Dance of the Happy Shades

was calling for a scrub-brash.
    Then I was lying on the sofa, covered with some kind of crocheted throw they had found in the bedroom. I didn’t want to lift my head. The house was full of the smell of coffee. Joyce came in, looking very pale; she said that the Berryman kids had wakened up but she had given them a cookie and told them to go back to bed, it was all right; she hadn’t let them out of their room and she didn’t believe they’d remember. She said that she and Kay had cleaned up the bathroom and the hall though she was afraid there was still a spot on the rug.The coffee was ready. I didn’t understand anything very well. The boys had turned on the radio and were going through the Berrymans’ record collection; they had it out on the floor. I felt there was something odd about this but I could not think what it was.
    Kay brought me a huge breakfast mug full of coffee.
    “I don’t know if I can,” I said. “Thanks.”
    “Sit up,” she said briskly, as if dealing with drunks was an everyday business for her, I had no need to feel myself important. (I met, and recognized, that tone of voice years later, in the maternity ward.) “Now drink,” she said. I drank, and at the same time realized that I was wearing only my slip. Joyce and Kay had taken off my blouse and skirt. They had brushed off the skirt and washed out the blouse, since it was nylon; it was hanging in the bathroom. I pulled the throw up under my arms and Kay laughed. She got everybody coffee. Joyce brought in the coffeepot and on Kay’s instructions she kept filling my cup whenever I drank from it. Somebody said to me with interest. “You must have really wanted to tie one on.”
    “No,” I said rather sulkily, obediently drinking my coffee. “I only had two drinks.”
    Kay laughed, “Well it certainly gets to you, I’ll say that. What time do you expect
they’ll
be back?” she said.
    “Late, After one I think.”
    “You should be all right by that time. Have some more coffee.”
    Kay and one of the boys began dancing to the radio. Kay danced very sexily, but her face had the gently superior and indulgent, rather cold look it had when she was lifting me up to drink the coffee. The boy was whispering to her and she was smiling, shaking her head. Joyce said she was hungry, and she went out to the kitchen to see what there was—potato chips or crackers, or something like that, that you could eat without making too noticeable a dint. Bill Klinecame over and sat on the sofa beside me and patted my legs through the crocheted throw. He didn’t say anything to me, just patted my legs and looked at me with what seemed to me a very stupid, half-sick, absurd and alarming expression. I felt very uncomfortable; I wondered how it had ever got around that Bill Kline was so good looking, with an expression like that. I moved my legs nervously and he gave me a look of contempt, not ceasing to pat me. Then I scrambled off the sofa, pulling the throw around me, with the idea of going to the bathroom to see if my blouse was dry. I lurched a little when I started to walk, and for some reason—probably to show Bill Kline that he had not panicked me—I immediately exaggerated this, and calling out, “Watch me walk a straight line!” I lurched and stumbled, to the accompaniment of everyone’s laughter, towards the hall. I was standing in the archway between the hall and the living room when the knob of the front door turned with a small matter-of-fact click and everything became silent behind me except the radio of course and the crocheted throw inspired by some delicate malice of its own slithered down around my feet and there—oh, delicious moment in a well-organized farce!—there stood the Berrymans, Mr. and Mrs., with expressions on their faces as appropriate to the occasion as any old-fashioned director of farces could wish. They must have been preparing those expressions, of course; they could not have produced them in the first moment of shock; with the noise we were making, they had no doubt heard us as soon as they got out of the car; for the same reason, we had not heard them. I don’t think I ever knew what brought them home so early—a headache, an argument—and I was not really in a position to ask.
    Mr. Berryman drove me home. I don’t remember how I got into that car, or how I found my clothes and put them on, or what kind of a good-night, if any, I said to Mrs. Berryman. I don’t remember what happened to my