The Towers of Love (20 page)

They had gone next to Connecticut to spend a few weeks with his family; his mother had wanted that. And for a while, there had been little family dinners for four, which had been pleasant enough, and sometimes his Aunt Reba had dropped in and, once or twice, Pansy had come down for the week-end, bringing a friend or room-mate from school. It had seemed relaxed, but actually there was a restlessness in the air, a sense that the serious business of life ought to be beginning, but had not yet begun. Anne had been irritable and impatient about little things, and, during the days, Hugh had taken long walks by himself in the woods behind the house. And when—quite out of the blue—his old friend Joe Wallace had telephoned with his extraordinary offer, and when Hugh had accepted it, a feeling of relief was expressed on everyone's face. “You see?” he had said to Anne. “The Good Lord provides.”

“Oh, I'm so happy!” she had said. “I'm so proud of you, Hugh.”

He had smiled at her. “The Good Lord provides for his poor handicapped ones,” he had said.

“Oh, Hugh,” she had said. “You mustn't talk like that. You're
not
handicapped. I've never thought of you that way, and you mustn't think of yourself that way, either.”

And when they had moved to New York and were settled in their new apartment, and he had started working very hard with Joe Wallace, he had overheard one other conversation. Anne had always been very close to her father. And one evening, coming home from work, he had walked into the apartment, using his key, and had heard her in the living-room talking on the telephone.

“He's always busy-busy-busy, Daddy,” she was saying. “Every night he brings home a briefcase full of work from the office, and all he'll talk about is the business—the business
this
, and the business
that
. Oh, of course I'm glad he's busy, Daddy, and I know it's a good job—but
really
. Does the business need to take
all
his time? Everybody wants to see us, and we haven't been able to see anybody. He's always too busy with something from the office, something about the business. Nobody can be
that
busy! And do you know what I think, Daddy? I think he's making excuses. I think he just doesn't
want
me to see my friends. Because I think he's just jealous of my friends, Daddy, and he just doesn't want me to see them.…”

He had stepped quietly out of the apartment again and closed the door. He had waited in the hallway, listening to the steely slither of the elevator cables growing louder, and then fainter, as the cars rose and then descended again. He waited for a full ten minutes, checking the time on his watch, before attempting to enter the apartment again, giving her time to finish her call, thinking that the serious business of life had begun in earnest and that the honeymoon, as Anne had so truly commented, was over.

Ten

And so to-night, when his mother returned from New York, there were only three of them for the little family dinner. He was not ready, somehow, to tell the family about himself and Anne; he did not know why he wasn't ready. He would have to tell them sooner or later, of course. But not yet.

When he got downstairs, his mother and father were already waiting for him at the table. “Sorry to be late,” he said.

“Baby, that's all right,” his mother said. “Did you have a good day? Were you lonely?”

“Of course he wasn't lonely,” his father said. “Why the hell should you be lonely, Hugh?”

“I had a good day,” he said, smiling. “Did some reading. Went for a walk.”

“Oh, good,” his mother said.

“How was your day, Sandy?” he asked her.

“Disappointing,” she said. “I seem to have bought another love-seat for the living-room which I really don't want at all. It's a hideous-looking thing, really, but you know how Titi and Waldo are. They're so persuasive. They practically raped me on it to get me to say I'd take it.”

“Tootoo calls it ‘the drawing-room,'” his father said.

“But you know what I think I'll do,” she said. “I think I'll keep it for a few weeks, and then send it back. I'll tell them my passion for it has cooled—simply
cooled
.”

“Damn it, I meant to tell Tootoo I wasn't going to pay two thousand dollars for that chest of drawers,” his father said. “Why didn't you remind me, Hugh, when he was here last night? Damn it all, I knew there was something I was going to tell him.”

As the dinner progressed, and as they talked, Hugh began to notice something about them he had not noticed before—a little trick of conversation that they seemed to have developed. Perhaps he had never noticed it because this was the first time in several years that he had watched them alone together. They seemed to have got into the habit of talking to each other obliquely; one never seemed to be speaking directly to the other. They spoke, instead, to him, and sometimes the remarks that one made bounced—from him, as it were—to the other, but often the remarks did not. Questions fell, and were unanswered. Suggestions were made and never pursued. No point of conversation ever seemed to be quite finished, and incompleted thoughts hung in the air all around the table as vague and hesitant as the images of the four seasons that shimmered from the ceiling; the talk seemed to drift in one direction, then stop abruptly and drift in another. Each referred to the other in the third person, as though the other were not really there. Hugh studied this phenomenon, looking first at one, then at the other, trying to figure out what it meant.

“Your father told you about the lovely offer you'd had with that company in New Haven, didn't he?” his mother asked once.

“I told you about that, didn't I, Hugh?”

“Yes, you told me, Dad,” he said.

“Did he tell you? Well, what do you think of it, baby?” his mother asked. “Are you going to take it?”

“Well, as I told you,” he said to his father, “I'm going to think about it.”

“I'd love it if you took it,” his mother said. “Simply because it would mean you'd be so close. Of course, and Anne could actually live right here. It's only thirty-seven miles. I've often thought—we could fix up those tower rooms.”

“Hugh and Anne don't want to live in those tower rooms,” his father said.

“Why not? There's a view—”

“Well, don't think about it for too long,” his father said. “Walter Owens isn't going to wait for ever for an answer.”

“Of course,” she said, “you haven't told him what
my
brilliant idea is, have you, Hugh?”

“Which idea, Sandy?”

“To take that money and start an advertising agency of your own.”

“Well, it's an idea,” he said.

“Well, I think you're terribly wise to think all this over long and carefully,” his mother said. “I think you'd be wise to think it over for a very long time.”

“Well—” he began.

“I'd have some definite answer for Walter to-morrow if I were you,” his father said. “Or Monday, at the very latest.”

“My father,” his mother said, “had all sorts of little mottoes that he lived by, you know. He simply ruled his life with little mottoes, and Papa's not terribly original but still terribly sensible motto to cover this situation of yours, baby, would have been ‘Haste makes waste.'”

“Her father was a lunatic,” his father said.

“My father was very probably a genius,” she said.

“Ha!” he said. “Moving this house down from Massachusetts. Only an idiot would do a thing like that.”

“This house has sheltered all of us,” she said. “But I don't care to discuss my father's eccentricities. He was a brilliant man and a genius, and all geniuses have had their eccentricities.”

“Eccentricities!” he said.

“Of course, Hugh,” his mother said, changing the subject quickly, “there's really no reason now why you have to do anything at all, is there? After all, you're rich now. You can afford to say the hell with any kind of business for the rest of your life, and be a gentleman of leisure.”

“That money you got for the business isn't going to last you for ever, don't forget,” his father said.

“Look,” Hugh said, “both of you—”

But his mother interrupted again. “I should think it would be terribly amusing to be a gentleman of leisure,” she said. “Just think of the fun you could have—you could travel, you could—”

“Walter Owens has a growing little business there in New Haven,” his father said.

Hugh smiled. “Actually, I'm thinking of going into the pickle business,” he said.

His father put down his knife and fork and stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked him.

“Look, Dad, I'm only kidding,” Hugh said. “All I'm trying to do is put a stop to this ridiculous—”

But his mother cut in once more. “The pickle business!” she cried. “Oh, how amusing! What a perfectly divine idea!”

When Pappy came in from the kitchen, bringing their dessert, the swinging door from the pantry caught and scraped loudly against the sill.

“Oh, Pappy,” his mother said. “Is that door
still
doing that? We've got to remember to get that little man to come back and do something about that. Please remind me, Pappy, dear.” She turned to Hugh. “We had a little man here who was supposed to have fixed that. He shortened the door, but it still doesn't work right.”

His father carefully removed the spoon and fork from his dessert plate, and placed them on the table. “The man who was here,” he said slowly, “lowered the sill.”

“Darling,” his mother said to Hugh, “as I was saying, he shortened the door. He
took the door off
, and shortened it. He planed it down.”

His father cleared his throat. “If you really want to know what happened, Hugh,” he said, “the man lowered the sill. He did not have to remove the door, you see. He simply lowered the sill.”

His mother laughed a light, brittle laugh, a little girl's laugh. “He shortened the door,” she said.

“He didn't.”

“He did.”

“Damn it,” his father said. “He did not touch the door. He lowered the sill!”

“I know that my eyesight has failed terribly in my declining years,” his mother said, “but when I saw that man here, with the door off,
sawing
it to shorten it—”

“He lowered the sill.”

His mother laughed again. “He didn't,” she said.

“Who are you going to believe?” his father asked him.

“My God,” Hugh said, “what difference does it make? It still doesn't work!”

“Exactly,” his mother said. And on that inconclusive note, the conversation ended, and the dinner continued in silence.

As they got up from the table, thinking that he could improve their mood, Hugh got between them and linked arms with both of them. “Come on, kids,” he said. “I hate to see you bickering.”

“No one's bickering,” his mother said. “Let's all go into the library and have lots and lots of brandy!”

So they went into the library, and his father filled two glasses from the decanter and handed one to Hugh. “You want your usual?” he asked his wife.

“Please,” she said.

His father rang for Pappy. “Ginger beer for Mrs. Carey,” he said when Pappy appeared.

“Hot tea, please, Pappy, darling,” his mother said.

Pappy bowed and left.

“Play some piano, Dad,” Hugh said.

“Oh, no. No. I'm all out of practice,” his father said.

“Oh, go ahead. We don't care,” Hugh said.

“No. No, thanks.”

“Please, Dad.”

“Well—”

“Go ahead.”

And so his father crossed the room to the piano and sat down before it. He stared for a moment at the keys, placed his hands tentatively across them, and then began to play. His father was a self-taught pianist. He had never had a lesson and played entirely by ear. But for all that, he had a sizeable repertoire of songs that he could play and, in the old days, he had been in great demand at parties because he played the kind of piano that made people gather around the piano and sing. He had a lavish and rollicking honky-tonk style of playing that was incongruous with his bearing and person and, as he played the fast tunes of the twenties and early thirties—tunes like “Back in Nagasaki Where the Fellas Chew Tabaccy,” and “So Long, Oolong,” and “Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking?”—his shoulders rocked and his head tossed with the noisy rhythm.

After a few brief introductory chords, he began to play now like this, and the library seemed to come alive with the music of this more naïve era. Music seemed to sparkle from the brandy glasses and, as Hugh and his mother sat listening to it, and as Pappy arrived with the tea and departed again, Allen Carey played, neatly moving from one old tune into another. Then, after several songs, he stopped and turned to Hugh's mother. He was smiling now and his eyes, Hugh thought, were misted with something that might have been nostalgia. “Sing something, Sandy,” he said.

“Oh, I couldn't.”

“Please, Sandy.”

“Go ahead, Sandy,” Hugh urged.

So, putting down her teacup, she stood up and went to the piano and began to sing.

It was an extravagant performance. It had always been. Singing together had been one of the Chinless Charmers' charms, and his mother sang with great vivacity and exaggerated gestures. She had a deep and throaty soubrette's voice and, as she sang, she flung her long arms wildly in all directions, making her rings and bracelets flash, and kicked up her heels under her long skirts. She sang:

Ma-ny's the night I spent with Minnie the Mer-maid

Down at the bottom of the sea-ea-ea—

Down among the corals

Minnie lost her morals—