“Dr. Delwyn Dahlstrom and his chiquita are no more than five miles behind me,” he cried.
“What of it?” said Betty, smoothing her sleeves. “Our society is reduced to Iris, her gynecologist, and his bimbo. What difference does it make if they’re early?”
“I want a shower.”
“Not if they’re five miles back, kiddo. No way, José.”
“Grab me a pick-me-up. I’m gonna go for it.”
Jack rose to the occasion. When the doctor came, he pulled open the front door as if revealing the grand prize on a quiz show. Dr. Delwyn Dahlstrom, a portly, grinning Scandinavian, swung his arm to indicate Melanie, a bug-eyed redhead of twenty-five years.
“Melanie,” he said, doing the honors.
“We stopped off,” Melanie explained, “See, so if we’re late, that’s how come.”
“Who’s late?” Betty asked. Only Jack and Iris took it as a crack. Jack spread his arms for the coats. When he got them, he transferred them to Iris and then hurried around the center island to the bartender’s side and began pulling noisy levers on ice trays while the others tried to talk.
Jack said, “I remember Delwyn making bathtub gin in the urinalysis machine. Does that date me?”
“You wouldn’t happen to have mai tai mix?” Melanie inquired.
“And enough Spa
ada to sink a battleship,” said Betty.
“True,” said Dr. Dahlstrom.
“Betty’s right,” said Melanie. “My taste in drinks is corny.”
Dahlstrom’s spirits made the dinner a noisy good time for everyone except possibly Iris, who was too young to drink and came to seem almost frozen. And maybe Jack noticed it, even though technically Iris wasn’t his department, because he abruptly slumped into his chair and held his head for an odd instant of silence. The others looked at him and it passed.
“Are you feeling baby move regularly?” Dahlstrom asked Iris.
“Yes,” said Iris with a red face.
“Has baby changed position in the last month?”
“Not really.”
“Any unusual spotting?”
“Ugh!” said Melanie.
“No …” said Iris.
“And still our young man has not come forward?” the doctor inquired.
“Delwyn,” said Jack, “it goes like this: He has not come forward. Iris is fifteen. Iris is going on with her life. If the young man comes forward, Iris’s life doesn’t go forward. Use your brain, Delwyn. The story is, Iris goes on with her life.”
“And Jack handles the private adoption,” Betty added.
Dahlstrom looked all around himself in search of something; then, his focus sharpening, he suddenly noticed Melanie. “Melanie,” he said, “go find yourself a snack.” This diversionary remark, right after a filling meal, failed to have its intended effect.
“What?” said Melanie. “Betty’s going to fill me up on Spaada.” Betty pulled a contraption out of the closet, something made of metal tubes and cloth.
“When I get back to the only home I’ve known since being dragged from Massachusetts as a young bride, it will be Indian summer. Indian summer! To think! I am very lightly complected. So this is going to make a difference on those long days ahead.” With a clattering rush of fabric and aluminum, a red and green and yellow beach umbrella sprang open.
Jack said, “Jesus H. Christ.” And the doctor said he didn’t get it. Melanie said she knew what it was, it was a beach umbrella, and Betty said she still didn’t have the dunes of childhood and that that stupid odorless lake out there didn’t have so much as a single Pocohontas or other legendary figure associated with it, unless it was the propane man she had been unable to reach on the phone all day.
“In my mind’s eye,” said Betty, “I will be able to sit next to the Atlantic.”
“Bearing Portuguese immigrants,” said Jack.
“I will hear — shut up, Jack — the cry of gulls and the moaning of sea buoys.”
“I don’t get it,” said Dr. Dahlstrom. “I thought she was from some burg near Boston.”
Jack’s sigh seemed to detonate. “Yeah, she is,” he said, well within her hearing. “But here’s the catch. It had a trolley stop near the water. I’ll never hear the end of this if I live to be a hundred.”
But Melanie took up for Betty. “I’m like Betty when it comes to mountains. I used to live with my dad in Denver. Even in traffic jams — like going to a Broncos game? — you could see right over the top of the cars all the way to … all the way to … what was it, Pike’s Peak?”
The doctor said, “My favorite is La Jolla.”
“I go right on standing for something,” said Betty. “Year after year.”
“Namely the eternal sea,” said Jack. Quite suddenly, he realized that Iris was at the foot of the stairs. She beheld the adults.
“Good night everybody!” she cried. “Thanks for asking!”
It wasn’t until she’d gone up and was safely out of earshot that Dr. Dahlstrom said, “Thanks for asking what?”
Everyone but Melanie fell into a kind of state; she stared from one distant gaze to another, then shrugged. Finally, the doctor said, “You got around the courts on the adoption, huh?”
“Yup,” said Jack.
“Who’s the pigeon?”
“A judge. Yes, a judge, and his hearty but barren wife of thirty years. I like the guy. A real diamond in the rough. State College. Babson-type portfolio of investments. Getting on in years. Wealth. Half hour a day on the rowing machine. Plus, if he morts out, she has family. Betty and I went over this one good.”
“How did you find this wonderful fellow?”
The question didn’t make Jack comfortable. “Through a thing down at the plant,” he said. “We tipped a few. This and that. Said his life had everything but kids. A bulb went off.”
Jack looked around to find someone to break the silence. He didn’t seem to like this silence at all, and no one was coming forward to break it. Just whose side were they on?
“You know,” said Jack, “I’m not the biggest guy on the block. Just a quonset building, a couple of presses. One shift. One time clock. One faithful foreman. I make the calls. I say to the plant, You build it, I’ll sell it. I call on everybody. I call on the competition. We make beautiful music together. And then one of my boys, a Polack, sticks his big mitt in a punch press. It goes up next to the roller and never comes out. I offer my most sincere regrets. I don’t say, What were you doing with your mitt in the roller? I’m sad for him, but that won’t do. No, he wants it all. He wants my business. You can’t have it, I say. It’s that simple: You can’t have it. You can have reasonable compensation, but no more. I want it all, says the Polack. And he has professional counsel who feels so confident, he has taken it on as a contingency bond. I say, You lean on me, I lean on you. I call on the judge, not as a finagler but as a red-blooded American with his own business. I sell myself to the judge. Meanwhile, the Polack’s lawyer is sending me poison-pen letters. Shit. You reach a point where you don’t know whether you’re part of what makes America great or not.”
“Eight hours from now,” said Dr. Dahlstrom, “I’ll be dropping gallstones in a porcelain pan. I can’t deal with this.”
“You know what I’m in a mood for?” said Melanie. “A diner. Some ham and eggs. The night shift. Neon.”
“That is Melanie,” said Dahlstrom. “That is her magic.”
“I’m going to let those dishes sit till morning,” said Betty, apparently overfaced by the magic of Melanie. Conversation trailed off; a car started up; things in the foreground seemed impossible to notice.
Jack wandered over to the bar and made himself a nightcap. He was already in a cloud. Betty went up the stairs and Jack slumped in the peculiar apelike repose produced by patent recliner chairs. But there was a slumberous burn still in his eyes. When Iris came down the stairs in her robe to get some ice cream, Jack smiled at her and kept smiling, finally smiling to himself. The burn went out of his eyes as the sweet sound of the scoop in the ice-cream container reached his ears.