Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

It was this, she knew, that reconciled her to the news in Ellen’s telegram. It was this, however odd it might seem, that had produced such calm, allowed such cheer.

She had an idea! And what so delighted her about her idea was the fact that she knew she was rising to an occasion. She was into her eighties now. People in their eighties will have been called upon to rise to occasions countless numbers of times — all those births and deaths and ceremonies; all those pitched battles of obligation that made up a life, constructed it like a laborious masonry of rough expectations. The rare thing, the sweet and marvelous thing, was to rise to an occasion gratuitously, out of some sheer sense of its Tightness, its dead solid joy, all its, well, nondeductible, not-for-profit giftness.

She would throw a party for the happy couple when they returned from their honeymoon cruise. Her condo wasn’t big enough so she’d host it in the game room of Building One. She’d have to find a date when it was available, of course, but that shouldn’t be difficult. Since there were fewer occupancies in the Towers there was less demand on the facilities these days. Indeed, as the idea for the reception formed in Mrs. Bliss’s mind it became increasingly clear to her that the affair (the concept of the party already beginning to snowball, transmuting itself from simple party to reception to affair; if she didn’t rein herself in at least a little, before she knew it she’d have a full-blown gala on her hands) would have to be catered. This was beyond some one-woman deal. From the first she hadn’t even wanted it to be and, even if she did, she knew she wasn’t up to the task of preparing the game room, let alone all that food, by herself. The more Mrs. Bliss thought about it the less enthusiasm she had. Who would she invite? If she invited her family, whoever was left, the remnants of the old gang in Chicago, her kids in Cincinnati and Providence, all her globe-trotting, scattered grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it would send the wrong signals. This wasn’t intended to be some last hurrah thing. All she’d meant was to introduce the happy couple to each other’s neighbors and some of her Florida friends. Maybe she would even send a special invitation to Wilcox in Houston if for no other reason than to witness the cure he’d wrought.

All right, so the snowball was starting to melt, break up under the heat of her cooled-down second thoughts. But that was all right, too. Now she didn’t have to worry about arranging for game rooms and caterers and all the foofaraw a gala would involve. Not that she was losing her enthusiasm for the idea of doing something for them, just for the overkill of her first hasty impressions. One thing, though. She had better stop planning for the thing (whatever it turned out to be) and do something before all that was left of the snowball was a great puddle.

Commit yourself, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, and decided she would fire off a telegram of her own, offering her congratulations to the bride and groom and announcing her intentions about the party.

Which was easier said than done.

About an hour after she phoned in her message, Western Union called to apologize. They were sorry, the operator told her, but at this point they weren’t accepting nonessential civilian communication between the United States and the cruise ships in that area of the Atlantic. Both telegraphic and all two-way air traffic had been put on hold while the weather emergency was still in effect. If she wished, she could cancel her message or, if she preferred, they’d file it with the rest of their backlog and send it first-priority once the ship was out of harm’s way.

“Harm’s way?”

“Once they’re sure which direction this fella’s gonna jump,” said the male operator at the other end of the line.

Even more out of hunch than superstition, Mrs. Bliss told Western Union to cancel altogether. She’d call back when the coast was clear.

But maybe it was superstition. It made her nervous (it always had) to fix on a specific date too long before its time. Even when she’d organized Maxine’s wedding she had postponed making the arrangements for as long as she could. Don’t get her wrong, she was crazy about George, she was rooting for their marriage, and it had nothing to do with losing the deposit or anything like that. It was only that Mrs. Bliss felt there was something just a little too cocksure about making long-range plans. Man proposes, God disposes. Something like that.

And now, too, something spooky about that out-of-harm’s-way business. She was familiar with the phrase. It was something they always dragged out in wartime, impending crisis. She didn’t like the sound of it, and though Western Union had been very polite and explained to her about keeping the traffic lanes open between Ellen’s boat and the land, once the United States was dragged into it, everything started to seem much too important and official sounding. The United States?

Mrs. Bliss turned on the television to see if they’d interrupt a program for a special news bulletin. Sure enough, she didn’t have long to wait. They cut away to an expert standing by at the National Hurricane Center and then leapfrogged to another expert at the U.S. Meteorological Survey in Atlanta, Georgia. Both men seemed very excited. Andrew’s winds were gusting from between 100 and 130 miles per hour and had been unofficially clocked as high as 185 miles per hour. If it didn’t veer to the east it was expected to hit the Bahamas with heroic force sometime in the middle of the night. It would be, both the Atlanta and Coral Gables guys agreed, the mother of all hurricanes. Already, all ships in the area had been instructed to change course in the hope of either outrunning or evading the storm that was moving along at about 25 knots. She didn’t know what a knot was exactly, but the experts couldn’t get over it. Between them they had over fifty-seven years in the weather business and neither could remember a storm packing such high wind velocities to travel at such a speed toward whatever would turn out to be its ultimate destination. Because usually the more furiously a hurricane’s winds revolved about its eye the more moisture it picked up from the sea and the heavier it became. The heavier it was the slower it traveled toward impact. This one, though, this one was a horse of a different color, and may the good Lord have mercy on whatever got in its way!

Mrs. Bliss, hooked, watched all the channels for the latest developments. Again and again she saw the same experts talking to each of the anchors on the major networks. Idly, she wondered if these experts were paid extra for going on the different shows. Officially, she supposed, they were civil servants. Probably, if it happened, they were paid under the table.

Even the local meteorologists were having a field day. They put their Skywatch and Doppler Weather Alert and Skywarn and Instant Color Weather Radar systems into play, all their latest, fancy, up-to-the-minute machinery. Their jackets were off, their collars and ties undone, their sleeves rolled up. Only the civil servants, Mrs. Bliss noticed, shvitzed in their buttoned, inexpensive, dress code suits, but everyone, from the TV meteorologists to the experts at the National Hurricane Center and U.S. Meteorological Survey served up a kind of short course on hurricanes. Vaguely, Mrs. Bliss was reminded of the lectures delivered by the community college professors who used to come to the Towers game rooms to talk about their disciplines.

It was very impressive, lulling, too, in a peculiar way, rather like the gardening, cooking, and home improvement shows she sometimes watched — programs for young homemakers: furniture stripping, interior decoration, foreign cooking. Before she knew it she was as involved in the science of these powerful storm systems as ever she’d been in an actual entertainment show, absorbed in all the interesting bits and pieces — the gossip of tempest. She learned, for example, that hurricanes could be two hundred to three hundred miles in diameter, that they were nurtured by low pressure fronts and rose in the east and moved west (just like the sun, just like the sun! worried Mrs. Ted Bliss) on the trade winds, that an eye of a hurricane was about twenty miles in diameter and traveled counterclockwise from between ten and fifteen miles per hour as the winds blew it along above the sea, sucking up the warm, evaporating ocean. She learned that storm clouds, called walls, surrounded the eye, that it was these that caused the most damage, kicking up dangerous waves, called storm surges, that forced the sea to rise several feet above normal. Especially destructive at high tide, they brought on terrific, murderous floods.