Sunday Best

by Edward O. Phillips

  (Was she going to say “You shouldn’t have”?)

  “You really shouldn’t have. Jennifer!” Lois and Jennifer embraced in that curious way women can, without appearing to touch. “You’ve met Douglas?” She beamed at her son. “And Charles, our best man.” The Douglas smile faded as she turned to him; her voice lost colour. “Now, I know the young people have plans for the evening, and there will be plenty of wine. Perhaps we might go right in to dinner?”

  So that was the drill. We were to be hustled through the meal so the young people could hit the road, leaving me at the mercy of the hostess. And for this I was missing Garbo?

  Wedding or no blasted wedding, I did not intend to spend the next four months being manipulated by Lois Fullerton every time we met. It was an easy pattern to fall into. I had been raised in that atmosphere of chivalry and condescension which saw men deferring to women the same way they deferred to children. One humours inferiors. But no more; my own consciousness had been raised.

  “I would like another drink first, if I may.” Without waiting for permission I moved to the trolley and poured myself a belt. Nor did I even glance at Lois.

  “But of course … I only thought …”

  “May I have a vermouth, please, Uncle Geoffry?” asked Jennifer, whose silence up to now had become apparent.

  “Let me do it,” suggested Douglas. “I’ll have one myself.”

  “Why not!” announced Charles, more as a statement than a question, as he headed for the gin bottle.

  Unable to quell the palace revolt, Lois made an exit, Andromache leaving the walls of Troy. “I’d better go and tell Cook to delay serving dinner.”

  Her departure created a vacuum in which we bobbed, clinging to our tumblers for security. From across the room Charles Grant winked to catch my attention and gave me a thumbs-up gesture of approval. I looked away, torn between complicity over the drinks and solidarity with my hostess, with whom I was aligned through age and station.

  “What was the mystery wedding present?” I asked Jennifer in order to get the wheels turning.

  I could see the corners of her mouth twitching ever so slightly. “A pair of silver napkin rings, engraved with our initials, D and J.”

  “As in John Doe or Disc Jockey. Pity they’re engraved. That means you can’t take them back.”

  “Not to worry,” said Charles. “You can hang them from the rear-view mirror. Far classier than a pair of big fuzzy dice.”

  “Are your ears pierced, Jennifer?” I asked. “They could be very dramatic, with the peasant blouse and unbleached cotton skirt.”

  Jennifer, Charles, and I all started to laugh. Unwilling to be left out, Douglas joined in.

  “I’m going to have a rebellious cook on my hands,” announced Lois from the door. “Bring your drinks to the table.”

  7.

  WERE I TO HAVE CONCEALED a small tape recorder on my person so as to capture the conversation at dinner, the tape would have made very dull listening. The table at which we sat, Lois and I at either end, Douglas beside Jennifer facing Charles across its width, was hedged around with constraint. All the baggage of gracious living – the silver, china, crystal, impeccable food, and a maid to hand it around – far from fostering ease only managed to inhibit.

  On one level I did not really mind. There is very little people in their early twenties can tell me that I don’t already know, except about computers. There is much we have to discover by and for ourselves alone. To be told with extreme seriousness that the sky is blue and the grass green fails to hold my interest.

  I had hoped Charles might at least be amusing; I far prefer superficial to solemn, at least over dinner. But even he was cowed into obedience by the mise en scène: the coldly formal room, the table set as if for a photographer, and the hostess who, in spite of airs and graces, did not succeed at putting her guests at ease. Furthermore, it was evident that Lois Fullerton did not like Charles Grant, and he obviously had enough smarts to avoid the line of fire, as he sat in total isolation on the far side of the long table.

  Jennifer played it safe, speaking when spoken to and keeping her answers short. She offered no conversational cadenzas or verbal arabesques, but took refuse in the simple declarative sentence. It fell to Douglas, himself on home ground, to carry the ball, as it were. He and I did what we could with what we had, conversing past Jennifer without including her. Occasionally I bounced a remark off Charles, who sat well outside the charmed triangle; but he too gave the minimal answer and, perhaps wisely, did not elaborate.

  We skated over the usual subjects: Douglas’s graduate work over cream of carrot soup. During medallions of veal we discussed free trade, or the idea of free trade. (Anyone who has cruised Dominion Square after midnight soon learns no trade is free.) Television saw us through a salad in which chunks of avocado and shards of endive jostled for prominence. Douglas Fullerton had the comfortable, slightly-to-the-left attitudes of a graduate student with a good profile and ample income. I suspected that by the time he was forty his point of view would have moved even further right than his snaffle bit loafers and patterned tie.

  Lois was playing the role of hostess as though she had won the part after a stiff audition. She conferred with the maid, saw that wineglasses were kept filled, signalled the advent of the next course. She did much with her long, full, medieval-romantic sleeves, brushing back their scalloped edges with long, graceful gestures. At the same time she deferred to the men, which meant she took no active part in the conversation. I would not have been in the least surprised if she and Jennifer, and quite possibly Charles, had quit the dining room at the end of the meal, leaving Douglas and me with our port and cigars.

  One episode, small but telling, stuck in my mind in sharp contrast to the bland conversation that, like white noise, had hummed quietly throughout the meal. By the time salad arrived I could see that Charles was having trouble keeping the lid on. Like a tightly closed cooking pot, steam inside was building up pressure. As we got onto the subject of movies, Charles began to join in. He evidently held stronger opinions on certain actresses and their wardrobes than on free trade. Outrageous he undoubtedly was, yet at the same time carried a kind of innocence. He did not intend to shock but to state.

  The name of a certain television personality came up, one of those women whose main talent is for self-promotion.

  “Isn’t she something else!” exclaimed Charles, clapping his hands together. “I waited on her at a party once. Believe me, if her knockers were any bigger she’d need her own postal code.”

  Obviously two gins and a fair amount of wine had just spoken. But knockers is a no-no, particularly over avocado and endive on Baccarat plates. Lois, herself a prime contender for her own private listing (H3Y T1T), gathered herself in, tamed her sleeves, and asked in a frost-coated voice if we had finished our salad.

  The arrival of the chocolate cheesecake helped to smooth over the contretemps. I do not avoid sweet stuff for any reasons of weight or health or hypoglycaemia, that which used to be called a sweet tooth. I actually dislike sugar. But I helped myself to a wedge, the way I was expected to. At some point I would cut off a piece, mash it around on the plate with my fork, and leave it alone.

  Lois coyly admitted the ingredients were a secret she did not ordinarily divulge, but that she would make an exception and give Jennifer the recipe for her card file. Jennifer thanked her politely, even though I am reasonably certain my niece is a nuts-and-berries kind of cook. Charles was so blissed out he could hardly even speak.

  Obviously pleased by the reception to her dessert, Lois inquired if anyone would like a second helping. “Geoffry?”

  “No, thank you. I haven’t finished what I have.”

  “Jennifer?” (Had my own mother been hostess, Jennifer, being a lady, would have been asked first.)

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Fullerton.”

  “Douglas?”

  “Top weight, thanks, Mother.”

  “Charles?” She did not look at him
as she spoke.

  “Oh, I really shouldn’t,” he replied in the languorous tone of one about to fall voluptuously into the arms of a second helping.

  “Then don’t!” she snapped.

  I could see Jennifer react as though she had been slapped. So did I, although I was perhaps better at masking it. I have never been one to throw down the gauntlet if there is another way out, but I found myself ready and willing to challenge Lois, even though I was still a guest in her house.

  “Here, Charles,” I said quietly, “why don’t you finish mine. I’ve barely touched it, and it’s far too good to waste.” Upon which I handed him my plate.

  The gesture compelled him to reach for it, meaning he had to give me his plate in return. Bad manners, indeed, but we can’t always play by the book. As he handed me his empty plate, he looked directly into my eyes; I knew I had just made a friend for life.

  The younger members of the party had been invited to join a group of friends en route to a nightclub. As Douglas and Jennifer were to be the nominal guests of honour, they decided to skip coffee and leave right away. Had I been they, I would gladly have traded the congenial atmosphere of a club for dreary demitasses with our mixed media group.

  With commendable foresight Lois suggested that as they would perhaps be drinking she would prefer them not to drive. The chauffeur was to ferry them to the club; they could take a taxi home.

  We moved in a wedge to the front door where the chauffeur stood waiting in the front porch, just as drop-dead good-looking as I remembered. For a moment our eyes met, locked. Lois gave him an order I couldn’t hear, and he looked away. I had the oddest sensation that he had just given me what used to be called a dirty look. Then again, he had already demonstrated his total reluctance to make any sort of contact. And, democratic niceties aside, he remained a servant, one whose job it was to display distance and deference to his employer’s friends. He was out of reach, but distance definitely lends charm.

  In a flurry of goodnights and injunctions to have a wonderful time, Jennifer, Douglas, and Charles departed. The night was still young, to coin a phrase, and I was marooned way up here on the hill with Lois and her sleeves. Haven’t we all been taught that one should try to make the best of any situation? I followed her gown into the library, where I headed for my customary chair on the far side of the fireplace.

  Lois poured coffee as if preoccupied. A question was obviously formulating itself, but she could not seem to find words to frame it. After a moment or two she abandoned her quest for paraphrase and gave it to me straight. “What do you think of Charles?”

  I understood precisely what she meant, but pretended not to.

  “He seems a likable young man, bright, personable. He has a sense of humour, which I always appreciate in a person. I suspect he will reach whatever goals he sets for himself.”

  I had not given the answer she wanted. I knew it, and enjoyed watching her flounder.

  “What you say is true, but doesn’t it bother you that he is, well, so obviously what he is?”

  “And what precisely is that?”

  She gave a short sigh of impatience. “Geoffry, you’re a man of the world. Do I have to spell it out?”

  “I’m a lawyer, Lois, not a graduate student. I am trained not to deal in abstractions. In fact, whenever I see an abstraction heading into the room I hide behind a chair.”

  I wasn’t giving Lois the slightest bit of help. She was dying to lay into Charles because he was gay, but she also wanted me to fill in the spaces. Well, screw her, in a manner of speaking.

  “I think the current word is gay.”

  At least I had obliged her to say it out loud, obviously a problem for her. We had not said a word about my niece, the bride, or about her son, the groom on whom, if I had correctly read the signals, the sun rose and set. Instead we were discussing the best man, and not his role in the wedding party but his sexual orientation. The message flashing onto the screen read Proceed With Caution.

  “Well, what about it? His personal life is his own business. Times have changed since we were youngsters, Lois. Sexual preference is no longer something to be concealed as if it were shameful. Being gay is no longer a major misfortune but a minor inconvenience.”

  “Yes, I know!” She tried unsuccessfully to keep the impatience out of her voice. “It’s just that – I have never dictated to Douglas who his friends ought to be. But for his wedding? I mean, the best man is usually the groom’s best friend.”

  “And what will the neighbours say? No more coffee, thanks. I think I’ll have a highball, if I may. Face it, Lois, marriage is a fairly sound indication of heterosexuality, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “Indeed it is not!” she flashed with a bit too much heat.

  “Would you prefer the best man to be some lout who stands in the receiving line chewing on a toothpick and who calls the bridesmaids broads? At the last wedding I attended, the best man was a football-playing jock who, I am sure, could not even read the diploma he had recently been awarded. By the time we got into dinner he was too drunk to toast the bride. I would be very surprised if Charles were not both articulate and amusing.”

  If not mollified, Lois at least paused to consider what I had said.

  “I suppose you’re right. And once Douglas and Jennifer are married it won’t matter who their friends are. He hadn’t – gone out with many girls before he met Jennifer. But she is such a lovely girl. I am sure she will make him an excellent wife.”

  “Did Douglas have trouble persuading you to give your approval?”

  Lois laughed a brittle little laugh. “Not at all. I only hoped when he finally got serious about a girl she would turn out to be someone I liked. I never dared hope she would turn out to be as nice as Jennifer. It’s all happening just as I would have wished.”

  Lois put her empty cup onto the tray, then crossed to pick up mine from the occasional table beside my chair. “If only Douglas hadn’t asked that awful little fairy to be his best man.”

  The remark came out so matter-of-factly that it jarred me all the more. It had the same harsh crudeness of her telling Charles at dinner not to have a second helping. I had noticed before that Lois had failed to catch up with the eighties. She still inhabited a time warp when men were men, women were women, and homosexuals were beaten up. It had also become abundantly clear that she was hugely relieved Douglas was getting married. To whom did not matter, in spite of protestations to the contrary. Jennifer might be cast as the bride, but she was still going to do nothing more than a walk-on cameo. I was beginning to have an uneasy suspicion that Lois wanted this marriage more than anyone else, so that her “sensitive” son, who was designing the rings, would be stamped, labelled, and presented to the world as she would have him seen.

  My sister, Mildred, would have fallen right into line. By even the most stringent standards Douglas was a catch. With his Wasp good looks, pleasant manners, soon-to-be-awarded Ph.D., and, let us not forget, bags of Fullerton money, Douglas was pretty close to a ten. Jennifer should be so lucky.

  It all looked good on the surface, so good, in fact, that I felt uneasy. However, further speculation on the wedding was pushed to one side as Lois moved to the drink trolley. After studied deliberation she poured about an eyedropperful of Grand Marnier into a tiny glass, but instead of returning to her chair she sat on the small couch facing the fireplace. She gave the seat beside her a couple of inviting pats and shifted her voice into the key of G-spot.

  “Why don’t you come and sit here? Then you can look at the fire.”

  “I’d like to, but sitting in front of an open fire gives me a headache.”

  “I’ll put up the screen. That will block a good deal of the heat.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m perfectly comfortable where I am, and at my age inertia is perhaps the most powerful drive of all.”

  “If the fire bothers you we could go upstairs to the den.”

  “It’s not the fire. I like that. It’s just the
blast of direct heat.” I realized it was some indication of how determined Lois was to nail me that she did not throw me out of the house into the street. I can well remember during my own younger days how I overlooked any amount of loutish behaviour if I wanted to get someone into the sack, behaviour for which today I would quite certainly ask someone to leave. Crotch fog not only obscures the view; it scrambles the thought process as well.

  And in terms of the present situation, my own behaviour had been considerably below par. To be sure, I had not put my feet onto the table or flicked cigarette ash onto the rug or broken wind. But I had thwarted Lois enough times that, had our situations been reversed, I would have pleaded an all-purpose headache and sent me on my way.

  But behind those dimples of iron lurked a will of steel. Lois leaned slightly forward, brushed back her right sleeve, and laid her arm along the back of the couch. The gesture threw her bust into relief and made a graceful line of her jaw, neck, and shoulder. If, as feminists claim, penetration is colonization, she was ready for me to plant my flag. Poor Lois, she was running a marathon on a treadmill.

  She smiled. “I have to admit, Geoffry, you are a difficult man to get close to.” Her tone invited confidence.

  “Not difficult, Lois. Impossible.”

  “How so?”

  How easy it would have been to tell her the truth. This so- called truth may not set us free, but it can permit us to uncross our legs. Yet one feature I have always admired about Arab countries is the importance of saving face. One must never pull the rug, prayer or otherwise, from under somebody’s feet. To admit to Lois that I was homosexual would make her seem a fool. Why had she not seen the truth for herself? All this scheming and effort and manipulation so she could flirt with a fairy and make a pass at a pansy? She would lose face, that same face she had probably spent the better part of an hour putting on.

  Furthermore, campy candour is not my style. I was not about to erupt into shrill giggles and admit I was as gay as a fuschia feather fan. I had given Lois ample notice of my intentions, or lack of them. I had hung out the Do Not Disturb sign, only to have her ignore it and pound on the door.