A young party, then, and it would pass through the stages with inevitable predictability, the same as every other party. What a sad thing, always striving to be unique, a party unlike all those that had gone before, a vanguard moment in communal relations, a night that charted, a memory. My mother had always thought of parties as events designed to foster collective amnesia, so that what you wanted in the end was a memorable place for forgetting. Cute.
She was in a clutch of five, the right number, the configuration at which two-by-two intimacy (always man-woman, man-woman, wasn’t it?) broke apart into the impersonal, performative stage-and-audience situation, a five-way conversation being a mythical Loch Ness sort of thing, because in reality, wasn’t it always just one guy speechifying while the other four stood there and swizzled, which was exactly what she was doing, swizzling, absently observing the varieties of digital combinations employed to cradle a wineglass, almost as individual as the faces above them, each one a signal, her mind wandering, fingernail polish color, prominence of hair between knuckles or lack thereof, presence and make of watch, style of bracelet, wedding ring.
Thank god we look at the nose when we’re talking, she thought. Thank god we don’t actually have to look into people’s eyes.
In her little flight of five (three women, two men), one woman and one man were married, one of each sex was not, and my mother was, but absent her spouse. They were all about the same age, steered toward one another by Jane, who’d then veered off in search of other lost souls, and they’d talked for a while about how consummate Jane was, and one of the men was funny, the married one, and the other one less so, thus playing catch-up, hard to watch, and both of the other women were perfectly nice, though one, wearing a huge white hat made out of an arctic fox, was overselling her boredom, making no effort to conceal her scans for a better option, a naked disregard for the feelings of the other guests that my mother admired, possibly because she herself was lashed to politic behavior like a sailor to the mast. I suppose it was that same appreciation for brutalist behavior that attracted her to my father. And, naturally, everyone was doing it, checking over the shoulder of whoever was standing opposite, just in case. Three knew each other (the couple and the fox hat), all had Jane and Bo in common, and they had talked out the blizzard and the married man was explaining the Coriolis effect—inaccurately, my mother thought, but what did it matter? She crunched an ice cube and heard the echo of her own mother’s voice, You’ll crack a tooth, and at the same time a more ventrally located dialogue, the morbid drone of Henry Kissinger lecturing her on Viennese-era sexual frustrations.
Low-pressure systems. Low pressure, the man was saying.
I’ve never understood any of it, his wife said. Nothing but a bunch of wavy lines to me, she said, smiling with her whole face, beaming, shooting rays of sunlight out of her mouth.
Lows bring precipitation. And now here’s the interesting part. The Coriolis effect makes wind blow counterclockwise around a low.
Good god, Terry, his wife said, are you trying to get us thrown out of here with all this subversive talk?
Everyone laughed.
Come on, this is interesting, isn’t it? It’s—it’s—it’s human history, it’s ancient seafaring knowledge. Someday it might come in handy. Like when we get tossed out into the blizzard because of your big mouth. He swatted his wife on the ass. She made a Kewpie doll face and said, Did you say counter cock wise?
Good grief, Marg, said that fox hat.
If you stand with your back to the wind, the low-pressure system will be on your left—left for low—and the high-pressure system will be on your right, so when you’re rounding, say, the Cape of Good Hope, making for Madagascar, you’ll know how to avoid those nasty low-pressure hurricanes I’m sure you’ve all heard so much about.
Fascinating, the other man said.
See? the first man said to his wife. See? Fascinating! Buys-Ballot’s law.
God, take me now, she said.
Say their names again? the second man said.
Buys-Ballot. One guy. Buys like Bosch Tools. Danish.
Dutch, my mother said, took a drink, smiled in apology.
Oh? the wife said.
That’s right! Of course, the husband said. Dutch.
And, my mother said, grimacing.
What? Oh shit. What? said the husband, laughing at his impending execution.
It’s reversed in the southern hemisphere. Sorry.
Flush a toilet in Australia? the other man said, but no one bit.
So you drowned us all within sight of Madagascar, you asshole, the fox hat said, slapping at the husband, who cowered, laughing.
Leave it to me to find the climatologist in the crowd, he said.
Just a crusty old sea dog, my mother said.
The fox hat said, That man over there, bald, tweed, don’t everyone look at once, come on, guys. You’ll never believe it, but that’s Lee Warshaw.
Where? said the husband.
There, bald, tweed jacket.
The guy who?
Speaking of drowning within sight of Madagascar.
The second man looked at my mother, shot his eyebrows, shrugged.
Um—he was—do you want to? my mother said to the hat.
Lee Warshaw. Lee Warshaw? No?
The man laughed and shook his head. I don’t follow sports.
Oh dear god, what sport would Lee Warshaw play? HA! the fox hat said. She did not laugh so much as bark the word itself.
Distance swimming? the husband said.
For Christ’s sake, Terry, the wife said, slugging him in the arm. He’s standing right there.
Paging Warshaw! Warshaw to the lifeboats! the husband announced in the direction of Lee Warshaw, who did not indicate that he’d heard.
Oh my god, shut up, you fuckwit! his wife said, pounding him on the chest while he laughed and dodged, wiggling his drink overhead like a maraca. The other
