Dhalgren (23 page)

From the kitchen: "Bobby,
please
come in and set the table.
Now!"

Kidd went into the living room. "Bet you'd hardly recognize me," he said to Madame Brown.

"Oh, I don't know about that."

"Dinner's ready," Mrs Richards said. "Kidd, you and Bobby sit back there. Edna, you sit here with June."

Madame Brown went over and pulled out her chair. "Muriel, stay down there and be good, hear me?"

He squeezed between the wall and the table—and took some tablecloth with him.

"Oh, dear!" Madame Brown lunged to grab a tottering brass candlestick. (In suddenly bared mahogany, the reflected flame steadied.) By candlelight her face had again taken on that bruised-eyed tawdriness she had last night in the bar.

"Jesus," Kidd said. "I'm sorry." He pulled the cloth back down across the table and began to straighten silverware. Mrs Richards had put out a profusion of forks, spoons, and side plates. He wasn't sure if he got all of them in the right place or which were his or Bobby's; when he finally sat, two fingers lingered on the ornate handle of a knife; he watched them rubbing, thick with enlarged knuckles and gnawed nails, but translucently clean. After baths, he reflected, when you're still alone in the john, is the time for all those things you don't want people around for: jerking off, picking your nose and eating it, serious nail biting. Was it some misguided sense of good manners that had kept him from any of these here? His thoughts drifted to various places he'd indulged such habits not so privately: seated at the far end of lunch counters, standing at public urinals, in comparatively empty subway cars at night, in city parks at dawn. He smiled; he rubbed.

"Those were my mother's," Mrs Richards said, on the other side of the table. She set down two bowls of soup for Arthur and Madame Brown, then went back to the kitchen. "I think old silver is lovely—" her voice came in—"but keeping it polished is awfully difficult." She came out again with two more bowls. "I wonder if it's that—what do they call it? That sulfur dioxide in the air, the stuff eating away all the paintings and statues in Venice." She set one in front of Kidd and one in front of Bobby, who was just squeezing into place—more plates and silverware slid on the wrinkling cloth; Bobby pulled it straight again.

Kidd took his fingers from the tarnished handle and put his hand in his lap.

"We've never been to Europe," Mrs Richards said, returning from the kitchen with bowls for her and June. "But Arthur's parents went—oh, years ago. The plates are Arthur's mother's—from Europe. I suppose I shouldn't use the good ones; but I do whenever we have company. They're so festive— Oh, don't wait for me. Just dig in."

Kidd's soup was in a yellow melmac bowl. The china plate beneath bore an intricate design around its fluted lip, crossed by more intricate scratches that might have come from cleanser or steel wool.

He looked around to see if he should start, caught both Bobby and June looking around for the same purpose; Madame Brown had a china bowl but every one else's was pastel plastic. He wondered if he, or Madame Brown alone, would have merited the spread.

Mr Richards picked up his spoon, skimmed up some soup.

So he did too.

With the oversized spoon-bowl still in his mouth, he noticed Bobby, June, and Madame Brown had all waited for Mrs Richards, who was only now lifting hers.

From where he sat, he could see into the kitchen: other candles burned on the counter. Beside a paper bag of garbage, its lip neatly turned down, stood two open Campbell's cans. He took another spoonful. Mrs Richards has mixed, he decided, two, or even three kinds; he could recognize no specific flavor.

Under the tablecloth edge, his other hand had moved to his knee—the edge of his little finger scraped the table leg. First with two fingers, then with three, then with his thumb, then with his fore-knuckle, he explored the circular lathing, the upper block, the under-rim, the wing bolts, the joints and rounded excrescences of glue, the hairline cracks where piece was joined to piece—and ate more soup.

Over a full spoon, Mr Richards smiled and said, "Where's your family from, Kidd?"

"New York—" he bent over his bowl—"State." He wondered where he had learned to recognize this as the milder version of the blunt What-nationality-
are
-you? which, here and there about the country, could create unpleasantnesses.

"My
people are from Milwaukee," Mrs Richards said. "Arthur's family is all from right around the Bellona area. Actually my sister lived down here too—well, she did. She's left now. And so has all of Arthur's family. It's quite strange to think of Marianne and June—we named our June after Arthur's mother—and Howard and your Uncle Al not here any more."

"Oh, I don't know," Mr Richards said; Kidd saw him preparing to ask how long he'd been here, when Madame Brown asked: "Are you a student, Kidd?"

"No, ma'am," realizing it was a question whose answer she probably knew; but liked her for asking. "I haven't been a student for a while."

"Where were you in school, then?" Mr Richards asked.

"Lots of places. Columbia. And a community college in Delaware."

"Columbia University?" Mrs Richards asked. "In New York?"

"Only for a year."

"Did you like it? I've spent a lot of time—Arthur and I have
both
spent a lot of time—thinking about whether the children should go away to school. I'd like for Bobby to go to some place like Columbia. Though State, right here, is very good."

"Especially the poly-sci department," Kidd said. Mr Richards and Madame Brown spooned their soup away from them. Mrs Richards, June, and Bobby spooned theirs toward them. One, he remembered, was more correct; but not which. He looked at the ornate silverware handles, diminishing in size either side of his plate, and finally simply sank his spoon straight down in the soup's center.

"And of course it's a lot less expensive." Mrs Richards sat back, with a constrained laugh. "Expense is always something you have to think about. Especially today. Here at State—" (Four more spoonfuls, he figured, and the soup would be too low for his compromise technique.) Mrs Richards sat forward again. "You say, the poly-sci department?" She tipped her soup bowl toward her.

"That's what someone told me," Kidd said. "Where's June going to go?"

Mr Richards tipped his away. "I don't know whether June has thought too much about that."

Mrs Richards said: "It
would
be very nice if June wanted to go to college."

"June isn't too, what you'd call, well, academic. June's sort of my old-fashioned girl." Mr Richards, tipping his bowl, apparently couldn't get enough; he picked it up, poured the last drops into his spoon, and set it down. "Aren't you, honey?"

"Arthur, really…!" Mrs Richards said.

"It's very good, dear," Mr Richards said. "Very good."

"Yes, ma'am," Kidd said. "It is," and put his spoon on his plate. It wasn't.

"I'd like to go to college—" June smiled at her lap—"if I could go someplace like New York."

"That's silly!" Mr Richards made a disparaging gesture with his soup spoon. "It was all we could do to keep her in high school!"

"It just wasn't very interesting." June's bowl—pink melmac—moved, under her spoon, to the plate's rim. She centered it again. "That's all."

"You wouldn't like New York," Mr Richards said. "You're too much of a sunshine girl. June likes the sun, swimming, outdoor things. You'd wither away in New York or Los Angeles; with all that smog and pollution."

"Oh, Daddy!"

"I think June ought to apply to the Junior College next term—" Mrs Richards turned in mid-sentence from husband to daughter—"to get some idea if you liked it or not. Your marks weren't
that
bad. I don't think it would be such a terrible idea to try it out, at the Junior College."

"Mom!" June looked at her lap, not smiling.

"Your mother went through college," Mr Richards said, "I went through college. Bobby's going to go. If nothing else, it's a place to get married in."

"Bobby reads more than June," Mrs Richards explained. "He reads all the time, in fact. And I suppose he
is
more school-minded."

"That Junior College is an awful place," June said. "I hate everybody who goes there."

"Dear," Mrs Richards said, "you don't know
everybody
who goes there."

Kidd, with his middle finger, was exploring the counter sinking about some flathead screw, when Madame Brown said:

"Mary, how close are we to the second course? Arthur up there looks like he's about to eat the bottom of his bowl."

"Oh, dear me!" Mrs Richards pushed back in her chair. "I don't know what I'm thinking of. I'll be right in—"

"You want any help, mom?" June said.

"No." Mrs Richards disappeared into the kitchen. "Thank you, darling."

"Pass me your soup plates, everybody," June said.

Kidd's hand came up from under the tablecloth to join his other on the china plate to pass it—but stopped just below the table lip. Knuckles, fingertips, and two streaks on the back of the hand were smudged black.

He put his hand down between his legs and looked around.

Anyway, people were keeping their plates and just passing their bowls. He passed his with one hand, his other between his knees. Then the other joined it and he tried, without looking, to rub his fingers clean.

Mrs Richards came in with two steaming ceramic bowls. "I'm afraid we're vegetarian tonight." She went out, returned with two more. "But there's nowhere to get any meat that you can trust," and returned again.

"You do that nice tunafish casserole," Mr Richards called after her. "That's very good."

"Ugh," Bobby said.

"Bobby!" June said.

"Yes, I know, Arthur." Mrs Richards returned with a gravy boat, set it on the table, and sat. "But I just feel so funny about fish. Wasn't it a couple of years back all those people
died
from some canned tuna that had gone bad? I just feel safer with vegetables. Though Lord knows, they can go bad too."

"Botulism." Bobby said.

"Really, Bobby!" Madame Brown laughed, a hand against her sparkling chains.

"Oh, I don't think we're doing so badly. Mashed potatoes, mushrooms, carrots—" Mrs Richards indicated one and another of the bowls—"and some canned eggplant stuff I've never tried before. When I went to that health-food restaurant with Julia—when we were in Los Angeles?—she said they always use mushrooms and eggplants in place of meat. And I've made a sauce." She turned to her husband, as though to remind him of something. "Arthur…?"

"What?" Then Mr Richards too seemed to remember. "Oh, yes… Kidd? Well, we've taken up this little habit of having a glass of wine with our meals." He reached down beside his chair, brought up a bottle, and set it beside the candle at his end of the table. "If it isn't something that appeals to you, you're perfectly welcome to have water—"

"I like wine," Kidd said.

Mrs Richards and Madame Brown had already passed their wine glasses up. So Kidd did too; though the water glass at the head of his knife seemed the better size for wine drinking as he was accustomed to it.

Mr Richards peeled away gold foil, pulled loose the plastic stopper, poured, passed back the glasses.

Kidd sipped; it was almost black in candlelight. At first he thought his mouth was burning—the wine was bubbly as soda pop.

"Sparkling burgundy!" Mr Richards grinned and doffed his glass. "We haven't tried this one before. 1975. I wonder if that's a good year for sparkling Burgundy?" He sipped. "Tastes okay to me. Cheers."

The candle flame staggered, stilled. Above and below the ornate label, green glass flickered.

"I put a little wine in the gravy," Mrs Richards said. "In the sauce, I mean—it was left over from last night's bottle. I like to cook with wine. And soy sauce. When we went to Los Angeles two years ago for Arthur's conferences, we stayed with the Harringtons. Michael gave Arthur that shaving soap. Julia Harrington—she's the one who took me to that Health Food restaurant—made absolutely
everything
with soy sauce! It was very interesting. Oh, thank you, Arthur."

Mr Richards had helped himself to mashed potatoes and now passed the dish. So had Madame Brown.

Kidd checked his fingers.

The rubbing had not removed any dirt; but it had divided it fairly evenly between both hands; the rough strips of nail back on the wide crowns were once more darkly ringed, as though outlined, nub and cuticle, with pen. He sighed, served himself when the dishes passed him, passed them on, and ate. His free hand back beneath the tablecloth, found the table leg, again explored.

"If you're not a student," Madame Brown asked, "what do you put down in your notebook?—none of us could help noticing it."

It was inside, on the table by the chair; he could see it beyond her elbow. "I just write things down."

Mrs Richards hung her hands by the fingertips on the table edge. "You write! You're going to be a writer? Do you write poetry?"

"Yeah." He smiled because he was nervous.

"You're a poet!"

Mr Richards, June, and Bobby all sat back and looked. Mrs Richards leaned forward and beamed. Madame Brown reached down with some silent remonstrance to Muriel.

"He's a poet! Arthur, give him some more wine. Look, he's finished his glass already. Go on, dear. He's a poet! I think that's wonderful. I should have known when you took that Newboy book."

Arthur took Kidd's glass, refilled it. "I don't know too much about poetry." He handed it back with a smile that, on a college football player, would have purveyed sheepish good will. "I mean, I'm an engineer…" As he took his hand away, wine splashed on the cloth.

Kidd said, "Oh, hey, I—"

"Don't worry about that!" Mrs Richards cried, waving her hand—which knocked against her own glass. Wine splashed the rim, ran down the stem, blotched the linen. While he wondered if such a thing were done on purpose to put strangers at ease (thinking: What an uncomfortably paranoid thought), she asked: "What do you think of him? Newboy, I mean."

"I don't know." Kidd moved his glass aside: through the base, he could see the diametric mold line across the foot. "I only met him once."