The Dinner Party by Howard Fast Page A

Leonard always felt that his grandfather had been named properly. Levi was six feet and three inches tall, a broad, barrel-chested man with a ruddy face that resembled the traditional cartoon of John Bull. His frame was large enough to support the roll of fat around his stomach, so he was never taken for a fat man, a large man but not a fat man, for all of his two hundred and forty pounds.
    His wife, Jenny—Jean by birth certificate—had been one of those tall, rangy women, golf and skis and tennis and horses—wide shoulders that carry clothes with queenly grace. Now, at age sixty-nine, she was still a fine-looking woman, thirty pounds heavier than the girl he had married, with the unassuming arrogance that comes of having been born rich and having been rich all of her life. Augustus was seventy-three, but he fought age as he fought everything else, and if he displayed a vigor he did not wholly feel, it was nevertheless a vigor he could command when called upon. Leonard had often wondered how these two self-satisfied and very large people could have produced his mother, Dolly, who was, in contrast, small, delicate, and prey to endless uncertainties.
    â€œYou don’t look good, either of you,” was Augustus’ immediate reaction. “You need sun and exercise! Kids today don’t eat right! God damn it, you’re not on coke, are you?” He spoke to them as he would have spoken to a job-boss, but whereas the job-boss would have cringed in fear, both Leonard and Elizabeth broke into their first real laughter of the day. He adored them, and possibly they were the only things in the world that he gave a damn about, these two slender, beautiful creatures who were out of his genes and his blood. On their part, he was their large, gruff, and totally malleable pet bear. Jenny was something else, a grandmother, loving, though not too demonstrative; always in the shadow of the man she had married, yet tall and queenly enough to be her own person.
    The luggage came off the plane, five suitcases for their single night at the Cromwells, and Augustus went off to have a last word with his pilot. When he returned, Leonard was hauling a suitcase into the station wagon. Effortlessly, Augustus tossed the other pieces into the car.
    â€œShould we wait for the pilot?” Leonard asked.
    â€œNo. We carry a navigator who doubles as a co-pilot now. They’ll find their way into town. I do wish I could spend some time with you kids and play some tennis. By golly, it’s three, four years since we played tennis. Think you could beat me, Liz?”
    â€œI’d give it a good try.”
    â€œWell, maybe this afternoon.”
    â€œYou haven’t touched a tennis racket in years,” Jenny said, “and you’re not going to this afternoon.”
    â€œListen to her!” He was in marvelous good humor.
    â€œWhy can’t you stay?” Leonard wondered.
    â€œWe’re on our way to Switzerland. It’s business, not pleasure.”
    â€œOh, I envy you.”
    â€œCome along.”
    â€œHave you opened the house at Klosters?”
    â€œNo,” Jenny said with annoyance. “No. Nor shall we. It’s cold and drafty and falling to pieces, and I don’t know why we don’t sell it.”
    â€œIt’s so beautiful,” Elizabeth said. “You remember, Lenny—that great big fireplace.”
    â€œI remember how cold I was,” Leonard said.
    â€œWe’ll stay in a proper hotel in Geneva,” Jenny said. “I will not go near Klosters. He believes he’s thirty. I will be seventy years old come October, and I am aware of it.”
    But Leonard’s thoughts were riveted now on that day in Klosters—he was eight years old, chilled to the bone, and taken into that strange old half-timbered lodge through the wild, whipping snow. A fire roared in the great fireplace, but he could not warm himself and he kept shivering with the cold of