Casual
_Casual My Father's Mansion Has Many Holes It was dusk. Brooks flicked a speck of lint from his velvet smoking jacket, poured himself a finger of Chivas, and held out his glass so that it could...
...He sipped meditatively on his cocktail, trying to remember whether this was the night Oscar de la Renta was bringing Princess Stephanie...
...White essays...
...Ensconced in a wing chair, Brooks drifted off into a reverie: A bank official hands him a foreclosure notice and the Brooks family is forced to move out of this house (bought in September, just three months before) and into a dingy apartment...
...Martha Stewart had stopped by to pick up a few tips on gracious living, and Brooks put aside his collection of E.B...
...As Brooks entered the foyer, he heard the creaking of the ceiling above just before it came down on his head...
...Brooks flicked a speck of lint from his velvet smoking jacket, poured himself a finger of Chivas, and held out his glass so that it could capture a few ounces of water leaking down from the bathroom upstairs...
...Many were having their mail forwarded...
...Brooks wandered into the kitchen and savored the rich aroma of homemade bread— the flour ground from the bones of the realtor who had made a 6 percent commission selling him the house...
...Shall we dine eight-ish...
...It was the handiwork of the laborers outside, who were trying to rebind the wall of the house to its foundation...
...If only...
...he asked...
...Brooks watched his breath cloud and drift upwards, until crystalline drops of condensation mimicked the water stains on the ceiling...
...As the paramedics lifted him onto the gurney he looked up where his roof had once been and beheld the infinite vastness of the sky...
...Halfway extricated, the boy was able to motion to his mother upstairs through the other hole in the ceiling, the one caused by the leaking pipes in the children's bathroom...
...one of the painters had earlier in the day detected water seeping through the wall around the circuit-breaker box, so the power had been shut off...
...Through the hole in the ceiling that had been cut by the plumber who had desperately tried to stem the leak, Brooks admired his wife as she applied the last of her emeralds...
...Regardless, it would—as it is every night at the Brooks salon—be an evening of glittering conversation, witty bons mots, and sensual elegance, as each guest would outdo the last in trying to explain why mud was mysteriously seeping up through the tiles of Brooks's downstairs bathroom...
...Brooks could hear the sound of shuffling feet outside the front door...
...The air was frosted with anticipation of the coming candlelit dinner...
...David Brooks...
...Her reply was drowned out by a sudden crash...
...Twirling an elegant '73 Merlot in preparation for its uncorking, Brooks could only admire the energy with which the home's previous owners had practiced their drilling techniques on the kitchen walls...
...It was dusk, and in the growing darkness the house was transformed into a symphony of melodious murmurings...
...Contractors had begun making such frequent visits to the house that many were leaving tools and toothbrushes overnight...
...The sounds of children's play resounded from the kitchen, where Brooks's six-year-old son was trapped under some of the cabinetry that had been shaken loose when the dishwasher door again fell unaccountably to the floor...
...From the basement came the gentle lapping of rain puddles brushing against the family book collection, still waiting for the shelves to be completed...
...The sump pump was doing its work much as the legendary Sisyphus did his, and with as much effect...
...A sense of calm enveloped the Brooks household, disturbed only by the twinkling of jackhammers as the landscapers regraded the ground around the back room, where water had been flooding into the basement...
...They were soon to host another of their glamorous Washington dinner parties...
...The wall had been breached accidentally by a carpenter who was trying to install bookshelves in the adjacent living room...
...Knocks followed...
...The bracing winter's wind whispered a dulcet tune through the holes around the window frames...
...The cool gray of the winter's evening permeated the abode...
...A smile swept across Brooks's face...
...For a few minutes the halls resounded with gasps of admiration as Miss Stewart gushed over the piquant French furnishings, the graceful rococo settees, and the witty yet elegant gash in the dining-room wall (so admired by the curatorial staff of the National Gallery at the recent fundraiser hosted by the Brookses...
...Brooks retired to his sitting room and admired the way his two-year-old daughter had mastered the power saw a carpenter had left on the floor between visits...
...The guests had arrived five minutes earlier, but Brooks had not heard them because the doorbell didn't work...
...The kitchen wall, last painted during the Coolidge administration, was itself an edifying canvas of 20th-century food stains...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 18
