In Sunlight and in Shadow (23 page)

“What does that mean?” Harry whispered to Catherine.

“You think I know?”

Billy glanced at Evelyn, who then rang the bell. A man and a woman entered with silver serving platters. “A beach dinner night,” Billy announced. “No soup.”

“Do you say grace?” Evelyn asked Harry.

“I live alone,” he answered, “and so have forgotten.”

“Would you like to remember?”

“I would, but it’s Friday and I don’t have the proper equipment. Besides, I’m not a woman.”

“No,” said Billy. “You’re not a woman. Okay.” They hadn’t the slightest idea what Harry was talking about.

“It’s a long and complicated ceremony.”

“To become a woman?” Billy asked.

While Harry was amused by this, Evelyn, only slightly put off in feeling left out, said, “Billy, why don’t you say grace, then?”

“Because we don’t really do that,” Billy protested. “It’s mainly for him, and I don’t know what the hell
he
does, but it sounds like he doesn’t do it either, so why don’t we just skip it?”

“No, Billy. Grace is hanging over us, and now it has to be said. It’s like pulling back the hammer of a gun. Don’t keep yourself all cocked up.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Billy answered. “Why don’t you do it?”

“It’s your serendipity to do it,” his wife told him.

“It is?”

“Yes.”

“Catherine?” her father asked.

“Don’t look at me,” Catherine said.

“All right. I’ll say it. But . . . let’s see. It should have music.”

“That’s just an excuse so you won’t have to . . . ,” Evelyn began. “And what do you mean, ‘music’?”

Billy held up his hand like a traffic cop. “No, it isn’t an excuse. We have music. Ring the bell.”

“I don’t know any tunes,” Evelyn said, “and it’s only one note.”

“Just ring it.”

She seized the bell and moved it back and forth like a dog shedding water. At first, nothing happened, and Harry took some Scotch, hoping to relieve at least a little of the tension and that he might after a dazed moment or two begin to understand what was going on. But then everyone but Billy nearly jumped out of his seat as an immense volume of music swelled from the sun porch. The lights went on, and the French doors were thrown fully open from the outside, after which the marimbist rushed back to his seat amid an eighteen-piece orchestra packed against the screens and the furniture that had been stacked out of the way.

The music enveloped the room like a tidal wave that had breached the dunes. The servants, who somehow had been kept in the dark, almost dropped their platters. The clearly professional orchestra was playing a kind of ersatz Brazilian music of the “Flying Down to Rio” variety, but had put it in a minor key, so that despite its happiness and urgency it had a sad, ghostly quality that nonetheless was so spirited that it filled the room and made everyone want to dance. Thus, everyone was moving, at least slightly, and the tension was carried away on the music like fallen leaves upon a rain-swollen kill.

“We thank you,” Billy said, eyes closed, swaying rhythmically, “for the fish I caught in the sea, and the dolphins that flew above the waves as I pulled him in. For the rice that is a cousin of the dune grass that grows here. For the vegetables, especially the salad and Louise’s marvelous dressing. And for the dessert, and for making it possible for me to have rented this orchestra. Really. Amen.”

Harry took another drink of Scotch, a big one. “Do you do this often?” he asked.

“Oh, certainly not,” Evelyn said. “He didn’t even tell me.”

“I wanted to give Catherine her party,” Billy said. “I asked Clayton—you know, the one who was surprised when he saw me surf-casting, because he thought it was below my station—where I could get in touch with these people, because he’s the one on the board who approves the hiring of musicians. He was true to form, and said, ‘People like us don’t do things like that. Why don’t you just put a Victrola in the sun room and have a servant turn it on?’

“Well, people like us do all kinds of things. And people like us don’t have to run in narrow tracks that people like us, and people not like us, may think we have to run in. I wanted the music to be full, to surround us, to lift us like the swell, so I rented a bloody orchestra. You only live once.

“They’re going to play at the club tomorrow night, and came out today to get settled. It was easy to hire them. That’s what they do. They play every night for money. Not a bad life, if you like music and you don’t have too many days when you’re unengaged.”

“It’s the life I’ve chosen, Daddy,” Catherine said. “It’s not for money or fame. It’s for the music.”

“But in the end, where does it leave you?” her mother asked.

“In the end, it leaves you where everyone is left, but with a full heart, I hope.”

“I hope so, too,” Evelyn told her, touching her hand. “And do you agree, Harry?” For decades it had been her job as hostess to direct the conversation felicitously, touching upon what was serious but always ready to lift and carry it, like music, beyond the reach of gravity.

“Those questions,” Harry said, “were like the questions I asked myself before the war.”

“And what was your answer?”

“I thought I had come up with an answer, and then I was swept away.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And ever since, before I can ponder such things, I’ve been swept away. I met Catherine on the Staten Island Ferry, and since that unplanned second, everything has changed.”

“You can’t surrender completely to chance,” Billy said.

“I know,” Harry agreed, “that God is on the side of those with the biggest battalions, and I don’t believe in chance anyway. Chance is ugly and ragged. What I believe in holds things together beautifully as they run.”

All this was said almost lightly as they rode on the music as if on a boat in the waves. “And I try not to surrender entirely to anything,” Harry continued. “I find that it’s like jumping from a plane. You can plan on your landing zone, you can partially collapse the chute to influence your course, but overall the jump is blind and you go where the wind takes you.”

That led to much talk about many things, and as they ate and drank, everyone, including Catherine, ventured beyond safety. “I caught this fish this morning,” Billy told them. “It was a great cast. I was relaxed and the throw was easy, but more than that, the wind took the spoon. I followed it. It just carried forward like a bird in flight, and when it landed it was taken by the rip. I watched my reel unwind as if the hook had snagged a boat, until it jerked to a stop because I had run out of line. That spoon was two thousand feet from the beach, which is how I was able to bring in a bonito: they don’t run close to shore. He took the line about ten seconds after it had played out. I was half expecting the reel to wind itself. It didn’t. I had to work. And in the hour it took to land the fish, it was surrounded by leaping dolphins. I thought they wanted to save it, and if I hadn’t worked so hard I would have let him go to oblige them. I almost did.”

Luckily for their consciences, they had finished the main course and were speeding through a lemon cake. “It’s for dancing,” Billy said. “The orchestra. Catherine, you didn’t get a single dance last week. Even though the whole thing blew up, the orchestra continued to play after you left, and people danced until well beyond midnight. It was like a wake, I guess. And they had come all the way out here. Why shouldn’t you get a dance, too?”

Catherine drew back in her chair and pushed her empty plate away. As Harry helped her up she rose directly into his arms. The orchestra had started a euphoric, fast-paced Mexican song with a lot of whoops, brass, and flutes. “I don’t know what dance to do to this,” she said, looking up at him.

“That’s all right,” he said, “because we’re already dancing, and this dance is called ‘Just Don’t Knock Over the Table.’”

With Billy and Evelyn now up on the floor and almost oblivious of Catherine and Harry, Harry and Catherine, oblivious of Billy and Evelyn, danced their first dance. They were as smooth and free as if they could fly. They moved together naturally and without plan.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Do I like it? I think I’m going to faint.”

“I don’t think so, Catherine. People like you don’t faint. But go ahead, I’ll faint, too.”

“No, don’t,” she said. “I hope the song never ends.”

It did, however, and when it did he really didn’t want to let her go, but they switched partners and he found himself dancing, far more carefully, with Evelyn. “Will Catherine be as elegant as you?” he asked, for in her youth Catherine was not as stringent as her mother, if only because she did not need to be.

Self-possessed even as she was spun around the small space between the dining room table and the sideboard, Evelyn answered, “Catherine will be more so, because Catherine is better than I am.” They glanced over at Catherine, who was dancing with Billy as only fathers and daughters can dance. No matter how old the daughter may be, the father is dancing, in joy unparalleled, with his child when she was little.

Then they switched back, and when Catherine was again in his arms, in the white dress in which she had come on the train and which now nonetheless seemed as if it had been made for the dance, and when they were lost again, moving together in a rhythm that cut out everything else, they knew why dolphins breach the air above the sea.

H
E HAD EATEN
lightly and had had only a little more than half the Scotch Billy had poured him and less than a full glass of wine, so when he awoke at sunrise to the pounding of the surf his body was untroubled and his eye was sharp. Dressed in khaki uniform trousers and a polo shirt, he walked slowly along the length of the pool, now blue and slightly rippled by the morning wind. In banks of flowers bordering the slate that surrounded the pool, bees suspended in the air like hummingbirds alighted to load nectar, and patrolled in paths as precisely curved as if they had been laid out by a nautilus. Freighted with the remnant mist of breaking waves, the air beyond the dunes glowed like the sky above a distant city. And, as always, the heartbeat of the surf continued. It vibrated the ground beneath his feet, reverberated through his lungs like the sound of cannon fire, and was carried away on a reviving wind.

Inside the house, Billy stood in his robe, teacup in hand, as still as an Elgin Marble. Instead of greeting Harry, he remained motionless, gazing into the strong light from outside. Had Harry looked closely enough, he could have seen two perfect pictures of the terrace, the pool, the gardens, and the line of dunes, miniaturized and bent to follow in faithful color the orbs of their owner’s eyes. Fearing that Billy’s impassive demeanor meant that he had decided against him, Harry carefully said good morning, but Billy just stared in his direction, until he quoted, “‘The air was literally filled . . . the light at noon-day was obscured . . . and the continual buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.’”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Audubon. The passenger pigeon. There.”

Harry turned around. Behind him was what captivated Billy, the Audubon engraving of the passenger pigeon.

“Audubon reported that there were so many of them that they darkened the sky. But now they’re gone. The very last one—they had her in a zoo, in Cincinnati, and they knew that she was the last of her kind—died at one in the afternoon on the first of September, nineteen fourteen. I was probably . . . I don’t know what I was doing then. If it were a weekday, I may have been trading stocks. What were you doing?”

“Probably sleeping or drinking milk.”

“Were you born in Cincinnati?” Billy asked hopefully.

“No, but had I been born there, I don’t think I would have been her.”

Billy seemed disappointed. “Look at this,” he said, walking over to a flat tin box, as gray as lead and scarred by time, resting on a cherrywood desk. “It’s one of the boxes they used for sending prints to subscribers. I have all the prints, the complete set.” He opened the lid and propped it up with the dowel that came originally for the purpose. “Wow,” he said, meaning the life still to be felt in a wild goose, its plumage as dark as velvet and as white as raw cotton, its neck bent in readiness for combat, the red tongue vibrating between the halves of its beak like flame, its cry almost audible, and the background of marsh plants as lonely as in a Japanese print. Harry bent to the caption, which read,
Drawn from nature and published by John J. Audubon. F.R
.
S. F.L
.
S. & etc. Engraved, Printed, & Colored by R. Havel.

“Sometimes I regret that we so readily eat birds and fish, which are beautiful, and perfectly suited to the water and air. But, then again, when they can, they eat us, and with no regret.”

“And we’re ahead in the game,” Harry said.

“Not for long,” Billy answered. “Humankind, or at least American-kind, will lose its edge as we produce more and more pipsqueaks and everyone gets nicer. Whole generations of pipsqueaks will be so fucking nice you won’t be able to tell a man from a woman.”

“You won’t?”

“Nope. And it will get worse and worse as people mistake nice for good. Hitler was nice, supposedly, most of the time. A lot of good that did. Luxury and prosperity breed pipsqueaks. A century from now the country won’t even be able to defend itself.”

“Do you think that my generation,” Harry asked, “that just conquered the world, are pipsqueaks?”

“That’s why the pipsqueaks are on their way. The universe isn’t homogenized. Everything changes, and there’s only one direction in which we can go in the near future. Brace yourself for a different world, where you’ll be totally out of place, and hope that your children are strong enough to carry through to the hard generations that will protect your line from extinction.”

“I’ll do my best,” Harry said, unconcerned about the virility of his sons, and, given Catherine, the femininity of his daughters.

“Mark my words,” said Billy. “Within a decade the British Empire will have vanished.”

And then Catherine appeared. She had been standing close by and listening to their discussion. She, too, was in a robe. “Okay,” said Billy. “To hell with the British Empire. Let’s have breakfast and get to the beach before the sand fleas.” He left quickly, like Santa Claus.