by Irwin Shaw
“What for?”
“He wants to invite us all out to the country this weekend. He has a house on the beach in East Hampton with a pool and a tennis court and everything. It sounds super, doesn’t it?”
“Super,” Strand said.
“He says there are some good players I could have a game with and if anybody wanted to ride, there are horses nearby. He said he’d pick us up in his car Friday afternoon and get us back Sunday night.”
“Your mother has lessons on Saturday morning.”
“Once, just once,” Caroline said, “she could let those brats play baseball or smoke pot or look at television on Saturday morning. Just once.”
“We’ll talk it over when your mother comes home.”
“I’ll tell you the one thing that’s wrong with you and Mother,” Caroline said. “You’re too conscientious.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Now you’d better go in and take your shower before your mother gets home.”
“Righto,” Caroline said cheerily and started out of the kitchen. Suddenly she stopped. “Oh, one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Mr. Hazen said he talked to one of his partners at the office and his partner convinced him he ought to report the crime, that’s what he called it, the crime, to the police. He’s already done it, he said something about his civic duty, and that he wasn’t thinking clearly the night it happened. He said that there’d probably be a detective around to ask me questions. How do you talk to a detective?”
“I’m not an authority on that,” Strand said. “I’ve never talked to one that I know of.”
“I hope he’s a young one,” Caroline said and started off again, but Strand stopped her.
“Caroline,” he said, “don’t tell your mother about the detective.”
“Why not?”
“Because probably it’ll never happen and it’s no use reminding her of what Mr. Hazen calls the incident. She may not have looked it to you, but she was terribly upset about you Friday night and I know she’s started to worry about your going into the park even during the day.”
“Okay, Daddy,” Caroline said. “She’s your wife.”
“By the way, Caroline, did you thank Mr. Hazen for the racquet?”
“Of course,” Caroline said, with dignity. “I’m not a complete savage. Profusely.” Humming, she went down the hall toward her shower. Strand rinsed off Caroline’s plate and glass and knife and dried them, to hide the predinner malfeasance from Leslie. As he put them away he wondered if he ought to go to the nearest precinct house and tell whoever took charge of those things to please not send any detectives to the apartment, it had been too dark for his daughter to have recognized any of the boys involved and she was preparing for her final examinations and he’d prefer it if she weren’t distracted for the time being. He had a hunch that with all the major problems the police had to cope with in the neighborhood they’d be only too glad to file the report and forget it.
He heard the phone ringing and went into the foyer to answer it. It was Eleanor.
“How was the weekend?” he asked.
“Green,” she said. “I slept and the others drank most of the time. The people I was staying with know the Hazens. Correction on my first report about your friend. He had three children. The boy died. O.D.’d.”
“What?”
“O.D.’d. Overdosed. Heroin. Five months ago. Everybody was away for the weekend and he left word with the help he didn’t want to be disturbed. They didn’t disturb him and when they finally broke the lock into his room it was all over.”
“Oh, God.”
“Chilling, isn’t it? Maybe you ought to go into Jimmy’s room and look for needles.”
“Eleanor,” Strand said firmly, “do you know anything about Jimmy that you haven’t told us?”
“No. Only you can’t be too careful. The places he hangs out—and the people…”
“I’m sure he isn’t…isn’t one of those.”
“Maybe Mr. Hazen was sure, too. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Eleanor said. “No use getting the wind up. It was a random thought. Forget it. I heard some more about the Hazen family, too. His wife is not well liked, it seems, spends most of her time in Europe. The daughters’re not anyone’s pets, either. One is living with a so-called New Film director in San Francisco, no visible means of support. The other is in Rome, occupation unknown. Both very pretty according to my friends. No wonder Mr. Hazen liked the idea of having dinner with us. Although he is reputed to have a mistress. Not such sizzling news toward the end of the twentieth century, is it?”
“No,” Strand said.
“Kisses to everybody,” Eleanor said. “See you on Friday night.”
Strand hung up, stared at the telephone. O.D.’d. He shivered. The sense of guilt must be an impossible burden. Good reason for talking about the nihilism of the young, the responsibility toward the new generation, the offer to help Jesus Romero, the walk through the park with a healthy young athlete. All those clubs, all those board meetings, all that money and your son is left undisturbed for two days…
Strand went down the hallway, stopped at the door to Jimmy’s room. He looked at it for a long time, then tried the handle. The door was unlocked and swung open a little. Strand hesitated, then closed it firmly.
At dinner, which they were eating in the kitchen, there were only Strand, Leslie and Caroline. Jimmy made sporadic appearances for the evening meal, but conscientiously told his mother if he was going to be absent. Strand hadn’t told Leslie about Hazen’s invitation and he could feel Caroline’s imploring eyes on him. “Now,” she, finally said, in a stage whisper.
“Now what?” he asked, although he knew what she was talking about.
“You know. The weekend,” Caroline said.
Leslie looked at him inquiringly. She had been busy with dinner since she got home and he had been working on the schedule for the final exams and aside from a kiss of welcome and a few words about their respective days, guarded and noncommittal on his part, with no mention of detectives or Jesus Romero or young men found having O.D.’d.
“What weekend?” Leslie asked.
“It seems that Mr. Hazen was passing by the tennis courts and walked Caroline home,” Strand said.
“That was thoughtful of him.”
“Very,” Strand said. “It turns out that he has a house in East Hampton…”
“With a tennis court and a pool,” Caroline put in. “Heated. The pool, I mean. And it’s on the ocean.”
“What in the world would people need a pool for with the whole Atlantic Ocean just in front of them?” Leslie asked sensibly.
“Oh, Mother,” Caroline said. “For bad weather. And the ocean’s cold.”
“Well,” Leslie said, “it’s his money. Anyway, what’s Mr. Hazen’s house on the ocean got to do with us?”
“He invited us out for the weekend,” Strand said, “via Caroline.”
“All of us,” Caroline said.
“That’s carrying gratitude for a single bowl of soup pretty far,” Leslie said. She looked at Strand. “What do you think?”
Strand shrugged. “What do you think?”
“He’ll pick us up in his car on Friday afternoon,” Caroline said, the words tumbling out of her mouth, “and drive us back on Sunday night.”
“There’re all those lessons on Saturday morning,” Leslie said doubtfully.
“Those snooty juvenile delinquents,” Caroline said. “They’d vote you Woman of the Year if you gave them one Saturday off.”
“Sssh, Caroline,” Leslie said. “I’m thinking.”
“There’s too much thinking going on in this house,” Caroline said despairingly. “We’ll think ourselves into absolute inertia.”
“Will you keep quiet for a moment, Caroline,” Strand said crossly.
“He’s a lonely old man,” Caroline persisted. “The
least we could do would be to cheer him up a little. The house has sixteen bedrooms he told me. How would you like to be alone rattling around in sixteen bedrooms week after week? You and Mother’re always telling me we should be considerate of the needs of others. Well, let me tell you, Mr. Hazen is an other.”
“Miss lawyer,” Leslie said crisply, if you’ll stop for a minute, maybe we can discuss this.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” Caroline said.
Leslie touched her hand gently.
“All right,” Caroline said, sitting back, resigned and folding her arms. “My lips’re sealed.”
“Are you sure he included us all?” Leslie asked. “Jimmy and Eleanor, too?”
“Sure,” Caroline said.
“Did he say as much?” Strand said.
“Not in so many words,” Caroline admitted. “But it was certainly implied.”
“Allen,” Leslie said, “you look as though a little sea air wouldn’t do you any harm.”
“Now,” Caroline said triumphantly, “we’re beginning to talk some sense around here.”
“I imagine I could postpone the lessons,” Leslie said thoughtfully. “Some way. And I’d have to talk to Eleanor and Jimmy, see what they want to do…”
“If they deprive me,” Caroline said, “for their own selfish reasons, I’ll never speak to either one of them again.”
“Don’t talk like a baby,” Leslie said. “I said we’d discuss it.”
Then the phone rang and Strand stood up from the table. “I’ll get it,” he said. “It’s probably the lonesome lawyer, himself.”
It was Hazen on the phone. “I’m not interrupting your dinner, I hope,” he said.
“No,” Strand said. “We were just finishing.”
“Did you enjoy the Berlioz?”
“It was superb,” Strand said. “Thank you again.”
“Not at all. Any time you want to go, just let me know. They send me tickets for just about everything and very often I find I’m not free on a particular evening.”
“Caroline told me you walked her home,” Strand said, thinking, What must it be like to be sent tickets to just about everything? “It was very thoughtful of you.”
“She’s a lovely child,” Hazen said. “And bright, along with everything else. Did she tell you about our enjoyable little conversation?”
“She did,” Strand said. He couldn’t help thinking about how Hazen would describe whatever conversations he had had with his son before they broke the lock on the door. “I had a little conversation myself with a young person this afternoon,” Strand said. “The boy I told you about—Romero. Not exactly enjoyable.”
“What did he say?”
“He’ll think about it.”
“Would it help if I talked to him?” Hazen asked.
“I doubt it.”
“Well, you know best. Did Caroline ask you about coming out to the Island this weekend?”
“Indeed she did,” Strand said. “She’s been bludgeoning her mother and me all through dinner about it.”
“You are coming, aren’t you?” Hazen sounded anxious.
Sixteen bedrooms to rattle around in and a heated pool to swim in by himself. “We’re still trying to see if we can work it out,” Strand said.
“Your other daughter and your son are invited, too, of course.”
“So Caroline implied. I don’t know what their plans are. Can I call you on Wednesday or Thursday?”
“Anytime,” Hazen said quickly. “Have you got a pencil handy? I’ll give you my office telephone number.”
“Right here,” Strand said and jotted down the number Hazen gave him over the phone. “By the way, Caroline tells me you still look a bit the worse for wear.”
“It’s nothing,” Hazen said quickly. “If I don’t look in the mirror or infants don’t scream in their carriages at the sight of me, I forget anything ever happened.”
“Caroline also mentioned something about the police,” Strand said, lowering his voice, so it wouldn’t carry into the kitchen.
“Yes. A useless formality, I’m afraid. But one of my partners is on the Mayor’s Juvenile Crime Commission and he says assembling accurate statistics is one of the hardest parts of the job and more to please him than for anything else, I…You don’t mind, do you?”
“I suppose not,” Strand said, but he knew he sounded reluctant.
“Well, I hope you can make it this weekend,” Hazen said. “I’ll await your call.”
They said their good-byes and Strand hung up. He went back into the kitchen.
“Well?” Caroline asked anxiously.
“It must be tough, filling those bedrooms,” Strand said, sitting down.
“You didn’t answer me,” Caroline wailed.
“I said I’d let him know later in the week,” Strand said. “Now let me eat my dessert.”
5
FORGET THEM, FORGET THE men falling…
It was Conroy who came to pick them up on Friday afternoon, in a long Mercedes limousine with jump seats. Mr. Hazen sent his apologies, Conroy said, he was unexpectedly detained at the office, but would come down later in the evening. Strand sat in the front seat beside Conroy. Leslie, Eleanor, Caroline and Jimmy sat in the back. Strand had been a little surprised when Eleanor had said that she’d like to go. She loved the Hamptons, especially out of season, she said, and had a lot of friends there she’d like to see. That was another thing he hadn’t known about Eleanor, Strand thought, as he put down the phone—that she was familiar with the Hamptons and had many friends there. He wondered what other revelations she had in store for him and for that matter what information Leslie, Jimmy and Caroline, now all chattering briskly in the back of the car, would divulge to him when they thought it convenient to do so.
“By the way,” Conroy said, “there’s a station wagon in the garage you can use if you want to get around.”
“I don’t drive,” Strand said, “and neither does my wife. But Eleanor has a license.” She had owned a beat-up old Ford the last two years in college. He turned and said, “Eleanor, did you hear what Mr. Conroy said? There’s a station wagon in the garage you can use.”
“Does that go for me, too?” Jimmy asked.
“Of course,” Conroy said.
“I didn’t know you had a license, Jimmy,” Strand said.
“A friend loaned me his car for a few afternoons,” Jimmy said, “and I tootled around and took the test.”
Strand shook his head. Something else he hadn’t been told about his family.
Conroy asked if they wanted him to turn the radio on and get some music, but Leslie vetoed the idea. “We never can agree on what we want to hear,” she said, “and I don’t want my ride to be spoiled for Jimmy and Caroline and Eleanor nor theirs for mine.”
Strand enjoyed the trip. It was a balmy evening, the sun still shining. Conroy drove well and after they got out of Queens the traffic was light and the big Mercedes smoothly ate up the miles through the lines of trees of the Parkway. In a way Strand was glad that Hazen had been detained at his office. If he’d been along Hazen would have kept the conversation going and Strand preferred to ride in silence. Conroy didn’t speak and Strand felt no need to listen to the holiday babble going on behind him. He was glad they had all decided the weekend would be a treat and he looked forward to seeing the inside of Hazen’s house. You could tell a great deal about a man from seeing the way he lived. Hazen was a new breed of animal for Strand and he was growing more and more curious about the lawyer. Strand was by nature cautious about quick impressions of people and had not yet made up his mind about what he really thought about Hazen. The circumstances under which they had met had been bizarre and with all his talking, Strand realized as he thought about it, Hazen had managed to find out a great deal about the family without telling anything much about himself except that his family had arrived in New York in 1706 and had never gone to Ohio. His absolute silence about his own immediate family, for example, was well b
eyond the bounds of ordinary discretion and except for confessing that he was a lawyer and went to symphony concerts, he had confined himself almost entirely to impersonal abstractions. From Who’s Who Strand knew a considerable amount about the public man; the private one was still concealed.
While waiting for the car to come to pick them up Eleanor had said of Hazen, “That man wants something.”
“Why do you say that?” Strand had asked.
“A man like that always wants something,” Eleanor had said, and he had been annoyed at her cynicism. In Strand’s code you didn’t accept hospitality, especially of this lavishness, from somebody about whom you had misgivings, even if they were only as vague as his daughter’s.
Leslie, who had a proprietary interest in the man whose wounds she had tended and admired the stoical way he had behaved when he was in pain, had snapped, uncharacteristically, at Eleanor, “If you feel like that, why don’t you just go someplace else for the weekend?”
“Sorry,” Eleanor had said. “I thought we were in America. Freedom of speech. Guaranteed by the Constitution, and all that.”
“Hush, everybody,” Strand had said. “This is a holiday.”
Jimmy had just grinned, pleased that for once Eleanor and not he was on the receiving end of a rebuke. Caroline had paid no attention to what was going on, but had sat dreamily humming to herself, cradling her racquet in its new case.
Looking out at the swiftly passing spring countryside, Strand thought about the exchange between his wife and his daughter and wondered if what Eleanor had said had some truth in it, then decided it was just idle spite, born of Eleanor’s jealousy or distaste for some of her superiors under whose orders she chafed on her job and whom, rightly or wrongly, she identified with Hazen. For himself, Strand decided that he would accept Hazen at face value. The face so far, he had to admit, was somewhat obscure, but he had detected no signs of malice or desire for advantage. Quite the opposite. If anything, after the news about the son, Strand pitied the man and sympathized with him. If Hazen was using the family to alleviate his loneliness, that hardly could be called manipulation. Strand remembered his fleeting suspicion of Hazen’s intentions about Caroline and smiled. Hazen would hardly have asked them out to his house en masse if he was plotting to satisfy his lust for the seventeen-year-old daughter of the family.
