Family Dancing (6 page)

Ernest’s crying got suddenly louder.

“You’ve done it,” Jennifer said.

Thirty minutes later, Dino was safely home, and the Harringtons were on their way. Dry-eyed. “Happy now?” Mrs. Harrington asked.

Jennifer and Ernest climbed into the back. “I hope Timmy’s there,” Ernest said.

“Can I drive?” Roy asked.

“Not tonight, I’d be scared,” Mrs. Harrington said.

“Then can we at least listen to KFRC?” Roy asked.

“Yeah! Maybe they’ll have the Police!” Ernest shouted gleefully.

“O.K., sure,” said Mrs. Harrington.

“You’re in a good mood,” said Roy, switching one of the preset buttons to the station he wanted.

They pulled out of the driveway. The dark, warm car filled up with a loud, sad song:

Why did you have to be a heartbreaker,

When I was be-ing what you want me to be . . .

Roy beat his hand against the dashboard. He looked funny in his orange shirt and green tie—long hair spilling over corduroy jacket—as if he had never been meant to dress that way and had adjusted the standard male uniform to his particular way of life.

Oh, Mrs. Harrington relished that moment: her children all around her. What amazed her was that she had made them—they wouldn’t be who they were, they wouldn’t be at all, if it hadn’t been for her. Aside from a few sweaters and a large macramé wall hanging, they were her life’s artwork. She was proud of them, and fearful.

They turned onto a dark road that twisted up into the hills. From the Lauranses’ high window, Mrs. Harrington’s house was one of a thousand staggered lights spreading like a sequined dress to the spill of the bay.

The Lauranses had introduced her to a woman who was involved with holistic healing. “Meditate on your cancer,” the woman had said. “Imagine it. Visualize it inside of you. Then, imagine it’s getting very cold. Imagine the tumors freezing, dying from freezing. Then a wind chips at them until they disappear.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Harrington said, overcome again. “Oh.”

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Roy asked her. In the dark car, concern seemed to light up his face. She could only look at him for a second because the road was curving up to meet her stare.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m sorry. Just a little pensive tonight, that’s all.”

But in her mind she could see Dr. Sanchez’s hairy hands.

The party was already in full swing when they arrived. All over the Lauranses’ carpeted living room the clink of drinks sounded, a slow, steady murmur of conversation. Ernest held Mrs. Harrington’s hand.

She lost Jennifer and Roy instantly, lost them to the crowd, to their friends. Suddenly. They were on their own, moving in among the guests, who said hello, asked them what their plans were. They smiled. They were good kids, eager to find their friends.

“Hey, Harrington!” she heard a gravelly adolescent voice call, and Roy was gone. Jennifer lost as well, to the collegiate generation—a boy just back from Princeton.

Mrs. Harrington’s friends the Lewistons were the first to greet her. Mr. Lewiston had taught in the law school with Mrs. Harrington’s ex-husband, and they had remained friends.

“How are you feeling, Anna?”

“How’re the kids?”

“You know, anything we can do to help.”

She motioned toward Ernest with her eyes, don’t talk about it. Ernest, who had not been listening, asked, “Where’s Timmy?”

“Timmy and Kevin and Danielle are in the family room playing,” Mrs. Lewiston said. “Would you like to join them?”

“Kevin!” Ernest turned to his mother, his eyes and mouth breaking. There was a red sore on his chin from drool. He started to cry.

“Ernie, baby, what’s wrong?” Mrs. Harrington said, picking him up, hugging him fiercely.

“I don’t like Kevin,” Ernest sobbed. “He’s mean to me.”

Kevin was the Lewistons’ son. As a baby, he had been on commercials.

And the Lewistons looked at Mrs. Harrington in vague horror.

“When was he mean to you?” Mrs. Harrington asked.

“The other day on the bus. He threw—um, he threw—he took my lunch and he threw it at me and it got broken. My thermos.”

Mrs. Harrington looked at the Lewistons, for a brief moment accusingly, but she quickly changed her look to one of bewilderment.

“He did come home the other day with his thermos broken. Ernest, you told me you dropped it.”

“Kevin told me not to tell. He—he said he’d beat me up.”

“Look, Anna, how can you—how can you think .
.
.” Mrs. Lewiston couldn’t complete her sentence. “I’ll get Kevin,” she said. “Your son’s accused him of something he’d never do.”

She ran off toward the family room.

“Anna, are you sure Ernest’s not making all this up?” Mr. Lewiston asked.

“Are you accusing him of lying?” Mrs. Harrington said.

“Look, we’re adults. Let’s keep cool. I’m sure there’s an explanation to all of this.” Mr. Lewiston took out a handkerchief and swatted at his face.

Ernest was still crying when Mrs. Lewiston came back, dragging Kevin by the arm.

Ernest wailed. Mrs. Laurans, the hostess, came over to find out what was causing such a commotion. She ushered the families into the master bedroom to have it out.

“Kevin,” Mr. Lewiston said, seating his son on top of forty or fifty coats piled on the bed, “Ernest has accused you of doing something very bad—of taking his lunch and hitting him with it. Is this true? Don’t lie to me.”

“Bill, how can you talk to him that way?” Mrs. Lewiston cried. “You’re never that way with him.”

Kevin, a handsome, well-dressed child, began to cry. The adults stood among their sobbing children.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Harrington said. Then she laughed just a little.

Mrs. Lewiston took her lead, and laughed, too. The tension broke.

But Mr. Lewiston, overcome by guilt for treating his son badly, was holding Kevin, and begging his forgiveness.

Mrs. Harrington knew what that was like. She also knew that Ernest had lied before. She led him over to the corner.

“Did you make that story up, Ernest?” she asked him.

“No.”

“Tell the truth.”

“I didn’t,” Ernest said.

“Kevin says you did,” Mrs. Harrington said with infinite gentleness.

“He’s lying.”

“You can’t pretend with me, young man.” Her voice grew stern. “Look, I want the truth.”

Sternly, she lifted up his chin so that his eyes met hers; she was on her knees. For a moment, he looked as if he might once again break out in full-fledged sobs. But Ernest changed his mind.

“All right,” he said. “He didn’t throw it at me. But he took it.”

“I gave it back!” Kevin yelled. “I threw it
to
you, and you dropped it and the thermos broke!”

“Ah!” all the parents said at once.

“Two parties misinterpret the same incident. Happens all the time in the courts. I teach about it in my class,” Mr. Lewiston said. Everyone laughed.

“Now, Mrs. Harrington, I think both these young men owe each other an apology, don’t you? Kevin for taking Ernest’s lunch, and Ernest for saying he threw it at him.”

“Boys,” Mrs. Harrington said, “will you shake hands and make up?”

The children eyed each other suspiciously.

“Come on,” Mr. Lewiston said to Kevin. “Be a good cowboy, pardner.”

Kevin, like a good cowboy, reached out a swaggering arm. Sheepishly, Ernest accepted it. They shook.

“All right, all right,” Mrs. Lewiston said. “Now why don’t you two go play with Timmy and Danielle?”

“O.K.,” Kevin said. The two ran off.

“And we’ll all get a drink,” Mr. Lewiston said.

The adults emerged from the bedroom and made their way through the crowd. All of them were relieved not to have to face the possibility that one of their children had done something consciously malicious. But Mrs. Harrington had to admit that, of the two, Ernest had come off the more childish, the less spirited. Kevin Lewiston was energetic, attractive. He had spirit—took lunch boxes but gave them back, would go far in life. Ernest cried all the time, made more enemies than friends, kept grudges.

Small children, dressed in their best, darted between and among adult legs. Mrs. Harrington, separated from the Lewistons by a dashing three-year-old girl, found herself in front of a half-empty bowl of chopped liver.

A trio of women whose names she didn’t remember greeted her, but they didn’t remember her name either, so it was all right. They were talking about their children. One turned out to be the mother of the boy from Princeton. “Charlie spent the past summer working in a senator’s office,” she told the other women, who were impressed.

“What’s your daughter doing next summer?” the woman asked Mrs. Harrington.

“Oh, probably doing what she did last summer, working at Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Or, perhaps, living in another town.

The ladies made noises of approval. Then, looking over their heads to the crowd to see if her children were within earshot, Mrs. Harrington saw someone she had no desire to talk to.

“Excuse me,” she hurriedly told the women. But it was too late.

“Anna!”

Joan Lensky had seen her; now she was done for. Her black hair tied tightly behind her head, dressed (as always) in black, Joan Lensky was coming to greet her.

“Anna, darling,” she said, grasping Mrs. Harrington’s hand between sharp fingers, “I’m so glad to see you could come out.”

“Yes, well, I’m feeling quite well, Joan,” Mrs. Harrington said.

“It’s been so long. Are you really well? Let’s chat. There’s a room over there we can go to and talk privately.”

Regretfully, Mrs. Harrington was pulled away from the crowd into an empty room. She did not enjoy talking to Joan Lensky; the details of their histories, at least on the surface, bore too much resemblance to each other. Up until his death, Joan’s husband had been famous for making advances to his female graduate students—so often, and so clumsily, that his lechery had become a joke at the faculty wives’ teas.

Mrs. Harrington’s husband was more serious; he left her suddenly and flatly for a law student, quit his job, and moved with her to Italy. After that Mrs. Harrington stopped going to the faculty wives’ teas, though most of the wives remained steadfastly loyal—none more so than Joan, who seized on the wronged Mrs. Harrington as a confidante. It made Mrs. Harrington nervous to realize how much she knew about Joan’s life that Joan herself didn’t know—Joan, with her black poodles, her immaculate kitchen. Nevertheless, she put up with this demanding friendship for many years, chiefly because she felt sorry for the old woman, who seemed to need so badly to feel sorry for her. When she got sick she changed her priorities. Now she only saw Joan when she had to.

Tell me, then, how are you?” Mrs. Lensky asked her gravely. They were sitting on an Ultrasuede sofa in a small sitting room, close together. Mrs. Harrington could feel Mrs. Lensky’s breath blowing on her face.

“I’m all right. I feel well. The kids are doing fine.”

“No, no, Anna,” Mrs. Lensky said, shaking her head emphatically. “How
are
you?”

She couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer.

“All right. I’m on the tail end of radiation therapy. It’s about fifty percent effective.”

“Oh, you poor, poor dear,” Mrs. Lensky said. “Is there much pain?”

“No.”

“And your hair? Is that a wig?”

“No, I have it specially cut.”

Mrs. Lensky looked toward the ceiling and closed her eyes rapturously.

“You are so lucky, my dear Anna, you don’t know,” she said. “My sister has a friend who is going through terrible ordeals with the radiation. All her hair. She weighs seventy pounds. Terrible. Don’t let them increase your dose! Or that awful chemotherapy!”

“All right,” Mrs. Harrington said.

“You must avoid chemotherapy. I know a woman who died from it. They said it was the treatment that killed her, because it was worse than the disease. Another woman I know was so sick she had to stay in bed for three months. She’s still so pale. Also during surgery make sure they don’t leave any of their sponges inside your stomach .
.
.”

Mrs. Harrington counted her breaths, thought, It’s all she has to live for, other people’s sorrows to compare with her own.

“Have you heard from Roy? Is he still married to that child?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Harrington said. “He is. She’s actually very nice. They’re quite happy.”

Mrs. Lensky nodded. Then she moved even closer to Mrs. Harrington, to deliver some even greater confidence.

“I heard of an organization I thought you would want to know about,” she said. “It arranges for . . . things . . . before you go. So that your children won’t have to worry about it. I’m a member. The dues aren’t heavy, and they take care of everything . . . just everything.”