Aberration of Starlight

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Tom Thebus is singing in a monotone under his breath, singing in the sunlight that turns the croquet lawn on which he stands into a dazzle of green. “I’ll Never Smile Again.” His mind is not on the game that he is playing with Ralph and Grace Sapurty, but he interrupts the whispered and only partly recollected lyric of the song again and again to look over the lie of the balls and the possible shots that he considers for them as well as for himself: he does this with a casual professionalism, an insouciance carefully kind and tinged with camaraderie and humility, so that neither of his opponents becomes annoyed, ever, at his advice. On the contrary, they are flattered by his attentions.

He glints an occasional smile across the lawn at the woman who sits on a canvas chair in the shade of the umbrella trees at the very edge of the lawn, just this side of the large and beautifully tended kitchen garden. His smile is easy and warm, a smile that he thinks of as one of his good points. He is, indeed, vain about it, as he is vain about his small, scrupulously trimmed moustache and his wavy brown hair. She avoids his smile and his eyes, afraid, he knows, that he will discover in her eyes her admiration for and delight in him. She hides behind a copy of Liberty. But he knows that she admires him, and his actions, although performed as if he is not aware that she is considering each one of them with enormous care, are choreographed for her pleasure. He crouches now, his hair softly gleaming with rose oil, then stands straight, filling his briar from an old leather tobacco pouch. Mr. Sapurty is gesturing with his mallet toward two balls that lie close together on a slight incline beneath the heavy, powdery-blue flowers of a giant hydrangea. Tom Thebus, lighting his pipe, nods, and then gestures as well, using the stem of his pipe. It is a gesture that he has seen made in countless movies, and he imitates it flawlessly. Grace Sapurty shifts from one foot to another, smiling foolishly at him, her fingers touching the pink and yellow embroidered flowers on the bodice of her sundress.

Mr. Sapurty takes his shot. His ball hits the edge of the wicket planted at the base of the hydrangea and rolls down the incline. Tom Thebus smiles, not a smile of triumph, but one of good fellowship. “Brothers in difficult straits,” his smile says. “Tough luck,” it says.

Tough luck, he says. That’s a hard shot. He turns then and fires a glance straight at the woman in the shade and this time their eyes meet and she flushes, turns a page of her magazine, then another, looking down blindly at her lap. Tom walks toward his ball, his mallet on his shoulder, peering up with his eyes only toward a second-floor window that overlooks the lawn. He sees behind the dotted-Swiss curtain that hangs there the dark shape of the old man.

As he lines up his shot, his impeccably white shoes planted on either side of his mallet, he begins to whisper again. “I’ll never love again until I smile at you.” And then he sees, coming around the front of the house, the heavy-thighed body of Helga Schmidt. She is smiling a general greeting at all the figures on the lawn, her hand raised, but her eyes are twisted upward and to the left, focusing on the flat white of the dotted-Swiss curtain. Tom smiles as well, but not at Helga.