All the Houses (28 page)

I'd come with Courtney and Hugo, and the three of us waded into a pride of people I still thought of as other people's parents, and for all my preparing I wanted to turn tail, for they could be counted on to speak of their children's careers and marriages and babies in such a way as to put in relief my not having a comparable curriculum vitae, and I felt sorry not for myself but for my mother and father, who'd been suffering the comparisons for some years now. Maybe it was just as bad, maybe even worse to have to keep reporting on your child's single, freelance state to achievement-minded peers than it was simply to be the child giving evasive answers. It had been all right when I was younger and
in school
, less so when I was
working in Hollywood
and
dating someone
, and now what was there to say? (I was best glossed over in favor of my sister, the married one with a good job at a big-name nonprofit.)

But I'd gussied up, worn earrings. I was prepared to feign an interest in official acronyms, to palaver about current events, to do whatever it took.

“Where's your father?” Hugo asked, over the din.

“Maybe he's not here yet,” Courtney said.

“He gave me a gun,” I said.

“What did you say?”

I saw that she had taken in my words but rejected them, and I thought the better of making myself clear. “Let's get a drink,” I said.

I saw a head, a younger one with stubbly sideburns and impish eyes, floating above the crowd, attached to a tall man (though not too tall, his head perhaps not actually so lofty as it seemed in that moment). Our eyes met; instantly I blushed; and into my own head came the thought that this might be a different sort of evening than the one I'd anticipated. My heart accelerated for maybe five beats until I saw next to him a pregnant and pretty companion. But of course. Courtney ran over and gave him a hug. It was apparently someone she knew. I followed behind her, loopily, my voice rushed and cracking as I introduced myself, and I knew my sister was watching, wondering what the hell. I couldn't help it.

How's the food? was what I'd meant to ask, I swear, but what I in fact uttered was, “How's the fetus?”

Well, fine, they said, smiling, as Courtney stepped deliberately on my toe. In fine fetal fettle. Just yesterday it had caught the hiccups. And then I made a joke so poor I can't bear even to repeat it here, all I'll say is that they excused themselves then, and rightly so, leaving me with my sister, who asked, “Am I going to have to take you home?”

“Just five more minutes. Who was that?”

“You don't remember Ted Wexler?”

“
That's
Teddy Wexler? He was a lot less hot in high school.”

“What's the matter with you? He's about to have a baby.”

“That doesn't disqualify him from hotness. It doesn't de-hotify him. What is he, like some do-gooder lawyer now?”

“Actually I think that is what he does.”

“Where do these men hang out when they're single?”

“Not in the neighborhood you're living in.”

“That's helpful, thank you.”

I stepped away from her, then glanced at my phone and saw that Rob had texted, asking for the address of the party. I sent it to him and then instantly regretted it.

*   *   *

In no time at all came the phase of the party when all the rented glassware had been distributed and was in use or abandoned on tables, smutched with fingerprints and lip balm, while standing by the bar pouring red wine into a coffee mug was a rosy Nordic giant in a bright red sweater and wide-wales, his face flushed with his own good fortune. I had a feeling that this was the sort of man I ought to be talking to, if I wanted to improve my prospects in Washington. But before I could work up the resolve to introduce myself I was distracted by a balding fellow in a down vest who'd found a birdcage under a worn yellow towel and was proffering, to what I think was a cockatiel (or was it a cockatoo?) a blanched haricot vert. And then rather than speak to either man I got caught up in a swell of women ascending the stairs to admire some just-completed renovations of the upper floors.

A small, sparkly woman led the way—our hostess, Rennie or Ramie I think her name was. Her youngest son was still in high school and lived on the third floor, which was its own apartment practically. A tricked-out living area at the top of the stairs had a leather sofa and television, also a sink and a refrigerator and a stretch of marble-topped counters. There, a thin scapular boy with a pierced lip stood pouring a vodka and coke.

“Say hello, Jonathan.”

“Hello, Jonathan,” the boy said. The mother paused, her face crinkling coolly. Then she clapped her hands together and led us down again. “We let him drink at parties,” she confided, though as soon as we were back on the first floor she whispered something to a man who'd been handing out cocktails; he went bounding tightly up the stairs. When he returned, holding the bottle of Grey Goose, his eyes had gone glassy, yet he went into the kitchen and after a minute came out dimpled and hale once again.

I saw my father bending another man's ear, spinning some theory no doubt. The other man was noticeably well-groomed, not a stray hair on his head, and as he listened he polished off a slider, neatly, and touched his lips with his napkin afterward. I pulled out my phone and texted Rob again:

party no bueno, let's meet up after?

The bird fancier was still standing by the cage, still wearing a down vest over his shirt, but now the bird had perched on his hand. And all at once the sight of that obliging tropical specimen with its curled pink talons and clipped wings filled me with a childlike sadness. At the same time I wanted to take the bird on my own finger.

I couldn't place the man, but I'd seen him before, either he was someone's parent or else someone who had at one time or another been in the margins of the spotlight: a campaign advisor, a special counsel. And now I felt I might as well be the bird, looking to perch on somebody else's status-callused hand. Did I actually begin to trifle with the man in the down vest? If so it wasn't intentional. Or else he started it, passing the bird off to me, so that we were attending to it together, and the lies began pouring out, that I was applying to law schools, that I had loved college, that I had missed Washington, that I was interested in what his sons were doing: Who the hell were his sons? Who was he? It was one of those party exchanges that go on and on before you get around to names. Finally, I told him mine.

“Tim Atherton's daughter?” he asked, and when I nodded he said, “Your dad's a smart guy.”

I knew that, but the man's tone gave it weight. I wished I could get him to say more. Just then Hugo approached.

“What a beautiful animal,” Hugo said, and in no time at all he started in on some question of trade with China. I hoped he would shut up, but the man in the down vest seemed as eager to discuss trade with China as Hugo was. I myself had a mental block on trade with China—any time those two words, trade and China, showed up in the same sentence, I started to fade.

My sister's husband had thick coppery hair and a highly audible voice, and early on I'd wondered whether Courtney had ended up with him for no better reason than that she'd noticed him, whether it had taken this emergency signal of a man to divert her from her agenda. His eyes were wide-set, roaming, forever trying to anchor themselves in some impassioned conversation that I didn't want to have. They shared that interest, he and Courtney; they made a point of speaking about the war, about third world disasters, about the environment. Few people I knew in L.A. talked much about these things, not once they were past thirty.

I excused myself.

But how did I end up on the second floor—and inside our hostess's closet? Having gone upstairs in search of a bathroom, I opened the wrong door and was welcomed by dry-cleaning bags, smells of cedar and perfume, a chorus line of shoes, each toe even with the next one. A mother's closet. Even this strange one, though it was missing the particular belts and boots, purses and jackets and hose I knew best, was a very comforting place to stand. I stayed in there a spell, the noise of the party below barely reaching me. It seemed as good a place as any to finish my eggnog, to make a few notes, to try on—why not?—my hostess's shoes. They pinched a bit.

Of course in any tale worth its salt, the person hidden in a closet or behind a curtain becomes privy to some business she shouldn't have seen, and so when I heard footsteps approaching I pulled the door almost closed, and I spied with my little eye.

It was my dad. He sat on the bed and balanced his drink between his knees. I could hear his exhales. He took out his phone, its blue display a beacon in the darkness. His hands were slow: I always forgot that he was no longer in his forties, that I was closer to my forties than he was to his. He stopped, stared at the phone again, and at last made a call.

“It's me. Tim. It's, ah, Saturday at around nine p.m. I'm at the Morgans, which made me think of you. I just had a very interesting talk with Al Barnett, I was telling him about my book, the one that I've been working on, and he thought it sounded very promising. I think … well. I know you're busy. But please give me a call at, ah, your earliest convenience.”

Earliest convenience? After ending the call he waited a moment, as if he expected an answer. Although I couldn't be sure, I believed that I had just seen my dad drunk-dial my mom. And was he still working on his book, in spite of what he'd told me?

Who was this person?

Everything I'd written about him so far, I'd written by looking away from him, and now my Tim Atherton seemed all wrong. The outline of a body on the floor, from which position my living dad had stood up and wandered off. Surely this was why it was more typical to write about your parents after they were dead and could be pinned down, I thought—even if that was an illusion, that they could be specified, you could still manage it without confronting them, without having to compare your meager version to the living one.

I waited until he left the room to emerge. I spotted a landline phone on top of a dresser, picked it up, and listened to the dial tone for a while. It occurred to me that I remembered Gary's number.

I didn't expect him to answer, but he did. “Hello?… Hello?”

The sound of his voice paralyzed me. Then someone else got on the line, waited, and then said, “Hello?”

“Hello?” Gary repeated.

“Who is this?” It was the boy upstairs, I realized. Jonathan.

“This is Gary Doyle, who is this?”

“You sound lame.”

“You sound a little old to be making prank calls, asshole,” Gary said, and hung up. A mysterious cheer resounded from below.

As I walked back downstairs, Hugo appeared at the landing, carrying a little plate with little veggies on it. His tie was covered in circles: dark, filled-in circles surrounded by the outlines of larger circles, like dozens of eyes. Instead of meeting his real eyes, I looked at the tie. I thought, as I'd thought in the past, my sister sleeps in a bed with this man.
Every night.
But I passed judgment so readily, even when—especially when—the person I was judging could be said to be better off than yours truly. About Courtney that certainly could have been said. It had always been sayable, implied if not said outright, and though I would've preferred to be free of any negative feelings about our lifelong inequality, Courtney > Helen, I was not.

What a human I was turning out to be. So what if her husband was taking baby carrots with him to the bathroom, what did that matter? He turned himself sideways and backed up against the wall so that I could pass—out of politeness, but it was as though I weighed three hundred pounds. I felt enormous.

Downstairs Courtney was at the bar, mixing the feeblest of cocktails in a plastic cup: seltzer with a tiny splash of vermouth and a lemon wedge. I picked up the vodka and started pouring it into the glass. “You forgot this.”

“Stop. I'm not drinking that.”

“Yo, check out the boots. Those are tight.”

“I got them in New York,” she said. She'd gone up to New York for work and had seen Maggie and I guess had gone shopping with her. I knew it wasn't that they'd left me out on purpose, and still it pinched at that thing in me.

“What are you wearing?” she asked.

I tried to explain about the bi-stretch pants. I'd worn those.

“Are they comfortable?”

“I think if I gain weight over the holidays, they'll just keep stretching. In two directions,” I said.

“I'm so ready for the holidays to be over. Hugo and I were thinking we might just go away somewhere.”

“You? A vacation?” I'd gone upstairs in a strange mood and come back down in a stranger one.

“I'd still have to work some, but I could bring my computer.”

“No, come on, don't. You should totally go on a vacation. A real one. You wouldn't even have to go anywhere, you could just take a little time off, lock your computer in a drawer, and do the whole holiday jam for once. Do it up.”

I knew what she thought, that I was always on vacation. It wasn't true, I worked all the time, but my work wasn't like hers.

“It's nothing but eating and drinking and buying shit and thinking of all the things you meant to get done but didn't in the past year.”

“Honey, if you're against Christmas, you're against America. And eating and drinking and buying shit are what you do
instead of
brooding over the past year. You gots to chill, my sister. Chill out and have some alcohol. Have a treat.” I held up a gingerbread snowman.

“I'll pass.”

I waved the snowman in her face and then bit off its head. From across the room Hugo was watching, I noticed, with a fond bug-eyed expression that might have been for either one of us, or for us both.