"I saw your son downstairs, Walt," Ricky said to Walter Barnes, the older of the two bankers. "He told me his decision. I hope he makes it."
"Yeah, Pete's decided on Cornell. I always hoped he'd at least apply to Yale-my old school. I still think he'd make it." A heavy-set man with a stubborn face like his son's, Barnes was disinclined to accept Ricky's congratulations. "The kid isn't even interested anymore. He says Cornell's good enough for him. 'Good enough.' His generation's even more conservative than mine. Cornell's the kind of rinky-dink place where they still have food fights. Nine or ten years ago, I used to be worried that Pete would grow up to be a radical with a beard and a bomb-now I'm afraid he'll settle for less than he could get."
Ricky made vague noises of sympathy.
"How are your kids doing? They both still out on the West Coast?"
"Yes. Robert's teaching English in a high school. Jane's husband just got a vice-presidency."
"Vice-president in charge of what?"
"Safety."
"Oh, well." They both sipped at their drinks, refraining from trying to invent comment on what a promotion to vice-president in charge of safety might mean in an insurance company. "They planning to get back here for Christmas?"
"I don't think so. They both have pretty active lives." In fact, neither of their children had written to Ricky and Stella for several months. They had been happy infants, sullen adolescents, and now, both of them nearly forty, were unsatisfied adults-in many ways, still adolescent. Robert's few letters were barely concealed pleas for money; Jane's were superficially bright, but Ricky read desperation in them. ("I'm really getting to like myself now": a statement which to Ricky meant its opposite. Its glibness made him wince.) Ricky's children, the former darlings of his heart, were now like distant planets. Their letters were painful; seeing them was worse. "No," he said, "I don't think they'll be able to make it this time."
"Jane's a pretty girl," Walter Barnes said.
"Her mother's daughter."
Ricky automatically began to look around the room to catch a glimpse of Stella, and saw Milly Sheehan introducing his wife to a tall man with stooping shoulders and thick lips. The academic nephew.
Barnes asked, "Have you seen Edward's actress?"
"She's here somewhere. I saw her come down."
"John Jaffrey seems very excited about her."
"She is really sort of unnervingly pretty," Ricky said, and laughed. "Edward's been unnerved too."
"Pete read in a magazine that she's only seventeen years old."
"In that case, she's a public menace."
When Ricky left Barnes to join his wife and Milly Sheehan, he caught sight of the little actress. She was dancing with Freddy Robinson to a Count Basie record, and she moved like a delicate bit of machine tooling, her eyes shining greenly; his arms about her, Freddy Robinson looked stupefied with happiness. Yes, the girl's eyes were shining, Ricky saw, but was it with pleasure or mockery? The girl turned her head, her eyes sent a current of emotion across the room to him, and Ricky saw in her the person his daughter Jane, now overweight and discontented, had always wanted to be. As he watched her dance with foolish Freddy Robinson, he understood that there before him was a person who would never have cause to utter the damning phrase that she was really getting to like herself: she was a little flag of self-possession.
"Hello, Milly," he said. "You're working hard."
"Oh poof, when I'm too old to work I'll lay down and die. Did you have anything to eat?"
"Not yet. This must be your nephew."
"Oh, please forgive me. You haven't met." She touched the arm of the tall man beside her. "This is the brainy one in my family, Harold Sims. He's a professor at the college and we've just been having a nice talk with your wife. Harold, this is Frederick Hawthorne, one of the doctor's closest friends." Sims smiled down at him. "Mr. Hawthorne's a charter member of the Chowder Society," Milly concluded.
"I was just hearing about the Chowder Society," Harold Sims said. His voice was very deep. "It sounds interesting."
"I'm afraid it's anything but."
"I'm speaking from the anthropological point of view. I've been studying the behavior of male chronologically-related interaction groups. The ritual content is always very strong. Do you, uh, members of the Chowder Society actually wear dinner jackets when you meet?"
"Yes, I'm afraid we do." Ricky looked to Stella for help, but she had mentally abstracted herself, and was gazing coolly at both men.
"Why is that, exactly?"
Ricky felt that the man was about to pull a notebook from his pocket. "It seemed like a good idea a hundred years ago. Milly, why did John invite half the town if he's going to let Freddy Robinson monopolize Miss Moore?"
Before Milly could answer, Sims asked, "Are you familiar with the work of Lionel Tiger?"
"I'm afraid I'm abysmally ignorant," Ricky said.
"I'd be interested in observing one of your meetings. I suppose that could be arranged?"
Stella laughed at last, and gave him a look which meant, get out of that.
"I suppose differently," Ricky said, "but I could probably get you into the next Kiwanis meeting."
Sims reared back, and Ricky saw that he was too unsure of his dignity to take jokes well. "We're just five old coots who enjoy getting together," he quickly said. "Anthropologically, we're a washout. We're of no interest to anyone."
"You're of interest to me," said Stella. "Why don't you invite Mr. Sims and your wife to the next meeting?"
"Yeah!" Sims began to show an alarming quantity of enthusiasm. "I'd like to record for a start, and then the video element-"
"Do you see that man over there?" Ricky nodded in the direction of Sears James, who more than ever resembled a stormcloud in human form. It looked like Freddy Robinson, now separated from Miss Moore, was trying to sell him insurance. "The big one? He'd slit my throat if I did any such thing."
Milly looked shocked; Stella lifted her chin and said, "Very nice meeting you, Mr. Sims," and left them.
Harold Sims said, "Anthropologically, that's a very interesting statement." He regarded Ricky with an interest even more professional. "The Chowder Society must be highly important to you."
"Of course it is," Ricky said simply.
"From what you just said, I'd assume that the man you just pointed out is the dominant figure in the group-as it were, the honcho."
"Very astute of you," Ricky said. "Now if you'll forgive me, I see someone I must have a word with."
When he had turned his back and gone away only a few steps, he heard Sims ask Milly, "Are those two really married?"
5
Ricky stationed himself in a corner, deciding he'd wait things out. He had a good mostly unobstructed view of the party: he'd be quite happy just watching things until it was time to go home. The record having come to an end, John Jaffrey appeared beside the portable stereo and put another one on the turntable. Lewis Benedikt, drifting up beside him, seemed amused, and when the sound began to issue from the speakers, Ricky heard why. It was a record by Aretha Franklin, a singer Ricky knew only from the radio. Where on earth would John Jaffrey have obtained such a record, and how long ago had he done it? He must have bought it specifically for the party. This was a fascinating concept, but Ricky's deliberations on it were interrupted by a succession of people who joined him, one by one, in his corner.
The first person who found him was Clark Mulligan, the owner of the Rialto, Milburn's only movie theater. His Hush Puppies were unaccustomedly clean, his trousers pressed, his belly successfully contained by his jacket button-Clark had spruced himself up for the evening. Presumably he knew that he had been invited for his relation to show business. Ricky thought it must have been the first time John had had Clark Mulligan in his home. He was glad to see him; he was always glad to see him. Mulligan was the only person in town who shared his love of old movies. Hollywood gossip bored Ricky, but he loved the films of its golden days.