But when the invite comes, nobody regrets. They can tuck in enough wild boar and frangipani foo-foo for a week, if they don’t mind the hostess looking thinner than a guitar string in a little nothing made of two or three of them. And meanwhile bone up on what the Dow Jones is doing best on, in one look at the guy she’s receiving with.
Alba’s the only one of the girls who moves from man to man that much, sometimes even from day to day; she says how can she help the market’s temperament? We call all of them “the banker” out of respect for her long-term first one, who she only missed marrying through a change of pope. In return, if you ask, “How’s the banker these days?” she’ll always answer generously, like “Oh he’s in Chile for the weekend, their copper is merging with ours,” or “Xerox? I don’t see him anymore.” Oscar says, the air on East Sixty-Ninth Street is now so rarefied you only get the tips on where the stock tips are.
The girls would like to disapprove harder of all that instability, but too much style they want to keep up on goes with it—how can you afford not to know a girl who picks you up at Rumpelmayer’s in a Maserati, when you’re still paying for your second-hand silver Mercedes, not knowing quiet elegance is passé? And who walks through all the birds who are just beginning to wear whatever—already not wearing it.
It’s home where she busts out. Which Oscar says is just what any shoeless girl from the banks of the Tiber, and with a nostril and an arch like hers would do: “There’s an emperor’s by-blow in her, somewhere.”
Only where some of her imperial ancestors vomited dinner so they could eat again, Alba vomits rooms. And has them redone overnight apparently, since though my aunt and uncle often come back saying the dining room’s migrated again, or turned purple according to the latest principles, or an Aubrey Beardsley corner is now where the trompe-l’oeil umbrella stand was, there’s never any mess. Alba claims it’s all done because the old mansion the first banker gave her is plumbing prone—to leaks. She connects this with the house being in exchange for her virginity. When Tekla hooted, “What virginity?” Alba replied with great dignity, “My American one.” Aurine says “Alba’s very domestic. She’s feathering her nest. And that decorator gives her a cut.”
As a kid, they tease me the place is a carousel that turns around between visits; I keep looking for the brass rings, hoping Alba will let me have one for being her godchild. Most of the by-blows in the girls’ crowd are; she only shows us in public until we’re five. After that, if we’re ever underfoot when a banker crashes—paying Alba’s expenses doesn’t mean he has the run of the place—we know enough to stand very stiff while she straightens our school uniform and says, “This little dear, her mother’s been like a mother to me.”
He has to stand there, holding the little box from Cartier or the big fur one from Kaplan, and be glad we’re not the monsignor. Who Alba keeps an afternoon for. Giorgio, the oldest of us by-blows, used to say, “Alba lives her whole life in a state of qualm.” Which she is always overcoming.
We godchildren tend to loathe each other in a tied sort of way. We’re too much alike. We stand united though, on not letting that out to the girls. Or to the uncles, who are even more conservative.
Nila’s kid, the Nose, now eleven, sums it up neat enough last Christmas. His crowd of boys, which runs from ten to fourteen, is the most depraved I guess, from being all word-of-mouth—when you can really get it up, you graduate. Little girls their own age won’t notice them anyway; as soon as they fall off, Father, they’re after the older boys. And as soon as they can borrow or steal the pill.
“Listen,” Nosey says, “it’s the girls’ livelihood. Why break it to them the style now is give it for free?”
Carolyn, who goes to Little Red, says “And it’s our livelihood, you mean, don’t you, punk?”
It’s not going to be hers, I think.
“Just you wait for socialism!” she says. “Bet you won’t get it free though, even then.”
I think Carolyn will someday be going to college too.
Nosey makes a noise at her. He wants to be an anthropologist; his term project at Walden is a study of how our national life ignores belches and farts. But I’m betting he goes in business with his uncle, who’s a bookie; he’s going to be one of those small men who have a fix on livelihoods. “Queenie-so-quiet,” he says, “tell us something. Why did so many of the girls have girls?”
It’s a fact I think some Nobel scientist should get interested in.
Carolyn perts out quick, “If we’d a seen you first, we’d’ve abort.”
Maybe she’ll be the Nobel scientist.
Meanwhile she’s in love with Nosey, kid style. And Nosey is in love with me. Our tie being also that we both miss Giorgio, the only other boy in our crowd being Tatiana’s Nicky, who is already at Exeter, in his uncle’s footsteps. Or partly.
The finalist is Deirdre, Sheelagh’s kid, whose uncle in the British Embassy sends her to Spence. And whose uncle’s wife was presented at Court. No relation of course, but still an influence. “Les girls are simply marvellous, don’t you think? With the world situation the way it is. Sim-pully muh-haw-v’lus.”
Are we a lost generation? I think we’ll all get married out of spite.
So does Schubert Fish. Who says he might be willing to marry me for it. I bring him to Alba’s party not because he’s as handsome in his way as any of us, and probably as rich as the richest uncle, but because he’s impossible. Like that whole shebang when it’s really rolling is likely to be. And because I haven’t altogether forgotten about God.
Schu’s at my school, my same age, and our bond is that he too comes from doctrinarians—rich radicals. His parents got married under protest, and have continued it. Schubert has never been baptized, or inoculated for anything; he’s eaten health foods all over the world, following his father’s art collecting and his mother’s swamis, but has never had a cup of coffee. In all civic respects, he’s a kind of Jehovah’s Witness. Though the Fish family don’t believe the world will end until the family deadline—which Schu says will be when he’s had a hundred women, his mother has attained all a woman can in Mahayana, and his father’s found a lost four-by-six canvas of a very scarce painter called Bonington. Schubert has also never been registered for the census, or pledged allegiance to the flag. They never touch money; you have to pick his cab fare out of a pocket the valet puts it in. Schubert has a custom-made pocket in a peculiar neighborhood, just for the girls. I think he’ll make his deadline quicker than the others. His middle name is Hegel, and if he goes out of the country again he’ll have to sneak back; he’s never been vaccinated.
He goes along with his birthright he says, like anybody—until it begins to itch. “Then I told them—send me to school like other kids. Or I’ll drop out of here. That did it. Dropping out is their bag.”
Only it’s supposed to keep him and them more in than any of us.
And it’s with him I make a real feminist mistake. I tell him my recent thoughts about God. He then makes a male chauvinist one. When I talk about God—he thinks I’m talking about him.
All I see at the moment is our field trips for film class begin to involve a lot of transport. “No, I’ve seen that,” he’ll say. “Let’s hop on down to Eighth Street.” So when I decide to take him along to Alba’s, all I have to say is, “Someone’s giving me a party. Wanna hop a cab?”
Up to now, Alba’s front door was dependable. It stayed oak. But tonight it’s port-wine color; the whole house-front is pale green wash, with a line of potted pink hyacinth straight across. Live ones, and fresh. I say, “Alba’s cut from the florist will feed us all.”
Schubert’s never been home with me. I never bring young guys there; Oscar and Aurine always look at them.
And outside the home, none of us talk family, no matter what the family thinks. After puberty, you’re not even ashamed of them.
But anybody coming plonk into Alba’s will need some commentary. In good faith. So I say, “She never changed the door
before; it must be that psychiatrist. Candido’s. He and Alba took the banker’s check for it. But Candido finked out and went.”
Schubert’s too smooth to ask who Candido is; he’s got a good background. Once inside the vestibule though, he studies that framed birth certificate. When I point out Alba, who is gliding among her guests in a little piece of silk tied in a sailor’s knot, he only says, “If I went and got myself one, suppose she’d like a copy of it?”
When Alba mermaids up to us in that legless way she has, I see at once she’s pleased with him. Schubert’s a lanky redhead with a high-minded profile, like he’s studying to be a chaplain who won’t go to war. Front-face, he’s even fanatical. Meaning pop-eye. But he does a fair job of convincing himself they’re concentrating on you.
What else Alba sees is obvious, to a hand like her. The Fish clothes are just as funky as they’re supposed to be. Nobody’s been allowed to polish the Fish boots. Still, the Fish himself has a certain kind of wan charisma. Maybe it’s because his nails are so clean of dollar dirt. Or that he looks hungry and thin in the smart way only money can. Like if somebody told you his people don’t want him to go to college but to help crew their yacht to the lower Antilles with a load of forty guests and a macrobiotic chef—you wouldn’t be surprised.
Alba isn’t. She says, “Don’t I know your father, Mr. Fish?”
He says politely, if his father didn’t only collect early-nineteenth-century, she sure would.
And we pass on to the brats. My godsisters and brother are in the first room to the left, which is kept strictly mansion-style for changing bankers in, so never alters much.
Carolyn nails Schubert at once, for socialism, and he takes her phone number.
I say, “The revolution’ll take a while. She’s only ten.”
He says we’re all precocious here, aren’t we, he’s noticed that.
I say bastards usually are.
“So many of you?” he says. “All?”
And we pass on.
Passing on seems to be what Schubert does well; he’s what Deirdre’s mother’s lord keeps telling the papers the British nation is: unflappable. What you have to watch is when this sort flaps, but I don’t know this yet. I’m beginning to like him for it—that chipped Vermont granite is really pretty pretty from the sideburns side—and to wonder if this, hélas, is it. Deciding if it is, I’ll get it to close its eyes. Or close mine.
By now we’re at what was called the pumproom the year Alba bought cherubs, and still has a ceiling of them, but is the soda fountain this year. Meant for the brats, who of course won’t touch it. But the European-style girls love it, some even dress for it. Petine Esterhazy, Carolyn’s mother, is drawn up to the bar in gigolo-check bicycle pants, and a blonde wig with braids. Nosey’s mother’s headdress is the same, but she’s still a natty size six, in something made of plastic funballs, and inner space. I’m surprised at Dulcy, until I recall she gave up Potto after our last blast, for Somebody Southern at the Pentagon. She’s in a see-through Mother Hubbard, tending bar.
They all look as if they’re posing for Elle, and of course they are.
Schubert is struck,
“They’re not precocious,” I say. “They’re all twenty-nine.”
“Mamma dear——” Dulcy says to me, leaning over the bar to him, “kin I touch?”
Schu says “What?”
Passing on, he explains he’s not nervous with women; it’s just he’s still so germ-free he has to watch his immunity.
Outside the birdcage room, my favorite, I say “Go on in and tell me is it still there.”
He calls out it is, canaries and all.
“No parrots, see,” I say. “So no psittacosis.”
After we kiss, tongues and all, he says, “I’ve never even had a cold.”
Outside, we bump into Martyne, who cases us quick. “Y’all heard where Tekla is? Flew down to see your old friend Giorgio. She’s gonna handle him, his first fight.”
I say “Giorgio is a postcard friend.” No special germs in that.
But while Martyne puts out for Schubert and I let her, I’m sad. Not for Giorgio. I trust that bo. If his motive is to ruin his beauty, which I think it is, even with a mother like Tekla in the ring, he’ll manage it.
I feel sad to find I’m the kind of person who feels sad. But in a happy person today, isn’t that encouraging?
On the general level, that’s how I analyze it. On the personal level, I can hear Sam Newber’s crack—“Half a woman wants to get laid; the other half only wants to talk about it.” But shouldn’t that be afterward, not before?
With Sam of course, it would probably have to be during.
Meanwhile I see Schubert thinks Martyne, in white pants and her hair in a baby’s barrette, is very clean. She has the smallest tits that can still be waggled up at a man. She’s saying she knows his name, she’s musical.
I say, “Uh-huh. Next time I’ll bring Jack.”
“Who’s he?”
All those old men make her gullible, in the end.
I say, “How’s Nym.”
She’s a sport though. She grins at me. “Oh, she flit. And I do mean flit. The rajah had a hurry call.” Then she catches sight of little Rudolph. “Pore old thing, he’s heading for the throne room again. Y’all looking for your aunt and uncle, that’s where everybody is. It’s those eats.”
I see germs have come up in Schubert again; I’m getting to know that look. And that faddists will always tell you what causes it. He admits the throne is what the toilet is called—diet does it—chez Fish.
“Oh no, it’s a real throne,” I say. “A present from Thailand. From a member of the World Bank.”
And suddenly I’m happy, happy again. Any little bit of life takes me so far. Think what college will do! Talk or no talk, I mean to confess myself to myself all the way. Who else is laughing?
In the throne room, Oscar’s sitting on it; he adores any chair can really carry his weight. Aurine’s nearby, flirting with a guy just enough to show she’s besieged, but standing. When we two come up, the guy fades, but since it’s Deirdre’s lord, first bowing deep to my aunt. And even deeper to Oscar, who gives a gloomy wave.
This is because he’s eaten, and knows he will soon eat again. I would like to tell him he looks like Henry the Eighth just about to toss the chicken bone over his shoulder in the bit from that old movie. But to Oscar one only quotes legit. So I say, “Your Highness, may I present Schubert Fish?”
Sure enough, Oscar and Aurine both look. So before the amenities can take a real grab at everybody, I drag him away again. To the table. On which God, moving mysterious his pinkie at Alba’s caterer, has caused to be placed in front of Schubert the forbidden fruit from maybe three fast airliners—including caviar in a swan carved of ice.
And all around us is the lovely throng. They’re busy; they’re not looking at us. People are loyal to youth though; they’ll remember us in a minute, if we make a move.
“This is some do,” Schubert says. “Just to send somebody off to college.”
“Oh, I know,” I say absently. “It’s just that none of us have ever gone to college before.”
I’m feeling sentimental. I know all along, you see, that these parties aren’t really for me. On the girls’ side, they’re all the weddings our crowd won’t be having, rolled up in a ball with some leftover christenings, or some that got stopped cold at the abortionist’s—it’s too late here for the pill. Or the girls were too early. Bye-bye, bye-bye, Background!
Schubert’s saying, “My father has a margravine looks a lot like your aunt.”
“What’s a margravine?”
“A countess of the Holy Roman Empire.”
“Where does he keep her?”
“Why—on the wall.”
To my mind, exactly the sort of girl a man whose wife’s trying to be a Buddha would have. Particularly if all he eats is infertile eggs.
And isn’t Schubert exactly the son?
Just the
n, inching me toward the table, he jostles Candido, in apache drag as usual, who swivels round at once, not even looking at him, and snarls, “Wanna fight?”
Schubert has his arm on me, but his eye on the swan. “No.”
Baby, do you have to be radical, to say it like that!
“Neither do I,” says Candido. “That doctor is turning me fag.”
When he slinks off, Schubert leans down to me. “Who’s he really?”
I speak the truth, which is seldom a help. “Alba’s bodyguard.”
He says he saw at once she has the imperial full lower lip. “I see you do too.”
He’s his father’s boy, if that’s all he sees. With what I’m wearing. But I’m looking at my aunt and uncle, who Rudolph is now taking a picture of, squeezed together in that chair.
I know that chair from childhood; it’s a religious article, so never got thrown away. It’s an Oriental gilt one, the kind made of mixed monsters. You sit in the coil of the snake. A boa constrictor, whose head hangs intimately over the occupants.
They look beautiful there. Sad. That’s a dragon’s arm dear Aurine is leaning on. The jaw an inch from dear Oscar’s neck is a crocodile’s. Oh bye-bye. Bye.
And Schubert says in my ear, through what smells like his first spoon of caviar, “Just where are you people in exile from?”
I mean to turn on him savagely, how dare this snot laugh? Instead I choke up.
Parents! Or aunts and uncles, Father. How can we tell them they’re all in exile forever, from us? “Parents,” I say. “You know how they are. They still have to think they’re royalty.”
After a while, he says, “See why they call you Queenie.” I never give it a thought.
What I must, must remember from now on is that not everybody LAUGHS.
I stand there myself, eyes misty, for I don’t know how long. I’m watching the uncles, a gamut from chimps all the way to Oscar, from the Champs Elysées to the Ginza, and never forgetting the Avenidas of the Americas, including Wall. For them this is still solid glamor, hip to thigh. And the kind you can’t take home to Mary. It’s true, I think, nibbling a swizzle stick. We just know a lot of people who always look good.
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