by Daniel Stern
It was this attitude toward himself which had prompted him to participate so completely in the trouble between Alec and Annette. His season with the ballet over, he had accepted an offer from them to be their guest for the late summer and early fall, and so had been there when Max’s letter arrived. Alec’s first instinct had been to hide it from Annette. At this point Jay had spoken firmly about Annette’s right to know what was going on.
He could see Annette’s face harden slowly as Alec told her.
“Well,” she said, “what are you going to do, darling?”
“What do you think—”
“Don’t ask my advice, Alec. This is your baby.”
“All right. I can’t not go. But I can’t go. Not without you.”
“That’s quite a dilemma.”
“Isn’t it? Would you want me to take you there, knowing their attitude?”
“I guess not. But that’s not the question. The point is, do you go alone or do we stay here and ignore the whole thing? If the money stops, it stops.”
“That’s all very well—”
“I’m sorry, Alec. This has dragged on too long. I’m almost grateful to your brother for bringing it to a head. Me, or the goddamned money and the goddamned family. I wish it didn’t have to be a choice, but I didn’t make it that way. They did. I’ve got to finish making dinner and then I’ve got a rehearsal. You think about it, darling.”
She kissed him on the cheek and then went into the kitchen, leaving him and Jay standing near the piano. When she came back from the rehearsal Alec was packing. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it to Jay at all, while she was gone. Then suddenly he turned to Jay and said, “Look, will you come home with me and spend the holidays with us?”
“What’s the matter? Afraid to leave me alone with Annette?”
Alec punched his arm. “Yeah. How about it? You’d be a big help. You really would.”
“Why don’t you stay here with Annette, and forget about the rest of it?”
Alec shook his head. “I can’t. I’ve tried but I can’t. Annette will calm down. It’s just a question of making the break when I’m ready for it.”
“You know damn well nothing ever comes when you’re ready for it.”
“No, I don’t know. Look, boy, don’t preach to me. I’m not going to lose Annette because I go home for the holidays.”
“You’re not?”
“Hell, no! We love each other in one of the best ways I ever hope to see as long as I live. Jay, boy, Jay! I can’t give up a structure I’ve built for so long, overnight. We’ve got security this way. I’ll go home and try to smooth things over and straighten them out about Annette.” His voice did not sound hopeful, but a trifle desperate.
That evening after the rehearsal Annette packed some things and went to stay at the Y in Los Angeles. Alec took the car and the following day he and Jay started out for Colchester. Little by little Alec’s bravado began to crack until finally the occasional drinks before and after dinner became a sustained binge, in which Jay joined as little as possible. Alec was no longer sure that Annette would be there at all when he returned and he did not possess the strength to turn the car around and go back. For the last third of the journey he kept telling Jay Annette’s point of view as if Jay were someone who could see only Alec’s side.
“She wants kids, and a real home, you understand.”
Jay understood.
“She needs a normal life and to be accepted like everybody else, not to be left at home like some cheap—You can see that.”
Jay could see that.
The last few hours had drained Alec of any coherency. To Jay’s suggestion that they stop at a hotel in town until he could sober up he had been violently opposed. “Gotta get home now!” he’d shouted. “Gotta get home!” And nothing Jay could say or do calmed him. The only thought that appeared to give him any solace was that he would soon see Elly. They had not been traveling fast enough to suit him, but now he lay still, breathing heavily in a half doze as Jay tried to figure out why there was no gentle slope, as had been described in the letter, but instead a rather steep incline of stone steps leading to the house. He decided that they must somehow have come around the back way.
His pleasure at being there was colored a little by a sense of apprehension. He fervently wished there were some way he could snap Alec back to alertness. God knew what he might say to his brother in his present condition! Jay brought the car to a halt, realizing he would have to leave it here while he dragged Alec up the stone steps. It was clear there was no manner in which the car could navigate up that hill.
Jay opened the door and let his legs flop out wearily. He then crossed them and lighted a cigarette. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was seven-thirty. They should just be finishing dinner by now. Perhaps he could sneak Alec into a room while they were all in the dining room. He discarded this idea. There were too many unknown factors. He’d better brace himself to face the idea of a scene. He felt a sudden rush of wonder, for which he was completely unprepared. What was he, Jay Gordon, doing here, returning a drunken friend to his family who lived in a glass house? If someone had told him about this three years ago, say during the intermission of his Carnegie Hall recital, he would have laughed and dismissed it as a charming flight of fancy. Yet, here he was, a ballet piano pounder, three years after Carnegie, sans wife, sans career, sans—
He imagined the girl he had walked with at the beach in California sitting in the house on the hill at the dinner table. Some crazy urge had taken him that night, strolling on the cool sands, to tell her all about himself. Luckily the distraction of the accident that befell the pregnant woman had prevented him from giving in to the odd impulse. She was only a kid. But he had played for her that night. Brahms, he remembered vaguely. Why had he played, when it inevitably caused him, as it had caused him then, such agony? If you were going to leave something alone, you had to leave it alone, that was all.
Alec was snoring now and Jay glanced down at the long, skinny body, drooping long eyelashes and the long arms lying at his side. Jay nudged him. “Alec!” he said. “Wake up! We’ve got to go.”
Alec stirred and whispered as he looked around him, as if it were a secret, “Jeez, I don’t remember any of this place.”
“Of course you don’t. You’ve never been to this house. Come on—up you go! How do you feel?”
Alec ran his fingers through his dark, rumpled hair and yawned drunkenly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Jay took his arm as he almost stumbled. “Easy now. Put your arm around my neck.”
The ascent was long and painful. At the summit Jay leaned Alec against the garage wall and made an attempt to tidy his rumpled clothing. He was starting on his own when a man in a dark suit appeared.
“This is private property. What do you want? Are you drunk?”
Feeling as if he was playing a low comedy scene, Jay said, “This gentleman lives here. His name is Alec Kaufman, and he is a little the worse for a few drinks.”
The man frowned and vanished. Alec seemed to have revived a bit at the unexpected encounter. He still held on to Jay’s arm, however, as they navigated around the garage and toward the house. To one side, in the far corner of what seemed to Jay to be an enormous formal garden, he saw Elly break an embrace with a tall, slender man with slightly graying temples and run toward them.
“Alec!” she shouted. “Uncle Alec!”
A gray smile spread over Alec’s face as she threw herself onto him. Jay raised a warning hand but lowered it immediately as from somewhere Alec found the strength to hug Elly to him tightly and murmur, “Hello, Pasquale.”
“Hello, Tony,” she replied. “Oh it’s so good to see you!”
“You too, baby.” He pushed her rather roughly from him and held her at arm’s length. “How do you manage to look different? It’s only been eight or nine months.”
“I’m not different.” She laughed. “Whew, Alec, you’re drunk!”
Elly glanced at Jay swiftly. “She left you, Alec?”
“Or I left her, or something.”
“Well, which was it? I have to know.” Elly raised her voice.
“Elly, baby, take it easy. She left me. That’s why I’m here alone. No, that’s not exactly right.”
“Thanks,” Jay remarked dryly.
“Not alone. You know what I mean, old boy.”
“Sure.”
“I’m so sorry, Alec. Really.”
“That’s all right, baby. Wasn’t your fault. Besides, I’ll get her back, without or with your—you should pardon the expression—goddamned father.”
Jay felt the time had come to step in. “Where are your father and mother, Elizabeth?” he asked, noticing as he spoke that the tall man he had seen embrace Elly was gone.
“They’re playing bridge with the Marlowes. I was going to have dinner alone. Now we can all eat together. This is Justin, our butler,” she added as the man reappeared. Elly directed him to help Alec, who had wilted again, into the house.
Elly and Jay fell behind a moment and Jay said, “I don’t know if he’ll have much stomach for eating, Elizabeth.”
She nodded. “Why?” she asked. “Why did he get drunk tonight? Was it about Annette?”
“Yes. He’s been feeling pretty low since we left L.A.”
Alec suddenly whirled around and out of Justin’s firm grasp.
“I saw you, Elly Kaufman,” he said. “Who were you kissing? You can tell me. Who was it? Come on!”
“I wasn’t kissing anyone. I was holding onto Carl’s arm.”
“Who’s Carl? And you were kissing him.”
“He’s the rabbi at the new temple and I was not kissing.”
“Somebody was kissing somebody!” Alec roared.
“S-h-h-h! He may not have left yet.”
Somewhere beneath the façade of drunkenness and mock truculence, Alec sensed the impressive nature of the scene he was playing. The procession, led by himself, being led by a servant, followed by Elly and Jay walking together in the now opaque night air. He was silent.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jay whispered to Elly. “I saw him leave.”
“Good,” Elly said. “But I wasn’t—Oh, never mind! Let’s get him in the house before Dad and Mom get home.”
They took Alec to Elly’s room, with Jay strolling behind, taking in the house, an expression of wonder on his face. He ran his fingers through the leaves of one of the indoor trees, blew his breath against one of the glass walls and, quickly looking around like a small boy to see if anyone had noticed his action, closed the curtains and hurried after the others.
Elly was giving Alec black coffee when Jay reached the room. Seeing the girl sitting on the edge of the bed, feeding her uncle, Jay had the impression, more tonight than that other evening at the beach house, that Elly completed Alec in some odd way. Certainly as they gazed at each other, she speaking, he sipping and replying, they were quite oblivious of anyone else in the room. Sensing the beginning of an impact of strangeness, Jay determined to keep from his thoughts any reference to past experience. The evening was strange? All right. Perhaps the rest of the holiday would be strange, too. Very well. It might be just what he needed, to keep him from the eternal comparisons he made between his new life and his old life; between the way he played the piano now and the way he used to play; between this girl and his wife. He had blown a film of breath onto the glass wall of the house.
And with this he had a sudden impact of the sense of freedom. He was a man of thirty-three without ties. There were pianos everywhere, young women everywhere. He was thinking how glad he was to have come when Elly turned and said, “Justin will fix you something to eat in the kitchen. I’m glad you came.” She stood up quickly and, taking his hand in hers, reached up and swiftly kissed him on the cheek. Quietly astonished, he followed Justin into the kitchen.
Alec swung to an upright position on the side of the bed, and Elly sat next to him, massaging his forehead.
“That feels good. I’m sorry about all this, Elly. I don’t want to start any trouble my first night here.”
“There won’t be any trouble. Dad’ll be so glad to see you, he’ll burst. All the trouble about you has come and gone while you were in California.”
“What do you mean? What?”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. How do you feel now?”
“Better. Quite a lot better. Why don’t you make believe I was just rehearsing for a drunk scene? Okay?” Alec felt the first twinge of guilt regarding the manner of his home-coming, now that he was a little more sober.
“Sure, darling.” Elly laughed. “Come on, I have a wonderful idea. Come on. Oh, how I’ve missed you in this damned desert! Come on!” And she pulled Alec from the bed, determined that he should ask no more questions as well as that neither of them should mention Annette for as long as possible.
Jay was biting into a cold corned-beef sandwich when he saw through an exposed stretch of window not shielded by the draperies a tennis ball flash by. Unable to believe it to be such, he waited and saw it returned. It was so dark out now that it could be a bird, but then he heard the click of a racket meeting a ball. Still munching his sandwich he rose and walked out the rear door, turning toward what he now saw was a tennis court about forty yards behind the house. In the darkness he could make out the outlines of the net. Suddenly the area was flooded with light and Jay saw Elly skip away from a switch imbedded in a tall pole atop which were two large, stationary floodlights. Into the milky phosphorescence Elly danced in time to meet a lobbed ball and laughed as she missed it completely. She produced another one immediately. Alec was steadier on his feet and was beginning to move faster.
Jay flopped to the grass on his side, still chewing his sandwich. Looking up he saw hundreds of small insects gathering about the arc lights. The night was silent except for the plop of the ball slapped back and forth. The hill, the garden and the house narrowed to a circumscribed, timeless area of light on which two ghostly figures moved swiftly on tiptoe in Elly’s ritual dance of welcome. Outside was the night in which Jay and Alec had arrived, Alec drunk and Jay worried but pleased at being away from the world. Jay had—he thought, but wasn’t quite sure—felt a light finger of jealousy touch him on observing Elly break from her embrace with the man who had vanished. But here was only the artificial moon, the two figures floating gently over the manicured grass court.
Jay watched Elly’s long brown legs as her skirt flared around her, his eyes not following the ball but moving with her. Elly played well and he knew Alec was good. The bantering had stopped and a kind of change had come over the game. They were no longer floating about at will, returning the ball easily. They had become intent and Jay couldn’t tell who had changed the quality, brought about this metamorphosis. The serving became more forceful, their movements more careful, purposive. Jay almost cried out, “Hey!” but thought better of it. It occurred to him that they would not have noticed his call. The plop had become a slap now, the light drenching them clearer and colder. Jay noticed the grass on which he lay was moist and he shifted his position to avoid a cramp.
The moon was behind a long stretch of clouds and from somewhere Jay heard the scrush of tires on pavement, far away. Alec was returning Elly’s short hard strokes with powerful little blocking swings. He was on the defensive, backing farther away from the net. A little frightened for no definite reason, Jay stood up and, brushing the grasslets from his clothes, moved a little closer. He saw that Alec’s face was dripping perspiration. “Isn’t that enough—?” he started to call out, when, both of them quite near the net, Elly sent the ball stinging hard, right at Alec’s throat. It glanced off the side of his neck and Elly dropped her racket instantly, vaulted the net and threw her arms around Alec who was massaging his neck furiously.
“Did I hurt you, Alec? I didn’t mean to, honest. How does it feel?”
“It’s okay, baby, it’s fine. Sobered me up, anyway. My head’s clear now.”
He dropped his racket, too, and hugged her to him. What is it with these two? Jay wondered, seeing them clasped together in the middle of the brilliantly lighted court, like the last scene of a movie. There was, he sensed, between Alec and his niece some bond which was more complex than either of them knew. It was possible, he thought, that each one’s conception of the relationship was something quite different. The sudden ferocity with which a dreamlike volleying, with a drunken vagueness, had been transformed into a contest, sharp, clear and with overtones of violence, hinted at an involvement neither one could be quite aware of.
They walked toward Jay, arms still around each other, Alec mopping his face with a handkerchief and breathing heavily.
“I’m not the man I used to be,” he panted.
“That’s true.” Jay laughed, a little nervously. “Of course you didn’t used to be much.”
“That’s true too,” Alec replied.
“Leave him alone,” Elly said. “He’s fine.”
