Lucy Crown (4 page)

Bunner grinned. “He certainly does.”

“Do you think it’s possible for a father to get what he wants in a son?” Patterson asked.

Bunner glanced at the doctor, looking for a trap. “I haven’t thought about it,” he said carefully.

“Has your father got what he wanted from
his
son?”

Bunner almost smiled. “No.”

Patterson nodded.

They watched Oliver approach, flanked by Lucy on one side and Tony, carrying his fishing rod, on the other. Lucy was putting on a loose white sweater over her bathing suit. There was a slight gleam of perspiration on her upper lip and forehead, from the long row, and the wooden clogs on her bare feet fell noiselessly on the short grass. The group passed in and out of the sunlight between the trees and Lucy’s long, naked thighs shone, briefly and goldenly, when she emerged from the shadow of the trees. She walked very straight, keeping her hips in a strict line, as though trying to minimize her womanliness. At one point she stopped and put her hand against her husband’s shoulder and lifted her foot to dislodge a pebble from her clog and the group was posed there, immobile for one midsummer moment in slanting leafy sunlight.

Tony was talking as the group approached Patterson and Bunner. “This lake is all fished out,” he was saying. His voice was a clear, high childish alto, and although he was tall for his age, he seemed frail and undeveloped to Bunner, with a head too big for his body. “It’s too close to civilization. We ought to go to the North Woods. Except for the mosquitoes and the moose. You have to be careful of the moose. And you have to carry the canoe in on your head, Bert says. There’re so many fish, Bert says, they splinter the paddles.”

“Tony,” Oliver said gravely, “do you know what a grain of salt is?”

“Sure,” the boy said.

“That’s what you need for Bert.”

“Do you mean he’s a liar?” Tony asked.

“Not exactly,” said Oliver. “Just that he should be taken salted, like peanuts.”

“I’ve got to tell him that,” Tony said. “Like peanuts.”

They stopped in front of Patterson and Bunner. “Mr. Bunner,” Oliver said, “my wife. And Tony.”

“How do you do?” Lucy said. She nodded briefly and buttoned her sweater up to the neck.

Tony went over to Bunner and politely shook hands.

“Hello, Tony,” Bunner said.

“Hello,” said Tony. “Boy, your hand is calloused.”

“I’ve been playing tennis.”

“I bet in four weeks I can beat you,” Tony said. “Maybe five weeks.”

“Tony …” Lucy said warningly.

“Is that boasting?” Tony turned toward his mother.

“Yes,” she said.

Tony shrugged and turned back to Bunner. “I’m not allowed to boast,” he said. “I have a hot forehand, but my backhand has flaws. I don’t mind telling you,” he said candidly, “because you’d find it out anyway, in the first game. I once saw Ellsworth Vines play.”

“What did you think of him?” Bunner asked.

Tony made a face. “Overrated,” he said carelessly. “Just because he comes from California and he can play every day. You’ve been swimming.”

“Yes, I have,” Bunner said, puzzled and amused. “How do you know?”

“Easy. I can smell the lake on you.”

“That’s his one parlor trick,” Oliver said, coming over and ruffling the boy’s hair. “He had his eyes bandaged when he was sick and he developed the nose of a bloodhound.”

“I can swim, too. Like a streak,” Tony said.

“Tony …” It was Lucy again, with the tone of warning.

Tony smiled, caught out. “But only for ten strokes. Then I go under. I don’t know how to breathe.”

“We’ll work on that,” Bunner said. “You can’t go through life not knowing how to breathe.”

“I have to put my mind to it,” Tony said.

“Jeff’ll teach you, Tony,” Oliver said. “He’s going to stay with you until the end of the summer.”

Lucy glanced sharply at her husband, then dropped her eyes. Tony, too, stared at Oliver, carefully, with guarded suspicion, remembering nurses, medicines, regimes, pain, captivity. “Oh,” he said. “Is he going to take care of me?”

“Not exactly,” Oliver said. “Just help you catch up on a couple of things.”

Tony examined Oliver for a long moment, trying to discover just how candid his father was being. Then he turned and silently inspected Bunner, as though now that their connection had been announced it was necessary to start the process of judgment immediately.

“Jeff,” Tony said finally, “how are you as a fisherman?”

“When the fish see me coming,” Bunner said, “they roar with laughter.”

Patterson looked at his watch. “I think we’d better be going, Oliver. I have to pay my bill and throw on some clothes and I’m ready.”

“You said there was something you wanted to tell Tony,” Oliver said.

Lucy glanced from his face to Patterson’s, distrustfully.

“Yes,” Patterson said. Now that the moment had come he was sorry he had given into Oliver’s demand. “Still,” he said, conscious that he was being cowardly, “don’t you think it could wait for another time?”

“I think this is the very best time, Sam,” Oliver said evenly. “You’re not going to see Tony for another month, at least, and Tony after all is the one who’s finally responsible for taking care of himself and I think it’d be better if he knew just what he has to expect and why …”

“Oliver …” Lucy began.

“Sam and I have talked all this out already, Lucy,” Oliver said, touching her hand.

“What do I have to do now?” Tony asked, eyeing Patterson distrustfully.

“You don’t have to do anything, Tony,” Patterson said. “I just want to tell you how things are with you.”

“I feel fine.” Tony sounded sullen as he said this and he looked unhappily at the ground.

“Of course,” Patterson said. “And you’re going to feel a lot better.”

“I feel good enough,” Tony said stubbornly. “Why do I have to feel better?”

Patterson and Oliver laughed at this, and, after a moment, Bunner joined in.

“Well
enough,” Lucy said. “Not good enough.”

“Well
enough,” Tony said obediently.

“Of course you do,” Patterson began.

“I don’t want to stop anything,” Tony said warningly. “I stopped enough things already in my life.”

“Tony,” said Oliver, “let Dr. Patterson finish what he has to say.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Tony.

“All I want to tell you,” Patterson said, “is that you mustn’t try to read for a while yet, but aside from that, you can do almost anything you want—in moderation. Do you know what moderation means?”

“It means not asking for a second ice-cream soda,” Tony said promptly.

They all laughed at that and Tony looked around him, shrewdly, because he had known it was going to make them laugh.

“Exactly,” Patterson said. “You can play tennis and you can swim and …”

“I want to learn to play second base,” said Tony. “I want to learn to hit curves.”

“We can try,” Bunner said, “but I don’t guarantee anything. I haven’t hit a curve yet and I’m a lot older than you. You’re either born hitting curves or you’re not.”

“You can do all that, Tony,” Patterson went on, noting somewhere at the back of his mind that Bunner was a pessimist, “on one condition. And the condition is that as soon as you feel yourself getting the least bit tired, you quit. The least bit …”

“And if I don’t quit?” the boy said sharply. “What happens then?”

Patterson looked inquiringly at Oliver.

“Go ahead and tell him,” Oliver said.

Patterson shrugged and turned back to Tony. “Then you might have to go back to bed and stay there again for a long time. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“You mean I might die,” Tony said, ignoring the question.

“Tony!” Lucy said. “Dr. Patterson didn’t say that.”

Tony looked around him with hostility and Patterson had the impression, for a moment, that the boy was regarding the people who surrounded him not as his parents and friends, but as the instigators and the representatives of his illness.

“Don’t worry,” Tony said. He smiled and the hostility vanished. “I won’t die.”

“Of course not,” said Patterson, resenting Oliver for having put him through a scene like that. He took a step forward to the boy and leaned over him a little, coming closer to his level.

“Tony,” he said, “I want to congratulate you.”

“Why?” Tony asked, a little guardedly, suspecting teasing.

“You’re a model patient,” Patterson said. “You recovered. Thank you.”

“When can I throw away these?” Tony asked. He put his hand up with a quick movement and took off his glasses. His voice suddenly seemed mature and bitter. Without has glasses his eyes looked deepset, peering, full of melancholy and judgment, alarming in the thin, boyish face.

“Maybe in a year or two,” Patterson said. “If you do the exercises every day. One hour each morning, one hour each night. Will you remember that?”

“Yes, Sir,” Tony said. He put on the glasses and they made him seem boyish again.

“Your mother knows all the exercises,” Patterson said, “and she’s promised she won’t skip a minute …”

“You can show them to me, Doctor,” said Bunner, “and we can spare Mrs. Crown.”

“There’s no need of that,” Lucy said quickly. “I’ll do it.”

“Of course,” Jeff said. “Whatever you say.”

Tony went over to Oliver. “Daddy,” he said, “do you have to go home?”

“I’m afraid so,” Oliver said. “But I’ll try to come up on a week-end later in the month.”

“Your father has to go back to the city and work,” Patterson said, “so that he can afford to pay me, Tony.”

Oliver smiled. “I think you should have allowed me to make that joke, Sam.”

“Sorry.” Patterson went over and kissed Lucy on the cheek. “Bloom,” he said, “bloom like the wild rose.”

“I’m walking past the hotel,” Bunner said. “Do you mind if I tag along with you, Doctor?”

“My pleasure,” Patterson said. “You can tell me what it’s like to be twenty.”

“So long, Tony,” said Bunner. “What time should I arrive tomorrow? Nine o’clock?”

“Ten-thirty,” Lucy said quickly. “That’s early enough.”

Bunner glanced at Oliver. “Ten-thirty it is,” he said.

He and Patterson started up the path toward the hotel, a big, gravely moving, bulky man and an agile, slender, dark boy in grass-stained canvas shoes. Lucy and Oliver watched them for a moment in silence.

That boy is too sure of himself, Lucy thought, watching the graceful, retreating figure. Imagine coming asking for a job wearing a sweatshirt. For a moment she thought of turning on Oliver and complaining about Bunner. At least, she thought, he might have let me be here when he interviewed him. Then she decided not to complain. It was done, and she knew Oliver too well to believe that she could change his mind. She would have to try to handle the young man by herself, her own way.

She hunched her shoulders and rubbed her bare thighs. “I’m cold,” she said. “I’m going to put on some clothes. Are you all packed, Oliver?”

“Just about,” he said. “There’re a couple of things I have to collect. I’ll go in with you.”

“Tony,” Lucy said. “You’d better put some pants on, too, and some shoes.”

“Oh, Mother.”

“Tony,” she said, thinking, He never talks back to Oliver.

“Oh, all right,” Tony said, and he led the way, shuffling his feet luxuriously in the cool thick grass of the lawn, into the house.

3

A
LONE IN THE BEDROOM
with Lucy, Oliver finished packing his bags. He was not a fussy man and he never took long, but when he finished with a bag it was always rigidly neat, almost as though it had been done by a machine. To Lucy, who had to pack and repack bags in bursts of inefficient energy, it seemed that Oliver had some brisk, inborn sense of order in his hands. While Oliver was packing she took off her sweater and bathing suit and looked at her naked body in the long glass. I’m getting old, she thought, staring at herself. There are the little secret marks of time on the flesh of my thighs. I must walk more. I must sleep more. I must not think about it. Thirty-five.

She brushed her hair. She wore it down a little past her shoulders, because Oliver liked it that way. She would have preferred it shorter, especially in the summer.

“Oliver,” she said, brushing her hair, looking at his reflection in the mirror as he quickly and neatly put an envelope full of papers, a pair of slippers, a sweater into the bag on the bed.

“Yes?” He snapped the bag shut, crisply, like a man cinching a horse.

“I hate the idea of your going home.”

Oliver came over to her and stood behind her, putting his hands around her. She felt his hands on her and the cool stuff of his suit against her back, and fought down a sudden quiver of distaste. He owns me, she thought, he must not behave as though he owns me. Oliver kissed the back of her neck, under her ear.

“You have a wonderful belly,” he said, moving his hands, kissing her.

She turned in his arms and held onto him. “Stay another week,” she said.

“You heard what Sam said about earning enough to pay for his bill,” Oliver said. Gently, he stroked her shoulder. “He wasn’t kidding.”

“But all those people at the plant …”

“All those people at the plant are out at the first tee by two o’clock in the afternoon, if I’m not there,” Oliver said good-naturedly. “You’re turning a marvelous color.”

“I hate being alone,” Lucy said. “I’m not good at being alone. I’m too stupid to be alone.”

Oliver laughed and held her tighter. “You’re not stupid at all.”

“Yes, I am,” Lucy said. “You don’t know me. When I’m alone my brain is like an old washrag. I hate the summers,” she said. “I’m in exile in the summertime.”

“I admire the color you turn in the summertime,” Oliver said.

Lucy felt a little touch of anger because he was treating her lightly. “Exile,” she repeated stubbornly. “Summertime is my Elba.”

Oliver laughed again. “See,” he said “you’re not so stupid. No stupid woman would have thought of that.”

“I’m literary,” Lucy said, “but I’m stupid. I’m going to be so lonesome.”

“Now, Lucy …” Oliver moved away and started walking around the room, opening drawers and looking in closets to make sure he had left nothing behind. “There’re hundreds of people around the lake.”