by Irwin Shaw
“Maybe,” Susan said wearily.
Poor Tony, Lucy thought. The first girl he’s ever looked at.
“Delighted to have made your acquaintance, everybody,” Susan said. “Ta, again.”
They watched her walk down the path, her buttocks like two solidly pumped-up beach balls under the tight cloth of the jeans.
Jeff shuddered elaborately as she disappeared around the corner of the house. “I bet her mother is something,” he said. “I’ll give you three guesses why that lady was in Nevada last summer.”
“Don’t gossip,” Lucy said. “Tony, stop lingering.”
Tony slowly came back to the adult world. “She looks funny in pants, doesn’t she? Kind of lumpy.”
“You’ll find they get lumpier and lumpier in pants as you go along, Tony,” Jeff said.
The moment, with its joke about sex, and the memory of the girl’s dry and effortless rejection of her son, made Lucy uncomfortable. Another night, she thought, resenting Jeff, and I would have laughed. Not tonight.
“Tony,” she said, “inside with you. Get into your pajamas. And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
Tony slowly started in. “Jeff,” he said, “will you read to me when I get into bed?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll read to you tonight,” Lucy said, almost automatically.
“I like the way Jeff reads better.” Tony stopped at the door. “He skips the descriptions.”
“Jeff’s had a long day,” Lucy said, stubbornly, sorry that she had started this, but committed now. “He probably has a date or something.”
“No,” Jeff began, “I …”
“Anyway, Tony,” Lucy said, in a tone of sharp command she almost never used with him, “go in and get your pajamas on. Quickly.”
“All right,” Tony said, sounding hurt. “I didn’t mean …”
“Go ahead!” Lucy said, almost hysterically.
Puzzled, and a little frightened, Tony went into the house. Lucy moved quickly, in little jerky movements, around the porch, throwing some magazines together, closing the sewing basket, standing the telescope on the chair next to the glider, conscious that Jeff was watching her closely, humming tunelessly to himself.
She stopped in front of him. He was leaning against the porch pillar, his head in darkness, only a faint gleam showing where his eyes were.
“You,” she said. “I don’t like the way you behave with Tony.”
“With Tony?” Jeff straightened up, surprised, and came into the light of the lamp. “Why? I just behave naturally.”
“Nobody behaves naturally with children,” Lucy said, conscious that her voice was strained and artificial. “There is no such thing. All those sly jokes. All that pretense …”
“What pretense?”
“That you’re so fond of him,” Lucy said. “That you’re really just about the same age. That you want to see him again after the summer …”
“But I do,” Jeff said.
“Don’t lie to me. By Thanksgiving you won’t remember his name. And you’ll raise a lot of hopes in him … and all that it’ll mean to him is a long, disappointed autumn. Do your job,” she said. “And that’s all.”
“As I understood it,” Jeff said, “my job was to try to make him feel like a normal, healthy boy.”
“You’ve made him morbidly attached to you.”
“Now, Lucy …” Jeff said angrily.
“What for? Why?” She was almost shouting now. “Out of vanity? What’s so gratifying about getting a poor lonely little sick boy to cling to you? Why is it worth all the tricks? The Sign of the Ram, the Sea of Fecundity, human sacrifice, the Virgin, the Winter Carnival …” She was gasping, as though she had been running for a long time, and the words seemed to be pushed out past sobs. “Why don’t you go home? Why don’t you leave us both alone?”
Jeff took her arms and held them. She didn’t try to break away. “Is that what you want?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re the wrong age. You’re too old for him and you’re too young for me. Go find someone who’s twenty years old.” With a sharp movement, she pulled her arms out of his grasp. “Someone you can’t damage,” she said. “Someone for the summer. Someone you’ll forget in September just the way you’re going to forget us.”
“Lucy,” he whispered. “Stop it.”
“Go away.” She almost wept.
But he held her again, this time high up on her arms, close to her shoulders, his hands digging into her. “What do you think it’s been like for me?” he demanded, his voice still low, modified by the necessity of keeping Tony from hearing him. “Being so close to you, day after day? Going home and lying awake, remembering how your hand felt when I helped you out of the boat, remembering the sound your dress made as you brushed past me on the way down to dinner. Remembering what your laugh sounded like … And never being able to touch you, tell you … Damage!” he whispered harshly. “Don’t talk to me about damage!”
“Please,” she said, “if this is the way you talk to everybody, if this is the technique you’ve worked out, if this is how you’ve been successful with all your girls … spare me. Spare me.”
His hands tightened momentarily on her arms and she thought he was going to shake her. Then he let go of her. They stood there close to each other and he spoke wearily, without force. “You had a big straw hat last summer,” he said, his voice flat. “When you wore it in the sunlight, your face was all rosy and soft. Now, whenever I see a woman in a red straw hat like that, it’s as though someone has grabbed me by the throat …”
“Please,” Lucy said, “for the last time … go find yourself some other girl. There’re dozens of them. Young, unattached, who have no one to answer to when the summer is over.”
He stared at her, then nodded, as though agreeing. “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “But you must promise not to laugh.”
“All right,” Lucy said, puzzled. “I won’t laugh.”
Jeff took a deep breath. “There are no other girls,” he said. “There never have been.”
Lucy lowered her head. She noticed that one of the middle buttons of her waist was undone. She closed it carefully. Then she began to laugh, helplessly.
“You promised,” Jeff said, hurt.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She raised her eyes, trying to control her mouth. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at myself.”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“Because we’re both so clumsy,” she said. “Because we’re both so hopeless. Because neither of us knows how to do this.” Now she was looking at him squarely and soberly. “Because we’re going to do it,” she said.
They stood that way in silence for a second. Jeff made an uncertain movement with his hands. She took a step toward him and kissed him, hard.
“Lucy,” he whispered. He touched the back of her neck lightly with his hand.
“Now, little boy,” Lucy said, sounding motherly, almost jocular, pushing him away, “go to your nice, dark, empty sister’s house and sit on the porch and look at the moon and think of all the younger, prettier women you might have made love to tonight—and wait for me.”
Jeff made no move. “You … you’ll come there?” He asked warily, disturbed by her strange switch in attitude. “You’re not joking now? It’s not a trick?”
“It’s not a trick,” Lucy said lightly. “I’ll come along, never fear.”
Jeff tried to kiss her again, but she held him off, smiling, shaking her head. Then he wheeled and went quickly across the lawn, his shoes making no sound in the dewy grass. Lucy watched him disappear. Then she shook her head again and moved absently over to the glider. She was sitting there, her hands quiet in her lap, looking out at the misted lake, when Tony came out a few minutes later, in his pajamas and bathrobe, carrying a book.
“I brought the book,” Tony said as he came through the door.
“Good.” Lucy stood up. “Get into bed.”
Tony looked around him as he took off his robe. “Where’s Jeff?”
Lucy took the book and seated herself next to the glider, where the light of the lamp was strongest. “He had to go,” she said. “He remembered he had a date.”
“Oh,” Tony said, disappointed. He got into bed after moving the telescope so that he could reach it easily. “That’s funny. He didn’t tell me.”
“You mustn’t expect him to tell you everything,” Lucy said calmly. She opened the book. It was Huckleberry Finn. Oliver had made a list of books that were to be read to Tony during the summer and this was the third on the list. The next book to be read was a biography of Abraham Lincoln. “Is this the place?” Lucy asked.
“Where the leaf is,” said Tony. He was using a maple leaf as a bookmark.
“I see,” said Lucy.
She read the first few lines silently to orient herself and there was silence except for the busy sounds of crickets in the woods around them.
Tony took off his glasses and put them on the floor next to the telescope. He wriggled under the bedclothes and stretched luxuriously. “Isn’t this great?” he said. “Wouldn’t it be great if it was summertime all year long?”
“Yes, Tony,” said Lucy, and began to read. “So we went over to where the canoe was,” she read, “and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and a coffee-pot and frying pan, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft.…”
7
SHE LAY ON THE NARROW bed with his head on her breast, holding him lightly, watching him sleep. He had said, when she saw his eyelids drooping, “No, how could I sleep on a night like this?” Then he had sighed and moved his head gently against her breast, and had drifted off. He had a triumphant expression on his face, like a small boy who has accomplished something difficult and praiseworthy in the presence of his elders, and she smiled, seeing it, and touched his forehead with her fingertips.
He had also murmured, “Forever,” once, his lips against her throat, and she remembered it now and thought, How young you have to be to say forever.
He had been hesitant and uncertain in the very beginning, but after the first violent awkwardness, he had found, almost as if it had been locked always in him, needing only her touch to free it, a delicacy and gentleness that had moved Lucy profoundly and in a manner in which she had never been moved before.
Now, lying with the sleeping boy pressed against her, her limbs feeling light and powerful, Lucy thought calmly of the moment of passion as though it were already far in the past, something that had happened once, long ago, and would never happen again. They would make love from time to time, perhaps, but it would never again be like this.
The sign of Virgo, she remembered. In the region of the Euphrates, she remembered, almost hearing again Jeff’s youthful, playful voice, it was identified with Venus … Virgoans are shy and fear to be brilliant. Virgoans fear impurity and disorder and are liable to peptic ulcers.
She chuckled softly and the boy moved in her arms. A frown came over his face and he threw his head back on the pillow fearfully, as though he were trying to escape a blow. Lucy stroked his shoulder, which was dry and warm, and seemed still to be giving off the heat of the sun that had fallen on it during the day. The obscure look of terror slowly flowed out of his face and his lips relaxed and he slept steadily again.
The time, she thought. I ought to get up and see what time it is. It must be nearly dawn. But she lay there quietly, feeling somehow that even to be thinking about the hour was a form of betrayal of the boy beside her.
She had no desire to sleep. Sleep, she felt, would subtract from the completeness of the night. She wanted to lie there serenely, conscious of every sound—Jeff’s steady breathing, the peeping of young frogs at the lake’s edge, the call of an owl in the pine forest, the occasional rustle of the wind against the curtains of the bare room, the faraway resonance of an automobile horn on the highway leading to the mountains. She wanted to lie there conscious, above all, of herself. The thought struck her that she felt infinitely more valuable now at three o’clock in the morning than she had felt even so recently as ten the night before or at any other time in her life. Valuable. She smiled at the word.
Examining herself with the critical pleasure of a woman before a mirror, she realized that tonight she felt finally grown-up. She had the feeling that before this a great deal of her life had been devoted to those activities that a child might engage in if the child were anxious to pretend that she was an adult. And there had always been, too, the complementary anxiety that the masquerade would be discovered at any moment. She remembered her mother, dying at the age of sixty, and knowing she was dying, lying in her bed, yellowed and wasted, after a life of pain, trouble, poverty, disappointment, saying, “I can’t believe it. The hardest thing to believe is that I’m an old woman. Somehow, unless I catch sight of myself in a mirror, I still have the same feeling about myself that I had when I was sixteen years old. And even now, when the doctor comes in and pulls a long face, and I know he thinks I’m not going to last through the month, I want to tell him, ‘No, there’s been a misunderstanding. Dying is much too sophisticated for someone who feels sixteen years old.’”
Oliver had been no help, Lucy thought. Secure in his strength and forgiving and even approving of her timidity, he had made all decisions, protected her, kept his troubles to himself, only occasionally scolding her, and even then with a quick, fatherly indulgence, for such mistakes as the lost garage bill. At parties, she remembered, where he seemed always at home, where, at ease, ceremonious, never embarrassed, he was always the center of a group, he would suddenly sense that she was off somewhere in a corner, lost in the social flood, backed to the wall by a bore or desperately pretending to be studying the pictures on the walls or the books on the shelves while hoping that it would soon be time to leave. Then, he would break away from whomever he was talking to and come over to her, smiling and interested, and lead her skillfully back with him, into the middle of things.
She had recognized what he had done through the years and she had been grateful. Now, she thought, perhaps it was wrong to be grateful. Now, she thought, feeling that because what she had done that night was different from anything she had ever done before, everything that came after would also be different, now nobody has to protect me any more.
She wondered what Oliver would do if he found out. Probably, she thought, he would forgive her with the same mannerly, overpowering condescension with which he was no doubt forgiving her for the lost garage bill. Thinking this, she resented him in advance, then could not help being amused at herself for her contrariness.
She remembered a conversation that she and Oliver and Patterson had had about a woman they all knew, who was having an affair with a colonel on Governor’s Island. “That,” Sam had said, “is unpermissible adultery.”
“Wait a minute, Sam,” Oliver had said. “What’s your idea of permissible adultery?”
Sam had put that solemn, close-mouthed expression on his face that he used when he was preparing to say something clever, and had said, “Permissible adultery is when you enjoy it.”
Oliver had laughed heartily then. She wondered if he would laugh now. It had never occurred to her that he might be unfaithful to her just as she was sure that it had never occurred to him to doubt her. Maybe, she thought, that’s what has been missing in our marriage.
Still, there was no reason to make any changes. There was no need for Oliver to know anything. She was so practiced in innocence that now, when she was innocent no longer, the habit and impetus of the years would sustain her. Also, she had lied from time to time to Oliver, always successfully. The lies, certainly, had not been very grave, fibs about overdrafts at the bank, purposely misplaced invitations to parties she did not wish to attend, forgotten appointments. But great or small, they had always gone undiscovered, and Lucy had forgiven and justified them to herself as
part of the necessary lubrication to keep their marriage going smoothly. Now, if the lie to be told was more serious in nature, she was confident she could bring it off unhesitatingly and with even greater justification. Tonight, she felt, with a delicious tingle of power, she was capable of handling anything.
It couldn’t be too difficult. After all, she thought, look at all the women who manage it. Mrs. Wales, with her discreet week-end in the mountains and the two or three afternoons a month in New York. Claudia Larkin, with her golf pro, and the pro giving lessons, besides, every Saturday afternoon to Bill Larkin. Edith Brown, who was one of the silliest women alive, but even so appearing serenely on all occasions with her husband, despite the fact that everyone but her husband was certain about her and a chemistry professor in New Haven.
One thing she was sure of, Lucy thought righteously. She would never expose Oliver to anything like that. Her reticence would be complete, and she would make certain, too, of Jeff’s discretion. Whatever happened, Oliver would lose nothing, tangible or intangible. If anything, she felt, although she was a little vague in her own mind about the reasoning that went into the reflection, she would make a better wife than ever to Oliver. Oh, she thought comfortably, it doesn’t pay to make too much out of this. Fifteen years are a long time. There probably isn’t a single marriage we know of that’s lasted half that long without some kind of excursion on somebody’s part …
As for Jeff … She looked down at the thick, dark youthful hair crushed against her breast. Forever, he had said. Well, she thought indulgently, time will take care of that.
She lay still, pleased with herself. I’ve never figured out anything as completely and intelligently as this, she thought. I’ve never been in such control.
And, she thought, luxuriating in a new-found delight in mischief, the next time a young man watches me all summer, I certainly will notice him.
Jeff stirred in her arms, tensed, trembled. His head moved spasmodically against her and his lips opened as though he were trying to scream. She kissed him on the cheek and woke him.
