Mothers and Daughters
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Год: 1961
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon and Schuster
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Mothers and Daughters». Краткое содержание книги:
“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.
It took him a little while to realize that most of the early dancing was being done by husband-and-wife teams, nice ballroom dancing, which they had practiced together since they were teen-agers, every nuance of husbandly pressure on the small of the back instantly picked up by the wife, each trick-step specialty executed with precision and aplomb, slightly idiotic grins on the faces of mates, it was Prom Time again in lovely, woodsy Talmadge. Then the record changed, or everyone suddenly needed a fresh drink, and then the couples on the floor were no longer husband-wife teams, or at least no longer this-husband-belongs-to-this-wife teams, everyone seemed to have changed partners again at a signal, a magician had waved a magic wand and whooossssssssh, the swirling couples were mismatched.
Talmadge was a friendly town, and everyone danced close here, and cheek to cheek here. If a man in the New York subway had stood this close to a Talmadge woman, she’d have clobbered him with her umbrella. But this was Talmadge, and this was the town where everyone was concerned with how you were, and where it was always good to see you, and where men shook hands with other men but kissed the women on the cheek, so it was all right to dance close here. No one minded it. It was the proper, friendly, social thing to do. It never got unfriendly, or unsocial, or improper. It got damn close to being all of those things, but it never crossed the unchalked line, never broke the unwritten code. A great many male thighs were very very close to a great many female thighs, and a great many male hands reached clear around a female back to that first soft swell of an unfamiliar breast, a soft cheek was flushed and feverish against a bearded one, lips almost touched when their owners pulled back their heads to murmur a word or two, the dipping was sometimes a little personal, a tiny bit intimate, especially during the summer months when clothing was habitually lighter. But all this touching and near touching seemed to reach a prearranged, quasi-climactic point when the female would say, “I think we’d better rest a little,” or the male would say, “Let’s have another drink, shall we?” With these words, or a variation of them, the touching of this particular partner had reached its apogee; there was nothing further to do but go. So they went. Touch-and-Go, and whoooosssssh, the magician waved his wand again, everybody changed partners again, the carousel was in motion once more, different horses, new riders, the same old jazz.
Matthew hated it.
He hated it because it was an outrageous lie, and he didn’t like lies or liars. He hated it, too, because it was a game of musical wives that had no obvious destination, a game that was a deception, an inspired delusion, a medieval sort of orgy-cum-fantasy in modern dress with self-imposed limits, time-consuming, energy-depleting, and totally frustrating. He hated it. He decided definitely and emphatically to avoid it. If he had to get stone-cold drunk and pass out on the richly carpeted floors of every home in Talmadge, he would manage to avoid this juvenile nonsense.
For however fanciful Matthew’s theories, however speculative his ideas, he had never once in the six years of his marriage broken the contract he’d made with Amanda. If he ever did break that contract — and he had considered it, he was a man, and vain, and egotistical, and he had considered it — if ever he did break that contract, he was going to do it in spades and not by rubbing bellies with a Talmadge matron who had already borne three children and was corresponding secretary of the P.T.A.
The Talmadge party that November night was exactly the same as every other Talmadge party he’d ever attended.
Except for Julia Regan.
He didn’t meet her until eleven o’clock. He was fairly crocked by that time, so that the inane chatter and the blasting hi-fi unit and the cavorting couples blended into a sort of alcohol-misted din behind him. He was sitting in the dark on the patio, his jacket collar raised on the back of his, neck, the lapels pulled closed across his chest in defense against the cold. The door opened suddenly, and a tall woman with an upswept hairdo stepped onto the patio, pulled her stole around her, sighed deeply, and reached into her bag for a cigarette. He saw her face briefly in the flaring match, fine-lined, patrician. She sucked in on the cigarette. The match flared again and died. She began walking toward the edge of the patio. Her heels clicked on the slate in the darkness. He had always liked the sound of high-heeled pumps. He listened to the clicking. She has good legs, he thought. He could tell from the sound of her walk.