Ramona Ausubel - Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

On the first of December when the light displays started to go up, Mary drove to the suburbs with a notebook and drew sketches of each façade. No one had colored lights — the houses were all haloed in white like rows and rows of humble angels. Eaves were always decorated and it was acceptable to entwine a well-sculpted hedge. There was always, always a wreath with a red bow on the door. The oldest mansions were lit with reservation and the newer colonials were overdone. Mary aimed at a mid-mark. It was hardly their first light display but Fern’s family would be the highest-ranking dinner guests they had ever had and behavior over the holidays was the basis of the social rankings for the following season. Mary knew that her invitation to exhibit a bouquet in Champion Bancroft’s spring flower show depended on her performance now. She knew that she would either be invited back to Fluffy Turner’s book club or told it was going on hiatus, though of course there would always be six cars parked in the drive on Tuesday evenings.

Edgar came home two weeks later reading the Communist Manifesto. He and Mary sat together at the big dining table while she polished the four-hundred-piece set of silver and he read aloud. “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbances of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones,” he read.

“Edgar, I have no idea what any of that means.”

“Here’s where it gets good,” he said, starting again. “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life.”

“Which are?”

“Which are that the proletariat is forced to fight for decent pay and rights. It’s class war, Mother.”

“You do know where you grew up?” she said. “You do know whom you have invited for Christmas Eve dinner?”

“Fern’s different,” Edgar said. “We’re both different.” He left the table with his book. He tried sitting in his room, but it was the room of a rich kid. He tried sitting in the living room, but the walls of leather-bound books in mahogany shelves could not be described as proletariat. He tried sitting on the porch, but it was twenty-five degrees outside. Finally, Edgar settled in the barn. He had to overlook the horse tack and the fact that it was heated (he was sure Russian horses did not need heated stalls), but at least it smelled like animal shit. At least the ground was covered in hay.

—

Christmas Eve arrived with Fern in a red velvet dress with a wide skirt, her hair pinned in a neat twist and her mother in the usual black, her hair short, her lips red. Mary hugged the girl and Fern hugged her back. She was warm and pretty and complimented the light display. “You are very sweet,” Mary said. Edgar took Fern to the parlor window to look at the snowfort he had built behind the house. It was bluish in the dark and almost glowing. “Will you move in with me?” he teased.

“How many bathrooms?” They both laughed.

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t send Ben home for Christmas,” he said.

“I dreamed that he was drowning and my dress was too heavy to save him.”

In the window were their reflected ghosts. They took hands and looked at the image of themselves. How very much this joined pair comforted them.

The fathers drank their drinks and talked over the particulars of a horse race they had both heard about but had not seen. Paul felt surprisingly good. It could shift at any moment, he knew, but for now he was enjoying the clear-headedness. Hugh asked after Ben. “He’s on a base in Indiana,” Paul said. “He seems all right so far. Probably no different than a college dorm.” The statement sounded like a question.

“I expect you worry about him,” Hugh said, having seen Ben at the library a few months before, his big body hunched over a book about lilies. He corrected himself, knowing his wife would cut his tongue out if he ruined this night. “Just as we all do. Worry about our children, I mean. I’m sure he’s going to be just fine.”

The mothers took a tour of the house and Evelyn politely noticed the pleasing shade of white of the crown molding in the sitting room. Mary thanked her but the comment sent a shot of rage down her spine. To compliment a shade of white was to insult everything else.

“Yes, I’m very careful about whites,” Mary said.

“One must be,” said Evelyn. “The wrong white can ruin a room.”

The goose came out hot and glistening and the mashed, stewed, baked and broiled sides were all pristine. Mary said quiet prayers of thanks. If she could have, she would have gone upstairs for the rest of the evening to cry tears of relief. Conversation was pleasant, wine was poured at the correct rate, the children looked at one another across the table in a way that made the adults nostalgic for their youth. It was the Christmas Eve they had all been hoping for, until Fern’s father turned to Edgar and asked him about his studies. “I’m studying Marx,” Edgar said. “And I’m finding it very interesting.”

Fern’s father was quiet, as one ought to be if one wants the dinner to proceed without incident, but Hugh could not leave the statement alone.

“You give your child everything and he comes home from Yale a communist. Aren’t we busy fighting a war over this?”

Edgar muttered something about the war being criminal and the family being a bourgeois institution.

Fern had no map for getting her beloved out of this tangle.

“Edgar took a Greek History class,” Fern said. “I would love to visit Greece.”

“It’s sweet of you to try to rescue me,” Edgar said to Fern, “but I don’t need rescuing. My father should know that I disagree with everything he stands for.”

Fern’s mother excused herself and went to the powder room. Hating the world was plenty familiar but saying so in better company was unacceptable. Paul sat very quietly, arranging butter on his bread. Edgar said things about private property and the capitalist agenda and heavy progressive graduated income tax and his father said, “You are a spoiled shit,” and his mother, whose hands were pink and shaking said, “What did I do to deserve you for my only child?” When Evelyn returned they all went quiet for a moment, remembering their manners. Fern wished hard for her brother, a person whose eyes could always settle her. The absence of Ben was thunderous, much louder than the boy himself had ever been.

Edgar stood up. “I’m sorry. I apologize. I shouldn’t have brought up such topics on a holiday.” He looked at the faces of his parents, his sweetheart, her parents. “I asked for this evening for a reason,” he said. His voice started to crack and he wrung his napkin. “I wanted to ask Fern… Fern,” he said, turning to her. “I wanted to ask you to marry me.”

Before her father wondered whether his was the approval the boy should have sought first, Fern stood to meet him and took both of his hands. “Of course I will,” she said.

“I thought you just said family was a bourgeois institution,” Hugh tried to say.

“Shut up,” Mary told him. “Shut up right now.”

The boy and girl did not hear his parents fighting and they did not hear her parents try to find enough air in the room. There she goes, thought Evelyn, just as I expected. Next she’ll call to say she’s pregnant. Paul felt a needle-stab of pain. No one had ever looked at him the way the young couple was looking at each other.

In front of everyone, Fern and Edgar leaned close and kissed.

—

Mary was up all night and the words that banged in her head were Fuck it . Fuck the roast goose and the four hundred pieces of silver. Fuck the book club and the flower show and the appropriate light display. She went into Edgar’s room and found him reading by candlelight.