mired in prose. Besides, there can be something so—refreshing—about a young voice.”
Nancy looked doubtfully toward Ernest. “Well?”
“I don’t see what harm it would do.”
She smiled tightly. “All right, in that case, I guess there’ no problem, is there? Thank you, Jonah. Ben, say ‘thank you’ to Mr. Boyd.”
“Thank you. Can I go now and decide which poems to read?”
“But we haven’t had dessert. And you said ‘poem,’ not ‘poems.’”
“I don’t want dessert.”
“Just wait until after dessert. Denny?”
Nancy got up and went into the kitchen. I followed.
“Oh, I just don’t know about this,” she said as she arranged the pumpkin pie on its plate. “I mean, do you think his poetry’ any good? I hope Boyd’ not expecting some little genius. It’ not that I’m not supportive of Ben, it’ just—well, you don’t follow up a dinner of beef Wellington with Twinkies, do you?”
“I wouldn’t worry. It’ just a casual thing. And who knows? Maybe Boyd will think Ben is a genius, and take him under his wing, and the next thing we know, he’ll be the toast of New York.”
“Dear Denny, so young and so idealistic,” Nancy said, plunging a spoon into a gallon of vanilla ice cream. That shut me up.
The desserts were now ready—in addition to pumpkin pie, banana cream pie, apple pie, and a chocolate pecan pie that Daphne had made. We returned to the dining room, bearing trays piled high with plates as well as the tub of ice cream. Nancy sliced. I scooped.
No one talked much, except to compliment the pies.
“Can I go now?” Ben asked after a few minutes.
“May I go now,” Nancy corrected. “And yes, you can.”
He dashed from the table.
“Well, who’ for coffee?” Various hands shot up. Nancy hustled off to make the coffee—Boyd said he would help her—and the rest of us retreated to the study, where Phil went to work arranging chairs, and Ernest set up a makeshift lectern, using a plant stand and a dictionary holder. I sat on the sofa, next to Daphne and Glenn. Anne, holding a fresh glass of wine, had claimed a spot next to Ben, who was sitting on a sort of daybed pushed up against the bookshelves, going through his sheaf of poems. “How you’ve grown!” she said, tousling his hair. “Remember when you were just a little tyke? I used to give you back rubs.”
He didn’t answer.
“You used to squirm around and say it tickled, but then you’d relax into it,” Anne said, her fingers moving to his shoulders.
“Stop, I’m trying to concentrate.”
She laughed. As the evening wore on, her laugh had grown harsher, with an almost granular edge. And now Nancy came in, apronless, and bearing a tray with cups, saucers, and spoons piled on it, followed by Boyd with his four notebooks, the coffee pot, the cream, and the sugar: an accident waiting to happen that, fortunately, didn’t. Nancy poured and handed out cups. “Might I just squeeze in?” she asked when she was done, insinuating herself into the narrow space that separated Anne from Ben.
“Be my guest,” Anne said. “By the way, Nancy, I love those sheets.”
“Oh, thanks.”
Daphne rolled her eyes.
“Well, shall we begin?” Ernest ejected Little Hans from the leather rocker and claimed it for himself. “Who goes first?”
“Oh, you, of course, Jonah,” Nancy said.
“I don’t know, I think my wife is right, we should let youth have its say.”
“Or perhaps it should be age before beauty,” Anne said, this time laughing so loudly that her laugh turned into a coughing fit.
Giving her a look that might not have been affectionate, Boyd stepped to the lectern, and opened one of his notebooks. “I think I’ll simplify matters by reading from the first chapter. That way I won’t have to go through all the rigmarole of explaining who everyone is and what’ already happened and so on.” He cleared his throat. “By the way, the novel is called Gonesse. As our young poet so astutely noted, it is about ballooning. I got the idea from some wallpaper I saw in Paris once—a ballooning toile de Jouy.” He gazed hard at the notebook. “Oh, and the hero—Agostinelli—was a real person. He was Proust’ chauffeur, and probably his lover.”
“Interesting,” Nancy said.
“All right, Chapter One.” Again, Boyd cleared his throat. And then, in that soothing if slightly cracked baritone, he read:
“To make love in a balloon . . .”
For all sorts of reasons that will later become obvious, I wish today that I could remember more about that reading. Many years have