“Boy, you were right about Billy Hatcher. He had a lot to say.”
It’s still strange to hear Neal’s voice again. I don’t understand why it’s soothing to hear a remnant from my past when my past was not soothing.
I smile and watch my father over his shoulder.
“You can relax now,” Neal says. “You did it.”
“I don’t know if he’s enjoying himself.”
“It doesn’t matter. You did something kind for him. You can’t control his response to it.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Now have a cranberry fizz.” He hands me a cup and knocks his own against it. “Cheers.” I wonder if Neal is a drinker, if he gets plastered every night upstairs in his little apartment by himself. I wonder if he, too, had something before he came.
Not surprisingly, I’ve had my share of alcoholic boyfriends. The last was a Brit who hid his addiction well for a while and then, when I was safely smitten, flaunted it like something he was vastly proud of. He was sharp and sexy and always horny, no matter how much he’d put away. I had fast, intense orgasms when he was drunk. And then he hit me, at a party. It wasn’t a hard blow and didn’t even leave the proof of a bruise on my face. After that I learned how to spot even the very sly ones. Dan was one, and I figured it out before I saw him drink anything at all, knew it the minute he started pounding on the steering wheel. Jonathan and I liked the taste of red wine, but neither of us enjoyed the feeling of being drunk or even buzzed, and an open bottle could hang around his apartment for weeks. Drinking was something neither of us remembered to do very often.
“I need to give this to him. And there’s Patricia.” I pour another cranberry soda and take one to my father and one to Patricia at the edge of the lawn. Thinking she’ll need to be introduced I lead her toward the party, but she seems to know nearly everyone.
I feel like my mother, greeting, kissing, directing the servers, integrating the guests. Now and then I sense Jonathan watching me, angry, cynical, shaking his head and muttering, And so another Ashing socialite is born. Or maybe it’s Garvey. Jonathan would just be shaking his head, still in shock. You gave up me and Berkeley for this? In California it is still afternoon. Whoever has my job has already begun the fall semester. The urban kinship project is well under way. But with the last of my own money I have thrown a catered party in the suburbs.
“When I left the house she was making a nice dinner for two!” I hear my father say. “She got me good, I tell you. She got me good.”
I manage to get everyone seated at a table, and the servers come immediately with salads. My father and I sit with the Bridgetons, the Utleys, Neal, and Patricia.
The sky has gone quickly black. The five tables are close together on the lawn, a candle on each that lights our plates and faces but nothing beyond. It feels very intimate, exactly what I imagined. For the first few moments it is quiet. No one is drunk. No one is squawking. Everyone seems to be taking it all in, as I am.
Mr. Gormley at the table next to us breaks the silence. “Well, we haven’t been to such a classy event at this address in years. Usually you go over to Gardiner’s for drinks and you end up on the roof wearing a hula hoop!”
“It ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” my father says.
The main course arrives. I check my father’s plate: a thick slice of prime rib, very rare, bathed in jus, very few vegetables, exactly how I asked Philomena to prepare his plate.
“Hey, hey,” he says looking down at it. Then he looks at me. “You are something, you know that.”
“No, you are something, Dad.”
“Yeah, something awful.”
“No, Gardiner,” Barbara Bridgeton says. She is on his other side, patting his hand. I see Patricia lift her head. “You are very special to all of us.”
“Hear, hear!” Mr. Utley says, raising his plastic cup of soda water. Mile High Mr. Utley, Garvey and I used to call him, because he’s at least six-five.
“How’s that shop of yours doing?” Mr. Bridgeton asks Neal.
“Let’s just say I don’t think my gross profit will outdo IBM this quarter.”
Mr. Bridgeton, who works for IBM, looks momentarily confused, then laughs. “If you’ve got anything in that store as good as Shogun, I’ll come and get it tomorrow.”
“I remember reading that the author had been a prisoner of war in Japan,” Patricia says. She is mothlike, thin and slightly translucent. “And that he was treated very badly and nearly starved to death.”
“Is that right?” my father says. I wonder what they know about each other. Like my father, she goes to the meeting every night.
“But then he wrote this sensitive portrait of that country, which in the end made the English look like the barbarians.”
“Huh,” my father says.
They recommend in AA that if you’re single you do not get into a romantic relationship until you are sober a year. It seems like good advice. I hope Patricia will still be around by then. I like her, and I think she likes my father, though he seems entirely oblivious.
“I’ve never had a better prime rib,” he says, putting down his fork, vegetables untouched.
After the cake is served I stand and tap my glass.
“As many of you know, my father is a man of surprises. All my life he has surprised me with gifts, live animals, lectures, highly inappropriate jokes—” People laugh. “But nothing has surprised me more than his strength and determination these last two months. I couldn’t be more proud of him. Or more thankful. I love you, Dad.”
There is applause as I kiss his cheek and he hugs me and says something I can’t hear.
People start chanting “Speech, speech,” and my father who, despite his desire for attention, dreads all forms of public speaking, stands up.
“Well, you all outsmarted me, that’s for sure. Ben telling me he was going fishing with his son this weekend, and then Neal there pretending that he hadn’t seen Billy Hatcher steal home when he was actually at the game, the lucky bastard. So thank you all for showing up here tonight. I need to raise a glass to my daughter now because she did all this for me. She has given up so much for me—” The next word comes out as a squeak and he shakes his head and their are tears in the cracks of his skin around his eyes. He raises his cranberry soda and then sits down quickly and his napkin shakes in his fingers as he lifts it to wipe his face.
I pat his leg. He takes my hand and holds it tight. If Jonathan hadn’t thrown that party for me in June, I wouldn’t have given this night to my father. I wish he knew how grateful I am.
After dinner I change the music in the poolhouse to Glenn Miller, and when I come out people are already dancing in the grass and along the edge of the pool. Eventually nearly everyone gets up and bounces around. Only a couple of my father’s old friends, men who need a few drinks in order to dance, sit on lawn chairs and watch. My father, who has never needed even music to dance, spins me around. I see Neal dancing with Patricia, Mike dancing with Mrs. Keck, William with Philomena. Every time I look I see a different combination of people. When I’m dancing with Mr. Utley, Dad cuts in on Mr. Keck for Patricia. He spins her. Then he runs into the poolhouse and comes out with a lifesaver ring around his waist. The music turns slow and my father takes her hand in one of his and puts his other in the hollow of her back. Mr. Utley does the same with me. He is so tall my arms are reaching straight up, as if I’m climbing a ladder.
“I’ve never seen your father quite like this, Daley. You’re a good influence on him.”