Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

“The first thing our government is going to do after the Big B is to implement their post-attack taxation plan,” Tim Barnes said.

“I mean,” his wife said, “who wants to survive only to pay forty or fifty percent?”

“You have to protect the banking system,” Tim said. “You have to reestablish the productive base.”

“I have to greet the guest of honor,” Joan said. The group, for the most part, chuckled. Joan walked toward Daniel, who was standing at the bottom of the lawn. He had a drink in one hand and a pretzel rod in the other and was gazing into a bed of delphiniums. Several yards away, Donna, the TR person, was talking to Bliss.

“People need dentists,” Joan heard her assure him, “they really do.”

“Joan!” Daniel exclaimed as she drew near. “What a beautiful garden.” He wore a green shirt and a poplin suit. His large feet were encased in sneakers. “Cast completely in blue and white. Very discriminating, very elegant. It must have been difficult.”

Joan looked at her garden, which gave her no pleasure. She had designed it and cared for it. She knew some things. It didn’t matter.

“White is a distinctively modern color,” Daniel said, finishing his drink. “It takes the curse off things.”

“Its neutrality is its charm,” Joan said.

The priest sighed. “I want to clarify what I just said, Joan. You can’t imagine how tired I am. Claire was so tired, she couldn’t make it. The hustle-bustle of moving is exhausting. She’s going to write you a note. You will definitely receive a note from her. I meant, and this is not in regard to your garden, which is stunning, that white is often used to make otherwise unacceptable things acceptable. In general.”

“Some people feel that flowers are in bad taste,” Joan said.

“Isn’t that astounding,” Daniel said. “Someone told me that once in regard to the altar and I found it astounding.” He rolled his glass between his hands and nodded toward the puppy, who was resting on his haunches now, regarding the group in the dimming light.

“Your cats must be afraid of that Doberman,” he said.

“I don’t have cats.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you had two cats. Perhaps it’s Joan Pillsbury who has the cats.”

One of Daniel’s sons came up to them and said, “Dad, there’s nothing to do here.” Daniel looked at him. Joan told the boy about the hidden candy and in a moment the small group of children had scattered across the yard with shrill cries. An instant later, they had found it all and returned to the small piece of earth that they had appropriated for themselves. They displayed the amount, then ate it.

“That was fun,” the priest said. “They all certainly enjoyed that.”

“Dentists talk a lot, don’t they,” Donna said to Bliss. “I mean, I’ve always wondered, why are dentists so garrulous?”

“Look,” Bliss said, “my wife has turned on the moon.” The two couples had drifted together and now looked upward at a full, close, mauve moon.

“My wife fell from that tree once, you know,” Bliss said, addressing Daniel, pointing toward a large maple.

“You didn’t,” the priest said to Joan. He shook his head.

“Uh-huh,” Bliss said. “Several years ago.”

“How did it happen?” Daniel said, weaving his eyes among the branches, down the trunk to the ground beneath it as though he expected to see her splayed form there, outlined in lime by some secular authority. “Was one of your cats up there with his eye on the sparrow?” He chuckled.

“I would’ve broken my neck,” Donna said. She laughed but her eyes were wet. Her mouth trembled a little.

“Nothing happened,” Joan said. “Here I am.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Joan,” Daniel said. “You took a little rest but now you’re back among us.”

Donna looked at Joan, then at the priest.

“I believe you married us,” Donna said to Daniel. “St. Stephen’s, right? Harry and Donna Sutton?”

“Hello,” Daniel said warmly.

“We weren’t members. You just fit us in.”

There was a pause while they all sipped their drinks.

“Do you know that at any given moment there are approximately five hundred and eighty-four million unfilled carious lesions in the teeth of the U.S. population?” Bliss said.

Donna laughed, then turned and walked unsteadily to one of the long stone benches on the lawn. She lay on the bench and crossed her ankles.

“You’d like Donna,” Bliss said to Joan. “You know where she’s from? Panama City.”

“How are she and Harry doing,” Daniel asked.

“Time has wrought its meanness on their attachment,” Bliss said. “You know what I told her? I told her, to God both the day and the night are alike, so are the first and last of our days.”

“My, that’s very good,” Daniel said, “but a bit cold.”

“I told her sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.”

“One of the great lines, certainly.”

“Are you of the school that thinks of man as a vapor, a fantastic vapor, or a shadow, even the dream of a shadow?” Bliss asked.

“Stop,” Joan said. She stifled a yawn because she wanted to appear rude.

“A bubble,” Daniel said. “We subscribe to the bubble theory.”

“Excuse me, Father,” Bliss said. “I’m sure this happens to you all the time, people asking you questions on an emergency basis at cocktail parties.”

Daniel stretched his neck and smiled at Joan.

Bliss took several swallows of his drink. “An interesting thing happened today,” he said. “Joan’s father sent us a letter. It began briskly enough, ‘Dear Joan and Bliss.’ But then there was nothing, not a thing. Just a page, blank as the day is long. Well, we puzzled over that one, you can imagine.”

“Faith illuminates that letter for us,” Daniel said. “Love is the great translator. On the other hand, how’s Dad’s eyesight? Does he buy good-quality pens or does he buy them ten for two dollars?”

“The man refuses to be a guest.” Bliss laughed. “Actually, I don’t know why I made that up about the letter.”

“I’m a little giddy tonight myself,” Daniel said. “I suppose it’s the thrill of saddling up and moving on.”

Bliss put his hand on Joan’s back and lightly touched her hair. For an instant Joan hated him, and in another instant felt sick, drowning. She saw the party set up beneath the trees, illuminated by candles stuck in paper bags of sand. People were eating ribs and salad from large china plates. Donna remained lying on her back on the bench, her arms dangling, her hands, loosely curved, touching the grass. Joan pulled away from Bliss and walked over to her. The girl’s eyes were open and she wore shiny pants, pegged and zippered at the ankles. Her blouse looped out over her belt.

“Can I get you something to eat?” Joan asked. She was solicitous and incurious. But people were supposed to be making connections like these all the time, she thought, all through their lives.

Donna sat up abruptly. “I shouldn’t be behaving like this, should I? I’m making a fool of myself, aren’t I?” Joan sat beside her on the bench. “My husband’s sick and doesn’t want me anymore,” she said. “When he was well he was always saying he didn’t want me to have a baby yet. He said he wanted to wait a while before we had a baby. Men always act as though the same baby is waiting out there in the dark each month, did you ever notice that?”

At the edge of the party, Amanda Sherrill, her long peach-colored hair shining and swinging, demonstrated a hip-slimming exercise to a small exuberant group. She grasped the seat of a lawn chair and extended her left leg upward in a slow arc.

“Oh, my goodness,” Jack Buttrick screamed.