They started to jump up and down, in time to the words, up and down the hall they went in a frenzy of excitement, repeating the magic, mysterious and somehow forbidden words: “We went for a drive!”
“Stop it!” Elaine shouted. “If you don’t go right back to your rooms I’ll tell Miss Kane not to come tonight.”
The boy stopped jumping immediately and said, “I want Ruth to come. I want Ruth.”
“Then go quietly to your room.”
“Is Ruth coming?”
“She’s coming if you behave yourself.”
“She’s not coming, you said she’s not coming!”
“I said I’d tell her not to come if you make any more fuss.”
“She’s not coming, she’s not coming!” The boy went, wailing softly, back to his room. He felt betrayed, cheated. She was not coming. His mother was a black witch and his father told lies.
The parents were too ashamed to look at each other. Elaine turned and started up the steps, her shoulders sagging.
“Elaine—”
“I pressed your costume. It’s on your bed.”
“Thanks.” He wanted to apologize, to his children, to his wife, but the children couldn’t understand and his wife wouldn’t listen.
He did the next best thing to please them all. He gave Paul and Judith a dollar each and he put on his Fiesta costume without argument. The embroidered caballero coat was too tight and the gold braided trousers flapped around his ankles when he walked, like broken wings. Under the dangling pompons of his broad-brimmed hat, Gordon’s eyes held a vast bewilderment.
He heard the front doorbell ring and Judith and Paul dashing down the stairs shouting for Ruth.
Elaine came in from the dressing room. She was dressed as a Spanish bride in white lace with a heavy white lace mantilla over her hair. A red velvet rose was caught in the mantilla, and another was pinned to her waist. She had painted her mouth larger than usual, going beyond its own firm outline. The new mouth changed the emphasis of her face and made her look like a stranger to Gordon.
“Ruth’s here,” Elaine said. “Are you ready?”
“I guess so.”
“That coat’s a little tight this year. You must be gaining weight.”
“Probably.”
“Gordon—” She sat down cautiously on the edge of the bed. “I wonder why Paul does that. I mean, he gets ideas in his head, he deliberately misunderstands. You heard me tell him Ruth was coming. He refused to believe me. He was practically hysterical, I don’t understand it.”
“I don’t either,” Gordon said. He would have liked to sit down and discuss Paul’s difficulties, to try and trace their origin. But he knew that Elaine didn’t want a discussion, she merely wanted to be reassured that it wasn’t her fault, that she was a good mother. Any serious discussion of the children would lead to a scene, to Elaine weeping, I did the best I could singlehanded without any help from you, they might as well not have had a father, you’ve never loved them, you’ve never even played with them like a normal father.
No, Gordon thought, I didn’t. She never gave me a chance. If I so much as picked one of the children up, she always found reasons why I shouldn’t — I was holding them the wrong way, or watch-out-for-his-arm-Gordon! or it was too soon after a meal for them to be jostled around, or it was time for their nap.
“I feel,” Elaine said virtuously, “that it’s we parents who are to blame.”
Gordon nodded, and the pompons on his hat danced in wild irony.
“I might have known that something would happen tonight, it always does when I’ve been looking forward to something, like this party.”
“I’m sorry if — if I’ve spoiled it for you.”
Elaine gave a hard brief laugh. “You haven’t, don’t worry! I wouldn’t let anything spoil it. I’m not like some people. I don’t let circumstances get the best of me.”
To Gordon, her eyes added, I’m not like you, Gordon, you poor weak mouse, letting people, letting circumstances, letting—
Letting you too, Elaine.
Well, that just shows how weak you are. And you’ll go on letting me, forever and ever!
Gordon took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
“It’s too bad you couldn’t have grown a beard like some of the other men,” Elaine said. “You’d look more authentic.”
“You look very authentic.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“It was the way you said it that I don’t like.”
“Listen, Elaine. Would you mind if I had a drink before we leave?”
Elaine wrinkled her forehead in exasperation. “What on earth for? There’s going to be plenty of liquor there. The liquor was included in the price of the tickets like last year. Anyway,” she added as an afterthought, “Ruth is here.”
“What’s Ruth got to do with it?”
“Well, you know, she’s death on liquor. If she saw you taking a drink she’d probably go home and tell Hazel and Hazel would spread it all over the town, exaggerating it, of course. A dentist can’t be too careful of his reputation. Anyway, why do you want a drink now, just when we’re ready to go?”
“So I’d feel a little less foolish in this outfit, to dull my sensibilities, in brief.”
Elaine shook her head in wry satisfaction. “I knew, I said to myself, if we get out of this house tonight without Gordon making some kind of a fuss about his costume, it’ll be a miracle.”
“I wouldn’t call this a fuss.”
“I can’t understand why other people can dress up and go out and have a good time and you can’t even seem to make the effort. My goodness, what difference does it make whether you’re dressed up like a businessman or a gay caballero?”
“I don’t feel like a gay caballero,” Gordon said dryly. “That’s the difference.”
“Well, all right then! We won’t go! We’ll stay home! We’ll spend one of our nice jolly evenings at home for a change!”
“Not so loud, Elaine. Ruth and the kids will hear you.”
“Well, it’s time somebody heard me. It’s time somebody heard my side of the story!”
“Come on, Elaine, let’s go.”
“I won’t.” She sat rigidly on the edge of the bed, refusing to budge.
“Look at it sensibly, Elaine. You’re getting your own way. I’m wearing the costume, I’m not having a drink. I’m a gay caballero, see, come hell or high water, and lips that touch liquor shall—”
“You’ve got a nerve getting sarcastic again.”
“I wish I had a nerve. Or two nerves.”
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”
“That’s a very vague threat,” Elaine said, but she got up and went to the door. She seemed to have a sixth sense about how far she could go without rousing Gordon’s temper, and when she reached that point she stopped. Not that Gordon would actually do anything — he never had, the presumption was that he never would — but he could spoil the party for her by sulking or refusing to dance with some of her bridge-club friends or by drinking too much, as he had on one occasion.
Elaine folded her troubles away in one corner of her mind, neatly and carefully, so that it wouldn’t be hard to find them again and unfold them as good as new.
The caballero and his Spanish bride went down the steps together, trailing the faint odor of mothballs and the fainter but more pervasive and sour odor of a quarrel.
Ruth was sitting on the davenport in the front room, with Paul on her lap and Judith pressed against her side. “... and this little girl was in the first grade, just like you, Judy, and she had a little brother who was just going to start to school, like you, Paul. And they had a baby brother too, and a dog.”