The Best of Everything (37 page)

"Shall we?" Donald asked, turning to Caroline.

"All right."

He was a pumper, she should have known from looking at him. One hand held her in a firm, splayed grasp in the center of her back and the other arm was held out stiffly, like the handle of a pump, going up and down in time to the beat of the music. His forehead was beginning to perspire. "I'm not much on dancing," he admitted.

"You're perfectly fine."

"You sure are a woman full of flattery." He laughed timidly at this bit of bold wit and pumped a little harder.

This number is almost over and then we can sit down, Caroline thought with relief. But the end of the song glided into the beginning of the next one without a break, and she was trapped in another five minutes of athletics. "Let's see what they have to eat," she said finally.

He dropped his hands from her waist and hand as if she were on fire and trotted obediently back to their table. Poor thing, Caroline thought regretfully, I hope he isn't insulted.

By the time they were halfway finished with their soup course Dotty was handing around snapshots of her two children, aged two and one. "Isn't he a love?"

"Just darling. What adorable fat cheeks," Brenda said.

"Do you have any children?"

"Not yet." Brenda glanced at her husband, and over her face came a look that could only be described as utter coyness. "But we're going to have one in February."

"How nice!" Dotty said. "You really don't look . . . but February's in ten months!"

"I know," Brenda said calmly.

Donald turned to April. "Care to try a dance?"

"All right," April said, rising. They went out onto the dance floor, and Caroline could see his arm moving up and down, up and down, in time to the music. A middle-aged man with a large round stomach and a bottle of champagne in his hand was making his way across the dance floor to Caroline's table. He stopped on the way and put his arm around Donald's shoulder, looking into April's face like a little old elf. Caroline could see Donald introducing them, and then the man continued across the floor. He stopped in front of Caroline and beamed at her,

"I'm Mary Agnes' Uncle Fred. Who are you?"

"I'm her friend Caroline."

He looked at the two empty chairs. "May I sit down?"

"Of course."

He put the bottle of champagne on the table in front of them with an unsteady hand, turned one of the chairs around and straddled it, his arms crossed on top of the back of it, his chin on his forearms. He peered at Caroline. "Are you having a good time?"

"Very good, thank you."

"You're a pretty little girl. Are you married?"

-No."

He beamed at her more widely. "You are cute." He turned then to the table and the bottle of champagne. "Look what I have. Shampoo. Do you like shampoo?"

"Yes . . ." Caroline said rather dubiously. Uncle Fred's cheeks were as red as Santa Claus's and he sprayed her when he spoke into her face. She figured he'd had quite a bit of shampoo aheady.

"Here." He took her half-filled water glass and dumped the contents, ice cubes and all, into the centerpiece. Then he filled the water glass to the top with champagne.

"Oh, that's really too much," Caroline said.

"Ill help you," he said sweetly, "It's a kind of loving cup." He

raised the glass to his lips and took several thirsty swallows. "I love weddings, don't you?"

'Tes."

"I'll go to your wedding. I'll drink shampoo and dance. Will you invite me to your wedding?"

"Of course," Caroline said.

He pinched her cheek. "You are cute."

"You haven't met the rest of the people at the table," Caroline said desperately. "Brenda!" Brenda looked at her. "Tnis is Mary Agnes' Uncle Fred. Brenda and her husband, Lenny. And I guess you know Dotty and Bo."

"Hi, Uncle Fred," said Dotty, waggling two fingers at him.

"Hi there, Dottikins."

Brenda and Lenny, who were across the table and seemed to know when they were safely out of it, smiled pleasantly and nodded. Uncle Fred turned back immediately to Caroline. 'Td like to dance with you."

"I've just been dancing," she said. "I'm very tired."

"Tired! At Mary Agnes' wedding? What kind of friend are you?"

"I've . . . taken my shoes o£E," she lied. "They're somewhere under the table and I can't find them. Maybe later."

"Well, dance without them! Now we'll really have fun!" He took hold of her arm. She sighed and let him pull her to her feet.

Uncle Fred was exactly the same height as she was. When he held her in the steps of the foxtrot the band was playing his large round stomach kept bumping into hers. It was an extremely hard stomach and there seemed to be no escape from it. "I'm sorry I've never met you before," Uncle Fred said.

Caroline felt her smile becoming fixed as she looked over his shoulder at the other couples. All of them looked as if they were having such a good time. Perhaps she did too. She felt Uncle Fred's breath spraying her cheek. "You don't look at me when I'm talking to you," he said in what was meant to be a reproachful and piteous tone. With an effort she turned her head.

"You probably don't want to look at me," he went on, in that same sad voice. "Because I'm just an old man. You probably think I'm just an old man. But I like to look at you because you're so young and pretty."

She didn't know whether or not to feel sorry for him because she

couldn't decide whether or not he was really sorry for himself. "Thank you," she said.

"Oh," he went on, "I'm just an old man. I have four daughters, all married. I married every one of them ofif in a great big wedding. Each one wanted a wedding bigger and fancier than her sister before her. Nobody cares about the old man. Just pay the bills, that's all he's good for."

Caroline looked at him really then, startled, but he was smiling in his elfin and now half-rueful way, and she still couldn't decide if he was unhappy or just bantering.

"Oh, I don't care," Uncle Fred said. "1 love weddings. Dance, have fun, drink, meet pretty girls. Weddings are fun. After all, it's only once in a lifetime. Then you have the housework and the babies and the work begins. A girl has to have something to remember. Y'know?" He gave Caroline's waist a squeeze.

"Yes," she said.

"I don't mind paying the bills."

The music had stopped playing, the dance was over. Caroline heard the silence with a gasp of relief and disengaged herself from Uncle Fred's embrace. "I promised the next dance to Donald."

Uncle Fred took her elbow and escorted her back to the table. Donald was sitting there with April and there was a plate of ice cream at everyone's place. "Look sharp," Donald said, "the bride's going to cut the cake."

The band broke into the strains of "The Bride Cuts the Cake," and on the dais Mary Agnes and Bill stood up. In front of them was a huge three-tiered wedding cake decorated with swirls of icing and bells, and topped with a tiny bride and groom under a bower. Mary Agnes held a large knife with a white bow tied on the handle. She held it aloft like a celebrity christening a ship and flash bulbs popped and blossomed from the floor below. She and Bill were looldng at each other and at the cake, posing, while more pictures were taken, the guests tried to hush one another, and the band played on. Then Mary Agnes' arm rose and fell as the blade sank into the cake, and everyone applauded. Flushed with achievement, she turned the knife over to one of the waiters to finish the job. She and Bill sat down again and a young man on the dais stood up.

"I'd like to propose a toast." He raised his glass and there was silence from everyone in the room. He bowed toward the bride and

groom and began a rapid recitation of something Caroline realized was a poem. She caught only a word here and there because he was almost inaudible with embarrassment at his public appearance. The people closer to the dais heard it though, and there was laughter and applause when he sat down, his ears red. Everyone in the room raised his glass and drank. Uncle Fred, whose water-champagne glass had been removed by a waiter, lifted the champagne bottle to his lips and drank from that.

"Isn't this the height of luxury?" he asked Caroline, jiggling the bottle and chuckling happily.

Finally, after what seemed hours to Caroline, there was no more to eat and very little more to drink, the dancers had exhausted themselves, and someone noticed that Mary Agnes had slipped away to change her clothes. Uncle Fred had rediscovered April, and had placed his chair close to hers so that he could pat her cheek, squeeze her hand, and offer her the remains of his champagne, which she kept refusing politely. Caroline wondered where his wife and four married daughters were, and why they didn't come to claim him. But they were probably used to him by now; after all, he was one of the family.

"Oh, look! Here she is! Here's Mary Agnes!" came the excited voices. Mary Agnes, in her navy-blue butcher linen going-away suit, with a handbag to match and a little pink flowered hat on, was standing near the door. She was holding her bridal bouquet.

"Line up, girls!" Uncle Fred said. He nudged April and turned to prod Caroline. "Line up to catch the bouquet,"

April and Caroline exchanged a glance. It was a silly superstition that had always embarrassed Caroline, and more so because she partly beHeved in it. She'd caught several bouquets when friends of hers from Port Blair or college had been married, and it had evidently done no good. She was sure other girls had too. Yet, there was always that thundering run to be nearest to the tossed bouquet, hands outstretched, and the accompaniment of squeals and laughter. She stood up reluctantly and followed April to the center of the dance floor where a dozen other single girls were already waiting. Mary Agnes waited until the room was entirely still. Then she raised her arm, took a deep breath, and the white bouquet curved into the air trailing its streamers like a bird's tail, and swooped downward. There were screams and a galloping rush. One of the girls from the

front of the group emerged with the bouquet held triumphantly aloft. Everyone applauded, and the girl with the bouquet and Mary Agnes hugged each other.

"Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!"

Bill was there beside Mary Agnes, already holding her small overnight bag. They were to spend their wedding night in a hotel and in the morning take an early plane to Bermuda. Mary Agnes' mother ran to her and kissed her on both cheeks. Then she kissed Bill. "Goodbye, goodbye!"

"Goodbye."

They were gone. Caroline turned to April. "I guess we should be going now, it's pretty late."

"Should we say goodbye to Donald?"

"You can. I'm afraid of Uncle Fred."

"Me too," April admitted with a little smile. They looked around for Mary Agnes' parents to thank them but they had vanished into a crowd of their good friends. "Let's just go," April said. "I'm so tired. Nobody cares if we go or stay."

"I'm tired too." They slipped out of the room and walked down a hall to the hotel lobby and through the revolving door.

The spring night was soft and warm, filled with the sound of the wind blowing through leafy trees and the whir of auto tires over pavement. The street was brightly lighted with street lamps and the neon sign of the hotel. "Let's walk to the corner."

They walked in silence, listening to the faint click of their heels on the sidewalk and the sound of the band playing through the opened windows of the hotel they had just left. Caroline was not siu-e whether it was the band from Mary Agnes' wedding or some other party; they all had that happy, festive sound when you were on the outside listening in. At the corner they turned into the neon-bright Grand Concourse. It was a Saturday night and there was a line outside the movie theater. Teen-agers, girls in pastel summer dresses with flat-heeled shoes to match, boys with their hair falling into their eyes, couples holding hands, some with their arms around each other's waists. People were driving by in cars, older couples in their twenties and thirties, out for a night on the town while the baby-sitter stayed home with their children. In front of a store that sold popcorn and pizzas there was a group of teen-aged boys, without dates, whistling at the girls who walked by. And coming out of

the early show at the movie, which was just breaking, were girls in their twenties, who didn't have dates either, and who had met each other for an early movie before they went home to watch television.

This was where Mary Agnes and Bill had been born, and where they had grown up and met and fallen in love, and where they had gotten married, and where they would live and bring up their children. Perhaps they would move away after a year or two, to Levit-town or Forest Hills or even to Manhattan. It didn't matter. Wherever they lived it would be the same. Mary Agnes had been working for four years, two years longer than Caroline, but it had not made her change in any way. When she came downtown to Rockefeller Center every morning she brought her world with her, insulating and protecting her. The office was a place to work and earn money, that was all. The people she met there passed through her hfe at a safe and amusing distance, interesting to watch and talk about, but not really of personal concern to her. Mary Agnes knew more private gossip than any other girl in the typing pool, but she might as well have been telling the plot of a story she had read in Unveiled—it was sheer entertainment. Her real life, the things that mattered to her, was at home on Crescent Avenue, in her cedar hope chest.

Those teen-agers standing now in front of the movie theater holding hands might someday marry each other or perhaps someone else who was right now standing in front of Loew's instead of RKO. Then they would join the married couples, driving in cars to a party at the home of a friend for beer and television and cards and pretzels and gossip and coffee and cake. Their children would stay home with the baby-sitter. And later the children would be old enough to go out alone on Saturday night, and they would be holding hands in front of the movie theater.

The girls would dream for years of a big wedding, as Mary Agnes had, of a day when there would be one star and many admirers, even if it was only for a few hours. Caroline was sure that the wedding had cost over two thousand dollars, with the hotel and the catering and the food and hquor and flowers—nearly what Mary Agnes made in an entire year. Perhaps it had cost much more, she didn't know about these things. Mary Agnes had been saving her money for two years, bringing her lunch to the office in paper bags, and perhaps her parents had been saving up for her wedding for the past twenty. And it was over in five hours, with nothing left but an album of photo-