come much farther than could have been expected. You can almost pass for what you think you are. I haven’t told Ophelia—she would probably say I’m being old-fashioned. Nonetheless. Here, I’ll break.” Haviland lifted the triangle. Gleaming and inert, the balls held their orderly formation
until, with a clatter, they flew apart like flushed birds. None went in. “Heck!” said Haviland.

Winn bent over the table. The crook between his fingers was sweaty, and the cue slipped, bumping the ball and sending it dribbling sideways. “You don’t think—,” he began. “You can’t mean—Ophelia isn’t—In 1976, you still—” He stopped and tried to collect his thoughts. He had always been told that his family had been established in Boston society by Frederick’s working his way up from a clerk to mill owner. The idea of Frederick as the child consort to a lecherous old queen could not be made to fit with anything Winn knew. This was a perversion, a sordid prank. He wanted to run Haviland through with his cue. Why would the man say such things? He must want to sabotage Winn’s relationship with Ophelia. But why? Haviland should be grateful he was interested. Winn had assumed it would be abundantly obvious to everyone that he was capable of doing better and that his courtship of the girl was a sign of maturity, that he was letting go of some youthful romantic ideal.

“Do you disapprove of my taking out Ophelia?” he asked.

Haviland looked at him curiously. “No. But I thought we should talk before it got too serious. It would be best if it didn’t get too serious.”

With as much dignity as he could muster, Winn crossed the room and set his cue in the wall rack. Turning back, he said, “I think,
Brother
Haviland”—this was the way Ophidian members addressed one another—“that you have made several mistakes tonight, and eventually you will regret them all.”

Haviland tilted his head to one side. “You know,” he said, “it’s interesting to me that your father named you after Cunningham. I think it must have been his way of trying to legitimize the situation. The best defense is a good offense, as they say.”

“I was named for my grandfather’s uncle,” Winn said stiffly.

“If you say so.” Haviland began bending and shooting, bending and shooting, indiscriminately sinking balls with expert thrusts of his cue. “If it’s any consolation, the Vespasian has a long history with men like that. Do you know what they found when they came into
the building for the first time after Arthur Andrew Depuis died? Caligula’s vacation house. Nude statues, suggestive paintings, very unusual tribal objects. The floor of the Keep was a mosaic of a naked shepherd boy caressing the horn of a goat. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the Seahorse Society stepped through the door. No one knew, of course. He left it to them as a kind of joke because they hadn’t let him join their club. People will go to great lengths for revenge on those who have excluded them—isn’t that interesting? I could have blackballed you from the Ophidian, you know, but I didn’t. I admire you, Winn. You’re a striver. Fortunately for the Seahorse, Depuis was an appreciator of antiquities in general as well as the male form, and they could salvage some things, like the pool, for instance. And I think most of these paintings came from Depuis. It was easier just to keep what they could and change the name. That way they didn’t have to gut the place entirely. Probably for the best. If they had decorated it with seahorses, I’m not sure it would have looked any less queer than when Depuis had it.” Again the table was an empty green field. Haviland set down his cue and took up his glass.

“You seem to have a lot of knowledge about this sort of thing,” Winn said. “Kind of a hobby for you?”

Haviland smiled without humor. “I hope you understand it’s nothing personal. If you ever have a daughter, you’ll know.”

WINN HAD BROKEN UP
with Ophelia as cruelly as he could stand to. He stopped calling her, broke what dates they already had, and brought the most beautiful girl he could find to a party where he knew she would be. He felt a twinge of conscience when he saw Ophelia standing in Harry Pitton-White’s doorway, her stricken face, her protuberant eyes filling with tears, and then her valiant effort to pull herself together. She wore a short summer dress patterned with pink and green elephants—the fact was she had terrific legs. He turned away, feigning absorption in the story his date was telling about her
years smoking forbidden cigarettes out the dorm windows at Foxcroft. “It was wild!” she kept saying.

The night, for his purposes, began as a success. Ophelia looked miserable. His date looked stunning. Harry Pitton-White took him aside and flicked a thumb in the direction of the date, who could be heard exclaiming “Wild!” from across the room, and said, “Where’d you find Helen of Troy?”

“At a dinner,” Winn said.

“Great face. Great ass.”

Winn studied the twin protrusions in the paisley jersey of the girl’s dress. “I’d say her face could launch seven or eight hundred ships, tops. But that
is
a thousand-ship ass.”

“Bon voyage,” Pitton-White said, taking a handful of almonds from a nearby bowl and dropping some into his mouth and some onto the carpet.

“You can have her after tonight.”

“Really? Anyway, what happened with you and Haviland?”

“I was never very excited about that one.”

“And you don’t want to hang on to this one?”

“Not for long.”

“Must be all right being you,” Pitton-White said. He went and turned down the lights and put on a record, and everyone pushed back the furniture and began to dance. Winn’s date hopped up and down in the middle of the mob, looking around in all directions and tossing her hair. Soon Pitton-White was pogoing beside her and reaching for her hips. Ophelia swayed on the periphery, smiling slightly. A guy Winn didn’t know tried to dance with her, but she refused. Winn leaned against the wall and watched. Had he been sober, he would have been more careful, but he was drunk and let himself stare. She glanced up and caught him looking. He turned his attention to the almonds, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her coming toward him.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Well, then, why—”

“It’s just not for me. Sorry.”

“You could have told me that. You didn’t need to let me twist in the wind. It seems like you not only want to break up with me, you want to be as mean about it as possible.”

“Sorry.”

“I would like to know why.”

He watched the dancers jump and turn exuberantly, elbows flying. He had not expected Ophelia to be so persistent. Unwittingly, she was presenting him with an irresistible opportunity to really lower the boom on the Havilands. “It’s nothing you can help,” he said. “It’s the way you look.”

She recoiled. “What?”

“It’s your eyes. They bulge. I see myself with someone more attractive. I’ve never been very attracted to you. I don’t like looking at you.”

She flushed. Her bug eyes expanded with anger. He had expected her to run away, to cry. He found himself nervously munching almonds one after the other. “You couldn’t keep your hands off me,” she said in a hard voice. “I think you found me plenty attractive. You left that girl, that Wellesley girl, for me. You lasted five seconds in bed. I felt like I was with a fifteen-year-old. You don’t like to look at me—then why have you been staring at me all night? Your date’s noticed.”

On the dance floor, his date was watching them over Pitton-White’s shoulder and frowning. Winn shrugged and ate another almond. What Ophelia said was true, but happiness in the bedroom was something separate from his expectations for physical beauty. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do. Why don’t you try to have some dignity about it?”

“And,” she said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m at least as attractive as you are. You’re good looking enough, but your skin is bad and …”—her eyes alit on what he already knew to be his most regrettable feature—“you have a weak chin.” She shook her head, still staring at that disappointing spot below his lips. He wished she were not so willing to seize the advantage—something he had loved
about her. His fingers crept up to his chin, squeezed it tenderly, like a piece of fruit. A clear delineation existed between his neck and face, but still his chin was not the strong, crisp, masculine escarpment it should be. The problem was that there was a smidge too much softness
underneath
his chin, a yielding swag of flesh he had possessed since childhood that tended to swallow the lower edge of his jawline, especially if he wasn’t careful and pulled his head back into his neck. Weak chins were for weak men, symptomatic of cowardice, corruption, deviant appetites, and poor breeding, and he was forced to conclude that, both on a cosmetic level and as a sign of his essence, his mandibular failings made him less attractive than he might have been with a perfect, Gregory Peck kind of chin. But there was nothing to be done.

“I can’t help it if I’m not attracted to you. There’s no cause to get mean,” he said breezily.