The Dinner Party: A Novel

by Brenda Janowitz

  Which is fine by him. Sylvia decorated his study to be warm and inviting, a place where he could take his coffee and read through the newspaper or his medical journals without being disturbed. The walls were lined with mahogany bookshelves, hand carved and stained. Medical journals filled the shelves, as did family photographs in sterling silver frames, sports memorabilia. A baseball signed by Sandy Koufax sat in a case next to one with a Super Bowl ticket (all he had with him at the time!) signed by Joe Namath. A Lladró statue of a doctor, a graduation gift from his parents, sat atop his medical school yearbook. The back walls of the bookshelves were painted a deep red—years before it was popular, Sylvia would hasten to add. The mahogany wainscoting on the ceiling finished the look, making it seem like it had always looked like this.

  Alan scanned the business pages of the Times. He wouldn’t Google the Rothschilds—that he wouldn’t do—but there was nothing wrong with brushing up on what was happening in the financial world.

  The house Alan lives in now is far different than the house he grew up in. A home filled with two Holocaust survivors who feared going to the dentist and refused to stand on line. Parents who never slept at night. The house Sylvia made for them has a feeling of warmth. A feeling of comfort. His childhood home was cold. There had been no rugs on the floor; the furniture was sparse. Nothing adorning the walls. It was as if his parents wanted to be ready, if they ever needed to again, to run and hide.

  Alan wasn’t allowed to have friends over. “Who are those people?” his mother would ask. Alan’s parents didn’t trust anyone but other Holocaust survivors. They didn’t entirely trust them, either. It was easy to avoid the outside world in their tiny Brooklyn enclave. His father worked as a haberdasher just blocks from their home. His mother rarely left the house. The only socializing they did was on holidays, and that was with other Holocaust survivors. People Alan barely knew. They had no family.

  Alan was embarrassed by his parents. He was scared of them. He wanted very little to do with them.

  * * *

  Alan Gold met Sylvia Fischer when she was working at Connecticut Children’s Hospital. Everything about her was an aberration. Most Jewish women worked as teachers in those days, or married well, so they wouldn’t have to work. But Sylvia was a nurse. Not that Alan could tell she was Jewish with her Grace Kelly hair, deep-blue eyes, and porcelain skin. Her maiden name was Fischer, which, in Alan’s experience, could go either way.

  But Sylvia didn’t want to date Alan. She was there to work. Unlike the other nurses who batted their eyes as they reported on his patients and asked for his signature on paperwork, Sylvia was a model of efficiency. She was known as the best nurse in pediatric cardiology, and doctors fought to get her on their shifts.

  The children themselves didn’t love her, but their parents did. As the parents of a three-year-old surgery patient had explained to Alan, “When Sylvia tells you something, you know it’s true.”

  Sylvia had always wanted to be a doctor. She took her studies seriously. “I sent you to college to find someone to marry,” her mother would tell her. To which Sylvia would respond, “You didn’t send me, I sent myself.” She was right, of course; she’d earned a scholarship to school. But her mother worried. Sylvia was no great beauty, her one chance at finding someone was at college, where she could impress the young men with her intellect, of which she had plenty.

  But Sylvia wanted more.

  The first time Alan asked her out, she said no. That had never happened to Alan before and it made him laugh. As he watched her walk away from him, back to the nurses station, he wanted to yell: You should see the women I usually date! But he put his head into his patient’s chart and slowly skulked away.

  The second time he asked her out, he was sure she would say yes. They’d just come off a rough shift—twin babies delivered nine weeks early, both with major congenital heart disease, a five-year-old diagnosed with a condition that would necessitate a complicated surgery, and a nine-year-old with Down syndrome whose heart had simply given out. Alan decided to treat the staff to a late-night dinner. On him, of course. Everyone was delighted to accept the invitation. Everyone but Sylvia. As she explained her need to get some rest before her next shift started, he interrupted, saying: “It’s not even a date! It’s a bunch of coworkers blowing off some steam after a rough day!”

  Sylvia was not fazed. She explained to Dr. Gold that yes, she did understand that, and no, she would not be able to attend. That night, even as the most junior nurse on staff—a sultry redhead with the face of Ann-Margret and the body of Marilyn Monroe—flirted shamelessly with him, all he could think about was Sylvia.

  Eleven

  The house felt empty now that Dominic was gone. Valentina could almost swear it had an echo.

  She still cooked elaborate dinners each night, as if Dom were coming home to her. All of his favorites: veal Parmesan, baked manicotti, shrimp scampi. She didn’t know how to cook for fewer than six; that’s not how she’d been taught back in her grandmother’s kitchen. Each night, she’d cook for hours, preparing a feast—salad, antipasto, homemade pasta, and a main course—and then eat her dinner quietly, alone, at the dining room table. Once she was done, she’d freeze the leftovers, certain she’d eat them another day. But she never did. And her freezer had run out of room.

  Friends invited her over to eat—she had gone to her older sister’s house four out of the five Sundays since Dominic had been gone—but it just wasn’t the same. Valentina longed for Dominic’s company. Those nights they’d linger over dinner. Dominic telling her she was beautiful, bringing her flowers for no reason. Every night, they would eat in the dining room, as if dinner were a grand occasion, and every night, Dominic would carry on about her food—how it was the best he had ever tasted. The chicken, the most tender; the pasta, the freshest; the sauce, the sweetest. Even better than his mother used to make, rest her soul.

  She still had red wine with dinner. (It’s good for the heart, she told herself, when she worried about the type of woman who drank alone.) She savored every sip, every bite. She imagined that Dominic was still there, sitting catty-cornered to her, complimenting her at every turn. These candlesticks are beautiful! No one sets a table like my Valentina! Even the neighbors can smell how delicious our kitchen is!

  Valentina had invited Sarah’s mother over to eat countless times, but Sylvia always seemed to have something to do, somewhere she had to be, even during the Super Bowl parties that she and Dominic threw each year.

  Valentina suspected that Sylvia didn’t like her very much, which was why she was surprised to even be invited to this dinner party. And a Jewish holiday, to boot! She suspected it had something to do with her breakdown in the frozen foods aisle. But Dominic loved pigs in a blanket—he thought they really classed up a party—and seeing that party pack of Nathan’s had just really sent her over the edge.

  Twelve

  “What are you wearing tonight?” Sarah asked.

  “Pants and a shirt, why?” Alan knew that his answer would not satisfy his daughter, but he could never figure out exactly what made one pair of slacks different from the other.

  Still, he loved to give her a hard time.

  “What are you wearing?” Alan asked.

  “I just need to know what to put Joe in,” she said.

  “What to put him in? Joe is a grown man,” he said. “I think he probably knows how to dress himself.”

  Joe did not know how to dress himself. Beyond his usual uniform of jeans and a work shirt, Joe had no idea how to put an outfit together. He never met an occasion that he felt jeans would be inappropriate for.

  Sarah was partially at fault for this. She’d been picking out his clothes ever since he first let her, for the seventh grade homecoming dance, when they’d agreed to a coordinating teal tie to match Sarah’s dress. He never had to give clothing much thought. Even an ill-fated subscription to a men’s fashion magazine was no help. Joe never read it, thinking Sarah had gotten it for herself—
something about sussing out the competition.

  “If I let him dress himself, he’d come to the Seder wearing jeans,” Sarah said, with something like a guffaw escaping her lips.

  “Would that be so bad?” Alan asked. “Maybe it would be nice to have a more casual holiday one of these years. Tell you what—if Joe wants to wear jeans, I will, too.”

  Sarah laughed to herself. She could just see it now: Sylvia’s guests, marching to the door in a sea of jeans and untucked shirts, like a zombie apocalypse.

  Sarah remembered the holidays of her childhood. Blouses with lace trim on the edges, thick tights, dresses that looked like miniature versions of what her mother would wear. And high heels. Sylvia would always let her girls wear shoes with a tiny heel for the holidays. It made Sarah feel so grown up. She lived for the times she could wear her dressy shoes. They made her feel adult. They made her feel important.

  “Do you even own jeans?” Sarah asked her father.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Alan replied. “Very hip ones, I might add.”

  “It’s a holiday,” Sarah said. “I’m sure that Mom has told you that we’re expected to dress up.”

  “No,” Alan said. “In fact, your mother didn’t mention anything like that to me at all. Was there a dress code for tonight?”

  They both laughed, possibly a little too much.

  “Wear a tie,” she said, and Alan could swear he was talking to Sylvia.

  “I’m not wearing a tie,” he said, patting down his outfit. “I have on a cardigan.”

  “A cardigan?” Sarah asked, exasperated. A cardigan? “I’m making Joe wear a tie. Please put on a tie.”

  “Yes, dear,” Alan said. And with that, he went back upstairs to add a tie to what he considered to already be a very smart ensemble.

  Thirteen

  Henry was not the smartest person in his family, but he was determined to show that he was. He just didn’t want to work too hard at it.

  It never dawned on him that once he left the golden cage of the Upper East Side life would be different. He still expected to lead the same life he’d led up until that point—a life filled with domestics, women who lusted after him, and everything he ever wanted served up for him on a silver platter. He hadn’t gotten into any of the colleges his father had handpicked for him. His grades from his third-tier Manhattan prep school were atrocious, and his SAT scores were even worse. His father had been counting on Henry’s college application essay (which he had paid good money for) and his own connections to get Henry into Princeton, his alma mater. What did they think those enormous endowments were for, anyway? Dartmouth rejected him mere hours after receipt of the application, and Brown didn’t even have the grace to send a rejection. They’d had to call to find out the bad news. Apparently, Henry’s rejection letter was lost in the mail.

  The University of Florida was the only school that would take him, and with him, a check for the new library they were looking to build. Henry’s parents encouraged him to go, under the misguided notion that he would take college seriously, and that they could keep an eye on him from their winter hideaway in Palm Beach. It only took one semester for the University of Florida to send Henry packing. The dean called Henry’s father personally to give him the news. It seemed Henry had not attended any classes in the one semester that he’d been there, and then had sent in another student to take his final exams for him. “We can forgive a lot,” the dean explained in a conspiratorial tone, “but a blatant disregard for the Code of Conduct is not one of them.” A few days later, the check Henry’s father had sent for the library was mailed back to him, with a personal note of apology from the dean, thus restoring Edmond’s faith in humanity, if not in his son.

  It wasn’t fair, Henry thought in the days after being sent home from Florida. How was he expected to survive in college when he’d been given so few tools to do so? It was like hurling a baby bird out of the nest before teaching it to fly.

  Since coming home, he’d spent most of his time at Columbia’s library. He wasn’t studying—he was waiting for his friends from high school to come and study after their classes. Four of his friends had gone on to attend Columbia and he could usually convince at least one of them to blow off studying.

  The bars by Columbia were amazing. Much better than the ones in Florida. They had clever names like The Library, The Dead Poet, and Hemingway’s. The top bar at Florida was called The Swamp.

  And the best part of these bars was that they were always filled, no matter what time of day. It was four o’clock on a Thursday when Henry met Becca. She was seated at the bar, and when her girlfriend left, Becca stayed back, nursing her pint of beer and order of fries. It was only when Henry sat down on the bar stool next to her that he realized she was crying.

  “What does a pretty girl like you have to cry about?” Henry asked. It wasn’t a line. He really couldn’t believe that a girl like her, with her long mane of blond hair, crystal blue eyes, and lithe frame, would have anything to cry about. In his experience, girls who looked like that usually got what they wanted.

  “Nothing,” she said, looking into her beer. “Everything.”

  “It can’t be that bad,” he said. “Maybe you’re done with the drinking for now.” He motioned to the bartender to get her a cup of coffee.

  She shook her head at the bartender. “A glass of vodka, please.”

  Henry laughed. “You don’t drink straight vodka.”

  “How do you know what I do and don’t drink?” she asked. Henry decided that the way her lips curled into a snarl was the cutest thing he had ever seen in his life.

  “You just don’t look like the type who day drinks,” he said. “Here, I think a cup of coffee is what you need.”

  “I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Who doesn’t drink coffee?” he said. “I’ve never met someone who didn’t drink coffee before. Wait, you aren’t one of those tea drinkers, are you?”

  “What?” she asked. “No. But is drinking tea bad?”

  “Tea drinkers are a different breed. We coffee drinkers have to stick together.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but somehow, he got her to laugh. She tried a sip of the coffee—it was bitter, so bitter—and put the cup back down on its saucer. It was the first sip of coffee Becca had ever had in her life. She never needed caffeine. Usually her nervous energy was enough to fuel a cruise ship. But she had been feeling tired lately. Exhausted, really. And she felt utterly, completely adrift. If she wasn’t always running, always doing, who was she?

  “I got the internship I applied for,” she told Henry. Becca felt like she could tell her secrets to this stranger. After all, isn’t someone you’ll never see again the perfect person to confess to?

  “That’s great!” Henry said. “So, then, why are you crying?”

  “Because I got the internship I applied for.”

  “You didn’t want it?” he asked. Henry was confused. The girls he usually met in bars, even smart ones like Columbia bars, were easy. This girl seemed difficult.

  “Yes, I did want it,” she said. “I’m just so tired.”

  “Well, that’s why I got you this coffee.”

  “It tastes disgusting.”

  “May I?” Henry asked. Becca nodded and he added sugar and cream to the cup. She took a sip and smiled.

  “Mmm,” she murmured.

  The edges of Henry’s mouth curled up. Now, that’s a sound I’d like to hear more often.

  “May I take you out for dinner tonight?” he asked.

  Becca had her orientation for her internship that night. She knew people were depending on her. But she still said yes.

  Fourteen

  “Why aren’t you ready?” Sarah trilled as Joe walked in the door. He hadn’t expected her to be home so early. In fact, he hadn’t expected her to be home at all. He thought she would meet him at the Seder, straight from the train. He’d hoped for a few minutes to relax after work, a quick beer (always a quick beer be
fore dealing with Sarah’s mother), and a hot shower to wash off the day.

  “How do you know I’m not ready?” he asked.

  Sarah responded with a look.

  “What?” Joe asked, edging up to Sarah. “These jeans aren’t appropriate for dinner at your family’s house?”

  Joe approached Sarah slowly. He had no intention of actually touching her (he knew that if he sullied her dress he would never hear the end of it), but he was getting a kick out of her reaction. Sarah had once casually mentioned to him that he “knew how to wear a pair of jeans,” and that was something that Joe had never forgotten. Jeans had become his official uniform from that day forward.

  “Don’t touch me!” Sarah cried. “You’re covered in grease!”

  “You don’t like my shirt?” he asked, taking it off. He stood in front of Sarah bare-chested, in a pair of jeans that he knew how to wear. They had over an hour until the Seder began. It only took Joe seven minutes to get showered and throw clothes on. The drive to Sarah’s parents’ house was only ten minutes, so if he played his cards right …

  “You need to take a shower!” she said.

  A shower sounded like an excellent idea. Joe arched his eyebrows, and tilted his head toward the shower. Shower for two?

  “Are you insane?!” Sarah half whispered, half yelled. “Go get ready!”

  Joe took less than ten minutes to shower, shave, and dress. In fact, he was coming out of the bedroom just as Sarah was giving him her twenty-minute warning.

  “We’re leaving in twen—” She stopped short. “What is that?” she asked.

  “What’s what?” he repeated, innocently, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. Sarah was waiting in the living room. Had she been standing here this entire time, waiting for him to get showered, shaved, and dressed?

  “I thought I told you to wear the tie I got you for the wedding?”

  “This is a tie substitute,” Joe explained. He thought that someone who worked in fashion would know something like this.