had reported (falsely, it turned out) that Negroes were assembling on Belle Isle and were planning to march on the city, Bea had felt something odd: a social—racial—terror. It was quite unlike anything she’d ever known, this invasive fear of another race.
Uncle Dennis took the topic firmly in hand. “Oh, but it isn’t a problem in one neighborhood, it’s the whole city’s problem. And it has to be a citywide solution. We need more of those Sojourner Truth housing developments. Good heavens, this is America, how can you say to people, Your kind has nowhere to live in the fourth-largest city in the country?” Given Mamma and Papa’s attitudes, this wasn’t perhaps a wholly rhetorical question. Still, Uncle Dennis proceeded confidently. He was of course a great liberal, as was Aunt Grace, whose heroine was Eleanor Roosevelt. “That’s the thing all of us are learning,” he declared, and carried on in this vein, his all of us shepherding the dinner party safely into a territory where fairness and decency and progress flourished. Uncle Dennis pushed on, delving into some of the specific programs the city needed to adopt, and would adopt, because we remain a very decent city , and it soon became evident that at this celebration a potential disaster had been averted.
But still no whitefish. In desperation, Bea said, “Why don’t you tell us about your reading, Uncle Dennis?”
“My reading?”
“Your science fiction. You must be reading a science-fiction story.”
“Yessss …”
Although Uncle Dennis avidly discussed his reading with Bea, he’d never felt quite comfortable sharing such things with the world at large. “Oh, this one’s pretty dumb, actually,” he said, and his plump bespectacled face looked a little abashed.
Still, he carried on. “The book’s called Lost Planet of the Amazons . A spaceman from Earth crash-lands on some distant planet and discovers there aren’t any other men in sight. No boys. No males anywhere. Only females.
“And at first he’s utterly delighted. Jeepers, it’s like a harem! I don’t mean to suggest the book goes in for hanky-panky. But you can imagine how overjoyed our spaceman is to find himself the only man on a planet overrun by women.” Uncle Dennis halted. “That may not sound like heaven to you, but you’ll have to trust me on this, Stevie,” he said. “Eventually, you’ll get it”—which made Stevie blush and everyone else laugh. The laughter felt good. Uncle Dennis was trying so hard, really, to make the party a success …
“But then he fell to thinking. Men had to be somewhere . Otherwise, where did all the women come from? And he’d caught a few glimpses of pregnant women, and how could they be pregnant without—without the benefit of men?”
Uncle Dennis glanced searchingly around the table. His gaze settled on his wineglass and he took a sip.
Stevie and Edith were staring hard at Uncle Dennis, who only now realized his tale might not be completely appropriate for children.
“But where did the babies come from?” Edith asked in her level, fact-gathering way.
Uncle Dennis was saved by the belated arrival of the whitefish.
Like Chuck, the waitress was very fat and very red-faced. The two of them might almost have been brother and sister, though they didn’t otherwise look much alike; it seemed if you were fat enough and red-faced enough, other resemblances scarcely counted.
The fish was covered with bread crumbs—wonderfully crunchy bread crumbs—and it came with buttered carrots and mashed potatoes with dark brown gravy. Uncle Dennis had selected well. They ate in silence. They were going to get through this potentially disastrous celebration. It was merely a matter of everyone’s proceeding cautiously—tonight, tomorrow, next week—and letting time do its healing work. They were all one family, the Paradisos and the Poppletons, and they were, besides, all the family each of them had.
The waitress refilled the
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