by Richard Ford
His parents had scheduled a party. They were proud of his achievement and would celebrate on publication day. They lived in Rye, New York. His father took the train to Manhattan, working for an import-export firm. He dealt in bristles, hides, and furs; he placed orders for Kolinski, Chunking 2 1/4, Arctic fox, and seal. They were moderately prosperous and happy, they told him, to help. His job at the bicycle shop was therefore part time, a gesture; he drove an MG. It was British Racing Green, a graduation gift. “From here on,” he promised his mother, “I’m enrolled in the school of real life.”
She thought this phrase enchanting. Much of what he said enchanted her—his pronouncements on fashion, for instance, his sense of the cartographer as artist, mapping the imagined world from its available features. She had two vodka martinis every afternoon at five; he joined her on the porch.
“My son the poet,” she said.
“Except it’s fiction, Mom.”
“You’ll always be a poet.” She swallowed the olive intact.
His mother liked occasions. She was not sociable and did not attend parties herself. But she welcomed the caterers’ bustle at home, the porch festooned with lanterns, the garden sprouting tables and white plastic chairs. She gave birthday and anniversary parties, graduation parties, wedding parties. The house was large. She felt less lonely entertaining, she explained; they should put the place to use. She asked him for a guest list six weeks in advance.
He listed friends from Columbia, his editor, the publicity woman, his cousin, a classmate from high school who was an all-night D.J. His father invited business associates; his mother included the children or parents of friends. She disliked a party at which everyone knew everyone; a party ought to take you by surprise.
She made a habit of pronouncements, and then repeated them. One such repeated assertion had to do with variety, the spice of life, the way ingredients invariably vary. He humored her. He had come to recognize his parents needed humoring; his father’s politics, for instance, had to be avoided when they met. His father admired Judge Julius Hoffman. He wished the judge had thrown the book at those impertinent Chicago-based conspirators; he was afraid of Hoffman’s leniency, he said. He trusted Mark. He knew his son refused to bite the feeding hand.
On the Sunday of the party, he drove from Wellfleet to Rye. Trucks rumbled past at speed. He reached the Sagamore Bridge in a sudden cloudburst and pulled off the road to raise the convertible top. Tugs whistled in the canal; Mark saw the line squall receding. His book was coming out that day; he would celebrate that night. He opened his shirt to the rain.
There was much weekend traffic; he made New London by ten. He wondered if the tollbooth tenders worked eight-hour shifts. They would take coffee breaks. They would bring a heater with them in winter, soft drinks in Styrofoam cups; they would have portable radios for music and the news. They would have a grandson in Spokane. This grandson played the drums. Mark was learning to provide corroborative detail for his characters: birthday parties, a distaste for lima beans, a preference in socks. “Make a catalogue,” his writing teacher had advised. “Make it on three-by-five cards. Know everything you can. Tell yourself the person despises lima beans. Try to decide if she likes snow peas or string beans better, and if she wears a girdle, and if she sleeps soundly at night.”
He took the turnoff after Playland and reached his house by two. It was a sprawling half-timbered slate-roofed structure; there was a three-car garage. His mother met him at the kitchen door. “Congratulations,” she said.
“I made it,” Mark said, stretching. “Six hours on the nose.”
“It’s a wonderful review.”
“What is?”
“You didn’t know?”
He shook his head.
“A beautiful review,” she said. “In this morning’s Sunday Times. I thought they would have told you.”
“No.”
“They must have planned to make it a surprise. It’s wonderful. You’ll see.”
The pantry was filled with salads. There were trays of deviled eggs. The review was prominent, and generous; he had heard of the reviewer, and she made much of his book. “Classic and unmannered cadences,” she wrote. “Fidelity of mind and spirit, a tale told with economy and grace.” The novel avoided those pitfalls young writers so rarely avoid; she hailed “an auspicious debut.” His mother clapped her hands. “They’ve been calling all day long,” she said. “We tried you up in Wellfleet but you’d gone already. Everyone who’s anyone reads the Sunday Times.”
We all have been assessed in public, whether by report card, hiring, or review. Our system incorporates rank. We are used to reading how we’ve done, what we are doing, and in which percentile. But this was new and newly exciting—far more so than the notice in trade journals earlier. He had never heard of the Library Journal or The Kirkus Reviews prior to their praise. To read himself described as “brilliantly inventive,” “persuasively original,” was a “heady, yet heartfelt experience”: he took his duffel to his room, and then he showered and changed.
His parents knew an author who wrote children’s books. Ernest the dog was anything but earnest—was, in fact, mischief itself. Ernest got into and barely escaped from trouble; he was a cross between a dachshund and Dalmatian—known as a dachmatian to his friends. Mark, nine, disliked the books. His parents thought them cute, however, and gave him Ernest in the Monkeyhouse, Ernest Goes to Boarding School, Ernest and the Alligator Swamp. There were elaborate inscriptions from the author for his birthday, for Christmas, or when he was sick. Ernest had a pal called Busy Bee. They helped each other out—when Ernest was being chased by the men from the dog pound, for instance, Busy Bee distracted them: when Busy Bee was slated for the honeymill, Ernest picked the lock.
One day the author came to lunch. His name was Harold Weber, and he had a big white beard and was completely bald. Like one of his own characters, he wore a blue velvet vest. His wife, who died three years before, had been Mark’s mother’s cousin; they kept distantly in touch. Harold Weber drove a Lancia; his father admired the car. “This is your biggest fan,” he said, presenting Mark. “He knows Ernest Goes to Boarding School by heart. And The Frying Pan and Fire. It’s his favorite.”
That November had been blustery: the last dark leaves of the Japanese maple beat at the bay window. Branches blew past. His father said, “Let’s have a fire,” and a voice from the chimney said, “Wait!” “What’s that?” his father asked. “Wait, won’t you?” called the voice. “I have to get my family out first. We fell asleep.”
Mark approached the fireplace and put his ear to the wall. “Hello, little boy; what’s your name?” He turned to his parents, shocked. “I’ve got it—you must be Mark. Ernest told me all about you. You’re his favorite person on all Echo Lane.” Then the voice changed register, grew gruff. “Hello, Mark. How’ve you been? Tell them not to start that fire till I get Busy Bee out.”
Harold Weber leaned against the mantelpiece. He was smiling; his mouth moved slightly, and his Adam’s apple worked. Yet the voice came from the chimney, not where he stood beneath it. Mark said, “You’re doing that,” and Harold Weber bent, shaking his bald head, raking his beard with his fingers, looking up the fireplace and saying from what seemed like the window, “He’s not.”
Then there were drinks. There were cheese biscuits and shrimp with plastic toothpicks impaling them on a cabbage, so it looked as if the cabbage grew multicolored quills. “Don’t poke me,” said the cabbage. “I get ticklish if you poke.” Then the cabbage giggled, and Harold Weber laughed. “I guess we’ll have that fire,” he said to Mark’s father. “I guess Ernest helped old Busy Bee to get his family out.” “I guess,” agreed Mark’s father, and they laughed and swallowed shrimp.
That day he knew he’d witnessed magic—not the poor ventriloquy but the invented voice. A creature from a page had spoken to him, Mark, from a familiar place. He adored Harold Weber through lunch.
The party started at six. His father’s business partners, his uncle f
rom Arezzo, his neighbors arrived. They congratulated him. They offered wine and a leather-bound notebook and a subscription to The New York Review of Books and champagne. His sister’s plane was late. She took a taxi from LaGuardia and clattered in, exuberant, embracing him. “I knew you could do it,” she said. She told him that Johns Hopkins was a prison, and medical school like some sort of boot camp or jail; she hadn’t slept in weeks, and then just for an hour with the surgeon on the cot. She laughed with the openmouthed braying hilarity that meant she did not mean it. “I love the place,” she said. “Seriously, kid.”
The caterers served drinks. They set out food. There were several pâtés and salmon mousse and sliced roast beef and a whole ham and veal in aspic and caviar and water chestnuts and vegetable dip. Bill Winterton drove down from Rhinecliff. He accepted scotch. “It’s quite a spread,” he said. Mark was uncertain if he referred to the tables piled with food or to the house itself. “It’s a question of proportion,” Winterton observed. “Your folks are spending more for this than we paid for the book.”
His friends appeared. They drove from Manhattan and Riverdale and Westport and Larchmont and Barnegat Light. They arrived in pairs or carloads and three of them came on the train. Betty Allentuck traveled alone. She had been living with Sam Harwood, his close friend; she and Sam had broken up that spring. Sam was on a Fulbright in Brazil.
Betty had thick chestnut hair, long legs and high wide hips. Her breasts were full. She smoked and drank and swore with what he thought of as erotic frankness; he had envied Sam. They brushed against each other in the foyer, and she kissed him happily. “Your big night,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
She kissed him again. “Later,” she promised, and they went out on the porch.
That promise hovered where she stood in the gathering dark on the lawn. Spotlights in the oak trees lit the far stone wall. There were lanterns and torches as well. There were aromatic candles in glass jars. His father moved among the guests, wearing a pinstriped blazer, looking like a politician, pumping hands. The punch was good.
His friends attended him. They asked about the Cape, they praised his tan, they asked for free copies or where they could buy one or if he would sign books they brought. They talked about themselves. They were in law school and business school and advertising agencies; they were moving to Los Angeles and Spain. There was a rope hammock, slung between two maples; Betty lay inside it, swinging, sandals off. His father’s accountant said, “Mazel tov,” pointing in what seemed to be her direction; his uncle asked about his plans, what he was planning next. There were checkered tablecloths and helium balloons in clusters anchored by his book. The balloons were blue and white.
Then there were toasts. Bill Winterton said he was pleased, and Mark should get to work. He hoped and trusted this was the beginning of a long career. There was applause. Mark’s sister said, I want to tell you, everyone, his handwriting is rotten. Scribble, scribble, scribble, Mr. Gibbon. People laughed. There was a toast to the reviewer for the Times: may her judgment be repeated. I’m proud of you. Mark’s father said, I’m grateful you folks came. Imagine what this food will look like in the morning, said his mother; please everybody take seconds. Help yourselves.
By the time dessert arrived, he had grown impatient. A party in your honor is supposed to be more fun than this, he told Betty in the hammock; it was nine o’clock. Dessert was cake. His mother said, “You cut it, dear,” and led him to the serving table. They made space. The cake was large, rectangular, its icing fashioned in a perfect likeness of the cover of his novel. The blue sky and the bird outstretched against it and the pillars with his name inscribed—all were reproduced. He was embarrassed. “Beautiful,” they chorused. “It’s magnificent.” “The word made sugar,” said Billy the D.J. “Take of my body. Eat, eat.”
There were photographs. Flashbulbs popped repeatedly while he smiled and blinked. His mother provided a knife. “You cut the first slice, author.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s the book’s birthday. We made it a cake.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Please,” she said.
He took the knife and flourished it, then stabbed the air. He wielded it as if it were a saber, impaling, conducting. In the angle of his vision he saw his mother’s face, shocked. He advanced as might a fencer, left arm curled above the shoulder, wrist cocked, thrusting. She would construct indulgence yet again. There were a hundred portions, and he hacked.
“You were wonderful,” said Betty.
“When?”
“With the cake. I loved it.”
“You’re in the minority.”
She put her hand on his arm. “When the party’s over would you take me home?”
“Is that a proposition?”
“Yes.”
The guests dispersed. They took their leave of him as if he were a host. There were pots of coffee for those who had to drive. The caterers cleaned up. His parents and his sister rocked companionably on the porch. “You’d never make a surgeon, Mark,” she said. “Look what you did to that cake.”
He told them he was taking Betty to New York. He claimed a bottle of champagne, said thank you to his parents, and promised to return by dawn. “Drive carefully,” they said. “To the victor,” said his sister, and they laughed.
The MG’s top was down. The seats were wet. He dried them with his handkerchief, and Betty leaned against him, and they kissed. Headlights from a turning car illuminated their embrace; she did not turn away.
What followed was delight. They drove into Manhattan in their own created wind; she rested her hand on his thigh. The city spread beneath them like a neon maze through which he knew the track, a necklace suspended from the dark neck of the river. At the Triboro Bridge toll booth the attendant said, “Fine night.” He found a parking space in front of her apartment, and they closed the car. “I’ve wanted this all year,” she said. “Haven’t we been virtuous? It seems like I’ve waited all spring.”
The sex was a promise delivered. Betty took him into her with a high keening wail, a fierce enfolding heat; she flailed against him in the bed, repeating to his rhythm, “God, my God, my God.” He was proving something, celebrating, displacing his friend in her flesh; he battered at her till she cried, “I love you, Mark.” He wondered, was that true. They drank champagne. The ache in his knees, in his back, the plenitude of travel and arrival and release, the long day waning, the radio’s jazz, the whites of her eyes rolling back—all this was bounty, a gift. Each time he entered her she begged him, “Stop. Don’t stop.”
On Tuesday he and Winterton met again for lunch. This time they ate at Lutèce. “Word is the Newsweek is good. And The Saturday Review.” He handed Mark The Saturday Review. There was his photograph, and a review entitled “Timeless Parable.” Again he had heard of the critic; again the assessment was kind. “I wish I could have written a book this good at twenty-two. I could not, and very few do. There’s a major talent here. Hats off.”
“Publicity is ringing off the hook,” said Winterton. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
The bumblebee, he said, is by all scientific measure too slow and fat to fly. Cheerfully ignorant of this, however, and to the dismay of scientists, the bumblebee just flies. Winterton flapped his arms. He drank. You’ve got to learn, he said, to be like that bumblebee flying: just go ahead and buzz.
“I’m working on a story,” Mark announced.
“Good.”
“It’s about discovery. Self-discovery. A boy who sleeps with his best friend’s girlfriend, then finds out she’s the Muse.”
“Don’t spoil it by analysis.”
“I’m not. I’m only telling you.”
“Well, don’t.” He pressed his palms to his temples and then extracted glasses from his coat. He had not worn glasses before in Mark’s presence; he studied the menu with care. “There’s nothing that can happen now,” he said, “that’s anything but a distraction to you
r work. If the praise continues, if it dies down or changes or stops. All of this”—he waved his hand—“it’s beside the point. The point is to keep working, to not stop.”
He said this with bitterness, smiling. The first course arrived. Thereafter the mood lightened, and Winterton grew expansive. Ernest Hemingway drank rum, and Scott drank French 75’s, and Bill Faulkner drank Jack Daniels; he emulated them all. You can tell a writer’s models by which drink he orders, at which bar.
His tennis game was off. He had lost his backhand and his overhead. His marriage was a warring truce, his boy a diabetic, and his secretary couldn’t tell the difference between Tolstoi and Mickey Spillane if her raise depended on it; his eyes hurt. No one read Galsworthy now. No book buyer in this room—he raised his arm, inclusive—could tell him, he was certain, where “The apple tree, the singing and the gold,” came from, and what was its original.
Mark too recited a verse. “Samuel Smith he sells good beer / His company will please. / The way is lit and very near / It’s just beyond the trees.”
“What’s that?” asked Winterton, incurious, and Mark said he read it in Wellfleet. It was a tavern motto from a tavern washed away. The whalers weighed anchor off Jeremy Point—but all they found was pewter now, a bowl or two, some spoons.
“Mine’s Sophocles,” said Winterton, “in the Gilbert Murray translation. ‘Apples and singing and gold . . .’”
The garden room was full. Light slanted through the windows; women laughed. Mark had taken the train to Manhattan and would take it home again; his car was being serviced in the garage at Rye. They drank Italian wines, to honor what Bill Winterton described as his true provenance; it seemed important, somehow, to pretend they were in Italy. This went against the decor’s grain; the waiters spoke in French. “You know where Napoleon comes from? It’s a riddle.” Winterton coughed. “The question is what nationality was Napoleon at birth? I ask you, ‘Can you answer?’ and the answer’s, ‘Cors-I-can.’”
This seemed uproarious to Mark—witty, learned, apt. They celebrated lengthily, and there was nothing he could not attain, no prospect unattainable. Walking to Grand Central he breathed deeply, weaving. He made the 4:18.