“Well, it means – it means psychedelic, Mom, that’s all.”
Laura wasn’t there when Lucy got home from the city one night. That was strange enough – she had always been there before, secluded with her records or messing around in the kitchen with some other starving, overweight girl from school – and it became more and more strange as the hours passed. Lucy knew the names of two or three girls that Laura might be visiting, but she didn’t know any of their last names, so there was no hope in the telephone book.
By ten o’clock the idea of calling the police had occurred to her, but she didn’t do it because she wouldn’t have known what to say. You could scarcely report a child “missing” at ten o’clock after a single day; even if you could, it would only lead into a labyrinth of dumb, dumb questions by some cop.
It was almost eleven when the girl came slouching into the house at last, looking vague, prepared with an apology as awkward and irritating as adolescence itself.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “A bunch of us got to talking and we lost track of the time.”
“Well, dear, I’ve been a little on the frantic side. Where were you?”
“Oh, over at Donarann, is all.”
“Over where?”
“Donarann, Mom. Where we lived for about a hundred years.”
“Well, but that’s miles from here. How did you get there?”
“Chuck drove me over, with a couple of his friends. We go there all the time.”
“Chuck who?”
“His name’s Chuck Grady. Look, he’s a senior, okay? So he’s had his license for two years, okay? And he even has a commercial license now because he drives a bread truck after school.”
“And for another thing,” Lucy said, “what possible reason can there be for your wanting to go there?”
“We go up to the dorm, is all, with a bunch of the other kids. It’s a – good place to go.”
“Up to the dorm?” Lucy felt there might be a little hysteria rising in her face and voice.
“You know,” Laura told her. “Where the actors used to stay before they shut the theater down. It’s a good place to go, is all.”
“Dear,” Lucy said, “I’d like you to tell me how long you and your friends have been making use of that abandoned building. And I’d like you to tell me what you do there.”
“Whaddya mean, ‘do’ there? You think we go there to get laid?”
“You’re fifteen years old, Laura, and I won’t accept that kind of language from you.”
“Shit,” Laura said. “Fuck.”
And it might have gotten even worse, as they stood staring at each other like enemies, if Lucy hadn’t found a way to break the tension. “Well,” she said. “Now. Suppose we both try to calm down. You sit over there, please, and I’ll sit here, and I’ll wait for you to answer my questions.”
The girl looked ready to cry – was that a good sign or a bad one? – but she was able to provide the information. Two boys she knew had found a broken lock on the dormitory building last summer. They had gone inside and discovered the kitchen facilities and all the electrical wiring still intact; then, with the help of a few girls, they had cleaned the whole place up and made it into a kind of clubhouse. Odds and ends of furniture and dishware were brought in, as well as a stereo and a good collection of records. There were now ten or twelve regular members of the group, usually more girls than boys, and anybody could see they weren’t doing any harm.
“And do you smoke marijuana there, Laura?”
“Nah-o,” the girl said, but then she qualified her statement. “Well, the kids bring it in and I guess some of ’em get stoned, or at least they say they do, but I tried it a few times and didn’t like it. I don’t like beer much, either.”
“All right; tell me something else. When you’re with these boys, these older boys like Chuck Grady, do you ever – have you ever – are you still a virgin?”
Laura looked as if the question were preposterous. “Mom, you’ve gotta be kidding,” she said. “Me? I’m big as a house and funny-looking anyway. God, I’ll probably be a virgin all my life.”
And the tragic way her voice rose and broke on “all my life” was enough to bring her mother quickly over to the arm of her chair.
“Oh, baby, that’s the silliest, silliest thing I ever heard,” Lucy said. She gently clasped the side of Laura’s head against her breast, ready to release it at the first subtle hint that Laura might rather be free. “And I don’t know how you ever got the idea you’re funny-looking, because it’s never been true. You have a sweet, lovely face and you always will. If you’re overweight now it’s mostly because of the snacking problem we’ve discussed many times; and besides, it’s perfectly normal. I was heavy too at your age. But will you let me tell you something, dear, with all my heart? Two or three years from now there’ll be boys on the phone all the time. You’ll have as many or as few boys in your life as you choose; and the choice – the choice, dear – will always be entirely your own.”
Laura made no reply to any of this – it wasn’t even clear that she’d been listening – so her mother had no alternative but to go back to the other chair, facing her again, and get down to the difficult part of the business.
“In the meantime, Laura,” she said, “in the meantime you are not permitted to go to that dormitory again. Ever.”
And there was an appropriately heavy silence in the room, while they looked at each other.
“So?” Laura said in a small voice. “How you gonna stop me?”
“I’ll give up all my work at the League, if necessary, and stay in this house around the clock. I’ll pick you up after school and bring you home. That might give you some idea of what a child you are.” And Lucy took a deep breath so that her next words would sound empty of all emotion. “Or, come to think of it, there’s a much simpler way: I’d have only to make a phone call. You kids are all trespassers on that property, as you know, and trespassing is against the law.”
There was fright in the girl’s face then, though it was the kind of cheap fright shown in crime movies: the eyes briefly wide and then suddenly narrowed.
“That’s blackmail, Mom,” she said. “Pure blackmail.”
“I think you might do well to grow up a little, dear,” Lucy told her, “before you use a word like that to me.” She allowed another silence to develop, and to gather weight, before she tried a new and gentler line of argument. “Laura, there’s no reason why you and I can’t discuss this sensibly,” she said. “I’m fully aware that young people like to have gathering places of their own; that’s always been true. My objection to this particular arrangement is simply that it’s not suitable for you. It’s unwholesome.”
“Where do you get ‘unwholesome’?” Laura asked, and that was a habit of speech she had picked up from her father (“Where do you get ‘precious’? Where do you get ‘elitist’? Where do you get ‘Kenyon Review’?”). “Mom, would you like to know something? Would you like to know who hangs out in the dorm all the time, for God’s sake? Phil and Ted Nelson, that’s who, and you think the Nelsons are wunnderful people. That’s just the way you’ve always said it, too, Mom, as long as I can remember: ‘Oh, the Nelsons are wunnderful people.’ ”
“I don’t appreciate the mimicry,” Lucy said, “or the ridicule, either. And I’m surprised to hear the Nelson brothers are falling into habits like this, because they’ve been raised in a very cultivated home.” She instantly regretted saying “a very cultivated home” because it was just the kind of phrase that would make Tom Nelson weak with laughter, but she couldn’t take it back now. “Still, whatever the Nelson brothers may happen to feel like doing is beside the point. My concern is entirely for you.”
“I don’t get it,” Laura said. “How come boys can do whatever they feel like and girls can’t?”
“Because they’re boys,” Lucy cried, rising from her chair, and she knew at once she was out of control. “Boys have done whatever they’ve felt like since the
beginning of time, don’t you even know that? Haven’t you even learned that yet, you poor, ignorant little – how smart do you have to be to know a thing like that? They’re irresponsible and self-indulgent and careless and cruel, and they get away with it all their lives because they’re boys.”
Her voice stopped then, but she could tell it was too late. Laura was up and backing away across the room, looking at her with a mixture of apprehension and pity.
“Mom, you really oughta watch it, you know?” she said. “Maybe you could get your shrink to give you some stronger pills, or whatever it is those people do.”
“I think we’d better let that be my business, dear, don’t you? Now.” And Lucy swept back her hair in a poor attempt at composure. “Can I – fix you something to eat before you go to bed?”
But Laura only said she wasn’t hungry.
*
“… And the point is I was wholly irrational,” Lucy said in Dr. Fine’s office a few days later. “I was raging at her like one of these madwomen whose only abiding passion is their hatred of men. It frightened me terribly and I’ve been frightened ever since, because I’ve never been that kind of person and I don’t want to be that kind of person.”
“Well, these adolescent years can be very trying for parents,” Dr. Fine began, as carefully as if he were telling her something she didn’t know, “and they’re especially difficult in the case of a single parent. The more exasperating the child’s behavior, the more severe the parent’s response; this in turn provokes further flare-ups of rebellion in the child, and so a kind of vicious cycle is established.”
“Yes,” she said, straining for patience. “But I don’t think I’ve made myself clear here, Doctor. As I’ve tried to explain, the matter of Laura and the dormitory is something I’m fairly sure I can deal with on my own. What I wanted to discuss with you today, you see, is this other thing – this sense of genuine alarm about myself; these increasing fears about myself.”
“I understand,” he said in the quick, automatic way that always suggested no understanding at all. “And you’ve expressed those fears, and I can only say I think they’re exaggerated.”
“Well, that’s – swell,” Lucy said. “So I’ve come here for nothing, once again.”
If this had been a few years ago she might have sprung to her feet, gathered up her coat and purse, and headed for the door. But she felt she had used up all the dramatic possibilities of exits like that. She had walked out on Dr. Fine too many times for any new points to be made; and besides, there had never been any way of telling, in the next session, whether he’d minded her doing it at all.
“It’s regrettable,” he said, “that you sometimes feel you’ve come here for nothing, Mrs. Davenport, but perhaps that in itself is something we might do well to explore.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Lucy said. “Okay.”
“Mr. Santos?” she inquired in the League one afternoon. “May I speak with you for a minute, if you’re free?”
And when she had his attention she said “I have two friends who are professional painters, and I’d like very much to show them something of what I’ve done. There are twelve canvases here that I’ve saved for myself, but I wondered if you could go through them and pick out perhaps four or five that you think are the better ones.”
“Certainly,” he said. “That would be a pleasure, Mrs. Davenport.”
She expected him to linger over each painting lifted from her heavy stack, examining it, tilting his head this way and that as he did when confronting a picture that wasn’t yet finished; instead he went through all of them so quickly, and with such apparent impatience to get the job done, that she began to wonder for the first time if there might be something a little – well, a little inauthentic about him.
He set six pictures aside, then looked doubtful and put two of them back. “These,” he told her. “These four. These are your best.”
And she almost said How can you tell? Instead, from long habit, she said “Thank you so much for your help.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Can I give you a hand with those, Lucy?” said an agreeable boy named Charlie Rich who worked in her studio, and together they got all twelve canvases out of the Art Students League and down the sidewalk and into the trunk of her car, with Mr. Santos’s four selections placed carefully on top.
“You’re not leaving us, are you, Lucy?” Charlie Rich asked her.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she told him. “Not yet. I’ll be back.”
“Good. Glad to hear it. Because you’re one of the very few people I look forward to seeing every day.”
“Well, that’s – very nice, Charlie,” she said. “Thank you.” He was a sturdy, attractive kid and a good painter; she guessed he was probably ten or twelve years younger than herself.
“I’ve often wanted to take you to lunch,” he said, “but I never had the nerve to ask.”
“Well, I think that’d be nice,” she said. “I’d enjoy it. Let’s do it soon.”
Charlie’s hair was blowing awry in the wind and he used one hand to try and keep it in place. He wore his hair a little longer and fuller than average – a little like the Beatles; a little like the Kennedy brothers – and that was something she’d noticed in any number of other young men lately. In a few more years there might no longer be an “average” haircut for men, any more than there were hats.
“Well,” she said, with the car keys out and ready in her hand. “I ought to be getting started. I’m going to show my pictures to two very good professional painters tonight, and I’m a little scared. Maybe you’d better pray for me.”
“Oh, I don’t pray for anybody, Lucy,” he said, “because I’ve never believed in that stuff. Tell you what I’ll do, though.” And he came up close and touched her arm. “I’ll think about you all the time.”
Harmon Falls would be her first stop. She had called Paul Maitland last night to arrange this visit, and he’d tried to shy away from it by saying he’d never been a very good judge of other people’s painting, but she’d persisted. “Whoever said you’re supposed to be a ‘judge,’ Paul? I only want you to look at these pictures and see if you like them, that’s all, because if you do it’ll mean a great, great deal to me.”
And her imagination had taken it from there. She knew she’d be able to tell at once if he liked them. If he glanced back at her face with even a slight nod or a slight smile, after looking at each picture, it would mean he thought they were good. And if he impulsively slung his arm around her, or anything like that, it would mean he thought she was a painter.
Peggy Maitland might then come and join them in a long, three-way hug of comradeship – they’d all be laughing because they’d be off balance and stepping on each other’s shoes – and on the high wave of that exhilaration it might be easy for Lucy to bring them along with her to the Nelsons’ party tonight.
“Isn’t it about time, Paul?” she would say. “Isn’t it about time you got over this senseless prejudice? The Nelsons are wonderful people, and they’d love to meet you.”
And there could then be a fine joining of three painters in Tom Nelson’s studio. The two men might be a little reserved at first – they’d shake hands firmly enough, then step back to look each other up and down – but all the tension would dissolve when Lucy put her pictures out for display.
“My God, Lucy,” Tom Nelson might say in a hushed voice. “How’d you ever learn to paint like that?”
Still, nobody had to tell her how treacherous the imagination could be. This was what Dr. Fine called “fantasizing,” as wretchedly graceless a word as most of his others, and she resolved to put it all out of her mind.
Paul was still out on some carpentry job when Lucy got to the Maitlands’ house; that was too bad, because she always knew she wouldn’t get a very gracious welcome from Peggy.
“… I never drink until Paul gets home,” Peggy explained when they were seated uncomfortably together, “but I can offer you
a cup of coffee. And I made some raisin cookies this morning; would you like one?”
Lucy didn’t really want coffee, and the trouble with the raisin cookie was that it looked at least six inches wide. She didn’t know how she was ever going to get through it. There were only a few topics she could discuss with Peggy Maitland, and she lingered over each of them as a way of warding off silence.
Yes, her mother and stepfather were “fine.” Yes, Diana and Ralph Morin were also “fine”, though still in Philadelphia; they had two little boys now and were expecting a third child soon. “And speaking of that,” Peggy said, “I’m pregnant too. We just found out.”
Lucy told her that was wonderful; she said she was delighted; she said she was sure it would make them both very happy, and she even said she hoped it would be only the first of a good many children because she’d always imagined Paul and Peggy as ideal parents of a big family.
But while listening to herself saying all those things, holding the giant cookie just short of her lips, she was fully aware that silence would fall in the room as soon as her voice stopped.
And it did. She managed to take a bite of the cookie and to say “Oh, this is good” around her chewing, but from then on the silence was complete. Peggy asked no questions of Lucy – not even about Laura; not even about the Art Students League – and because there were no more questions there was no more talk. All they were doing now, adrift in all this silence, was waiting for Paul to come home.
I’ve never liked you, Peggy, Lucy said in her mind. You’re very pretty and I know everybody thinks you’re a treasure, but you’ve always struck me as a spoiled, selfish, rude little girl. Why haven’t you ever grown up enough to be kind, like most people? Or even considerate? Or even courteous?
But at last there was a stamping outside the front door and Paul came into the house. “Hey,” he said as he put down his heavy toolbox. “Good to see you, Lucy.”
He looked tired – he was getting a little old for manual labor in the service of art – and he made straight for the liquor supply. That was a lucky thing for Lucy because it meant that as soon as both the Maitlands’ backs were turned she was able to open her purse and stuff the damned cookie inside it.
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