What's for Dinner? Page 2

  “Yes, he was, and please don’t tell me clergymen’s children always turn out badly.”

  “They often do,” Lottie insisted. “People expect them to be models of goodness knows what and they rebel.”

  “May I offer you a little more of the breast, Mrs Delehantey?” Norris asked.

  “Oh no thank you,” Biddy said. “Well, just a morsel.”

  “No seconds for the boys,” Bryan said. “They’re supposed to be in training.”

  “What are you in training for?” Norris asked.

  “Well, one of you answer,” Bryan said.

  “I was waiting for my mouth to be empty,” Patrick said. “Spring training for the football squad.”

  “We go out for football,” Michael explained.

  “You’ve got the builds for it,” Norris said. “Though I don’t remember seeing you at any of the home games last fall.”

  “We weren’t old enough then,” Michael said.

  “You only went to one,” Lottie said, twirling the stem of her glass, which was again empty. Bryan didn’t offer to fill it, so she did so herself.

  “I don’t know where they find the time,” Maureen said. “Both my boys are in the school orchestra—Patrick plays the oboe while Michael studies trumpet. You must come to the Easter concert. I’m sure it will be lovely. Mr Marks is a most dedicated teacher.”

  Under the table Patrick nudged his brother at this allusion to ‘Fruity’ Marks. Happily married, father of three, Mr Marks had a habit of resting his hand on a boy’s shoulder while reviewing a score.

  “At the seminary I attended,” Biddy said, “we had an all string orchestra. I played second violin.” She put her head on one side, held up her hands and made sawing motions. “Can you picture it?”

  “Why I never knew that, Biddy,” Maureen said.

  “Don’t get me started on the days at old Sem! I implore you. There’s simply no end to what I remember. There was one girl— Lucy something: now what was her last name? I know it as well as I know my own. Oh, it’s right on the tip of my tongue. It’s something like Jones or Smith only not quite that common. Miller. Lucy Miller. We used to call her ‘cat’s cradle’, because of the eerie screeching noise she produced from her instrument. And the odd thing was that no one worked harder at her practicing than Lucy ‘cat’s cradle’ Miller. At recitals she was quietly asked to go through the motions without actually playing.”

  Lottie laughed rather loudly at this story.

  “More stuffing, anyone?” Norris asked.

  “At my school,” Maureen said, “there was a girl we called Kitty, but that was because she had such a catty tongue.”

  “Lucy Miller,” Biddy said, “later married most advantageously and moved west. I wonder what’s become of her, if she’s still alive.”

  Norris asked to have the wine passed, poured himself half a glass, and set the decanter down by his place.

  “Perhaps someone else would like some,” his wife said.

  “Perhaps a smidgen,” Maureen said.

  “Dad?” Patrick said.

  “No,” Bryan said, “definitely not.”

  “Let me help you clear,” Maureen offered, rising to her feet and suiting action to her words.

  “We’ll just dump them in the pantry,” Lottie said. The dessert course followed: an ice box pie with a graham cracker crust.

  “I know you don’t take coffee, Biddy, so let me make you a nice pot of tea.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it—a whole pot just for me! But if you have any tea bags . . .”

  “And I,” Lottie said, “wouldn’t dream of that. It’s no trouble.” In the kitchen she rested her hands on the sink and sighed. She opened the cupboard, looked at the bottle of vodka, then firmly closed the door. She felt dizzy. All the same, she soon returned with tea in a small ornate Victorian pot. “I hope you like English Breakfast mix. It’s the only kind Norris will tolerate.”

  “What a lovely thing that is,” Biddy said, regarding the pot. “An heirloom piece, I don’t doubt. It seems to me Grandmother Fowler had one not unlike it—a set. I wonder what ever became of all those things? She had twelve children and one of my aunts was what you could only call rather grasping. At the time she passed on— Grandmother Fowler, not my aunt—we were living in rather a small and crowded house and just hadn’t the room for some of the things that might have come to us.”

  “My wife and I,” Norris said, “were both rich in childless aunts and uncles. So it all winds up here.”

  “And what will become of it when we’re gone? Sometimes I’m tempted to have a white elephant sale. What am I bid for this sideboard?”

  “Things have their associations,” Norris said.

  “You must let me help with the dishes,” Maureen said.

  “Heavens, no. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if there weren’t a few dishes to wash up now and then. Shall we go into the living room? Bring your coffee—and your tea, Biddy.”

  “One cup is all I can manage these days,” Biddy said. “That’s why it’s such a shame to make a whole pot, just for me.”

  “You could pour it off, for iced tea,” Maureen said. “Though I guess it’s scarcely the time of year.”

  Lottie led the march between the china cupboards to the living room, the boys politely bringing up the rear.

  “Piss on you,” Patrick muttered.

  “Shove it up your bung,” his brother replied.

  “Spring, spring: will it never come?” Maureen asked when she had regained the overstuffed chair she had earlier vacated.

  “There was that time in the eighteenth century,” Norris said, “I believe it was, when summer never came. The black summer.”

  Maureen seemed stunned. “I can’t picture it. Whatever did they do? Didn’t people starve?”

  “I believe many did. There was a general panic, of course.”

  “I can remember a summer almost as bad as that,” Biddy said. “The corn went all mouldy in the ear. I was too young to remember much about it—just the general consternation. And my father taking me out to see what had happened to the corn. It made me cry.”

  “Anyone mind if I smoke this?” Bryan asked, waving back and forth a large cigar.

  There were few things Lottie hated more (“It gets in the curtains,” was her usual morning after complaint, “and stays for days“). “I’ll fetch you an ashtray. I think of your after dinner cigar as a kind of tradition, Bryan.”

  “You given up on the weed, Norris?” Bryan asked.

  “Three years ago, as a matter of fact.” They had had this conversation before. “When my doctor heard me cough, and I told him how many packs I smoked, he said, ‘You better make a choice, and you better make it fast.’ So I did. The first month was unadulterated hell, I don’t mind saying, and I gained ten pounds. Very rough on Mary Charlotte.”

  “There was no living with him,” his wife said as she placed an enormous cloisonné bowl at Bryan’s elbow. “Still, like most things, it passed.”

  Patrick yawned widely. “Close your mouth,” his father said, “and keep it shut.”

  “Where’s Twing?” Maureen asked in sudden alarm.

  “She’s here,” Patrick said. The cat was asleep beside him on the bench. Deirdre wandered into the room, sniffed loudly at the cat and began to lick its ear.

  “And the lion shall lie down with the lamb,” Biddy said. “One of my aunts had a canary that she let fly loose, and that bird would drink out of the same bowl as their cat. The cat had been altered.”

  “I wasn’t aware,” Norris said, “that that changed their attitude toward their natural prey.”

  “As sure as I’m sitting here,” Biddy twisted about in her chair, “that cat never laid a paw on that canary.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t doubting your veracity: it was the explanation that surprised me. Perhaps it had an unusually passive nature. There are these exceptions.”

  “That cat was as great a mouser as you could hope to meet in a long summer’s day. My aunt used to get quite cross, because I took the side of the mice and wanted to make him let them go. I was very young and understood nothing about germs.”

  Lottie stifled a yawn. “Excuse me,” she said, and went out to the kitchen. Norris got up and silently followed her. They returned shortly. Lottie stumbled slightly on the edge of a carpet. The others took no notice.

  “We really ought to be running along,” Maureen said.

  “Oh no,” Lottie said. “Bryan hasn’t begun to finish his cigar.”

  “Yes,” Norris said, “what’s all the rush?”

  “It’s partly the boys,” Maureen said. “What with school and training and their music they seem to need a great deal of sleep.”

  “Slug-a-beds,” Bryan said. “They can’t sit down to study without falling asleep over their notebooks.”

  “I ran two miles before breakfast,” Patrick protested.

  “Yes, it’s Michael who’s in love with his pillow,” their mother said fondly. “Sometimes I still have to pull the covers right off him.”

  “You ought to give the job of rousting them out to me,” Bryan said, carefully knocking the ash off his cigar. “This seems too fine an object to be used as an ashtray.”

  Lottie shrugged. “That’s what my great uncle used it for, and I certainly haven’t any other use for it. I’ll leave it to you in my will.” This was greeted by some rather hollow chuckles.

  “I hope we’re not keeping you from any of your favorite TV programs,” Biddy said.

  “We hardly turn the thing on,” Norris said, “except for the news, and the odd special event. Like the President’s speech.”

  “Oh, did you catch that too?” Maureen said. “I thought he made some telling points.” Norris let this pass, as the
two families voted different tickets.

  “Yes,” Biddy said, “the novelty wears off. Why I remember when we had a crystal set with earphones, and how the children used to wrangle over who was going to listen. Personally, it would be all the same to me if TV had never been invented.”

  “Oh Biddy,” Maureen said, “you know you wouldn’t miss your serials for the world.”

  “I hardly know one from the other. But I feel the need of a little rest in the afternoon and since I don’t nap, I like something to occupy my attention. Some of the acting is very well done.”

  Maureen laughed. “The other afternoon I heard the most hair raising screams coming from the set, so I went in to see what it was all about. This man was threatening to choke a woman with a necktie and there was Mother Delehantey sound asleep in her chair, literally dead to the world. The moment I turned down the volume, she woke up.”

  “Dead to the world,” Biddy said. “I shan’t be sorry to go when my time comes. In fact, I would much rather go than become bedridden and dependent.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Bryan said. “You’re a good deal sprier than I am, young woman.”

  “I imagine we’ll all be around a while longer,” Norris said. “May I offer anyone a highball?” Demurrers were general.

  “What’s in a highball?” Patrick asked.

  “Nothing you’re going to have,” Bryan said.

  “Whiskey and soda. Or, whiskey and water. In a tall glass,” Norris explained.

  “Why is it called a highball?” Michael asked, not to be outdone by his brother.

  “The high part is easy,” Norris said, “but I can’t say how the ball got in there.”

  “A lot of things have names there isn’t any reason for,” Biddy said. “No one could ever tell me why a surrey was called that. Though I can’t imagine why I wanted to know. ‘The Surrey With the Fringe on Top.’ Now that’s a catchy tune.”

  “All the tunes are catchy in Oklahoma. Maureen and I saw it when it was running in New York. And the movie, too, of course.”

  “That wasn’t yesterday,” Maureen said. “Which reminds me, Mary Lottie, I was talking on the phone to Mag yesterday. It’s wonderful to me how she does for herself, alone in that big old house. I came right out and said to her—not yesterday, another time—why didn’t she sell the house and move into an apartment? In an apartment, I thought she’d feel the loneliness less, after her husband’s demise.”

  “It was so sudden,” Lottie said.

  “Yes, wasn’t it. But she says there she knows where she can lay her hand right on anything she wants. She hasn’t a fear in the world of housebreakers. I didn’t like to come out and say it, but what concerned me more was the thought of her having some kind of accident, and all alone there. Like slipping and falling in the tub.”

  “Which might also happen in an apartment,” Norris said.

  “Oh, with Mag’s personality she’d soon be on terms with all her neighbors. They’d notice if she wasn’t about.”

  “Or she could lie in the tub and scream,” Norris said. “That would fetch them.”

  “A serious fall is no joking matter,” Maureen said, “not at Mag’s age. But you always like to look on the lighter side, don’t you, Norris.”

  “I don’t believe in anticipating trouble. If I started counting up all the things that might happen right in his house I’d never get out of this chair again. Read in the paper about a woman who was electrocuted when a hair drier fell in the tub.”

  “For goodness sake,” Lottie said, “let’s get away from tubs.”

  “Yes indeed let’s,” Biddy said. “They’re treacherous things.”

  Deirdre left the room and returned with a large rubber bone in her jaws. “Why Deirdre Taylor,” Lottie said, “you know that’s not allowed in here.” Like a tugboat, the dog slowly turned and waddled out of the room.

  “Isn’t it wonderful, the way they understand,” Biddy said.

  Twing now decided to make a circuit of the room, giving its unpleasant Siamese cry. “They love to talk,” Biddy observed. Twing finally elected for Bryan and leapt up. In doing so, both cat and Bryan’s lap became covered with cigar ash.

  “Oh gosh,” Bryan said, “look what you’ve done, kitty.”

  “Brush it on the rug,” Lottie said. “Ashes are supposed to be good for the nap. Like damp tea leaves—not that I ever use them.”

  “Damp tea leaves!” Biddy exclaimed. “I haven’t thought of those in years. They used to give the carpet a certain smell, funny but nice. I wonder why customs like that go out of style? It worked very well.”

  “Perhaps the perfecting of the vacuum cleaner had something to do with it,” Norris said.

  Finally the Delehantey’s took their departure, though not before a scramble with Twing over her leash. When the last goodbye and the protestations of pleasure and the praise of the food had all been said, and the driveway light turned off and the front door locked and chained, Lottie more or less flopped into a chair. “I don’t know that I think Mag’s personality is anything so out of the way,” she said.

  “She’s a cheery little soul,” Norris said.

  “Sometimes it grates. All that cooing. It isn’t so much that you wonder what she’s really thinking as I wonder if she’s thinking anything at all.” She got to her feet. “I’m not going to touch a dish tonight, but I do have to straighten up the kitchen a little. You go up to bed.”

  “Yes,” Norris said. “I’ll do that.” He was not yet asleep when he heard his wife stumble on the stair on her own way up.

  At the Delehantey’s the evening received short review: as a family, they were one and all devoted to sleep and plenty of it.

  “I wonder what gives a person the idea you can’t smell vodka,” Bryan asked as he shed his garments. “Did you catch her breath?”

  “Secret tippling,” Maureen said. “It never ends well. It went to my heart when she almost fell over that rug. I must say, Norris puts a good face on it.”

  “Norris isn’t a lawyer for nothing.”

  There came a light tapping. It was Biddy. “Twing was scratching at my door.” She was holding the purring cat in her arms.

  “Give her to me, Mother,” Maureen said. “The lock on the kitchen door doesn’t always catch. Come with me, Twingy-poo.”

  In the twins’ room the light was already off. After a time, Patrick began to breathe heavily. Shortly, and with practiced stealth, Michael got out of his bed and into his brother’s. They jerked each other off, Patrick never ceasing to feign the breathing sounds of sleep. A box of Kleenex stood convenient on the night table between their beds.

  Chapter II

  1

  “If your wife seems a little euphoric,” the nurse said, “you must realize that she is taking paraldehyde, which tends to induce a state of—uh, euphoria.”

  “I know,” Norris said. “The doctor told me.”

  “She’s waiting for you in the sun room.” The nurse pointed down the corridor, where various patients were sitting or ambling about. It was indeed a sunny room, the curtains and furniture done in a cheerful leafy chintz. Lottie was seated at a table with two other women and a man playing bridge. They were between hands, and when she saw her husband she rose to her feet with a radiant smile.

  “Why Norris! How nice.”

  “Weren’t you expecting me?”

  “Of course I was expecting you, but that doesn’t make it any less nice to see you, or of you to come see me.”

  Norris kissed her on the cheek. “But I’m interrupting your game.”

  “Oh tush. Mrs Brice will take my hand. Oh Mrs Brice, wouldn’t you like to sit in for me while I visit with my boy friend?”

  Mrs Brice was a heavy woman in purple knit. She was sitting with her hands in her lap and her ankles crossed, doing nothing. “I’ll just spoil it for the others. I’m not any good.”

  “It’s just a pastime,” Lottie said. “We none of us are exactly Olympic bridge champs.”

  “You’ll be my partner,” the man of the foursome said. “If you get the bid, I’ll be dummy and can help you play the hand. You’ll see. It will all go swimmingly.”

  Mrs Brice got up and joined them in a way that showed she felt she had no choice in the matter. “Clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades,” she said. “That’s how it goes, isn’t it?”