In Sunlight and in Shadow Page 18

  “What’s the Esplanade?” Harry asked.

  “You know, in the park, with the trees on either side meeting high above in the middle?” She illustrated with her arms upraised.

  “You mean the Mall?”

  “I’ve always called it the Esplanade. So has everyone in my family. Mall sounds like maul, the horrible verb, or something you split wood with. Esplanade is beautiful.”

  Thenceforth, Harry was content to call it that. What he did not yet know was that the Hales substituted, changed, or eschewed many words at Evelyn’s behest. Often she was proved right by logic and history. An esplanade, for example, was originally the flat plain between a castle’s battlements and the city that had grown up around it. In Europe, esplanades were the parks and greenswards, the epitome of peace, where people paraded in their finery and even the poor could pretend luxury. And yet they had been the battlefields and siege grounds of previous ages. The Mall in Central Park pointed like an arrow at the Belvedere, a replica Scottish castle on a hill to the north, separated by a lake as if by a moat. The fletching of the arrow was midtown Manhattan, the city. The Mall, according to Evelyn, was therefore the Esplanade.

  Sometimes, however, her word preferences—dictated to or unknowingly inherited by Catherine from early childhood—were less substantiated and perhaps a touch idiosyncratic. “I will not say the new and disgusting word that purports to represent a combination of breakfast and lunch. Nor will I say the disgusting, coy, and contemptible word that rhymes with the aforesaid disgusting word and pertains to the chewing and eating of crisp foods, often, unfortunately, slowly. Nor will I say the P-word.”

  The P-word was popcorn, which Evelyn hated. She went to the movies only at private screenings or premieres, where popcorn was verboten. She didn’t like the smell. She didn’t like the sound. And she didn’t like exiting a theater in a crowd of people whose hands and lips were covered with rancid butter. If young Catherine said popcorn, Evelyn would look at her with the expression of a hawk mulling its options in respect to a mouse dancing in an open field. This resulted in Catherine, at age six, briefcase strapped to her back, walking to school through the Upper East Side while chanting “Popcorn, popcorn, popcorn.”

  Alone for ten minutes in the guest quarters, Harry looked over the length of the pool, now almost black, at a shingle-sided house every window of which glowed with a different color—red, dark green, gray, peach, chalk, blue, yellow—set off by luminescent white millwork. He had seen no servants, but (to take the chill from the night air by the ocean, even in June) fires were burning in several fireplaces, including his own; huge arrangements of flowers had not a single dead petal or any leaves lying by them; and to someone who, although he knew little about keeping up an estate, was good at estimating required labor for any task, the gardens appeared to have received the attentions of many more than one full-time gardener.

  Rather than come exactly as he was, he changed his shirt and put on a deep violet tie that he thought more appropriate to evening and darkness than what he had been wearing. He anticipated with growing pleasure the sight and presence of Catherine, though she had been absent for only a few minutes. And the Hales seemed quite approachable. Probably the dinner would be painfully conventional and quiet—fish and roasted potatoes ladled out by servants speaking occasional pleasantries. Correctness above all. At the Dickermans’ and like households, he had always had to rein himself in and adapt to the quiescence, like a dinosaur bumped ahead a few eons, lest he terrify them with the comparatively loud rough-and-tumble of his own background, lest he eat more than nine peas, or stare with disbelief at the one-ounce cutlet of beef centered on his plate like Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific. He had been only partially polished and contained during his years at Harvard, and had often broken from his confines while there. But tonight he wanted to be at his most diplomatic and dull.

  As he walked past the pool, the black water enticingly alive, he straightened his tie. At first he couldn’t find the right way in, and walked into the kitchen, where four servants—two men and two women—were working smoothly and fast. After backing out, he found the correct entrance and, like someone reinserting the pin of a grenade, gingerly closed the door behind him.

  The Hales were in the living room, in front of the fireplace, arranged like a family portrait. Evelyn sat expectantly at the edge of a white, satin-covered chair, her hands placed royally together and resting on one of the thick arms. Billy was standing by the fire. None of them had changed clothing: Billy was in the navy polo shirt he had been wearing. Catherine, leaning against a brocade wing chair, had the self-effacement of a stage actress who must stay relatively silent in a scene that belongs to someone else, but whose presence is the essence of the play. The part she played in her play required this of her, and she vibrated with life even when she had no lines.

  At first it was rather awkward. No one knew how things might or should proceed in the new constellation in which they found themselves. To break a silence that grew more brittle with each second, Evelyn said, “Does your family own Copeland China as well as Copeland Leather?” In every Hale household were plenty of both.

  “No,” said Harry. “No connection. Only leather.”

  “Each is the best of its type,” Evelyn offered.

  “Thank you. That’s kind of you.”

  “It really is, really.”

  Breaking this rhythm, Billy said, “You changed your tie.”

  “The other one doesn’t behave at meals.”

  “I have ties like that.”

  “Harry,” Evelyn asked, “can Billy get you a drink?”

  “Not if you’re not. . . .”

  “Oh, but we will.”

  “Then straight Scotch, please.”

  “Single or blend?” Billy asked, gesturing toward a huge silver tray resplendent with single malts, crystal glasses, sterling ice buckets, and bar things, and backed by an ebullient, almost blinding floral arrangement that Harry could smell from all the way across the room.

  “Single.”

  “You have a preference?”

  “Surprise me.”

  The surprise was that Billy handed him a tumbler with at least four shots of Glenlivet. It was practically overflowing. “Here, take it in to dinner. You know, Scotch is the second cousin of the potato.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  No further explanation was forthcoming. Billy poured himself a Scotch of equal size, and Catherine and her mother were provided with gin and tonics that Billy dressed with some sort of sweet, pinkish-yellow syrup that foamed slightly pinker.

  “What is that?” Harry asked, somewhat crestfallen because he seemed to have nothing to say.

  “I have no idea. It was brought to us from Africa in the thirties, and I’m trying to use it up.”

  “What does it say on the label?”

  “It’s in Arabic,” Billy said, enjoying the stop this statement would put to subsequent investigation, as it always had.

  “I can read it.”

  “You can?”

  “Yes, although I may not understand it.”

  Billy brought him the bottle. After a minute or so, Harry looked up. “It’s for malaria,” he said. “It’s a pharmaceutical made in the Sudan in nineteen seventeen.”

  “I didn’t think it had a date. I looked for one.”

  “Arabic numerals,” Harry told him, “are not what we think of as Arabic numerals. For example, the zero is just a dot.”

  “The poor things,” said Evelyn, taking a sip from her tumbler, “they must be so confused by freckles.”

  “Are you sure you want to drink that?” Harry asked.

  “We’ve been drinking it for a year now,” Billy said. “We broke it out on V-E Day, when supplies were scarce. I thought it was for a Tom Collins. It’s delicious.”

  Catherine took a long draught. “It hasn’t hurt me,” she said, “up to this point. And I haven’t gotten malaria, either.”

  At this, Evelyn rose and
suggested that they go into the dining room. They followed her and took their seats, although Billy cracked open a pair of French doors that appeared to lead to a sun porch, and made a pronouncement into the darkness: “At the second bell.”

  “What does that mean?” Harry whispered to Catherine.

  “You think I know?”

  Billy glanced at Evelyn, who then rang the bell. A man and a woman entered with silver serving platters. “A beach dinner night,” Billy announced. “No soup.”

  “Do you say grace?” Evelyn asked Harry.

  “I live alone,” he answered, “and so have forgotten.”

  “Would you like to remember?”

  “I would, but it’s Friday and I don’t have the proper equipment. Besides, I’m not a woman.”

  “No,” said Billy. “You’re not a woman. Okay.” They hadn’t the slightest idea what Harry was talking about.

  “It’s a long and complicated ceremony.”

  “To become a woman?” Billy asked.

  While Harry was amused by this, Evelyn, only slightly put off in feeling left out, said, “Billy, why don’t you say grace, then?”

  “Because we don’t really do that,” Billy protested. “It’s mainly for him, and I don’t know what the hell he does, but it sounds like he doesn’t do it either, so why don’t we just skip it?”

  “No, Billy. Grace is hanging over us, and now it has to be said. It’s like pulling back the hammer of a gun. Don’t keep yourself all cocked up.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t,” Billy answered. “Why don’t you do it?”

  “It’s your serendipity to do it,” his wife told him.

  “It is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Catherine?” her father asked.

  “Don’t look at me,” Catherine said.

  “All right. I’ll say it. But . . . let’s see. It should have music.”

  “That’s just an excuse so you won’t have to . . . ,” Evelyn began. “And what do you mean, ‘music’?”

  Billy held up his hand like a traffic cop. “No, it isn’t an excuse. We have music. Ring the bell.”

  “I don’t know any tunes,” Evelyn said, “and it’s only one note.”

  “Just ring it.”

  She seized the bell and moved it back and forth like a dog shedding water. At first, nothing happened, and Harry took some Scotch, hoping to relieve at least a little of the tension and that he might after a dazed moment or two begin to understand what was going on. But then everyone but Billy nearly jumped out of his seat as an immense volume of music swelled from the sun porch. The lights went on, and the French doors were thrown fully open from the outside, after which the marimbist rushed back to his seat amid an eighteen-piece orchestra packed against the screens and the furniture that had been stacked out of the way.

  The music enveloped the room like a tidal wave that had breached the dunes. The servants, who somehow had been kept in the dark, almost dropped their platters. The clearly professional orchestra was playing a kind of ersatz Brazilian music of the “Flying Down to Rio” variety, but had put it in a minor key, so that despite its happiness and urgency it had a sad, ghostly quality that nonetheless was so spirited that it filled the room and made everyone want to dance. Thus, everyone was moving, at least slightly, and the tension was carried away on the music like fallen leaves upon a rain-swollen kill.

  “We thank you,” Billy said, eyes closed, swaying rhythmically, “for the fish I caught in the sea, and the dolphins that flew above the waves as I pulled him in. For the rice that is a cousin of the dune grass that grows here. For the vegetables, especially the salad and Louise’s marvelous dressing. And for the dessert, and for making it possible for me to have rented this orchestra. Really. Amen.”

  Harry took another drink of Scotch, a big one. “Do you do this often?” he asked.

  “Oh, certainly not,” Evelyn said. “He didn’t even tell me.”

  “I wanted to give Catherine her party,” Billy said. “I asked Clayton—you know, the one who was surprised when he saw me surf-casting, because he thought it was below my station—where I could get in touch with these people, because he’s the one on the board who approves the hiring of musicians. He was true to form, and said, ‘People like us don’t do things like that. Why don’t you just put a Victrola in the sun room and have a servant turn it on?’

  “Well, people like us do all kinds of things. And people like us don’t have to run in narrow tracks that people like us, and people not like us, may think we have to run in. I wanted the music to be full, to surround us, to lift us like the swell, so I rented a bloody orchestra. You only live once.

  “They’re going to play at the club tomorrow night, and came out today to get settled. It was easy to hire them. That’s what they do. They play every night for money. Not a bad life, if you like music and you don’t have too many days when you’re unengaged.”

  “It’s the life I’ve chosen, Daddy,” Catherine said. “It’s not for money or fame. It’s for the music.”

  “But in the end, where does it leave you?” her mother asked.

  “In the end, it leaves you where everyone is left, but with a full heart, I hope.”

  “I hope so, too,” Evelyn told her, touching her hand. “And do you agree, Harry?” For decades it had been her job as hostess to direct the conversation felicitously, touching upon what was serious but always ready to lift and carry it, like music, beyond the reach of gravity.

  “Those questions,” Harry said, “were like the questions I asked myself before the war.”

  “And what was your answer?”

  “I thought I had come up with an answer, and then I was swept away.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And ever since, before I can ponder such things, I’ve been swept away. I met Catherine on the Staten Island Ferry, and since that unplanned second, everything has changed.”

  “You can’t surrender completely to chance,” Billy said.

  “I know,” Harry agreed, “that God is on the side of those with the biggest battalions, and I don’t believe in chance anyway. Chance is ugly and ragged. What I believe in holds things together beautifully as they run.”

  All this was said almost lightly as they rode on the music as if on a boat in the waves. “And I try not to surrender entirely to anything,” Harry continued. “I find that it’s like jumping from a plane. You can plan on your landing zone, you can partially collapse the chute to influence your course, but overall the jump is blind and you go where the wind takes you.”

  That led to much talk about many things, and as they ate and drank, everyone, including Catherine, ventured beyond safety. “I caught this fish this morning,” Billy told them. “It was a great cast. I was relaxed and the throw was easy, but more than that, the wind took the spoon. I followed it. It just carried forward like a bird in flight, and when it landed it was taken by the rip. I watched my reel unwind as if the hook had snagged a boat, until it jerked to a stop because I had run out of line. That spoon was two thousand feet from the beach, which is how I was able to bring in a bonito: they don’t run close to shore. He took the line about ten seconds after it had played out. I was half expecting the reel to wind itself. It didn’t. I had to work. And in the hour it took to land the fish, it was surrounded by leaping dolphins. I thought they wanted to save it, and if I hadn’t worked so hard I would have let him go to oblige them. I almost did.”

  Luckily for their consciences, they had finished the main course and were speeding through a lemon cake. “It’s for dancing,” Billy said. “The orchestra. Catherine, you didn’t get a single dance last week. Even though the whole thing blew up, the orchestra continued to play after you left, and people danced until well beyond midnight. It was like a wake, I guess. And they had come all the way out here. Why shouldn’t you get a dance, too?”

  Catherine drew back in her chair and pushed her empty plate away. As Harry helped her up she rose directly into his arms. The orchestra had star
ted a euphoric, fast-paced Mexican song with a lot of whoops, brass, and flutes. “I don’t know what dance to do to this,” she said, looking up at him.

  “That’s all right,” he said, “because we’re already dancing, and this dance is called ‘Just Don’t Knock Over the Table.’”

  With Billy and Evelyn now up on the floor and almost oblivious of Catherine and Harry, Harry and Catherine, oblivious of Billy and Evelyn, danced their first dance. They were as smooth and free as if they could fly. They moved together naturally and without plan.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “Do I like it? I think I’m going to faint.”

  “I don’t think so, Catherine. People like you don’t faint. But go ahead, I’ll faint, too.”

  “No, don’t,” she said. “I hope the song never ends.”

  It did, however, and when it did he really didn’t want to let her go, but they switched partners and he found himself dancing, far more carefully, with Evelyn. “Will Catherine be as elegant as you?” he asked, for in her youth Catherine was not as stringent as her mother, if only because she did not need to be.

  Self-possessed even as she was spun around the small space between the dining room table and the sideboard, Evelyn answered, “Catherine will be more so, because Catherine is better than I am.” They glanced over at Catherine, who was dancing with Billy as only fathers and daughters can dance. No matter how old the daughter may be, the father is dancing, in joy unparalleled, with his child when she was little.

  Then they switched back, and when Catherine was again in his arms, in the white dress in which she had come on the train and which now nonetheless seemed as if it had been made for the dance, and when they were lost again, moving together in a rhythm that cut out everything else, they knew why dolphins breach the air above the sea.

  14. Conversation by the Sea

  HE HAD EATEN lightly and had had only a little more than half the Scotch Billy had poured him and less than a full glass of wine, so when he awoke at sunrise to the pounding of the surf his body was untroubled and his eye was sharp. Dressed in khaki uniform trousers and a polo shirt, he walked slowly along the length of the pool, now blue and slightly rippled by the morning wind. In banks of flowers bordering the slate that surrounded the pool, bees suspended in the air like hummingbirds alighted to load nectar, and patrolled in paths as precisely curved as if they had been laid out by a nautilus. Freighted with the remnant mist of breaking waves, the air beyond the dunes glowed like the sky above a distant city. And, as always, the heartbeat of the surf continued. It vibrated the ground beneath his feet, reverberated through his lungs like the sound of cannon fire, and was carried away on a reviving wind.