by Frank Conroy
"Good," Weisfeld said. "I just did the windows a couple of days ago." He flipped the sign on the door to read back soon and tried the lock. "So," he said, turning to Claude, "you're sure. You've made up your mind."
"Yes."
"I didn't talk you into anything? It's your life, after all." He put on his beret.
"It's what I want to do. It makes sense." Claude saw the cab coming even before the quick toot of the horn. "Here she comes."
Emma Rawlings pulled up at the curb and they got in the back.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Rawlings," Weisfeld said. "It's nice to see you."
"My pleasure," said Emma. "I'm gonna have to put the flag down, but don't get nervous, because it doesn't count."
"Whatever you say."
"Al couldn't come?" Claude asked.
"Nope. They're welding a boiler at his building, so he has to be there."
She drove west to Madison Avenue and then took a left downtown. The hack stand in front of the office building was empty and she pulled into it. "Just like last time," she said. It began to rain, and people on the sidewalk moved in close to the buildings, edging around each other as they walked. Weisfeld, Emma, and Claude got out of the cab and entered the building.
Going up in the elevator, Emma ignored the operator and asked Weisfeld, "I guess it must feel pretty good, huh?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Well, you were right about him. The stuff he did up in the country? You were right from ten years ago, practically. It must feel good."
"Hey," Claude said. "I'm standing right here."
"It feels good." Weisfeld nodded with a small smile.
"You deserve it," she said.
Claude was relieved when the operator pulled the gates open.
Nothing had changed. Mr. Larkin's eyes were still clear and blue, and he had not aged at all. Everything in the room was exactly as it had been. Otto Levits rose from his chair at the conference table to be introduced to Emma, and they all took their places.
"Claude," Larkin said, "first of all my congratulations on what I've heard was a brilliant performance."
"Thank you."
Larkin paused to arrange some papers. "We are here, as you know, to formalize the agreement establishing Mr. Levits"—he gave a nod to the bearded man—"as the manager and agent in matters musical for Mr. Rawlings." Another nod. "I understand from Maestro Fredericks, Mr. Weisfeld, and Mr. Levits that a good deal of discussion about Claude's future has taken place, and that there has been, shall we say, a meeting of the minds. Is that your understanding, Claude?"
"Yes, sir."
"And I take it that you have yourself thought long and hard about these matters?"
"Ever since—" Claude stopped himself. "I was going to say ever since the concert, but really, we've been talking about it for a long time." He looked at Weisfeld. "I mean we have, really, thinking back."
"Yes," said Weisfeld.
"Good." Larkin gave an encouraging smile. "It seems to me this might be a good time for Claude to share his thoughts with us, now that we're all here together. I admit to a certain personal interest. Just very informally, if you will."
The room fell silent. Everyone looked at Claude, even his mother. He resisted the nervous urge to begin talking immediately, and watched the rain on the window for a moment, gathering his thoughts.
"The most important thing to me is music," he said. "And the more music I do, the clearer that is. I want to play and I want to compose. Music will never run out. It'll never disappear. So that's what I want to do with myself." He felt a slight lump in his throat and coughed into his hand. "But I also think," he said, talking a bit faster, "that to become the best musician I can be, I have to do other things besides music. I'd rather go to college, if I can, than to conservatory. I want to read, and find out about stuff, all kinds of stuff." His eyes found Weisfeld's. "It isn't because I think I'd be a freak if I did nothing but play. I don't think I'd be a freak, as a matter of fact. I mean, I know it can happen, but I don't think it would happen to me. But I'm thinking of Ivan, you know, and how much fun it was. Maybe in college there'll be something like that."
"Ivan?" Larkin asked.
"A friend at school," Claude said.
"An extremely bright young man," Weisfeld added. "Off to Cambridge, I'm afraid. Cambridge Cambridge."
"I see," said Larkin.
"So I want to do both, if that's possible," Claude finished.
Otto Levits cleared his throat. "From my point of view it is possible. In fact, it is desirable. I think of the long term with my artists, Mr. Larkin. Everyone knows this."
"Quite true," said Weisfeld. "So we're talking balance. Carefully planned appearances during the school year, spread out, not too much traveling, never around exams. This way he can make enough for his living expenses. In the summer, maybe a little more. We can work it out."
"And this is feasible, Mr. Levits?" Larkin asked.
"Of course. It's what Fredericks wants, and he'll help if necessary."
"What about competitions?"
Both Levits and Weisfeld shook their heads.
"He doesn't need all that craziness," Weisfeld said. "He's already got a sponsor."
"Between us," Levits said, "we have the necessary connections. Competitions are for people from Nebraska who don't know anybody. I agree with Aaron."
Larkin nodded. "Good. Mrs. Rawlings, the document requires your signature, as Claude is not yet of age. Do you have any questions?"
"You're going to get him jobs?" she asked Levits.
"Yes."
"And you're going to keep on watching out for him?" she asked Weisfeld. "Look, I was in vaudeville a long time ago, but I don't know anything about this business."
"Yes," Weisfeld said. "Rest assured."
"Then if it's okay with Claude, it's okay with me."
Larkin brought the document around the table for everyone to sign, including Weisfeld as witness.
"Can he make enough to pay for college?" Emma asked.
Weisfeld handed back Larkin's fountain pen. "That might tip the balance. We're going to try for scholarships. He got A's at Bentley, after all."
"It's a good question, Mrs. Rawlings," Larkin said. "I'm glad you brought it up. Have you given any thought to where you might like to go, Claude?"
"Uh, no. I thought I'd talk to somebody at Bentley. There's a person you're supposed to talk to. I just didn't have time."
"Harvard," said Weisfeld.
"Columbia is good," said Levits.
"I don't know much about it," Claude said.
Larkin stood behind his chair, his forearms relaxed on its back. Claude noticed the length of his hands, envying them. Hands that big could handle long tenths. "Talk to your advisor," Larkin said, "and perhaps you might consider some of the very best of the smaller schools."
Claude was aware of a certain heightened alertness in Mr. Weisfeld, who leaned forward a bit. "What do you mean?"
"There is sometimes a greater degree of flexibility, a more sensitive awareness of each student as an individual, if you see what I mean. At a place like Cadbury College, for instance, the course of study can be practically tailor-made."
"I never heard of it," said Levits.
"Cadbury?" Weisfeld looked up at the ceiling. "Is that Pennsylvania?"
"Yes, between Philadelphia and Princeton. A small Quaker institution with four hundred and thirty young men enrolled at the moment. A first-class college. I'm on the board, as a matter of fact."
"I see," said Weisfeld.
"Yes." Larkin brought his hands together. "And since it's a matter of public record, I should perhaps mention that I'm a member of the scholarship committee."
"Oh," Weisfeld said, and Claude noticed him smile.
PART TWO
14
FOUR AND A HALF years later Claude was reading Gibbon's Decline in his carrel in the Boyd Library at Cadbury College when he became aware of a young woman nearby in the stacks. She was trying to find
a book. Her profile struck him immediately—fine-boned, aristocratic, and somehow familiar—and when she turned he felt a slight disappointment. She was not quite as beautiful as he had imagined. Nevertheless he could not take his eyes off her.
"What happened to the GS seven hundreds?" she asked. "It just stops at six ninety."
"Across?" He suggested the opposite shelf.
"No." Her voice was wonderful with a breathy rasp around the perfect elocution. She wore a tartan plaid skirt and a cashmere sweater.
"Ah." He closed his book and stood up. " Maybe the side shelves. They start over here."
Although Cadbury was a men's school it was not unusual to see young women from nearby Hollifield College around the campus. Hollifield was an elite Episcopal school, rumored to be superior to Cadbury, which did not stop the girls from coming over to take certain advanced courses, or from dating Cadbury boys. The schools enjoyed what was called a special relationship.
"Here they are," she said, and knelt to read the numbers, The gesture moved him for some reason, a combination of trust—since sue was only inches away from him—vulnerability, and unselfconscious grace. "Here it is." She extracted a volume and glanced up. "Marvell. Have you read him?"
He nodded. "Heady stuff." She had large, gentle brown eyes set wide apart, her expression at once soft and alert.
"He's beautiful," she said simply.
"Are you at Hollifield? Sorry to sound like the movies, but you seem familiar."
"I do?" She gave a soft laugh. "Yes, well, I'm almost never there on weekends, so you must have me mixed up with somebody else."
"I guess so."
They stood for a moment, neither one of them moving.
"I thought I'd go down to the coop for some coffee," he said.
"That sounds good."
During his early years at Cadbury, Claude had dated several girls from Hollifield, but few of these arrangements had lasted more than a couple of months. One girl had been put off by his general air of seriousness, his inability to lose himself in the communal frivolity of a big weekend or a football game. Another—a tense, intelligent scholarship student from a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia—had intrigued him both before and after her stunning revelation that she was a lesbian. It had taken him a while to believe her, and a while to absorb the shock. He knew that in trusting him with her secret, given the conformist mores of the times, she was doing something dangerous, and this had made her all the more attractive. But even the blindness of his lust could not stop him from the eventual realization that love with a male was, for her, quite impossible. A couple of other girls had simply toyed with him, which, because of his naivete and pride, had taken him longer to recognize than it should have. He still couldn't figure out why they'd bothered. By his senior year he'd stopped going to Hollifield altogether. He had surprised himself with his impulsive invitation.
In the deserted coop they bought coffee and sticky buns and sat by a window. They chatted about school, a movie they'd both seen, the metaphysical poets, President Eisenhower, the Quaker practice of fifth-day meeting, and several other safe topics, with Claude increasingly aware of how pretty she was and of how quickly her mind worked, with a kind of light wit that called no attention to itself. Rather, she seemed inclined to mask it, whether out of modesty or a desire to test her listener, he could not yet tell. He made sure to let her know he saw it, and to establish that he was himself up to speed. He made her laugh several times.
By the time they left the coop and strolled across the lawn to the bicycle rack, it was clear to both of them that they would see each other again. Yet it was only now that they exchanged names. Hers was Priscilla Powers.
"But everybody calls me Lady," she said. "It stuck from when I was a kid."
During the whole hour they had spoken of nothing of particular importance, asked no personal questions, and more or less avoided references to their lives outside school. This seemed entirely appropriate to Claude, who had slipped easily and gratefully into the egalitarian society of Cadbury, in which it was not important where one had come from. A quiet idealism glowed on both of these small, protected campus worlds—islands of optimism within the larger security of calm, prosperous postwar America.
As she mounted her bicycle, Claude asked, "What dorm are you in?"
"Chesterton," she said.
"Can I give you a ring?"
"That would be nice." And she was off down the path, pedaling briskly, her brown hair pulled by the wind.
For the last two years the college had bent its rules and allowed Claude to live off campus. He had two rooms over a small laundromat, directly across the street from the great stone pillars marking the entrance to the college grounds. He had argued that he needed instantaneous and continuous access to the piano in order to practice, work on his repertoire, and prepare for the recitals, accompaniment jobs, and chamber music performances he did about once a month. The dean had reluctantly agreed and, upright Quaker that he was, made a point to warn against the insidious dangers of a bohemian lifestyle.
In fact, Claude was accused by his friends of being somewhat of a straight arrow. He continued his habit of rising early, and most often put in two or three hours on the rented Chickering grand before the machines began to rumble downstairs as the laundromat opened. His days were carefully structured, balancing his musical and academic studies with composing, jazz, and a mild enthusiasm for basketball. He took most of his meals at Founder's Hall with the other students.
But as he saw more and more of Lady, he began to shift things around. They took long walks through Cadbury's extensive and bucolic grounds, studied together in the huge vaulted library at Hollifield, went to the occasional movie, or met for hamburgers at the local diner. The first time she'd come to his rooms, for afternoon tea (a very Hollifield thing to do), she'd been surprised by the piano.
"Good Lord. What's this?" She walked over and put her hands on the lid. "It takes up half the room!"
He'd told her very little about himself, having mentioned music only in passing, without hinting at its importance. "I play," he said simply. "I'm a musician."
"I thought you were an English major."
"I am, I am."
Over cups of Earl Grey he explained about Weisfeld, Fredericks, Larkin, Levits, and the master plan.
"You mean you studied with Fredericks?" she asked in amazement. "The Fredericks?"
"Oh yes, for quite a while."
"Well aren't you the slyboots." Lady raised her cup. "Saying nothing all this time." She seemed pleased.
What he learned about her came in bits and pieces spread out over several weeks. She was from New York City, had gone to Spence, and enjoyed something like celebrity status at Hollifield as an A student, coeditor of Horizons, the school paper, president of the Student Council, and captain of the field hockey team. Nobody at Cadbury seemed to know much about her, since Claude was the first Cadbury boy she'd dated, but he could tell, from the almost palpable admiration she continually received from Hollifield girls coming up to talk to her (unable to mask their curiosity and surprise at the presence of Claude), that it was a different story at Hollifield. She dealt with her status with a kind of patrician modesty, as if it were of no great importance. He noticed how generous she was with people, how carefully she listened to them.
"Why do you go home every weekend?" he asked her once.
"Oh, my family," she said.
"What about them?"
"They like me to come home," she said, and changed the subject.
At night they would ride their bikes to Chesterton, her dorm, well before the eleven o'clock curfew, when the lantern man would lock the gates. Under an arch, behind a tree, or in any shadowed private place, they would lean their standing bodies together and surrender to the voluptuous warmth of each other's mouths. She was slightly taller than Claude, and she would sometimes get up on her toes, her arms around his neck, and take over. Despite his avidity—the hot, sweet pain of his body�
��he never rushed her. He felt the softness of her breast for the first time only when she guided his hand, her thigh hard between his legs, her mouth at his forehead. "Mmm," she hummed. "Mmm."
Half delirious, drowning in sensation, Claude would come awake at the lantern man's ritual cry of "Closing. Closing, ladies and gentlemen. Closing." A last kiss and they would move to the gate, barely aware of the other couples emerging from the darkness.
"See you tomorrow," Lady would say, going through.
"Tomorrow." Trembling, he would break away, never knowing where he'd left his bike, moving through the roar of his blood, his groin aching as if from a blow.
For the first couple of years after her departure Claude had, instinctively and without volition, wiped the image of Catherine from his memory. Only after a long time could he afford to let a few stray thoughts of her into his consciousness, like a man taking tiny sips of a potentially dangerous elixir. Fragments came back to him—a frozen gesture, a scrap of conversation, the edge of a distant emotion—never lasting more than a second before floating away. He could be in mid-sentence talking to someone. He could be tying his shoe, doing scales, or writing an exam. Eventually these fragments were stripped of any physicality whatsoever and became simply pure emotion, pangs so swift he barely noticed them.
But one day, two months after meeting Lady, while eating lunch in the bedlam of Founder's Hall, laughing at a joke one of his friends had just told, he felt without warning a complete awareness of her, a dense and weighty sense of Catherine, of Catherine-ness, exploding in his soul like the swift circular penumbra of light moving from the center of an atomic bomb bursting on a movie screen. His knife and fork fell from his hands.
"Hey, Claude. What's up?" asked his friend Charley.
"You okay, buddy?" The face of another friend, Dan, loomed before him like a balloon.
"It's nothing," he was finally able to say. "Nothing. I just remembered something."
"Spooky," said Charley.
