table.
Carrying a bunch of yellow bananas like flowers, Ben headed straight for Esther. “Est! Look what I have.”
“Oh, no. Not bananas again.”
“Esther, you simply must develop a taste for them.” Ben pulled off one of the bananas like a rose and handed it to a reluctant but smiling Esther.
“You mean a distaste,” said Esther, taking one from his hands. Her entire demeanor changed. She became soft like chiffon, almost girlish.
A pristine Alice approached Harry.
“Hello, darling,” she said, raising her face for a kiss.
“Hello, dear.” He kissed her cheek. “What have you been up to today?”
“I played tennis after church, and then went riding, as always.”
“You look so fresh, you don’t look as if you’ve been playing tennis and riding.” His hand went to her back.
“I cleaned up, darling, before I arrived at your father’s house.”
“And you clean up quite nicely,” purred Harry. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Porter, Mr. Porter, sir. How are you this afternoon?”
Alice didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a girl who managed lumberyards and sawmills, and this is what appealed to Harry. She was petite, blonde and a debutante. A few years before she met Harry, she had been one of the most sought-after young ladies in Boston, bejeweled, dazzlingly dressed, spending the entire of her eighteenth year dancing and glad-handing at coming-out balls and social functions. By the time Harry had met her, she had already been courted by all the Lowells and the Cabots, and he wasn’t forced to compete. As if he would have. He deemed her out of his league, and it took several slight breaches of etiquette by Alice herself to show Harry she was interested before he invited her and her best friend Belinda for a stroll along the Charles with him and Ben. Belinda wasn’t what Ben was looking for, but Alice was what Harry had been looking for. Alice, whose clothes were crisp, her blonde hair ironed, her makeup flawless—and yet who rode horses and canoes, played tennis and golf, was a senior member of four different charities, arranging fundraisers, cookie bakes, plant sales, old book swaps to raise money for hospitals for the poor. She read history and loved poetry. She was bright and indefatigable, and it was she who chose Harry over the swarm of other eligible Boston men and now stood confidently and silently by his side, while Ben fraternized with Esther.
“Are you going to eat one, or aren’t you?” Ben said to her. “They are the future.”
“If I eat one, will you promise to stop bringing them?” Esther said, peeling down the skin. “Bananas are the future?”
“Your brother’s friend is not entirely wrong, Esther,” said Elmore in the banquet-hall dining room that afternoon. “Tropical fruits are the future.” He was seated to the right of Herman, the most honored place at the table. Even Ellen Shaw, usually Herman’s most welcome guest, today sat one demoted place over. Herman’s two children did not sit by their father. Ever. Ben sat there once, after he had been accepted at Harvard (“On a scholarship, no less!” pointed out a delighted Herman. “Didn’t cost his sainted mother a penny.”). Alice sat there half a handful of times, because Herman was quite fond of her. Often Alice’s father sat there, because they were friends and business partners. But not today. Alice sat between her mother and father. Ben sat between Harry and Esther, who was seated mutely next to the verbose Elmore.
“I know I’m not wrong,” Ben said, casting a sideways look at Esther, as if to say, I need this person to approve of my bananas?
“Benjamin is soon starting his last year at Harvard,” Herman explained to Elmore. “He has just changed his concentration to engineering. He is thinking about his future.”
“Giving bananas to my sister is engineering his future?” asked Harry. “See,” he said, “while Ben is concentrating on tropical fruit, I, who am also, inter alia, starting my last year at Harvard, am writing my senior thesis on the Civil War. I thought you’d be impressed, Father. I’m writing it about Ben’s relatives.”
“Why would that impress me?” Herman wanted to know. “You’re always writing about one war or another. You’re consumed with other people’s conflicts.”
“Be that as it may,” Harry said, “my main topic is a juxtaposition between Robert Gould Shaw and Philip Nolan.”
“Not again!” Herman exclaimed. “Didn’t you do an essay on Nolan in secondary school? Philip Nolan, the man without a country?”
“I wrote a five-page paper on him in Andover,” said Harry. “Hardly the same as a university dissertation.”
“But, son, Nolan’s story is only about five pages.”
Everyone laughed.
“Thirty-nine, sir.”
“I beg your pardon. You can read it in its entirety while waiting for Jones to serve the second course.” Herman steadied his gaze on Harry. “You know this story by heart. Why are you taking the easy way out?”
“It’s never easy, sir,” Harry said.
“Be that as it may,” Herman said, “what I’m interested in is whether you’ve heard from the Porcellians.”
“Not yet.” Harry looked into his bowl. “But fall semester doesn’t begin for almost two months. There is time.”
Porcellian was the final club at Harvard, the club of all clubs, members of which included the governor of New York, Teddy Roosevelt, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, oh, and Herman Barrington. But not yet Harold Barrington. This was Harry’s last chance, and everybody knew it.
“The potato soup is delicious, Herman,” Ellen said, intruding to change the subject. “Bernard has outdone himself.”
“I’d like my butler to bring the second course. We’re having cod today. And then pork chops with roast potatoes.”
“The scallops wrapped in bacon were also wonderful,” Ellen continued, giving Harry a sharp look as if to say, stop talking.
“I’m working to graduate first in my class, Father,” Harry continued unheeding. “That counts for something, no?”
“Can’t make a living from books, son,” Herman said, ringing for Louis.
“Can’t make a living from the Porcellian either,” Harry countered quietly.
“Oh, but I heard,” said jolly Orville, “that the legend goes that if a member of the Porcellian doesn’t make his first million by the time he is forty, the club gives it to him. Is that true, Herman?”
“I wouldn’t know, Orville. Perhaps Harry will be given a chance to find out.”
In front of Alice’s parents! Harry looked across the table at Orville who, as if on cue, without even bothering to clear his throat, opened his mouth and, buttering another piece of crusty bread, said what he said nearly every week at Sunday dinner: “You know, I’m grooming Alice to take over the family business upon my retirement.”
