54 THENEWYORKER,JANUARY18, 2021
own party frock. She reappeared in a
dress that was a mass of swirling red
blooms on white, and in a delicate waft
of perfume. Her day dress would have
been left on the Regency chair.
Then the front doorbell began to ring.
H
e saw it all now, as he drove to
ward what was no party at all: the
children in charge of the lawn, the
women subserviently but floridly in
charge of the table, dispensing the food
and drink and stepping onto the grass,
some in unsuitably high heels, only to
deal with the games and the crucial is
suing of presents.
The names of some of his friends,
his party guests, came clearly back to
him, though he had not thought of them
for decades: Bobby Scott, Nigel Wil
son, Helen Fletcher, Wendy Simms...
There they were on the lawn. Where
were they now?
A party for both children and mums,
an invisible wavering line between the
two. But there was a moment when
the mothers all claimed him. They
drew him away from his pride of place
on the lawn and took him aside. They
said things like “You mustn’t forget
us, Jimmy.” Or “Let’s have some of
you, too.”
It was Mrs. Simms who said that.
“Let’s have some of you, too.” What
ever it meant. She said it after pop
ping into her mouth, almost whole,
one of the little cakes, and as she did
so her eyes bulged and goggled in ex
actly the same way that her daugh
ter’s did when she attempted the same.
She flicked away bits of cake from
her lips, then waggled her fingers in
the air. Her party dress was also flow
ery—they were in a garden, after all—
and had no sleeves and a deep collar.
When she brushed her mouth, a siz
able crumb fell into her neckline and
disappeared. Did she know? Did she
see that he saw? But she said, after
the waggly thing, “Let’s have some of
you, too, Jimmy.” And added, “Us girls,
too.” So all the mums were now “girls.”
It was confusing.
And then she said, which was even
more confusing, “So come on, Jim,
you’ve got to tell us.” Her eyes swiv
elled round the crowded lawn. “You
can tell us. Which one do you like
best? Which one is your favorite?”
Then, as if to correct herself, she said,
“Which party frock?” More and more
confusion. Did she really mean, as
he’d momentarily thought, “Which
girl?,” or did she mean “Which frock?”
Or was it one and the same? In order
to give an answer, did he have to sepa
rate the girls from their frocks? Which
was a thought. Did he have an an
swer anyway?
So he said nothing. He struggled, a
magnet for confusion. Was Mrs. Simms
really wanting him to choose her
daughter, Wendy, both frock and girl?
Then another mum—was it Mrs.
Scott?—chimed in, “He’s blushing!”
Worse and worse.
But his mother quickly and gently
said, “Leave him alone. Let him be.
It’s his party.” It wasn’t reproachful of
the other women; it was just a little
soft statement that at once rescued
him. He felt again now, a seventytwo
yearold man at the wheel of a car, its
protective touch winging to him like
a bird.
And had he immediately stopped
blushing? How could he know? And per
haps no one knew, not even Mrs. Simms,
that he was blushing not at the choice
put to him but at the thought of that
crumb that had dropped down her
dress. Where had it gone? And at the
thought of all these grownup party
dresses, rustling, pressing, and whis
pering round him, which had been
put on in more complicated ways than
the girls’ ones and, it was at least partly
true to say, especially for him.
For a moment, he’d been claimed
by the women, even made to feel he
belonged to them. And been made to
understand that they were also girls.
And for a moment, too, after his moth
er’s magical intervention, he’d even
seemed to see everything through their
eyes. Not just the spectacle of the party,
of the childsprinkled lawn, which sup
posedly still guarded his secret choice,
but everything. Everything all around.
Not just the lawn but the rest of the
garden and the adjoining gardens, all
with their own lawns and trellises and
cascades of roses and apple trees and
clumps of hydrangea bushes. And the
houses with their redtiled roofs and
glinting windows, many of them flung
open as if to draw delighted breath on
this scintillating afternoon.
He let his eyes sweep round, the way
their eyes—he saw—now and then
swept giddily round to take it all in.
Everything.
The houses, he had once been told,
were roughly the same age as him.
They’d been new when his parents
moved in. The homes of pioneers.
Now they were settled and estab
lished and ten years old but still had
an aura of newness. Just like him. In
side the houses were new fridges, new
televisions.
Though not inside or even outside
them on this radiant day were all the
fathers, who—but had he thought
this then?—were working like billyo
to pay for it all, to keep the whole
sublime fabric intact.
Why should Dr. Henderson have
been invited?
Here and there among the gardens
were tall, massive trees, their leaves
greengold in the afternoon light, left
over from when it had all been farm
land, hedgerows and fields. A farm
house and barns had once stood where
his primary school was now. It was
hard to believe.
He looked around and could even
see how to the mums it must look
like Heaven. Everything that they’d
once wished and hoped for. It was
Heaven. And they’d achieved it, as
they’d achieved their children and
watched them grow, as they’d achieved
this party—if he didn’t see it then,
he saw it now—a dazzling homage
to it all.
He saw that it was happiness. What
else? He gasped, holding the wheel,
at the sweet breath of it all. A seventy
twoyearold man driving between
Heaven and Hell.
He gasped and recognized that this
was his chosen field. The breath of
life. Breath.
And why do we blush? Why are
some of us prone to this blazoning
of embarrassment, that is itself a
cause for further embarrassment? Can
you blush from sheer happiness, its
flagrant touch on your skin? He was
acquainted with the workings of the
human body, but he knew no more
about blushing than, apparently, Dr.
Henderson had known. It wasn’t his
field. It was supposedly an affliction
of the young and even innocent. Later,
