Paul Theroux - Picture Palace

“Where’s the party?” asked Phoebe.

“Wellfleet,” he said. “At the Overalls.”

We had always known the Overalls. Like us, they were year-round residents of the Cape, and had a house on Chip-man’s Cove. My parents went to the uproar in Boston with Mr. and Mrs., and we played with the two children. I think they looked down on us a little because they swam in the cold water of the Bay and we had the warm water of the Sound; the implication was that they were hardy and we were effeminate and sissified, Standish Overall was about Orlando’s age, and Blanche was somewhere between Phoebe and me. Papa didn’t think much of Standish, and in fact said, “He looks like a girler,” which in Papa’s eyes was the worst thing you could be (“I hear this Frank Sinatra’s a fearful girler,” he said some years later. “How I wish that man would leave the building!”). Standish, who positively honked with confidence, was good at everything, had an athlete’s bounce and like other wealthy boys I knew had begun to go bald at twenty. Blanche was a vain prissy thing who behaved like his wife and who had occasional fits of aggression, like a person who knows deep down her feet stink.

Orlando said that Mr. and Mrs. Overall were away for the weekend and that Standish — or Sandy, as he was known — had got his hands on some bootleg liquor and was giving a party.

“I can wear my new dress,” said Phoebe.

“Miss Dromgoole’s not going to like this,” I said.

“I’ll take care of the Ghoul,” said Orlando.

“What’ll you say?”

“That I can’t go to a party without my sweethearts.”

Phoebe smiled, but I knew what he meant.

The Ghoul raged, but off we went in the winter dark, the three of us in Orlando’s car, the snow curling wildly in front of the headlights. And though we weren’t that young anymore, I felt we were all about ten years old, because no matter what age you are, if you are related like that you feel truant and reckless if you’re all sitting in the front seat of a car in a blinding snowstorm. Brothers and sisters never outgrow their past if it’s been happy. Orlando told us about his English poetry course and how he liked Harvard, and then we sang “Clementine” and “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain.”

The Cape was empty, the fallen snow was black, the trees looked stiffer in the cold; and if I thought anything I suppose it was about having spent the day photographing snow scenes from the window and how easy and untruthful it was compared with being in it. I sang, but I stared at the low wolfish woods and the toppling flakes and heard the tire chains doing a smacking rhumba on the mudguards. At the brows of hills the snowy sky and storm clouds hung like a shroud. It was coming down hard, but it wasn’t freezing — this snowfall brought a somber warmth to the road, damp and temporary — so the car cut its own track and tossed the slush aside and I could see the flying blobs sink in the banks and plow-marks at the roadside. Every so often there would be a soft thud as a mound of wet snow slid down an evergreen bough; then the bough would shake itself and spring up sighing.

Orlando said, imitating Papa, “Gawjus.”

Outside Wellfleet, below the small village, the Overalls’ house was twinkling on the cove. It faced the Bay, where a commotion of waves, whiter than the snow, was rising to meet the storm and traveling in to beat against the low jetty: flecks of white on the swells highlighting the turbulence, peaks subsiding and beginning, a sound at the sea-wall like icy digestion, and from the house, laughter.

There was something barbarous about all those drunken people raising hell in the house on such a beautiful night, and as soon as I saw them at the windows I wanted to go away. I said, “I hate parties.”

“You might meet a nice fella,” said Orlando.

“I’ve got a nice fella,” I said. I squeezed his gloved hand. “I’m staying with you.”

He said, “What about you, Phoebe?”

“You know damn well what I want,” she said.

Orlando laughed, then yanked up the hand brake. The motor shuddered, coughed, spat, and died.

Inside, there were mostly youngsters, tearing around and sweating. They were ladling some sort of orange poison out of a punchbowl which had hunks of bruised grapefruit in it. It was a fairly typical get-together for those years: if people weren’t drinking there was a dead silence; if they were, they were drunk. There was no in-between.

Everyone cheered, seeing Orlando, and they swept him away from Phoebe and me. For the next hour or so it was a madhouse, the noisy college crowd making a night of it, one enormous brute pounding a ukulele with his knuckles, couples canoodling on the sofa, and some out cold and making a Q-sign with their tongues hanging out of their mouths.

I was deeply shocked. It dawned on me that I was seeing another side of Orlando: this person had been hidden from me, and I wanted to take him, then and there, and go home. Boys in crimson sweaters kept coming over and asking Phoebe to dance. She said no, but at last I said, “You might as well,” and she began dancing with Sandy. Then Orlando, who had not been dancing, snatched a girl’s arm and whirled her around in front of Phoebe. The dancers were jumping so hard the pictures shook on the walls. I sat there with my feet together thinking: I’m a photographer.

Later, Orlando came over to me. His eyes were glazed and his other self smirked. He said, “Where’s Phoebe?”

“Dancing her feet off.”

He made a face. “Why aren’t you?”

“No one asked me,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to.”

He dragged me out of my chair and whisked me to the center of the room. Then he did a kind of monkey-shuffle; I imitated him and we were dancing. I heard someone say, “That’s his sister,” and I tried even harder.

Orlando knew a trick that took my breath away each time he did it. It was this: he stood in one spot, clenched his fists at his sides and did a backward somersault, landing on his feet. He had done it for us in the garden or on the beach — I had a photograph of him where he appeared as a pair of whirling trousers above an admiring Phoebe. That night dancing with me he did three of them in a row and caused such a sensation that everyone stopped to watch him. He very nearly took a spill on his last somersault — he backflipped and I thought he was going to land on his stomach — but he came up smiling on two feet.

Phoebe said, “Stop it, Ollie, you’re going to be sick.”

Orlando, who was red in the face from all those jumps, said, “I’m all right — I can prove it.”

“Go ahead,” said Phoebe.

“Give me room.”

People had gathered around to listen, and after that wild dancing and those somersaults Orlando’s curly hair was damp with sweat and lying close to his head. He blazed with energy, his shirt half unbuttoned and his teeth gleaming. Someone kicked the phonograph and it stopped yakking “What’ll I Do” and Orlando said in his growly voice,

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber…

There was a hush — he had silenced them with his superb poem, one I had never heard before. And I knew why he was saying it. I was proud: he was declaring his love for me. I saw everyone watching, and even Phoebe, who had criticized him for his somersaulting and acted as if he was showing off — I saw her rapt attention. Her dress was open at her neck and she was breathing hard, her breasts going up and down. I tried to catch her eye, but she faced Orlando, her mouth rounded as if she were saying, “Ollie,”

Orlando’s voice teased and swelled and dropped, became emphatic on one word and nearly sang another. Each syllable had a different weight. Now he was hunched, and seemed to be listening as he spoke.