Matters of Honor (9 page)

T
HE SUN HAD SET
by the time the train finally pulled into the station. Only one door opened. We ran toward it to help Margot down the steps and take her bags. Yes, she was very beautiful, even if her nose was too big for her face, and she was doing her best to be pleasant. During the few minutes it took us to get to the Standish house, she managed to pet George, who was driving, to wink encouragingly at Henry, and to distinguish me as a special friend, all the while commenting lazily on the Norman Rockwell winter landscape. I concluded that the air of boredom I had found so off-putting at Mario’s party might have been only her cocktail party pose.

The Standish parents welcomed us at the door. I refused Mrs. Standish’s offer of tea: if I was to make it home to Lenox to change and back in time for a drink before the party, I had better leave at once. My, my, she replied, perhaps you’re right; the roads are so very slippery. Do give Jack’s and my greetings to your dear parents. We did so like their Christmas card!

I couldn’t have cared less about the road conditions and in truth didn’t need very much time to get into my dinner jacket, but I felt I had to get away and clear my head before facing Mrs. Standish, Mr. Standish, George’s two married sisters, and the sisters’ husbands, a New York banker and a New York lawyer. Like everyone in the county my age or younger, I had always found Mr. Standish overbearing and threatening. According to George, that was only self-defense. In reality, his father was gentle and very shy; the real tiger was his mother. That could well be, but in my present situation appearances were more important than some hidden reality. I preferred Mrs. Standish’s quiet eighteenth-century face and its expression of profound fatigue mixed with sympathy. Moreover, she didn’t just remember my name. She actually seemed to notice me. In fact, the last time I saw her, at the final afternoon concert of the Tanglewood season after my return from France, she had amazed me by asking that I call her May, which was something I couldn’t bring myself to do, any more than to call her Cousin May, which my mother had recommended as a suitable alternative when I reported the incident to her.

I had been worrying about what George’s parents might say when he told them about our having become close friends and the high opinion of me that he appeared to have; I hoped they would not have found it necessary to say that the friendship was inappropriate. There was some comfort in the thought that they might find it awkward to explain their objections, whether or not they knew that I was a child of sin: What difference should my illegitimate birth make when Lucy Butler in Tyringham, who was invited everywhere, was widely known to have been adopted by old Dr. Butler and his wife? Of course, their feelings might be very strong if I was a skeleton in the family closet. But would they risk taking that skeleton out just to put an end to my palling around with George? There was nothing I knew of that they could say against me personally, other than that some of my contemporaries considered me stuck-up, by which I hoped they meant that I was too literary. They couldn’t say I was a sissy; nobody could call me that. So it would have to be that I was disqualified simply as the son of my parents. But even if Mr. and Mrs. Standish thought that my parents’ reputation was as bad as I feared, I somehow doubted that they would want to say so to George, or that being told, he wouldn’t say that what my parents did was none of his business. In fact, I was coming to think that my vision of my standing in the Berkshires was tinged with hysteria only aggravated by Mr. Hibble’s declaration. I had to sort out these thoughts, especially since, if the less pessimistic view was borne out, the gates of the Standish estate—their property deserved that appellation—would no longer be closed to me literally or figuratively and I might be permitted to swim in Mr. Standish’s august pool, a privilege, I had been told all too often, granted only to the most favored children and teenagers. In the summer I might even be invited to the Standishes’ Sunday lunches. Those gates would not open for my parents, but it didn’t seem to me that duty or pride compelled me to refuse such invitations if they came, any more than they dictated rejecting George’s friendship.

My parents were at home, still dressing to go out. I changed rapidly and waited for them in the living room. My father brought down a tray with their glasses and the shaker and got busy making another batch of martinis. He asked whether I wanted one. I told them I was to have a drink at George’s house and added something about wanting to have my head clear on the road. That focused my mother’s mind. She said, Whatever you do, don’t crack up my car. And then, to my father, Maybe I’ll drive. Maybe you won’t, he replied. I won’t have any of that stuff.

I looked at them. Their faces were puffy, but overall they were a handsome couple. Being very thin and dressed just right helped, as did table lamps with pink bulbs. My mother wore a silver strapless sheath. She had no breasts to speak of, and her posture in profile was peculiar, something like a sexy question mark. Her legs were exceptional, long and shapely. She had no use for girlfriends and liked men, perhaps even my father, and indeed men swarmed around her. Perfectly respectable men, as well as those about whom people talked. I asked myself whether knowing that she was not my real mother had enabled me to see her more nearly the way other men did, but I couldn’t say that there had been a real change.

Are you going to bring your roommate over tomorrow? she asked. Not too early, please. My father interjected, You had better make it late brunch at the club. I said I would have to invite Margot and George as well. The news that George would be his guest caused my father to perk up. He reminded me to give his and Mother’s New Year’s wishes to the Standish parents, whom for this occasion he called Jack and May, and renewed his offer of a martini. I kissed my mother, shook my father’s hand, and prepared to go out into the cold. The thermometer at the door had sunk to nine degrees. My father followed me to the threshold and peeked at the thermometer himself. Take the old raccoon, he said, go on, it won’t bite you. I thanked him and put it on.

I hesitated about how far from the Standishes’ front door I should park in the circular driveway, and whether my car belonged in the driveway at all. Three were already there: the station wagon George had driven and two other station wagons. I supposed that was the only kind of automobile the family used. A couple of other cars were in the parking space in front of the huge garage that must have once been a stable. It seemed prudent to put my raccoon in the backseat and leave the car right there. The snow had been meticulously cleared and swept. It squeaked cheerfully under my feet. At the door a manservant met me with a tray of drinks. I took a glass of champagne. Champagne was not the standard beverage in the Berkshires, any more than was a man in white gloves or any male servant except the club bartender helping out on his night off. For that matter, waitresses in black satin dresses and lace aprons and headpieces that made them look like chambermaids in a French movie weren’t either. I thought of Henry’s feeling when he took possession of the dormitory bedroom with a view that he had entered a new world. What could be his impression now? Probably he was concluding, quite correctly, happy and a little frightened, that this was another, wider vista of that same world. Such were my own feelings too, although I was in a territory where, in theory, my feet should be squarely planted, visiting my nearest cousins. These grand relatives were but a few steps away, Mrs. Standish smiling wanly and Mr. Standish, splendid in his white tie and tails, positively beaming. Welcome, welcome, dear boy, he boomed, without waiting for Mrs. Standish to whisper my name to him, I see you have a glass of bubbly, have some more—without pausing for breath he beckoned to the manservant—and meet your girl cousins and their lords and masters. You were still in short pants when they flew the coop! I approached as bidden, pecked Mrs. Standish’s cheek when it was offered, took another glass—apparently glasses were exchanged, not refilled—and relayed my parents’ greetings. Yes, yes, yes, boomed Mr. Standish again, now come along.

Joanie and Millie took after their father. In consequence they shared with him, George, my father, and, it must be admitted, with me as well, the dirty-blond hair with curls that resisted both comb and brush, the wiry frame, no-nonsense legs, and a facial bone structure that made Mr. Standish and my father indisputably lantern jawed. Perhaps that was a deformation accentuated by age. They were nice women and, like their husbands, briskly polite and full of chatter. In rapid succession, they told me the ages and sexes of their five children, ranging from six to thirteen, as well as their summer arrangements. One set of in-laws had a house on the North Shore of Long Island, the other on the North Shore of Massachusetts. This enabled Millie to spend the last couple of weeks of June and all of July in Beverly, during which time Joanie had the use of the cottage on the Standish property. During the first week of August, Millie, her husband, and their children squeezed into the big house with the Standish parents, so that the whole family could be together. Then Joanie took over the cottage until it was time for the kids to go back to school, while Millie and her gang moved on to Syosset. Having duly mastered and admired these arrangements, I said I should find George and his houseguests, and moved on.

They were in the library, Margot with her back to the fire. She said she was freezing; the hot bath hadn’t gotten the cold out of her bones. She wore a long velvet dress of vivid red and red silk shoes. I supposed Mrs. Standish must be pleased by her chic. Henry’s appearance impressed me. Archie had talked him into exchanging the double-breasted dinner jacket that had been his mother’s purchase at Altman’s for an ancient Brooks Brothers model from Keezer’s with peaked lapels of exaggerated width, rather like the one my father wore. It had evidently been treated by the original owner with loving care. They had also acquired a silk dress shirt that had turned dark ivory with age. As a final touch, Archie taught him how to tie his bow tie loosely, so that it drooped like a Confederate officer’s mustache. The jacket was slightly too big for Henry, enhancing the devil-may-care effect. His face was flushed—I supposed from champagne and excitement—and he gestured as he talked, making Margot and George laugh. I knew how conscious he was of the anomaly of his presence. Was that awareness contributing to his high spirits? Or was that how he overcame his anxiety? In either case he was managing just fine.

I
DID NOT OBSERVE
Henry’s progress during dinner at the club. He and George and Margot were at Mrs. Standish’s table, and I was with Mr. Standish. As soon as the tables had been cleared, a stag line formed, and Henry and I and most of the other young men drifted into it. Older men remained with their wives and daughters or, if they too drifted away, it was in the direction of the bar. Mr. Standish was in the latter group. As soon as Henry realized that Mrs. Standish had been left alone—her daughters were on the dance floor with their husbands, and George was busy introducing Margot around—he hurried to her side. A moment later, they were on the dance floor. I would not have thought ballroom dancing had figured in Henry’s curriculum in Poland or Brooklyn, but Mrs. Standish’s face left no doubt that she thought he was a fine partner. His example inspired me not to wait until the set was over. I cut in as soon as the band had worked its way through “Tea for Two.” Unfortunately, the next dance was a rumba. My knowledge of the box step was too theoretical for spontaneity, let alone fun, and at first Mrs. Standish made an effort to lead that only confused me the more. We carried on grimly until she said she was thirsty and asked whether I would mind returning to the table and getting her something to drink. She longed to have a chat. Humiliated but grateful, I pushed my way to the bar. When I returned to the table with two glasses of champagne, I found that she and I were alone.

She gave me a thin-lipped smile and said, How nice, now we can really talk.

I had supposed that our subject would be Margot and perhaps some banalities about my parents. It wasn’t that at all. Her voice as light as a dragonfly skimming over water, she murmured, Your roommate is so charming. How interesting that you and George and he should be friends. I suppose you have known Henry for a long time.

I said that we met for the first time in our dormitory room, the day my mother dropped me off in Cambridge. Our other roommate was someone I had also never seen before, the son of an army officer who had moved around a good deal because of his father’s transfers to new posts.

Oh, said Mrs. Standish, how very interesting. You chose each other without ever having met!

Now I knew what she was driving at. Stalling, I laughed and said we hadn’t done any such thing. The university housing office had played God and made all the choices. The marvel of it was that the three of us got along exceedingly well.

Oh, said Mrs. Standish once again, more pensively. What an odd system! Come to think of it, perhaps it isn’t. I don’t suppose that Henry knew anybody at Harvard. Or am I wrong? Perhaps he already had a large group of friends from New York. He is from New York, isn’t he? I think that’s what he told me. Or was it George who said so?

I didn’t want to correct her by pointing out that Henry lived in Brooklyn, so I said that she was quite right. Hoping to move the conversation into a broader channel, I said that the university in fact matched many more roommates than one would think. For instance, I was the only member of my graduating class at school to be going to Harvard, and I knew no one else except George who was going to be in the freshman class. As it turned out I had assumed correctly that he was already spoken for.

He would have liked to room with you ever so much, Mrs. Standish assured me. You should have proposed it just as soon as you found out you were going. Or he should have thought of it. All of you are so brilliant and so completely scatterbrained! Jack and I are very pleased to see that you have become such good friends. We’ve always thought you should be, but of course one doesn’t want to interfere.