Thomas Disch - On Wings of Song

“You could have gone too, if you’d wanted,” Milly argued.

Cecelia disdained to reply.

“And from that she went on to become his secretary?” Daniel asked.

“ One of his secretaries.”

“Cecelia’s jealous,” Milly explained. “Aurelia earns approximately double what she does. Despite how many years in dental school?”

“A lifetime.”

“Aurelia is awfully pretty,” Rose explained.

“She certainly is,” Abe agreed with paternal complaisance. “But so is Cecelia. Every bit as pretty. They’re twins, after all.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Michael, and held out his empty wine glass.

Daniel, sitting next to the bottle, refilled his brother-in-law’s glass.

“Let’s change the subject, shall we?” suggested Cecelia. “I’m sure Daniel has all kinds of questions he’s dying to ask.”

“I’m sure I must, but so help me I can’t think of one.”

“Then I can,” said Rose, holding out her glass to him. “Or have you already heard about Eugene Mueller?”

“No.” The bottle was empty, so Daniel reached behind him for a fresh bottle from the bucket on the folding table. “Has Eugene returned from the dead too?”

Rose nodded. “Years and years ago. With a wife and two sons and a degree from Harvard Law School.”

“No kidding.”

“They even say he’s going to be the next mayor. He’s a real idealist. I think.”

“If he is elected,” Michael said, “he’ll be the first Democrat mayor in Amesville in nearly half a century.”

“Incredible,” said Daniel. “Gee, I wish I could vote for him.”

“He was a good friend of yours, wasn’t he?” Jerry asked.

Daniel nodded.

“And his brother ,” Rose went on, ignoring dirty looks from both Milly and Cecelia, “that is to say, his oldest brother, Carl — you knew him too, didn’t you?”

Daniel popped the cork from the third bottle and managed to fill Rose’s glass without spilling a drop. “We’d met,” he allowed.

“Well, he’s dead,” said Rose with satisfaction. “A sniper got him in Wichita.”

“What was he doing in Wichita?”

“He’d been called up for National Guard duty.”

“Oh.”

“I thought you’d like to know.”

“Well, now he knows,” said Milly. “I hope you’re satisfied.”

“That’s too bad,” said Daniel. He looked round the table. “Anybody else need to be replenished?”

Abe looked at his glass, which was almost empty.

Milly said, “Abe.”

“I guess I’ve had my limit.”

“I guess you have,” said Milly. “You have some more, if you want, Daniel. You’re probably more used to it than we are.”

“That’s show business, Mother. We drink it for breakfast. But in fact I’ve reached my limit too. I’ve got to go on stage in two hours.”

“An hour and a half, more nearly,” said Cecelia. “Don’t worry — I’m keeping track.”

The phone rang again just after Cecelia had passed round the dessert, which was home-made raspberry ice cream. It was tremendous ice cream, and she was back at the table before anyone had bothered to start talking again.

“Who was that?” Michael asked.

“Another crank. Best thing is just ignore them.”

“You, too?” said Milly.

“Oh, they’re all harmless enough, I’m sure.”

“You should tell them to stuff it,” said Rose militantly. “That’s what I do.”

“You all get crank phone calls?” Daniel asked.

“Oh, I don’t get them on your account,” Rose assured him. “It’s because I’m a phoney.”

“I told her not to,” said Jerry morosely, “but she wouldn’t listen. She never listens.”

“It’s a person’s own business what color she is.” She looked Daniel square in the eye. “Am I right?”

“Don’t lay the blame on Daniel’s shoulders,” Milly snapped. “It was your own damned folly, and you’ll just have to live with it till the stuff wears off. How long does that take, by the way?”

“About six months,” said Daniel.

“Christ All-Mighty.” Jerry turned to his ex-fiancée. “You said six weeks .”

“Well, I don’t intend to let it wear off. So there. You all act like it’s a crime or something. It’s not a crime — it’s an affirmation!”

“I thought we’d agreed,” said Cecilia, “that Rose’s trip to the beauty parlor was something we weren’t going to talk about.”

“Don’t all look at me,” said Rose, who was showing some visible signs of distress. “ I didn’t bring it up.”

“Yes you did,” said Jerry. “You brought it up when you said about the phone calls you’d been getting.”

Rose began to cry. She left the table and went out into the living room, and then (the screen door banged) into the front yard. Jerry followed a moment later, mumbling an apology.

“What kind of phone calls?” Daniel asked Cecelia.

“Really, it isn’t worth discussing.”

“There’s various kinds,” said Milly. “Most are just obscene in an ordinary loudmouth way. A few have been personally threatening, but you can tell they don’t really mean it. I’ve also had a couple who said they were going to burn down the restaurant, and I reported those to the police.”

“Mother!”

“And so should you, Cecelia, if you do get that kind.”

“It isn’t Daniel’s fault if a bunch of lunatics have nothing better to do with their time than to… Oh, I don’t know.”

“I’m not blaming Daniel. I’m answering his question.”

“I was going to ask you, Daniel,” said his father, with a composure that came from not having paid attention to what had seemed, by the sound of it, just another squabble, “about the book you gave me. What’s it called?” He looked under his chair.

“ The Chicken Consubstantial With the Egg ,” said Daniel. “I think you left it in the other room.”

“That’s it. Kind of a strange title, isn’t it? What does it mean?”

“It’s a sort of popular modern-day account of the Holy Trinity. And about different heresies.”

“Oh.”

“When I was in prison you brought me a book by the same writer, Jack Van Dyke. This is his latest book, and it’s actually rather amusing. I got him to sign it for you.”

“Oh. Well, when I read it, I’ll write him a letter, if you think he’d like that.”

“I’m sure he would.”

“ I thought perhaps it was something you wrote.”

“No. I’ve never written a book.”

“He sings,” Milly explained, with ill-controlled resentment. Abe’s vagaries brought out her mean streak. “ ‘La di da and la di dee, this is living, yessiree.’”

This time it was Cecelia who got up from the table in tears, knocking over, as she did so, the folding table on which the over-flow of the dinner had been placed, including the carcass of the half-cooked turkey.

Daniel regarded the idyl of the Hendricks’ front yard with a wistful, megalopolitan nostalgia. It all seemed so remote and unobtainable — the pull-toy on the sidewalk, the idle water-sprinkler, the modest flower-beds with their parallelograms of pansies, marigolds, petunias, and bachelor buttons.

Milly was perfectly within her rights being pissed off with him. Not just for not having got in touch for all those years, but because he’d violated her first principles, as they were written out in this front yard and up and down all the streets of Amesville: stability, continuity, family life, the orderly handing on of the torch from generation to generation.

In his own way, Grandison Whiting was probably after pretty much the same thing. Except in his version of it, it wasn’t just a family he wanted, but a dynasty. At the distance from which Daniel observed it, it looked like six of one, half a dozen of the other. He wondered if it wasn’t really the only way it could be done, and thought it probably was.