381: Mark was sitting ...
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 18 continues
Mark was sitting on the living room sofa with his right arm around Margot and his left arm around Martha, when Herb and Lorna, who had come in through the kitchen, suddenly appeared in the archway between their dining room and their living room. His first impulse was to jump up and thank them, he felt such a rush of gratitude. He was grateful for their having brought all this about, for having provided the house, the fireplace, the sofa — that sofa upholstered in scratchy, rose-colored fabric that he knew he would never forget — on which he had become so happy. At the same time he was a little worried for them, worried that they’d feel they were in occupied territory. He thought they might be offended by the way he and the others had taken over their living room, made themselves at home. We had built a fire (for its flickering, aphrodisiac light), and that seemed to Mark a violation. There was party clutter everywhere: bottles (beer in quarts and Haig & Haig Scotch in Pinch bottles, which were chic in my circle then), cigarette packs and butts and ash-trays and lighters (in memory, it seems as if all of us had Zippo lighters with totemic college emblems), snack packages and the remains of some onion dip. There were couples in various styles of embrace, and there were loud conversations. Lorna took all of this in, and she smiled. There was endorsement in her smile, not the condescending youth-must-be-served sort but an elevating this-is-meet-and-right sort, as if the purpose behind Herb and Lorna’s return was not to see what we might be doing wrong, but to see that we were doing it right. Lorna’s smile seemed to give to everything we were up to in her living room the endorsement of an elder, a sage. This interpretation comes long after the fact, I admit, and I can’t pretend that I read all of it in Lorna’s smile that night.
Herb was right behind Lorna, wearing a similar smile. He was less forward, eager but hesitant, and he stood in what I thought of as his ready-when-you-are posture, bent slightly at the waist, as if he wanted to come right on in and start shaking hands but felt that he had to wait for an invitation — not an invitation into his own living room, certainly, but an invitation into our party, into our youth.
Lorna called out, “Hello!” in a tone she might have used to welcome guests to a party of her own. The sound of her voice occasioned some squeals in corners of the room and a crash in one of the bedrooms down the hall. There was much scrambling, and tucking in of shirts and blouses. I hopped to my feet, greeted them, and began introducing them at once, sometimes to couples who were still buttoning themselves up.
They sat down. I made them drinks, and they began chatting. From them came the familiar cuddly, soothing, reassuring warmth, the active ingredient in the kind of hug mothers use as an analgesic for the pain of a scraped knee. Most of my friends, charmed by them, warmed by them, attracted to them, stayed around for another hour or so. We did a little cleaning up and put things in order a bit, but for most of the time we were just talking, sitting in front of the fire. Finally, everyone but Mark and the Glynns and Albertine and I had left. It was time for me to walk Albertine home. I urged Herb and Lorna to go to bed and leave the rest of the cleaning up to me in the morning. They said they would, but I could tell that they didn’t mean it. The five of us left.
It is possible that, without that quiet, domestic ending to the evening, the love that Margot and Martha felt for Mark would, when the three of them finally left, simply have evaporated in the outside air. Instead, as soon as Herb had closed the front door behind us, Margot linked her arm with Mark’s, snuggled against him, and said, “Weren’t they wonderful?”
“Oh, yes,” said Martha. She snuggled against Mark from the other side. “They’re so sweet. They’re so homey.”
“You can just see them serving Thanksgiving dinner, can’t you?” asked Margot.
“Right!” said Martha. “She’d be wearing a starched apron, with ruffles—”
“Oh, of course!” said Margot. “And she would have made about three pies—”
“And he would carve the turkey at the table,” Mark said.
“That’s just the way it is,” I said.
We separated at the end of the street. Albertine and I took our time walking home. Warmed by Herb and Lorna’s happy domesticity, we sketched something like it for ourselves. Mark and Margot and Martha, similarly warmed, were allowing themselves (but without admitting it) to hope that somehow they might, as a trio, achieve something like it, too.
[to be continued on Monday, November 14, 2022]
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In Topical Guide 381, Mark Dorset considers Food: Onion Dip; and Drinking: Scotch: Haig & Haig from this episode.
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