The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [36]
There was a small silence after which Teddy made some soothing remarks and the whispering, giggling and choking started up all over again. I just barely caught, “Mon Dieu, mais c’est pénible tout ça—un véritable bag-of-wind, n’est-ce pas?” It fell so lightly on the ears it seemed to be hummed, but it was enough for me. Enough was enough for me.
I had been lumped together all this time with my fool cousin, placed “on his side,” so to speak, by accident of blood, nationality and the seating arrangements. It was an error I intended to rectify. It was dessert now, and I was deserting. He was just heading into a fresh topic—admittedly not one which he found as controversial as the last, but equally dull and equally mysterious.
“Will you shut up and eat, for God’s sake!” It was my voice all right and the words were mine, too, only somehow the delivery seemed more forceful than expected. I was pained and shocked by its brutality.
As for John, he just gawped at me “Huh?”
“Eat!” I repeated. “Just … eat!” I was still badly out of control, almost in tears.
“Oh.” Blinking like an owl, he turned and stared bewilderedly down at his plate. Then, like a good child, he picked up his spoon and began shoveling in the food.
In the really big silence that followed I had plenty of time to perceive the extent of my failure. It was complete. I was tied far more tightly to John now than before my outburst, the force of which had even loosened his wife from her moorings. The giggling had stopped altogether, and nobody tried any rescue work.
Larry was the first to speak. He finished his souffle, wiped his mouth and announced that he was going to leave. He had to be up very early the next day, he said, for a talk with his set-designer. He gave me another of his traitor smiles—roguish and piratical—only this one betraying me.
Hurriedly I pushed back my chair and clumsily rose to my feet. At the same time I heard the Contessa murmuring, “I’ll drive you home, dear boy. I have a car outside.…”
“No, it’s too much trouble,” I mumbled thickly. “We’ll find a taxi.” With everyone staring at me I stumbled back over my chair.
“Now don’t you worry about my little cousin, Contessa. You two just run along. We’ll look after her,” said the good-natured voice at my side. To my horror, John, having made a miraculous recovery, was genially speeding the parting guests. He had his arm on my shoulder. “We’re not letting you off as easily as that, S. J.,” he said, playfully pummeling away at it. “Gosh, I know darned well I’ve been talking my head off this evening, but I’m going on the listening end as of right now. I’ve got a million and one questions stored up to fire at you. Woman’s angle stuff. Food. Fashions …” he looked at me suddenly and lost his train of thought, “Say, what the heck have you been doing with yourself anyway? I very nearly didn’t recognize you when you came in...”
I didn’t struggle. I remember thinking at the time that it was funny my not struggling. I’d had a lot of wine during the dinner and yet I knew this couldn’t entirely explain my listlessness.…
It was the door that did it finally—that door. When Teddy went to show them the way downstairs (those same stairs I had run down so dispiritedly—his threats still ringing in my ears— not a month and a half ago), he left the door ajar. John was probably still talking; I didn’t hear him. I couldn’t take my eyes away from that door. It seemed to be undergoing some sort of transformation, turning into a person—a personality, rather—a sort of automation butler, wooden and grotesque, with a very strong but not immediately definable attitude toward me. That doorknob … it was definitely making a gesture. It was showing me out! The door wants me to go, I thought crazily. And then I pulled myself together. It was typical of my lunacy to ascribe