Family Dancing

by David Leavitt

  “Does your mother know you switched the cards?” John asks.

  Lynnette smiles. “She’ll find out,” she says.

  “Seth’s disappeared again,” John says, looking once again toward the house. “I hope we get a chance to talk. It’s so strange seeing him in this context.”

  “Well, he’ll be in New York soon. Then we’ll see a lot of him, I’m sure. Still, I’d just love to drop it casually to Mom. You know. Seth and John are friends, Mom. They go to this club on Avenue A . . . you probably haven’t heard of it. She’d die.”

  “Don’t do anything cruel, Lynnette,” John says.

  She looks at him, surprised. “What does that mean?” she asks.

  “I’m serious. I’m sorry to have to be so blunt, but it bothers me, all of this aggression toward your mother. Switching the placecards and all. The point is not to be pointlessly cruel. The point is different.”

  “I’m not being pointlessly cruel,” Lynnette says. “I’m talking self-preservation. There was no way in hell I was eating lunch with my cousins after all this time.”

  John looks at the diving board, the still pool below. “Perhaps we should go socialize,” he says.

  “What is your problem today?” Lynnette says. “Angry one minute, the next everything is just hunky-dory.”

  “Look, I said what I had to say. Let’s go socialize. A lot of people are arriving.”

  He stands up, brushing some leaves from his lap, and offers Lynnette his hand. “Shall we?” he says.

  “All right,” she says. She gets up and takes his arm, and they promenade up the grassy slope of the lawn to the patio.

  “Oh, Lynnette,” Suzanne says once they’re in hearing range, “you’re just in time to see the Friedlanders. You remember Steve and Emily Friedlander, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Lynnette says. “I babysat for you in junior high.”

  “I remember. I do,” Mrs. Friedlander says, and shakes Lynnette’s hand.

  “And this is Lynnette’s roommate, John Bachman,” Suzanne says.

  “I work in publishing,” John says, in response to Mr. Friedlander’s query.

  “Not much money there, is there?” Mr. Friedlander says. “But I suppose someone’s got to do it. Emily and I are avid readers. What’s the company?”

  John names it. “Steve,” Emily says, “don’t we own that?” She laughs.

  “Champagne cocktail,” announces one of the young girls with the trays. “Fish mousse,” says another. “Mini egg rolls,” says another.

  Lynnette and John head for the champagne cocktails. They take two each. Suzanne takes one, and drinks it quickly and subtly. Only Bruce says no. He doesn’t drink. Someone runs inside to get him some sparkling cider.

  In the foyer, the graduation gifts pile up—silver ribbons and designer wrapping papers and huge, ornate bows which glitter in the sunlight.

  Seth finally makes it outdoors around three, still looking rumpled, though he’s wearing a new pressed suit. Almost immediately he is engulfed by a circle of grandmothers and aunts and great aunts, arrived by taxi from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Yonkers. “Sethela,” Pearl says proudly, “you look handsome as a man. How old are you?”

  “Almost eighteen,” Seth says. Over the heads of these small women he exchanges a glance and a nod with John, who motions with his eyes toward the pool house. Seth watches his friend whisper goodbye to Lynnette, and make his way down the grassy slope to the pool.

  “So what are your plans?” Pearl asks. “Tell us all, tell us your plans, you great big graduation man, you.”

  Suzanne sees Seth talking from the kiddie table, where she is setting up paper plates and special placemats. Bruce’s children, Linda and Sam, will sit at the kiddie table, along with two babies, some pubescent nieces, and the seventeen-year-old son of Concetta, the ex-maid. Suzanne can see Linda and Sam, standing glumly on the porch, surveying this party full of strangers. She thinks they are menacing children. She feels a little tipsy after two drinks, and thinks she will have more.

  And there, across the porch, is Lynnette, who, in the midst of looking for John, has been swept up by a stronger urge to find her father. Discovering he hasn’t arrived, she has sat down and decided to analyze her mother, who is having another drink. Her prognosis: Things are turning over on Suzanne (a turnover which will be completed when she sees the switched placecards). And then Lynnette remembers what John has said, and feels a stab of guilt. It is not her fault, she tells herself, if Suzanne is still in love with Herb, if Bruce is a weak, inferior person. Perhaps there is something wrong with her taking such pleasure in her mother’s sad predicament. And yet she takes pleasure in so few things, and if she tells no one, and does nothing to make things worse for Suzanne than Suzanne has already made them for herself, who can fault her? In the long run, Lynnette decides, she is doing her mother a favor by switching the placecards, saving her from the pain of sitting with Herb and Miriam, who are genuinely in love, and would only make Suzanne envious and unhappy.

  Where is John? He has disappeared somewhere. Seth is still surrounded by the circle of old women. Her mother is drinking, laughing, chatting. Bruce holds his wife’s hand with a kind of tentativeness—the hold of a man who isn’t sure what he’s clinging to.

  No one—not even Lynnette—notices when Seth slips away from his relatives, and makes his way toward the pool house.

  Suzanne is standing in the kitchen, holding on to the counter so hard her knuckles are turning white as the marble. She is biting her lower lip and she is fighting back a wave of nausea. Because suddenly, inexplicably, standing with her husband, she felt as alone and bereft as the first day she got out of bed after Herb’s departure and stood in the living room on her wobbly legs and cried. There is no need for this, she tells herself. She is in a new house, she is a new person, and she is surrounded by friends and relations, she is having a party. Yet none of it seems real to her. Why now, when she has no time to control it, must the pain return?

  She breathes deeply, counts her breaths. Next to her on the counter is a half-empty martini. Without thinking she gulps the drink down, before noticing that someone has extinguished a cigarette butt in it. A pleasant warmth seeps through her, and seems to numb her. She wants desperately to disappear, to watch television, to go to the grocery store. But she cannot, she must not.

  And strengthened—at least for the moment—by her drink, she goes back outside.

  Suzanne knows Herb has arrived when she gets outside because his name hums in the background, on the lips of all the guests. He is wearing a black-striped suit and a red tie, and he is standing with a pretty blond woman in her thirties who is wearing a white dress: Miriam. Herb has spoken of her, over lunch. They may be married in the spring.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Lynnette shouts, abandoning her search for John and Seth. And she runs from where she is sitting to where he stands, nearly knocking Suzanne over in the process.

  “Hi, baby doll,” Herb says, sweeping heavy Lynnette up in his arms, clear into the air, as if she is weightless. Miriam stands next to him, her hands crossed over her stomach, holding a small gift. She is the kind of woman who knows how to stand and look comfortable while she is waiting to be introduced, while she is being assessed.

  “Hello, Miriam,” Lynnette says. “I’m glad you could come.” And she whispers something to Herb which no one can catch.

  “Hello, Herb,” Suzanne says, walking to greet him. If she didn’t know about Miriam, she could say something sultry, like, “Who’s your friend?” Because she is drunk, she has no idea how she actually sounds.

  “You’re looking radiant as usual,” Herb says. Miriam smiles.

  “Oh, Miriam,” Herb says, suddenly remembering his companion. “Suzanne, this is Miriam. Miriam, Suzanne.”

  “Hello, Suzanne,” Miriam says. “Herb’s told me so much about you.” She reaches out her hand, graciously.

  “Likewise,” Suzanne says.

  “Hello, Herb!” A small man suddenl
y appears by Suzanne’s side, and shakes Herb’s hand. “Good to see you, buddy,” he says. Suzanne looks at the man, a little puzzled, and then she remembers that he is her husband.

  “I’ll leave you all to talk,” Suzanne says. “A hostess’s duties call.” And she slips off to the kitchen. Suzanne does not usually drink much, and when she does, it’s for a reason. On those rare occasions—like today—the power of alcohol impresses her tremendously, and she wants to recommend it, like a wonder drug. She wants to do commercials advertising its effectiveness. Perhaps she can tell Mrs. Ferguson. It is amazing what this stuff can do, she might say. We are all chemicals, after all. And suddenly, her body feels as if it is nothing but chemicals—entirely mechanical, a vat of interaction, immune.

  The caterers are carving several legs of lamb. “We’re ready to serve if you are, ma’am,” shouts the old lady in the chef’s hat.

  “Oh, I’m ready,” Suzanne says. “I’m ready for anything.”

  She is only surprised, in fact, when she sees her name on a placecard at a table with her cousins from Queens. She remembers arranging things differently. No matter. The Queens cousins can be fun. Anyone can be fun as long as she looks at them, listens to them the right way.

  Just as the appetizer is served, Seth and John reappear, somewhat out of breath.

  “Where were you?” Lynnette asks.

  “We took a walk,” John says, and they sit down at the table, with Herb.

  “Was it fun?” Herb asks.

  “Oh, yes,” Seth says. “Quite fun. Hello, Miriam.”

  From behind them, at another table, Suzanne raises a glass of wine and says, “Mazel tov, everybody.” Safely ensconced between Herb and John, Lynnette doesn’t even smile.

  “Suzanne,” Bruce says, sitting down next to her. “Suzanne, are you all right? Your eyes are all red.”

  By dusk, the tables have been cleared.

  The caterers are cleaning up the kitchen, to the hum of the dishwasher. The old lady in the chef’s hat, once so irritable, is sitting in a corner, polishing a copper skillet and humming “God Bless the Child.” Near the diving board, Suzanne watches purple blotches of cloud move and crash against one another. She is dimly aware that somewhere behind her people are talking, relatives mostly. (The Barlows and the Friedlanders left hours ago.) It is hard for her to identify any one voice. Yet she does not feel weak. In some perverse way, she feels strong—strong enough to bulldoze her way through dinner, to keep Myra from talking the whole time about dentistry. Once again, she has gotten past despair. She only wonders how long it will be until the next bout, and if the gulf will have widened.

  A roar of laughter is rising above the patio, and a voice—John’s voice—says, “Come on, please, dance with me, please.” Suzanne gets up and stumbles toward the house, to see what’s causing the commotion. It seems that Seth has put a dance tape on the stereo—one he made for a party at school—and a disco song with lyrics in German is blasting out the family room windows. The person John is trying to entice into dancing with him is Pearl, and she is shaking her head, no, no, and throwing back her neck, laughing as he reaches out his hands to her and implores her.

  “Come on, Pearl,” an uncle says. “You used to love to dance with the young men.” Yes, the family roars. Dance. And quite suddenly she relents, a smile widening on her face.

  Pearl dances with amazing energy. She kicks up her heels, and her sisters and cousins and grandchildren—gathered in a circle—applaud loudly, and cheer her on. Even Seth jumps and whoops with glee. Lynnette sits with Miriam and Herb outside the circle, at a small patio table. They observe this spectacle with polite smiles on their faces, like tourists who watch a native dance and wish they, too, could be primitive and join in. Lynnette gazes at Miriam, whose face is a model of perfect composure. What a contrast, she thinks, to her mother’s freak show of a party; how good it feels to be in the company of kind and well-mannered Miriam. Lynnette cannot help but smile, and move her hand toward Miriam’s, which lifts slightly off the table, then falls back perfectly in place.

  The next song on the tape is “It’s Raining Men.” Pearl is imitating John’s long-legged way of dancing, to the delight of everyone around her—even Suzanne, who now stands on the periphery of the patio, clapping her hands and throwing her head back in full laughter. Now she stumbles over to the table where Herb is sitting with Miriam and Lynnette and reaches out her hands. “Let’s dance,” she says. “Come on, Herb, come dance with your wife. For old time’s sake.”

  Herb looks up at her, confused. “Go ahead, Herb,” Miriam says. “I think it’s a lovely idea.” She smiles. As for Lynnette—Lynnette’s eyes bulge. Her make-up has smeared in purple and black circles under her eyes; sitting there, she looks like an old cartoon illustration of Satan Suzanne saw once, arrived uninvited at some absurdly genteel dinner party. He sat at the table in all his hideousness, and no one in the picture seemed to notice. The caption read: “The Unexpected Guest.”

  “Suzanne, please,” Herb says. “I really don’t want to dance.”

  “But it’s all right with Miriam, isn’t it?” says Suzanne.

  “Go ahead, don’t stop on my account,” Miriam says.

  Suzanne grabs Herb’s hands and hoists him up. “Come on,” she says loudly, so that several of her relatives turn and look. “We’ll show these young people what dancing really is.”

  Herb has no choice but to go with her. She drags him between two of her cousins into the center of the patio, where John and Pearl are still going strong.

  Pearl, who has been enjoying her spotlight, gives her daughter a look of irritation and suspicion. “Come on, Mom,” Suzanne says. “You can’t hog all the attention all night.” And she grabs Herb’s hands, and swings him into a jitterbug.

  But “It’s Raining Men” ends. The next song on the tape, inexplicably, is “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” John gets down on his knees and begs Pearl, who shoos him off. “No, I just can’t anymore,” she says. “I’m just too tired.”

  “Oh, you’ll break my heart,” John says. “My heart is breaking.

  “Good to see you haven’t forgotten how to flirt, Mama,” Suzanne says to Pearl, and everyone laughs. She has grabbed Herb firmly around the waist, to make sure he doesn’t try to run away from the slow dance. Now, alone in the circle, they writhe, Herb trying to keep his distance, Suzanne insistently holding him down so that his chest pushes against hers.

  “Hey,” Herb says, “I have an idea. Let’s make this a family dance. Let’s have the whole family. Come on, Seth!”

  Everyone roars approval. Seth nods no, but it’s only for show. His grandmother pushes him out into the opening arms of his parents, who take him in. The song continues, and the three of them roll haphazardly over the patio. “When an old flame dies,” Suzanne sings, “you know what happens.”

  There is a sound of rustling, now, behind the circle. Someone is trying to persuade Lynnette to join the dance. Indeed, several of her aunts have hoisted her up, and are pushing her toward the makeshift dance floor, refusing to heed her insistent pleas that she does not want to dance.

  “Come on,” Pearl says. “Don’t be a spoilsport. Dance with the family, darling.”

  But a spoilsport is exactly what Lynnette wants to be. “I don’t want to,” she says through gritted teeth, and elbows her way out of her aunts’ grips. To no avail. A space has cleared in the circle, and John has grabbed Lynnette by the arm so firmly that tears spring to her eyes. “Come on,” he says. “Dance.”

  “Let me go or I’ll scream,” Lynnette warns him.

  “Shut up and don’t be a baby,” John says, and plummets her into the center of the circle, into the reeling inner circle of her family.

  Immediately they close around her, like a mouth. It is dank inside that circle, full of the smells of alcohol and perfume. Arms around arms, heads knocking, the family stumbles, barely able to keep its balance. “I love you, sweetie,” Suzanne says from somewhere, and a mouth nuzzles Lynnette�
�s hair.

  She is crying now. Besides the music, her crying is the only sound, for the crowd has suddenly been struck silent, and is watching with wide eyes. And though Herb’s hand squeezes her shoulder, though he whispers in her ear, “It’s all right, honey,” all she feels is the terror of inertia, like the last time he ever pushed her on the swing. Higher and higher she went, as if his strength could disprove her fatness. “Daddy, stop!” she had screamed as the swing rose. “Stop, stop, I’m scared!” Her hands clutched the metal chains, her mouth opened. She wasn’t scared of the height; she was scared of him, of how he kept pushing, as if the swing were magic, and by pushing he could change her forever into the pretty little girl he really wanted to be his partner.

  Radiation

  Two sisters and a brother were sitting at a kitchen table watching “General Hospital.”

  Is Monica good now, or bad, asked the younger sister, a girl of eight.

  I can’t tell, said the brother, who had just returned from a summer program for college-bound youths.

  Shut up, shut up, I can’t hear, said the oldest sister, waving away a fly attracted to her damp skin.

  First she was bad, I think, then she was good, but now she’s bad again, said the cleaning lady, who had been intimate with the show since its inception.

  The younger sister got up and ran across the house to her mother’s room. On the way, she played a game of her own invention involving somersaults and spinning.

  The mother was riding the Exercycle, and also watching “General Hospital.”

  Again the girl asked, Is Monica good or bad?

  I don’t know, said the mother, pushing up and back against the handlebars to improve muscle tone. I can never tell.

  On the screen Monica and Lesley were arguing over Rick.

  An alarm went off, a commercial came on. The mother stepped off the Exercycle, sat down at the make-up vanity, and began combing her hair. She had it cut specially by a hairdresser who specialized in ladies undergoing the treatment. As the comb went through, lifting each tuft from the scalp, it revealed the concealed bald patches.