He stepped down and immediately helped himself to a barbecued prawn. Slowly the silence was filled with chatter again.
"I knew all your guests hadn't arrived." Marjorie said, and those around her laughed. "Aren't you going to ask him to dance?"
I looked from her to Basil and then at Mommy. who was walking toward me.
"What did you do?" I asked Marjorie.
"Moi? What could I have done?" she retorted, and they all went back to dancing while they kept an eye on Mommy and me.
"You went and invited that boy after what I told you," she began.
"I didn't. Mommy."
"Well, why would he be here? You'd better go find out immediately. Grace. Go," she ordered sharply. I winced and hurried toward Basil.
"Quite a little house party." he said before I could utter a word. "I wasn't going to come and decided at the last minute that I was hungry."
"You weren't invited." I said. amazed.
He raised his eyebrows and wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Really? What, did your social secretary make a mistake?" he asked, and drew an invitation out of his jacket pocket. He handed it to me. and I looked at it.
It was obviously a reproduction.
I turned and looked back at the girls around Marjorie. They were all watching us and smiling.
It was someone's idea of a big joke. Basil." I said. "I'm sorry."
"Oh." he said. "I get it."
"You don't have to leave," I said.
"No." he said. "You've got it wrong. I don't have to stay."
He turned and walked back up the steps and through the rear loggia,
And I felt my heart had become a yo-yo on a string that had just broken.
Na matter how well the party went afterward. Mommy was deflated. I could see her growing more and more paranoid over every group that gathered and spoke quietly. In her mind, those who might have had a legitimate reason to leave early were leaving because of the Basil incident, and nothing I or Winston could have said would change that interpretation.
After what they had done I couldn't make myself available to say good night to the students invited and thank them for corning. There were those who did look ashamed and embarrassed at what Marjorie and the others had concocted, but it was all too little and too late. Someone could have had the decency to warn me. I thought, but no one had.
I'll always be an outsider here.
I went up to my room before the last of the guests left. I could hear the band packing up, and scan the noise and the voices died away. By the time Mommy and Winston retired for the evening. I was already in bed, dozing off. I heard her walk down the corridor and waited to see if she was going to stop by. A few moments later the door was opened slowly, and she peeked in. I kept my eyes closed. It was painful for me to ignore her. but I didn't want to talk about the party and its purpose any more this night.
She closed the door softly, and all was dark and quiet. "Welcome to Palm Beach, Mommy," I whispered.
15
A Man Like Winston Montgomery
.
"I guess what those kids did was as cruel to that
boy as it was to us," Mommy admitted the fallowing morning at brunch. After so late a night none of us rose early enough to have breakfast. I had given Mommy the obviously duplicated party invitation Basil had received, and now there wasn't going to be much of an excited party review, despite the high marks the Carriage sisters gave Mommy on her arrangements, most of which they had had a hand in.
What the incident with Basil did do was put an end to Mommy's trying to get me accepted into the socalled Palm Beach in crowd represented by the privileged students at EJW. She now agreed with Winston that I should be left to find my own way at the school, find my own friends, my own