Free American Appetites by Joyce Carol Oates

course, the costly liquors, the gourmet shop items. And then there are the funny gifts, the gifts that make Ian laugh, an ebony and brass dress cane, for instance, from the Hawleys, with a rolled-up backgammon set (board, chips, and dice) inside; an elegant silk tie in the shape of a stylized but aggressively ugly fish, from a friend, Leo Reinhart, who couldn’t be with them tonight; a gigantic roll of athletic support tape, also from Ian’s squash buddies—says Ian solemnly, brandishing the tape aloft, “This is just what I need.” And Glynnis’s present to Ian, fussily wrapped in tissue paper of all colors of the rainbow, is a ten-speed Schwinn racing bicycle: hardly an extraordinary surprise, since Glynnis and Bianca have been after Ian for years to replace his battered old three-speed bicycle with something newer and more à la mode; but Ian seems genuinely taken with it, and thanks her, and kisses her, and makes as if to ride the bicycle out the door. And there is a good deal of laughter, and more drinks are poured. Glynnis hears another of the Blanc de Blancs being uncorked.
    And this leaves Bianca, who had, pleading exhaustion from the flight and the general busyness of the day—“I had classes this morning, Mother, you seem to forget”—slipped away from the party after the initial toasts.
    But now, dramatically, as if on cue—for Glynnis is about to summon her guests to dinner; it is almost nine-thirty—Bianca reappears, in theatrical attire: a black cutaway coat and trousers, starched white shirt, black derby jauntily aslant on her head. The McCulloughs’ friends turn to her, make way for her— What on earth, Bianca! Ah, look at Bianca! Glynnis and Ian merely stare at their daughter, so suddenly the center of attention; they are taken totally by surprise. They know that Bianca has been involved in theater, dance, and “performance arts” at college; but they are not prepared, ah, they are not prepared, for this.
    Bianca’s face is powdered a deathly white, like a geisha’s; her lips are a luscious bee-stung red; her eyebrows and lashes are blackened as if with soot. Her cottony fawn-colored hair has been pinned back under the hat, and dangling rhinestone earrings gleam in her ears. And she wears spike-heeled black patent leather shoes! Glynnis thinks, This is not like Bianca at all. This is not Bianca, at all.
    A space is quickly cleared at the far end of the room and a spot-light of sorts set up. Bianca has brought a tape deck and sets it going; tinny, discordant, cutely lurid music begins—a “symphonic poem” by a contemporary American composer of whom no one in the room has heard. (“Turn down the volume at least,” Glynnis pleads; “we’ll be deafened.”) With no word of explanation and no acknowledgment of her audience, Bianca begins her dance on a percussive note, strutting so heavily the carpeted floor shakes; she plays with her hat Charlie Chaplin style: dropping it, kicking it up with a foot, squashing it down hard on her head. She high-steps; she blows moist kisses at the audience; rolls her eyes, winks, smirks, leers; provokes her startled audience into laughter—though why they are laughing, Glynnis does not know. The makeup itself is comical, on a young girl with Bianca’s open, fresh, girlish face; it makes her look both innocent and depraved, like a performer out of Cabaret .
    Then, to Glynnis’s horror, Bianca begins to dance more suggestively, as the music itself shifts to another key. She throws her head back until the cords in her pale neck stand out; she moves her rather plump, fleshy body against the beat and the grain of the cacophonous music. In her demonic exuberance she collides with a chair and seems not to notice, gives the fireplace screen a glancing kick, nearly loses her derby hat when its elastic band breaks. She is mocking, funny, defiant, in her heavy-footed strut: