Friend of My Youth

Barbara’s cynicism was automatic and irritating. It was like a quirk she had, a tic.
    They had this conversation after Victor and Beatrice had come to dinner. Murray had been anxious for Victor and Barbara to meet. He wanted to present them to each other, almost to show them off to each other. But when the opportunity arrived they were not at their best. Each seemed standoffish, lukewarm, nervous, ironical.
    The day of the dinner party, in late May, had been freakishly cold and rainy. The children—Felicity was five then, and Adam three—had been playing indoors all day, getting in Barbara’s way, messing up the living room, which she had cleaned, and by bedtime they weren’t tired enough to settle down. The long, light evening was no help. There were many calls for drinks of water, reports of a stomachache, complaints about a dog that had almost bitten Felicity last week. Finally, Adam raced into the living room wearing only his pajama top, shouting, “I want a bicky, I want a bicky!” “Bicky” was a baby word for “biscuit,” which he didn’t normally use anymore. It seemed very likely that he had been inspired to this performance and probably rehearsed in it by Felicity. Murray scooped him up and carried him into the children’s room and whacked his conveniently bare bottom. Then he whacked Felicity’s once for good measure and returned to the dining room rubbing his hands together, playing a role he detested, that of the hearty disciplinarian. The bedroom door stayed shut, but it could not shut out a prolonged and vengeful howling.
    Everything had gone wrong from the start with this visit. Murray had opened the door and said expansively, “ ‘The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers stream from the hawthorn on the wind away!’ ”—referring to the weather, and thinking that Beatrice would appreciate an English poem. Victor, smiling distractedly, said, “What? What do you say?” And Beatrice said, “It’s a poem,” just as if somebody had asked,“What’s that running across the road?” and she had replied, “It’s a groundhog.”
    Victor’s gaiety remained muted. His large, bright-eyed grin, his laughter seemed misplaced and forced, without energy. Even his skin looked dull and putty-colored. He was like the statue of a prince in a story Murray remembered, a children’s story. The prince has his jewel eyes plucked out to be sold to help the poor, and finally gives all his gold-leaf skin to serve the same purpose. A little swallow helps him when he is blind, and remains his only friend.
    The whole house smelled of the cooking. Barbara had done a pork roast. She had made the potatoes according to a new recipe, slicing them and cooking them in the oven in a buttered dish. They seemed greasy to Murray, and slightly on the raw side. The other vegetables were overcooked, because she had been so harassed in the kitchen, distracted by the children. The pecan pie was too rich a dessert for the meal, and the crust was too brown. Beatrice did not even try it. Beatrice did not finish the potatoes on her plate. She did not laugh when Adam made his disastrous sortie. She probably felt that children should be trained and kept in line as strictly as horses.
    Murray reflected that he had never met a woman who was crazy about horses whom he had liked. They were narrow, righteous, humorless women, and usually not good-looking. Beatrice had a rosy, almost raw-looking complexion. Her hair was dull and graying and cut with no style. She wore no lipstick—an eccentricity that was a declaration of piety or contemptuous carelessness in a woman at that time. Her loosely belted mushroom-colored dress announced that she had no hopes of this dinner party and made no concessions to it.
    Barbara, by way of contrast, was wearing a polished-cotton skirt of yellow and orange and copper colors, a tight black belt, a low-necked black blouse, and large, cheap hoop earrings. One of the things about Barbara that Murray did not understand and was not proud of—as opposed to the things he did not understandbut was proud of—would have to be this taste she had for cheaply provocative clothes. Low necklines, cinch belts, tight toreador pants. She would go out into the streets of Walley showing off her body, which was lavish, in the style of the time—or one of the styles of the time, the style not of Audrey Hepburn but of Tina Louise—and the embarrassment Murray felt about this was complex and unmentionable.