Free America America by Ethan Canin Page B

“—Rock-e-feller’s. Balls.” He thumped himself on the chest. “In his. Sock drawer.”
    At that one, Mr. McGowar himself let out a laugh, which sounded like a tire deflating. His laugh continued until my mother appeared on the stairs.
    “You just never know,” she said. She was holding my father’s blue tie in her hand. “You just never know who’s going to be there at the Metareys’.” Then she added, “And you never know what’s going to happen.”
    “Who could be there that’s going to matter to Corey?” said my father. “Rockefeller’s going to be governor till the day we all die.”
    “That’s what
your
father used to say about FDR,” she answered. “And look at you, Corey. Just like your father. You look like a cabbage. Do you two think your shirts iron themselves?”
    As I unbuttoned my shirt, I could see Mr. McGowar’s long rib cage still bouncing from his laugh. When my mother had disappeared back up the stairs, he held up his finger again. “He was,” he said, “almost—”
    He coughed.
    “Almost what, Eugene?”
    “—almost—” he rasped.
    He took a whistling breath.
    “—almost. Right.”
    My father looked at him over his glasses.
    “—Your father,” he managed to get out, “—about FDR.”
    He coughed for a good while then, before he put the earpiece back in.
    By then, my mother had reappeared at the bottom of the stairs with my ironed shirt and my father’s tie over her arm.
    “Oh, all right,” said my father, getting up at last from the couch. “At least let me tie the condemned man’s noose for him.”

    A S THE SUN WAS SETTING that night over Aberdeen West, the guests began to arrive, and by dark they’d overflowed the patio onto the lawn. Behind a long mahogany table Gil McKinstrey had set up the bar. Not long after the party had begun, I was unloading a case of champagne when a courtly-looking man walked up in front of me and ordered a rye whiskey on the rocks. His nod to Gil was courtly as well, and he wore a stiff black suit that gave him something of the demeanor of a priest; but when Gil handed him the rye whiskey he tossed it straight back, then put his hand out for another.
    If I’d known who Morlin Chase was, of course, I’d have been too nervous to even stand that close to him. But I wouldn’t know about any of these men, really, until many years later. Not about Chase. Not about Henry Bonwiller. Not about half the figures I would come across that year, from Averell Harriman to Arthur Schlesinger, and not even about the Metarey family. I’ve thought about that summer for many years now, and there will always be parts of it I don’t understand. Chase, I discovered in college, was the son of a railroad baron himself, and he’d been as close to as many presidents as anyone in the history of American politics. But the governor’s election was still four years away.
    That night my duties were to stock the liquor and the ice for two hundred guests and to collect dirty dishes and glasses, and although two other bar-backs from town were working as well, I barely had a moment to look at anybody. The first time I pushed open the swinging doors to the service kitchen, I was surprised to see a room the size of a tennis court, with a whole row of stoves and sinks dividing it up the middle and two spray hoses on runners that were being yanked back and forth by the maids preparing the dishes for the sterilizer. It was as busy as a tennis court, too, with maids and cooks hurrying across the floor. I stayed in a line between the door and the pantry.
    As I was fetching a case of Scotch a few minutes later, I ran into Clara standing at the door by the sinks. She pointed to my tie.
    “Oh—” I said, “do you like it?” I’d tucked it into my pants so that it wouldn’t dip in the glasses.
    “Did I say that?”
    “I guess you didn’t.”
    “But I have to admit, it’s an interesting way to wear one.”
    With the Scotch in my arms, I made my way down the