The Dinner Party

by Howard Fast

  After a moment, Elizabeth replied, “I think he was frightened.”

  “Leonard says he was an honor student, and if he could face things out at Harvard Law, there is nothing at the Cromwells’ to frighten him.”

  “It’s different.”

  “You know, Liz, it’s your own cockeyed code that holds us beyond the pale. You decide that our worlds are so far apart that there’s no way to cross them. That doesn’t express a very high opinion of us.”

  “No, that’s not the way it is.”

  “Well, what way is it?” Dolly demanded, exasperated.

  Elizabeth sat up. “You’re my mother. I’m your daughter.”

  “And what does that signify?”

  “Oh, Mother, you know what I’m talking about. There are levels. I can’t just bridge them because I love you and you’re intelligent and sensitive. Can you do it with your mother, with Grandma Jenny?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  Elizabeth got off the bed and went to her mother and held her and kissed her.

  “That’s nice,” Dolly said, “but it doesn’t get you off the hook.”

  “He couldn’t face tonight, so he’s running away. Do you understand? He’s just a kid. He’s over six feet but don’t let that fool you. He’s a brilliant little kid, and he made it right from the bottom with scholarships. But he’s black and he’s a kid from a North Carolina ghetto slum, and the way he felt today he could not bring himself to sit down with the secretary of state and Mr. William Justin. So he ran away. Lenny is driving him over to the bus depot in town.”

  Dolly was silent for a moment or two; then she nodded and said that she could buy it. “I’ll talk to Leonard about it. I’m sorry. It would have been an interesting experience for him.”

  “Or a loathsome one.”

  “Elizabeth,” she said, “whatever you may feel, these two men run our foreign policy.”

  “Yes. I always had the notion that the president had something to do with it.”

  “I don’t wish to talk about that poor man. The important thing is whether Leonard will be back in time for dinner?”

  “Leonard promised in one hour.”

  “Very well. And at the table, darling, try to swallow the sarcasm. I know you’re a very clever and well-educated young woman, and you will find both these men rather dull and limited; so if you must engage someone with your wit, use Mrs. Justin.”

  “I love you when you’re prim and proper,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll try.”

  Leaving the room, pausing at the door, Dolly said, “You wouldn’t consider telling me what Leonard has gotten himself into? I am his mother, you know.”

  Elizabeth shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Showering, soaping his body energetically, the senator reviewed the day from the moment of his awakening at five o’clock in the morning. In the ordinary course of things, when one awakens at five in the morning, some days can be endless. In this case, it had also been extraordinary. The passage of sex with his wife still bewildered him, the explosion of passion puzzling, upsetting, and at the same time delicious; and as he dried his body, he found that the very memory of it was giving him an erection and filling him with renewed desire. If he responded, it would send him off, like a horny hound dog to find Dolly and lure her back into bed.

  That was beyond the pale. He tried to review the facts calmly. He had long ago given up any pretense that he was capable of monogamy, and while he had taken a handful of women to bed, it was always the result of affection. He loved women. He loved to be with women and talk to women and make love to women, and now, suddenly and unexplicably, he was once again in love with his wife, and on top of all this he had a mistress, Joan Herman, whose fascination for him had by no means turned cold enough to make him certain that it would not flare up again. There’s a mess, he thought, a beautiful mess, and addressing himself, told himself that he was by any measure, the most worthless one hundred and ninety pounds of manhood that had ever existed. This very morning he had become horny as a porcupine over the thought of Joan Herman in bed, and here, less than ten hours later, he was trying to convince himself and face the fact that the affair was over. Of course it was over; it had become shabby and worthless, but when he examined that conclusion, he was devastated. For years he had been a member of NOW, and he was one of the most prominent and aggressive supporters of the E.R.A.—and how did it all come together with the events of today? He had taken a detestable course with both his wife and his mistress, and if today actually meant some sort of a return—not to righteousness, which he detested—but to sanity, he still lacked enough faith in himself to believe that he could carry through.

  He decided to shave again, an unusual decision. Shaving to him, as to most men, was a ritual performed in the morning, and the senator’s beard was not heavy enough to require a second evening shave. On the other hand, at least for Richard Cromwell, shaving required total concentration—which would at least for the moment take his mind off his confused sex life.

  He shaved. Always when he shaved, he found his countenance intolerable, suffered it because a number of writers had described him as good looking, and wondered how anyone who looked like himself could be elected dog catcher. However, the act of shaving worked with his thoughts, and drying his face he turned his critical reflection upon his session with his father-in-law. And since this was a moment for self-examination with an added shred of honesty, he admitted to himself that he hated his father-in-law. The points he had given him in the belief that even a mean Jew had a streak of compassion hidden somewhere, were points without substance or meaning. He was as compassionate as John D. Rockefeller, Sr., the senator decided, and as much of a Jew.

  But on his part he had played it wrong, and that appeared to be a habit of his where Augustus was concerned. Having agreed to playing a few sets of pocket pool, he washed out as soon as the old man cleared the table on the break, thereby frustrating the old bastard. Surrender did not mean Augustus had won; it simply stigmatized Richard as someone with too little guts to play against a real hustler. Also, he should never have broached the subject of Sanctuary there in the billiard room immediately after he had washed out of the game. If he had been thinking properly, he would have saved the subject for the discussion that evening, throwing it in at a moment when Augustus, facing the two men with the senator beside him as family—well, that would have put the matter in an entirely different framework.

  His Machiavellian talents left much to be desired, and this once again returned his thoughts to his secretary, Joan Herman. She was his Machiavellian right arm, and without her he would be limited to naiveté and honesty, both death sentences in that strange place they called the Hill.

  All of which drops me into that uncomfortable space between a rock and a hard place, the senator admitted to himself, and with his bow tie hanging unmade around his neck, set off to find Dolly and beg her to tie it for him. That, he felt, was at least a trifle Machiavellian, for put to it, he could do his own bow tie. But this way it provided what he felt he needed at this moment, Dolly’s arms around him as she bent over a chair, encircling him from the rear, while he meekly allowed her to tie his bow.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Jenny found Dolly in the dining room, putting the finishing touches on the table, new candles in the sticks, two low clusters of flowers, and a rearrangement of the place cards that eliminated Jones and put Elizabeth between Web Heller and Bill Justin. Jenny was moved to sit between Leonard and Augustus. “Which puts you,” Dolly said to her mother, “next to Leonard and directly across from our two distinguished guests.”

  “And next to Gus. I could have been spared that.”

  “Mother,” Dolly explained, “we want something very important to Richard from those two, and I think that a pretty young woman will serve to put them in a better mood—”

  “Than a fat old lady.”

  “Mother, for heaven’s sake, you are not fat and you’re a
very beautiful woman—”

  “Matronly is the word.”

  “—and they will be looking at you and probably trying to rub knees with Elizabeth under the table.”

  “What a dreadful thing to say! I don’t know what’s come over you, Dolly, but you do say the most common things. Whether you like them or not, these are very important people and very highly placed in our government.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Prowling around the table, Jenny snorted at the card for Frances Heller, placed between Bill Justin and Richard, who sat at the head of the table. “You put her too far from you and me. She wants protection. She’s so sweet and innocent.”

  “And stupid, Mother. Richard will protect her, and if at age fifty-two she hasn’t learned to protect herself, heaven help her.”

  “You put her next to Bill Justin.”

  “Winnie Justin will be watching him like a hawk. And you were just defending him, Mother.”

  “Why are you so provoking? You know that I defend the office, not the man. Gus says he’s a perfect swine.”

  “You’re wonderful. Mother, you don’t have a double standard—you have a triple standard.”

  “What nonsense. Why did the colored boy leave?”

  “I suppose he was shy.”

  “That was no reason to leave. He was Leonard’s guest. You could have fixed him a tray of sandwiches for his room.”

  Dolly sighed and shook her head. “You’ve been my mother for forty-five years and you still astonish me.”

  “Well, what is it this year?” Jenny asked, irritated. “Is it Negro or black or what.”

  “Mother!”

  “I think I’d better go to my room and get dressed. We get into these awful quarrels and I know you’re so displeased with me, and I never know why. It never happens with my other children. Why are you so difficult, Dolly?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “That’s no answer.” She shook her head, petulant for a long moment, and then smiling. “Could Ellen help me dress?”

  “She’s up to her neck in things. Anyway, it would upset her. She’s not a lady’s maid, Mother.”

  “Upset her. Good heavens, your servants are servants, Dolly.”

  “I could send Nellie.”

  “That silly girl! Absolutely not.”

  “Then I’ll help you myself. I have time now.”

  “I don’t understand why you don’t have a personal maid. You run such a large house—there’s plenty of room for servants. You should have a chauffeur and a personal maid.”

  “I’m sure,” Dolly agreed.

  “I don’t need you to help me dress,” Jenny said, aggrieved. “Gus will provide whatever help I need. You always make me feel beastly—you know you do. Have I ever refused a contribution you asked for? The world is just the way it is; I can’t change it.”

  “Neither can I, Mother,” Dolly agreed. “I don’t want to make you miserable. I do love you. Can’t I help you dress?”

  “Absolutely not,” Jenny said firmly, having established her position, and with that she stalked out of the room.

  Dolly sighed and shook her head. She was the pivot of a seesaw, with her mother at one end and her daughter at the other—and every disagreement at one end or the other was of little consequence, and the realization pressed her on to the notion that her whole life was of little consequence. A few more passages through the seasons, and it was done. Her mother was an old woman, and she was middle-aged, and it all appeared to have happened in a moment when her back was turned. And then—whenever she thought of death a cold chill shivered its way through her body—and then what?

  She walked around the table, slowly, examining it. It’s really the only purpose I have, she said to herself, to put together a dinner table. If I were a waitress in a restaurant, I would be doing the same thing, but I’d be connected with reality. Here there’s just no connection with reality. On the other hand, she realized that there was a true mythic connection in what was happening this evening. Two of the most powerful people in all of mankind’s history on earth were coming to her pleasant old country house. They represented a power that dwarfed the Alexanders and Caesars and Napoleons and Hitlers. They could press a button and extinguish, not only mankind, but all that lives on earth. They were the thunder gods, and like her own father, they were neither Jew nor Gentile, not human in any aspect of prayer or hope or reverence. She knew. She had been born into this and lived with it and watched it. Now, dutifully she walked slowly around her dining room table, touching a fork here, a spoon there, a plate just slightly off center on its doily of handcrafted Irish linen. She couldn’t help but admire the fine old china, the glittering silver on the burnished mahogany table, the splendid correctness. All of it pleasing, as a work of art is pleasing.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I don’t know how long I have,” Leonard said to Jones, as they drove into town. “They couldn’t tell me that. They weren’t sure.”

  “I know.”

  “It seems unimportant, and I make this huge fuss about it. It helps not to know exactly when.”

  “You’re a brave man,” Jones said.

  “The coward dies a thousand times. I have already died ten thousand times. Why do you lie to me, Jonesy?”

  “I try to help you, Lenny.”

  “You have.”

  “When I get down home, I have to get a job. There’s a lawyer in town, name of Ruddiman, a white guy and pretty decent, and he says I can have a job clerking with him for the summer for forty dollars a week.”

  “That’s below the legal minimum.”

  “They don’t fuss much with legal minimums down there. But Daddy spoke to the foreman of the loading section at the Coca-Cola plant, and they always take on hands for the summer months. The foreman, Jake Tinsel, said he’d take me on and they pay two-seventy-five an hour. Makes a difference.”

  “It sure does. What does your daddy say?”

  “He needs the money and I need the money, but he says I can make whatever choice I think best. I’d learn a bellyful of North Carolina law, and that will count in the long run.”

  “On forty dollars a week, you won’t do much traveling.”

  “Sure. I know. But you could come down. We got a good family, and they’d treat you like one of us.”

  “Even if they knew I have Aids?” Leonard asked bleakly.

  “We don’t have to tell them.”

  “Are you out of your mind? You’d have to tell them.”

  “We spent the night at your home, and nobody told anyone anything.”

  “Because of the dinner. Only because of the dinner party tonight.”

  Then Jones was silent, and there was no more talking until they drove into town and pulled up at the bus station. Jones went inside and bought his ticket.

  “About thirty minutes,” he informed Leonard.

  “Let’s have a drink.”

  “You? You’re driving, Lenny, and you’re not that much of a drinker. What the devil are you thinking?”

  “I’m not going to kill myself,” Leonard said. “If that’s what you’re thinking, just blow it out of your mind. I’m scared, I’m not depressed, and there’s still a chance in a million that they’ll find some kind of vaccine.” He left the car and walked around it to where Jones stood uneasily, and he put his arm across Jones’s shoulder. “You talk to your mom and dad, and tell them I’m sick, and tell them that there’s no danger to anyone else. I know what Aids does to people. It scares the hell out of them.”

  Jones nodded, unable to speak, his eyes brimming with tears. He tried to say something, and his voice came out as a hoarse croak. He tried again, speaking slowly, controlling his deep, soft voice. “You never hurt anyone.”

  “It’s not crime and punishment,” Leonard said. “We don’t hurt people. There’s no judgment on us. Go home and tell them the whole damn thing.”

  “You know?” Jones asked mournfully.

  “Of course I know.”

&n
bsp; “I wanted to help you.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t want you to have the guilts. I’m stronger than you.”

  “I know. But there’s no guilt, Jonesy. Go home.”

  Jones went off, and Leonard stood and watched as Jones walked through the ugly concrete building to the open side, where the bus stood waiting. He resisted an impulse to run after the black man and beg, Jonesy, Jonesy, don’t leave me here alone. Let me go with you.

  Then he got into his car and began the drive back, pleading in himself, Why? Why did it have to be us?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Without any reason that she could put her finger on, Dolly felt a cold chill gathering around her heart. It was unwelcome and hateful. She had experienced moments of true exultation today. She had gone to bed with her husband, and he had made love to her. Perhaps five, six, ten years ago, he had made love to her that way, and it was possible that he had never made love to her before in just that way, so long ago, so hard to remember passion; but even if he had, this remained new, and for the past hour her body had glowed with delight. Now fear began to take the edge off her delight, and she turned it to Leonard. She had sensed that something was wrong with Leonard, a difference in his manner, a hesitation in response, an uncertainty that Elizabeth appeared to share. She had put it down to the presence of Clarence Jones. Her children, growing up as they had between her house in Georgetown and this country place for those times when the Senate was not in session, were not easily bemused. If anything, they were sophisticated to a point that sometimes irritated her and sometimes troubled her; but this intrusion of the young black man into a situation as delicate as this dinner party was either intentional or at least in good part irresponsible. She couldn’t deny that his departure had eased things; but after all, she had never in word or deed allowed him to sense her discomfort—or had she? Or had Richard? No. She dismissed the thought quickly. Whatever one might say about Senator Richard Cromwell, the notion that he could be rude or thoughtless in relation to a black man was ridiculous.