Lucy Crown

by Irwin Shaw

  Looking at the table, with the linen white, the glasses shining, she regretted for an instant that it was only going to be the three of them for the meal. It would have been nice to have some other families in, and other boys and girls Tony’s age. She closed her eyes and imagined what the table would look like, with the grownups at one end and five or six boys and girls, scrubbed, in their best clothes, the girls at that marvelous, shining age when from moment to moment they teetered back and forth between being children and young women.

  For Christmas,. Lucy decided, I’m going to arrange something big. Standing there, looking at the glittering table and thinking about Christmas, she was happier than she had been in many years.

  She glanced at her watch, went into the kitchen to take a last look around and sniff, luxuriously, all the warm and pungent smells of the dinner. Then she went upstairs and took a long time surveying the dresses hanging in her closet, trying to decide which one might please Tony best. She chose a soft blue dress with a wide skirt and a high neck and long sleeves. Today, she thought, he’d probably prefer me to look motherly.

  Oliver and Tony came back at a quarter to two, both of them flushed from the cold and entertained by the game they had seen. Lucy was waiting for them in the living room, in her motherly dress, proud that everything had been efficiently prepared, with fifteen minutes to spare, and that they could find her sitting in the orderly, bright room, calm, leisurely, ready for them. She heard them coming in through the front door and the pleasant male mumble of their voices, and when they entered the room she smiled at them, secretly observing that while he was undoubtedly Oliver’s son, his resemblance to her, the wide brow, the long gray eyes, the fine blond hair, was overwhelmingly strong.

  “God, it smells good in here,” Oliver said. He had obviously enjoyed his morning and he was smiling and full of energy and the nervousness and somber watchfulness of the night before had vanished. He only glanced at her briefly but she could tell that he was pleased with her. Perhaps it wasn’t all quite real—perhaps it was all prepared and staged, his glance told her, but it was well staged.

  “We met Fred Collins and his daughter at the game,” Oliver said, standing in front of the fire, “and I invited them up here for a drink on the way home. They’ll be here in a minute. Is the ice out?” He looked over at the silver ice bucket on the sideboard that they used as a bar.

  “Yes,” Lucy said, satisfied with herself because she had thought of that, too, because today she was thinking of everything. She smiled up at the two of them, standing side by side in front of the fire, in their tweeds and flannel trousers, the boy almost as tall as the father, filling the room with a sense of the crisp holiday outdoor morning. Tony looked at home, as though he was familiar with every corner of the room, as though he had lived here a long time and could move about the house carelessly and without strangeness.

  “Did you like the game?” Lucy asked.

  “It was a pretty good game,” Tony said.

  “There’s a fullback who’s going to go places in college, if they don’t break his neck for him first.”

  “Do you like football?” Lucy said.

  “Uhuh,” said Tony. “As long as I’m not expected to root for anybody.”

  Oliver gave Tony a swift, searching look, and Lucy thought, I must stop asking him direct questions about himself. The answers always are a little queer, and not what you would really want to hear from your son. Disturbed, she stood up and went over to the bar and fussed, getting out glasses, with her back to Oliver and Tony. She was relieved when the doorbell rang a few seconds later and Oliver went to the front hall to let in Fred Collins and his daughter.

  There was a kind of roaring at the front door because Fred Collins talked like that. He came from Oregon and he had the notion that the way you demonstrated the virtues of the primitive and open-handed West was to talk at the top of your voice at all times. He was a big man with a crushing handshake and he still affected a wide-brimmed, vaguely Texan kind of felt hat and he drank a good deal and organized poker games and he was always taking Oliver off to go hunting for deer and birds. Twice a year he discovered prize fighters who would make everybody forget Joe Louis and he had once taken Oliver all the way out to Cleveland to watch his current discovery get knocked out in three rounds by a Puerto Rican. Although she had never seen him put to the test, Lucy believed that he was generous and good-hearted and she was grateful to him for taking Oliver off so many evenings of the year and on the protracted trips to hunting camps and distant arenas.

  He had a pretty, rather washed-out-looking wife whom he called Sweetheart and whom he treated with the cumbrous gallantry of a bear in the zoo. His daughter Betty was only fifteen years old, small, honey-colored, confident of herself, coldly coquettish, and, as Lucy described her privately, ripening daily into wickedness. Even Oliver, who was among the least susceptible of men, confessed that when Betty Collins came into a room, she made him uncomfortable.

  “I’m telling you, Ollie,” Collins was saying, his words clearly discernible in the living room, “that boy is a find. Did you see the way he cut back when they piled up in front of him at the tackles? He’s a natural.” In the autumn, Collins supplemented his discoveries of fighters who would make everybody forget Joe Louis by discoveries of backs who would make everybody forget Red Grange. “I’m going to write my old coach at Oregon and tell him about this boy, and maybe get to him with an offer. We could use him out there.” Collins had left college more than twenty years before, and he hadn’t been back in Oregon for more than a decade, but his loyalty never wavered. He was also loyal to the American Legion, of which he was an officer, several secret societies, and to the New Jersey State Republican Committee, which was at the moment rocking under the hammer-blows of the Roosevelt dynasty. “Don’t you agree, Ollie?” Collins asked, invisible but loud. “He’d really be something in Oregon, wouldn’t he?”

  “You’re absolutely right, Fred,” Lucy heard Oliver murmur, approaching down the hall. Collins was the only person who ever had called him Ollie. It made Lucy wince every time she heard it, but Oliver hadn’t ever complained about it.

  The men came into the room, herding Betty in front of them. Betty smiled at Lucy and said, “Hello, Mrs. Crown,” in the voice that, as much as anything else about her, made men uncomfortable in her presence.

  Collins stopped melodramatically at the doorway. “By God,” he roared, spreading his arms like a wrestler preparing to grapple an opponent. “What a vision! Now, here’s something really to be thankful for! Ollie, if I was a churchgoing man, I’d go to church this afternoon and praise the Lord for making your wife so beautiful.” He advanced on her, rolling archly. “I can’t resist it, Ma’am, I just can’t resist it,” he shouted, taking her into his arms. “You’re getting prettier every day. Son,” he said to Tony, who was standing at the doorway, watching carefully, “with your permission I’m going to kiss your mother, because it’s a holiday and because she’s the loveliest lady on this side of the Mississippi River.”

  Without waiting for an answer from Tony, Collins gripped her tight, the wrestler coming to close quarters, and kissed her loudly on each cheek. Almost smothered by the man’s bulk, Lucy laughed, a little uneasily, permitting herself to be kissed, because if you allowed Collins into the house you had to take him with all his noise and all his rough-hewn and boisterous gallantry. She had a glimpse, past Collins’ head, of Tony. Tony wasn’t looking at her now, but had turned and was watching Oliver with an expression of scientific interest on his face.

  Lucy couldn’t see Oliver, and Collins pressed her heartily to his barrel-like chest once more, crying, incomprehensibly, but with the best will in the world, “Venus! Venus!” Then, winking broadly and rolling his head lewdly, he said, in a loud stage whisper, “Baby, my car is waiting, with the motor running. Just say the word and off we go. The first night of the new moon. Watch out for me, Ollie, boy, watch out for me. She brings out my tiger blood.” He roared with laughter an
d let her go.

  “That’s enough, now, Fred,” Lucy said, knowing how ineffectual it must sound in the midst of all that bellowing and lip-smacking. She looked over again at Tony, but his eyes were fixed on his father, coolly, expectantly.

  But Oliver didn’t seem to notice. He had seen so much of Collins in the last year that the noise and confusion that surrounded him by now seemed normal, as the sound of a waterfall finally seems almost like silence to people who live next to it.

  Collins finally released her and sank expansively onto the couch, pulling his daughter down beside him and fondling her hand in his. “Ah, these cushions feel good,” he said. “Those benches at the game are awfully rough on the derrière.” He beamed with coarse benevolence at Tony. “He’s a fine-looking boy, Lucy. A little stringy so far, eh, Son, but that’s the age for it. When I was your age you may not believe it, but I only weighed a hundred and thirty-five pounds, soaking wet.” He laughed loudly, as though what he had said had been irresistibly witty. “We’re glad we finally met the young Crown prince, aren’t we, Honey?” He peered lovingly into his daughter’s eyes.

  Betty looked consideringly at Tony, using her lashes. “Yes, Daddy,” she said.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Collins mimicked her in a quivering falsetto. “Oh, the volumes that’re concealed in those two simple words. Yes, Daddy.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek, entranced with his own vision of his daughter. “Beware this girl, Son,” he said. “She has her eye on you. I recognize the signs. Consider yourself lucky and beware! The whole senior class of the high school would give up their next year’s allowance for that little Yes, Daddy.”

  “Now, Daddy, stop …” Betty said, tapping her father’s hand reprovingly.

  “When we went through the stands to our seats this morning,” Collins said, booming, “you could hear the sigh of desire sweeping across the cheering section like the wind through a field of wheat.” He laughed fondly, proud, overt, simple-minded.

  Oliver, who was standing by the fire now, next to Tony, laughed, too. Tony looked at him, unamused, icily puzzled.

  “Say, Betty,” Collins said, “aren’t you going to a dance tonight?”

  “Yes,” the girl said.

  “Why don’t you take Tony along with you?” Collins said. “If he’s half the man his daddy is, I’ll bet he’ll be able to show you a thing or two.”

  Nervously, Lucy glanced at Tony. He was peering at Collins, studying him, as though Collins were an animal he had never seen before and which he was trying to place in its proper category.

  “Well, I’d love to,” Betty said, smiling at Tony, using her medium artillery. “I honestly would. But I promised Chris I’d let him take me and …”

  “Chris, Chris!” Collins waved impatiently. “You know you have no use for him. We can’t let Tony just mope around with the old folks on his holiday. Let ’em both take you.”

  “Well, of course, that would be lovely,” Betty said, and Lucy was sure the girl was calculating secretly the impact of the moment of her arrival at the dance with a boy on each arm. “If Tony would like to …”

  “Of course Tony would like to,” Collins said. “You be at our house at nine o’clock tonight, Son, and …”

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” Tony said. “I’m busy this evening.”

  He spoke very quietly and it cut into the booming torrent of Collins’ sound, coldly polite, uninterested, a rebuke to the loud and foolish father and the coquettish and triumphant daughter. There was nothing boyish or hesitant about it. It was an adult and chilly snub, fastidiously administered. Betty did not mistake it. She glanced thoughtfully at Tony, annoyed and interested, her face open for a moment, revealed. Then she dropped her eyes, covering up.

  Where did he learn to behave like this, Lucy wondered. What has he had to do with girls in the past two years that makes him so sure of himself? And seeing Collins now through Tony’s eyes, she realized, painfully, that as recently as a year ago, Oliver would never have permitted either the man or his daughter to enter the house.

  Collins didn’t miss it either. He narrowed his eyes, measuring Tony, understanding antagonism. The room was uneasily silent, the atmosphere strained. Only Tony, of all of them, Lucy felt, was undisturbed. Then Collins patted his daughter’s hand protectively.

  “Well,” he said, “you had your chance, Son.” He turned to Oliver. “Didn’t you say something about a drink, Ollie?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “What’ll it be?”

  “Martinis,” Collins said. “It’s the only drink for Thanksgiving.” He laughed, emptily, reaching for his wavering assurance.

  Oliver started to put the ice into the shaker and open a bottle of gin. They all watched him with exaggerated interest, trying to ignore the breach that Tony had opened between them.

  “No, no, no,” Collins said, jumping up. “You’re drowning it in vermouth, lad.” He went over to the bar and took the shaker from Oliver’s hand. “You’ll ruin the holiday, Ollie! Here, let me make it, let the old martini-master get to work.”

  “If you want.” Oliver relinquished the gin bottle, too. “We usually drink whisky and I …”

  “It’s all in the wrist, all in the wrist, my boy,” Collins said, pouring elaborately, squinting with one eye. “I learned it from an old Indian out in the big woods …”

  “I’ll do it.” It was Tony. He had moved, unhurried, between the two men, and he took the shaker from Collins’ hand.

  Collins stood there, his mouth open foolishly, his hand still curved in the position it had been in when he was holding the shaker.

  “In this house, Mr. Collins,” Tony said, “we supply our own bartenders.”

  Calmly, Tony poured the gin and the vermouth and began to mix the drink, staring at Oliver, rebuking him silently and pitilessly.

  “Sure, sure …” Collins said. He shrugged, disciplined, wanting to react, not knowing just how. He went back to the couch and sat down, dismissed.

  Tony stood next to the bar, stirring, ignoring Collins, looking steadily and contemptuously at his father. Oliver met his eye briefly, smiled uncomfortably, and moved away. “Well,” he said, more loudly than was necessary, “that’s the advantage of sending your son to a good school. They teach him to make martinis.”

  He laughed, falsely, and Lucy felt she couldn’t stay in the room a moment longer. She sprang up from her chair. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I have to go and see that the dinner isn’t burning up.”

  She fled into the kitchen, making sure the door was shut tight behind her, so that she wouldn’t hear what they were saying in the living room. She worked distractedly, uselessly, not paying attention to what she was doing, wishing that the day was over, the week-end, the year … Oh, God, she thought, the accidents! Why did they have to meet Collins at the game? Why couldn’t it have been raining, so that they would never have left the house? Why did Oliver have to invite him over? Why did I let him kiss me? Why does Oliver let him call him Ollie?

  She put the turkey on the platter and the sweet potatoes around it and the gravy in a boat and the cranberry sauce in a bowl. Then she sat down next to the window, staring out at the graying afternoon, her hands folded desolately in her lap, waiting until she heard the voices die down in the living room, and a few minutes later, the sound of Collins’ car going off down the street.

  Then she carried the holiday turkey into the dining room, smiling almost correctly, crying, “Dinner, dinner,” knowing that nothing was going to be any good.

  Tony hardly talked during the meal and Oliver talked too much, drinking almost a whole bottle of wine, and making a rambling speech about politics and taxes and the possibility of war, speaking with his mouth full of food, looking over their heads, not waiting for answers.

  After the meal was over, Oliver said he had promised Collins he was going to walk over to his house for a brandy. He asked Tony and Lucy if they wanted to go with him and seemed relieved when Tony said, “No,” and Lucy said that she w
as tired and wanted to take a nap.

  Oliver went out of the house, humming, loudly, a march that the high-school band had played between the halves that morning. For a moment, left alone at the cluttered table with Tony, Lucy thought that, finally, she could talk to him, and, by saying the exact, right word, cure them all. But Tony’s face was still and removed and she got up from the table and said, “Leave everything, I’ll clear it up later,” and went up to her bedroom without looking back.

  She lay down on the bed and dozed a bit, pursued by dreams, and doors seemed to open and close in her dreams and there were steps in a shadowy, distant hallway and a final soft thud of a faraway door shutting.

  When she woke, unrefreshed, she went down to the living room and it was without surprise that she saw the note on the library table. She picked it up and took the note out of the envelope and read, still unsurprised, in Tony’s handwriting, that he had decided that it would be better if he went back to school.

  “I despise what you have done to my father,” he wrote, “and what you have made him turn into and I don’t want to see him again in this house with you and with the kind of friends you have driven him to.”

  There was something that had been heavily scratched out at the end of the letter and for a while she didn’t bother to try to decipher it. She sat wearily in the dimming November afternoon light, the letter in her hand, oppressed by accident and failure.

  After a while she turned on a lamp and looked more closely at the scratched-out sentence that ended the note. She puzzled over it, holding it directly under the lamp light, and after a minute or two she saw what Tony had put there.