Ways and Means by Daniel Lefferts

Author:Daniel Lefferts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

HO-HO-KUS

Mark’s mother, Janet, was turning sixty. Her party was scheduled for the night of Friday, July 8, three days from now. The eighty-odd guests would convene at the Ridgefall Country Club, where they would sit at tables centered by vases of white peonies, dine on filet mignon with a zinfandel reduction or grilled halibut with a tomato coulis, listen to a local jazz band that specialized in “soothing” selections, and, should they step outside, find an outdoor bar and a lawn scattered with illuminated white spheres. The party planner, whom Janet had hired at a cost of $5,000, had managed every detail and done a fair amount of coercing in matters of taste. But the night before, while watching Fourth of July fireworks with Arty and Mark, Janet had decided she wanted balloons, something loudly and wholesomely festive, even if the planner had suggested, in so many words, that balloons were cheap. Earlier that day, then, Janet had gone to Party City and then dug out from the garage a helium tank left over from her much-ballooned thirtieth anniversary dinner, and now Mark sat with her at the kitchen counter, surveying piles of variously colored rubber. They inflated blue balloons, green ones, white ones, and black ones, holding their ends and studying them before letting them deflate.

“I like the white,” Janet said.

“Everything is white,” Mark said.

“White is nice. White is simple.”

“This party is costing you thirty thousand dollars,” Mark said. “Its connotation of simplicity goes only so far.”

Janet squinted as if to shield her eyes. Money, Mark knew, was a gnat of complexity forever hovering at the edges of her vision, encroaching on what she considered to be simple pleasures. She was neither proud of her wealth nor protective of it; she would have liked everyone to have as much money as she did, if she thought about money at all. But her preference was not to think about it.

Mark attached a blue balloon to the nozzle of the helium tank. “Let’s see how they float.”

“Careful,” Janet said. “Don’t let it get away.”

Mark tied the end, waited until the balloon had stilled, and sent it aloft. But the balloon had its own ideas. It bounced and bobbed toward the double-height great room behind them, passing the lip of the kitchen ceiling and drifting out of reach. As Mark watched it climb, putting his hand out helplessly, he had a memory of some kindergarten celebration, maybe a graduation ceremony, at which the children were encouraged to blow up balloons and release them into the air. He remembered panicking at the sight of his balloon flying away, vanishing into the sky. He remembered realizing, with a sense of injustice, that no adult force could stop it. He wondered now if that was his first-ever inkling of loss—the permanence of it, the inability of higher powers to redress it. The balloon rose and rose toward the great room ceiling and came to a stop between two wooden beams, twenty feet up.

“Shit.”

“I told you to be careful,” Janet said.

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