A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
How beautiful, Tommy thought, how truly beautiful, there at dusk on the river, the river like an ever-rolling stream, that they should all be singing this particular hymn, their liquid voices carrying over the water, and that all these specks in the current, these swimmers in his sea, should be singing the same song as they floated across the river from their different places to the same big dock at the landing on the shore, to the same club whose purple and amber lanterns beckoned them now, at nightfall on the river, and that their voices should be echoing across the water in the twilight as they all boomed out the last chorus:
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come...
When they arrived, boat by boat, at the landing, they got into their various cars and drove the short distance to the country club, up the driveway to the long sweeping porch where the paper lanterns glowed in the twilight, lighting the way to the door.
And there, in the foyer, standing in the soft light, was his mother, who leaned over to kiss him as he came in and approached her from the wide screened doors.
“Happy anniversary,” he said. “You look beautiful.” She did look beautiful, but not like a flower in a summer garden. Her dress was the color of smoke, like a color Tommy had never seen before, on a dress. Was it blue? Was it brown? Was it white? It was all of them but none of them exactly, and it flowed from her shoulders to her waist to the floor in a haze of smoky chiffon. She was wearing her pearls, his grandmother’s long pearls, and the ring with the star in it on her finger, and the little sapphires in her ears, surrounded by tiny diamonds. “You’re not wearing your arrow,” Tommy said.
“She doesn’t want to pierce any hearts tonight,” said his Uncle Roger from behind him, and his mother smiled, and his father, who was standing there beside her in his black tuxedo—he was almost the only man there who wasn’t wearing a white jacket—said, “Move along, young fellow, you’re holding up the line,” but he said it nicely and gave him a little hug as he passed. Tommy moved out of the line, but he didn’t leave the foyer. He wanted to look at his parents, who truly were a handsome couple as Mrs. Wentworth said; he wanted to watch his mother extending her hand, exchanging kisses with the ladies and the gentlemen, his father shaking hands with all the men and kissing the ladies on the cheek. He watched the guests passing through the door: Mr. and Mrs. Steer, Mrs. Wentworth and Mrs. Addington and their house-guests, Mr. Wolfe, his Uncle Christian, the Hutchins and the Rodgers, crazy Mrs. Barger with her glass eye and her red dress—“looking like a fire truck,” John whispered to him—Mrs. Meyer and Mr. Meyer, who gave his mother a big smack and clapped his father on the back, his Aunt Martha and Uncle Charles, Bob Griswold and his wife, Mr. Treverton, and now Margie and David, Dr. and Mrs. Randolph, Daisy and Phil, his Aunt Clara and Uncle Andrew—everyone Tommy knew and some he scarcely knew at all, and they all wore their best clothes, even Mrs. Appleton, who tried to look as good as she could but was as mean as ever. Tommy saw her looking at Mrs. Hutchins, who was wearing a lot of jewelry. She always did. “All her mother’s diamonds,” Mrs. Appleton said to one of the ladies, “every single one of them, and some more from the dime store, too, I’ll bet.” Tommy could smell the whisky on Mr. Hutchins’ breath when he shook his hand, and he followed Mrs. Hutchins into the lounge, where they were serving Mrs. Barlow’s punch from bowls in a corner. In a few minutes Mrs. Hutchins began to sip at her glass of bourbon, her hand and face twitching as always. “Daisy looks just like a bride,” she told Daisy’s mother, Mrs. Addington, and Mr. Sedgwick boomed out, “You’re only a bride once!” Tommy saw that Mrs. Steer was looking at him. He knew she thought Mr. Sedgwick was being an idiot again, but she didn’t say anything, and Tommy walked over to her at the same time Mrs. Appleton did. “Yes,” Mrs. Appleton said to Mrs. Steer, “and it doesn’t always happen at the church. White! Really!” Mrs. Steer said that Amy was in the cardroom—it was his responsibility to see that Amy had a good time, his mother had told him—and he went off to find her, to play with her for a while before she had to leave. She couldn’t stay for the dinner, but she got to see the beginning of the party because she’d helped pick the cattails. Mrs. Steer walked away from Mrs. Appleton too, to join Mrs. Wentworth and Mrs. Barlow. Even Mrs. Barlow had made it. She couldn’t make it to the Island anymore, but she did make it up the three steps to the country-club porch. She had to sample her punch, she said. If Mrs. Barger looked like a fire truck, Tommy thought, Mrs. Barlow looked like a mountain.
Tommy and Amy walked across the foyer and into the ballroom. There was a huge iron candelabrum on either side of the French doors. They were taller than a man, taller than his brother David, even, and he counted the candles. There were nine in each of them, two ascending circles of four and a single candle at the top. They hadn’t been lit yet, but when they were, Tommy thought they’d be really something. He’d never seen them before, and he wondered where his mother ever found them. Not in his house, he knew that. The orchestra was playing softly, but no one was dancing yet—everyone was still in the lounge or the foyer, on the porch or in the cardroom—and above the orchestra was a round mirrored ball, bigger than David’s basketball and covered with small chips of glass. It looked like a giant golf ball, if golf balls were made of glass. It revolved as the orchestra played, sprinkling the big room with light. There were tables set up around the edges, all of them with candles and flowers and silver and china, white like the candles, but except for the orchestra the room was empty.
They walked through the big archway, where there were two more of the iron candlesticks, into the dining room. There were small tables there too, but the long table with Mrs. Aldrich’s precious cloth and the two silver candelabra from his Aunt Elizabeth stood at the end, the smaller tables extending out from it on either side. Tommy wanted to show Amy the tablecloth. He told Amy that Mrs. Aldrich never washed it, and they both looked it over closely before they finally discovered a stain or two. Tommy found his place card, next to his brother John’s at the far end of the table. David’s was at the other end, next to Emily’s. Tommy bet David wouldn’t be too happy about that. They looked at all the cards on the head table and they all went man, woman, man, woman, man, woman, then John and Tommy. There were six women and eight men and they were all family, except for Emily and Margie, who everybody knew would be family sooner or later, and his parents were in the middle, side by side.
The two of them looked for Amy’s parents’ places. They found Mr. Steer’s at one of the tables in the dining room, but they had a harder time finding Mrs. Steer’s. Finally they found her card in the ballroom, to the right of Dr. Rodgers’. “My mother won’t like that,” Amy said. “She doesn’t like him anymore.” But Mr. Treverton was on her other side, and that was good. Tommy could have told his mother that Mrs. Steer wouldn’t have wanted to sit next to Dr. Rodgers, if she’d asked him. His mother had told him once that they weren’t so friendly anymore, that the Steers had gotten into an argument with him, but she must have forgotten. Mrs. Steer was friendly with Mrs. Rodgers, though. She was always nice to her. Tommy and Amy looked at all the place cards, or as many as they could, before Mrs. Steer came looking for Amy. “We’ll be sitting down to dinner soon,” she said. “They’re beginning to light the candles,” and sure enough, they were: Ophelia and Katherine and Katherine’s husband, George; Junior and Buck, too; Rose and Ruth and Lena and the people from the hotel—all moving quickly about the room to light the candles. “Vint is waiting to take you home,” Mrs. Steer said to Amy, and her brother came up behind her with Madge McGhee on his arm. Tommy thought that Mrs. Steer hoped they’d get married. He didn’t think she really liked Mad
ge all that much—she might have been glamorous, but she wasn’t very interesting—but Mrs. Steer had said once that Vint could do a whole lot worse, and he very well might. She worried about that sort of thing. Mr. Steer said that was the Great Dane in her, and Tommy remembered that she’d said a long time ago that parents in Denmark arranged their children’s marriages and they worked out better in the long run. Her parents couldn’t have arranged her marriage, though. They didn’t even know Mr. Steer. That was the odd side of Mrs. Steer. Tommy walked out to the long porch with them, and he watched Vint take Amy off to the shore. Amy waved as she left. Tommy was glad that she’d been there, even if only for a while. It was an exciting thing to see. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it before.
Tommy returned to the clubhouse and found his mother standing with his father in the foyer, near the French doors, which were now closed. All his aunts and uncles and his brothers and Emily and Margie were gathered around them. “Oh, there you are,” his mother said. “I’d just asked Buck to find you. We’re ready to begin.” His father opened the wide glass doors. Tommy looked in wonder. The view, now that the room was lit, was breathtaking. The huge iron candelabra flamed like torches beside the doorway, and all the shaded candles on the tables and the mirrored ball turning slowly above the orchestra filled the room with sparkling light. “Let’s go,” his father said, and his mother took his father’s arm, the orchestra struck a chord and went into a sort of march, and they filed through the doors and into the ballroom, walking quickly in time to the music, past all the small tables, through the archway into the dining room, and took their places at the long table, their guests following behind them in clusters of twos and fours and sixes, all chattering away, some still carrying their drinks, and looking for their places at the party.
Well, Tommy thought, all his mother’s planning had produced a beautiful sight, and all the people had dressed for their parts in it too, to make it even more beautiful, and now the gaiety was about to begin. It was exciting to sit at the head table, and John was being very nice to him. He said he had to sit at the very end so Tommy wouldn’t fall off. His Aunt Elizabeth was on Tommy’s other side and his Uncle Christian was next to her, and they all had a lot of fun because his uncle liked to tease his aunt. They were almost the same age. He told her he had known that with all these flowered dresses in the room she would find one that was different. It was, too. It was as if there were a pretty garden growing around her hem, but the rest of the dress was white except for a single flower that started at one hip and ran across to the top of her dress and opened on her opposite shoulder, like a real flower in bloom. His aunt was like that; she wanted to be very stylish, and she was. Tommy could certainly never imagine her in anybody’s hand-me-downs. That made him think of his Aunt Louise. Louise and Arthur weren’t there, and neither were his Uncle Archie and his Aunt Pat. He hadn’t expected they would be.
It was exciting to be at the head table, looking out over the dining room and into the ballroom beyond, the rooms filled with smiles and laughter, but after a while it wasn’t so exciting anymore. The dinner was long, and all the grown-ups talked about the things they always talked about, though more brightly and more gaily than usual. The party made them festive. His mother had said that when you were a guest at a party, it was your duty to help make it work, and all the people seemed to be doing their duty tonight. But still, the dinner was long. Tommy couldn’t have any wine, though he would be allowed a small glass of champagne so that he could join in the toasts. Finally, with the dessert, the champagne arrived, but they still had to eat their dessert, and nobody seemed to be in any hurry, either. Tommy had thought the dessert would be like a wedding cake, but it wasn’t. It was like a custard. It tasted of peaches, and there were small sections of peach in each dish.
“I thought there’d be a wedding cake,” Tommy said to John.
“That’s for weddings,” John said, “and the wedding was twenty-five years ago.”
“The cake would be awfully stale by now,” said his Uncle Christian, who’d been listening to their conversation.
“What a thing to say,” said his Aunt Elizabeth, laughing. “Can’t you be just a bit romantic?”
“You’re the romantic in the family,” Christian said. “You’re the romantic little girl waiting for the man on the horse. Does Roger ride?”
“Roger doesn’t ride,” his aunt said, her brown eyes wide. “You know that.”
“He bought you a fur coat, though,” his uncle said.
“Are you teasing me?” asked his aunt.
“Now, Elizabeth,” his uncle said, “would I tease you?”
“Probably,” she said. “You probably would and I wouldn’t even know it.”
“I wouldn’t tease you, Elizabeth,” Christian said. “It wouldn’t be worth it. It would all be lost. I’ll bet it wouldn’t be lost on Tommy, though.”
Tommy laughed. The party was getting to be fun again, and he liked the champagne. He’d never felt so grown up. There he was, sitting at the head table at a fancy party as big as New Year’s Eve’s, drinking champagne and listening to the laughter, and keeping his elbows off the table, too, at least most of the time. No one would even know he was wearing short pants; the cloth hid his legs. He had to remember not to spill anything on it. He looked, but he couldn’t see any spots, just a couple of crumbs.
The waiters were coming around again, filling glasses. He saw Rose and Ruth and Lena out there working. Ophelia was standing by the doors from the kitchen, her arms folded, supervising things, gazing at the spectacle. Tommy waved at her, and she waved back, smiling. “You drank all your champagne,” John said. “You weren’t supposed to do that. You were supposed to wait for the toasts.”
“Can I have some more?”
“May I,” his aunt said. “You should say ‘May I.’ What do you think, John? Should he have some more? We don’t want to make him woozy. Emma wouldn’t like that. Are you feeling woozy, Tommy?”
“Oh, no,” Tommy said. “I feel fine.” They’d only poured a little bit in his glass anyway. He was glad his Aunt Clara wasn’t sitting where Elizabeth was. She would have said he couldn’t have any more, that he was too young. She probably would have made him drink orange juice. But John said he thought it would be all right—he ought to have something in his glass for the toasts—and the waiter poured a little bit more in the bottom of the glass. It couldn’t be more than one swallow, Tommy thought. He’d hardly get woozy on that. And then his Uncle Andrew, who was sitting at his mother’s right, stood up and tapped his glass with a spoon. It rang like a bell. The tables grew slowly quiet, and everyone looked toward the head table in anticipation.
“To the happy couple!” His Uncle Andrew raised his glass and everyone rose, glass in hand, turning toward his parents and repeating the words “To the happy couple!” John nudged Tommy from his chair. He stood up with his glass and said the words “To the happy couple.” The happy couple smiled. His mother caught his eye. She glanced at his glass and back to his eye, giving him a short warning look that said, “That’s enough, now,” but his glass was already empty.
His Uncle Roger raised his glass. “Twenty-five more years!” Everyone cheered and took another drink, and the waiters scurried around the tables with their bottles, and his parents sat in their places, smiling toward their friends in the crowd.
There were a lot more toasts. “To the bride,” Bob Griswold said. Tommy was surprised that Bob Griswold made a toast; he was younger than Tommy’s parents, maybe about his Uncle Roger’s age, but he wasn’t family. He wasn’t even a very good friend, but his parents had to invite him. It was such a big party that it would have been rude to leave him out. “You’re only a bride once!” Mr. Sedgwick shouted again, and everyone laughed. Mr. Wolfe rose to his feet. “To the lady of the evening,” he said, bowing toward Tommy’s mother; “to the queen of the revels—and the king!” He nodded toward Tommy’s father, and all the grown-ups raised their glasses to their lips and cheere
d some more. His mother acknowledged the cheers with a nod and a smile, and fingered the pearls at her throat. Tommy remembered his father’s saying on New Year’s Eve, “Even the queen of the night has got to wear her boots.” Rose had laughed at that. Tommy would have to notice what shoes his mother was wearing tonight. Tommy saw Mrs. Appleton at a table in the ballroom lean across Mr. Hutchins and say something behind her hand to Mrs. Randolph, who didn’t respond.
Mr. Treverton, who was quite an old man, rose slowly to his feet. “I want to remind everyone, everyone at this beautiful party, that my New Year’s Day rule worked: ‘Three hot rum toddies followed by a cold one, and then you’re fixed for the New Year.’ Everyone here must have followed the rule. We hope Tommy didn’t, but I fixed it so it works with the children’s eggnog, too.” Everyone laughed, and Tommy turned red with embarrassment and pleasure. Suddenly everyone was looking at him. “Yes,” Mr. Treverton continued, “everyone here must have followed my rule, because it’s working very well tonight, at this beautiful, beautiful party.” The men called out “Hear! Hear!” and Tommy’s Aunt Elizabeth leaned toward him and John and said, “Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t he a darling man?”
And then Mr. Hutchins rang his glass. “To the victor,” he sang out. “To the victor belong the spoils,” and there was more laughter and a scattering of applause and scraping of chairs, and the glasses were raised to Tommy’s father.
“What did he mean by that?” Tommy asked John.
“He used to be a suitor of your mother’s,” his Aunt Elizabeth said before John could reply. “He was one of her many handsome beaux. She had lots of beaux. Your mother was very glamorous, you know, but she only had eyes for your father. I’ll never forget the blue velour hat with the long sweeping feather she wore when they left on their wedding trip. So stylish. I wasn’t much older than you, Tommy, maybe the same age, but I was impressed.”
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