But it had been my suggestion in the first place, had it not? She would tell me what: Why didn’t we call on Drew and Yvonne then and there and put the idea to them, absolutely unofficially, just to see how it went down? What a pity Jeannine wasn’t with us too! But if three of the four main interested parties seemed to agree that it sounded at least worth considering further, Jeannine would surely not hold out, didn’t I think? She’d never been troublesome that way. We could wrap it all up and forget about it in time for her, Jane’s, remarriage…
I saw. And for when, pray, was that last-mentioned transaction scheduled? She patted my hand, smiled girlishly: not till fall. You are wondering, Dad, how it is we were driving already into the Second Ward when Jane impulsively decided to visit her son and daughter-in-law. So was I, until that throwaway announcement, like a casual grenade, disoriented my priorities. She and “Lord Baltimore” each had business to wind up before tying the knot, Jane declared. André was right that that “September Song” business was wrong: the less time left to one, the more patient one became about biding it.
Ah, Dad. Never mind the validity of the paradox: that sentiment, so clearly not Jane’s own (who seemed as deaf to Time’s chariots as she was historically amnesiac), stung me to the quick, as unexpected and intimate a revelation of her lover’s reality as that breathtaking blackmail photograph. I was dizzied; wished myself out of there, wished myself—
What Jane wished, as we entered the new federal low-rent housing project on the edge of “Browntown,” where the Drew Macks lived, was that me had been foresighted enough to see Tomorrow Now in 1967 or before, while all the Trouble was going on in the Second Ward. She could’ve bought out the slumlords for a song when Rap Brown had everybody scared, and never mind that fire insurance didn’t cover riot-related incendiarism: arson was cheaper than professional demolition, and she’d’ve been in on the ground floor of the New Reconstruction boondoggle.
“I’m joking,” she explained.
We Stock Liberals are not at ease in the Second Ward, Dad, especially exiting from black-chauffeured Continentals. People watched; I waved wanly to a few I knew. What’s more, Yvonne Mack, smashing as always in her hair-scarf and Nefertiti makeup, was plainly edgy about our visit. The kids were away at camp in the Poconos; Drew was at a Big Meeting elsewhere in the project and wouldn’t be back till Lord knew when. Yvonne is normally hospitable, more so than her husband, but we were offered none of the Tanqueray in clear view on her sideboard, for example. Jane sat without being invited to; I waited to be asked and was not. Yvonne popped up and down, sure that Drew would be sorry he’d missed us. Could she take a message for him? Bye, bye, then.
Well, Jane growled, back in the car. She of course was as at ease in the Second Ward as in the me boardroom, but miffed that Yvonne was learning discourtesy from Drew, and cross that we couldn’t after all just Wrap the Whole Thing Up, Damn It.
Not my night for seeing the nose on my face, Dad: Drew in deep conference on the eve of Marshyhope’s commencement ceremonies, the disruption whereof we’d feared since September last! But I was too preoccupied by now with the incremental deflation of my plan du soir: Cap’n Chick, the O.F.T., Jane’s invocation of her affiancement and of the Cambridge race riots, which put me in mind of my adventure on the New Bridge with Drew and dear brave Polly. I was ready to call it quits — even formed that phrase in my head without hearing what I was telling myself. But now Jane was hungry! Now she was up for a real dinner! At the cottage! Let’s pretend the whole stupid evening hasn’t happened! Let’s start over and do it right this time!
If only she’d not made that last exhortation. But now her girlishness was determined, and her language came straight from the Author: Late as it was, it was not too late to save our evening.
Back out to Todds Point! Bye, bye, John: Mister Andrews will fetch me home! I found myself asking, like a scared adolescent, Was she sure she…
She was sure.
Attend now, Father, my last evening as a late-middle-aged man. I fooled with drinks and charcoal briquettes and rémoulade while Jane ummed and hummed about the place, not so much unimpressed by what I’d preserved, restored, or remodeled as uncertain which was which. No time to bother with the fresh asparagus; it would be rockfish and a simple salad. But I was watching Jane; forgot to oil the fish grill; clapped my brow at the late recognition that my creamy garlic dressing for the salad was redundant, given the rémoulade; neglected to preheat the oven for the French bread; saw Jane, finger at her chin, begin to inspect the bedroom just as it was time to fork the fish.
A debacle. The fish skin burnt to the grill; the splendid animal overbroiled to a flayed, licorice-flavored mush; the sauce unappetizingly curdled; the salad indifferent; the bread doughy; Jane’s airy compliments insulting; her banalities about bachelor cooking particularly silly. I guzzle the wine (its back broken by overchilling) and chew a bread crust, too gloomy either to apologize or to correct her. She stuffs herself, chiding my want of appetite. She is beautiful. My spirits are plummeting. Ten-thirty.
Well, I say, and begin to clear the table. The president of Mack Enterprises takes my arm and purrs a directive: Let ’em soak.
That is how our Author works: having put us exquisitely out of sorts, he then brings to pass our dearest fantasy. Bitterness smote me; Jane’s extraordinary body (zip-zip, Dad: there it was) was a positive affront. I was surly; I was glum — and, of course, absolutely, almost belligerently impotent. Jane Patterson Paulsen Mack: Jane, Jane! So altogether, so impersonally self-willed and — centered, you could not only be “unfaithful” without a qualm, perhaps without even acknowledging to yourself that Infidelity was what was transpiring; you could (I realized to the bowels) even “love” a man and somehow be untouched by your own emotions! Cold as that Appalachian Chablis, I seized the hands that tried to rouse me; my voice came clotted, furious. Did she remember, God damn it? That this was the bedroom she’d strode naked into on the afternoon of August 13, 1932, Virginia Dare’s birthday, to fuck me while Harrison went for ice? Did she remember that we’d been lovers from that day till March of the following year, and again from July 31, 1935 (Pony-Penning Day in Assateague, Va.), till the Dark Night of June 21 or 22, 1937? God damn it, did she not recall that Jeannine Patterson Mack Singer Bernstein Golden was very possibly my daughter? Had she never understood that — together with certain other, itemizable causes — it was love of her that had brought me, on that last-mentioned calendar date, to an impotence and despair not unlike those I was currently entertaining, thence to a resolve to blow up myself, her, Harrison, Jeannine, and the entire Original & Unparalleled Floating Opera? Finally, finally, did she not bloody understand, as I had come since the spring of this year to understand, that I still loved her desperately — there was the exact adverb — that I still loved her desperately desperately desperately?
Even as I spoke I saw that of course she didn’t, couldn’t so remember, recall, understand. Jane was properly alarmed at my outburst (and offended by my coarse language); I saw her consider how to deal with me. I released her, apologized, told her I’d wait on the porch till she was ready and then drive her home. Her self-possession was at once restored. I wasn’t to be silly: it was late, she was tired; it had been an unfortunate evening, her fault; she should be the one apologizing. Et cetera. Come on, now. As for All That Stuff: of course she remembered, most of it anyhow, at least now I’d reminded her. Really, though, some of it she thought I’d made up over the years, or got from That Novel. I was such a romantic! Most men were, she supposed: certainly Harrison had been, Jeffrey had been, André was. Come on, now. The thing was, not to make a big thing out of it.