Who Do You Think You Are

shivering in the cool wet night. Her feelings were as confused as anybody’s can get. She was humiliated, she was ashamed of Patrick. But she knew that it was his style that most humiliated her, and that made her suspect something corrupt and frivolous in herself. She was angry at those other people who were cleverer, or at least far quicker, than he was. She wanted to think badly of them. What did they care about Indians, really? Given a chance to behave decently to an Indian, Patrick might just come out ahead of them. This was a long shot, but she had to believe it. Patrick was a good person. His opinions were not good, but he was. The core of Patrick, Rose believed, was simple, pure and trustworthy. But how was she to get at it, to reassure herself, much less reveal it to others?
    She heard the back door close and was afraid that Jocelyn had come out looking for her. Jocelyn was not someone who could believe in Patrick’s core. She thought him stiff-necked, thick-skulled, and essentially silly.
    It was not Jocelyn. It was Clifford. Rose didn’t want to have to say anything to him. Slightly drunk as she was, woebegone, wet-faced from the rain, she looked at him without welcome. But he put his arms around her and rocked her.
    “Oh Rose. Rose baby. Never mind. Rose.”
    So this was Clifford.
    For five minutes or so they were kissing, murmuring, shivering, pressing, touching. They returned to the party by the front door. Cyril was there. He said, “Hey, wow, where have you two been?”
    “Walking in the rain,” said Clifford coolly. The same light possibly hostile voice in which he had told Rose she looked delicious. The Patrick-baiting had stopped. Conversation had become looser, drunker, more irresponsible. Jocelyn was serving jambalaya. She went to the bathroom to dry her hair and put lipstick on her rubbed-bare mouth. She was transformed, invulnerable. The first person she met coming out was Patrick. She had a wish to make him happy. She didn’t care now what he had said, or would say.
    “I don’t think we’ve met, sir,” she said, in a tiny flirtatious voice she used with him sometimes, when they were feeling easy together. “But you may kiss my hand.”
    “For crying out loud,” said Patrick heartily, and he did squeeze her and kiss her, with a loud smacking noise, on the cheek. He always smacked when he kissed. And his elbows always managed to dig in somewhere and hurt her.
    “Enjoying yourself?” Rose said.
    “Not bad, not bad.”
    During the rest of the evening, of course, she was playing the game of watching Clifford while pretending not to watch him, and it seemed to her he was doing the same, and their eyes met, a few times, without expression, sending a perfectly clear message that rocked her on her feet. She saw him quite differently now. His body that had seemed small and tame now appeared to her light and slippery and full of energy; he was like a lynx or a bobcat. He had his tan from skiing. He went up Seymour Mountain and skied. An expensive hobby, but one which Jocelyn felt could not be denied him, because of the problems he had with his image. His masculine image, as a violinist, in this society. So Jocelyn said. Jocelyn had told Rose all about Clifford’s background: the arthritic father, the small grocery store in a town in upstate New York, the poor tough neighborhood. She had talked about his problems as a child; the inappropriate talent, the grudging parents, the jeering schoolmates. His childhood left him bitter, Jocelyn said. But Rose no longer believed that Jocelyn had the last word on Clifford.
    T HE PARTY WAS ON a Friday night. The phone rang the next morning, when Patrick and Anna were at the table eating eggs.
    “How are you?” said Clifford.
    “Fine.”
    “I wanted to phone you. I thought you might think I was just drunk or something. I wasn’t.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “I’ve thought about you all night. I thought about you before, too.” “Yes.” The kitchen was dazzling. The whole scene in front of her, of Patrick and Anna at the table, the coffee pot with dribbles down the side, the jar of marmalade, was exploding with joy and possibility and danger. Rose’s mouth was so dry she could hardly talk.
    “It’s a lovely day,” she said. “Patrick and Anna and I might go up the mountain.”
    “Patrick’s home?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh God. That was dumb of me. I forgot nobody else works Saturdays. I’m over here at a rehearsal.”
    “Yes.”
    “Can you