The New Yorker Stories

deep lines around his eyes—and saw on it the look she called Bemused Monsignor. He could nod and smile and murmur his “not to be believed” as Edith went on in her breathless way (surely she was telling him again about her session in a bodybuilding shop for women out in Santa Barbara last summer), but his interest was feigned. Edith was not a Catholic, and she could not know the sort of complicated, surprising man Philip Curnan really was. He had told Charlotte once that after working his way through Cornell (his father had an auto-repair garage in upstate New York somewhere), he had ridden across the country on a Harley-Davidson, while searching his soul about his desire to enter the priesthood. Charlotte smiled now, remembering the confidence. Just last week he had told her that there were still times when he longed to get back on a motorcycle; his helmet was still on the top shelf in his bedroom closet.

A server passed by, and Charlotte finally got a drink. Surveying the room, she was pleased to see that Nicholas was talking to the McKays’ daughter, Angela, home from Choate for Christmas. Charlotte thought of the day, a month before, when Angela’s mother, Janet, had consulted with the head of Burwell, McKee about filing for legal separation from Chaz, her husband. Chaz, a lawyer himself, stood with his arm around his wife’s waist, talking to a couple Charlotte didn’t know. Perhaps Chaz still did not know that she had made inquiries about getting a divorce. M.L., the hostess, passed in her peach-colored gown, and Charlotte touched her shoulder and whispered, “It’s wonderful. Thank you for having us.” M.L. gave her a hug and said, “I must be somewhere else if I didn’t even say hello.” As she moved away, Charlotte smelled her perfume—at night, M.L. always wore Joy—and heard the rustle of silk.

Martin VanZell came up to Charlotte and began talking to her about his arthritic knee. He tapped a bottle in his breast pocket. “All doctors dote on Advil,” he said. “Ask any of them. Their eyes light up. You’d think it was Lourdes in a bottle. Pull off the top, take out the cotton, and worship. I’m not kidding you.” He noticed that he seemed to have caught Father Curnan’s attention. “Meaning no disrespect,” he said.

“Who was being slighted?” Father Curnan said. “The pharmaceutical company?” His eyes met Charlotte’s for a second, and he winked before he looked away. He speared a shrimp and ate it, waving away the napkin a server extended in her other hand.

Frankie Melkins suddenly swooped in front of Charlotte, kissing the air above her cheek. Frankie had been in a bad car accident last New Year’s, and had returned to the Church after Father Curnan’s hospital visits. That had been much talked about, as well as the fact that the case was settled out of court, which led people to believe that Frankie had got a lot of money. As Frankie and Martin began to compare painkiller stories, Charlotte drifted away and went to the side door, where someone had been knocking for quite some time. Oren and Billy! Oren could be such a devil. He gave drums to his nephews for Christmas and once threw rice during a party that wasn’t at all like a wedding. The minute she opened the door, he gave her a bear hug.

“What on earth!” M.L. said, staring out the door after the two men had come in. “Why, I’ll bet Frankie has left the cabdriver out there waiting.” She began to wave her arms wildly, whistling to him. She turned to Charlotte. “Can you believe it?” she said. She looked beyond Charlotte to Frankie. “Frankie!” she called. “Were you going to leave your cabdriver out in the driveway all night? There’s plenty of food. Tell him to come in and have something to eat.”

Father Curnan stood talking to the host, Dan Tazewell. They were looking at the mantel, discussing a small drawing of a nude that was framed and propped there. She overheard Father Curnan lamenting the fact that the artist had recently left the art department at the university and gone back to New York to live. Charlotte accepted another drink from a server, then looked back at Father Curnan. He was scrutinizing the drawing. On her way to the bathroom, Charlotte heard Nicholas telling Angela McKay details about hand surgery, spreading his thumb and first finger wide. Angela looked at the space between his fingers as though staring at some fascinating thing squirming beneath a microscope. His hand? Had Nicholas had hand surgery?

One of the servers was coming out of the bathroom as Charlotte got to the door. She was glad it was empty, because she had had two drinks before she left the house and another at the party. She put her glass on the back of the sink before she used the toilet. What if she left the drink there? Would anybody notice and think things?

The bathroom was tiny, and the little casement window had been flipped open. Still, Charlotte could smell cigarette smoke. She reached up and pulled the window closed, hooked it, and rubbed her hand down her new black shirt. “Wheet,” she said, imitating the sound the silk made. “Someone’s in there,” she heard a voice say. She took a sip of her drink, then unhooked the window and pushed it out again. The sky was black—no stars visible across the small part of the sky she could see. There was a huge wind out there, like an animal loose in the trees. She turned and began to wash her hands. The spigot reminded her of a fountain she had seen years ago in Rome, when she was first married. It had bothered her that so many things there were exaggerated but not full-form: massive marble heads—lions and gargoyles, rippling manes, mythic beasts spewing water—but whole bodies were usually to be found only on the angels and cherubs. She dried her hands. That couldn’t be true—that couldn’t have been what all the fountains looked like. What am I doing thinking about fountains in Rome, she thought.

When she opened the door, she saw Martin VanZell in the dim hallway, his white face a ghostly contrast to his dark pin-striped suit. “Great party, huh?” he said. She had stopped outside the door, dead center. It took her a minute to realize that she was staring, and blocking his way. “It is every year,” she heard herself saying, and then he passed by and she turned toward the noise of the party. A man whose wife ran one of the nurseries on Route 29 came over as she walked down the two steps into the room. “Charlotte, you just missed my wife here, losing track again. She was telling Father Curnan—hey, he’s gone off again—she thought Chernobyl was this year. It was last year. It happened in the spring.”

“Well, I believe you,” his wife said, with a false smile. “Why were you bringing it up, Arthur?”

Nicholas came up to Charlotte just as the host rang a bell and everyone fell silent.

“It’s not Santa. It’s the annual ringing out of one year for Father Curnan and a ringing in of the new,” the host said cheerfully. He rang the bell again. “Because today he’s our birthday boy again, and if he’s going to keep getting older we’re going to keep noticing it.”

Father Curnan raised his glass, blushing. “Thank you all—” he began, but the host clanged the bell again, drowning him out. “Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t make us take time out from the party to hear a speech,” the host said. “Time for that on Sunday, Philip, when you’ve got your captive audience. But happy birthday, Father Phil, and on with the ball!” People laughed and cheered.

Charlotte saw that someone’s glass had made a white ring on the tabletop between two mats that had been put there. Janet’s husband came up and started to talk about the cost of malpractice insurance, and then Charlotte felt Nicholas’s hand on her elbow. “It’s late,” he said. “We should go.” She started to introduce him to Janet’s husband, but Nicholas steered them away and into a bedroom where two temporary clothes racks stood bulging with coats and furs. More coats made a great mound on the bed. Then suddenly she and Nicholas were standing with M.L. at the courtyard door, saying goodbye as they struggled into their coats and scarves. It was not until the door closed that Charlotte realized that she had not said a single word to Father Curnan. She turned and looked back at the house.

“Come on,” Nicholas said. “He didn’t even notice.”