What's for Dinner? by James Schuyler (to read list .txt) 📕

grandmother, God rest her soul. I was always tripping over my own feet, just like the boys. ‘Don’t sit down like a spoonful of mush,’ she used to say to me. I can hear her now.”

“Which grandmother was that?” Michael asked.

“Your great-grandmother Bellowes. She had a light hand with pastry but a strong one with the switch.”

“You make good pies,” Patrick said.

“Look at them,” Bryan said, whom the twins closely resembled, not least in bulk, “food, food, food.”

“I said,” Maureen said, “that’s enough. I can never imagine how Mary Lottie keeps this room so spit tidy: there’s not a thing in it that isn’t a dust-catcher. And without a maid.”

“Oh,” Biddy said. “I thought she had Mrs Gompers come in once a week to help out.”

“She’d never let her in here,” Maureen said. “Mrs Gompers is just for heavy work: waxing the kitchen floor and so on. She’d reduce those—“ she pointed to a laden knick-knack stand, “to smithereens. I ought to know. I’ll never forget the day she dropped that stack of Spode plates. I rushed into the pantry and she was standing there shaking her head and saying, ‘Butterfingers.’ I let her finish out the day, but that was the end of that.”

“With your vim,” Biddy said, “you don’t really need the help. Not that it mightn’t be a nice change for you to get out more.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining,” Maureen said.

In the kitchen Lottie was saying, “I think we should have offered cocktails.”

“Bryan already had a few,” Norris said. “Couldn’t you smell it?”

“So had Maureen. Bourbon smells even worse than it tastes.” She was lifting a turkey onto a platter while he funneled California claret from a jug into a decanter. “Could you reach down that sauce boat?” Norris opened the cupboard and remarked in an idle tone, “I see somebody else has had a few.”

His wife didn’t answer, but her cheeks were red, and not from the oven.

At the table Norris said, “I expect you boys would like the drumsticks.”

“They take what’s served them,” Bryan said.

“Aren’t they old enough for half a glass of wine?” Lottie asked. “They look it.”

“Oh sure,” Bryan said. “I’d rather have them drink in front of me than behind my back.”

“As you did behind your father’s?” Biddy said with a twinkle. “Remember the time he smelled beer on your breath? My, he certainly gave you a hiding.”

“And I was none the worse for it,” Bryan said, surveying his sons. “May I refill your glass, Lottie?”

“Why, yes, thank you.” She was toying with the food on her plate rather than eating.

“Fellow told me an interesting story today,” Bryan said, “at the office. Man I’ve worked with twenty years. Actually, it wasn’t at the office: it was at lunch—Mariano’s (glad you’re not having ravioli tonight). Seems he has this son going on for nineteen maybe, in his second year in college. Or they thought he was in college. Letters kept coming pretty regularly, asking for money of course—some extra expense, lab fees, or like that. Well as luck would have it, business took Hal into the area of the college so he thought he’d drop in, surprise the kid. And you know what? He wasn’t there. Vanished into thin air. Luckily, Hal knew his son’s roommate from the year before—knew his name anyway—and he was there all right. As soon as Hal introduced himself the kid broke down and admitted he’d been forwarding Hal Junior’s letters: young Hal hadn’t even registered for the fall term but was living in New York—Greenwich Village or some place like that, living with some girl and off of the money he was supposed to use for college. Hal was so disgusted he wanted to drop the matter right there but his wife went all to pieces and insisted. So—can you believe it?—they’re paying him an allowance until he gets on his feet and decides if he wants to go on with college. I would have shown him the sole of my boot.”

“He should have confided in his mother,” Maureen said.

“Was he always a wild boy?” Lottie asked. “Do they think he was using drugs?”

“My sympathies are with the family of the girl,” Biddy said. “Just imagine how they must feel. Why they may not even know where she is! I don’t understand all this running away. And the places they run to sound so simply dreadful.”

“Sowing wild oats is not exactly a novelty,” Norris said. “One of my uncles passed some bum checks in college—forged his father’s signature. The old man popped him into a clinic for a year and he grew up to be excessively scrupulous about money. Always paid cash. For everything: wouldn’t even have a mortgage on his house.”

“That,” Bryan said, “is financially foolish. But I must say, I think a little less of Hal. Weak-kneed, I call it.”

Lottie held out her glass and Bryan filled it.

“Oh judge not lest,” Biddy said. “You never know all the ins and outs of family life. There may be extenuating circumstances. Who knows? It may bring them all the closer together in the end. So often a troubled passage is the prelude to peaceful seas.”

“And a prosperous voyage,” Norris said.

Lottie belched quietly. “That uncle of yours—the forger—was he a clergyman’s son?”

“Yes, he was, and please don’t tell me clergymen’s children always turn out badly.”

“They often do,” Lottie insisted. “People expect them to be models of goodness knows what and they rebel.”

“May I offer you a little more of the breast, Mrs Delehantey?” Norris asked.

“Oh no thank you,” Biddy said. “Well, just a morsel.”

“No seconds for the boys,” Bryan said. “They’re supposed to be in training.”

“What are you in training for?” Norris asked.

“Well, one of you answer,” Bryan said.

“I was waiting for my mouth to be empty,” Patrick said. “Spring training for the football squad.”

“We go out for football,” Michael explained.

“You’ve got the builds for it,” Norris said. “Though I don’t remember seeing you at any of the home games last fall.”

“We weren’t old enough then,” Michael said.

“You