On one of my errands, juggling an armful of stuffed envelopes, I ran into Arthur. He invited me to Thanksgiving dinner. His in-laws were coming up for the long weekend. Penelope wanted me there, he said. “She thinks we can use an ally.”
That afternoon Will came over. The central heat in the building hadn’t kicked in yet, and we were all sitting around in our coats. Dave said, “My man Will! Is it three o’clock already?”
Will said, “Where are you guys going?”
“We’re freezing.”
Will noticed the hardcover on the couch. “That’s my father’s new book,” he said.
“Have you read it?”
“Not yet,” he said ponderously. “I plan to, one day, but I decided it would be better to wait awhile. And anyway, I already know what it’s about.”
“And what’s it about?”
“Art. And Mom and me.” Will sat down by my side. His puffy jacket wheezed a smell of banana and ham sandwich. He picked up the book and flipped through it.
“Your hands are filthy,” I said.
“I’m eleven years old. That’s what happens when you’re eleven. I don’t like the cover.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think it’s kind of clever.”
“Is that supposed to be us? Art’s hair isn’t blond, Mom’s hair isn’t blond, and my hair isn’t blond either. What were they thinking?”
“So you’re not the least bit curious to read what your father’s written about you and your mom?”
“I mean, I could. I told you, I make my own decisions. It’s called delayed gratification.”
I arrived at the Morels’ empty-handed, something I noticed only as Penelope was welcoming me in. Seated on the sofa was an older woman with a square crop of coiled hair and an embroidered velvet jacket.
Penelope said, “This is my mother.”
“Mrs. Wright,” the woman said. She did not hold out her hand for me to shake. “Tell me, dear, is this a convertible sofa I’m sitting on?”
“Yes, Mother, it’s a convertible.”
“I was just wondering — it’s very comfortable.”
“Why don’t we get you a drink,” Penelope said to me, rolling her eyes with her back turned so that only I could see. I followed her into the kitchen. “ ‘Is this a convertible’! Meaning, why couldn’t she and Dad have stayed here?” She poured out some champagne into a fluted glass and told me that this was the first time her parents were visiting since the move. They didn’t understand why they couldn’t stay with Penelope and Arthur. Her mother was hurt; her father was angry. “It’s not Queens, for crying out loud! But that means nothing to them.” They were used to a certain kind of hospitality — and budget — from living below the Mason-Dixon Line and were put out to be spending so much on a hotel when they could be staying with family for free. And indeed when I sat down with Mrs. Wright, she spent a good ten minutes comparing their hotel room with her daughter’s “three bedroom.”
“It’s a one bedroom plus den, Mother.”
“It’s a palace compared with where we’re staying.”
The patio’s sliding door opened, and Arthur entered with a stocky older man. They trailed a distinct whiff of cigar smoke. Penelope’s father, who introduced himself to me as Frank, crew cut and upright, looked like he had kept up a twice-daily regimen of sit-ups for the past forty years excepting no holidays. Frank regarded me with a certain amount of suspicion. His questions about who I was seemed less to do with getting to know me and more to do with getting to the bottom of what my motives were, intruding on this family gathering.
He said, “So what was this fella like back in his school days?”
“He hasn’t changed much,” I said.
“Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker. Could have used you around a decade ago, warn us what we were getting ourselves into.” He didn’t crack a smile. If he was being humorous, the humor was of the driest sort.
“It would have been too late,” Penelope said, going around the room with a platter of deviled eggs. “He already knocked me up.”
“Okay, now,” Mrs. Wright said. “Not in front of the boy, surely!”
Penelope gave me a wink.
It smelled good in the apartment, juices caramelizing in a roasting pan. The air was steamy, festive. Cinnamon candles flickering on the windowsills, doorways trimmed with lights and pine branches. The dining room table was set and twinkled like a department store display. Holly shaped rings coiled around each red cloth napkin.
The first part of the evening was pleasant. Penelope’s mother proved easy to talk to, despite the frosty first impression. She asked me what I did, and for the first time, I was honest. “I work at a movie theater,” I said.
“My friend is being modest,” Arthur said. “He’s also a movie producer. He and his cohorts work here in this building, down the hall from us.”
I told a couple of anecdotes. Though Frank remained cool to me, Mrs. Wright warmed up some — she was an eager listener, or at least an obliging one, responsive with a gasp or a laugh, with wanting to know what happened next. I was aware of myself in her eyes as Arthur’s long-lost childhood friend — it seemed Penelope had billed me as such — and right then I allowed myself to indulge the illusion.
I went out onto the patio for a smoke, and to my surprise Mrs. Wright joined me. We stood side by side, looking out. I offered her a cigarette and, with a glance over her shoulder, she nodded. She kept her back to the door and her elbows tucked in and smoked with small movements so as not to betray what she was doing to those inside. Without looking at me, she began to talk about the predicament the Wrights found themselves in with their son-in-law.
Although they both had their reservations about Arthur’s left turn into fiction and worried over his ability to be a financial asset to their daughter and grandson, they were nevertheless supportive of his need to express himself creatively and of his decision to make a go of the writing life. Especially Frank. Give the boy some room to breathe, he said. After all, the family had some money, and whatever drain it might be on their daughter’s finances to have a writer for a husband certainly would be made up for by the buzz it would bring.
“We are strivers, you know,” Mrs. Wright said. “Our friends, too. As a group, we’re a competitive bunch.” And the contestants in this competition, she explained, were the children. Whenever she would get together with her friends, they traded their children’s achievements like they were playing a game of cards — a graduation, a new job, a child on the way — keeping the failures close to the vest. Arthur’s first bloom of success was a coup for her and Frank as well. There was something giddy about it she couldn’t explain and something generous that allowed their friends to participate without being jealous. So she perceived. Whereas Ethelyn Owen’s new grandson was a success only for the Owens, and subject to the petty jealousies that they were all helpless to, Arthur’s minor splash as a debut novelist was something they could all share in, as a community. And it was a success that promoted itself — neither she nor her husband ever had to mention it — their friends would come to them with news, sightings of the book in a magazine or in a bookstore. It was the prestige felt at the blackjack table during a winning streak — proud in a shy way of the table’s attention — even though you knew it was only luck that brought this about. They admired Arthur’s success in a way they wouldn’t have had it been their own child. Of their children’s success, they felt differently. They would have counted it as their own, as owed — a success they were at least partly responsible for. But Arthur’s success was a gift, and for it they were grateful.