The Dinner Party (20 page)

“And stupid, Mother. Richard will protect her, and if at age fifty-two she hasn't learned to protect herself, heaven help her.”

“You put her next to Bill Justin.”

“Winnie Justin will be watching him like a hawk. And you were just defending him, Mother.”

“Why are you so provoking? You know that I defend the office, not the man. Gus says he's a perfect swine.”

“You're wonderful. Mother, you don't have a double standard—you have a triple standard.”

“What nonsense. Why did the colored boy leave?”

“I suppose he was shy.”

“That was no reason to leave. He was Leonard's guest. You could have fixed him a tray of sandwiches for his room.”

Dolly sighed and shook her head. “You've been my mother for forty-five years and you still astonish me.”

“Well, what is it this year?” Jenny asked, irritated. “Is it Negro or black or what.”

“Mother!”

“I think I'd better go to my room and get dressed. We get into these awful quarrels and I know you're so displeased with me, and I never know why. It never happens with my other children. Why are you so difficult, Dolly?”

“Because I love you.”

“That's no answer.” She shook her head, petulant for a long moment, and then smiling. “Could Ellen help me dress?”

“She's up to her neck in things. Anyway, it would upset her. She's not a lady's maid, Mother.”

“Upset her. Good heavens, your servants are servants, Dolly.”

“I could send Nellie.”

“That silly girl! Absolutely not.”

“Then I'll help you myself. I have time now.”

“I don't understand why you don't have a personal maid. You run such a large house—there's plenty of room for servants. You should have a chauffeur and a personal maid.”

“I'm sure,” Dolly agreed.

“I don't need you to help me dress,” Jenny said, aggrieved. “Gus will provide whatever help I need. You always make me feel beastly—you know you do. Have I ever refused a contribution you asked for? The world is just the way it is; I can't change it.”

“Neither can I, Mother,” Dolly agreed. “I don't want to make you miserable. I do love you. Can't I help you dress?”

“Absolutely not,” Jenny said firmly, having established her position, and with that she stalked out of the room.

Dolly sighed and shook her head. She was the pivot of a seesaw, with her mother at one end and her daughter at the other—and every disagreement at one end or the other was of little consequence, and the realization pressed her on to the notion that her whole life was of little consequence. A few more passages through the seasons, and it was done. Her mother was an old woman, and she was middle-aged, and it all appeared to have happened in a moment when her back was turned. And then—whenever she thought of death a cold chill shivered its way through her body—and then what?

She walked around the table, slowly, examining it. It's really the only purpose I have, she said to herself, to put together a dinner table. If I were a waitress in a restaurant, I would be doing the same thing, but I'd be connected with reality. Here there's just no connection with reality. On the other hand, she realized that there was a true mythic connection in what was happening this evening. Two of the most powerful people in all of mankind's history on earth were coming to her pleasant old country house. They represented a power that dwarfed the Alexanders and Caesars and Napoleons and Hitlers. They could press a button and extinguish, not only mankind, but all that lives on earth. They were the thunder gods, and like her own father, they were neither Jew nor Gentile, not human in any aspect of prayer or hope or reverence. She knew. She had been born into this and lived with it and watched it. Now, dutifully she walked slowly around her dining room table, touching a fork here, a spoon there, a plate just slightly off center on its doily of handcrafted Irish linen. She couldn't help but admire the fine old china, the glittering silver on the burnished mahogany table, the splendid correctness. All of it pleasing, as a work of art is pleasing.

TWENTY-FOUR

I
don't know how long I have,” Leonard said to Jones, as they drove into town. “They couldn't tell me that. They weren't sure.”

“I know.”

“It seems unimportant, and I make this huge fuss about it. It helps not to know exactly when.”

“You're a brave man,” Jones said.

“The coward dies a thousand times. I have already died ten thousand times. Why do you lie to me, Jonesy?”

“I try to help you, Lenny.”

“You have.”

“When I get down home, I have to get a job. There's a lawyer in town, name of Ruddiman, a white guy and pretty decent, and he says I can have a job clerking with him for the summer for forty dollars a week.”

“That's below the legal minimum.”

“They don't fuss much with legal minimums down there. But Daddy spoke to the foreman of the loading section at the Coca-Cola plant, and they always take on hands for the summer months. The foreman, Jake Tinsel, said he'd take me on and they pay two-seventy-five an hour. Makes a difference.”

“It sure does. What does your daddy say?”

“He needs the money and I need the money, but he says I can make whatever choice I think best. I'd learn a bellyful of North Carolina law, and that will count in the long run.”

“On forty dollars a week, you won't do much traveling.”

“Sure. I know. But you could come down. We got a good family, and they'd treat you like one of us.”

“Even if they knew I have Aids?” Leonard asked bleakly.

“We don't have to tell them.”

“Are you out of your mind? You'd have to tell them.”

“We spent the night at your home, and nobody told anyone anything.”

“Because of the dinner. Only because of the dinner party tonight.”

Then Jones was silent, and there was no more talking until they drove into town and pulled up at the bus station. Jones went inside and bought his ticket.

“About thirty minutes,” he informed Leonard.

“Let's have a drink.”

“You? You're driving, Lenny, and you're not that much of a drinker. What the devil are you thinking?”

“I'm not going to kill myself,” Leonard said. “If that's what you're thinking, just blow it out of your mind. I'm scared, I'm not depressed, and there's still a chance in a million that they'll find some kind of vaccine.” He left the car and walked around it to where Jones stood uneasily, and he put his arm across Jones's shoulder. “You talk to your mom and dad, and tell them I'm sick, and tell them that there's no danger to anyone else. I know what Aids does to people. It scares the hell out of them.”

Jones nodded, unable to speak, his eyes brimming with tears. He tried to say something, and his voice came out as a hoarse croak. He tried again, speaking slowly, controlling his deep, soft voice. “You never hurt anyone.”

“It's not crime and punishment,” Leonard said. “We don't hurt people. There's no judgment on us. Go home and tell them the whole damn thing.”

“You know?” Jones asked mournfully.

“Of course I know.”

“I wanted to help you.”

“I know.”

“I didn't want you to have the guilts. I'm stronger than you.”

“I know. But there's no guilt, Jonesy. Go home.”

Jones went off, and Leonard stood and watched as Jones walked through the ugly concrete building to the open side, where the bus stood waiting. He resisted an impulse to run after the black man and beg, Jonesy, Jonesy, don't leave me here alone. Let me go with you.

Then he got into his car and began the drive back, pleading in himself, Why? Why did it have to be us?

TWENTY-FIVE

W
ithout any reason that she could put her finger on, Dolly felt a cold chill gathering around her heart. It was unwelcome and hateful. She had experienced moments of true exultation today. She had gone to bed with her husband, and he had made love to her. Perhaps five, six, ten years ago, he had made love to her that way, and it was possible that he had never made love to her before in just that way, so long ago, so hard to remember passion; but even if he had, this remained new, and for the past hour her body had glowed with delight. Now fear began to take the edge off her delight, and she turned it to Leonard. She had sensed that something was wrong with Leonard, a difference in his manner, a hesitation in response, an uncertainty that Elizabeth appeared to share. She had put it down to the presence of Clarence Jones. Her children, growing up as they had between her house in Georgetown and this country place for those times when the Senate was not in session, were not easily bemused. If anything, they were sophisticated to a point that sometimes irritated her and sometimes troubled her; but this intrusion of the young black man into a situation as delicate as this dinner party was either intentional or at least in good part irresponsible. She couldn't deny that his departure had eased things; but after all, she had never in word or deed allowed him to sense her discomfort—or had she? Or had Richard? No. She dismissed the thought quickly. Whatever one might say about Senator Richard Cromwell, the notion that he could be rude or thoughtless in relation to a black man was ridiculous.

Perhaps her father or her mother? Not her father, she decided; for all of his icy aloofness and disdain for morality, his manners were impeccable—at least in terms of strangers. How often she had heard him spell out his definition of a gentleman: a gentleman is someone who treats a common laborer like a prince and a prince like a common laborer. It was not a definition that Dolly agreed with, since she had come to believe that the quality of a gentleman is something more than a display of manners; but she was satisfied that no remark or manner of her father's could have precipitated Jones's departure. On the other hand, her mother had carefully avoided any conversation with Jones, but it was hardly likely that he would have expected conversation from a lady Richard had once referred to as the “queen Wasp of Wasps.”

Dolly walked through the house to the senator's room, full of an overwhelming need to see him, to touch him. The door to his office was open, and as she entered, he called to her from the bedroom. He was standing in front of a full length door mirror, black shoes, black trousers, dress shirt pleated and rather elegant, white suspenders, and bow tie drooping from his neck.

“I tried,” he said.

Dolly took over the bow tie. “Oh, come on. Crouch a bit. You're seven feet tall. Or do you want to sit down?”

“I can still crouch. Damn it, I can still do a one-knee bend.”

“Puffery! You haven't done a one-knee bend in twenty years.”

He watched her hands as she leaned over his shoulders from behind him and tied the knot. She was as manually effective as he was incompetent. In less than a minute, the tie was perfect.

“You're not even dressed,” he remarked.

“Plenty of time. I'm a quick change; you know that. By the way, Clarence Jones bugged out. Leonard drove him to the bus station in town.”

The senator thought about it for a moment or two, and then he asked why?

“I don't know, to tell the truth.”

“Did Liz go with them?”

“No—just the two boys.”

“Did you ask Liz why?”

“Yes. She said he was shy, scared, uneasy, embarrassed—what you will.”

“She didn't indicate that it was anything you or I said, or Gus and Jenny?”

“No. Really, no. I think her explanation covers it. I must say, Richard, that I'm a bit relieved.”

“Yes, it occurred to me that our two gents from the high places could take it poorly. Especially Justin's wife.”

“But I don't want to feel better about it,” Dolly complained. “Richard, what is wrong with me—with both of us? That beautiful young man, do you know that every step of the way he fought through on scholarships. His father is a plain working man, and in the South. Think of the brains, the natural elegance of that young man, and we were apologizing to ourselves for sitting him at the table with that old man who presides over the end of things.”