What's for Dinner? Read online

  JAMES SCHUYLER (1923–1991) was a preeminent figure in the celebrated New York School of poets. He grew up in Washington, D.C., and near Buffalo, New York. After World War II, he made his way to Italy, where he served for a time as W. H. Auden’s secretary. His books include two other novels, A Nest of Ninnies (written with John Ashbery) and Alfred and Guinevere (also published by NYRB Classics), as well as numerous volumes of poetry.

  JAMES McCOURT was born in New York City and attended Manhattan College, NYU, the Yale School of Drama, and the Old Met. Among his works of fiction and nonfiction are Mawrdew Czgowchwz (published by NYRB Classics), Way-faring at Waverly in Silver Lake, and Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947–1985. He lives in New York City.

  WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

  JAMES SCHUYLER

  Afterword by

  JAMES McCOURT

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  Contents

  Cover

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

  Dedication

  I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII

  Afterword

  Copyright and More Information

  WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

  for Anne Dunn

  Chapter I

  It was a lovely light living room. Or it would have been, had not a previous owner found quick-growing conifer seedlings an irresistible bargain. When the sun set, a few red beams would struggle in, disclosing in their passage the dust of which the air at times seems largely composed. Mary C. Taylor—the laughing Charlotte of the class of 19**—found the sweet mood brought on by contemplation of the spick-and-spanness in which her husband Norris perused and, presumably, memorized the evening paper, soured.

  “It seems to me all I do is dust this room.” She put on the bridge lamp at her elbow, in hopes of fighting light with light.

  “It isn’t dust, it’s pollen.” Norris was never so absorbed as not to leave a trickle of attention running.

  “Not when it gets in here,” she said tranquilly, as she followed the course of a large and furtive basset towards an easy chair. “Deirdre wants her dribble cloth.”

  Norris, deep in the mendacities of one of the columnists who shaped his thought, made no comment.

  “I said, would you give her her cloth.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because it’s under your elbow.” Lottie, as some called her, crossed the room—no easy task, for it was amply furnished as the yard—lifted his arm and abstracted a square of oil cloth, then lifted the dog’s head and spread it over the chair arm. The dog sighed and returned to its basket in the kitchen.

  “I wonder what you’ll do when I’m gone? Are you planning to remarry?”

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “I suppose you’ll go on some sort of trip and meet somebody so it’s no good trying to figure out who you’ll pick. Meat loaf.”

  “Perhaps I intend to predecease you.” His wife left the room. She returned, carrying a perfume atomizer. Placing herself at an angle to a sunbeam, she rapidly squeezed the bulb.

  “It’s only water. To see if it will lay the dust.”

  “And does it?”

  “I can’t tell. I think so. Or it may just stir it up. Or it’s other dust that rushes in to take its place.”

  “A lawn sprinkler might be more to your purpose.”

  Mrs Taylor shrugged and put the atomizer on the mantle. Her husband frowned.

  “You see,” she said contentedly. “You wouldn’t like it a bit if I didn’t keep this room scrupulously tidy. Not that I expect ever to reach the exalted standard set by your mother.”

  “I suppose she has given up dusting, now that she herself is dust.” He spoke with the certitude of an accredited agnostic. “Did you say meat loaf? I surmise you’re kidding.”

  Deirdre, her dugs grazing the carpet pile, slunk back. Once more she was foiled in an attempt to make off with her dribble cloth and destroy it.

  “Red sky at night—is it sailors or shepherds who are so delighted by that?” Before Norris could answer, if that was his plan, the sun set, the dust vanished, and the doorbell sounded in the pattern of “Shave and a haircut, two bits.”

  “It’s the Delehanteys.”

  Norris leaned backwards with a lipless grin.

  “I’m sure I told you; in fact, you know I did. For pity’s sake let’s put on some lights,” she said as she did so, “or I don’t know what they’ll think.” A painting of an Indian encampment sprang into view.

  Norris went and, to the toppling of a Benares tray, admitted their guests, who were six: Mr and Mrs Bryan Delehantey, old Mrs Delehantey, Patrick and Michael, the twins, and a cat on a leash.

  They made short work of shedding their wraps, and were soon milling about the living room. “It is a beauteous evening,” the elder Mrs Delehantey claimed, “calm and free,” as she achieved her goal, a straight back chair all wooden knobs and spirals. Perched above its taloned feet, Biddy reminded herself of something she had read about a Chinese empress who looked like a wise old monkey. Her daughter-in-law’s Scandanavian interiors gave small scope for such a view.

  “Calm and freezing is more like it,” said the younger, and larger, Mrs Delehantey (Maureen). As usual, her robust frame appeared freshly back from the upholsterer. “Why it’s Mary Lottie!” she exclaimed, as though surprised at finding same in her own living room, a room which seemed all thrust and menace to the speaker. She gazed about her with a large smile. “Oh! the plants, the plants.” She studied some evacuees from the jungle floor who found the lighting altogether to their taste.

  “We don’t know where to sit,” one of the twins said in a foggy bass.

  “Sit anywhere boys,” Biddy said, “so long as you don’t sit on your old Gran.”

  “And see you sit up straight,” their mother said.

  “And keep your mouths shut,” their father said.

  “And mind Twing,” their mother said. The boys subsided on a bench in a misleading state of catatonia. “Pussy pines so if we leave her alone: we knew you wouldn’t mind if we brought her.” Silence was the most the Taylors could muster in reply.

  When they saw in what the appetite-whetters were served, the conversation turned naturally to the subject of collecting. Spoons, salt and peppers, towels stolen from distant athletic clubs with matching ash tray: then Biddy put in her two cents worth.

  “Do you know what I collect, boys? Happiness, that’s what I collect.”

  Maureen moved uneasily. “I think Twing wants to see her friend Deirdre.” The cat in question was lying on her back, idly ripping at some ball fringe.

  “America, the melting pot,” Norris said. “Let’s hope their union will not be blessed with issue.”

  “I’ll take her,” Michael hastily offered.

  “You stay where you are,” said his father, a Solomon of the suburbs. “Patrick can do it.” Sluggishly, the youth led the reluctant cat from the room and, under cover of yowl and howl, subjected the contents of the refrigerator to a swift and circumspect diminishment.

  “She doesn’t want to see her,” Patrick said on their return.

  “I gathered,” Norris said.

  “The days grow shorter,” Biddy said.

  “I don’t think so, Mother,” Bryan said in a loud voice. He sometimes had difficulty in hearing what she said—she often spoke with food in her mouth—and deduced that her hearing was failing. “This is February.”

  “Today,” Norris said, “is the first of March.”

  “Isn’t this leap year?” his wife asked.

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “What I mean,” Biddy said, “is that at my age t
he days, though I sleep less and they are therefore longer, seem much shorter and to go by more quickly. More rapidly, in fact, than I can say. It is a paradox.” Mrs Taylor shivered.

  “You’ll live a long time yet, Mother,” her daughter-in-law said in a voice as bright as a scoured sink. Biddy looked inscrutable.

  “Please pass the edible oddments,” Norris said.

  “Well boys, don’t just sit there,” their father barked. “Not you Patrick, Michael can do it. And remember not to offer yourself any.”

  “Perhaps Patrick would be so kind as to help Twing down off of the mantle,” Lottie said. “Those figurines . . .”

  Bryan laughed heartily. “Haven’t you heard the expression, Sure footed as a cat? Especially true of Siamese.” Twing curled up behind the Seth Thomas clock, slightly dislodging it from its alignment.

  “Ever hear the one about the dog who howled in the night?” Norris asked.

  Lottie opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then said, “I think I’ll just go look in the oven.” The gaze with which her husband followed her exit from the room was one of amusement not unmixed with pity.

  In the kitchen Lottie opened the oven and rattled the roaster without bothering to open it. The she went to a cupboard, took a bottle of vodka and had a swig. She went to the sink and turned on a tap, apparently intending to top up the bottle. Instead she shrugged, drank again, recorked the spirits and put it back. “A little nip never hurt anyone,” she said half-aloud.

  “Well,” Bryan was saying on her return, “Hasn’t either of you anything to contribute to the conversation?”

  Patrick cleared his throat, coughed, and rumbled, “How old is Deirdre?”

  “Nine,” Norris said.

  “Eleven,” his wife said. “I know, because we got her the year of my appendectomy.”

  “My stars,” Maureen said. “Is that eleven years ago? I remember so well going to see you in the hospital and when I got home the twins were sickening with scarletina. I was so afraid I might have given it to you, in your weakened condition.”

  “Yes. I confess I was a little alarmed myself, but I’m afraid hypochondria runs in my family. And in Norris’s too. You brought me a perfectly lovely azalea which we later planted out. But you wouldn’t know it now—it’s grown to be quite a bush.”

  “What color is it?” Michael asked.

  “Salmon.”

  “You needn’t talk as though you took any interest in gardening,” Bryan said. “Just getting these lummoxes to tend the lawn takes my next to last breath.”

  “We could do with a healthy lummox,” Norris said. “All our yard man likes to do is hoe. I think because he likes to lean on it.”

  “We’re going to have more snow yet this year,” Biddy said. “I can tell by my joints.” She exhibited her swollen knuckles.

  “How painful,” Lottie said. “I often wonder if I’m not developing bursitis. In the mornings I can hardly bend my left elbow. Some days.”

  “That’s because you sleep on your left side,” Norris explained.

  “At least I don’t sleep on my back. We all know what that leads to.”

  “Snoring,” Maureen said.

  Patrick guffawed and his father glared at the twins. Michael, who had been chafing his thighs, turned beet red.

  “I think,” Lottie said, rising to her feet, “I can begin putting things on the table.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Norris said.

  “Don’t bother.” Nevertheless, he followed her from the room.

  “No cocktails,” Biddy said knowingly.

  “I thought that might be the case,” Bryan said. “And took the necessary precaution before we left.”

  “So did I,” Maureen said, “and I intend to go right on matching you drink for drink, so you needn’t give me one of your looks.”

  Biddy, who had never touched a drop in her Presbyterian life said, “I consider this most unsuitable in front of the lads.” Said lads were wearing their deaf and dumb look. “I don’t know where you got the habit: your father was a complete abstainer,” she said to her gigantic son.

  “I’ve sometimes wondered about that,” Bryan said in a teasing tone.

  “The clock!” Maureen exclained under her breath and quickly crossed the room; or as quickly as some sidetables would allow. Twing, shifting to a more comfortable position, had pushed the clock to the edge of the mantle. “Here,” Maureen said, passing the cat to the boys, “see she keeps out of mischief.” Twing began kneading bread in Michael’s lap, who said “Ow!” in a loud tone.

  “Stop bellowing over nothing,” Bryan said. “If you think a cat scratch is the worst that’s going to happen to you . . .”

  “Oh lay off for a while,” Maureen said.

  “I’m sure the boys try,” Biddy said. “They’re the apples of my eyes. I well remember that when I was their age nothing I did could seen to please my grandmother, God rest her soul. I was always tripping over my own feet, just like the boys. ‘Don’t sit down like a spoonful of mush,’ she used to say to me. I can hear her now.”

  “Which grandmother was that?” Michael asked.

  “Your great-grandmother Bellowes. She had a light hand with pastry but a strong one with the switch.”

  “You make good pies,” Patrick said.

  “Look at them,” Bryan said, whom the twins closely resembled, not least in bulk, “food, food, food.”

  “I said,” Maureen said, “that’s enough. I can never imagine how Mary Lottie keeps this room so spit tidy: there’s not a thing in it that isn’t a dust-catcher. And without a maid.”

  “Oh,” Biddy said. “I thought she had Mrs Gompers come in once a week to help out.”

  “She’d never let her in here,” Maureen said. “Mrs Gompers is just for heavy work: waxing the kitchen floor and so on. She’d reduce those—“ she pointed to a laden knick-knack stand, “to smithereens. I ought to know. I’ll never forget the day she dropped that stack of Spode plates. I rushed into the pantry and she was standing there shaking her head and saying, ‘Butterfingers.’ I let her finish out the day, but that was the end of that.”

  “With your vim,” Biddy said, “you don’t really need the help. Not that it mightn’t be a nice change for you to get out more.”

  “Oh, I’m not complaining,” Maureen said.

  In the kitchen Lottie was saying, “I think we should have offered cocktails.”

  “Bryan already had a few,” Norris said. “Couldn’t you smell it?”

  “So had Maureen. Bourbon smells even worse than it tastes.” She was lifting a turkey onto a platter while he funneled California claret from a jug into a decanter. “Could you reach down that sauce boat?” Norris opened the cupboard and remarked in an idle tone, “I see somebody else has had a few.”

  His wife didn’t answer, but her cheeks were red, and not from the oven.

  At the table Norris said, “I expect you boys would like the drumsticks.”

  “They take what’s served them,” Bryan said.

  “Aren’t they old enough for half a glass of wine?” Lottie asked. “They look it.”

  “Oh sure,” Bryan said. “I’d rather have them drink in front of me than behind my back.”

  “As you did behind your father’s?” Biddy said with a twinkle. “Remember the time he smelled beer on your breath? My, he certainly gave you a hiding.”

  “And I was none the worse for it,” Bryan said, surveying his sons. “May I refill your glass, Lottie?”

  “Why, yes, thank you.” She was toying with the food on her plate rather than eating.

  “Fellow told me an interesting story today,” Bryan said, “at the office. Man I’ve worked with twenty years. Actually, it wasn’t at the office: it was at lunch—Mariano’s (glad you’re not having ravioli tonight). Seems he has this son going on for nineteen maybe, in his second year in college. Or they thought he was in college. Letters kept coming pretty regularly, asking for money of course—some extra expense, lab fees, or li
ke that. Well as luck would have it, business took Hal into the area of the college so he thought he’d drop in, surprise the kid. And you know what? He wasn’t there. Vanished into thin air. Luckily, Hal knew his son’s roommate from the year before—knew his name anyway—and he was there all right. As soon as Hal introduced himself the kid broke down and admitted he’d been forwarding Hal Junior’s letters: young Hal hadn’t even registered for the fall term but was living in New York—Greenwich Village or some place like that, living with some girl and off of the money he was supposed to use for college. Hal was so disgusted he wanted to drop the matter right there but his wife went all to pieces and insisted. So—can you believe it?—they’re paying him an allowance until he gets on his feet and decides if he wants to go on with college. I would have shown him the sole of my boot.”

  “He should have confided in his mother,” Maureen said.

  “Was he always a wild boy?” Lottie asked. “Do they think he was using drugs?”

  “My sympathies are with the family of the girl,” Biddy said. “Just imagine how they must feel. Why they may not even know where she is! I don’t understand all this running away. And the places they run to sound so simply dreadful.”

  “Sowing wild oats is not exactly a novelty,” Norris said. “One of my uncles passed some bum checks in college—forged his father’s signature. The old man popped him into a clinic for a year and he grew up to be excessively scrupulous about money. Always paid cash. For everything: wouldn’t even have a mortgage on his house.”

  “That,” Bryan said, “is financially foolish. But I must say, I think a little less of Hal. Weak-kneed, I call it.”

  Lottie held out her glass and Bryan filled it.

  “Oh judge not lest,” Biddy said. “You never know all the ins and outs of family life. There may be extenuating circumstances. Who knows? It may bring them all the closer together in the end. So often a troubled passage is the prelude to peaceful seas.”

  “And a prosperous voyage,” Norris said.

  Lottie belched quietly. “That uncle of yours—the forger—was he a clergyman’s son?”