We Are Not Ourselves(47)

When Connell called from a pay phone and said they were ten minutes away, she was surprised to find herself seized by terror. She passed the news to the living room, which filled with that clamor particular to a crowd silencing itself. A quiet grew louder than the din that had preceded it; she could almost hear her pulse in its murky depths. She moved through the wall of people to be near enough for him to see her when he entered.

As Ed stepped into the room, Eileen closed her eyes, obeying a strange compulsion not to look at his face. A frenzied chorus rang out around her. When she opened her eyes, she saw him beaming and being passed from person to person, shouting as he encountered every new face—shouts like war whoops that could have been either exultant or lunatic. He was red with excitement, and sweat was gathering on him. As she moved close to hug him, she heard him whoop the way he had for the others, as though he hadn’t seen her in years. His whoops went on; they wouldn’t die down. He greeted each successive person with the same ecstatic disbelief.

She was afraid to leave him, afraid to stay. She saw him engulfed in friends’ arms and ducked into the kitchen to get him a drink. When she returned he was miming his own shock for them over and over. She didn’t want anyone else to notice the unconvincing mirth in his performance. She shouted to Connell to cue the stereo. Ed was ushered into the dining room. In the mirror she tried to look at other people’s reactions but was inexorably drawn back to her husband’s expressions. When he saw his brother Phil in from Toronto, he let out a howl that sounded like that of a dying animal. She reached for a tray of hors d’oeuvres to pass. The food smells were mingling successfully; no trace of dust came off any surface she touched; nothing was out of place. The only messes were the ones guests were making themselves—someone bumped into the punch bowl and sent a couple of crystal mugs crashing to the floor—and for those she had great patience.

She poured herself a glass of wine and drifted into the living room, where she gave herself over to conversation. Behind the timbre of any individual voice lay the lovely murmur of the group, but she couldn’t distract herself from the thought of her husband’s frenzied surprise, and she went in search of him.

She went out on the stoop with Pat and the smokers and the kids, but no one had seen him come outside. The bathroom was locked, but after a little while her aunt Margie came out. She went down to the basement and searched its recesses, where she found no sign of him.

When she got back up to the landing at her back door, instead of heading inside she called up the stairs. There was no response, but she had an instinct to proceed upstairs anyway, and she found him sitting on the flight between the second and third floors, just sitting there, looking directly at her as she approached, in a way that unnerved her, as though he’d been waiting for her to find him. The music and talking muffled through the intervening flight rose and fell in waves, following the rhythm of its own respiration. There had been no dip in the revelry yet.

“Frank wants to take your picture,” she said. “Fiona just got here. I don’t know if you saw her.”

He sat in silence, though he didn’t look away.

“Pat’s only here to see you. He doesn’t go to parties anymore. You should have heard him when I finally got him on the phone. ‘For Ed?’ he said. ‘Sure. Anything.’?”

“Keep him away from the bar,” Ed said.

“He won’t even come inside,” she said, chuckling. “He’s on the stoop.”

She could feel her eyes watering, though she wasn’t consciously sad. “We’re having a real party downstairs,” she said. “It’d be even better if you were there.”

He patted the spot beside him. The gentleness of the gesture touched her, and being moved when she was also angry confused her, so that she wanted to go back down alone, but she gave in, gathered her skirt under her and sat.

“I’m getting old,” he said. “I can feel my body breaking down.”

“You just feel that way because it’s your birthday,” she said. “Everyone gets old.”

“I didn’t expect to see all these people. I thought we’d have a quiet night.”

She looked at him wryly. “Haven’t we had enough quiet nights lately?”

“I don’t even know half these people.”

“You know almost every single one of them,” she said. “There are maybe four people that you’ve never met.”

“Then I don’t remember them.”

“Of course you do. I’ll go around with you and start conversations and you can hear who they are that way.”

He looked away.

“You love parties,” she said. “You grumble and complain that I entertain too often, but once the party’s going, no one enjoys it more than you. Those people are here to see you. I don’t know what to tell them when they ask where you are.”

“Tell them you saw me a second ago in the other room.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m tired. I can’t tell you how tired I am. I’m tired of standing in front of a bunch of people and being the center of attention. Do you have any idea how much energy that takes? You’re never off. Never. You can never have a bad day. I feel like I’ve been trying to keep all these juggling balls in the air, and I can’t let them hit the ground or something bad will happen. I’d love to just lie down right now.”