Lucy Crown (14 page)

Lucy stood up briskly and picked up her raincoat. “I think it’s time we went and got me that drink,” she said.

“Answer me,” said Jeff.

“You mustn’t be silly.” There was a warning note in Lucy’s voice now.

“Answer me.”

“It has nothing to do with us.” Lucy put on the raincoat and started to button it.

“I want you to promise me something,” Jeff said, not moving from the front of the porch, still leaning against the pillar.

“What?”

“I want you to promise not to have anything to do with your husband while …”

“While what?” Lucy asked.

“While we’re together.”

Lucy finished buttoning the coat and put the collar up against her ears. “And just how long will that be?”

Jeff swallowed miserably. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Give me a figure,” said Lucy. “Two days? A week? A season? Five years?”

Jeff came over to her but didn’t touch her. “Don’t be angry.” He spoke brokenly. “It’s just that I can’t bear the thought … Listen, we can see each other all the time. I can come down to the city at least once a month. And the holidays—Thanksgiving, the Christmas vacation. And almost every week-end I can get into Boston.”

Lucy nodded as though she were taking this very seriously. “Uhuh. Boston. What hotels do you propose I stop at? The Ritz? The Copley? Or perhaps one of the traveling-salesmen hotels. The Touraine? The Statler? And should I wear my wedding ring?”

Jeff put up his hands as though to ward off blows. “Lucy,” he said, tortured. “Don’t.”

“And how should I introduce you in Boston?” Lucy went on. “As my son? My nephew? An old friend?”

“Don’t make it ugly,” Jeff said angrily.

“What do you propose I tell my husband? A person who shall be nameless has raised certain objections to …”

“Stop it,” Jeff said. “There are a lot of ways of doing things like that.”

“Are there?” Lucy said, sounding agreeably surprised. “Perhaps you’ll write me a note. As a budding diplomat. It’ll be good practice for you later on, when you have to send a protest to the Prime Minister of Iran or a sharp reminder to the Hungarian Foreign Office. Dear Sir: It has come to the attention of this office that there are several conflicting claims on the body of your wife …”

“Don’t make fun of me,” said Jeff. He was sullen now. “What do you expect me to do?” he pleaded. “Lucy, darling, it’s been perfect up to now. Are you going to blame me because I want to keep it that way?”

“Perfect.” Lucy nodded in ironic agreement. “They loved each other perfectly—on school holidays, in various inexpensive hotel rooms—and the young man always managed to get to his first class on Monday on time. Is that your idea of perfect?”

“Oh, God,” Jeff said. “I feel so trapped. If I were older, settled, with some money of my own …”

“Then what?” Lucy challenged him.

“Then we could go off together,” Jeff said. “Get married. Live together.”

Lucy hesitated for a moment. Then she spoke in a low, assuaging voice. “Be glad,” she said, “that you’re not older, settled, with money of your own.”

“Why?”

“Because I wouldn’t go with you.”

“Don’t say that.”

“And then,” Lucy said, “you’d blame yourself instead of your youth or your poverty. And it would hurt a lot, more. This way you can go back in the autumn and boast in the dormitories on the cold nights about the lively summer you had at your sister’s house in the mountains. I can just hear you say it now and I forgive you in advance and half envy you the pleasure you’re going to have in saying it. ‘I don’t know what it is about me,’ you can say, ‘but married women of a certain age’—you can wink at the other boys here—‘just throw themselves at me.’”

“What are you trying to do?” Jeff asked.

“I’m trying to tell you,” Lucy said, “that summertime is summertime. That the hotels close. That the cottages are shuttered against the snow. That the lake freezes over. That the birds fly south. That the children go back to school and the grownups go back to … to shopping lists, bridge games, imperfection, security, reality …”

Now Jeff’s face looked stricken in the last cold rays of the sun. “You don’t love me,” he said.

Lucy came over to him, smiling gently. “Even that isn’t quite true,” she said. Lightly she took his chin in her hand and kissed him. Then she relinquished him and shrugged. “Don’t look so sad, little boy,” she said, turning away. “The summertime still has two weeks to go.”

Jeff took a step after her and then stopped because he saw Tony coming out of the shade of the trees, walking slowly toward the house across the lawn. Lucy saw him at the same time and stepped off the porch to greet the boy. Tony stopped and regarded his mother and Jeff without expression. He looked tired and, in the gray light, pale.

“Hello, Tony,” Lucy said. “Where have you been until now?”

“No place much,” Tony said. He carefully avoided going close to his mother as he stepped on the porch.

“How was the hayride?” Jeff asked.

“Okay,” said Tony. He leaned against the wall of the porch and examined Jeff. “How’s your tooth?”

“Okay,” said Jeff.

“Did you have a good time at the movies?” Tony asked his mother. “What was playing?”

“I … I didn’t go,” Lucy said. “I found out that they only showed them on week-ends.”

“Oh,” said Tony politely. “Where did you go?”

“I did a little shopping,” Lucy said. “For antiques.”

“Did you buy anything?” Tony asked.

“No,” said Lucy. “Everything is too expensive. I just looked around. Jeff and I are going down to the hotel for a drink. Do you want to join us? You can have a Coke.”

“I’m not thirsty,” Tony said.

“Even so,” Lucy said.

“I’m not thirsty,” Tony repeated.

Lucy went over to him and felt his forehead. “Are you all right?”

The boy twisted away. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just a little tired,” he explained vaguely. “The hayride. I missed my nap. I think I’ll just lie down for fifteen minutes.” Then, afraid that his mother would bustle over him, he smiled widely, disingenuously, at her. “Those hayrides are rough,” he said. “See you later.” He went in and lay down on his bed. He lay stiffly, with his eyes open, and when he heard his mother and Jeff walk past his window on the way down to the hotel bar, he counted up to five hundred slowly, one by one, and then went into the living room and called his father in Hartford.

11

T
HE CAR WAS MUD-SPATTERED
when it drove up to the cottage and the wipers had made two smeary crescents on the windshield, which gleamed dully in the reflection of the headlights off the wet trees. Oliver stopped the car and sat for a moment at the wheel, resting after the long drive in the rain. There was a light on in the cottage but Oliver saw no one moving within. He got out of the car, carrying his raincoat and a small overnight bag that he had thrown into the back of the car. He went in the front door. The room was empty. The only sound to be heard was the small drip of rain from the maple whose branches hung over one side of the house. There were newspapers scattered on the table in the middle of the room and a book was lying open, face down, on the couch. There were some chessmen scattered over the chessboard and two or three of the pieces had fallen to the floor. Some petals had drifted down from a bunch of peonies in a vase on the mantelpiece and had dropped onto the rug.

Standing there, looking at the empty room, Oliver thought, whenever she’s any place for five minutes she creates a small, unimportant disorder. Sometimes it gave him a sense of pleasure, of intimacy, of indulgent understanding, when he saw a room like that after Lucy had been in it. But tonight, after the long trip, he was annoyed by it.

He took off his hat and rubbed his hands to warm them. There was no fire on the hearth. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was two minutes past eight. As always, Oliver had arrived exactly when he said he would arrive. He went into the kitchen to look for the bottle of whisky that was kept in the cupboard above the icebox. There were some dishes left in the sink from the afternoon’s tea. Three cups, he noticed, three saucers, some plates with crumbs of chocolate cake. He took down the whisky and poured himself a drink. He didn’t bother to put any water in it and went back into the living room and sat down wearily, sipping the drink, waiting. A moment later he heard footsteps on the porch. The door opened and Tony came in, wearing a slicker and a baseball cap. Tony stopped just inside the door. He seemed almost reluctant to come into the room.

“Hello, Tony,” Oliver said, smiling at him.

“Daddy,” Tony said. He approached Oliver as though to kiss him and stopped at a little distance from him.

Oliver took off his cap and ruffled his hair gently in a slight affectionate movement. “You’re being pretty mysterious, Tony,” Oliver said, making a little joke out of it. “Not telling me what was wrong on the phone. Insisting that I get up here exactly at eight o’clock. Telling me not to speak to your mother.”

“You’re sure you didn’t call her?” Tony asked suspiciously.

“I didn’t call her,” Oliver said. There was no sense in telling Tony that he had tried to telephone en route from Waterbury, but that there had been a break in the line because of the rain and he hadn’t been able to get through.

“She doesn’t know you’re here?” Tony asked.

“No,” Oliver said. “I came in the back way, as you said, during dinnertime. Tony,” he asked mildly, “are you sure you’re not reading too many comic books?”

“I don’t read any comic books,” Tony said.

“You’ve had me worried all day,” Oliver said gently.

“I’m sorry.”

“Come over here and sit down.” Oliver indicated a chair close to his. Tony took off his slicker and came slowly over to the chair and seated himself. Oliver sipped his drink. “Now—what is it?”

“Daddy,” Tony said in a low voice, “I want to go home.”

“Oh.” Oliver looked pensively at his glass. “Why?”

Tony made a restless movement with his hands. “I’ve had enough of this place.”

“It’s done you a lot of good, Tony,” said Oliver. “You look very healthy and brown and Mother writes me that …”

“I want to go home,” Tony said flatly.

Oliver sighed. “Did you tell that to your mother?”

“No,” said Tony. “There’s no use talking to her.”

Oliver nodded indulgently. “Ah,” he said, “you two’ve had a little argument.”

“No.”

Oliver took another sip of his drink. “With Jeff?”

Tony didn’t answer for a moment. “With nobody,” he said. “Can’t a fellow want to go home with his own father once in a while without everybody jumping on him?”

“Nobody’s jumping on you, Tony,” Oliver said reassuringly. “Only you have to expect people to ask you a question or two when you make long-distance phone calls and give all sorts of mysterious instructions. Be reasonable, Tony.”

“I am reasonable,” Tony said, sounding cornered; “I want to go home because I don’t want to be in the same place with Mother and Jeff.”

Oliver put his glass down and spoke very gently. “What did you say, Tony?”

“I don’t want to stay here with Mother and Jeff.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Oliver glanced sharply at the boy. He was sitting with his head bent, staring at his shoes, his hands plunged in his pockets, looking resentful and embarrassed. “Tony,” Oliver said, “we’ve always been on the level with each other, haven’t we?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always told you what was bothering me and you’ve always told me, up to now,” Oliver said. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Have I ever promised you anything I didn’t do for you,” Oliver asked.

“No,” said Tony.

“When you asked me questions, have I ever given you an untruthful answer?”

“No.”

“When you began to get into that habit last summer of telling fancy stories,” Oliver said, “like saying you swam across the lake one afternoon when you couldn’t swim at all and saying that old Mr. Norton invited you out to his ranch in Wyoming for a month and was going to give you your own horse …”

“That was just kid stuff,” Tony said.

“I know.” Oliver nodded reasonably. “Didn’t I tell you I knew and understood? It was all right to tell me those stories and not anyone else because I knew you were just having fun and using your imagination. But other people who didn’t know you the way I did might have begun to think you couldn’t be trusted and that you told lies.”

“I don’t tell stories any more,” Tony said. “Not to anyone.”

“Of course,” said Oliver. “And even about your eyes—there were a couple of times in the beginning when it was awfully hard to tell you what was wrong and what the chances were. When you get to be a father, Tony, you’ll understand what it meant to me.” He stopped. “But I did it,” he said. “Didn’t I?”

“Yes,” said Tony.

“Do you know why I did it?”

“I think so.” Tony’s voice was down to a whisper now.

“Because I wanted everything to be clear and straight between us,” said Oliver. “Because a long time from now, when you’re a man as old as I am now, I want you to be able to say, no matter what else happens in your life, ‘There was honor between my father and me.’” Oliver leaned over and patted Tony’s knee. Then he stood up, walked over to the front door and looked out into the wet night.

Tony raised his head and stared at his father’s back, his lips trembling. He waited for Oliver to say something more, but Oliver remained quiet and Tony got up and crossed and stood next to him. “I don’t know how to say it,” he whispered. “Mother and Jeff … They’re doing something wrong. They’re doing what grownups do when they’re married. I want to go home.”

Oliver closed his eyes momentarily. He hadn’t known what to expect after Tony’s call, but he hadn’t expected this. He’d told himself, as he sat at the wheel peering through the rain all day, that it was just some child’s crisis that would probably be over by the time he arrived. He wouldn’t even have come up, really, if things hadn’t been slow at the plant this week. Now—he thought, this is something different. This is like hearing cries from the nursery and going in thinking you are going to separate two children who’d hit each other with pillows or toys and finding, upon opening the door, one child lying in a pool of blood and the other standing over him with a knife in his hand. “Who told you that, Tony?” he asked.