Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

Many of them drifted away. New guests were arriving and Tommy Auveristas, excusing himself from Mrs. Bliss as if she were indeed the guest of honor, went off to greet them.

Ermalina Cervantes came back with her soft drink.

“Here you go,” she said. “It wasn’t cold enough, I put ice in it. Can you drink it with ice?”

“Oh, thank you. Cold is fine. This is good, I’m really enjoying it. But you know,” Mrs. Bliss said, “they fill up your glass with too much ice in a restaurant, they’re trying to water it down. I don’t let them get away with that. I send it back to the kitchen.”

“If there’s too much ice…”

“No, no, it’s perfect. Hits the spot. I was just saying.”

Ermalina Cervantes smiled at her. She had a beautiful smile, beautiful teeth. Beautiful skin. Mrs. Bliss set great store in pretty skin in a woman. She thought it revealed a lot about a person’s character. It wasn’t so important for a man to have a nice skin. Men had other ways of showing their hearts, but if a woman didn’t have sense enough to take care of her skin (it was the secret behind her own beauty; why people had bragged on her looks almost until she was seventy), then she didn’t really care about anything. The house could fall down around her ears and she’d never notice. She’d send her kids off to school all shlumperdik, shmuts on their faces, holes in their pants. But this was some Ermalina, this Ermalina. Teeth and skin! Butter wouldn’t melt.

Ermalina Cervantes, nervous under the scrutiny of Mrs. Bliss’s open stare, asked if anything were wrong.

“Wrong? What could be wrong, sweetheart? It’s a wonderful party. The pop is delicious. I never tasted better. You have a beautiful smile and wonderful teeth, and your skin is your crowning glory.”

“Oh,” Ermalina Cervantes said, “oh, thank you.”

“I hope you don’t mind my saying.”

“No, of course not. Thank you, Mrs. Bliss.”

“Please, dear. Dorothy.”

“Dorothy.”

“That’s better,” she said, “you make me very happy. I’ll tell you, I haven’t been this happy since my husband was alive. Older people like it when younger people use their first names. If you think it’s the opposite you’d be wrong. It shows respect for the person if the person calls the person by her first name than the other way around. Don’t ask me why, it’s a miracle. You’re blushing, am I talking too much? I’m talking too much. I can’t help it. Maybe because everyone’s so nice. You know, if I didn’t know pop don’t make you drunk I’d think I was drunk.”

A pretty blond named Susan Gutterman came by and Ermalina introduced her to Mrs. Bliss.

“Susan Gutterman,” Mrs. Bliss said speculatively. “You’re Jewish?”

“No.”

“Gutterman is a Jewish name.”

“My husband is Jewish. He’s from Argentina.”

“You? What are you?”

“Oh,” Susan Gutterman said offhandedly, “not much of anything, I guess. I’m a WASP.”

“A wasp?”

“A White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” Susan Gutterman explained.

“Oh, you’re of mixed blood.”

“May I bring you something to eat?” Susan Gutterman said.

“I haven’t finished my pop. We haven’t met but I know who you are,” said Mrs. Bliss, turning to a woman just then passing by. “You’re Carmen Auveristas, Tommy Auveristas’s wife.” Like all the other South Americans at the party she was a knockout, not anything like those stale cutouts and figures with their fancy guitars, big sombreros, spangled suits, and drooping mustaches thicker than paintbrushes that the Decorations Committee was always putting up for the galas on those Good Neighbor nights in the gussied-up game rooms. And not at all like the women who went about all overheated in their coarse, black, heavy mourning. Was it any wonder those galas were so poorly attended? They must have been insulted, Mrs. Ted Bliss thought. Portrayed like so many shvartzers. Sure, how would Jews like it?

“And I know who you are,” Carmen Auveristas said.

“Your husband’s very nice. Such a gentleman. He kissed my hand. Very continental. Very suave.”

“Have you met Elaine Munez?” Mrs. Auveristas asked.

“Your daughter, Louise, let me up. She tried to sell me a paper. Oh,” she told her fellow guest, the cop-and-paper-boy’s mother, “she must have called up my name on her walkie-talkie. That’s how the servant knew to give me my name tag. I was wondering about that.”

“May I bring you something to eat?” Elaine Munez said flatly.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I ate some supper before I came. I didn’t know what a spread you put on. Go, dear, it looks delicious. I wish I could eat hot spicy foods, but they give me gas. They burn my kishkas.”

The three women smiled dully and left her to stand by herself. Dorothy didn’t mind. Though she was having a ball, the strain of having to do all the talking was making her tired. She sat down in a big wing chair covered in a bright floral muslin. She was quite comfortable. Vaguely she was reminded of Sundays in Jackson Park when she and Ted and the three children had had picnics in the Japanese Gardens. In the beautiful room many of her pals from the Towers, there, like herself, in the penthouse for the first time, walked about, examining its expensive contents, trying out its furniture, accepting hors d’oeuvres from the caterers, and giggling, loosened up over highballs. Dorothy amused herself by trying to count the guests, keeping two sets of books, three — the Jews, those South Americans she recognized, and those she’d never seen before — but someone was always moving and, when she started over, she’d get all mixed up. It was a little like trying to count the number of musicians in Lawrence Welk’s band on television. The camera never stayed still long enough for her to get in all the trumpet players, trombonists, clarinet players, fiddlers, and whatnot. Sometimes a man with a saxophone would set it down and pick up something else. Then, when you threw in the singers…It could make you dizzy. Still, she was content enough.

Closing her eyes for a moment and concentrating as hard as she could — she was wearing her hearing aid; this was in the days when she owned only one — she attempted to distinguish between the English and Spanish conversations buzzing around her like flies.

Tommy Auveristas, kneeling beside her armchair, startled her.

Quite almost as much as she, bolting up, startled him, causing him to spill a little of the food from the plate he was extending toward her onto the cream Berber carpeting.

“Son of a bitch!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s my fault,” Mrs. Bliss volunteered. “If we rub it with seltzer it should come out! I’ll go and get some!”

“No, no, of course not. The maid will see to it. Stay where you are.”

Mrs. Bliss pushed herself up out of the armchair.

“ Stay where you are! ” Auveristas commanded. “I said the girl would see to it. Where is the nincompoop?”

Seeing he’d frightened Mrs. Bliss half to death, he abruptly modulated. “I’ve offended you. Forgive me, señora. You’re absolutely right. I think you’d be more comfortable someplace else. Here, take my arm. We’ll get out of this woman’s way while she works.” He said something in Spanish to the maid who, on her hands and knees, was picking a reddish sauce out of a trough of sculpted carpet before wiping the stain away with a wet cloth. He led Dorothy to a sofa — one of three — in a distant corner of the room. Seating her there, he asked again that she forgive him for his outburst and promised he’d be right back.

He returned with food piled high on a plate. “Ah, Mrs. Bliss,” he said. “Not knowing your preference in my country’s dishes, I have taken the liberty of choosing for you.”