Fortunate Lives (10 page)

And anyone listening paid attention and was distressed, even her own children, and especially Martin. “That sounds so ugly
when you say it,” he had said to her once in the midst of some outburst of hers.

“Oh,
please
! Men use language like that all the time. For God’s sake, most of our friends use much more graphic language than I ever
do. Why doesn’t that bother you?” she asked.

“They don’t. Not when they’re mad. I don’t know why it bothers me, but it just does. It bothers me when anyone loses control
like that. It’s really unpleasant. The children hate it. They leave the room. I don’t think you have any idea how you sound.”

She had silently granted him that—it was language she, too, was unnerved to hear when it was used in anger. She had been slightly
abashed; she was sorry to some degree, but not entirely. “Well,” she said, before realizing that what she was about to tell
him was something she had thought for quite a while. She turned slightly away from him so that he wouldn’t see the censure
on her face. “The thing is, Martin, that you don’t
need
it! You’ve never had a proper sense of outrage.”

Gradually, of course, Martin had picked it up, too. If he stubbed his toe, or the hot water ran out in the middle of a shower,
or Duchess slipped her collar and went streaking off across the fields. “God-damned-mother-fucking-son-of-a-bitch!” he would
mutter to himself, but within earshot. And when Dinah heard him, or on that rare occasion when she was struck by her own words,
she did recognize that in theory they had slipped just a notch lower in her private measure of their effort to hang on to
all that was civilized. In the abstract she was disappointed in herself, but in practice she never regretted her words for
a moment.

She left Sarah to deal with the extra crown, and she spent far more time than usual soaking in the bathtub
before carefully putting on eyeshadow and mascara and polishing her fingernails and toenails with some of Sarah’s nail polish,
which she had always considered a bit tacky in any shade. This color was brilliant; it was labeled British Red.

When Martin rapped lightly to ask what else he should get besides ice, she kept her voice neutral and was glad to have the
door between them. She knew the puzzled look of apology that would cross his face if she confronted him with his unmentioned
invitation to an extra child to this carefully planned party.

She put on low-heeled sandals and a deep blue muslin sundress that Vic and Ellen had brought her from Mexico. It had a scooped
neck, short, pleated sleeves, and the bodice was fitted just below her breasts. The skirt, cut on the bias, fell narrowly
past her waist to flare extravagantly around her calves, and the hem and bodice and sleeves were embroidered elaborately with
intricate pale blue, coral, and metallic gold and silver flowers and birds. Dinah rarely wore the dress because she didn’t
trust the dry cleaner not to destroy it. But today she hoped it would make her feel festive.

She walked through the rooms, seeing to one thing and another. Vic and Ellen had arrived after all; and while Ellen had disappeared
upstairs to arrange Moonflower, everyone else had congregated on the screened porch off the kitchen. Christie and David were
doing a rough run-through of some of the children’s songs, and Anna Tyson was stretched out asleep in the wicker swing with
her head in Netta’s lap. Netta, so small, gently swayed back and forth, the very tips of her toes barely brushing the floor.
As the swing moved backward, she swung her feet beneath it just as a child would do. While Vic and Martin were sitting and
chatting with her, Dinah found the chocolate-streaked double boiler pan and a smaller pan scummed with scalded milk left to
soak in the kitchen sink.

As she scrubbed at the milk with steel wool, she realized that she could hear David and Christie quite clearly through some
trick of acoustics—they were all the way across the long kitchen and outside the window, but their voices were low and tense
and embarrassingly audible. “Oh, Jesus, Christie! It’s impossible… I’m
not
mad, but I’m
sick
of you asking me about it….”

Dinah flinched at the lack of charity in David’s voice, but she was curious in spite of herself and froze there at the sink
to find out whatever it was that Christie could be asking him. She felt mildly relieved that she was not the only one from
whom David withheld information. But before anything else was said, David got up and moved away to sit with the group at the
far end of the porch, and Christie stayed where she was, trying out chords on the guitar. Dinah began to take things out of
the refrigerator to let them come to room temperature.

She had made potato salad the way it used to be made before potatoes became chic—with sweet pickle and onion and green olives;
and she had blanched and marinated an assortment of vegetables—green beans, carrots, cauliflower, mushrooms, zucchini, broccoli.
She had roasted a turkey and glazed a ham the day before, and Martin had grilled a beautiful London broil. The menu for this
party never varied, and Dinah had the timing down to a science. It was plain fare that children would eat without being squeamish
and that adults would enjoy. The meats were sliced, the eggs boiled and stuffed, the garnishes assembled, and she was arranging
trays of vegetables when she realized that Christie had moved down to the other end of the porch, too, and now Dinah could
hear the general conversation, with Netta’s soft voice rising and falling as the primary note in the flow of sound.

Ellen joined Dinah just then in the kitchen. “I’ve got the pulley working fine, I think, although Moonflower’s a little the
worse for wear.” She washed her hands at the sink.
“I don’t suppose anyone will notice, though, but I think we’d better use the spider tonight. I restrung the wire with a nylon
fishing line, and it should show
less
, but it could be that light will reflect off it, or something.” When Dinah didn’t make a sound, Ellen realized that she hadn’t
heard anything she had said.

Even though it was soft, Netta’s voice had the quality of carrying, with a syllable here or there flashing out in absolute
clarity as though her confidences were like the metallic threads in Dinah’s skirt, illuminated randomly by any light. “Oh,
I haven’t really minded. I know how
threatening
stray people can be. But I guess I was surprised. Oh, yes…” The pattern of her speech was compelling in its lilt and in its
gentle, prolonged sibilances, almost a lisp. “I really was.” Her words were followed by a long silence that had the quality
of a breath caught, a hint of suspense in the air. “I don’t suppose I really did expect…” Netta’s voice trailed off into a
pale note of wonder. “… well, you don’t expect jealousy these days… you really don’t. What I’d gotten used to at Harvard was
a kind of cooperative misery.” She gave a pensive, deprecating little laugh. “Or elation. Oh, but never the sort of… well…
envy
. From other women. It gets very lonely, you know.” Her tone was that of resignation, not anger. Resignation with a trace
of perplexity. Once more there was a hush in the conversation. Dinah and Ellen exchanged a glance, and Ellen headed for the
porch, rubbing her still damp hands together.

In spite of the lurking cat, Taffy, who never hesitated to investigate the counters, Dinah left the tray she was arranging
uncovered and escaped into the living room, from which she removed any fragile objects that might be in reach of small children.
But everywhere Dinah went in her own house, as she arranged flowers in a vase or moved through a room to put out bowls of
nuts and olives, straightening this or that, she felt she was intruding.
Sarah’s friends had arrived and the three girls had taken over the dining room. Although they were friendly and offered help,
their conversation came to a stop whenever Dinah passed through. The house was blossoming with intimate conversations, furtive
discussions, muted confessions.

Just before four o’clock, when people would begin to arrive, Dinah returned to the kitchen to make the final preparations
and discovered Netta there once again. She had hoisted Anna Tyson up on the countertop next to the sink and was gently swabbing
her daughter’s sleep-swollen face with a dampened towel. As Dinah leaned against the counter and watched Netta and her daughter,
she felt a lessening of the tension she had experienced all day.

She could hear Vic and Martin still chatting on the porch. “… a
luminosity
to her intelligence. Don’t you think so?” Vic was saying. Dinah could hear Christie in the living room trying to persuade
David to do the spider song. “… but you know they’ll all get silly if I do it. Especially the little boys. It won’t kill you,
David.” And she could hear Sarah’s stereo from upstairs, where she and her friends had retreated. This one moment of peace
in the kitchen was soothing.

Anna Tyson turned her head away from her mother’s hand and stared at Dinah in that belligerent state of sudden wakefulness
that small children sometimes experience. “Why are you wearing those shoes with your toes showing?” she asked sulkily in Dinah’s
direction, and Dinah just smiled back at her, not answering, but reminded of how cranky her own children had always been—and
sometimes still were—in the moments before they had to give up wakefulness or just after they had come out of sleep. She felt
indulgent and fond of Anna Tyson, whose face was still flushed and blotchy from her nap, and who resisted her mother’s ministrations
so vigorously that
Netta finally lifted her down to the floor. Netta leaned over the sink and cupped water in her palms and splashed her own
face while Anna Tyson approached Dinah.

Anna Tyson stood with her hands at her sides, her mouth a disapproving line tucked in at the corners. “My mother says I can’t
wear anything shiny.” She was looking at Dinah’s dress.

“My mother says the same thing,” Dinah said lightly, with a little laugh so that Netta would realize that she wasn’t insulted
by Anna Tyson’s rudeness. But Netta didn’t appear to notice. Anna Tyson silently studied Dinah, as though she had encountered
another species.

“You painted your toenails red, didn’t you? Why did you do that?”

Dinah was feeling far less fond of Anna Tyson by now, and she was at a loss to find a diplomatic way to respond. She looked
to Netta for assistance, for a word to ward off her own daughter, but Netta was merely watching them while she gently patted
her own face dry with a dish towel. Finally, though, she dampened the towel again under the faucet and stooped down to Anna
Tyson’s level, and Dinah didn’t want to hear the little girl chastised; Dinah was anxious to deflect Netta’s attention from
anything Anna Tyson had said.

“You know,” Dinah said conversationally, as though she hadn’t paid any attention to Anna Tyson’s behavior, “Anna Tyson’s really
a lovely-looking little girl.” Dinah said this in a manner of reassurance, because she really thought that Anna Tyson was
one of those children who just look like anyone; there was nothing arresting about her, she wasn’t lovely or unlovely. But
Netta’s face registered a discernible reaction for the first time, and it was disapproval.

She rose, carefully refolding the damp towel and aligning it neatly along the edge of the sink. No one spoke
at all while Netta observed the precision of her own movements. With apparent reluctance she faced Dinah, speaking slowly
and with great patience. “You know, I’m sure you would never have made that remark if Anna Tyson were a boy. I know you meant
it as a compliment. People always do. But don’t you see how it focuses Anna Tyson’s attention on all the wrong assets? I’m
sorry, but I really find unconsciously sexist remarks more and more intolerable. I know you meant it kindly, but I don’t want
Anna Tyson to define herself by how she looks.”

Dinah was so astounded she couldn’t speak. As she stood in the kitchen reviewing exactly what Netta had just said in her careful
and deliberate speech, it crossed Dinah’s mind that Netta had the same personality as the spell-checker on Martin’s computer.
The spell-checker made no allowances, had no sense of humor, no knowledge of context, no social radar. Dinah found that her
usual impulse to save people from themselves—to save them from knowing what fools they have made of themselves—had entirely
deserted her. She didn’t feign agreement, she didn’t gently reinterpret Netta’s words for her so that later Netta would believe
that she had made her point tactfully or even politely. Dinah simply turned away and went out to the porch to wait for the
guests to arrive.

David watched as Dinah drifted through the rooms, collecting the children while the party went on around her. She stopped
and smiled and greeted people here and there. And David had no memory of ever perceiving her as foolish or threatening. He
admired the way she bent down to this child or that, never altering her voice the way many adults do when they speak to children.

“You’d better come with me out to the porch so you can practice the Moonflower song. You know about Moonflower, don’t you?”
And the child would shake his or her head solemnly—even suspiciously, the older ones.

“Ah, well…” and she would take the child’s hand and explain as she led the little girl or boy out to the porch, where Christie
was already going over and over the songs with the other children assembled there.

“I haven’t seen Moonflower in… oh, an awfully long time,” David heard Dinah confess wistfully to a little boy who was trailing
along beside her with some reluctance, “because she’s not a bit interested in grown-ups. She thinks they’re too judgmental,
you know,” she added conversationally. Although the little boy, who was probably no more than four years old, had no idea
what that could mean, he nodded in agreement.

“She might not come, of course,” Dinah added matter-of-factly. “She’s very moody. I just hope that no one hurts her feelings.
But
sometimes
! Well, sometimes she does appear at this time of year, just when the light is fading. We can hope…. She’s very shy, though,
you know.” And she looked down at the child to whom she was talking, and he nodded mutely, understanding Moonflower’s reluctance
perfectly as he was being led through this house that was not his own by this tall woman. But slowly he gave up his disbelief
in the face of Dinah’s skepticism.