Who Do You Think You Are

of young women at that time, three or four were noticeably pregnant. And most of the men were in suits and shirts and ties, like Patrick. Rose was relieved. Not only did she want Patrick to fit into the party; she wanted him to accept the people there, to be convinced they were not all freaks. When Patrick was a student he had taken her to concerts and plays and did not seem overly suspicious of the people who participated in them; indeed he rather favored these things, because they were detested by his family, and at that time—the time he chose Rose—he was having a brief rebellion against his family. Once he and Rose had gone to Toronto and sat in the Chinese temple room at the Museum, looking at the frescoes. Patrick told her how they were brought in small pieces from Shansi province; he seemed quite proud of his knowledge, and at the same time disarmingly, uncharacteristically humble, admitting he had got it all on a tour. It was since he had gone to work that he had developed harsh opinions and delivered wholesale condemnations. Modern Art was a Hoax. Avant-garde plays were filthy. Patrick had a special, mincing, spitting way of saying avant-garde, making the words seem disgustingly pretentious. And so they were, Rose thought. In a way, she could see what he meant. She could see too many sides of things; Patrick had not that problem.
    Except for some great periodic fights she was very docile with Patrick, she tried to keep in favor. It was not easy to do so. Even before they were married he had a habit of delivering reproving lectures, in response to a simple question or observation. Sometimes in those days she would ask him a question in the hope that he would show off some superior knowledge that she could admire him for, but she was usually sorry she had asked, the answer was so long and had such a scolding tone, and the knowledge wouldn’t be so superior, either. She did want to admire him, and respect him; it seemed that was a leap she was always on the edge of taking.
    Later she thought that she did respect Patrick, but not in the way he wanted to be respected, and she did love him, not in the way he wanted to be loved. She didn’t know it then. She thought she knew something about him, she thought she knew that he didn’t really want to be whatever he was zealously making himself into. That arrogance might be called respect; that highhandedness, love. It didn’t do anything to make him happy.
    A few men wore jeans and turtlenecks or sweatshirts. Clifford was one of them, all in black. It was the time of the beatniks in San Francisco. Jocelyn had called Rose up on the phone and read her Howl . Clifford’s skin looked very tanned, against the black, his hair was long for the time and almost as light a color as unbleached cotton; his eyes too were very light in color, a bright gray-blue. He looked small and cat-like to Rose, rather effeminate; she hoped Patrick wouldn’t be too put off by him.
    There was beer to drink, and a wine punch. Jocelyn, who was a splendid cook, was stirring a pot of jambalaya. Rose made a trip to the bathroom to remove herself from Patrick, who seemed to want to stick close to her (she thought he was being a watchdog; she forgot that he might be shy). When she came out he had moved on. She drank three cups of punch in quick succession and was introduced to the woman who had written the play. To Rose’s surprise this woman was one of the drabbest, least confident-looking people in the room.
    “I liked your play,” Rose told her. As a matter of fact she had found it mystifying, and Patrick had thought it was revolting. It seemed to be about a woman who ate her own children. Rose knew that was symbolic, but couldn’t quite figure out what it was symbolic of.
    “Oh, but the production was terrible!” the woman said. In her embarrassment, her excitement and eagerness to talk about her play, she sprayed Rose with punch. “They made it so literal. I was afraid it would just come across as gruesome and I meant it to be quite delicate, I meant it to be so different from the way they made it.” She started telling Rose everything that had gone wrong, the miscasting, the chopping of the most important—the crucial —lines. Rose felt flattered, listening to these details, and tried inconspicuously to wipe away the spray.
    “But you did see what I meant?” the woman said.
    “Oh, yes!”
    Clifford poured Rose another cup of punch and smiled at her. “Rose, you look