American Appetites by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

episode of September 21, 1986, is renewed. The “McCulloughs’ harassment,” it is called; for naturally their friends know all about it in detail. (Ian in particular was outraged by the incident and talked of little else for days. He made numberless telephone calls, demanded a formal explanation and apology from the state commissioner of police, enlisted the aid and advice of friends in the ACLU about whether he should file charges. For, after all, as he argued, his and Glynnis’s civil rights had been violated.) Glynnis would rather talk about something else but knows the subject must be allowed to run its course. Malcolm has much to say, most of it new and quite interesting; Vaughn tells an anecdote, buttressed by Meika, which Glynnis does not remember having heard before; Denis, an old, fiery SDS radical of the sixties, speaks with vehemence of the “encroaching police state”; Ian has something to add, of course; and Amos Kuhn; and the others. Glynnis listens, or half listens; warmed by drink and gratified by the success of her dinner thus far—the seviche, the chicken, the vegetables, the sourdough bread, the Bernkasteler Doktor Auslese 1982 and the equally superb Château Mouton-Rothschild 1976—she allows her thoughts, for very pleasure, to drift. The table is elegantly set, beautifully set: with her finest tablecloth, white embroidered Irish linen-lace, and the pair of pewter candelabra inherited from her grandmother, and the lovely pink roses in the Waterford vase, in the center. Because they are Ian’s favorites, Glynnis set the table with the Italian earthenware plates they had brought back years ago from Florence. And the finestemmed crystal wineglasses and goblets bought a few weeks ago at Neiman-Marcus’s post-Christmas sale. And the beautiful thick Tunisian napkins, a gift from the Grinnells. And, for fun, Glynnis’s great-grandmother’s gold-plate service . . . really quite beautiful, if a bit, as Glynnis always says, much .
    Everything appears to be going well; apart from Bianca’s behavior, her rudeness both in public and in private, everything is going, Glynnis thinks, wonderfully well.
    At his first taste of the ballotine of chicken, Leonard Oppenheim laid down his fork and said, “Glynnis, you’ve outdone even yourself, this time.” And raised his glass to her.
    And Glynnis tasted it too, and thought, Yes, it’s good, thank God it’s good; my effort has paid off.
    She has not, she thinks, seen Ian so happy in any social gathering in quite a while.
    Nor has she, she thinks, seen her friends so . . . attractively and attentively happy, so harmonious together; no matter if, even with Bianca’s place removed, they are a bit crowded around the table.
    Denis is talking about an incident that happened to him the other day, in New York City. A near mugging, as he describes it. Glynnis listens to him, as always, with immense interest, watches him admiringly, feels a surge of affection for the man, her husband’s closest friend, her closest friend’s husband, that is still deeply erotic: yet perhaps more companionable, as if she and Denis had in fact been married, instead of deciding that they must not push things beyond a certain point . . . must not destroy the delicate fabric of their domestic lives. Denis, an economist, like Ian a senior fellow at the Hazelton Institute, is a year or two older than Ian: a thick-shouldered, thick-necked man of moderate height, with a head that might have been painted, in its shrewd peasant solidity, by Brueghel. A bulldog face, Glynnis thinks, but a handsome one. In the candlelight, Denis’s somewhat coarse skin is softened and the sharp quizzical frown lines between his eyes have vanished.
    Glynnis has seated Denis on her left and, at these close quarters, is led to consider the brief eight months of her affair with him: the “physical” affair, that intense,