The Dinner Party (9 page)

“Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson.”

“How do you know that?”

Mac shrugged and spread his hands. “Anyone knows that.”

“Well, if you break one—”

“You ever see me break a dish?”

He was grinning at her, fondly, and she said, “Oh, for heaven's sake, you are trying. Trying. And don't you dare put them in the dishwasher. Just wipe each one off gently with a warm-water cloth.”

“Yavo, mein Führer.”

“Oh, get out of here.”

There was a tapping on the door of the senator's study. “Come in,” he said. Dolly opened the door and came into the room, and for a moment stood waiting, her whole manner hesitant and even apologetic. The senator's study was a comfortable room, a tufted leather couch, a pair of deep leather chairs, paneled walls, two excellent paintings, one a Thomas Eakins of boys swimming naked in a creek, and the other an unusually large George Inness Hudson highland scene, a gift from his father-in-law. There were also two Audubon bird prints, a gift from Dolly out of her inheritance. Her great-grandfather had a full folio of the bird prints, and on his death in 1890, the prints were divided among his children. Eventually, eight of the prints came to Dolly. Six hung in various rooms of the house and two were in the senator's study. The rich rose and ivory Chinese rug gave a glow to the study. Dolly loved the room. She had put it together herself, picking up the rug when she and Richard were in Hong Kong, and finding the Eakins at an auction in London, and bidding for it and getting it at a wonderful price because he was American and not too desired then—before Eakins jumped to six and then seven figures.

The senator, who had been gazing out of the window, turned as she entered. He was such a big, good-looking man, Dolly thought, well, not exactly good-looking, his nose too heavy, his face too wide, but casually handsome in light gray trousers and a black golf sweater.

“You're very angry at me, aren't you,” Dolly said.

“No—”

“I say awful things. I have a terrible temper.”

The senator shrugged. She hated to have contention in the house when the children were home and even more so when her parents came. He had never been fully aware of Dolly or able to understand her movements and motives. At best, he was aware of her devotion to order, propriety, indeed to conservatism; on the other hand, in Washington, she despised the conservatives she met socially, their manners—or lack of manners—their taste, their gauche and naked drive for power, the furniture in their homes, the way they did their hair, their use of overpriced jewelry, their impassive, nonregistering faces whether she spoke of the clean, pure influence of the Shaker movement on American art or the fact that Sam Houston could quote the entire
Iliad
by heart. They were without history, ruling a country whose past was not simply a mystery but a handful of myths pasted on haze and confusion; and the senator could never be entirely sure that her devotion to his party was not simply a part of her contempt for the other party.

“I'd like you to help me,” she said. It was as close to an apology as she could get, not an apology for what she had said but only for the manner in which she had said it. “The seating?”

He nodded.

“Oh, you're not speaking. Is it one of those days?”

“I'm speaking. Of course I'll help you. But the seating's a small matter.”

“After lunch—I'll still have so much to do. If you could spend some time with Mother and Father?”

“Sure.”

“And maybe get to talk with Leonard. That would be so good, Richard. He's seems so sad—I think there is something dreadfully wrong.”

“Oh, no, no. You worry too much about the kids. They both look wonderful.”

“How can you say they look wonderful. Do you ever really look at them?”

“Dolly,” he said tiredly, “if it were another day, I could take off to my office or whatever. Today I have to be here. Can we sidetrack this quarrel before it becomes irreversible.”

“I don't want to quarrel with you.”

“All right. I'm not an insensitive idiot, Dolly. I know there's a wall between Leonard and myself. I know I built it. I don't know how, but I made it, and I don't know how to climb over it.”

“Why don't you forget about walls and just go to him.”

“Yes,” he said, recalling the times he had tried. You don't just forget about walls. They remain. “I'll try.”

When she defeated him, when she touched the nerve that deflated him entirely, leaving a tragic and lost man, a frightened man that the world never saw—then she would be filled with remorse and compassion, finding in this stressed, overweight middle-aged man someone that she had fallen in love with so long ago, someone more than just a memory.

“You mentioned the seating,” he said.

“Oh, yes. Well, I do need help. I had no idea he was bringing this Jones boy home with him. And now that he's here—”

“Of course.”

“Time was we could feed the kids in the breakfast room,” she said, almost wistfully.

“What do you know about Jones?”

“He's Leonard's classmate at Harvard. Jones loves what he's doing as much as Leonard hates it. Leonard's in law school only to please you. You know that, don't you?”

“Don't turn everything back on me, Dolly. I asked you about the black boy, Jones.”

“Oh, Richard, I'm sorry. Why do I do it? I don't know. About Jones—try to remember his first name, Clarence. Leonard thinks he's brilliant. Graduated cum laude. Very poor background. Did it with scholarships and such.”

They had left the senator's study now and were walking toward the dining room.

“Good voice and good speech,” Dolly went on. “I think Leonard mentioned that he's from North Carolina. I'm not worried. Be a good thing for our guests to break bread with a plain black kid who isn't some overstuffed Uncle Tom on show for the voters.”

“It won't hurt.”

“I told Leonard that it was black tie, and he didn't mind. He has an extra white jacket for Clarence, and they're about the same size. But the seating …” They were in the dining room now.

The dining room, as with the rest of the house, had been decorated by Dolly. She had decorated and furnished the entire house as, according to her lights, a house should be furnished and decorated. In Dolly's case, that meant a time frame between 1750 and 1820, and for the most part pieces produced in Philadelphia, New York, or Boston—with just an occasional intrusion from Great Britain. Other people might decorate differently; that was all right for others. The rich gray-mauve toile above the chair rail, the gleaming white woodwork, the mahogany table, the brass candle chandelier, and the twelve chairs, made in Philadelphia in 1793 in the style of Queen Anne, all of it sitting on a properly threadbare Persian rug, the walls exhibiting a group of American primitives that were a gift from her grandmother—this was proper and right for Dolly. “In Mother's world,” Elizabeth had once explained to a friend, “nothing ages, nothing changes, nothing is new. It's wonderful but also ridiculous.”

Richard Cromwell simply accepted it with appropriate reverence. To marry a rich woman is not as simple or as easy as some believe, and Richard Cromwell found himself in a foreign land where only the language was familiar. Only grifters, conmen, and out-and-out bums marry rich women and fall into it like a letter into a mail slot, using and spending with the pathological ease of middle-European noblemen; the senator was none of the above, and he had never made an easy adjustment to his wife's money or style of living. A teller in a midwestern bank, his father brought home a slowly increasing paycheck that started in the 'thirties at twenty-seven dollars a week. His whole boyhood had been skimped: shoes or new trousers, chopped meat or Spam, a movie for the family or medicine. Real poverty is formless, shapeless, chaotic, and the one good fortune of the senator was that he had a mother who was a rock of discipline and organization, and she had relentlessly fought and rejected the chaos of poverty. In many ways Dolly was like his mother, but at the opposite end of the social spectrum; that was why he had married her, not for her money.

MacKenzie had just finished inserting the boards that widened the table to its full extent. “If you would just hold the other end, Senator, we could get rid of the cracks.”

The table came together properly. MacKenzie excused himself, and Dolly spread the place cards on the table.

“You and I at the two ends,” she said. “We have to hang it on that. Ordinarily I'd say give me the two lords of Pennsylvania Avenue, and you'd have their wives.”

“Why not?” the senator wondered. “As a start.”

“Because Augustus Adams Fillmore Rosenberg Levi is being picked up at the airport by our two kids this very moment.” It gave her a reason to smile and signal that she would like to be friends, at least for today.

“Good heavens! Is that his real name?”

“Every last bit of it.”

“You never told me that. Nobody has four given names.”

“Pop has. My grandfather was a peculiar man.”

“That's the trouble with an old family,” the senator said. “They get peculiar.”

“Oh?” She regarded him thoughtfully.

“I say that in awe. And respect. My word, Dolly, four names. I'm envious. My family never had enough money to even begin to be peculiar. A middle name, mine is Joseph. But no more.”

“Your daddy was a lovely man, and a gentleman. Sometimes, you're like him, Richard. You can be very funny and very sweet. Sometimes,” she temporized.

“When you decided I was having an affair, why didn't you say something?”

“To what end? I don't want to divorce you.”

“Why?”

“God knows—we're doing the seating, aren't we?”

“Yes. Sure. You feel that Gus will be offended if he's not sitting at your right hand?”

“Something like that.”

“Suppose you put Winnie Justin on my left. She's bright and a bit nasty but she's good-looking. Gus is impressed with a smart, good-looking lady, so he could sit next to her, and then you put Liz on the other side of him, and he ought to be happy as a clam.”

“We're eleven. That means five on one side of the table and four on the other. Who sits between Liz and me? Or is it the five side?” She slid the place cards around to match the senator's suggestion.

“No, I think the four side.”

“That will put Gus in a pet. When he comes here and the kids are home, he'll want a spot between Liz and me.”

“Dolly, I know that your father has met practically everyone in this country and almost everyone in most other countries, and he knows Web Heller, but this will be the first time he's had dinner with Bill Justin, a nasty and powerful man. He's sitting down with two of the most powerful men in the country—in fact with two of the men who run this country behind that charade they call the presidency, so it seems to me that what Gus would appreciate most is to sit facing these two major linemen. That way he can say his piece without twisting his head and talking across someone else.”

“Possible,” Dolly agreed, moving the cards. “If I put Heller next to me—and then who sits next to him?”

“Jenny. Your mother.”

“O.K. Mom can hold her own with that cadaverous old bastard. Then on the other side of mother—Franny Heller?”

“Why not. I can take her. A little flattery and she melts all over her dinner plate. And then to my left, Clarence Jones.”

“Good—good thinking. You'll have him under your wing.” She slid the cards around. “We're left with Father, Liz and Leonard. But we make progress.” She stared at the cards. “You want Liz next to Jones—or Winnie Justin?”

“If we put Liz next to Jones, then Leonard gets Winnie Justin.”

“Oh, no. That won't do. Absolutely not.”

“Then she's mine—right here, between Jones and Gus.”

“Can Jones handle her? Leonard says he's enormously bright, but she is South and she has a sharp tongue and a reputation for bitchiness.”

“Still, she's at a dinner table under her husband's eye. She'll behave. And Jones may surprise us.”

“Well, here it is,” Dolly agreed, moving the cards to form a miniature pattern on the polished surface of the table. On my right, Leonard, Liz, Daddy, Winnie and Jones. On my left, Heller, Mother, Bill Justin and Frannie Heller.”

“It should work.”

“You know how many perfectly rotten dinner parties we've been to? It's because few hostesses pause to consider that they're not simply serving food, but creating a work of art—I mean a theatrical piece.” She looked at her husband questioningly.

“Yes. I suppose I'd agree with that. Certainly about the lousy dinner parties,” thinking how strange it was that he, a United States senator, with all the weight of a suicidal world on his mind and conscience, should be occupied with the seating arrangement at a dinner table. But thus the whole world was occupied, he realized, eating, drinking, screwing, weeping, laughing, robbing, killing, and why should he be any different?

Dolly shrugged. “I apologize,” she said bitterly. “I'm pleading my case that there's some reason for me to exist on this earth, that I'm some use to somebody.”