Part 6 (1/2)

Mr Whitbread asks for us, and Kelley vanishes with the bowl

How about you, Warren?

Warren-having barely touched his food-dabs his raphy of Samuel Johnson

Boswell? Mr Whitbread says I loved Boswell How he described spying on Mr and Mrs Johnson through the bedroorante delicto like talruses like talruses

Mrs Whitbread ducks her head, and I try not to snicker, for any talk of sex in those environs seems particularly wanton

This is by Walter Jackson Bate, Warren says

Bate's a cah the library stacks wearing a little porkpie hat like Art Carney in The Honeymooners The Honeymooners

Kelley returns to say there isn't any us, and the cook bellows from the kitchen, Tell hih asparagus Tell hih asparagus Which holler blows invisibly through the rooain Mrs Whitbread covers herover at ly obvious is a quality I covet

Before we leave the table, we're supposed to give our breakfast requests to the cook via Kelley Mrs Whitbread finds it odd that I won't have at least a poached egg But in the tract houses I visited as a kid, you declined food, presu a polite show

You'll starve into a little chicken, Mrs Whitbread says, standing and placing her napkin on the table

Over port in the library, I h wine at dinner to keep pace with Warren's father-while I flip through portraits In the small solitary ti out some explanation of the house, the family's history, but he'd dozed by the pool instead

Sitting in their library, the Whitbreads are only slightlySo I pore over the photo albu to decipher the rules of the reale, I tune in more keenly to what the sloppy shoe box of photos in my homestead holds: Mother's cousin Henry drunk in Mexico, dressed as a ators they'd killed for the hides strung froe editor chronicle e for this historic visit to Fairweather Hall? At that time my family is broke out in the kind of misery common to sharecroppers in Faulkner novels Just thatat the VFW bar, he'd toppled off a bar stool He's still alive but paralyzed and speechless, barely aware that Mother's popping valiues with enough presidents to fill a high school history book Both Roosevelts practiced in the fa car with McKinley right before he was shot

Warren gets quiet during the stories He was bred in quiet and carries quiet in hier's tail he can pull off with gravitas But he can also drift far fro across from him, I can't meet his eyes Maybe he's patiently irritated with hoed I a rules of coet derandfather-in riding gear circa 1930-so a polo mallet-is Warren's exact double Here's the cover of The New York Times The New York Times that falsely reported his death after a fall Mr Whitbread stares into so, The oldInfuriatedwreaths to the house, and he was galloping across a field that falsely reported his death after a fall Mr Whitbread stares into so, The oldInfuriatedwreaths to the house, and he was galloping across a field

Effortless, excellence has to be Tossed off, reflecting the ease you're born to, which opposes what little I've garnered about comportment I'et come from effort Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they te unbreakable, because Lord knows they'll try-without letup-to break you Where I couests have to know you've sweated over a stove, for sweat is how care is shown At the Whitbreads', preparations are both slapdash and irant St Andre triple-creme cheese, or on Christmas Eve, half a pound of caviar casually flipped into a silver urn

It's taken me so much effort effort just to do as medium-shi+tty as I've heretofore done Just to drop out of college, stay alive, and have my teeth taken care of just to do as medium-shi+tty as I've heretofore done Just to drop out of college, stay alive, and have my teeth taken care of

I take another sip of port, which slides down as if greased Warren seems thousands of miles away, and why has he kept all this from me?

Here's Mrs Whitbread in her dress for Queen Elizabeth's coronation So why they were various places Here's Mr Whitbread flanked by briefcase-carrying aides, striding confidently up the steps of the Supre behind you, and you pulled out some notecards

You were there? Mr Whitbread asks

Mrs Whitbread looks exasperated Of course, darling I thought they should experience it

Warren goes on, And your client said, What are you doing? What are you doing?

Mr Whitbread tosses so, I suppose I told hiu for The Washi+ngton Post The Washi+ngton Post at the ties between Warren's parents and me-later claimed Mr Whitbread was the only man he ever saw talk at the ties between Warren's parents and me-later claimed Mr Whitbread was the only man he ever saw talk don to the Supreme Court) to the Supreme Court) At dinner, I'd seen my lover's fine jaw flex as he studied his plate, and I'd felt the liquid warether evaporate as he braced hi for solass into the fireplace and stalk out with a poor kid's piety, riding off with him in his Mazda into a life with nary a polo divet to sto comfort saps resolve

And by the tiun to breathe in the parents' gentility The conversation is so adroit-the nonchalance so juicy-I lap it up as Tiger did our fatty scraps, steel bowls rattling on the kitchen tiles I want to believe I'm at home with these composed individuals They're liberal in their politics, after all Fro needlepoint pillows, I can see a whole shelf devoted to the egalitarian writings of Thonize my native intellect At soion does your family practice, Mary?

Which I take as interest inhistory I think of my mother, who studied every faith and-with her husbands-co, really, I say But I findup a few childhood visits to the Presbyterian church, for I know a joke punch line about Episcopalians being Presbyterians with trust funds

But I catch Mrs Whitbread's unht hoht have been a irl again in summer, and my half-Indian daddy has just corime under his nails from a double shi+ft How carefully he draws five one-dollar bills froive Mother for two pairs of school shoes-one forthe car around, he slips off his shi+rt, showing a chest pale as paper where his worker's tan runs out He steps out of his khakis, and jutting through his baggy boxers, his legs are knobby and thin One thigh's pronounced hunk of shrapnel is royal blue The long scar up his right shi+nbone where a horse he was breaking threw and dragged hie, staring at his brown forearreedy call for hie drops, and he's gone, reabsorbed into the shriveled form in my mother's house, tended days by a hts by Mother, who resents it

In an instant I'm back in the Whitbreads' library, and Daddy lies uninsured, half paralyzed

On the s before the fireplace, glossy-haired and tidy They actually eous silverware Not reseeous silverware Not reseer Two Tiger One, Tiger Two(I'll coenetic code i DNA in offspring My own son, blond and blue-eyed, will bear so little of me that ladies in the park will think I've been hired to push his stroller) Just as we're saying good night, Mr Whitbread inquires whether, as a Texan, -wittily, I think-up to his elboelve hours a day Which fact they take with a preoccupied air I could speculate on what they thought, but they're unreadable as granite

That night, lying in Warren's narrow bed, where I've sneaked from his sister's flowery boudoir to make love, I ask him, How'd I do?

He cups my face I love you, he says Leafy shadowsere) Do you think they heard us just now?

Don't be silly, he says I doubt they'd care

Their roo otherroom, padlocked from the outside Not even theon his back, and his face mesmerizes me-the patrician nose, Germanic jaw

Do they like me? I say

You want everybody to like you, he says

You don't? I say

Only you, he says And Tiger

Not Sa to so his mother said about a cousin's wife

I'm common, I say

I always fancied an affair with a sculleryhim He fails to open his eyes, as he says, Aren't you even a little sleepy?

I' with your eyes shut?