The Dinner Party (14 page)

“Don't ever put down a plain old country lawyer,” Augustus said. “Sam Ervin was that, but nothing plain about Sam. He was one of the smartest men in Congress and the best damn constitutional lawyer in the country.”

“Do you like the idea, Mr. Jones?” the senator asked him.

“Oh, Daddy,” Elizabeth said. “The poor man's name is Clarence.”

“Sir?” Jones wondered.

“I mean, Clarence, do you like the idea of politics?”

“Well, sir …” He hesitated and thought about it.

Jenny, who rarely listened to her husband's discussions, was worried about the dishes that would be used for dinner. “They're museum pieces. I should have given them to the White House,” she said to Dolly. “I thought about it, but the White House wasn't interested in a hundred pieces of dinnerware. I never thought you would use them.”

Jenny, who rarely listened to her husband's discussions, was worried about the dishes that would be used for dinner. “They're museum pieces. I should have given them to the White House,” she said to Dolly. “I thought about it, but the White House wasn't interested in a hundred pieces of dinnerware. I never thought you would use them.”

Jones said, finally answering the senator's question, “I do and I don't.” He smiled, sheepishly but winningly. “This would be the wrong place to question the integrity of politicians in general.”

“Not at all,” Elizabeth protested. “Daddy agrees with you.”

“Oh, come on,” the senator protested. “There are politicians and politicians.”

“And if they're millionaires, they don't take bribes,” Leonard said.

“Not so quick, sonny, not so quick,” Augustus said to Leonard. “A politician needs the votes, and that tends to keep him human. These two fellers coming to dinner, they're appointed. You don't need votes for that.”

“It's not a thing widely understood,” the senator said. “Maybe it's the big flaw in our constitution.”

“Gramps,” Elizabeth said, “what do these two good old boys want with you?”

“There's an example of what all that nonsense about women's rights has done. In my time, a young girl at the table with her elders would not dare to come up with a question like that.”

“It's not a table,” Elizabeth said, “it's lunch on the terrace, and I'm not a young girl, I'm a grown woman.”

“And they're not good old boys but a couple of barracudas.”

“The trouble is,” Jenny was saying to Dolly, “that until Jackie Kennedy got into the White House, no one gave a second thought to how it was furnished. Anyway, who was there? Eleanor was above such things and that Truman woman never got her feet out of Kansas—”

“I think it was Missouri, Mother.”

“However. And poor Mamie—”

“Mother, I'll be delighted to give you the dishes, and you can give them to whatever institution you like.”

“What nonsense!”

Watching Leonard with quick glances or out of the corner of her vision, Elizabeth marvelled at his control. He and Clarence Jones had plunged into an argument with Augustus about the theoretical possibility of a politician with total integrity. The young men argued against it, and Augustus dismissed the concept as being an unreal conceit.

“You want to equate the politician with the crook. That's an old American legend, still vital, and it serves to ease the burden of voters who are being plucked dry by the gang in Washington, but my daddy was a friend of Al Smith, and by my daddy's lights no finer or more decent man ever stood in politics. Sure, there were people who called Al Smith a crook. It doesn't matter.”

Elizabeth had lost track of the argument. She was watching Leonard and fighting back her tears, and smiling at the same time at Leonard's verve.

“You're telling us,” Leonard said, “that the system is admirable because it's crooked? Or in spite of?”

“A little of each.”

“Gramps, I just don't know what you mean.” He turned to his father. “Do you, Pop? Do you know what he means?”

Elizabeth realized that an unusual thing had happened. She had never heard him call the senator
Pop
before. It had once been
Daddy
and then it became
Father
and then it slid off to nothing, and speaking of Richard, Leonard would refer to him as the senator. Nor was Cromwell himself unaware of the word. The question had been addressed to him. And somehow, out of the part of her mind that heard the conversation through the screen of her mother's chatter, Dolly became aware of it, and as she turned to listen to the others, Jenny fell silent. Only Jones and the grandparents remained ignorant of the small thing that had happened.

“I think I do,” the senator said, in answer to his son's question. “There's something profoundly important in what he says, but possibly it's profoundly awful as well.”

Leonard asked Jones, “Do you make it?”

“I'm not sure. Mr. Levi,” he said to the old man, “did you ever hold public office?”

“The closest I ever came to it, aside from various panels put together for the nonsense that panels confront, was as an officer in World War Two. I suppose that was public service of a sort, but nobody ever had to vote for me. No, young man, I'm an engineer, not a politician.”

“Daddy, you're being isolated,” Elizabeth said.

“It's happened before.”

“And Gramps never did answer my question.”

“Lizzie, you don't want a world where every question is answered.”

“Only Buddha set foot in that kind of world,” Leonard murmured.

Augustus grinned at his grandson. “Oh? Tell me about it.”

“He knew all the answers to all the questions,” Leonard said slowly.

“There's someone I'd like to have on my payroll.”

“You can't hire him.”

“The way I see it,” Elizabeth said, “if those two worthy diplomats wanted to have dinner with you, you want to have dinner with them. Otherwise, you could have told them to bug off.”

“And miss a chance of seeing my grandchildren?”

“That's right, Daddy,” Dolly said. “You need an invitation to come here.”

“The trouble is,” Augustus said to the senator, “that when you come from what we in America, in all our lousy pretentiousness, call old money, you find your kids being born with more money than you have.” And seeing the expression on Jones's face, “Clarence there is puzzled. Unfortunately, it's not your problem. My father, blessed with more money than God, left a bundle of it to my daughter—cutting my parental influence to absolute zero.”

“Augustus,” Jenny said severely, “this is not the place to discuss money.”

“Any place, my dear, is the proper place to discuss money. It's the air we breathe and the food we eat.”

“Suppose we switch to the food on our plates,” Dolly said with some annoyance, turning to her children and Jones. “You're not eating. You're playing with your food.”

“Not hungry.”

“Mummy, you're absolutely right,” Elizabeth said. And to the two young men, “Come on, kids, eat something.” And to MacKenzie, hovering in the background, “Tuna fish, Mac. I can always eat tuna. It's the mother's milk of our childhood.”

“The things you say, really,” Jenny said. She disapproved of the way her daughter did things. She felt that one couple and one servant hardly suited their position, as Jenny called it; neither sufficient servants nor a proper house, referring to the sprawling Colonial structure as a mess of cottages stuck together. She had come from an old New Hampshire family and had married what her father always referred to as “the rich Jew.” Once, during the courtship, Jenny's father got around to asking Augustus where the family's money came from. “Junk jewelry,” Augustus said. “We used to peddle it here and there.” Jenny was furious with him. The fact was that the Levis, Sephardic Jews, had come to Philadelphia from Cuba in 1692. By the middle of the eighteenth century, a trickle of Polish Jews found their way to Philadelphia, and poor as they were, uncouth in their beards and sidelocks and Yiddish tongue, they became an embarrassment to their elegant Spanish-Jewish brethren who had settled in Philadelphia a few generations before. Avrum Levi, born in 1714, discovered a profitable answer to this predicament. He outfitted each Polish Jew with two donkeys and two bags of what Augustus called junk jewelry, consisting of mirrors, trinkets, glass beads, knives, and clay pipes of Dutch design in the shape of a human head—which they traded to the Indians for beaver skins. While some of the Polish Jews failed to survive in the wilderness, others did so and in the course of things, struck it rich and laid the basis for many a fortune. Very few of these families survived as Jews; they intermarried and in a few generations lost their identity. The Levis also intermarried, but Augustus converted back—as he put it.

After lunch, Augustus, ignoring his wife's plea that he lie down for a nap, informed Richard that he would like the senator to take a walk with him. As always, the senator was awed by his father-in-law's energy. “I'd much prefer the nap Jenny suggested,” Richard said.

“I'm too old to nap and you're too young to nap.”

“I'm up since five this morning.”

“So am I,” Augustus told him.

They settled for two lounge chairs alongside the swimming pool. The swimming pool, roughly rectangular, rimmed with cut granite pieces to match a granite overhang at one end, gave the impression of a natural formation, at least to a degree. Instead of detracting from it, the pool added to the charm of the little glen.

“Always liked this pool,” Augustus said. “You built it about fifteen years ago?”

“Somewhere then.”

“What did it cost you?”

“About forty thousand—with the landscaping.”

“Cost you a hundred today. Do you all swim?”

“In the morning mostly,” he replied, wondering whether the old man's purpose was to discuss family health.

“I swim. Can't get Jenny into the pool or the ocean.”

Augustus was silent for a minute or so, while the senator closed his eyes and began to drop into a doze.

“Richard!”

“Oh, yes?”

“About this dinner tonight—how did it happen?”

“Justin's mother has a big summer place near here—up in the hills, one of those old turn-of-the-century minicastles. The old lady spends a month or so there with an army of servants, and I suppose Justin pays filial homage there each summer. She's as rich as Croesus, and Justin is an eager little bastard. Well, Heller and his wife are with him for a few days, and this past Monday, Justin calls me here and announces that Heller would be simply delighted to see my father-in-law. But you have met him, haven't you?”

“A good many times—enough to know he pisses standing. That was years ago. I don't like to mix with those fellers.”

“Well, not just to meet you. But to sit down and talk. So I asked Dolly to put together this dinner party. I told Justin that we'd be pleased to have them at the house, but it would depend on your schedule. Since I owe them nothing, I could be cavalier about it. When you agreed, I invited Justin and Heller. I suspected that you agreed because you wanted to talk to them.”

“You were right. But if I know you at all, Richard, you set it up because you wanted to talk to them.”

“That's possible,” the senator agreed.

“About what?”

“What are we playing, Gus? You tell me your dream and I'll tell you mine?”

“You can guess what they want with me. I can't guess what you could want with those two wolves in wolves' clothing. Unless you're planning to defect?”

“That will be the day. No way, Gus. The day I decide to step over the line and become a Republican and join your set of thieves, I'll toss away my toga and earn an honest living.”

“Hear! Hear!” Augustus said goodnaturedly. “After that excellent lunch my daughter provided, I cannot berate you. Not that your son of a bitch is any better than mine; but we're richer. Your boys are easier to bribe.”

“Are they? Well, about this dinner tonight, I would say, Gus, that they want to talk about the road.”

“I think I always underrate you, Richard. That bovine exterior and the way you fumble around for words throws people off the track.”

“That makes me out to be devious. Do you really think I'm devious, Gus?”

“No, I can't say that I do. I think the way you are is there. You don't alter it.”

“I don't know whether you're being nice or nasty.”

“And I still don't know what you want out of our revered secretary of state.”

“All in good time.”

“Ah. Well, I won't press you.”

“What about the road?” the senator asked.

“We'll see. I have two hundred million in it—almost one quarter of a billion dollars. That, Richard, is not play money.”

“It certainly is nothing I ever played with.”

“And you're going to be close mouthed?”

“For the moment.”

“I might be of some help,” Augustus said.

“I hope so.”

“All right. Enough of that. What about Leonard? He looks like hell.”

“He's always been too thin.”

“What's with the two of you? Why the hell can't you be father and son?”

“Always subtle, aren't you, Gus? Why don't you ask me how many times a week I sleep with your daughter?”

“I'd like to.”

“Yes, and I'd like to deck you, except that I never punched anyone, and it's late to start. The reason we've never had a real fight is that you're Dolly's father, and I'm not going to start one now.”

Augustus grinned at him. “You know, I like you, Richard. I always have, and it's no news to you that I'm a nasty old bastard.” He put out his hand. “Shall we start again?”