parked in front of our house, and the caterer—a woman—is carrying things in, helped by a teenage boy who is probably her son. He’s as glum as she is cheerful. My wife and she give each other an embrace, all smiles. She darts in and out, carrying trays.
My wife says, “I wonder if I should go out and help,” and then answers by saying, “No—I hired her to do it.” Then she’s smiling to herself. “It’s a shame the Vandergrifts can’t come,” she says. “We’ll save something for them.”
I ask if I should put some music on the stereo, but my wife says no, it’ll be drowned out by the conversation. Either that or we’d have to crank it up so loud that it would bother the neighbors.
I stand in the front room and look at the caterer and the boy. He comes through the door holding one of the trays at arm’s length, carefully, like a child with a sparkler that he’s half afraid of. As I watch, Mrs. May, the neighbor we don’t speak to (she called the police one night when we went to bed and mistakenly left the light burning on the front porch), comes by with her toy poodles, Annaclair and Esther. She pretends not to notice that a caterer is carrying party food into our house. She can look right through you and make you feel like a ghost. Even the dogs have cultivated this look.
My wife asks me which person I’m most looking forward to seeing. She knows that I like Steve Newhall more than anybody else, because he’s such a cutup, but just to surprise her I say, “Oh—it’ll be nice to see the Ryans. Hear about their trip to Greece.”
She snorts. “The day you care about travel,” she says.
She’s as responsible for fights as I am. She gets that edge to her voice. I try to keep a civil tongue in tone as well as in speech. She never minds giving one of those cynical little snorts and saying something cutting, though. This time, I decide to ignore it—just ignore it.
At first I can’t figure out how come my wife and the caterer are so huggy-kissy, but as they talk I remember that my wife met the caterer at a shower in Alexandria a few months ago. The two of them are shaking their heads over some woman—not anyone I’ve met, so she must be a friend of my wife’s from back when she had her job—and saying that they’ve never heard of a doctor who let labor go on for over sixty hours. I find out, as the foil is pulled back from the deviled eggs, that the woman is fine now, and that she had her tubes tied before she left the table.
The boy goes back to the car without saying goodbye. I stand in the hallway and look out the door. He gets in the car and slams the door shut. Behind him, the sun is setting. It’s another one of those pink-to-orange sunsets that used to take my breath away. I move back from the door quickly, though, because I know the caterer is on her way out. Truth is, if I don’t have to exchange amenities with her, all the better. I’m not good at thinking of things to say to people I don’t know.
The caterer ducks her head into the room where I’m standing. She says, “You have a good party tonight. I think you’re really going to like the fiery-hot bean dip.” She smiles and—to my surprise—shrugs. The shrug seems to have no context.
My wife comes out of the kitchen, carrying a tray of sliced meat. I offer to carry platters with her, but she says she’s fussy and she’d rather do it herself. That way, she’ll know where she’s placed everything. I wonder whether she couldn’t just look at the table and see where she’s put things, but when my wife is preparing for something it is not the time to ask questions. She’ll snap and get in a bad mood. So I go out to the front porch and watch the sky darken.
The caterer honks as she pulls away, and for some reason—probably because he’s sitting so straight—the boy reminds me of what happened when part of the highway into Washington was reserved for cars carrying at least three passengers: people around here started buying inflatable dolls and sitting them in the car. They put hats and coats on them.
“Mary Virushi and her husband are having a trial separation, but she’s coming to the party with him anyway,” my wife says from the doorway.
“Why’d you have to tell me that?” I say, turning away from the sunset and coming back into the house. “It’ll just make me feel uncomfortable around them.”
“Oh, you’ll survive,” she says. She often uses this expression. She hands me a stack of paper plates and asks me to divide it in thirds and place the stacks along the front of the table. She asks me to get the napkins out of the cabinet and put piles of them down the middle of the table, between the vases of daisies.
“Nobody’s supposed to know about the Virushis,” she says, carrying out a tray of vegetables. Fanned out around the bowl in the middle, their colors—orange and red and white—remind me of the sky and the way it looked a few minutes ago.
“Also,” she says, “please don’t make it a point to rush to refill Oren’s glass every time it’s empty. He’s making an effort to cut back.”
“You do it,” I say. “If you know everything, you do everything.”
“You always get nervous when we entertain,” she says. She brushes past me. When she comes back, she says, “The caterer really did a beautiful job. All I have to do is wash the platters and put them out on the porch tomorrow, and she’ll take them away. Isn’t that wonderful?” She kisses my shoulder. “Have to get dressed,” she says. “Are you going to wear what you’ve got on?”
I have on white jeans and a blue knit shirt. I nod yes. Surprisingly, she doesn’t argue. As she walks up the stairs, she says, “I can’t imagine needing air-conditioning, but do what you think best.”
I go back to the porch and stand there a minute. The sky is darker. I can see a firefly or two. One of the little boys in the neighborhood passes by on his bike, all shiny blue, with training wheels on the back. There are streamers on the handlebars. The cat that kills birds walks by. I’ve been known to fill a water pistol and squirt the cat when nobody’s looking. I’ve also turned the hose on it. It walks on the edge of our lawn. I know just what it’s thinking.
I go in and take a look at the table. Upstairs, water is running in the shower. I wonder if Marie will wear one of her sundresses. She has a handsome back, and she looks lovely in the dresses. In spite of what she says, I do travel—and I often like it. Five years ago, we went to Bermuda. I bought the sundresses for her there. She never changes size.
On the table, there’s enough food to feed an army. Half a watermelon has been hollowed out and filled with melon balls and strawberries. I have a strawberry. There are what look like cheese balls, rolled in nuts, and several bowls of dip, with vegetables around some and crackers in a bowl next to the others. I spear a piece of pineapple wrapped in prosciutto. I drop the toothpick in my pocket and push the pieces closer together, so the one I took won’t be missed. Before the caterer came, my wife put out the liquor on the deep window ledge. There are
