The Good Life (3 page)

She smiled crookedly. Her hair, almost white, stuck out in feathery tufts. “The Hot Spot. I don't usually go there. Marty says he usually doesn't either.”

“That's right,” I said, stopping myself from telling her that Martin invariably called the place The Wet Spot. He went there more often than he told her. “Marty,” I said.

He kissed me on the cheek. “The place looks nice. I like the balloons. Where's Jeff?”

“Pouring a drink.”

Martin took off across the room, and I grabbed Lora's hand before she could follow him. “I'm very, very glad you're here.”

Perhaps she was tipsy enough not to hear the pressure in my voice. She said, “I like parties. I go to every party I can find.”

“We don't have them very often,” I said. “You tell us if we're doing something wrong.” I was tipsy myself, high enough on gin to be unsure whether I was feeling delight or dread. “Promise me you'll tell.”

“You've been drinking,” she said. “That's a good start. Make sure everybody's drinking.”

As if surveillance were required. Guests hardly paused at the door before they steamed over to our little bar. I smelled scotch, bourbon, lots and lots of gin. Martin stood with a glass in each hand. Even Dik popped open a beer, which might have accounted for his toreador spin at the end of “Walkin' After Midnight.” Once he started dancing, the man was as light on his feet as a sunbeam. When he and Alice whirled by, he said, “Dancing puts us in harmony with all creation.”

“Preach on,” I said, and he winked.

Jeff was circulating, telling jokes, freshening drinks. From across the room I noticed for the first time that his yellow shirt, which I had never liked, lent his skin a summery glow. I caught up with him on the way to the kitchen for more ice.

“Did you see Martin?”

“And Lora,” he said. “Lora Ruth, first of four daughters. Never divorced, grows tomatoes on her patio, rides a Kawasaki.”

“Blood type?”

“I'd say she's a universal donor.”

“I hope so,” Martin said, leaning around the other side of the kitchen door. “Felicia thinks I need some new blood.”

“Your old sources have dried up?” Jeff said.

Martin smirked amiably, and even through my ginned-up haze, I was alarmed. Martin was rarely amiable. “Show some respect. Felicia is wise. She knows many things.”

“Sharpen up, buster,” I mumbled. “I know everything.”

“For instance, she knows how to give a party for her best friend,” Martin said. “A dancing party. Why aren't you two dancing?”

“All we can do is the waltz.” I motioned toward the living room. Someone had put on Herb Alpert. “This is a cha-cha. I guess.”

“No one will be giving a grade. Get out there.”

“What about you?” Jeff said to him. Absurdly, I felt comforted, as if Jeff were trying to protect me by throwing the spotlight on Martin. “Where's your date?”

“Easy come,” Martin said, and shrugged. “Guess she found more congenial company. My fate to be alone.”

“Don't be a jerk. Felicia will dance with you.” He didn't look at me, which was prudent: no auctioneer should look at the flesh on the block. Confused by my train of thought, I stopped it. Jeff wasn't selling anything. He was giving me to Martin, who was giving me back. My face buzzed with blood and liquor.

I said carefully, “Felicia is sitting this one out.”

“You're a good dancer, babe. You should get out there.” Jeff sounded almost sober, but he never called me babe.

“Both of you. Show us how it's done,” Martin said.

“Up to you, man. You're supposed to dance with your hostess,” Jeff said.

“Is that how Cary Grant does it?”

“Shut up, Martin,” I said.

“You love his Cary Grant.”

Jeff said, “Martin, this is not the time to remind us of everything we ever loved. You're like hell's matchmaker.”

Martin's smile was a cherub's. “It's a good time to remember what you've loved. What else is a party for?”

I said, “Celebrations are external as well as internal. We are opening the doors to new energy.”

Martin and Jeff stared at me. “When did you learn to channel Dik?” Martin said.

“I told you: I know
everything
.” My voice rang across two rooms—somebody had taken off Herb Alpert in mid-“Tijuana Taxi.” After a moment came dreamy strings and Patti Page, her voice warm as breath. “I was waltzin' with my darlin'—”

Not lightly, Martin pushed me toward Jeff. “There's your waltz.”

“Ease up, Glad Hand. We'll dance when we feel like it,” I said.

“Do it for me,” Martin said. “As a favor.”

“I don't recall owing you a favor.”

“Then I guess I'll just be in your debt,” he said. I flinched, but his voice remained small. His hands and lips were shaking.

Jeff gazed into the living room. He said, “Alice looks like a princess.”

In front of the picture window, Alice and Dik and Lora were swaying, arms linked, singing along with the sad, pretty lyrics—love taken away, love lost. Alice's pink skirt billowed, enough fabric there to wrap up the three of them.

“Jesus, this is a sweet song,” Jeff said. I was prepared to go refresh my drink, but before I could move, Martin had his arms around us both, shoving my shoulder into Jeff's armpit.

“Come on, now. It's your song.” Martin's breath across my shoulder was rough as a file. I twisted my head to look at Jeff, whose eyes were full of tears. He always cried when he drank too much, although I didn't know how much he'd drunk tonight. The three of us swayed, a dangerous activity for people so drunk. We tottered across the room, stumbling into a lamp and a chair until we came to rest against the bookcase. When I closed my eyes, my head swam, and when I opened them I was dizzied by Jeff's yellow shirt.

The song seemed to last for hours, as songs in drunk time do, and until the last note we kept swaying. Then we slowly came unstuck, Jeff's hands sliding down my back, Martin still unsteadily singing that he'd lost his little darlin'.

“Nobody is lost here,” I snarled. “Nobody is going anywhere. Do you hear me?”

From across the living room, Dik's high voice: “This is the center. Get used to it,” he said. “This is joy, whether you like it or not.”

 

 

 

O
N A DIFFERENT DAY
, Frederick Weiler might not have been bothered by the puffs of chintz his daughters had recently installed above the kitchen windows. The puffs replaced the quilted, energy-efficient shades he had put up when his oldest daughter, Laura, was still a baby. On another day, his feet might not have longed for the friendly prickle from the sisal floor mats that his daughters had covered with throw rugs. But today his column about sustainable energy had been rejected by the editor of the
West Haven Hills Advocate
, who pointed out that he had just taken a whole series of articles by Frederick. Maybe he should try again in a year.

The editor couldn't see that the column was meant to go
with
the articles, a series on Xeriscaping—energy-conscious, water-saving gardening. Already Frederick knew that the articles would be cut and botched and jammed into back corners of an inside page, edited beyond recognition. Next to them, the newspaper would probably feature an article like the one in today's paper, on hybrid tea roses—simpering, frail, fertilizer-dependent plants that some hybridizer should have been fined for developing. The headline read “Your Garden's Glory!”

“I'm a dinosaur,” he told his wife, Pat, over the dinner table.

“You're not extinct, just unfashionable,” she said. “Like beneficial bacteria. People would miss you if you weren't there.”

“I was hoping for something of greater stature than a microorganism.”

“Microorganisms don't have ponytails,” said Laura.

“I like my ponytail,” Frederick said mildly.

“So that's one vote,” she said. “You know, Dad, we have to look at you. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.”

Bett, the next oldest, got up for more spaghetti and flipped Frederick's ponytail as she passed. “Problem. Definite problem.”

He counted to five, then said, “Who would like to tell me one interesting thing that you learned in school today?”

The girls sighed chestily around the table. “Like talking to a brick wall,” the oldest said, and Pat lowered her eyes and smiled.

Frederick gazed at her: long, wavy hair and pretty eyes, a pert nose unlike his own long one, which all the girls had inherited and fussed about. Every time they complained, he gravely apologized, though Pat said he shouldn't. Frederick felt that an apology was in order—if not to his daughters, then to the universe. He hadn't intended to have so many offspring. Who could have known that Pat, who rarely raised her voice and whose opinions were mild and generous, would be a creature of such rampaging fecundity? After Laura, their planned child, seventeen years ago, Pat had managed to conceive through a condom, an IUD, and the pill—the last only 94 percent effective, as her gynecologist defensively reminded them.

Now, at the dinner table, he said to ten-year-old Tina, the youngest, “Pay attention to what people do, not how they look,” and to Laura, “We've been over this.”

“And you haven't given me one reason for you to keep going out in public looking like a used-up hippie,” she said.

“I haven't had to pay for a haircut in years.”

“That's not really something to brag about,” said Bett.

Laura set her elbows on the table and assumed her concerned expression. “You know, Dad, we'd like to be proud of you, but it's hard when you have stringy hair and go out wearing corduroys that you bought when Nixon was president. You do own a tie, right? One? I don't know it personally.”

“I think I do plenty for you to be proud of,” he said softly, thinking of the committees, the letter and petition drives that Pat helped him with, the volunteer hours every week that far exceeded his time in the classroom. In the statement of support his department head had written for Frederick's tenure years before, it was noted that “Professor Weiler's best teaching is embodied in his community service.” Frederick heard the barb but cherished the comment anyway.

Laura let the silence between them grow boggy before she said, “My friend Marcia saw you handing out dry milk at the food bank. She went there for Social Awareness Day and couldn't wait to call me when she got home. She said some of the clients were better dressed than you, and she wanted to know if you were making some kind of statement.”

“Your friend Marcia should concentrate on her homework.”

“I told her yes.”

He shouldn't have asked further, but when the question occurred to him, it seemed to be produced by intellectual curiosity. “What kind of statement?”

She shrugged. “Same as always. There's a fun way to do everything and then there's your way, and everybody is supposed to do it your way. It's really irritating, if you want to know.” She shook her wavy hair back from her face. “Go on, now. Tell me that I'm wrong.”

“Not me,” he said. He glanced at Pat and wished she would stop smirking at her plate. This was the kind of thing that always amused her, even when it undercut the lessons they had agreed they should teach the girls. “You got it about right.”

 

After a long walk, Frederick came to think of the conversation as a watershed. He would tell Pat so. Now he and his daughters might have a real talk about values and priorities, about the outward symbols that defined a full interior life. But the next night, dinner conversation rippled at its usual breathless level, the girls chattering about a television show that all of them had watched that afternoon.

“I wish you'd do something a little more constructive with your time,” he said reflexively.

“One hour a day,” said Laura. “My friend Marcia says I live in a prison.”

“Pretty low security. You get TV and fruit juice,” Frederick said.

“
The Jack Carey Show
rules,” said Bett. “Couples get makeovers. After haircuts and new makeup and clothes, their own families don't recognize them. They're crying, they're so happy.”

“You're just trying to get me to react, aren't you?” Frederick said.

“People's families send their names in. The ones who get on the show are mostly shy at first, but once they come on stage with the new clothes and all, you should see them.”

“They give the phone number all the way through the show. Toll free,” said Laura. “If you ask me, it's a public service.”

“These people—you'd never believe where they started,” said quiet Trish, the third youngest. “Before the makeover, they look like you, Dad. After the makeover, they're movie stars.”

“You're going to have to work harder than that to insult me,” Frederick said.

“I think they know that, dear,” Pat said.

“Everybody supposedly knows they have options,” Laura said. “But this show lets people see them. If you don't like what you are, then change. It's very empowering.”

“'Empowering.' Sweet Jesus,” said Frederick. Catching Pat's look, he added, “Remember when that meant something more important than hairdos?”

Pat smiled. He smiled back at her. She had spent the afternoon, he knew, stuffing and Zip-Code-sorting envelopes with flyers he had made about an antidevelopment proposal that would be on the next ballot. He hoped that the girls were watching and learning about real relationship—about respect, reciprocity, a love too deep for words. He said to his daughter, “Don't even think about it.”

“You can't keep them from thinking,” Pat said.