Lucy Crown

11

THE CAR WAS MUD-SPATTERED when it drove up to the cottage and the wipers had made two smeary crescents on the windshield, which gleamed dully in the reflection of the headlights off the wet trees. Oliver stopped the car and sat for a moment at the wheel, resting after the long drive in the rain. There was a light on in the cottage but Oliver saw no one moving within. He got out of the car, carrying his raincoat and a small overnight bag that he had thrown into the back of the car. He went in the front door. The room was empty. The only sound to be heard was the small drip of rain from the maple whose branches hung over one side of the house. There were newspapers scattered on the table in the middle of the room and a book was lying open, face down, on the couch. There were some chessmen scattered over the chessboard and two or three of the pieces had fallen to the floor. Some petals had drifted down from a bunch of peonies in a vase on the mantelpiece and had dropped onto the rug.

Standing there, looking at the empty room, Oliver thought, whenever she’s any place for five minutes she creates a small, unimportant disorder. Sometimes it gave him a sense of pleasure, of intimacy, of indulgent understanding, when he saw a room like that after Lucy had been in it. But tonight, after the long trip, he was annoyed by it.

He took off his hat and rubbed his hands to warm them. There was no fire on the hearth. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was two minutes past eight. As always, Oliver had arrived exactly when he said he would arrive. He went into the kitchen to look for the bottle of whisky that was kept in the cupboard above the icebox. There were some dishes left in the sink from the afternoon’s tea. Three cups, he noticed, three saucers, some plates with crumbs of chocolate cake. He took down the whisky and poured himself a drink. He didn’t bother to put any water in it and went back into the living room and sat down wearily, sipping the drink, waiting. A moment later he heard footsteps on the porch. The door opened and Tony came in, wearing a slicker and a baseball cap. Tony stopped just inside the door. He seemed almost reluctant to come into the room.

“Hello, Tony,” Oliver said, smiling at him.

“Daddy,” Tony said. He approached Oliver as though to kiss him and stopped at a little distance from him.

Oliver took off his cap and ruffled his hair gently in a slight affectionate movement. “You’re being pretty mysterious, Tony,” Oliver said, making a little joke out of it. “Not telling me what was wrong on the phone. Insisting that I get up here exactly at eight o’clock. Telling me not to speak to your mother.”

“You’re sure you didn’t call her?” Tony asked suspiciously.

“I didn’t call her,” Oliver said. There was no sense in telling Tony that he had tried to telephone en route from Waterbury, but that there had been a break in the line because of the rain and he hadn’t been able to get through.

“She doesn’t know you’re here?” Tony asked.

“No,” Oliver said. “I came in the back way, as you said, during dinnertime. Tony,” he asked mildly, “are you sure you’re not reading too many comic books?”

“I don’t read any comic books,” Tony said.

“You’ve had me worried all day,” Oliver said gently.

“I’m sorry.”

“Come over here and sit down.” Oliver indicated a chair close to his. Tony took off his slicker and came slowly over to the chair and seated himself. Oliver sipped his drink. “Now—what is it?”

“Daddy,” Tony said in a low voice, “I want to go home.”

“Oh.” Oliver looked pensively at his glass. “Why?”

Tony made a restless movement with his hands. “I’ve had enough of this place.”

“It’s done you a lot of good, Tony,” said Oliver. “You look very healthy and brown and Mother writes me that …”

“I want to go home,” Tony said flatly.

Oliver sighed. “Did you tell that to your mother?”

“No,” said Tony. “There’s no use talking to her.”

Oliver nodded indulgently. “Ah,” he said, “you two’ve had a little argument.”

“No.”

Oliver took another sip of his drink. “With Jeff?”

Tony didn’t answer for a moment. “With nobody,” he said. “Can’t a fellow want to go home with his own father once in a while without everybody jumping on him?”

“Nobody’s jumping on you, Tony,” Oliver said reassuringly. “Only you have to expect people to ask you a question or two when you make long-distance phone calls and give all sorts of mysterious instructions. Be reasonable, Tony.”

“I am reasonable,” Tony said, sounding cornered; “I want to go home because I don’t want to be in the same place with Mother and Jeff.”

Oliver put his glass down and spoke very gently. “What did you say, Tony?”

“I don’t want to stay here with Mother and Jeff.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Oliver glanced sharply at the boy. He was sitting with his head bent, staring at his shoes, his hands plunged in his pockets, looking resentful and embarrassed. “Tony,” Oliver said, “we’ve always been on the level with each other, haven’t we?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always told you what was bothering me and you’ve always told me, up to now,” Oliver said. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Have I ever promised you anything I didn’t do for you,” Oliver asked.

“No,” said Tony.

“When you asked me questions, have I ever given you an untruthful answer?”

“No.”

“When you began to get into that habit last summer of telling fancy stories,” Oliver said, “like saying you swam across the lake one afternoon when you couldn’t swim at all and saying that old Mr. Norton invited you out to his ranch in Wyoming for a month and was going to give you your own horse …”

“That was just kid stuff,” Tony said.

“I know.” Oliver nodded reasonably. “Didn’t I tell you I knew and understood? It was all right to tell me those stories and not anyone else because I knew you were just having fun and using your imagination. But other people who didn’t know you the way I did might have begun to think you couldn’t be trusted and that you told lies.”

“I don’t tell stories any more,” Tony said. “Not to anyone.”

“Of course,” said Oliver. “And even about your eyes—there were a couple of times in the beginning when it was awfully hard to tell you what was wrong and what the chances were. When you get to be a father, Tony, you’ll understand what it meant to me.” He stopped. “But I did it,” he said. “Didn’t I?”

“Yes,” said Tony.

“Do you know why I did it?”

“I think so.” Tony’s voice was down to a whisper now.

“Because I wanted everything to be clear and straight between us,” said Oliver. “Because a long time from now, when you’re a man as old as I am now, I want you to be able to say, no matter what else happens in your life, ‘There was honor between my father and me.’” Oliver leaned over and patted Tony’s knee. Then he stood up, walked over to the front door and looked out into the wet night.

Tony raised his head and stared at his father’s back, his lips trembling. He waited for Oliver to say something more, but Oliver remained quiet and Tony got up and crossed and stood next to him. “I don’t know how to say it,” he whispered. “Mother and Jeff … They’re doing something wrong. They’re doing what grownups do when they’re married. I want to go home.”

Oliver closed his eyes momentarily. He hadn’t known what to expect after Tony’s call, but he hadn’t expected this. He’d told himself, as he sat at the wheel peering through the rain all day, that it was just some child’s crisis that would probably be over by the time he arrived. He wouldn’t even have come up, really, if things hadn’t been slow at the plant this week. Now—he thought, this is something different. This is like hearing cries from the nursery and going in thinking you are going to separate two children who’d hit each other with pillows or toys and finding, upon opening the door, one child lying in a pool of blood and the other standing over him with a knife in his hand. “Who told you that, Tony?” he asked.

“Susan,” Tony said.

“Who’s Susan?”

“She’s here with her mother at the hotel. Susan Nickerson. She’s fourteen years old. She has three fathers. Her mother was divorced twice. She knows a lot of things.”

“Is that why you asked me to come up here, Tony?” Oliver asked. “Is that the only reason?”

Tony paused. “Yes,” he said.

“Tony,” Oliver said, choosing his words meticulously, “in a place like this in the summertime there are often idle women, women of bad character, women who have nothing else to do but sit and play bridge and make up stories about their neighbors, stories that a decent person mustn’t even listen to. And often little girls of fourteen who are just beginning to become interested in boys hear bits and scraps that are not meant for them and build them up into … uh … colorful fairy tales. Especially a little girl whose mother has gone from husband to husband.”

“I hit her,” Tony said. “I hit Susan when she told me.”

Oliver smiled. “I don’t think you should have hit her. But I don’t think you should have listened to her either. Tony, will you do me a favor?”

“What?” His voice was suspicious.

“Don’t say anything about this to your mother,” said Oliver. “Or to Jeff. We’ll just pretend that I suddenly found out I could have some time off and I jumped into the car and came up here. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

Tony moved away as though he were in pain. “No.”

“Why not?” Oliver asked.

“Because Susan wasn’t the only one.”

Oliver put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Just because two or three or a hundred people gossip,” he said, “doesn’t mean they’re saying the truth. Do you know what gossip is?”

“Yes,” said Tony.

“It’s one of the worst things in the world,” said Oliver. “It’s a grownup disease. And one way a good man remains a child all his life is that he doesn’t gossip and he doesn’t listen to gossip.”

Suddenly Tony pulled away from his father’s grasp. “It’s me! … It’s me! I went down to his sister’s house yesterday and I looked through the window and I saw with my own eyes.” He turned and, almost running, went across the room and flung himself into the easy chair, burying his face away from Oliver, into the wing. He was crying, racked by the effort of pretending he was not crying.

Oliver ran his hand wearily across his eyes and walked over to the easy chair and sat on the arm. “All right, all right now.” He stroked the boy’s head. “Tony, I hate to have to do this. But I don’t know what else I can do. You’re very young. I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know. You might see something you think is very wrong and it could be completely innocent. Tony,” he said, “you must tell me exactly what you saw.”

Tony spoke without turning his head, into the crease of the chair. “She said she was going to the movies. But Susan was right. She wasn’t in the movies. I went down to his sister’s house. She’s not here this week and there’s nobody in the house. There’re Venetian blinds on the windows. They don’t come all the way down. There’s a little space at the bottom and you can look in. They were in bed together and they … they didn’t have any clothes on. And Mummy was kissing …” Tony swung around and faced his father. “I want to go home … I want to go home.” Now he wept, inconsolably and openly.

Oliver sat on the arm of the chair, rocklike, taut, watching his son weep. “Stop crying, Tony,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You haven’t cried since you were a little boy.” He stood up and pulled Tony out of the chair. “Go in now and wash your face,” he said in a colorless voice.

“What are you going to do?” Tony asked.

Oliver shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You’re not going away, are you?”

“No,” said Oliver. “I’ll just sit out here for a while. Go ahead, Tony. Your eyes are all red.”

Slowly, his feet shuffling along the floor, Tony went into the bathroom. Oliver watched him go and shook his head vaguely. He walked heavily and pointlessly around the chilly room. There was a straw handbag with a bright orange scarf tossed over it that Lucy had left on a chair. He stopped in front of the chair and picked up the scarf. He put the scarf to his face and sniffed the perfume that Lucy had put on it. He bent again and opened the bag and rummaged in it. There was a small compact there and he opened it. The powder was spilled all over the mirror. He put the compact on the table and neatly took out all the other things from the bag and with absent precision arranged them on the table. There was a tiny bottle of perfume, a bunch of keys, a comb. A clipping from a newspaper of a recipe. The recipe was for angel-food cake. He took out a small coin purse. He opened the purse and took the coins out of it and made a neat little pile of the coins. They came to seventy-eight cents. Then he methodically put all the things back into the bag, one by one. He heard voices, Lucy’s and Jeff’s, outside the cottage, and their footsteps on the porch and he composed his face and turned toward the door as it swung open. Lucy came in, followed by Jeff. She was laughing. When she saw Oliver standing in the middle of the room, the shadow of a frown crossed her face. Then she said, “Oliver,” sounding pleased and surprised, and ran across the room to throw her arms around him and kiss him. Tactfully, Jeff waited at the door until the embrace was over.

Oliver kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, Lucy,” he said pleasantly.

“What are you doing here?” Lucy bubbled on. “Why didn’t you telephone? How long are you going to stay? Have you had your dinner? What a lovely surprise! Have you seen Tony?”

Oliver chuckled. “Easy now,” he said. “One thing at a time. Hello, Bunner.”

“Welcome, Mr. Crown,” Jeff said with boyish politeness, standing very straight.

Lucy took Oliver’s hand and led him to the couch. “Come over here and sit down,” she said. “You look tired. Can I get you something? A drink? A sandwich?”

“Nothing,” said Oliver. “I ate on the road.”

Jeff looked at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I guess I might as well be moving on.”

“Oh, no. Please stay,” Oliver said. He wasn’t sure whether Lucy glanced at him uneasily or not. “There are a few things I’d like to talk to you about. Unless you’re busy.”

“No,” said Jeff. “I’m not busy.”

“Have you seen Tony?” Lucy asked.

“Yes,” said Oliver. “He’s inside. In the bathroom.”

“Doesn’t he look marvelous?” Lucy asked.

Oliver nodded. “Marvelous.”

“Did I tell you he swam a hundred yards this week?” Lucy asked. She seemed to Oliver to be speaking more quickly than he remembered, like a pianist who is suffering from an attack of nerves before an audience and to make up for it finds himself going faster and faster through the difficult passages. “Way, way out on the lake,” Lucy said. “With Jeff following him in a boat. My heart was in my mouth and …”

“I just talked to him for a minute,” Oliver said. He turned pleasantly toward Jeff. “Are you taking all your meals at the hotel now?”

“This week,” Lucy broke in hastily before Jeff could reply. “His sister’s away this week and the poor boy was faced with two cans of salmon and we took pity on him.”

“Oh, I see.” Oliver smiled. “You both look as though the summer has agreed with you.”

“It hasn’t been too bad,” Lucy said. “It’s rained a lot, though. Now what about you? How’d you manage to break away? Did all those charming people in the plant go on strike all of a sudden?”

“Nothing as lively as that,” Oliver said. “I just managed to sneak some time off.”

“It’s been awful in the city, hasn’t it?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, not so bad.”

Lucy patted his hand. “We missed you so. Tony asked when you could come. You’re going to stay now, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “That depends.”

“Oh,” said Lucy. “Depends.” She wandered back toward the little hall that led to the bedrooms and called, “Tony! Tony!”

“Leave him alone, please,” Oliver said. “I’d like to talk to you, Lucy.”

Jeff, still standing near the door, coughed, a little awkwardly. “In that case,” he said, “I’d better …”

“And to you too, Jeff, if you don’t mind,” Oliver said pleasantly. “Would you think I was rude if I asked you to wait down by the lake for a few minutes? I see it’s stopped raining. I’d like to speak to my wife alone and then—if it’s all right with you—I’ll call you.”

“Of course,” said Jeff easily. “Take as long as you want.”

“Thanks,” Oliver said, as Jeff went out the door.

Lucy felt her mouth get dry and she wanted to call to Jeff, “Stay! Stay! Give me time!”

But she watched him go out, and then, trying to swallow, to restore the moisture in her mouth and throat, she made herself go over to Oliver. She was almost sure she was smiling, as she put her arms around him. The important thing, at this moment, she thought, is to be normal. What would be normal, though? She had a flicker of panic, at the impossibility of knowing what normal was.

“It’s so good to see you again,” she said. “It’s been such a long time.”

Normal.

To give herself something to do, to prolong time, she made herself examine Oliver’s face closely. The long, hard, familiar face, the pale, clever, knowing eyes, the set, pale mouth, so surprisingly soft when he kissed her, the hard, smooth texture of the skin. She touched, with the tips of her fingers, the marks of fatigue under his eyes. “You look so tired.”

“Stop saying I look tired,” Oliver said with a first little flash of anger.

Lucy moved away from him. Everything I am going to do, she thought, is going to be wrong. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “You said your staying here depends—On what?”

“On you.”

“Oh.” Lucy clenched her hands, unconsciously, squeezing her fingers. “On me?”

Suddenly the light was too bright in the room and everything stood out too clearly, the sharp, ugly lines of the table, the hideous yellow of the drapes, the worn drab spots on the arms of the easy chair. Everything was angular and hurtful and time was moving too fast, like a train going downhill into a tunnel. How wonderful it would be if she could faint, if she could make time for herself in darkness, prepare in a warm, protective haze for the hard thing that was ahead of her. It’s unfair, she thought confusedly, the most important act of my life, and nobody gives me time to get ready for it.

“You know what I would like,” she said lightly, still almost sure she was smiling, “I would like a drink and …”

Oliver reached over and took her wrist. “Come here, Lucy.” He led her to the couch. “Sit down.”

They sat down next to each other. This is the millionth time, she thought, we have sat next to each other.

Lucy laughed, letting things happen, not trying to guide them. “My, you’re serious,” she said.

“Very serious,” Oliver said.

“Oh.” Lucy’s voice was small, domestic, apologetic. “Have I spent too much money? Did I overdraw at the bank again?”

There, that wasn’t a bad thing to say, she thought. Just let it happen.

“Lucy,” Oliver said, “have you been having an affair?”

Let it happen. Say the normal thing. He was sitting there like a teacher in school, asking her questions, grading her. Suddenly she realized that she had been afraid of him for fifteen years, every minute for fifteen years.

“What?” she asked, proud of the tone of amusement and incredulity in her voice. This is only temporary, she thought. Later on, when we have more time, we will talk seriously. Later on, we will lead up to the permanent truth.

“An affair,” Oliver was saying.

Lucy wrinkled her forehead, looking puzzled, as if Oliver had presented her with a riddle, but a riddle she was prepared to enjoy, once she understood its intent. “With whom?” she asked.

“Bunner,” Oliver said.

For a moment Lucy seemed stupefied. Then she began to laugh. Somewhere inside me, she thought, there is the perfect model of an innocent wife, who makes the correct noise and gives the correct answer to all questions. All I have to do is mimic her automatically. “Oh, my,” Lucy said. “With that child?”

Oliver watched her closely, already almost convinced because he was so ready to be convinced. “You must get over your habit of thinking men are children until they reach the age of fifty,” he said mildly.

“Poor Jeff.” Lucy was still laughing. “He’d be so proud if he could hear you. Why,” she said, feeling her face frozen in the difficult lines of laughter and inventing spontaneously and without plan, “why, all last winter he was going to dances with a girl who’s still in high school in Boston. She’s a cheer leader. She wears those short skirts and does somersaults at the high-school football games every Saturday afternoon and they can’t go to bars when they have dates because none of the bartenders will serve them.” Listening carefully to herself with her inner ear she sought and found the proper tone of incredulous amusement. It’s like a dive, she thought. Once you start, there’s no turning back, no matter how high it suddenly seems, or how deep the water below, or how frightened you are or how much you regret having started. “Is that why you came up here like this?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Oliver.

“That long, long ride all alone,” said Lucy pityingly. The middle of the dive, going through the air, balancing. “Poor Oliver. Still, if that’s the only way I can get you up here, I’m satisfied.” Then she spoke more seriously. “Now how did you happen to get an idea like that? What happened? Did you get an anonymous poison-pen letter from one of those old hens up in the hotel? I have nothing to do with them and I suppose that annoys them. They see me and Tony and Jeff together all the time and they love to have a scandal to munch on and …”

“I didn’t get any anonymous letters,” Oliver said.

“No?” Lucy challenged him. “Then what?”

“It’s Tony,” said Oliver. “He called me last night. He asked me to come up here.”

“Oh,” said Lucy. “And you didn’t call me back?”

“He asked me not to,” said Oliver.

“So that’s why he rushed away from dinner. So that’s why you came at this odd hour,” she said sardonically. “For the secret rendezvous of the males of the family.”

“Well, the truth is,” Oliver said, on the defensive, “I did try to call from Waterbury, but the line was out this afternoon. He didn’t tell me anything on the phone. He was almost hysterical. He kept saying he had to see me alone.”

“I … I’m ashamed,” Lucy said, quoting the impeccable model within her. “Of you. Of Tony. Myself. Our marriage.”

“What would you have done?” Oliver said miserably. “If Tony had called you and said that I …”

“What have I always done?” Lucy said quickly.

“There’s never been anything with me,” Oliver said. “You know that.”

“No? Maybe not,” Lucy said. “Who’s to know? I haven’t asked. Still—is that the only thing in the world? Is that the only problem that people who’ve been married for fifteen years have to face? Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever hidden anything from you?”

“No,” Oliver said wearily, and Lucy had the feeling that he was almost ready to let the whole matter drop.

“Suddenly,” she said, speaking swiftly, pressing her advantage, “everything changes. Now is the time for conspiracy and secret visits and spying and the testimony of children. Why?”

“All right,” Oliver said. “I admit—I should have called. But it still doesn’t answer the question. Why did Tony tell me what he did?”

“How do I know?” Lucy said. “I don’t even know what he told you.”

“Lucy,” said Oliver gently, “he said he saw you and the young man in his sister’s house.”

End of dive.

Lucy took in her breath with a long sighing noise. “Oh. He said that?”

“Yes.”

She spoke in a flat, dead voice. “What exactly did he say he saw?”

“I can’t repeat it, Lucy.”

“You can’t repeat it,” she said, her voice still lacking in timbre.

“No,” said Oliver, “but unhappily, it was most convincing.”

“Oh … I’m so sorry.” Lucy bent over and he couldn’t see her face and for a moment he thought she was going to confess. “Mostly for Tony,” she said. Mistake. The dive was not over. Because it wasn’t a real dive. It was a descent in a dream, whirling, grabbing handfuls of air. “Listen, Oliver,” she said soberly. “There’re several things you ought to know about your son. Not such pleasant things. You know how he makes up stories? Let’s use the exact word. Lies. How many times have we pleaded with him?”

“He’s stopped that,” said Oliver.

“That’s what you think,” said Lucy. “It’s just that the stories become more clever as he grows older. More ingenious, more believable, less innocent.”

“I thought he was getting over that,” Oliver said.

“That’s because you don’t know him. You see him a few hours a week when he’s on his best behavior. You don’t know him the way I do, because you haven’t been with him day and night for years.” Arson, she thought, horrified with herself. Once you light the match, there’s nothing to do but stand back and watch the house burn down. And deny everything and solidify the alibi. “That’s why this has happened,” she said. “The truth is he doesn’t behave with me like a normal little boy. He behaves like a jealous, possessive lover. You said so yourself.”

“Not really,” Oliver said. “Not seriously. As a joke maybe—”

“It’s not a joke,” said Lucy. “You know how he acts when he comes into the house and I’m not there. He prowls around, looking for me. He telephones my friends. He goes to my bedroom and stands at the window waiting, not saying a word to anyone. You’ve seen it dozens of times, haven’t you?”

“Yes. And I never liked it,” Oliver said sullenly. “And I thought you liked it too much. That’s one of the reasons why I hired Bunner.”

“And then you told me to leave him alone more,” said Lucy rapidly. “To let him spend more time by himself. To force him to be independent. And you told Jeff the same things. Well, we followed instructions. Your instructions. And this is the result.”

“What do you mean?” Oliver asked, confused.

“We left him alone from time to time,” Lucy said. “We carefully avoided making him the center of things every minute of the day. And he hated it. And this is his revenge. This sick, unpleasant little story.”

Oliver shook his head. “No little boy can make up a story like that.”

“Why not?” Lucy asked. “Especially now. Among other instructions you left you prescribed a course in sex for him.”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s about time he …”

“About time he could whip together his jealousy and all this interesting new information and try to destroy us with it.”

“Lucy,” Oliver said, “are you telling the truth?”

Lucy took a deep breath, raised her head and stared directly into Oliver’s eyes. “I swear it,” she said.

Oliver turned and went to the door and opened it. “Bunner,” he called to the boy at the edge of the lake. “Bunner.”

“What are you going to do?” Lucy asked.

“I want to talk to him.” Oliver came back into the room.

“You can’t,” Lucy said.

“I have to,” Oliver said gently.

“You can’t embarrass me like that. You can’t embarrass yourself. You mustn’t degrade me in front of that boy.”

“I’d like to talk to him alone, please,” Oliver said.

“If you do this,” said Lucy, “I’ll never forgive you.” She said it not because she meant it, but because it was what the automatic, innocent wife would have said.

Oliver made a short gesture of dismissal. “Please, Lucy.”

They were standing there facing each other tensely when Bunner came into the room. Oliver saw him finally. “Oh, yes,” he said, “you’re here.” He turned back to his wife. “Lucy,” he said, waiting. Without looking at Jeff she walked swiftly to the door and went out. After a moment, Oliver visibly braced himself, then gestured politely to Jeff. “Sit down,” he said. Jeff hesitated, then sat on a wooden chair. Oliver walked slowly back and forth in front of him as he spoke. “First,” he said, “I want to thank you for the letters you’ve been writing every week reporting on Tony’s progress.”

“Well,” Jeff said, “since you couldn’t get up here I thought you’d like to know what we were doing with ourselves.”

“I enjoyed the letters,” said Oliver. “They were very shrewd. You seemed to know what was going on with Tony all the time and I got the feeling you really liked him a great deal too.”

“He’s a rewarding little boy,” said Jeff.

“Rewarding?” Oliver repeated vaguely, as though this was a new concept of his son. “Yes, isn’t he? The letters gave me quite a good picture of yourself incidentally.”

Jeff laughed a little self-consciously. “They did? I hope I didn’t give myself away.”

“Quite the opposite,” said Oliver. “I got the picture of a most intelligent, decent young man. I even began to feel that, after college, if you might somehow change your mind about diplomacy, I might try to find something for you in my business.”

“It’s very nice to hear, Sir,” Jeff said, embarrassedly. “I’ll remember it.”

“By the way,” Oliver said, as though it would have been impolite to get to the main question too soon and he was casting about, looking for subjects of conversation, “that girl of yours you talked about the day I met you. I even remember your exact words. I asked you if you had a girl and you said, approximately. Is she by any chance still in Boston, in high school?”

“In high school?” Jeff asked, puzzled.

“Yes,” said Oliver. “Cheer leader for the high-school football team?”

Jeff laughed uneasily. “No,” he said. “I don’t know any high-school girls in Boston. And certainly no cheer leaders. The girl I was talking about is a junior at Vassar and actually I was boasting. I don’t see her more than five or six times a year. Why do you ask?”

“I must have gotten a little mixed up,” Oliver said easily. “Maybe it was something in one of Tony’s letters. His handwriting leaves a great deal of room for speculation.” He shrugged. “It’s of no importance. So—no cheer leaders.”

“Not a one,” said Jeff.

Oliver waited. “How about older ladies?” he said evenly. “Married ladies?”

Jeff dropped his eyes. “I don’t think you really expect me to answer that, Mr. Crown.”

“No, perhaps not.” Oliver took out his checkbook and pen from his pocket. “Has Mrs. Crown paid you regularly every week?”

“Yes,” said Jeff.

“She hasn’t paid you this week?” Oliver asked, with the checkbook open.

“No,” said Jeff. “Now wait a minute, Sir.”

“This is Friday,” Oliver went on calmly, “and the arrangement was thirty dollars for a seven-day week, wasn’t it? That would be five-sevenths of thirty—well, let’s say roughly twenty-one dollars as a flat sum. You don’t mind a check, do you? I’m a little short on cash.”

Jeff stood up. “I don’t want any money,” he said.

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “Why not?” he asked. “You took it each week from Mrs. Crown, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But …”

“Why should this week be any different?” Oliver sounded good-tempered and reasonable. “Except that it’s two days short?”

“I don’t want it,” Jeff said.

Oliver purposely misunderstood him. “Things being as they are,” he said, “you don’t think that you ought to stay on any longer, do you?”

“No,” Jeff said, mumbling so low that Oliver could hardly hear him.

“Of course not,” Oliver said, in a fatherly tone. He gave Jeff the check. “Here, take it. You’ve earned it. I remember when I was your age I could always use twenty dollars. It can’t be so different today.”

Jeff looked down unhappily at the check in his hand and started toward the door. Then he turned back. “I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry or ashamed or something like that. I suppose it would make you feel better.”

Oliver smiled warmly. “Not necessarily,” he said.

“Well, I’m not,” Jeff said defiantly. “It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

Oliver nodded. “It always is,” he said. “At the age of twenty.”

“You don’t know,” Jeff said incoherently. “You don’t know her.”

“Perhaps not,” Oliver said.

“She’s pure,” Jeff said. “Delicate. You mustn’t blame her. I did it. It’s all my fault.”

“I don’t want to take any of the glory away from you,” Oliver said pleasantly, “but I must say that when a thirty-five-year-old woman takes up with a twenty-year-old boy I can’t give him credit for anything more than being—present.”

“You …” said Jeff bitterly, confronting the older man. “You’re so sure of yourself. I know all about you. She’s told me. Sitting back. Telling everybody what they’re to do. What they’re to think. The people who work for you. Your child. Your wife. Having everything your own way. Being polite and frozen and ruthless. God, even now you don’t even have the grace to be angry. You come up here and find out I’m in love with your wife and what do you do? You sign a check.” With a melodramatic gesture he crumpled the check and threw it on the floor.

Oliver’s air of indulgence, of amusement, did not change. “It’s one of the arguments you always hear,” he said, “against hiring the sons of wealthy families. They don’t have the proper respect for money.”

“I hope she leaves you,” Jeff said. “And if she does, I’ll marry her.”

“Bunner,” Oliver said, repressing a smile, “if I may say so, you’re behaving like a fool. You’re being sentimental. You use words like love, marriage, delicacy, purity, and I know why, and I even admire you for it. You’re not a brute. You want to have a high opinion of yourself. You want to think of yourself as passionate, exceptional. Well, it’s natural enough, and I don’t blame you for it—but I have to tell you that it doesn’t square with the facts.”

“What do you know about the facts?” Jeff asked bitterly.

“This much,” Oliver said. “You haven’t had a love affair. You’ve had a work of the imagination. You’ve imagined a woman who doesn’t exist, an emotion that doesn’t exist.”

“Don’t tell me,” Jeff started to interrupt.

“Please let me finish.” Oliver waved his hand. “You’ve taken something that’s routine and casual and you’ve larded it with roses and moonlight. You’ve mistaken a season for a lifetime. You’ve mistaken a silly, childish woman’s easy conscience for passion, and finally, you’ll be the one who gets hurt the worst because of it.”

“If that’s the way you feel about her,” Jeff said, almost stuttering in his anger and confusion, “you have no right to talk about her. You don’t respect her, you don’t admire her, you don’t love her …”

Oliver sighed. “When you get older,” he said, “you’ll find out that love very often has almost nothing to do with respect and admiration. Anyway, I didn’t come all the way up here to talk about me. Jeff,” he said, “let me ask you to do something fairly hard—look at things as they really are. Look at the summertime, Jeff. Look at all the hotels like this one. All the clapboard palaces with thin walls and bad dance bands and postcard lakes and lazy, thoughtless, vacationing women separated from their husbands for the hot months. Women who lie out in the sun all day, bored, restless, drinking too much, looking for amusement and finding it in traveling salesmen, waiters, hired athletes, trumpet players, college boys. The whole tribe of cheap, available males with only that to recommend them. That, and the fact that they conveniently vanish when the cold weather comes. By the way,” Oliver said conversationally, “have you talked to Mrs. Crown on the subject of marriage?”

“Yes. I did.”

“What did she say?”

“She laughed,” Jeff admitted.

“Of course.” Oliver was friendly and sympathetic. “The same thing happened to me when I was just past twenty. Except that it was on a boat, on the way to France. Actually it was perhaps even more romantic than this …” He waved his arm to indicate the cottage, the lake, the surrounding forest. “Boats being what they are and France being what it was right after the war. And the lady was wise enough to leave her children at home, since she was perhaps more practiced than Mrs. Crown. It was very intense. It even included a two-week trip to the Italian lakes and adjoining cabins on the old Champlain and I made speeches to her on the boatdeck on the way back to America that I imagine were very much like some of the speeches you must have been making here on moonlit nights. And we were luckier, too. The husband never knew anything. Never appeared until we docked. Even so,” Oliver laughed reflectively, “it took two hours to get through customs and by the time we were through the gate she was having trouble remembering my name.”

“Why are you trying to make it so ugly?” said Jeff. “Why does that make it better for you?”

“Not ugly,” Oliver said, “merely ordinary. Pleasant—that summer in Europe is one of the most agreeable memories I have—but ordinary. Don’t be so unhappy because at a certain age you happen to have gone through an experience that other young men have had before you.” He bent down and picked up the crumpled check from the floor. “You’re sure you don’t want this check?” He held it out, offering it to the boy.

“No,” said Jeff.

Oliver shrugged. “Whatever you say. As you get older, you learn to treat money more carefully, too.” He smoothed out the check, looked at it absently, then with a sudden movement threw it into the fireplace. “Incidentally—that phonograph is yours, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jeff.

“I think you’d better take it with you,” Oliver said. “Now. And anything else around here that belongs to you.”

“That’s all there is,” said Jeff.

Oliver went over to the phonograph and snapped out the plug. He wrapped the cord neatly around the instrument and tucked the plug firmly through the twist of wire. “I think you’d better stay away from here from now on, don’t you?”

“I’m not making any promises.”

Oliver shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. I was merely thinking of your own peace of mind.” He tapped the phonograph. “Here we are.” He waited, smiling pleasantly. Jeff, his face set, came over and put the machine under his arm and started out. As he got to the door it opened and Lucy came in.

After Lucy had left the house, she walked blindly down toward the lake. She stopped at its edge, staring out across the water. The clouds had parted a little and there was pale, wet moonlight picking out the tips of branches, the pilings at the end of the hotel dock, a mast on one of the small sailboats tied a few feet off the end of the dock.

It was cold along the edge of the water, and Lucy shivered. She hadn’t put on a sweater and she couldn’t go back into the house now and get one.

She thought of what the two men were saying to each other in the living room. She tried to imagine the conversation, but it was impossible. In other times and other places, men had killed each other in situations like this. Not only in other times. She remembered a story she had read in a newspaper a month or so ago. A sailor had come home unexpectedly and found his wife with another man and had shot them both. Then he had shot himself. It had been all over the front pages for two days.

Well, nobody was going to shoot anybody else in the living room. Maybe that was what was wrong with them. All three of them. Maybe something like this was only valid and worthwhile if people were willing to shoot each other as a consequence.

She turned and looked at the house. It looked exactly the same as it had looked all summer and the summer before. The light streaming peacefully, too brightly, through the curtains of the living-room window, making the wet grass gleam on the lawn in front of the house. And several windows away, the light was on in Tony’s room, shaded, from the lamp on his desk. She wondered what Tony was doing. Reading? Drawing his pictures of horses, boats and athletes? Packing, preparing to run away? Listening?

She shivered. Suddenly, she knew that the worst thing was going to be facing Tony, whether he was listening or not. She turned away from the house and looked out across the lake. How easy it would be just to walk out and keep going, out into the blackness, out into the simple blackness … Well, she knew she wasn’t going to do that, either.

She listened to the tapping of the water against the dock-pilings, small, monotonous, familiar, the same sound as last summer, as all the summers before that. She wished it was last summer. She wished it was any time before tonight. With everything to be done over again, and done better and more wisely, not with that insane, rushing, diving, automatic, dreamlike inventiveness. Or next summer, with everything settled, forgotten, punished.

She wished that they could go back a half-hour, to the moment when she came into the house and saw Oliver standing there, and knowing it was going to be bad, and being frightened of him and at the same time feeling that sensation of warmth and gladness that she always felt when she saw him after being away from him for some time, a sensation of rootedness, familiarity, connection, a subtle, comfortable relinquishment of the responsibility of being alone. She wondered if she could ever explain that feeling to Oliver, and explain that it could exist at the same time that she was making love with another man, at the same time that she was lying to him about it, at the same time that she was pretending to be outraged and innocent.

What she should have done when Oliver sent Jeff out of the room and accused her, was to get up and say, “Please give me fifteen minutes alone. I want to arrange everything exactly, correctly, in my mind, because this is too important to rush.” Then she should have gone into her own room, by herself, and thought it all out and come back and begged for forgiveness.

Only she hadn’t done that. She had behaved instinctively, like a guilty child, in a gush and brainless female flurry of tricks, thinking only of protecting herself for the moment, no matter what losses it would mean later on. Instinctively, she thought. Well, my instincts are no damned good.

When she went back into the house, she decided, she was going to make it all up. She was going to be calm and sensible and she was going to say, “Please forget everything I said tonight. Now, this is the way it happened …”

And she would also promise never to see Jeff again. She would keep the promise, too. It would be easy—because as soon as she had seen Oliver and Jeff together, in the same room, Jeff had vanished, he had become nothing, he had become once more just a nice little boy who was hired to teach her son how to swim and to keep him out of mischief for a few weeks in the summertime.

If only Oliver hadn’t been so stubborn, she thought, with a little twinge of anger against him, if only he had taken her home with him when she’d asked him to, in July, none of this would have happened. If he hadn’t complained that night over the phone about that garage bill. Let him take some of the blame, too. Let him understand that there were consequences for him, too, in always making other people do what he wanted them to do. Let him understand that she was a human being, not a block to be pushed, a piece of material to be shaped, that her feelings were signposts, danger-signals, appeals, and were to be considered.

Maybe this was all to the good, she thought—this event—this, this accident. Maybe, she thought optimistically, this will shake our marriage into its proper final shape. Maybe from now on, the rights and privileges and decisions will be more equally divided.

She saw shadows moving across the light, behind the living-room curtains and she wondered what the two men were saying about her, who was attacking her, who defending, what judgments they were reaching about her, what revelations, criticisms, what plans for her future. Suddenly, it was intolerable to think of them alone together, debating her, exposing her, settling her. No matter what happens, she thought, it is going to happen in my presence.

She hurried across the wet grass and into the house.

When she opened the door, she saw Jeff standing there, in the middle of the room, with his phonograph under his arm, ready to leave. He looked small and defeated and unimportant, and she knew immediately that whatever Oliver had wanted from him he had got.

Oliver was standing on the other side of the room, impassive and polite.

Lucy glanced once at Jeff, then turned to Oliver. “Are you through?”

“I believe so,” Oliver said.

“Lucy …” Jeff began.

“Go ahead, Jeff,” she said. She was still holding the door open.

Miserably, looking disciplined, Jeff went out, the bulk of the phonograph under his arm making him walk awkwardly.

Oliver watched him leave. Then he lit a cigarette deliberately, conscious that Lucy, standing rigidly near the door now, was following his every movement. “Quite a nice young man,” Oliver said finally. “Quite nice.”

I can’t go through with it, Lucy thought. Not tonight. Not while he’s standing there, looking amused. Not while he’s patronizing and in control. She felt herself shaking and she couldn’t remember what she had decided to do while she was out at the edge of the lake. All she knew was that she had to get through the next ten minutes somehow, anyhow.

“Well?” Lucy asked.

Oliver smiled wearily at her. “He seems … very attached to you.”

“What did he say?” Lucy demanded.

“Oh—the usual,” said Oliver. “I don’t understand you. You’re pure and delicate. It was all his fault. He’s glad it happened. It’s the greatest thing in his life. He wants to marry you. Very gallant. No surprises.”

“He’s lying,” Lucy said.

“Now, Lucy,” said Oliver. He made a tired small movement of his hand.

“He’s lying,” Lucy repeated, stubbornly. “He’s a crazy boy. He was up here last summer. I never even met him. But he followed me around, watching. Never saying a word. Just watching. All summer.” She rushed on, speaking very quickly in an attempt to overwhelm Oliver, to keep him from interrupting. “Then this summer,” she said, “he came up just because he found out I was going to be here. Then one night I did something foolish. I admit it. It was silly. I let him kiss me. And it all came out. How he was in love with me from the first minute he saw me. How he followed me. How he wrote me dozens of letters during the winter and didn’t mail them. How he couldn’t bear not to be near me. All the childish, extravagant things. I was going to call and tell you about it. But I kept thinking, if I told you you’d be worried. Or you’d make a scene. Or you’d think it was a trick on my part to get rid of him. Or you’d make fun of me for not being able to handle a boy like that myself. Or you’d say it’s just like her—always needing help and not being able to take care of herself like everybody else. I kept thinking, It’s only for six weeks, it’s only for six weeks. I kept him off. I used every trick I knew. I ridiculed him. I was bored, I was angry, I suggested other girls. But he was always there. Always saying, Eventually. But nothing happened. Nothing.”

“That isn’t his story, Lucy,” Oliver said quietly.

“No, of course not. He wants to make trouble. He told me himself. Once he even told me he was going to write you and say we were lovers so that you’d kick me out and I’d have to turn to him. What can I do to make you believe me?”

“Nothing,” Oliver said. “Because you’re a liar.”

“No,” Lucy said. “Don’t say that.”

“You’re a liar,” Oliver said. “And you disgust me.”

Her defenses overrun and all pretense suddenly abandoned, she walked blindly toward him, her arms out in front of her. “No … please, Oliver …”

“Keep away from me,” Oliver said. “That’s the worst part. The lies. The unforgivable part. After a while, maybe I could forget your summertime college boy. But the lies! Especially the lie about Tony. Good God, what were you trying to do? What kind of a woman are you?”

Lucy slumped into a chair, her head down. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said dully. “I’m so scared, Oliver. I’m so scared. I want so much to save us, both of us, our marriage.”

“God damn such marriages,” Oliver said. “Lying in his arms, laughing about me, complaining. Telling him between kisses that I was cold, I was a tyrant. With your son outside, peering through the window, because you were too eager to jump into bed to make sure the blinds were drawn properly.”

Lucy moaned. “It wasn’t like that.”

Oliver was standing over her now, raging. “Is that the marriage you’re so anxious to save?”

“I love you,” she whispered, her head still down, not looking at Oliver. “I love you.”

“Am I supposed to be melted by that?” Oliver asked. “Am I supposed to say now that it’s all right that you’ve lied to me for fifteen years and all right that you’re going to lie to me for the next fifteen? Just because, when you’ve been found out, you’re brazen enough to say you love me?”

“This is the first time,” Lucy said hopelessly. “I never lied to you before. I swear it. I don’t know what happened to me. You shouldn’t have left me alone. I begged you not to. You said you were going to come up and you never did. I told him I wasn’t going to see him again. You can ask him.”

Suddenly Oliver picked up his hat and coat and overnight bag. Frightened, Lucy looked up. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “I’m getting out of here.”

Lucy stood up, putting out her hand toward him. “I’ll promise anything,” she said. “I’ll do anything. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t.”

“I’m not leaving you yet,” Oliver said. “I have to get off by myself till I can decide what to do.”

“Will you call me?” Lucy asked. “Will you come back?”

Oliver took a deep breath. He sounded exhausted. “We’ll see,” he said. He went out of the cottage and a moment later Lucy heard the car start. She stood in the middle of the room, dry-eyed, drawn, listening to the sound of the engine. The door from the hallway was flung open and Tony came into the room.

“Where’s Daddy?” he asked harshly. “I heard the car. Where did he go?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. She put out her hand to touch Tony’s shoulder, but he pulled away and rushed onto the porch. She could hear him running down the road, his voice growing smaller and smaller, calling after his father, and the noise of the car diminishing and then vanishing in the distance.