CHAPTER SIX
Helene
I’m dancing and the band’s too loud and been going on too long and I’m also starting to feel sick, so I say “Really, I’m getting dizzy, mind if we stop?” and the man I’m dancing with, I don’t know his name, he told me it and I forgot, his name’s Allan or Aaron or some name with an A and I think an an or on at the end of it, well Adman I’ll call him just for the heck of it, since he said he was one or was that the last man I danced with, says “Anything you say, Miss Helene—just a-kiddin; too many old movies. But what is it? You’re not feeling too good?” We’ve stopped. People dance around us in twos, threes and groups plus a few snapping their fingers and with their eyes shut doing entranced oohing solos. “Too much champagne—Watch out for the whirling whale on your left—we’ll get rolled over. I always drink too much at these damn affairs. Not damn. It’s a nice affair and not Dorothy and Sven’s fault I don’t know how to drink. One glass, that should have done it, while I must have had three, maybe four. And this music. Excuse me, but you don’t think it’s God’s gift to modern ears, do you? Ears, Ears,” when he looks at me as if he didn’t hear, “because that’s exactly what it gives you, hearing problems. I find it too loud, fast, for children—give me Piranesi—Palestrina, if not to dance then just to listen and sing to. But I used to be able to dance furiously to this—liked it better then too. Eons ago, but now—I hated to be Miss Killjoy but if I had danced another few steps, and God forbid another big swirl, I would have thrown up.”
“Please, no excuses necessary. I’m in fact gratified,” bowing, “knowing the physical effect it would’ve had on you, since I am wearing my new party shoes and only renting this—but why am I being so gross?” He takes my upper arm, holds out his other hand and says to the dancers he parts us through “Pardon, scus-e moi, happy man, hapless damoiselle,” and we walk back to the dais where I have a seat next to Dorothy’s. Pleasant man, clever enough tongue, but so unattractive. And what an awful affair. From the bagel tree to the champagne fountain. How could she have let her mother throw it? Reminder if I ever marry again: take the ladder route, toots, even if I am eight flights up, then to relent to those insurmountable—unsurmountable?—whatever it amounts to—parental forces. “Thank you very kindly, Mr.—I’m sorry, my champagne head, and last names.”
“Arthur Rosenthal.”
“Arthur, right. With an A.”
“Vut den? The only way.”
“No, it’s just—Oh, out with it, girl—no more dissembling. Do you know who Satchel Paige was?”
“From what I read, still is. A great old baseball pitcher.”
“Well I had a friend who loved to repeat—”
“A male friend?”
“Yes, a man. Loved to repeat what Satchel Paige said about lying. He said, Paige did—oh God, what did he say? His mother—Something about if you’re going to lie—I wish my friend was around, but only to feed me the line. Anyway, I knew your first name started with A and while we were dancing I raked my brain to remember it. But the champagne again. Out goes memory, in goes whatever goes in. A headache tomorrow. But, don’t know how I would have made it back here without you, so thanks—Arthur? Artie? Art?”
“I prefer Arthur. Mind if I sit with you? Till Dorothy gets back?”
“Where is Dorothy? There she is. Hi, Dots. Great party. Dance it away, me lady.”
“She looks miraculous, doesn’t she? Brides. Boy, they all do, even the ugly ones, though she wasn’t ugly before. Till now she was near to being beautiful. A borderline beauty I’ll call her. Not a natural beauty I can say—not like you, if you’ll excuse me—tut tut, got carried away,” and he slaps his wrist. “But tonight—you do excuse me, don’t you?”
“Sure, but no more—for my own reasons.”
“What are they?”
“Please, my own reasons. Reverse egotism, which sounds like the reverse of it, but what do you want me to say? Tonight Dorothy what?”
“Tonight she’s truly beautiful, which isn’t merely her dress and happiness but is also very much tied up with her knowing we all know she’s a beautiful ecstatic bride.”
“I’m sorry, you lost me there a little. And sure, sit if you like; at least don’t stand. Don’t know how much chitchat I’m good for. I’m a bit tired tonight.”
“No problem, honestly. I usually don’t talk this much too.” He sits. “So, what do you do?”
“What do I do? I didn’t say so on the dance floor? I’m a dance instructress.”
“Of course you are.”
“Really showed. Stepped a few more times on your toes than I should have.”
“It wasn’t that. In fact, you were extremely graceful.”
“Graceful I’m not. And extremely? Would you believe I once studied to be a dancer? True, true, and people—ballet instructors, older dancers—said I had a gift for it too. But I lost the body for it. Got too top-heavy for one thing and a bit too bottom-heavy too.”
“You’ve a fine figure.”
“Fine, maybe—I don’t know—but for classical dancing?—no. By the time I was fourteen the figure had filled out too much, despite what I did to stop it—you just can’t reduce bones—and I couldn’t, well, float the way I wanted to over a ballet stage. I was devastated.”
“So what kind of work did you end up doing?”
“You still don’t believe I’m a dance instructress? No, we went over that.”
“Champagne?” the waiter says, pouring more champagne into my empty glass.
“Not for me thanks, really. Take it away.”
“It’s a wedding reception. Drink, be gay. It’s luck for the bride and groom if you do. You don’t and then he and next everyone here, this’ll all go to waste. It’s paid for and the barmen will hide the unused bottles as if they been drunk.”
“That’s the wedding couple’s problem,” Arthur says, “—the mother.”
“It should be ours too. Sophie should know.”
“Don’t tell her I told,” the waiter says. “Anyhow, it isn’t so. I only said it to get you to drink. Tell folks something’ll only go to waste and they stuff their faces with it, but nothing like a happy occasion. I love it when all my people I serve get drunk. They get zonked enough—hey, they don’t see me knocking down some too. Not serious. Yours?” he says to Arthur.
“Why not? Any one of these glasses. In fact, I’ll drink hers, mine and yours.”
“Hooo, bad guy—candy from babies. But it’s people like you who make for great parties.” He fills all the glasses on this side of the dais, says to Arthur “Persuade her,” and goes.
“Crazy guy,” Arthur says, downing his glass. “So, after all that, what do you do?”
“Really, it’s all sort of boring to me now, my work. But you’re so interested in learning what I do—no, this won’t make any sense—Hi, Soph, dance a jig, kid, ‘cause tomorra you’ll be broke. Not serious, as the waiter says. I’m not—Oh God, what did I say?—Sorry, Soph, but it’s your champagne. It’s too good,” and I try to roll my eyes while I roll my head. She waves, puts her fingers to her ears that she didn’t hear, foxtrots to the middle of the floor with Sven, people crowd around them clapping in unison, Dorothy taps Sven’s shoulder and cuts in to dance with her mother and the clapping crowd cheers them. “I’m so embarrassed. To bring up the cost of this overpriced garish party. And the cake hasn’t even been wheeled out yet. I’m supposed to—how am I going to?—stand beside them while they cut it, with its three different-colored tiers and the edible naked couple standing on top right down to the pink nipples, detumescent penis and Dorothy’s dark and Sven’s yellow pubic hair. Arthur, I’ve got to be crocked, or close to it. Say something that will make me think I wasn’t that crude to Sophia or that she really didn’t hear.”
“I don’t see how she couldn’t’ve.”
“Great help.”
“What do I do did you start to ask me before?”
“Right—good. I was. Then I don’t know what. Ju
st answer. Pay no attention to what I say.”
“Lawyer. Tax law. Might sound boring, but it’s fairly exciting if you’re interested in psychology and people and petty—and, you know, right on up the ladder—thievery.”
“Doesn’t sound boring. Doesn’t sound too exciting, but everyone has to do something. See how smart I am? Ready for more painstaking cerebration and fancy wording? It’s nice to make a good living. I’m sure you do or enough to leave reasonably well on—live on.”
“I don’t complain.”
“I do because I don’t make enough to leave or live on. But I’m not really complaining either, even if it might seem, with my comment about how I can complain—forget it. Anyone for tied-up tongue tonight? Not quite on the menu. I don’t know why I even unconsciously suggested it, since I get paid well enough for what I do in the time I do it in. Yes I do, and health insurance, and I love my kids.”
“You’re married?”
“What do I do do you mean to make such an uncomplaining living and have such good kids? I teach. American literatures and languages. That was supposed to be amusing,” when he looks mystified. “Russian literatures and languages?” Still doesn’t get it. “Romance?” He smiles. “Ah, la love you understand. And maybe there is such a department in some university—American L and L—but I’m not aware of it—Hi, Sven. Do her the big dip again.” He does. Dorothy waves to me as her hair brushes the floor, then is upended again and I blow them a kiss and they each blow me one back. What will he think when he sees his pubic hair on top of the cake? Dot got it at the Erotic Bakeshop as a surprise for him. Good thing Sophie talked her out of having the couple recline postcoitally in bed, but I hope he scolds her for being so goddamn New York magazine.
“Dance with us, Helene,” Dorothy says.
“Too many bubbles. I’ll fall on my face.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do at a wedding reception,” Sven says.
“And that’s what everybody’s been telling me to. But I have to grade papers and write a review the next few days, so I need that face. I’m enjoying myself just fine from here. And I danced on my face before just fine with Arthur.”
They dance away. Rock music’s been playing for thirty minutes straight. Flowers. Smell of so many of them makes me think of summer, Cape cottage, student-free.
“I’m really not a good dancer,” Arthur says, “but you simplified it for me. However much you say the alcohol affected you, you danced as gracefully as I said. Not like a gazelle, mind you, with dancing shoes on, but one without them. You carry well.”
“I carry well?”
“You let me carry you well, the few times I held you, and lead you well too. It felt, those times, as if I were dancing with a feather—it’s true.”
“Did I tickle you? Sorry. So, tax law, huh? Actually, my father used to be one. But just a plain lawyer.”
“You’re kidding. This is unbelievable. On his own or in a firm? Where, New York? Hey, we were made in heaven, and what’s your original last name?”
“In Vilna before the war. He was too weak when they got here to study for the bar, and the piddling hard jobs he took to keep us alive quickly did him in.”
“He died?”
“He didn’t, no, just got very disconsolate and sick.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Not that he got sick, and I didn’t mean to pry. But he was a lawyer—well, let’s say he eventually recovered and went back to it or was very successful in anything he did. Champagne,” picking up two glasses of it. “Moments like these we need it, as the beer commercials say.” He offers me one, I shake my head, he drinks it down and sips from the other. “You do forgive me?”
“Whatever for? Depression, the rest—I’d blame the Germans again ten more times before I ever would you. But then, hadn’t been for them, my parents never would have fled to the Soviet Union and met in a camp. So now I’m going to say something I’ve thought a lot about and really feel about the order of life. Never—”
“Helene,” a man says. I turn to him. Don, Ron, non—Lon. “Lon Friedensohn?”
“How are you, how are you, how are you? Haven’t seen you since Diana’s birthday party around this time a year ago. Schopenhauer, Stradivarius—remember? If I’m not stopping anything, would you like to dance? I love this number. From sixty-six. The Stones. Beggars Banquet. An abominable rendering of it—or was it sixty-seven?”
“Got me. And I’d like to but I’m exhausted. Too much champagne besides. Besides that, other things. I’ll collapse the moment I’m out there.”
“You’re expected to. Minimum of five times for everyone under thirty-five or the wedding’s not been sanctified. It’s in the Talmud—look it up. And all night I’ve been dying to dance with someone who’ll collapse with me to the floor and then just lie there laughing. Dance with me, Helene, dance with me, dance with me,” he sings as he dances in place.
“Wish I could, but thanks.”
“Say. Later.”
“You’re so admired,” Arthur says, “and desired. I never saw anything like it.”
“Only when I’ve drunk too much. Then, I must look like an easy mark and a good dancer.”
“No, it’s obvious. Everyone’s magnetized by you. Women, men. Strangers. The way the waiter spoke to you. He’s probably a sour fucker normally—excuse me—to most people, but you lit him up. I can tell: people are naturally pulled to you. I was, this Lon, and just the way half the men here look at you when they go past—even the little kids. It must get very distracting at times.”
“If it’s so, I don’t really notice it. If I do notice it, what’s it mean? It’s your face they’re looking at—or your body. Half of them are only thinking Oh boy, would I like to—what was the word you used?—fuck her. It’s not just to me, it’s to most of the younger women here. We’ve all touched up our faces, done our hair, shaved our armpits, put on our prettiest clothes, so what do you expect?”
“Not so, with you. It’s also your intelligence they’re seeing. And that particular complex of characteristics—your personableness, for instance—that distinguishes you from everyone in this room.”
“Really, except for minor variations, I’m no different than anyone here, woman or man.”
“What are you saying? You know, you need someone to make you believe more in yourself.”
“I believe plenty in myself, no problem there. I look at myself clearly and regard myself fairly and don’t think of myself excessively and that’s the extent to which I want to deal with myself that way. It’s because I don’t respond with open arms to cajolery and compliments that I don’t mind beating them back with self-deprecating jokes or something to discourage further flattery and complimentary attacks. Oh, compliments and the accompanying gushing attention can sometimes be all right, if in moderation and short order and, when the timing and setting’s okay, come from someone you really like. But not when I’m pooped, sweaty, bit of a headache coming on, little stomach-ache already there, diarrhea probably next, and I’m slightly grumpy and somewhat tight.”
“You’re absolutely right. Say, how about a dance?” and he gets up and dances in place.
“No, really.”
“I was only doing an imitation,” sitting down. “So, been teaching long?”
“Long enough. And you? Tax-lawyering long?”
“Twelve years. What grad school you go to for literature? I’m assuming you did. Ph.D., I betcha, and Yale, because it has the best. I went to Yale Law and while there audited several literature courses.”
“No, didn’t go there.”
“Where did you go?”
“Honestly, Arthur, I don’t want to talk about my schooling and job. It’s simply that the way I feel—but food, yes. Excuse me, but food should help me. A ladies’ room too. Water on my face, maybe soap and water on my face, and to retouch up my face, redo my hair.”
“You have absolutely—pardon me for coming right out with this—”
“Then don’t.”
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“Glorious hair. I’ve never seen such hair. I can’t believe what it’d look like loose. The color looks like the inside of a fireplace. The fire, or place, when lit, I mean.”
“I was wondering.”
“The orange inside the fire when there’s lots of carbon in the wood, I think it is. But not red flames, just orange-red. It’s both eene and unearthly.”
“Thank you, but plenty of women have the same color hair and plenty of pussycats too.”
“But it’s so smooth. Smooth like a real eating orange almost. It makes me want to reach out and touch it, but I won’t.”
“It’s really messy and dirty. It should be combed.”
“Suppose I said—no, I shouldn’t say it.”
“Fine. Now let’s forget my hair. It’s just a slightly untypical mop.”
“It’s highly untypical. I’ve never encountered a woman with that particular color orange whose hair was so straight. Usually that orange is on a kinky-haired woman or at least one kinkier-haired. Yours isn’t kinky at all.”
“That’s because I washed it tonight, but now it’s full of smoke. Really. I should go to the ladies’ room. I also have to pee. Excuse me.” I stand up.
He stands. “I’m sorry. I pushed you away.”
“No, I’ll come back if you want. Stay here or go to the food table, better. Have some champagne while I’m gone. Go on. I’ll meet you over there because I think some smoked fish—they have some, don’t they?”
“About a dozen different kinds, but only three or four are left.”
“That’s what I’m sure will help sober me up. The Russians use it. One of them told me at a party I went to earlier tonight. They’d never drink as much as I did without lots of smoked fish. So I’ll see you over there.”
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