William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (46 page)

“Somebody fix the record!” Peyton cried, breaking away from Harry and laughing. There were more toasts, more champagne, and the end of the receiving line at last: a girl named Winnie Byrd Taylor, who had grown up with Peyton. She was gaunt and homely, with no breasts to speak of, and she probably would never get married, and she embraced Peyton with a sort of whimper, letting her blotched face fall on Peyton’s shoulder and crying a little, as if she could remember nothing but their childhood and the summer days beneath the trees.

“Thank you, Winnie Byrd,” said Peyton, kissing her back, “this is Harry.” Winnie Byrd touched him briefly, made an agonized smile and was gone. The four of them were alone together then—Peyton and Harry, Loftis and Helen; and Loftis, turning with his champagne glass in hand, looked at Peyton, and had a surge of relief. Everything seemed to have improved some. Utterly sober, he nonetheless felt a faint, tingling, pleasant intoxication: from the happy faces of the guests, the music, from watching Peyton. Mainly, from watching Peyton. There had hardly been a second since the end of the ceremony when he had taken his eyes off her: how happy she looked now, how excited, lovely, how much the glowing bride! And how wrong he must have been to have thought otherwise. Look: she had kissed him twice—saying, “Bunny, you dear”—in five minutes. His panic at the ceremony had been needless suffering.

Helen stepped aside for a moment to put her arms around some woman, an old friend, and over her shoulder Loftis saw Harry bend down and kiss Peyton again, right on the mouth. It was a private view he had, almost: one of those unaccountable lulls at a gathering during which the guests of honor, hastily ignored by the other people in favor of food and drink, seem to be completely and senselessly isolated. It is the mystery of a split moment in time, the instant when we could most logically ask, in our strange solitary state, even as guests of honor, “Life. What am I doing here?” For that brief instant one could remove all of one’s clothes or faint dead away, and nobody would notice. Here Loftis was the only observer, and he sensed it, and as he watched them kiss he felt the same visceral, drowsy hunger he had felt this morning and at the ceremony; only this time it was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but a little of both, partaking more of memory, really, than anything else, and causing him once again to recall a note of music only half-heard, sunlight somewhere, something irretrievable. Helen moved aside, a glass was lifted, there was the tinkle of laughter and the clatter of dishes; a lush fraulein voice sang
“tränen ins Auge”
above the remote whine of strings, and through the sphere of his glass, iridescent as a rainbow, which he raised to his mouth, he saw their lips touch and their eyelids drift close, and flutter excitedly, their arms about each other in an anxious embrace. No one saw, no one noticed, except himself, and he was split up the middle with a violent, jealous tenderness such as he had rarely felt before. Only a moment had passed. Bubbles of champagne rose sour and sweet beneath his tongue, and he watched in a sort of enchantment: Harry, dark and Jewish, handsome, blood gently pulsing at his brow, and Peyton, hair about her shoulders, eyelids so clear they might be transparent, drawn down, fluttering—her lips on his.

The spell was broken. Suddenly they drew away from each other, for Helen’s back had loomed up in front of him. With one arm around the woman, she was saying, “Felicia, this is Peyton and this is Harry—don’t they look good together?” Loftis moved in closer, about to say something, but someone touched him on the arm. It was Edward, blushing to the ears with champagne.

“Hello, old man, you aren’t celebrating much. Here, take this glass.” He had two.

“Thanks. I’ve got one,” he said, raising his own.

“You’re out.” He put down a glass, removed the empty one from Loftis’ hand, and replaced it with his own.

Loftis protested, then gave up. “I’m on the wagon, you know.”

“Not today you aren’t,” Edward said. Loftis felt himself succumbing to his sudden, real urge to drink—partly to the authority in the voice—and he took a big swallow, hating Edward, for some reason, more than ever. He heard that voice behind a desk at some camp, saw himself for an instant a trembling lieutenant—“Not today you aren’t”—how easily, under certain conditions, could that voice become a paralyzing command. Edward was at the stage of drunkenness in which the ego glows like a coal, and brilliant people become more inspired, but in which dull people, fired by the same inspiration, become only more dull. Loftis looked at the eagle roosting on Edward’s shoulder. It would be nice, he thought with some envy, to have been a colonel and to have survived wounds on Guadalcanal (the champagne was working: he had a sudden vision of steaming jungles, heard the hollow rat-tat-tat
car-Wong,
as in the newsreels) but to have all that to be a man like this: no.

“Peyton’s a honey,” said Edward.

“Yeah.”

“A real honey.”

“Yeah.”

“This Harry’s a lucky boy. How’d he get hooked up with her?”

Loftis sketched in briefly what Peyton had written and had told him, the little he knew.

“He’s Jewish, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is.”

“He looks like the better kind, though. He must be, or that little sweetheart wouldn’t’ve married him. He seems to be thoroughly O.K., you know, and I liked him from the very first moment I saw him. You know, when I was regimental exec on the ’Canal we had one on the staff. He was one of the best tactical officers I——” But Loftis was no longer listening. He had the funny sensation that, somehow, it was he who was doing Edward’s thinking: he knew precisely what Edward thought, and this knowledge made him unbearably nervous. He swallowed some champagne. Well, so he was a Jew. Did it matter? No. Yes. No, thoughts like that were childish. It was remarkable, when you came right down to it, how blandly both he and Helen had accepted the fact, after Peyton had written them. He had been surprised but not shocked, as he might have been ten years ago, and he had been further surprised how placidly Helen, whom he had never thought of as intolerant but who had always been rather hipped on class distinctions, had accepted the fact. What had she thought? He hadn’t asked her, and had forgotten all about it himself. Until this day. Yes, until this day. In the receiving line just now he had been soothed by Peyton’s kisses—he could still almost feel them, warm on his cheek—and by the sweet, delectable noise of her laughter. They had held hands once, and it was as if by that touch, magically, she had erased his tension and anxiety, comforted him, made him think she was happy after all. Yet—and this angered him—it seemed that he was unable to exist for one moment without a worry; he preyed on them, or perhaps they preyed on him, took up a natural dwelling on his brain, like lampreys upon the belly of a shad. He had, frankly and ashamedly, worried about Peyton marrying a Jew, a painter and a 4-F at that. He was also rather old. Hell, he was almost thirty. So what? one part of him said, she’s happy, look at her, isn’t that enough? Yes, the other part of him said, but he’s a Jew.

And why? Why did he worry? It infuriated him. That he should worry so about Peyton’s happiness. That he should have finally these suspicions about a Jew marrying his
own
daughter, when all his life he had had no prejudice—perhaps because there were few Jews around, perhaps out of charity or good will—against Jews and only a little, for that matter, against Negroes. His suspicions had infuriated him, so that eventually he had laid them to a rather excessively solicitous attitude toward the guests. What did they think? Miller. His name was Harry Miller. It was one of those names straight from Yorkshire, like Harris or Palmer, which (so Loftis’ New York classmates told him) many Jews claim for their own, so that in places like New York they evolve into names almost exclusively Jewish. What had the guests, having seen Miller on the invitations and thought nothing of it, most likely, thought of this Miller? Yes, he supposed that was what worried him the most. The guests. Well, if they had thought anything at all they had not betrayed it in their looks. They had been ladies and gentlemen. They had turned their bright, protestant eyes upon Harry’s face, found it warm and gentle, and had shaken his hand. Perhaps they had said, “This is a special Jew. He is Peyton’s boy.” Perhaps they had. One way or the other, Loftis was pleased.

Edward smoothed back a sheaf of steel-gray hair, regarding Loftis with the puckered distaste of a bigot trying to be agreeable. “When I was a civilian there were New York Jews I knew in the coal business who were as nice a type——”

Loftis was peeved and bored, and he wanted to say something withering, but he only got up courage enough to put a finger over his lips and murmur, “Just don’t you worry, don’t you worry,” with a wink he hoped was enigmatic, and strolled away. His glass was empty.

Now he found Peyton and Harry standing with Helen. The photographer was a nervous little man with the eyes of a dog who has been unjustly beaten. The light was all wrong, he complained, but the client wanted informal pictures: he’d try his best. He put Loftis between Helen and Peyton, made them all stand cozily together. “There,” he said, “now stay still if you please will,” and moved them about, adjusted lenses and plates, while the guests stood around in a half-circle, making comments.

“Smile if you please will.”

“I’m trying my best.” Peyton giggled softly. Beneath Loftis’ hand her waist was soft, warm, though somehow Harry’s wrist, which he touched, too, was hairy, and it intruded.

“Smile.”

“Hey, Milt, grin like the day you tied Gene Sarazen,” Monk Yourtee called. The laughter was general.

“Big smile, please. Mrs. Loftis, lift your chin up if you please will. That’s the ticket.”

There was a flash of light, another, one more; the session was over and the guests scattered back to the punch table, buzzing like flies over the pink tablecloth, already soaked with champagne. And more champagne was brought to the bridal party. The waiters were very careful about this. They came up grinning every five minutes, with loaded trays. After her second glass, Helen declined, but Loftis put his arm around her waist: “You don’t mind if I have some more?” And she smiled and stroked his chin gently with her fingernail, saying, “On this day, dear, anything goes. I have lots of Bromo-Seltzer upstairs.” In ten minutes he had three, accepting the colored boys’ offering with thanks and indiscretion, remembering that he should tip them well, and soon he heard himself talking to Peyton and Harry—rapidly, paternally and lovingly. With Peyton’s hand in his, he was saying the most gallant things imaginable. Youth was in the air, as much a part of it, indeed, as the music or the frivolous silver light, and he felt youthful himself and filled again with the curious, hungry ardor. “Don’t get worried about anything,” he was telling Harry, and he squeezed Peyton’s fingers, “she’s just like her mother here. There’ll be a time when you just can’t imagine how you ever got hooked up with such a fickle creature—they’re always eying anything in pants, you know—but just don’t you worry. You’ll look into those big brown eyes and she’ll laugh at you and what can you do? Take it from me, these Loftis women just make you helpless——”

“Oh, Bunny——”

“Milton——” Helen laughed.

“No, I mean it, Harry,” he said over the rim of his glass, “I really mean it. It’s from the Peyton side of the family. It’s a family of warriors, you see. You’ve got to watch out for them just like you would some top sergeants. Now take a top sergeant I once had in the last war when I was in training. Now that guy could be as mean as he wanted to be, yet there was something gentle and—really sweet about him. He was an Irishman named McNamara——” And he had branched off, he knew, onto something irrelevant, perhaps silly. He had begun with an analogy and ended up with a tall tale, only to impress Harry. That’s what wartime always did. You have to justify yourself, romanticize, if ever so subtly. But Harry’s face, through the bubbly exultant light, was receptive, intent: it was a Jewish face, all right, dark and almost handsome, with eyes that looked as if they rarely condemned or, on the other hand, ever indulged themselves in factitious pity, and there was a deep, oddly patient, waiting quality about them which chiefly seemed to express a desire just to understand. Because of this expression, and partly because of the champagne, Loftis found himself liking this young man more and more, but it also made it seem that Harry saw right through his story, so he came back to the main point. “Anyway, Harry my boy, remember what I say, because I know. They can’t beat you down for long. They really don’t want to. It’s all an act, like a top sergeant. They’ll really love you to death if you give ’em half a chance. Love you like you was a darlin’ little boy——” Then he kissed Peyton on the cheek.

It was obvious that he was not clicking, that he was lamely striving for a tenderly humorous effect—the reason for which he couldn’t explain himself—and that he was failing completely. Along the line he had said something wrong. Harry was wearing an appreciative, courteous grin, but the smiles on the faces of Peyton and Helen—both of which he sensed, rather than saw, at the same time—seemed fastened on with paste, and concealed a tense and inner reproach. “Oh, Daddy,” Peyton said—rather crossly, he felt—and removed her hand from his and drank quickly from her champagne. “Your father-in-law goes off the deep end at times,” Helen murmured to Harry, still smiling the reproachful smile. Loftis struggled for words to correct himself, anything to unplug this awkward moment, but just then up came the Abbott sisters, looking exactly alike. They were eighteen and nineteen, and, with their erect way of walking and flossy, butter-colored hair which they each wore page-boy style around their faces, they seemed to have all the straight, stemlike grace of a couple of jonquils.

“We’ve had a nice time,” they said in unison.

“You aren’t going so soon!” Peyton said. “Oh, Evelyn, Jeanie!”

“We’ve got to go back to Chapel Hill,” the one on the left said, “exams. You know how it is.”

Peyton kissed them both. Everyone said good-by, and they walked off arm in arm. Loftis was grateful to them for the interruption, but when he turned back to the family he was conscious only of the fixed smiles and the almost shocking silence. What on earth had he said? The room itself was filled with noise. The ceremony had been the spring part of the affair, it had passed; that was all innocence and had withered like April. Then there had been the summer, season of nonchalance, easy acquaintance, the first mellow glow, through which the guests had drifted (alcoholically speaking) as through a mist of August sunlight. Now early autumn of the reception had come, and if you closed your eyes you could hear its sound: the loose, high, windy laughter of the women, the male voices filled with a sudden, hoarse bluster, like the rattle of leaves. Thus do all parties move toward the cold of winter and a final numb extinction.