The War of the Roses

the impending surprise.

The family squatted around the table while Oliver, with great ceremony, poured the Lafite-Rothschild '59 into crystal wineglasses. He looked about, offering a cryptic smile, winking at Barbara and lifting his glass.

'Before we dine on this magnificent repast,' he said, savoring the arcane language, 'we must toast this moment of triumph.' He looked at Eve, who smiled broadly, two rougelike puffs of excitement on each apple cheekbone. 'B- minus will not an A make, but it's a hell of a long way from F.' Josh snickered. He always brought home straight A's and was not above teasing his sister on that score. 'And a longer way from H.'

'H?' Eve asked, squinting in bemusement.

'H for Honda,' Oliver said.

'Honda?' Eve looked at the faces around the table in confusion. Oliver raised his glass higher and from his pocket drew out a set of keys and his electronic remote-control garage door opener.

'Just don't hit the Ferrari on your way out.'

'Not if you value your life,' Barbara joked.

Eve squealed with hysterical joy, grabbing her father around the neck, kissing him with passionate gratefulness. She repeated the ritual with Barbara, then with Josh and Ann, finally picking up the keys and garage door-opener and dashing out toward the rear of the house.

'We're spoiling her rotten,' Oliver said when she had gone, bringing the rim of the wineglass to his lips. Everyone followed suit 'But it feels so damned good.'

'We didn't get our first car until three years after we were married,' Barbara said.

'Different times,' Oliver shrugged. 'Why all the hard work if not for this?' He moved his free arm through the air, the gesture taking in all the visible surroundings, including the people.

'I made the team,' Josh said suddenly, as if a bubble had suddenly burst inside him.

'Damn,' Oliver said, putting down his glass and slapping hands in black-jock fashion. 'Bad. Man.' He had picked up some of the jargon from Josh.

'I'll drink to that,' Josh said, lifting his glass and swilling down the expensive wine as if it were Coca-Cola.

They heard the horn blasts of Eve's new Honda, which she had driven around to the front of the house. Gathering at the window, the family waved and Eve sped off in a cloud of carbon monoxide.

'Lucky bitch,' Josh said.

'Well, now it makes it obligatory for you when you hit sixteen,' Oliver said. 'You now have a standard. That's what fatherhood means. Setting standards.' He laughed at his own little joke, then the family regathered around the table.

'There are other family victories to announce,' Barbara said quietly, her eyes smiling in their deep sockets, her full lips curling tremulously over her white teeth. She made her announcement in a flat, somewhat restrained tone, but with a determined flourish. There seemed a disturbing note of bravado in it as well, although Ann felt she was the only one who appeared to notice. Oliver moved closer to Barbara and kissed her on the lips.

'Fantastic,' he said as Ann quickly turned away, annoyed at her sudden burst of jealousy.

'I guess what I have to say is anticlimactic,' Oliver said just as Eve burst through the front door, flushed with joy.

'It runs like a dream. Like a dream,' she cried, squatting beside Ann and squeezing her hand. 'I'm so happy.'

Ann lifted a finger to Eve, in mock rebuke, as Oliver continued.

'Just a new client. More lucre for the family coffers. A huge retainer. My colleagues are quite pleased with my resourcefulness. I'm off to New York tomorrow to seal the deal.'

They exchanged more kisses and soon everybody was digging into the feast, mumbling ecstatically, with full mouths, over Barbara's wonderful cookery, embellished, they all agreed, by the rich taste and bouquet of the '59 Lafite-Rothschild.

Watching them in what she could only characterize as their splendor, Ann could not escape the comparison with her own shabby family, locked in the prison of their tiny wood-frame house in Johnstown. More like Dogpatch, she thought, where the big treat was snaring Polish sausages with a bent fork from a big jug and swilling down six-packs.

The rich cassoulet melted in her mouth as the movie in her mind froze into a single ghastly frame. In it, her mother's swollen body squirmed like jelly in a torn, flowered housecoat as she reclined on a sprung, worn couch in front of the television set, gun-muzzle curlers poised to shoot out Laverne and Shirley, while her father, his beer belly hanging over his belt like jelly mold, added cigar-ash dust to the frayed carpet from which sprouted his Archie Bunker chair.

Suddenly, as if to start the reel moving again, she tapped her wineglass with a silver spoon, the tinkling crystal forcing the silence.

'I can't tell you how much . ..' The words stuck in her throat and she had to clear it and begin again. 'I can't tell you how much it has meant to me to be here with you. You cannot imagine ...' She stumbled again, the images of her past life too vivid for the rush of words. Her gaze washed over each face, even Oliver's, which, surprisingly, she viewed without the earlier shame. 'It's been the most wonderful time of my life. The way you've taken me in and become, for me, my family.' She swallowed hard to hold down a ball of phlegm. 'Such a happy family . ..' She shook her head, too overcome to continue, then searched with her lips to find the rim of the glass, which she tipped, sipping the wine.

What a happy house, she thought, wondering how she had had the good luck to find them.

3

Oliver felt the first stab of pain just as Mr. Larabee finished talking, a familiarization lecture, really, outlining the company's special problem with the Federal Trade Commission. He had been taking notes on a lined yellow legal