Passing him on the stairs, she turned quickly away as her eyes caught a tantalizing picture. The damp had curled his hair and the terry-cloth V showed a profusion of jet-black body turf down to his navel. She could not bring herself to look below that but she could not ignore the piny scent that his skin exuded, embellishing the exciting aroma of his maleness. Passing him this close, with him in a state of semi-undress, was dizzying.
‘Soon,’ he said, winking as he passed her. ‘I’m going to give Eve the Honda keys at dinner.’
In the kitchen, Barbara was wearing a long mauve velvet at-home dress with a single strand of matched pearls and even Eve had parted for once from her jeans and was wearing a more fitting, preppyish outfit of pleated skirt, blouse, and saddle shoes. As always, when it came to clothes, Ann felt inadequate, despite the fact that she wore one of Barbara’s beige slack-suit hand-me-downs, a far cry from the J. C. Penney polyester she had worn that first day.
As if by silent consent, Ann picked up the cooling banana bread and joined the procession to the library, which doubled as a kind of family den. They moved through the marble-floored foyer, over which glistened a huge crystal chandelier, hanging three stories high in x brass-banistered stairwell. From the foyer’s corner, a tall clock in an inlaid-mahogany case offered seven chimes to underscore the Roman hour on its dial.
Oliver had built the walnut bookshelves in the library to hold their rows of leather-bound old books. Against a blank wall was a huge, carved nineteenth-century armoire, nine feet high, which he had fitted with shelves that now held an assortment of liquor. On the fireplace mantel was an array of Staffordshire figures. The Staffordshire collection was Oliver’s pride and there were more than fifty figures scattered around the house -milkmaids, sailors, Napoleons, Garibaldis, Little Red Riding Hoods, and crude, rosy-cheeked farm boys.
On a marble table in the foyer were displayed what had become the legendary Cribb and Molineaux, poised in their eternal pugilistic confrontation. The story of the Roses’ first meeting had been repeated in the household ad infinitum.
Over the library fireplace hung a large English oil, a hunting scene, appropriate to the leather Chesterfield couch and matching chairs in front of it.
It was, Barbara admitted, a mishmash room, but perfect for squatting around a heavy, low oak ‘rent table,’ on a Sarouk blue-and-red Persian rug, to have Sunday dinners.
‘It seems to be the only time we’re all together,’ Barbara had told her, offering a mysterious, wistful look, disturbingly out of character.
By the time Oliver arrived, with Josh trailing smugly behind, the platters of cassoulet and pate and the big wooden salad bowl had been laid out. An unsuspecting Eve picked at the banana bread and dropped little morsels in her mouth, unaware of the impending surprise.
The family squatted around the table while Oliver, with great ceremony, poured the Lafite-Rothschild ’59 into crystal wineglasses. He looked about, offering a cryptic smile, winking at Barbara and lifting his glass.
‘Before we dine on this magnificent repast,’ he said, savoring the arcane language, ‘we must toast this moment of triumph.’ He looked at Eve, who smiled broadly, two rougelike puffs of excitement on each apple cheekbone. ‘B-minus will not an A make, but it’s a hell of a long way from F.’ Josh snickered. He always brought home straight A’s and was not above teasing his sister on that score. ‘And a longer way from H.’
‘H?’ Eve asked, squinting in bemusement.
‘H for Honda,’ Oliver said.
‘Honda?’ Eve looked at the faces around the table in confusion. Oliver raised his glass higher and from his pocket drew out a set of keys and his electronic remote-control garage door opener.
‘Just don’t hit the Ferrari on your way out.’
‘Not if you value your life,’ Barbara joked.
Eve squealed with hysterical joy, grabbing her father around the neck, kissing him with passionate gratefulness. She repeated the ritual with Barbara, then with Josh and Ann, finally picking up the keys and garage door-opener and dashing out toward the rear of the house.
‘We’re spoiling her rotten,’ Oliver said when she had gone, bringing the rim of the wineglass to his lips. Everyone followed suit ‘But it feels so damned good.’
‘We didn’t get our first car until three years after we were married,’ Barbara said.
‘Different times,’ Oliver shrugged. ‘Why all the hard work if not for this?’ He moved his free arm through the air, the gesture taking in all the visible surroundings, including the people.
‘I made the team,’ Josh said suddenly, as if a bubble had suddenly burst inside him.
‘Damn,’ Oliver said, putting down his glass and slapping hands in black-jock fashion. ‘Bad. Man.’ He had picked up some of the jargon from Josh.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Josh said, lifting his glass and swilling down the expensive wine as if it were Coca-Cola.
They heard the horn blasts of Eve’s new Honda, which she had driven around to the front of the house. Gathering at the window, the family waved and Eve sped off in a cloud of carbon monoxide.
‘Lucky bitch,’ Josh said.
‘Well, now it makes it obligatory for you when you hit sixteen,’ Oliver said. ‘You now have a standard. That’s what fatherhood means. Setting standards.’ He laughed at his own little joke, then the family regathered around the table.
‘There are other family victories to announce,’ Barbara said quietly, her eyes smiling in their deep sockets, her full lips curling tremulously over her white teeth. She made her announcement in a flat, somewhat restrained tone, but with a determined flourish. There seemed a disturbing note of bravado in it as well, although Ann felt she was the only one who appeared to notice. Oliver moved closer to Barbara and kissed her on the lips.
‘Fantastic,’ he said as Ann quickly turned away, annoyed at her sudden burst of jealousy.
‘I guess what I have to say is anticlimactic,’ Oliver said just as Eve burst through the front door, flushed with joy.
‘It runs like a dream. Like a dream,’ she cried, squatting beside Ann and squeezing her hand. ‘I’m so happy.’
Ann lifted a finger to Eve, in mock rebuke, as Oliver continued.
‘Just a new client. More lucre for the family coffers. A huge retainer. My colleagues are quite pleased with my resourcefulness. I’m off to New York tomorrow to seal the deal.’
They exchanged more kisses and soon everybody was digging into the feast, mumbling ecstatically, with full mouths, over Barbara’s wonderful cookery, embellished, they all agreed, by the rich taste and bouquet of the ’59 Lafite-Rothschild.
Watching them in what she could only characterize as their splendor, Ann could not escape the comparison with her own shabby family, locked in the prison of their tiny wood-frame house in Johnstown. More like Dogpatch, she thought, where the big treat was snaring Polish sausages with a bent fork from a big jug and swilling down six-packs.
The rich cassoulet melted in her mouth as the movie in her mind froze into a single ghastly frame. In it, her mother’s swollen body squirmed like jelly in a torn, flowered housecoat as she reclined on a sprung, worn couch in front of the television set, gun-muzzle curlers poised to shoot out Laverne and Shirley, while her father, his beer belly hanging over his belt like jelly mold, added cigar-ash dust to the frayed carpet from which sprouted his Archie Bunker chair.
Suddenly, as if to start the reel moving again, she tapped her wineglass with a silver spoon, the tinkling crystal forcing the silence.