GERALD COSTANZO
summer twilight, couples in coupes,
roadsters and touring cars, up
from Falmouth and Hyannisport
in Palm Beach suits and taffeta weave.
There is dancing to Paul Whiteman
and Alice Fay. What summons
our attention—my mother-in-law told
me this—is not the soft flags luffing
at each high corner of the pavilion,
nor the placards for photoplays screened
—during the week and after the season—
on the lower level. Not the darkened
interior, the bandstand surrounded
by potted ferns and huge portal
archways, those boxed lights
with dim figures of dancing goddesses
suspended from the iron
mesh ceiling. Never mind
that all of this will burn to the cliffside
in the autumn of 1933. Tonight it is
the one couple, vaguely familiar, lingering
by the path. They are having a quarrel—
over sex or money, because what else
could it be? Never mind that within thirty
years their eldest daughter will be
a schoolmarm in another part
of the state; that their youngest,
surely the more beautiful and promising,
will have entered into an arrangement
with the Rathbone sisters
which will be marked by sadness
and disappointment. Never mind that their
only son, a graduate of Colby College,
will live in Cleveland and embark
on a livelihood seldom
mentioned at family gatherings. Tonight
they are young, and are having
a quarrel. It is one of those evenings
full of such stirrings as only memory
will adequately “take into account.” Just now
the orchestra strikes up and music
floats over the distance to where they are
being a little brusque with each other,
a little stubborn.
And now, as if called, they begin to move
toward the ballroom entrance, he slightly ahead
and tugging at her wrist, though not quite
so much to cause pain.
He believes the moment has passed
and he is leading her toward
an evening of happiness.
Toward a lifetime
of happiness.