Lucy Crown

13

“ARRIVING AROUND THREE O’CLOCK, tomorrow,” the telegram had read. “Please have everything packed and be ready to leave immediately. Wish to make as much of the trip in daylight as possible. Oliver.”

Lucy had re-read the telegram a half dozen times. She had been tempted to telephone Oliver, but had decided against it. Let him come, she had thought. Let it be settled, once and for all.

After the night of Oliver’s visit, Lucy had stayed in the cottage, numbly forcing herself to go through the routine of holiday with Tony, waiting, in the beginning, for something to happen, some message, some event which would push her one way or another, bring the season to a climax, disastrous, or violent if need be, but punctuating her life, finishing one section, marking the beginning of another.

But nothing had happened. Oliver had not called or written; Jeff had disappeared; the days wore on, sunny, long, ordinary. She went in to meals with Tony, she worked with him on his eye exercises, she went swimming with him, read to him, feeling that everything she did was unreal, that what she was doing she was not doing because it was useful, but because it was habit, like a ruined man going daily to his office to work over accounts that had long been closed merely because he had grown accustomed to it through the years and there was nothing else he could think of to do with his time.

She watched Tony greedily, but every day, under the cloak of custom and familiarity, she had the feeling that he was becoming more and more unknown to her. If, suddenly, he had leaped up and denounced her in the dining room, if she had awakened and found him standing over her bed with a knife in his hand, if he had disappeared forever into the forest, she would have had to say to herself, “Of course, I expected something like that.”

He was polite, obedient, ungiving, and with the passage of each day she felt the strain becoming greater. It was as though, each night, when she put the light out in his room, and said, “Good night, Tony,” somebody, somewhere, was turning a ratchet to which her life was attached and pulling her one notch tighter.

Ten days passed; the guests departed from the hotel, the nights turned chilly, the members of the band packed their instruments and returned to the city. Tony seemed neither happy nor unhappy. He held the door open for her politely when they went in to dinner, he came immediately out of the water when she called to him, “You’re getting cold, you’d better dry yourself now,” he asked no questions, volunteered nothing.

When she caught him watching her, his eyes seemed to her the eyes of a grown man, stubborn, unrelenting, accusing. By the end of the ten days she found that it was only by a painful act of memory that she could remember what he had seemed like earlier in the summer. And it was almost impossible to believe that so short a time ago she had considered him a little boy, loving, childish and easy to handle. Now, when they sat together on the lawn, in a stiff, artificial representation of a mother with her son on holiday, she felt herself rattled and clumsy, resenting him more and more each day, like two strangers, shipwrecked, floating across the ocean on a raft, begrudging each other the daily swallow of water from the canteen, suspicious of each movement. Soon his remoteness seemed to her to be open malevolence, his cold politeness an unhealthy and precocious vengeance on her. Finally, she thought, What right has he to sit there judging me like that? Unreasonably accepting him not as a child, but as a mature and implacable opponent, she thought, In the long run, what have I done to him?

And mixed with it all, there was a growing resentment of Oliver, too, for leaving her there alone with Tony for ten days, each of them using the other, she felt, to punish her.

At last, Lucy wrote Oliver and told him that she was going to leave him. She wrote it without heat, without excuses, without disclosing her plans for the future.

Actually, she had no plans for the future. It seemed to take all her energy, all her powers, merely to wake up each morning and know that for another fourteen hours she would have to support the scrutiny of her son.

In the act of writing the letter to Oliver, she had forced herself to make certain decisions about herself. But even as she made them, she had the feeling that they were provisional, that a smile from Tony, a word from Oliver, might overthrow them completely. “I must leave you,” she had written. “It’s impossible for me and Tony to live in the same house,” and she had meant it, but as time wore on she had almost lost her belief in the validity of what she had written, as a condemned man, after months of waiting in his cell, comes to believe more in the permanence of his, bars, the faces of his guards, the regularity and monotony of his diet and his hours of exercise than in the words of the sentence, which, at some distant and by now unimaginable hour, will abruptly kill him.

Then the telegram had come and broken the painful but familiar routine, the drift, the sense of being suspended in time, the feeling of being able to postpone, indefinitely, the decisions that would change her life.

She had told Tony to get ready and had helped him pack and now his bags were all neatly arranged on the porch—the telescope, the baseball bat, the fishing rod, the debris and symbols of boyhood and summer, leaning against an angle of the wall. She had packed nothing of her own. Tony had noticed it, she knew, but silent as ever, had said nothing about it. It was nearly three o’clock now and Lucy sat quietly on the porch, waiting, her eyes going again and again to the small pile of her son’s belongings. It was a clear brilliant day, with a touch of autumn in the air, and the lake had taken on a colder blue, preparing for winter.

Tony came out, dressed in the suit in which he had made the trip up to the lake and which now, after only two months, seemed too small for him. He was carrying a small valise which he put down next to the others. “Is that the last one?” Lucy asked.

“Yes,” said Tony.

“Did you look around? Is everything cleared out of your room?”

“Yes,” Tony said.

“You’re sure there’s nothing left?” said Lucy.

“There’s nothing left,” Tony said.

Lucy watched him for a moment and stared out at the quiet lake and the distant, hazy mountains. “You can almost see the autumn approaching,” she said. She shivered a little. “It’s a season I never liked. It’s funny,” she said, trying to make a connection, even in this fragile way, with her son, “it’s funny not to hear the bugle any more, isn’t it?”

Tony didn’t answer. He looked at his watch. “What time is Daddy coming?” he asked.

“He’ll be here any minute,” said Lucy, once more defeated. “He said he’d be here about three o’clock.”

“I think I’ll go wait for him down at the gate.” Tony started off.

“Tony,” said Lucy.

He stopped. “What?” he asked flatly.

“Come over here,” Lucy said—almost coquettishly. “Please.”

Reluctantly Tony came back and stood in front of her. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I want to look at you, in your city clothes,” Lucy said. “You look so grown-up. Those sleeves are too short for you.” She touched his shoulder. “And it’s awfully tight across here, isn’t it? You must have grown inches this summer. You’ll have to get a new wardrobe for school as soon as you get home.”

“I’m going down to the gate,” Tony said.

Lucy made a last effort. “Tony,” she said, smiling tremulously, feeling that this was the last possible moment, alone here with everyone else departed, the hills and the lake silently plunging into autumn, “Tony, will you give me a kiss?”

He stood there impassively but not unkindly, studying his mother’s face. Then he turned, without emotion or resentment, and started away. Lucy flushed. “Tony,” she called sharply. He stopped once more and looked at her patiently. “What do you want?” he asked.

Lucy hesitated. “Nothing,” she said.

There were footsteps from around the corner of the house and Jeff came into view. He, too, was wearing city clothes, a brown tweed suit, and a carefully knotted tie. He was carrying the phonograph under his arm. That boy, Lucy thought, with an hysterical desire to laugh, makes all his entrances and exits lugging a phonograph. Jeff came up to the porch tentatively. He looked much paler than he had two weeks before, as though he had been indoors all the intervening time. He stopped without coming onto the porch. “Hello, Tony,” he said. “Lucy.”

Tony said nothing. Lucy was taken aback. By an act of will, she had dismissed Jeff from her calculations long ago. Now, looking at him, she had a double sensation, a memory of past pleasure in him and present annoyance. She hid her annoyance by being determinedly casual. “Hello, Jeff,” she said lightly. “I didn’t know you were still around.”

“I came up again,” Jeff said uncomfortably, “to help my sister pack. I heard you were still here and I thought …” He looked at the bags in a row on the porch. “Are you leaving today?”

“What do you want?” Tony asked, ignoring the question.

“I just came to say good-bye,” Jeff said. The neat city clothes and his obvious lack of ease made him seem smaller to Lucy, seemed to push him back into awkwardness and adolescence. If he had been wearing those clothes all summer, she thought, remembering the white T shirts, the bare feet, I would never have touched him. He put the phonograph down on the edge of the porch. He smiled experimentally at Tony. “I thought you might like to have this, Tony. As a kind of a present. It’s a pretty good little phonograph. I know you like to listen to music and I thought …” He stopped, floundering under Tony’s unblinking stare.

Lucy broke in, moved by Jeff’s embarrassment. “That’s awfully kind of you,” she said in an artificial, hostess-like voice, “but really, it’s too much. What will you do those cold winter nights up in New Hampshire when the wind howls and you’re snowed in?” She looked with purposely exaggerated admiration at the phonograph. “It is a beautiful little machine, isn’t it, Tony?”

Tony didn’t move. He stood with his legs apart, dominating them both. “Are you giving it to me?” he asked Jeff.

“Yes,” said Jeff.

“Why?”

“Why?” Jeff asked, unhappy at the question. “Oh, I don’t know. Because we had some good times together this summer. Because I’d like you to remember me.”

“Are you going to say thank you, Tony?” said Lucy.

“It’s all mine?” Tony said, ignoring her, speaking directly to Jeff. “I can do whatever I want with it?”

“Sure,” said Jeff. “You can take it with you to school and put it in your room. When you start to have parties you can dance to it and …” Jeff stopped and watched tensely as Tony approached the machine, looking at it, touching it impersonally. Then Tony went over to where the baseball bat was leaning against the porch wall. He came back to the phonograph, holding the bat in one hand. With his free hand he brushed the machine off the porch, onto the lawn. Then, with great deliberation, he began to swing the bat at the phonograph.

“Tony!” Lucy called. She moved over to stop him but Jeff caught her arm. “Leave him alone,” Jeff said harshly. They watched silently while Tony coldly and methodically destroyed the phonograph.

After a minute or two Tony stopped, breathing hard. He turned and faced his mother and Jeff with a look of hard, mature triumph on his face. Deliberately he dropped the bat. “There,” he said.

“That was a brutal, wasteful thing to do,” Lucy said. “I’m ashamed of you.” She turned to Jeff. “I apologize for him.”

“Don’t you apologize for me,” Tony said. “Never. Not for anything.”

“It’s okay—Tony,” Jeff said gently. “If it made you feel better, it’s okay with me.”

Tony looked from the broken machine, first to his mother and then to Jeff. “No,” he said, “it didn’t make me feel better. I guess you want to talk to each other before my father comes. I told Bert I’d say good-bye to him before I left. I’ll be back in five minutes,” he said threateningly and strode away toward the dock.

Lucy and Jeff watched until he had gone out of sight. Then Jeff went over and touched the wreckage of the phonograph ruefully with his toe. “I bet my aunt would be surprised if she ever found out what happened to her present,” he said. He stepped onto the porch and came across to Lucy. “These last weeks,” he said, “have been gruesome, haven’t they?”

Gruesome, Lucy noted. Is that a word in vogue this year in the Eastern colleges? She hesitated. I’m not going to get involved, she thought. I’m going to finish him. “Have they?” she said lightly. She chuckled.

“What are you laughing at?” Jeff asked suspiciously.

“I keep remembering what I was thinking as Tony was whacking away at the poor little phonograph,” said Lucy.

“What’s that?”

“I kept remembering how carefully you worked with him,” Lucy said, “teaching him how to swing a bat. ‘Step in, Tony. Keep your eye on the ball.’” She mimicked him. “‘Don’t put your foot in the bucket.’ He certainly learned, didn’t he?”

“It’s not so funny,” Jeff said.

“Oh, it’s not so serious,” Lucy said airily. “Tell your aunt it was stolen and she’ll give you another one for Christmas.”

“It’s not that,” Jeff said. “He hates me.”

Lucy shrugged. “A lot of people will hate you before you’re through. What of it?”

“What about you?” Jeff said.

“Hate you?” She managed to chuckle again. “Of course not.”

“Am I going to see you again?” Jeff asked.

“Of course not,” Lucy said.

“I’m sorry,” said Jeff. He plunged his hands in his pockets. He seemed smaller than ever. “I guess I should have stayed away.”

“No,” Lucy said. “I’m glad you came. It was nice and generous. It was even a little brave.” Her tone was motherly, bantering. “Don’t pull such a long face. This was a nice, educational experience for you. The summer course for third-year students—a short term, compulsory for a bachelor’s degree—choice of instructors.”

“How can you take it so lightly?” Jeff’s face looked stricken.

“Instructors …” Lucy sounded puzzled. “What’s the feminine of instructor? Instructress? It sounds wrong somehow, doesn’t it?”

“I made a lot of trouble, didn’t I?”

Lucy made a little grimace, indicating that she thought Jeff was overestimating his importance. “People have to expect to pay a little for their fun,” she said.

“Fun?” Jeff said, shocked.

“Don’t look so scandalized,” she said. “It was fun, wasn’t it? I’d feel awful if I thought you hadn’t enjoyed it at all. If you did it just out of a sense of duty.”

“It was glorious,” Jeff said solemnly. “It was heartbreaking … it was like an earthquake.”

“Oh, my,” Lucy waved her hands in a fluttery, girlish gesture, “it’s too late to be getting solemn all over again.”

The pain was clearly evident on Jeff’s face. “You’re so different today,” he said. “Why?”

“It’s later in the season.” Lucy went over to the row of bags and stood there, frowning down at them, pretending to check them against some list in her mind.

“You’re going back?” Jeff asked. “Back to him?”

Lucy pretended to be puzzled. “Back to whom?”

“Your husband,” said Jeff.

“I imagine so,” Lucy said matter-of-factly, turning toward him. There was no sense in telling him about the letter she had written Oliver. “Don’t people usually go back to husbands? That’s one of the main reasons a girl gets married—to have someone to go back to.”

“Lucy,” he appealed to her, “what’s happened to you?”

Lucy walked toward the edge of the porch and stared out across the lake. “I guess I’ve finally become a big, grown-up lady,” she said.

“You’re making fun of me,” Jeff said bitterly. “I don’t blame you. I behaved like such a hick. Blurting out everything the minute he asked me. Going off with that damn phonograph under my arm like a kid who’s just been kicked out of school because he’s been caught smoking in the locker room.”

“I wouldn’t worry about little things like that if I were you,” Lucy said. “Actually I’m glad he found out.”

“Glad?” Jeff asked incredulously.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m such a bad liar. It’s too much of a strain for my poor little head.” Then her tone changed suddenly, becoming serious, almost threatening. “I found out it’s not for me. Never again.”

“Lucy,” Jeff said, trying to salvage something from the summer, “if we ever meet again, what’re you going to think of me?”

Lucy turned and regarded him thoughtfully. But when she spoke her tone was more playful than ever. “I’ll think,” she said, “What a touching young man! Isn’t it strange that I once thought, for a little while, that I was rather in love with him?”

They were facing each other—Lucy obdurate, implacably frivolous, Jeff forlorn and boyish, when Oliver, whom they had not heard, came around the corner of the porch. He was dressed for traveling and the long trip had left him wrinkled and weary-looking and he moved slowly, as though his energy were low. He stopped when he saw Lucy and Jeff. “Hello,” he said and they turned and faced him.

“Hello, Oliver,” Lucy said, without warmth. “I didn’t hear the car.”

“I just came to say good-bye,” Jeff said uncomfortably.

Oliver waited. “Yes?”

“I want to say I’m sorry,” Jeff said.

Oliver nodded. “Ummn …” he said vaguely. “Are you?” He moved across the porch, looking down at the ruins of the phonograph. “What happened here?”

“Tony …” Jeff began.

“It met with an accident,” Lucy broke in.

Oliver was not interested. “An accident?” he said incuriously. “Are you finished here, Jeff?”

“Yes, all finished,” said Lucy. “He was just leaving.” She put out her hand to Jeff. “Good-bye,” she said, forcing him to shake her hand. “Walk away with a nice springy step now. Make sure you study hard and get beautiful high marks this year at school.”

Jeff tried to speak but couldn’t. He tore his hand away from her and wheeled and plunged out of sight around the corner of the cottage. Watching him, Lucy felt like weeping. Not because he was going and she would never see him again, or because for a little while he had been dear to her and it was all spoiled now. She felt like weeping because he was so clumsy and she knew how it was hurting him and it was her fault.