The Dinner Party by Howard Fast Page A

to her lights, a house should be furnished and decorated. In Dolly’s case, that meant a time frame between 1750 and 1820, and for the most part pieces produced in Philadelphia, New York, or Boston—with just an occasional intrusion from Great Britain. Other people might decorate differently; that was all right for others. The rich gray-mauve toile above the chair rail, the gleaming white woodwork, the mahogany table, the brass candle chandelier, and the twelve chairs, made in Philadelphia in 1793 in the style of Queen Anne, all of it sitting on a properly threadbare Persian rug, the walls exhibiting a group of American primitives that were a gift from her grandmother—this was proper and right for Dolly. “In Mother’s world,” Elizabeth had once explained to a friend, “nothing ages, nothing changes, nothing is new. It’s wonderful but also ridiculous.”
    Richard Cromwell simply accepted it with appropriate reverence. To marry a rich woman is not as simple or as easy as some believe, and Richard Cromwell found himself in a foreign land where only the language was familiar. Only grifters, conmen, and out-and-out bums marry rich women and fall into it like a letter into a mail slot, using and spending with the pathological ease of middle-European noblemen; the senator was none of the above, and he had never made an easy adjustment to his wife’s money or style of living. A teller in a midwestern bank, his father brought home a slowly increasing paycheck that started in the ’thirties at twenty-seven dollars a week. His whole boyhood had been skimped: shoes or new trousers, chopped meat or Spam, a movie for the family or medicine. Real poverty is formless, shapeless, chaotic, and the one good fortune of the senator was that he had a mother who was a rock of discipline and organization, and she had relentlessly fought and rejected the chaos of poverty. In many ways Dolly was like his mother, but at the opposite end of the social spectrum; that was why he had married her, not for her money.
    MacKenzie had just finished inserting the boards that widened the table to its full extent. “If you would just hold the other end, Senator, we could get rid of the cracks.”
    The table came together properly. MacKenzie excused himself, and Dolly spread the place cards on the table.
    â€œYou and I at the two ends,” she said. “We have to hang it on that. Ordinarily I’d say give me the two lords of Pennsylvania Avenue, and you’d have their wives.”
    â€œWhy not?” the senator wondered. “As a start.”
    â€œBecause Augustus Adams Fillmore Rosenberg Levi is being picked up at the airport by our two kids this very moment.” It gave her a reason to smile and signal that she would like to be friends, at least for today.
    â€œGood heavens! Is that his real name?”
    â€œEvery last bit of it.”
    â€œYou never told me that. Nobody has four given names.”
    â€œPop has. My grandfather was a peculiar man.”
    â€œThat’s the trouble with an old family,” the senator said. “They get peculiar.”
    â€œOh?” She regarded him thoughtfully.
    â€œI say that in awe. And respect. My word, Dolly, four names. I’m envious. My family never had enough money to even begin to be peculiar. A middle name, mine is Joseph. But no more.”
    â€œYour daddy was a lovely man, and a gentleman. Sometimes, you’re like him, Richard. You can be very funny and very sweet. Sometimes,” she temporized.
    â€œWhen you decided I was having an affair, why didn’t you say something?”
    â€œTo what end? I don’t want to divorce you.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œGod knows—we’re doing the seating, aren’t we?”
    â€œYes. Sure. You feel that Gus will be offended if he’s not sitting at your right hand?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œSuppose you put Winnie Justin on my left.