Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“I’m not arguing. I’m stating a fact. I dislike Talmadge parties, and I dislike most Talmadge people.”

He nodded once, briefly, and fell into a sullen silence, which lasted all the way into the noisy living room of a sumptuous house set on twelve lovely acres of land. The houses in Talmadge, or at least the ones to which he and Amanda received invitations, were somewhere in the forty- to seventy-five-thousand-dollar bracket. Some had swimming pools, some had ponds, all had at least six acres of choice Connecticut countryside. There was still a shortage of capable household help in 1952, but the citizens of Talmadge managed very well with thrice-weekly cleaning girls, and gardeners who kept their spacious grounds immaculately landscaped. There was a chicken in every pot and, in addition to that, two cars in every garage, and Matthew had learned very quickly that Talmadge was what might be called a moneyed town. None of the Talmadge men discussed their salaries openly, of course. But then, Matthew had never heard of any men anywhere discussing their salaries openly, except perhaps on the Malay Archipelago where they were paid in amulets and betel nuts. The men of Talmadge were paid in good hard United States currency, and they didn’t have to discuss how much they were paid at all. Those cleaning girls and gardeners hadn’t come free with the house. Those Cadillacs in the two-car garages hadn’t been acquired with soap coupons and a letter of twenty-five words or less. The Talmadge women dressed to the teeth, and they didn’t do it on the income of ditch-digger husbands. However much these men earned, Matthew knew it was plenty. He didn’t begrudge them a cent of it. He simply wished they had a lot of legal problems and would take them to Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang.

As befitted men of means, there was plenty of liquor at Talmadge parties. Vodka had not yet assumed consumer proportions bordering on the epidemic, but there were fifths and fifths of Scotch, rye, bourbon, and gin, with a smaller play on rum, wherever Matthew went. The liquor wasn’t ostentatiously displayed; you simply knew instinctively that when a bottle ran dry there would be a closetful of new bottles from which to replace it. The replacement was effected quite often. The people of Talmadge drank fast and they drank hard. Matthew was amazed by the number of empty bottles he lined up alongside the trash barrel after a night of even small-scale revelry. He was amazed because Talmadge parties were always full of social chatter and pleasant music and well-groomed men and dazzling women who seemed to be conducting themselves in a perfectly sober and civilized manner, but apparently all these socially civilized sophisticates were belting away at the bottle at a surprisingly rapid clip. Nor did they ever show any of the apparent effects of steady alcohol consumption; not once did Matthew see anyone, man or woman, who he could say with certainty was drunk. There was no falling down at Talmadge parties. Nor was there any stumbling or staggering.

The bottles were set up in a row alongside the ice bucket, and the host served the first drink and refilled the glass when that was gone, and the standing rule was that everyone was on his own after that. Everyone accepted the rule and made the requisite trips back and forth between the conversation groups and the bar whenever his glass was empty. His glass seemed to be empty every five minutes or so. There was the drinking of whiskey before dinner — rarely was there a party given in Talmadge that did not include dinner, usually a buffet — and the drinking of wine during dinner, and the taking of brandy or liqueur after dinner, and then the hard drinking began again as soon as the cordials had calmed the stomach, and continued until the early hours of the morning when the patty broke up. People got warmer and happier as the evening wore on. New friends became old friends. No one ever got drunk, but the steady consumption of alcohol did much to contribute to a lessening of rigidity, a feeling of warmth and relaxation.

There was always music going at a Talmadge party. The host generally started the hi-fi a half hour before his guests arrived, warming up the set with Scheherazade , a classical introduction that set the tone for an evening of civilized intercourse. He would set up his bottles and his glasses and his soda and his water and his tonic and his ice cubes while Rimsky-Korsakov flowed from twin speakers and his wife yelled from the kitchen, where she was putting the finishing touches to beef Stroganoff for twenty, to turn that thing down, she couldn’t hear herself think. The host would shrug a little, wondering what the sense was in having a hi-fi if you couldn’t play the records loud. But he’d turn the volume down and then pour himself a little Canadian-and-soda, and sit in an easy chair, and look out at his garden or his fields or his favorite tree, and in a little while his wife would come in from the kitchen wearing a long hostess gown with a sequined party apron over it, and he would pour her a drink, and they would await their guests together, slightly expectant, slightly excited, but enjoying these last few moments of peace and silence accompanied by musical visions of harem maids in filmy baggy pants. By the time the first guests arrived, Scheherdzade had given way to the LP directly above it, an album of Tommy Dorsey classics, and “Song of India” bastardized the harem girls into musical visions of Lindy-hopping bobby-soxers, and suddenly the Talmadge ritual was set in motion.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Joe. How are you?”

“How are you, Frank?”

“Fine, thanks. Good to see you.”

“Hi” being a contraction of “How are you,” it was perhaps redundant to use both at the same time, but this was nonetheless the ritualistic form of greeting in Talmadge. The “Good to see you” was mandatory, and used at every social function even if the people shaking hands had seen each other at another cocktail party only an hour before. Only the men shook hands in Talmadge. Women kissed other women on the cheek, and men used this same form of greeting with other men’s wives. Talmadge was a very friendly and tolerant town. The invitations usually designated eight o’clock as the time of arrival. But no one ever showed up before nine or nine-thirty or even ten, depending on how many other parties there were that same night, except the people traveling from New York or New Haven, who usually arrived on the dot. These people were promptly made to feel like exactly what they were: outsiders. Within ten minutes, the Talmadge natives had gathered into tight tribal conclaves and begun discussing the latest town affairs while the outsiders breathed deeply of the bracing country air and muttered, “What the hell, let’s get drunk.”

The dancing did not begin until after dinner some time, when everyone had consumed enough liquor, wine, and cordials to keep the Stork Club open and running for a week. The small talk had run out by this time, the violent arguments about the new novels and plays and motion pictures had been fought, the latest Madison Avenue jokes had all been told, the latest travel experiences had been related, and everyone had been apprised of who was currently pregnant, cheating, or getting a divorce. The party would be settling into a gelatinous stupor threatening solidification, a yawn would be stifled here or there, when suddenly the all-observant host would rise and turn up the record player, the signal for an adventurous couple to break the ice and set the party into its next phase. This phase was labeled by Matthew, who favored short descriptive titles, the Touch-and-Go Phase. He recognized a variation of his More-or-Less Principle as the driving force behind the Touch-and-Go Phase, the person who was most bored being the first to start dancing, the person who was least bored being the last to join the throng circling the living room. Matthew, who never liked doing anything on a given signal, least of all dancing, managed to stay on the sidelines at Talmadge parties, watching the behavior of the natives. They certainly seemed restless, but restless in a totally relaxed way, a paradox that was difficult for him to grasp at first.