Free Peaceable Kingdom by Francine Prose Page B

half an hour.”
    “Where was I?” Caroline looked so crushed with disappointment that for a second Grady almost offered to repeat the whole show. The moment passed quickly, replaced by the thought that if it had been Mr. Rogers downstairs, she would have been down there watching.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. It’s all too much at once. My first husband was a painter and in my first marriage we were always having parties. Afterwards we always fought.”
    “Parties are work,” Grady said.
    “It wasn’t that,” she said. “It was that we felt like each party was a window through which the guests could see our lives, and afterwards we would wonder what they saw, and try to see what they saw, until we would wind up not liking what we saw.”
    Grady’s face felt stiff; he was dimly aware of a smile sitting stupidly on his mouth. He didn’t know what to say. What if his life was dead-ending here, leaving him stuck forever, unable to either continue this conversation or move? Just then Grady felt a tug on his pants. My little savior! he thought. “How did you find me?” he said, and sank straight to his knees. It was crowded and the people standing nearest him gave him peculiar looks until they saw that he was consoling a child. Then, of course, they smiled. Harry was sobbing so hard he was choking. “Calm down,” Grady whispered. “What happened?”
    It took Harry a while to talk. “Walt hit me,” he said.
    “Where?” Grady said. “Hit you where?”
    Harry solemnly lifted his shirt. Diagonally across his right shoulder was an ugly welt. “How did he do that ?” Grady said.
    “A sword,” Harry said.
    “A sword ?” repeated Grady, this time for Caroline’s benefit.
    “Oh, God,” she said. “His plastic He-Man sword. He’s been whacking the shit out of everything with it, and Eliot lets him get away with it.”
    “What seems to be the problem?” asked Eli.
    Grady stood up. “The kids were fighting,” he said. He longed to tell Eli to fuck off and grab Harry and get the hell out. But Grady felt he owed it to Harry not to make too much of this—to make him seem like a regular guy who could handle some rough-and-tumble.
    “Walt hit me with a sword,” Harry said.
    “That little monster,” Eli said. “Well, he’s younger than you. You think you can forgive Walt if he says he’s sorry?” Harry nodded tearfully. “All right,” said Eli. “Let’s go talk to him.”
    “I don’t know,” Grady said. “We should really be leaving.”
    “Not before the cake ,” Eli said to Harry. “Not before the ice cream and cake .” Harry seemed to agree.
    “O.K., we’ll stay for some cake,” Grady said, and the three of them trooped downstairs. The racket of the video games rose up to meet them. Grady felt suddenly tired; he couldn’t remember how many times he’d been led up and down these steps. He thought: I went to a children’s party and wound up in Dante’s hell.
    Walt was jabbing his sword at two little girls he had screaming in a corner. Eli gently disarmed him in a scene with echoes of every hostage movie Grady had ever watched. “Where’s Grandma?” Grady asked Eli.
    “Oh, Estelle?” said Eliot. “Kids, where’s Estelle?” “Oh, I don’t know,” he told Grady. “The kids probably killed and ate her. One thing about Mom: Dad was a fighter pilot, and now whenever the going gets rough, Mom just parachutes out.”
    Eli loomed over Walt. He said, “Did you hit this kid?” Only after Walt nodded did Eli kneel. “Say you’re sorry,” he said.
    “I’m sorry,” Walt said. Grady knelt, too, and the four of them huddled like some sort of midget scrimmage. “All right!” shouted Eli. “Cake time!”
    In a small kitchen adjoining the playroom, refreshments were set out on a rolling cart. On the top tier was the cake, actually a cake system, a series of rectangles iced like a choo-choo train. On the lower tiers were paper plates and forks. Eli wheeled the whole