Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson Read Free Book Online

come get dressed,” and started off back toward the house. “Better hurry,” he called back over his shoulder. “They’ll be here pretty soon.”
    *   *   *
    â€œWell,” Mr. Waite said genially. It was four o’clock and the casserole was in the oven, the Sunday liquor was set out in the pantry, the ice was freezing dutifully in the refrigerator, the long living room was in order, with ashtrays located at approximately the points at which Mr. Waite’s friends were most apt to drop cigarettes, and chairs readied for the brief, inconclusive sittings of Mr. Waite’s friends. The books they were likely to want to consult during discussion (
Ulysses
, C.S. Lewis,
The Function of the Orgasm
, the newest English homosexual novel,
Hot Discography
, an abridged
Golden Bough
, and an unabridged dictionary) were set in the small bookscase near the windows; Mr. Waite’s own books—the one he had written and the ones he had articles in, as opposed to the ones he referred to—were hidden modestly, bound in green leather, upon the mantelpiece. “Well,” Mr. Waite said, with the satisfaction of a country squire surveying his horses and his dogs and his shooting preserve, and he added, as though to his gamekeeper, “Looks fine, all of it.”
    â€œEverything
seems
to be ready,” Mrs. Waite answered nervously. She had inherited, probably from that indefatigable hostess, her mother, the hostess’s conviction that some vital factor has somehow been forgotten (perhaps because no one wanted company in the first place?), so that it would turn out suddenly that there were no cigarettes in the cigarette boxes, or that the magazines would all prove to be an issue old, or that the dust on the table
had
been overlooked after all, or that, suddenly at dinner, Mrs. Waite would have to turn her stricken face to her dumfounded husband as it occurred to them both simultaneously that the dinner wine had been forgotten and lay, unpurchased and unchilled, on the shelf at the store.
    â€œCasserole, salad,” Mrs. Waite said, flexing her fingers as though she were counting, or perhaps as though with remembered motions her fingers would recall all that they had done, and by neglected motions point out the forgotten fact, “coffee, pie. Rolls. Cigarettes, candy, pretzels. Please don’t let them drop cigarettes on the carpet, it’s bad enough as it is. Natalie, are you dressed?”
    Natalie moved into the range of her mother’s blinded eyes, and said, “I have on my blue dress.”
    â€œGood,” said her mother. “Did you comb your hair?”
    As though I could forget to comb my hair, Natalie thought happily. I am seventeen, after all, and a party is a party even if it
is
all grown-ups. And anyway I spend so much time looking into my mirror . . .
    â€œAre
you
dressed?” Mrs. Waite said, in so many years she had not found a usable name for her husband.
    â€œOf course,” he said, and he might have added, A party is a party . . . He had chosen to dress himself in a fuzzy tweed jacket and he looked very literary indeed; no amount of poise could forsake him in this jacket. It was almost equivalent to a brace of pistols and a pair of jackboots; Mr. Waite was arrayed for his own interpretation of a street brawl.
    The doorbell rang.
    â€œOh my God,” said Mrs. Waite. “Casserole, rolls, coffee . . . will you get it or shall I?”
    â€œI’ll get it,” said Mr. Waite, in a tone which implied very strongly that he did not believe that Mrs. Waite could find the door by herself. As he disappeared into the hall, Mrs. Waite said to Natalie, “I’ll just look at the kitchen,” and ran the other way.
    Natalie stood in the doorway between the hall and the living room, thinking, This is a party and I’m here already and I must remember that my name is Natalie.
    The first guests