The Dinner Party (5 page)

“Twenty minutes,” Leonard said.

“Towel!”

He threw a towel to her and watched her rub herself dry. She was breathing deeply, totally alive with herself. “Give me time,” she said. “I've only been at it a week.” She shook out her hair. “What is that—croissants? Give me one. And coffee. That dear angel Nellie. Well, Jonesy,” she said to Clarence, “what do you think of this big shit pile of money and class?”

“Given a chance, I could learn to live in a place like this.”

“I bet you could. Money makes the world go round. But it costs. You don't have the right grandpa, you can't afford it. And the senator has to have a place in Washington. Respectable. A house in Georgetown, proper for proper entertainment.” She took a sip of coffee. “Of course, it's small potatoes compared to Grandpa's modest way of life. He has seven homes.”

“Come on, you're kidding.”

“Didn't Lenny tell you?”

Leonard shook his head despairingly.

“It's the truth. Lenny is embarrassed as hell with wealth. I don't mind it. I can face right up to it. Myself, I don't think seven houses are a reflection of sense or sanity, but then I don't think rich people are very sane—or poor people, come to think of it.”

“Seven homes?”

“Poor black boy can't believe it. I don't blame you. I'll give you a rundown. Old family house in New York City on East Sixty-fourth Street. Five floors, seventeen rooms, built by his granddaddy in eighteen ninety-six. Lodge in the Adirondacks, apartment in Paris, house on Cape Cod, house in Montecito—his granddaddy used to be buddy-buddy with old William Randolph Hearst, and built the Montecito place to be reasonably near him. How many is that?”

“Too many,” Leonard said. “Will you forget the goddamn houses.”

“Lenny is like my mother. They both have what Thorstein Veblen used to call the conscience of the rich, which is as much of a lie as everything else, because the rich have no conscience. I like to bring up old Veblen because nobody in our generation knows who he is.”

“You impress me,” Clarence said.

“Come on, Jonesy, you're too smart to be impressed by me.”

“Will you come down,” Leonard said plaintively. “It's wonderful to see you like this, and I hate to lay the worst kind of shit on you, but I have to.”

She stopped her chatter, looked at him thoughtfully and waited.

“You and me. This is not for Mom or for the senator—do you understand. Just you.”

“All right,” she whispered.

“Begin with the fact that I'm gay.”

Elizabeth smiled wistfully. “That's all, Lenny? I've always known it—a long time, anyway.”

“I know. I wasn't sure.”

“So what? Jonesy here is gay, and the poor bastard's black. Suppose Jonesy were Jewish—Jewish, black and gay, that would be something—”

“Don't kid about it,” Clarence said.

She smelled it and sensed it. It was as if the gentle morning breeze had stopped, as if everything had suddenly turned into winter. She saw it in their faces, in their eyes.

“Oh, my God, what is it?” she begged them.

“Poor darling Liz,” Leonard said, his eyes brimming with tears. “I have Aids.”

Elizabeth stared at him for an endless moment, and then Leonard saw her face collapse. Something tore away all the flesh and muscle that supported her beauty, leaving a crinkled, distorted mask of sorrow and horror. Leonard went to her and embraced her, clutching her to him while she buried her weeping face on his breast. He held her like that, feeling her sobs contort her body, and whispering to her, “It's all right, Lizzie. I didn't want you to cry. Please don't cry. You know what happens to me when you cry.” He was crying. That's what happened to him when his sister wept, but it had not happened since they were children; and now clutching his sister, he remembered how, eight years old, he had felt his first intimation of mortality, a little boy alone in bed with the cold image of death.

“Don't cry, please.”

Clarence, watching, found himself being drawn into their grief. Close as he was to Leonard, he could never let down his walls of defense for a white man. He had his own hours of terror and despair after the tests told him his own final truth, and being black, he kept that as well as other things inside himself. He resisted the forces drawing him to the brother and sister as long as he could; then he dropped into a chair, covered his face with his arms and wept. He was weeping for himself. How lonely it is to weep for oneself.

Leonard pulled them out of it. “For Christ's sake, there comes Dad! No tears, please! I can't face him with it—please!”

They had dried their tears and pulled themselves together as the senator came onto the pool terrace. He wore a pair of pink and yellow swim shorts, and in spite of being thirty pounds overweight, he was a fine figure of a man, broad-shouldered and well built. He shook hands with Clarence with an energy that excluded any sensitivity to what might have been going on before he arrived. He boomed a cheerful good morning to Leonard and he kissed Elizabeth with exuberance. “So you're young Jones,” he said to Clarence. “Heard a lot about you, and glad you could come. Make yourself at home. We have a fine library and a nice selection of those movie cassettes that seem to be engulfing the country. Myself, when I want to forget the world, I take an hour at the billiard table.” With that, he walked to the pool and plunged in and came up shouting, “Cold—cold!”

Leonard managed to smile and say, “You see, he never saw me. Never knew I was here.”

SIX

R
ichard Cromwell swam two full lengths of the long pool before he realized that he had done an utterly deplorable thing; except for “good morning,” he had not said a word directly to his son, whom he had not seen for two months. He was taken sick at the thought. How could he have done anything like that? It was not in his nature, and never before had he done anything like this—or had he? He tried to examine himself, to roll back his memory and make a picture of how he had treated his son through the years; but it was too difficult while he was swimming, and after the fourth length, he pulled himself out of the water hoping to repair the situation.

They had gone. What now? He loved his son, he loved both his kids; he threw this declaration of his feelings at himself, muttering in his mind, Just don't tell me I don't love my kids. Well, it was not easy to love Leonard. Other sons related to their fathers, played ball with them, rolled in the grass with them, went walking with them. Yes, there were times he could get Leonard to walk with him; he could count the times on the fingers of his hands; but that didn't mean he didn't love his son, nor did it mean that his son didn't love him. Or did his son love him? It had never occurred to him to ask himself that question. The boy was at prep school, the boy was at college, the senator was in Washington. I do my best, his apology to himself. But what now? What could he do now?

SEVEN

A
t ten o'clock, Dolly joined Ellen in the kitchen to go over the menu for tonight's dinner. In all the years that Ellen and Mac had worked for her, Dolly had never found a way to an easy relationship. She had grown up with servants, but they were white servants, and her mother had a distant, imperious way with them, a way that came from an era when the poor were poor and lived and died with it, and the rich were rich by the grace of God. But when it came down to black servants and today, a difference appeared.

There was a difference, subtle, but always there, as Dolly spelled it out to her Washington, D.C. analyst. He was one of the most expensive analysts in Washington, charging one hundred and fifty dollars for his fifty-minute hour, and with enough positive reputation to back that up. He had at least two dozen patients who were wives to elected and appointed officials in high places, and Dolly often felt that the world might be at least slightly improved if the husbands were to take their wives' places. She irritated Dr. Philip Westfield when she referred to this. She irritated Dr. Westfield in other ways too—which was not supposed to be the case with a bright and reputable psychiatrist, and when she got too deeply under his skin, he ceased to be a Freudian listener and spoke out. As once when he said, “You make too much of this black business, we all recognize it. We live with it.”

“What do you mean—you live with it? Blacks live with it. They suffer, not you.” That finished her analysis for what it was worth. She decided that if she stayed out of Washington for a maximum number of days, it would be cheaper and more effective than analysis.

Apropos of her fluttering memories, she asked Ellen whether she had ever known anyone who was analysed, and to her surprise, Ellen replied that her daughter was taking courses in psychology, and that after she had produced two children, and the store was doing well enough to hire a pharmacist, she'd like to go in for therapy.

“Good! Encourage her. Now let's get down to work,” Dolly said. “You know, we're dealing with eleven now. The secretary of state and an assistant secretary. Be duly impressed.”

“I'm duly impressed.”

They sat at the big kitchen table, each of them with a pencil and work pad. For Dolly, a proper dinner party had to be a theatrical production in its own right, planned as such down to every detail. And details change. “I couldn't get the salmon,” Dolly said.

“That's a shame.”

“They had a few steaks, but not enough and I didn't like the look of it. I took sole instead.”

“Just as good.”

“Well, almost. I'll run through the menu again, and you tell me where we have a problem—if we do. Start with a quenelle of sole.”

“Then we'll want a white butter sauce, won't we?”

“I'm not sure of it. But jot it down anyway,” Dolly said. “I think we have everything. There are two jars of the caviar and the shallots are still good. Wine, vinegar, butter—we have a recipe for it somewhere.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Main dish, lamb, flageolets—do we have two boxes of flageolets? If not, we'll do wild rice. Very classy, but I dislike it.”

Ellen went to the pantry and reported that there were ample flageolets.

“And chopped spinach.”

“We have about five pounds of the fresh spinach, and I think there are eight boxes of the frozen stuff.”

“Fresh spinach. My mother knows.”

“Indeed she does,” Ellen agreed.

“Now on the salad, I want your opinion. I thought of endive and sliced, peeled tomatoes.”

“Endive?”

“Oh? Come on, speak.”

“I feel it's in the same class as wild rice.”

“Right. Pretentious and not great. No argument? Boston lettuce?”

“Arugula?” Ellen asked tentatively.

“Absolutely. But that wants a tart dressing.”

“No question about that,” Ellen agreed. They were always closer and easier when they worked. “Still lemon mousse for dessert?”

“Oh, absolutely. My father adores it.”

“He had it last time,” Ellen reminded her.

“With a lemon sauce. This time, raspberry sauce. Makes all the difference in the world.”

“It does, sure enough. I spent an hour yesterday squeezing them berries through the sieve. Miserable seeds.”

“But it's done.”

“All done.”

MacKenzie had come into the kitchen while they were discussing the menu, and he stood at the stainless-steel utility sink, scrubbing his hands. “Miss Dolly,” he said, “did you notice anything driving the station wagon?”

“The brakes pull to the right—just a bit.”

“Well, I got it. They'll pull straight now. When do you want me to go to the airport and pick up your folks?”

“Oh? No, I'll need you here, Mac. I want the silver polished, and I want you to see whether you can get the stains out of the dining room rug. I also want to talk about the meat.”