Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin Page A

if not outside her experience exactly, then at least outside earned experience, the cost-effective honors of accomplishment. She’d been a bride. She was a mother, she and Ted had married a daughter, bar mitzvahed two sons, buried one of them. She was a widow, she had buried a husband, so it wasn’t as if she’d never been the center of attention. (She had been a witness for the government in a high-profile drug case.) But who’s kidding who? Let’s face it, except for the trial, all those other occasions had been affairs of one sort or the other, even the funerals, may Ted and Marvin rest, bought and paid for. So unless they were exaggerating their interest in her—Tommy Auveristas was polite, even, she thought, sincere—she couldn’t remember feeling so important. It was exciting. But she was overwhelmed. As she hadn’t known what to do with all the attention after Ted’s death, she didn’t know what to do with the solicitude of these strangers.
    Many of them drifted away. New guests were arriving and Tommy Auveristas, excusing himself from Mrs. Bliss as if she were indeed the guest of honor, went off to greet them.
    Ermalina Cervantes came back with her soft drink.
    “Here you go,” she said. “It wasn’t cold enough, I put ice in it. Can you drink it with ice?”
    “Oh, thank you. Cold is fine. This is good, I’m really enjoying it. But you know,” Mrs. Bliss said, “they fill up your glass with too much ice in a restaurant, they’re trying to water it down. I don’t let them get away with that. I send it back to the kitchen.”
    “If there’s too much ice…”
    “No, no, it’s perfect. Hits the spot. I was just saying.”
    Ermalina Cervantes smiled at her. She had a beautiful smile, beautiful teeth. Beautiful skin. Mrs. Bliss set great store in pretty skin in a woman. She thought it revealed a lot about a person’s character. It wasn’t so important for a man to have a nice skin. Men had other ways of showing their hearts, but if a woman didn’t have sense enough to take care of her skin (it was the secret behind her own beauty; why people had bragged on her looks almost until she was seventy), then she didn’t really care about anything. The house could fall down around her ears and she’d never notice. She’d send her kids off to school all shlumperdik, shmuts on their faces, holes in their pants. But this was some Ermalina, this Ermalina. Teeth and skin! Butter wouldn’t melt.
    Ermalina Cervantes, nervous under the scrutiny of Mrs. Bliss’s open stare, asked if anything were wrong.
    “Wrong? What could be wrong, sweetheart? It’s a wonderful party. The pop is delicious. I never tasted better. You have a beautiful smile and wonderful teeth, and your skin is your crowning glory.”
    “Oh,” Ermalina Cervantes said, “oh, thank you.”
    “I hope you don’t mind my saying.”
    “No, of course not. Thank you, Mrs. Bliss.”
    “Please, dear. Dorothy.”
    “Dorothy.”
    “That’s better,” she said, “you make me very happy. I’ll tell you, I haven’t been this happy since my husband was alive. Older people like it when younger people use their first names. If you think it’s the opposite you’d be wrong. It shows respect for the person if the person calls the person by her first name than the other way around. Don’t ask me why, it’s a miracle. You’re blushing, am I talking too much? I’m talking too much. I can’t help it. Maybe because everyone’s so nice. You know, if I didn’t know pop don’t make you drunk I’d think I was drunk.”
    A pretty blond named Susan Gutterman came by and Ermalina introduced her to Mrs. Bliss.
    “Susan Gutterman,” Mrs. Bliss said speculatively. “You’re Jewish?”
    “No.”
    “Gutterman is a Jewish name.”
    “My husband is Jewish. He’s from Argentina.”
    “You? What are you?”
    “Oh,” Susan Gutterman said offhandedly, “not much of anything, I guess. I’m a WASP.”
    “A wasp?”
    “A White Anglo-Saxon