Helen Yglesias - The Girls

“I won’t be able to hear what anybody is saying except the persons on my left and right. I want to hear what everybody is saying. It’s my party, and I want to hear what’s going on.”

Finally fixed in the middle of the long table, she became engrossed in the question of seating others, and in the quality of the menu.

“This must be costing a fortune,” she said in a loud whisper to her daughter. “It better not show up on my bill, that’s all I have to say.” And said it a number of times.

She wore a handsome black-and-white pantsuit, but it was slung on her wasted body as if on a wire hanger, and with her moon face even her careful hairdo and makeup could not erase the deformation. She repeatedly questioned her daughter in a whisper everyone heard.

“Who invited him?”

Nieces and nephews she seldom saw were a special target.

“Who invited her? I guess she came for the food. She’s not fooling me, not one bit. I know why she came. They come if it’s convenient,” she ventured between wine toasts to her continuing years. “They live nearby, so they come. For the food. Look how they’re eating. Otherwise you wouldn’t see them.”

Relatives who lived in Florida had been urged to appear to make the occasion sufficiently gala. Only Eva’s children and a couple of her grandchildren had come from distant points, her son and daughter for reasons other than the party, the son from Philadelphia, the daughter from Colorado, to settle questions of health care, of the sale of Eva’s holdings, of what to do next about doctors, medication, permanent care until death. Eva’s grandson had come from Albuquerque. He was a middle-aged man, almost bald, tall and muscular, handsome, loving and attentive to Grandma’s slightest wish, an obvious favorite. The granddaughter was a Botticelli in a flowered dress that flowed from her lovely bosom down to her feet, big in long black flats. Her fair hair, loose around her classically beautiful face, was pushed behind her ears to cascade down her graceful back. She looked in her twenties, though Jenny knew she was in her late thirties, the mother of three of Eva’s great-grandchildren, and a professor of art history at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I wear my hair up in a bun in class, Aunt Jenny,” she said when Jenny teased about students trying to date her.

“ Great -aunt Jenny,” her brother corrected, and lifted his glass in a salute. He loved the idea of family, of greats and great-greats. Jenny had visited his house, complete with old family pictures carefully framed and hung. “And of course the kids try to date her,” he added.

The service was slow, but there was already much on the table. They drank wine, mineral water, ginger ale; ate bread, challa, and butter; amused themselves with pickles, coleslaw, sauerkraut, applesauce, black and green olives, sticks of celery and carrots, and a tasty corn mixture.

“We’ll be full before they serve dinner,” Flora said, and proposed another toast to Eva, this one to the artist in Eva, in every woman, in every man, in all life, the artistry with which mankind and womankind lived their lives “as Eva has done, as Eva is doing right now, living out her days as a work of art. May she live till one hundred years.”

“What did she say?” Eva said. “What was Flora mumbling about? If she isn’t the center of attention she’s not happy. So let her be happy, whatever she said. What did she say?”

But the fruit cup arrived and claimed Eva’s full concentration. Chicken soup with matzo balls followed quickly, and then there was another long pause. Naomi filled this one. She had written a poem in praise of Eva, her theme the great distances people had traveled to be present. Some of it rhymed, some didn’t.

A long poem, made longer by Naomi’s halting reading and the audience’s interruptions of appreciation. Some of it was unintelligible to Jenny, but the ending came through clearly.

Under cover of the applause and laughter someone said, “Isn’t that a football team?” And Jenny heard Eva complaining, “I couldn’t hear a word, not a word. What did she say? She looks beautiful, I’ll say that for her.”

Naomi did indeed look beautiful, in dress, hat, manner, serene face and carriage. She had been silent before reading the poem and was silent afterwards, turning from speaker to speaker with her large, intelligent eyes fixed on their faces, smiling, smiling, smiling — at Eva, at the relatives, at the waiters, at her own reflection in a compact mirror, at Jenny across the table, and again at her own reflection.

Following the chicken, potatoes, mixed vegetables, salad, and compote came the birthday cake, complete with the blowing out of the candles after the “Happy Birthday” song, in which the staff and waiters joined. Then coffee and tea (decaffeinated) and a round of champagne.

Jenny felt Eva’s exhaustion even as Eva forced herself to rise to the occasion. For a few minutes, with a great effort of will and memory, Eva became the woman she had always been in social situations — alert, elegant, and gracious. In a clear, strong voice, she thanked everybody for coming, for their gifts of flowers and their good wishes, and in turn wished them “all the good things of life” and a very, very good night, before inexplicably reverting to irritability when her daughter announced that the party was shifting to “the ballroom.”

“I’m too tired. And what about the flowers? Take, take, everyone, we don’t want them to go to waste, and I can’t use all these flowers. Come on, come on, come on, I’m tired, let’s get this over with.”

Shepherded by Eva’s daughter, everyone moved in a clumsy body, by wheelchairs, walkers, canes, and legs, to a large room off the central lobby where live music was being supplied by a group of half-live musicians. There was a good-sized waxed floor, with some surprisingly athletic old couples dancing. It was the Villa Rosa’s regular Saturday night dance, decorated with miniature silver top hats, confetti, balloons, and ivory cigarette holders dangling from the ceiling.

“They try to make it feel like the twenties when we were all young. Some try.” Eva, dripping scorn.

There were prizes and refreshments at a long table, a special area for wheelchairs and walkers, and a small platform for the decrepit five-man band. The saxophonist was deathly white. Each intake of breath might be his last, and the drummer, his heavy body swaying and yearning toward the floor, made Jenny nervous.

“They make fools of themselves here every Saturday night,” Eva said, “but what the hell, I come and watch them anyway.”

Eva’s Botticelli granddaughter electrified the room and was seized on by a thin, stooped old man who had been dancing around the floor alone. She begged off, he persisted passionately and won. He didn’t try to embrace her in a traditional lead, but danced in the current style, without touching, facing her. In a black pinstripe suit too big for his wasted body, his tie loosened, his white hair fluttering, his limbs as if screwed in at the wrong angle, his feet dragging, his back bent almost double, no longer able to convey rhythm with his wreck of a body, he used whatever he had left, kept time with a raised index finger, greeted the draggy music with an eloquent dip of his drooping head, marked the beat with a defining stamp of one aching foot, his face ecstatic, his shoulders rolling, a dancer to the end, which might seize him at any instant. Meanwhile, he treasured his turn with his enchanting springtime youth in her long flowered dress and flowing hair, stumbling about in her large flat-heeled shoes, embarrassed as hell.