“Yes, yes. I know.”
~~~~~
The night after her surgery, Father took us to see Mother at the hospital. We filed down a wide hallway. A nurse wearing a blue dress and white shoes smiled and showed us to Mother’s room, which smelled of sour rubbing alcohol and sweet perfume.
“Here they are,” Mother said, sounding tired. She lifted her arm and flopped it on the bed.
We walked in, clumped together. She lay against a huge pillow, her thin hair matted. She looked pale and sleepy.
“She may drift in and out,” the nurse said. “But she’s doing great.”
Mother turned to the nurse. She closed her eyes. Her mouth buckled as if she were trying to hold back tears. “Yes, I hope so.”
Elliot walked right up to her bed and gave her a toy lion. “This will protect you.”
She opened her eyes. “Elliot.” She tried placing the lion on the nightstand beside her, and missed. The toy clattered to the floor.
“Oh, Elliot.” She looked at the night table, then lifted her hand to her eyes. “Please.” Tears dripped from the side of her eyes. “I lost it there. I lost the sound. Can you get it, Elliot?” She turned toward the night table.
“Here it is,” Elliot said, picking up the lion.
She closed her eyes again.
“Irene. Are you in pain?”
She turned her head. “What did I lose?”
“Nothing, Irene. You’re dreaming. You’re going to be fine.” Father stood by her head and put his hand on the mattress. “The doctor thinks this is going to do the trick.”
Peter stood by the door. “Should I get the nurse?” He left the room.
Robert found the switch to the television and turned it on.
“Not now,” Father said.
Peter came back with the nurse.
“Why is she crying?” Elliot asked.
“The anesthesia will do that. It takes a few days,” the nurse said. She walked over to Mother and looked at her face. “She’ll come out of it. She won’t even remember half of what she says. You can come back again. She’s probably had enough for today.”
“Let’s not tire your mother,” Father said, striding back to the door.
~~~~~
She came home at the end of the week looking like herself: hair combed and washed. Everything back in place. Father was relieved to have her on the mend. We all were. She wore a brace but it was temporary. Friends sent bouquets, and cards, which decorated her bedroom. Each day her neck improved.
Finally freed from all the energy locked in her bones for so many months, a great surge of purpose took over her. She seized on the idea of a summer party. Even her roses responded to the idea, opening in a crescendo of hues and smells in the backyard. The huge flowerbed that dominated the backyard was squared off like a stage and divided into four quarters with aisles for strolling and viewing.
I stood at the edge of her garden watching her fold in new soil with a trowel. On her knees, she felt for clumps of dirt, nudging the silt for weeds with lavender gloves. I treaded the borders lightly not wanting to ruin anything.
“It’s the balance of all these things,” she said. “Soil, light, temperature in just the right measure.”
I tried pulling a green plant out of the garden, shaking the dirt from the balled root.
“Oh, that’s not a weed. It’s a young rose. Oh, well. Toss it in the pile there.” She pointed to a heap. The smell of her drink, a glass of Scotch tucked into a pocket of earth, floated by her roses. “See. Here’s a weed.” She held up a stringy, green plant. “Pull it out slowly. If it breaks, you won’t get the roots and the weed will come right back and take over. You don’t want that.”
Inside the house, Mother made lists. She sat at the kitchen table, her neck pain gone, though she still took pills every morning just in case.
“The thing is not to let it flare up,” she said.
She counted up names of couples she wanted to include from the neighborhood, the country club, and teachers from Father’s school. Dora grew more important by the minute polishing silverware. Silver trays sparkled on the kitchen countertops.
Father lugged two card tables up from the basement and placed one in the living room beside the piano, the other in the den near the bay windows. Dora draped them both with white tablecloths, the legs hidden under linens whose hems touched the floor. I put the silverware in baskets lined with linen napkins. Elliot sat at the kitchen counter drawing pictures of dogs and cats.
Robert, as usual, sequestered himself in his room, reading. He disliked social events. They made him nervous. The talking noise gave him headaches. Peter treated the event as if it were a play and he was the stage manager. He rambled back and forth between the main rooms, calmly hooking up extra speakers, then stopping in Father’s office to test the sound.
I moved on the edges of activity, preparing myself for the onslaught of adults, not sure what to expect but curious. I loved all the party food and nibbled on salted almonds from a candy dish on the piano. In the kitchen, I snagged a piece of cheese, and a dollop of onion dip.
“Want to draw?” Elliot asked me. He handed me a crayon and I drew a cat playing a guitar before Father called me into his office.
“Sarah! Take a look at these.”
One by one, he handed me albums he planned to use for the party. I stacked them on the floor. His office was a cave of papers and books, shelves filled with books, and a mahogany roll top desk from a yard sale that was dented and scratched, and old. “Buy a new one,” Mother said when he complained about sticking drawers. His Royal typewriter on a metal stand by the window gave off a metallic, inky smell. When he prepared a syllabus or exam, he typed with two fingers, the keys clicking with happy purpose. A stereo system was stacked high on a shelf near the window.
“Music is the essence of a party. Without it, you have nothing.” He looked at the ceiling to consider his words, then started up again. “Music is to parties as darkness is to night. The party is the music. ‘Are you the leaf — ’” he asked, quoting his favorite poet Yeats.
“Okay, Dad. I get it.”
I wasn’t in the mood for pontifications.
“How can you get it? I didn’t finish so how can you understand? Are you the dancer or the dance?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Good. You don’t know. My best students, princess, admit their ignorance.”
I sat down beside him on the rug and flipped through his selections: Cole Porter, Gershwin, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Ella Fitzgerald.
“You will learn to love these people,” he said. “And once you love them you will never want to leave them and they, my dear, will never leave you.”
I looked at him.
“What did you decide to do about your boss?”
“I told him what he wanted to hear.”
“That’s not what Cordelia did.”
“True.” He unsheathed a record and held it up to the light, looking for scratches, avoiding my gaze. “However, I will continue to work my methods. I haven’t given up, my princess. I’m just going underground for the time being.”
“So Cordelia did the wrong thing?”
“Not at all. But some have argued that she was foolish, perhaps she shouldn’t have been so brash.” He stood up and puffed out his chest. “Truth is, I listened to your mother and took her advice.”
“What’s that?” Mother stopped in at the doorway. “Don’t forget to get dressed,” she said to me, smiling. She leaned against the threshold in her white, quilted robe. “How about your blue dress?’’ Peter came in and adjusted the wires on the speakers again, coiling the wires into two neat piles on the floor.
The doorbell rang. Dora walked into the living room cradling a bright yellow flower arrangement.
“Gorgeous,” Mother cried. “They match my dress.” She bent over the flowers and inhaled. I did too.
The back doorbell rang and a triplet of women caterers entered with plates and
casserole dishes for the buffet dinner. They lined the kitchen counters with trays of stuffed mushrooms, crackers, cheese, sour cream dips, chicken wings, pastries filled with cheese. Lobster seafood pasta was the main entrée.
As the day progressed, so did the summer sun bearing down on the house. It grew warm inside. Father hollered. “Peter! Fans! Bring up the fans!”
Fruit and cheese platters decorated tabletops in the den as did small vases of Mother’s roses. One of the card tables in the living room had been set up as an extra bar with all the bottles of gin and vodka, scotch, whiskey and ice buckets. Beer was kept in coolers in the basement. Bottles of wine stood in formation on the liquor tables alongside empty, crystal glasses. The smell of squeezed limes, olives, and hors d’oeuvres crisping in the oven was intoxicating. Every inch of the downstairs rooms had been surveyed and dusted. Peter brought up standing fans and fans that fit into windows. It put us all in easy but alert tempers. I placed a paperweight on top of a stack of cocktail napkins to keep them from scattering.
I shaved my legs and dressed in a pink skirt and shirt, and white sandals. Peter put on his newest uniform: bell-bottomed dungarees, a red bandana around his neck. Though Mother disapproved, she swiveled away to attend to other details.
As the sun lowered itself, releasing colorful ribbons into the sky, Father swung open the front door and kept it open.
“Here we go! I see our first guests!”
I stood at the bottom of the carpeted stairs and greeted the adults as they arrived.
“Hello, Sarah. Don’t you look beautiful. So grown up. How old are you now?”
“Fifteen.”
Two by two, they entered through the door as if our house were Noah’s ark itself. Dora methodically whisked away decorative purses and scarves, which she sequestered in her room for the night. Assured that their valuables were in reliable hands, guests turned toward the living room. The men strode anxiously to the bar in the den. They joked and patted each other’s backs. Father gripped the necks of unopened wine bottles.
“This way,” he announced to new arrivals.
Aunt Annette and Uncle Max brought a box of candies. My aunt kissed me. Uncle Max nudged Mother’s elbow and took her into the back hall for a talk. When they reappeared together in the living room Mother looked worried, shaken over something. She quickly engaged herself in greetings and instructions to Dora and the caterers. I found Elliot hiding under the card table next to the piano in the living room. The fans blew a gentle breeze through his pajama top.
“Hi ya,” I said, slipping underneath the tablecloth to sit with him and his collection of plastic animals. I offered him a handful of salted almonds. He had an elephant, a tiger, and a hippopotamus. Together we viewed a parade of spiked heels and wing-tipped shoes. Many women wore sheer black or gray-tinted stockings.
“How long will they be here?” Elliot asked. He put one nut after another into his mouth, munching loudly.
“Hours and hours.”
We watched the night gathering speed. The rooms filled with tangles of smoke, conversation and laughter. I felt pleasantly submerged under the table, giddy from the smells of mushrooms, the tangy scents of vodka and lime, gin and bourbon. The music Father selected swarmed through the rooms. Outbursts of giggles or someone blasting forward to make a joke punctuated different corners of the rooms. A group of men, including Uncle Max, settled on the couch in the living room.
Elliot leaned harder into my shoulder, his body laden with sleep.
“Come on. I’ll take you up.”
Upstairs, the air was cleaner. We drank tall glasses of water and snuggled on top of the sheets as I read Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon. Elliot knew it by heart.
In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
The rhyming patterns of the story took him away. He stretched out and turned over, hugging a satin pillow, his bunny rabbit from his crib days tucked under one arm.
“See you in the morning,” I said, kissing the side of his head.
I passed Robert’s room. He had returned to his place on his bed, disinterested in the adults tugging on his cheeks and ears. He didn’t care how much he had grown. He had fantasy books, his world of space ships and alter-planets to tend to. But I wanted to see how the party was progressing. The noise level had risen to a happy, high tide. I wanted to see more. When I came back down, Dora looked me over and decided that I was old enough to do something useful. “Why don’t you pass these around,” she said, handing me a tray of hot mushrooms with melted cheese.
I entered the living room and made my way through.
“So you’re the girl?” a man with blond gray hair reached out and stopped me. “Shell Garrison,” he said, putting his drink down on the piano. He tapped my chin and whistled. “A beauty like your mother. How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
He nodded, lighting a cigarette.
“Let me give you some advice,” he said, pulling me to one side of the room. I held the tray with both hands waiting. “Got a boyfriend?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“You hold out for the one you want,” he said, blowing smoke in my face.
“Okay.”
He was a handsome man and I was both intrigued and unnerved by his directness. I excused myself and continued passing around food. Father introduced me to one of his associates, a woman with cleavage in a cream-colored dress. Miss Delgarno’s long fingers dove down to pick up a mushroom, which she promptly plunked into her mouth whole. Her breasts bobbed up high over her v-neckline. I couldn’t stop staring at her chest. She wore a startling blue sapphire necklace. Her thin dress clung to her bra so that her nipples and bra straps popped through.
“You’ve got quite a dad,” she said to me, smiling broadly. She wore pale pink lipstick and had a small mole on her upper lip. Father took two mushrooms and stuffed them into his mouth, obviously pleased.
“What do you think about all these zany adults?” Miss Delgarno asked me. She jostled a gin and tonic in her hand, then sucked on her cigarette until it turned bright red.
“I don’t know.”
Actually, I thought the question was one she was asking herself. But I said nothing and continued on, past Uncle Max and the group of men on the couch. Mother stood at the far end of the den near the bookshelves talking with Shell, who kept leaning over, whispering into her ear. Mother spotted me and came toward me.
“Having a good time, honey?”
She touched my cheek on her way to the kitchen. Miss Delgarno and her cream-colored dress went into Father’s office and came out again swaying to a Glenn Miller recording of “Moonlight Serenade.” Father cruised over to the bar and refilled her drink. Shell found me in the den next to the windows that looked out to the backyard. The roses were in full bloom, all colors that shone in the spotlights that Mother had turned on. The spots cast bright, intricate shadows across the lawn.
Tall as a tree with sizzling blue eyes, Shell leaned over me, swaying lightly, and asked me to dance but I was too embarrassed.
“Well, then. Where’s your beautiful mother?”
He lumbered off toward the kitchen. I watched him reappear with her. He took her in his arms and they started dancing the rumba. This set off another level of glee in the living room. Peter appeared next to me.
“We’ve got some desperate people here,” he said, shaking his head.
We stood near the piano watching. Father left Miss Delgarno and cut in on Shell so Shell grabbed Miss Delgarno. But I saw Shell look over at Mother as he danced with Miss Delgarno, his eyes skipping across the walls. Others joined in while my parents danced together, tipping forward and back, taking quarter turns, their hips shifting together like college sweethearts. It embarrassed me yet I stood mesmerized, drinking three glasses of ginger ale in a row until my stomach felt bubbly and full. Father took smooth control of my mother and she liked that, tilting her chin upwards in approval. Maybe s
he was remembering their college dance where they first met, in Boston. My father, seemingly assured and wild, gave my mother license to be less than perfect.
“See that? I know how to lead,” Father called to me.
He directed Mother past Shell who tried, again, to switch partners, but Father refused to let Mother go. It was a game between the men, a way to compliment my mother, the hostess. Then the song changed. Mother stopped next to me and laughingly informed me that Shell owned a chain of restaurants called Shell Fish.
“Richest man in this room. You should have danced with him dear.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“You will.” She flinched impatiently. “Come and help with dinner.”
Buffet dinner was served then cleared. Dora and the caterers laid out a new cloth, gold-rimmed dessert plates and silver forks. Coffee brewed in large silver urns. Dora moved intently from one cluster of adults to another, ushering them back to the table. Everyone gathered around to admire the strawberry layer cake. “Irene is the pearl in my oyster,” Father said, then called out: “Irene! Where are you?”
Mother emerged from the kitchen all smiles, her cheekbones piqued with the heat and the wine she had been drinking all night long. She stood next to Father and he put his arm around her. “Ah, the insouciance of time. The eternality of family and friends.”
After the cake, Aunt Annette and Uncle Max said their good-byes. They were the first to leave. Peter slipped a beer from the cooler, sneaking it up to his room. At midnight Father announced to everyone, “The backyard! We must go out to view the full moon.” Some of the women told him he was crazy but laughed and followed him out, including Miss Delgarno.
The remaining adults looked overheated, red-faced, and woozy. More couples asked for purses and the room began to thin out. Dora insisted I go upstairs to bed. I looked into Robert’s room. He lay sleeping with his mouth agape, his light still on. A pile of open books fanned around him like a rapt audience. The air in my room was markedly cooler and deafening in its tranquility. I looked out at the round moon from my bed and saw Father and Miss Delgarno talking alone in the yard, smoking cigarettes, and gesturing up at the sky. She kept shaking her shoulder-length hair and smoothing it back behind her ears, then hugging herself. I disliked her adulation of Father. But he inhaled it. I could see his puffy cigarette breaths jumping in the spotlights.
Night Swim Page 4