Lucy Crown

18

THEY DROVE IN SILENCE, through the brilliant noon light, in Tony’s small, black two-seater car. The top was down and the wind, blowing gustily across them, would have made it difficult to speak, even if they had wanted to. Tony drove carelessly and too fast and chickens went scurrying off the road before them as they passed the old stone farmhouses and in the towns people stared at them, reproaching them for being Americans and for traveling so fast. Black and white cattle grazed in the green fields and for long stretches the road curved between tall graceful parentheses of poplars that sent back the noise of the car’s passage as a soft, repetitious whoosh, like cloth-muffled drums being played nervously, in an obsessed rhythm, in a distant room.

There is no need to hurry, Lucy wanted to say, sitting uncomfortably in the wind, her hair wrapped in a scarf, feeling that she was too old for such a vehicle and that much speed. No need to hurry. He has been there for eleven years, he can wait another hour.

They passed family groups picnicking along the roadside, seated on chairs at collapsible small tables with cloths on the tables and wine bottles and tiny vases of flowers next to the long loaves of bread. From time to time they passed through shell-marked villages where ruined walls stood, softened by the weather, looking as though they had been that way for hundreds of years. Lucy tried to think of what the houses had looked like before the shells had hit and what it must have been like at the moment of impact, with the stone flying and the smoke and the people calling to one another from under the collapsing walls. But she couldn’t manage it. The ruins looked permanent, peaceful, undangerous—the picnickers, with their wine bottles and carnations and tablecloths looked as though they had never missed a summer. Where was I, she thought, when this belfry toppled into this stone square? I was preparing lunch in a kitchen three thousand miles away. I was walking across the linoleum to the electric toaster and opening the refrigerator door to take out two tomatoes and a jar of mayonnaise.

She looked across at her son. His face was expressionless, his eyes set on the road. He paid no attention to the picnickers or to the residue of war. If you live in Europe, Lucy thought, I suppose you become accustomed to ruins.

She felt exhausted. Her forehead ached dully from the repetitious, liquid blows of the wind and her eyelids kept drooping heavily over her eyes. Her stomach felt knotted and the top of her girdle bit into her flesh and it was difficult to move enough in the small leather seat to relieve the pressure. From time to time there was the taste of nausea, induced by weariness, in her throat, and when she looked over at Tony he seemed to be swimming minutely at the wheel.

There is something I should be able to say, she thought confusedly, to change him from a stranger into a son, but I am too tired to think of it.

She closed her eyes and dozed, passing swiftly between the fresh fields and the weathered ruins.

Well, now, Tony kept thinking, well, now. Here she is at last. If you have a mother it is too much to hope for that she will not finally put in an appearance.

He glanced over at her. Sleeping comfortably, he thought, happily digesting the day’s emotion, placidly nourishing herself on death, reunions, tears and guilt. Still pretty, even in the scarf and the harsh light, still—at fifty-three, fifty-four?—with that sliding hint of sex and invitation that he hadn’t recognized when he was a boy, but which in retrospect, and after knowing so many other women, he now could recognize so well. Still robust, with firm shoulders and a shapely bosom and clear skin and those damned long gray Eastern eyes. How long would she stay, he wondered, before going home again. A week, two weeks? Long enough to damage him and to try her hand at the French, to whom a woman in her fifties, especially one who looked like her, was interesting game. Long enough to open wounds, demand grief, claim kinship, visit graves, produce tears, disturb security, flirt in a new language, sample foreign beds …

We sat at my father’s grave and made the summer air over the crosses ring with dirty stories. We stopped the sport car at the spot where the bullet hit him and remembered that he was a fool. On the road to the summer resorts we left our tire marks in the dried blood, and winking, repeated the gag line of the joke. It is men’s night and women’s night at the smoker in the military cemetery and we amused the ghosts steadily for eighteen short years. We tore the white flag up into bedsheets and slept in comical surrenders. It is the height of the tourist season and all over the Continent, Mama and Mama’s boy are visiting the monuments. To the left we have Mont Saint Michel. To the right, observe disaster. Diagonally, at a point close to the interesting fourteenth-century Norman church, which unfortunately was hit in an air raid, notice the ditch into which Papa rolled when the machine gun hit him. He was a firm believer in the Geneva Convention, Papa, who should have been wiser about conventions.

Regard Mama’s boy at the wheel. The car is smart, though inexpensive, and is used extensively by photographers who wish to make pictures of people on holiday. In a pinch, it is suitable for funerals, if the funerals have taken place long enough ago in the past. The expression on the face of Mama’s boy is also smart, although, unlike the automobile, it did not come cheaply.

Lucy opened her eyes. “Are we nearly there?” she asked.

“Another two hours,” Tony said. “Go back to sleep.”

Lucy smiled tentatively, half-awake, then closed her eyes again. Tony glanced across at her again momentarily, then stared once more at the road. It was narrow and humped in the middle and its surface had been roughly repaired many times and the car jolted as it hit the filled-in places. There was a smell of tar, melting stickily at the road edges in the sun.

How easy it would be, Tony thought, squinting at the heat waves rising from the middle distance, to speed up just a little more and, with one turn of the wheel, slam off the road into a tree. How easy. How definite.

He grinned, thinking of his mother sleeping trustingly at his side. That would teach her, he thought, not to pick up rides with strange men. He stared at the heat waves, shimmering and oily on each small rise of the road, disappearing like mist as the car rushed on.

The grave waits, he thought. The scene of the death is two hours away by small, open car. This is the spot on which my father was killed … But is it, really? Or was he killed long before he reached the crossroads, on another continent, except that the deed was done quietly and none of the participants, including the victim, admitted to it until a long time later? It isn’t as simple as it seems, Tony thought, to fix the point in time and space in which a father dies.

His eyes on the road ahead of him, Tony thought of the last time he saw his father.

He was twenty years old and it was in New York, and the evening started at a bar near Madison Avenue, and his father was standing with a glass in his hand, looking fit and soldierly in his uniform, with the ribbon from the First World War on it.

It was about seven o’clock and the room was full, with many uniforms and well-dressed women with fur coats who looked as though they were pleased there was a war on. It was cold and rainy outside and people came in rubbing their hands, hurrying a little, showing how happy they were to be in a warm place, with a war on and a drink coming up. There was a pianist in a corner, playing songs from Oklahoma. Pore Jud is daid, he played, singing it softly.

Oliver had called Tony at the dormitory about an hour before, sounding jovial and a little mysterious, saying, “Tony, you better drop everything and come and have dinner with your old man. It may be the last chance you get.”

Tony hadn’t known that his father was anywhere near New York. The last he’d heard Oliver had been down South somewhere. After he had received his commission in Intelligence, because the only thing he’d been offered in the Air Force had been a desk in Washington, Oliver had wandered inconclusively around training camps for two years, appearing on leaves from time to time in New York, without warning, for a dinner or two, then disappearing once more to some new station. When he thought of it, Tony was sure that his father would never get out of the country, but would greet the armistice foolishly and uselessly in an officers’ club in the Carolinas or in a troop train heading slowly toward the Middle West.

They shook hands when Tony came in. Oliver put an excessive amount of force into his grip, as though almost automatically these days, in all situations, he felt that he had to prove that the uniform made him more youthful and potent than he looked. The Army had slimmed him down a bit and the belt of his tunic was flat across his stomach. His dark hair was shot with gray and cut short. From a distance, with his weatherbeaten face and the rough, sturdy hair and the flat-stomached tunic he looked almost like the drawings of senior officers that were filling the advertising sections of the magazines. He was not a senior officer however. He wore major’s leaves (he had had only one promotion since he had been commissioned) and when you came up close to him you saw that there were grayish puffs under his eyes, which were unhealthily yellowed, and which had the nervous searching expression of the man who is too vain to wear glasses, or is afraid to admit to his superiors that his eyes are not as sharp as they should be. His face, too, which at a distance seemed healthily conditioned-down, was, when examined closely, more haggard than muscular, and there was a hidden muddy tone of fatigue under the skin.

He smiled widely as he shook Tony’s hand. “Well,” he said. “It’s good to see you. What’re you drinking?”

Tony would have preferred to decline, since he didn’t like to drink. But he thought, I’m not in uniform, the least I can do is drink for him. He looked at his father’s glass. “What’re you having?” he asked.

“Bourbon. Good old Kentucky Bourbon,” Oliver said. “Stocking up.”

“Bourbon,” Tony said to the bartender.

“The best in the house,” Oliver said. He waved jovially and vaguely to the bartender and Tony wondered how long he had been drinking.

“Yes, sir,” said the bartender.

“You look fine, Son,” Oliver said. “Just fine.”

“I’m all right,” Tony said, wincing a little at the “Son.” Until Oliver had gone into the Army, he had always called him by his name. Tony wondered what obscure military motivation had effected the change.

“A little thin,” Oliver was saying judiciously, “a little pale. You don’t look as though you’re getting any exercise.”

“I feel all right,” Tony said defensively.

“You’d be surprised,” Oliver said, “how many boys are rejected every day. Young boys. You’d think they’d be in A-number-one condition. The widest variety of ailments. City living,” Oliver said. “The soft life. White bread. No manual labor.”

“I could be built like Joe Louis,” Tony said mildly, wanting to get off the subject, “and they’d still reject me.”

“Of course, of course,” Oliver said hastily. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking generally. I wasn’t talking about particular cases. The results of accidents. Things like that.” He was embarrassed and Tony was relieved when the bartender put his glass down in front of him on the bar and they could move off the subject. Tony lifted his glass.

“To victory,” Oliver said solemnly.

Tony would have liked it better if his father had picked something else to drink to, but he clinked glasses, feeling a little melodramatic in the softly lit bar, in the civilian suit, with the pretty women in furs and the man at the piano.

“I heard about a steak place,” Oliver said. “On Third Avenue. A little on the black-market side.” He grinned. “But what the hell! Nothing’s too good for the troops. Where I’m going there’ll be damn few steaks.”

“Are you going overseas?” Tony asked.

Oliver looked around slyly. “I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no.” He clapped Tony’s shoulder and laughed. “Anyway, I can give you a hint. Take a good long look at your old man. You won’t see him again for a long, long time.”

He wasn’t like this, Tony thought wearily. No matter how young I was, I couldn’t have been that wrong.

“Maybe it’ll be over soon,” Tony said.

“Don’t you kid yourself, Son,” Oliver said. His voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned closer to Tony. His breath had an afternoon’s whisky on it. “This is a long, long job, Son. If you’d seen what I’ve seen. If you’d heard some of the things …” He shook his head portentously with morbid proprietary satisfaction for his inside information about the duration and future miseries of the war. “Bartender,” he said. “Two more.”

“One, please,” Tony said to the bartender. “I’ll string along with this for a while.”

“When I was in college,” Oliver said, “we only refused a drink when we dropped below the level of the bar.”

“I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

“Sure. Sure.” Oliver nervously wiped his mouth with his hand, suddenly conscious of his breath. “I was only kidding. I’m glad to see you’re serious. I mean that. It makes me feel that maybe, with all the mistakes, maybe I didn’t do too bad a job with you. Too many boys these days …” He wavered, because Tony had ducked his head and was playing with his glass. “What I mean is, too damned many boys these days … Well, all they think of is drinking and screwing and having a good time and the hell with the future.”

Every single damn time he sees me, Tony thought, he uses that word. If he does it once more, I’m getting out. I don’t care where he’s going.

“Not that I’m against it, you understand,” Oliver said, with the wide, vague, jovial movement of his arm. “Far from it. Does a boy good. In its place. Talk about wild oats.” He laughed and drained his drink as the bartender came up with the new one. “I was one of the leading wild-oat sowers of my time. You can imagine. A young lieutenant in France after the Armistice.” He shook his head and chuckled. Then he suddenly grew serious, as though at the back of his head, beyond the fumes of whisky, past the moment and the recent memory of barracks, a distant light was shining. “But I’ll say one thing for myself. Most men—they sow their wild oats when they’re young and then, by God, they’re in the habit, and they’re pinching the nurse on their deathbed. Not me. I did it. I don’t deny it and I don’t say I’m ashamed of it. And I stopped.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. Once and for all.”

He peered down at his glass, holding it in both hands, his eyes reflective and serious and no longer clownish, his cheeks drawn and unmilitary.

The pianist had switched songs now. Many a new face will please my eye, he was singing softly, many a new …

“Your mother,” Oliver said, still playing with the glass with his roughened hands. “Have you heard from her?”

“No,” said Tony.

“She’s doing a big job, now, you know …”

“Is she?” Tony said politely, wishing Oliver would stop talking about her.

“In the laboratory at the hospital at Fort Dix,” Oliver said. “All sorts of blood tests and work on tropical fevers and things like that. When we got into the war she decided that it’d be a shame to let her training go to waste, and I agreed with her. She’d forgotten a lot and she had to work like the devil to get back to it, but she didn’t stint herself. She has six assistants working under her now. You’d be proud of her.”

“I’m sure,” Tony said.

“You know,” Oliver said, “we could call her and she could be here in two, three hours …”

“No,” said Tony.

“On a night like this,” Oliver said, without looking at his son. “I know it would please her.”

“Why don’t we go get those steaks?” Tony asked.

Oliver glanced at him and sipped at his drink. “I haven’t finished this yet,” he said. “There’s no hurry.” Then he looked at Tony again. “You’re a tough boy, aren’t you?” he said quietly. “You look like a squirt in a size-fourteen collar who doesn’t have to shave more than once a week, but you may turn out to be the tough one in the family.” He chuckled a little. “Well,” he said, “there ought to be one in every family. By the way, did I tell you I ran into Jeff the last time I was in New York?”

“No,” Tony said.

“Lieutenant in the Navy,” said Oliver. “Just in from Guadalcanal or Philippeville or some place like that and very salty. I saw him in a bar and after a while I said what the hell and we sat down and had a drink together. He asked how your eyes were.”

“Did he?” Oh, God, Tony thought, this evening is going to be the worst. The very worst.

“Yes. He turned out very well, I thought. Calmed down a bit. We decided to let bygones be bygones. Shook hands on it. After all, it was a long time ago, and we’re all in the same war together.”

“Except me,” Tony said. “Come on, Father, I think we ought to eat.”

“Sure. Sure.” Oliver took out a wallet and put a five-dollar bill on the bar. “Bygones,” he said vaguely. He flattened the bill out carefully. “A long time ago.” He laughed. “Who remembers it? Ten countries have fallen since then. All right. All right.” He put a hand restrainingly on Tony’s arm. “I have to wait for my change, don’t I?”

But before they could leave, two second lieutenants came in with their girls and it turned out that they had been with a headquarters that Oliver had been attached to in Virginia, and they were good boys, according to Oliver, the best damn boys you could hope to find, and they had to have a drink, and then another, because they were the best damn boys you could hope to find, and everybody was moving off mysteriously to secret destinations, and then they remembered Swanny, who had transferred to Armor and who, somebody said, had been reported missing in Sicily, and they had to have another drink to Swanny because somebody said he was missing in Sicily and by that time one of the girls was looking directly and provocatively at Tony and putting her hands on him when she talked and was saying, “Look, a pretty civilian,” and Oliver, as usual, rushed in to tell about Tony’s eyes, and the heart murmur, and Tony, who had been forced to have another drink in the flood of martial comradeship, and who was feeling it, said, “I’m going to have a sign painted and hang it on my chest. ‘Do not scorn this poor Four F,’ the sign is going to read. ‘He has patriotically volunteered his father on all invasions.’” Everyone laughed, although Oliver did not laugh heartily, and a moment later Oliver said, “Well, I promised the boy a steak,” and he put down another five-dollar bill and they left.

The steak restaurant was crowded and they had to wait at the bar and Oliver had another drink and his eyes were beginning to have a dense, opaque shine to them, but he didn’t say anything, aside from muttering once, staring at the diners, “Goddamn black-marketeers.”

Before they were seated, a girl whom Tony had taken out several times came in with an Air Force Sergeant who wore glasses. Her name was Elizabeth Bartlett and she was very pretty and she couldn’t have been more than eighteen and her parents lived in St. Louis and she was working at something that was not arduous or time-consuming in New York and she was making the most of the war. Each time Tony had gone out with her he had left her, exhausted, with the sun coming up over the rooftops, because part of living through a war for Elizabeth consisted of staying up all night four or five times a week. The Sergeant was no longer young and had the lugubrious air of a man who had done very well before the Army and who suffered keenly every time he looked down and saw the stripes on his sleeve.

Tony had to introduce Elizabeth to Oliver, and she said, throatily, “Major Crown,” when she shook his hand. Then she introduced the Sergeant, who said, “Hi,” indicating that he was off duty. Oliver insisted upon buying them a round of drinks and said, “You’re a damn pretty girl,” in a fatherly way to Elizabeth, and, “I don’t mind admitting, Sergeant, that it’s the sergeants who keep this man’s army going,” to the Sergeant.

The Sergeant did not react warmly to this. “I think it’s idiocy,” he said, “that keeps this man’s army going, Major.”

Oliver laughed democratically and Elizabeth said, “He was an industrial chemist and he’s peeved that they put him in the Air Force.”

“I hate airplanes,” the Sergeant said. He looked bleakly around the restaurant. “We’ll never get a table,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“I’ve been thinking about steak all day,” Elizabeth said.

“Okay.” The Sergeant nodded gloomily. “If you’ve been thinking about steak all day.”

Then the headwaiter came over and told Oliver that there was a table ready for him in the corner and Oliver invited the Sergeant and Elizabeth to join them, which made the Sergeant look unhappier than ever. But it turned out that the table was too small and it was impossible to squeeze four people around it. Oliver and Tony, carrying their drinks, left the couple at the bar, and Tony heard Elizabeth saying, “My God, Sidney, you are a pill.”

Tony, as he sat down, was sorry they hadn’t joined his father and himself. He was not particularly interested in either Elizabeth or the Sergeant, although Elizabeth had her uses, but he didn’t want to be alone with his father for a whole evening. For so many years now he had sat through these random, uncomfortable dinners with Oliver, in hotel dining rooms in the country towns where Tony had gone to school, in roadside restaurants during vacations when Oliver had dutifully toured the national parks with him when he was a boy, here in the city when Oliver had had his leaves. Sometimes it was worse than others, especially when Oliver was drinking, but there wasn’t a single dinner that Tony remembered with pleasure. And Oliver was certainly drinking now. He insisted upon continuing through the meal with whisky. “I understand Churchill does it,” he said, when Tony suggested wine. “What’s good enough for Churchill is good enough for me.” And he’d looked at Tony proudly and fiercely, linked momentarily with greatness.

There was something strange about Oliver’s drinking this night. He was not a drunkard, and even on the other occasions when he’d had one or two too many, it had seemed almost accidental. But tonight he went at his glass with purposeful intensity, as though there was something to be done before the evening was over that could only be achieved after a certain excessive intake of alcohol. Tony, who had returned to water, watched him warily, hoping to be able to get away before Oliver collapsed completely. Deuteronomy, he remembered, enjoined fathers not to show themselves naked before their sons, but that was before the invention of Bourbon.

His father ate noisily, taking bites that were too large for him, eating fast.

“Best steak in the city,” he said. “They smear it with olive oil. Italians. Don’t believe what you hear about the Italians. Damn good boys.” He spilled some salad on his uniform and brushed it off carelessly with his hand, leaving an oily stain. When he was a boy, when he still lived at home, Tony remembered, he had resented his father’s insistence on fastidiousness at the table.

Oliver ate in silence for a while, nodding with approval over the steak, eating with compulsive rapidity, emptying half a glass of whisky at a time, mixing the food and drink in his mouth. He chewed strongly, his jaw making a small, regular clicking sound. Suddenly, he put his fork down. “Stop looking at me,” he said harshly. “I’ll be goddamned if I’ll have anybody looking at me that way.”

“I wasn’t looking at you,” Tony said, flustered.

“Don’t kid me,” Oliver said. “You want to disapprove of me, do it some other time. Not tonight. Understand?”

“Yes, Father,” Tony said.

“The low, slavering beast,” Oliver said obscurely, “munching on his bloody bones.” He glowered at Tony for a moment, then put out his hand and touched him, gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m feeling funny tonight. Don’t pay it any attention. The last night …” He stopped inconclusively. “Some time,” he said, “it might be a good idea if you wrote me a full report. ‘My Impressions of Father.’” He smiled. “‘Father Drunk, Sober and Mistaken.’ Something like that. Leaving out nothing. Might do us both a lot of good. Might get that strangled look off your face the next time you see me. Christ, you’re an unhappy-looking boy. Even if you had good eyes, the Army’d probably turn you down on grounds of morale. You’d infect a whole regiment with melancholy. What is it? What is it? Ah, don’t tell me. Who wants to know?” He looked around the room vaguely. “We should have gone to a musical comedy tonight. Leave the country singing and dancing. Only all the goddamn tickets’re sold out. You got anything to say?”

“No,” Tony said, hoping the people at the next table weren’t listening.

“Never anything to say,” Oliver said. “Made a big speech at the age of thirteen that astounded his listeners with its brilliance and maturity, then shut his mouth for the rest of his life. That girl is smiling at you with all two eyes …”

“What?” Tony asked, confused.

Oliver gestured obviously toward the door. “The Sergeant’s girl,” he said. “She’s on her way to the latrine and she’s signaling to you like a sailor on a mast.”

Elizabeth was standing at the door and she was smiling and gesturing to Tony with her finger. The room was L-shaped and the Sergeant was seated around the bend of the L and couldn’t see her. He was slouched in his chair, morosely eating a breadstick.

“Excuse me,” Tony said, glad of an excuse to get away from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t hurry on my account,” Oliver said as Tony stood up. “We don’t sail until the wind changes.”

Tony crossed the room to Elizabeth. She chuckled as he came up to her and pulled him out into a little vestibule. “Are you prepared to be wicked?” she said.

“What about the Sergeant?” Tony asked.

“The Sergeant has bedcheck at eleven,” Elizabeth said carelessly. “Can you get away from Papa?”

“If it kills me,” Tony said grimly.

Elizabeth chuckled again. “They’re a riot,” she said. “Fathers.”

“A riot,” Tony agreed.

“He’s pretty cute, though,” said Elizabeth. “In his soldier suit.”

“That’s the word,” said Tony.

“The Village?” Elizabeth asked.

“Okay.”

“I’ll be at the bar in Number One at eleven-fifteen,” she said. “We’ll celebrate.”

“What’ll we celebrate?”

“We’ll celebrate that we’re both civilians,” Elizabeth said. She smiled and pushed him back, out of the vestibule. “Go ahead back to Papa.”

Tony went back to the table, feeling better. At least the whole evening wouldn’t be wasted.

“What time’re you meeting her?” Oliver said as he sat down.

“Tomorrow,” Tony said.

“Don’t mislead the troops,” said Oliver. He smiled mirthlessly and stared at the door through which Elizabeth had disappeared. “How old is she? Twenty?”

“Eighteen.”

“They begin earlier and earlier, don’t they?” said Oliver. “Poor sod of a Sergeant.” Oliver looked over at the Sergeant, safely behind the bend of the wall, and chuckled, without pity. “Paying five bucks a steak and losing his girl at the toilet door to the pretty young man.” Oliver leaned back in his chair and studied his son gravely, while Tony kept his mind on eleven-fifteen that night. “It’s pretty easy for you, isn’t it?” Oliver said. “I’ll bet they heave themselves at you.”

“Please, Father,” Tony said.

“Don’t be ungrateful,” Oliver said, though without heat. “Maybe the best thing in the world is to be handsome. You’re halfway up the hill to begin with. It’s unfair, but it’s not your fault, and you ought to make the most of it. I wasn’t a bad-looking young man, myself, but I didn’t have that thing. Women could constrain themselves in my presence. When you’re older, write me about it. I’ve always wanted to know what it would be like.”

“You’re drunk,” Tony said.

“Of course.” Oliver nodded agreeably. “Although it isn’t a polite thing to say to a father on his way to the wars. When I was a young man fathers were never drunk. That was before Prohibition, of course. A different world. Yes,” he said, “you’ve got what your mother has …”

“Please, Father, cut it out,” Tony said. “Have some coffee.”

“She was a beautiful woman,” Oliver said oratorically, using the past tense as though he were speaking of someone he had known fifty years before. “She couldn’t come into a room without having every head turn her way. She had a modest, apologetic way of walking into a room. It came about because she was frightened, she was trying to make as little impression as possible, but it had a funny result. Provocative. Frightened … That’s a funny thing to say about your mother, isn’t it?” He stared at Tony. “Isn’t it?” he asked, challengingly.

“I don’t know.”

“Frightened. For many years. For long, long years …” Oliver was almost chanting now and by this time the people on both sides of their table were hushing and listening to him. “Long, long years. I used to make fun of her for it. I kept telling her how beautiful she was because I wanted to give her confidence in herself. I thought I had so much myself that I could spare some, without feeling it. Confidence … Nobody has to give you any. You have it, and I’m happy for your sake. You have it and you know how you got it?” He leaned forward belligerently. “Because you hate everybody. That’s pretty good,” he said, “that’s pretty lucky—at the age of twenty to be able to hate everybody. You’ll go a long way. If they don’t bomb New York.” He looked around him fiercely and the people at the other table, who had been listening, suddenly began to talk loudly among themselves. “Wouldn’t that be a laugh,” he said. “All these fat ones sitting here, saying, ‘I’ll have it rare,’ and all of a sudden hearing the whistle and looking up and seeing the ceiling fall in on them. God, I’d like to be here to see that.” He pushed his plate away from him. “Do you want some cheese?”

“No.”

“I do,” Oliver said. “I want every damn thing I can get.” He waved to the waiter, but he wouldn’t order coffee. He insisted upon another glass of whisky.

“Father …” Tony protested. “Go easy.”

Oliver gestured at him with good-humored impatience. “Quiet, quiet,” he said. “I’ve simplified my tastes. All that crap about cocktails before dinner, two kinds of wine, brandy later … We live in a state of emergency. Streamlining is the order of the day. Even the Army’s done it. The streamlined division. Triangular. Eliminated the brigade, just the way I’ve eliminated wines and liqueurs. Great step toward winning the war. Don’t look disapproving. There are two or three things I intend to tell you before disappearing, and that’s one of them. Don’t look disapproving. It’s … it’s platitudinous.” A look of satisfaction spread over his face because he had thought of the word. “You’re too smart for stuff like that. The attempt should be in the direction of originality. Love your father. Where could you find something more original than that in this day and age? You’d be the talk of the academic world. A new phenomenon in psychological studies. Biggest thing since Vienna. The Cordelia complex.” He chuckled, pleased with his wit.

Tony sat there dully, looking at the tablecloth, wondering when the wild, unexpected monologue would end, yearning suddenly for all the old, stiff, silence-studded meetings of other years, when his father had always been so polite, awkwardly restrained, painfully searching for subjects to talk about with Tony in the two or three hours a month that they spent together.

“My father, for example,” Oliver said expansively, “killed himself. That was the year you were born. He walked into the sea at Watch Hill and just went and drowned himself. That was a hell of a fashionable place to commit suicide in those days, except, of course, nobody mentioned the word suicide, what they said was he had a cramp. Maybe he caught me looking at him that morning and he said, ‘That does it—this is the day for it.’ We never found the body. Rolling somewhere to this day in the Gulf Stream, maybe. The insurance was respectable. It was a windy day and there was a big sea. My father was always very careful of appearances. It’s a family characteristic and I can see it’s come down to you. Have you any theories on why your grandfather drowned himself at Watch Hill in 1924?”

Tony sighed. “Father, I have to get up early tomorrow and you’ve probably got a big day ahead of you … Why don’t we get through here and go home?”

“Home,” Oliver said. “My home is Room 934 in the Shelton Hotel on Lexington Avenue, but I’ll go there if you come with me.”

“I’ll take you in a taxi,” Tony said, “and drop you.”

“Oh, no.” Oliver put his finger slyly along his nose. “None of that. I’m not buying any of that. I have a lot of things to talk to you about, young man. I may be gone thirty years and we have to plan out the plan. Ulysses’ final instructions to Tele—Telemachus. Be good to your mother and keep a running count of the guests.” He grinned. “See—I’m just a simple soldier—but there are still relics of a former and more gracious life, before the Hotel Shelton.”

Tony looked at his watch. It was a quarter past ten already. He looked across at Elizabeth. She and the Sergeant were at their coffee already.

“Don’t worry,” Oliver said. “She’ll wait. Come on.” He stood up. The chair teetered behind him, but he didn’t notice it, and finally, it settled back without falling. Elizabeth smiled at them as they went out, after Oliver paid the check, and Tony tried to make his face express his resolution to get down to the Number One Bar as close to eleven-fifteen as possible.

When they stepped out of the elevator on the ninth floor, Tony opened the steel door, because Oliver couldn’t get the key into the lock, and put on the light in his father’s room. The room was a small one, littered with gear, a Valpack sprawled open on the floor, a greenish raincoat on the bed, a pile of laundered khaki shirts in a rumpled pile on the dresser, some newspapers on the desk, hastily flipped together by a maid.

“Home,” Oliver said. “Make yourself comfortable.” Without taking off his cap or trenchcoat he went over to the dresser and opened a drawer and brought out a bottle of whisky. “This is an amazing hotel,” he said, holding the bottle up to see how much was left. “The maids don’t drink.”

He went into the bathroom and Tony heard him humming Pore Jud is daid while he ran some water into a glass. Tony went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The room was on a court and on all sides blind windows looked back at him. The sky was an indeterminate black distance above him.

Oliver came back cuddling his glass and poured some whisky in it. Then, still in his cap and coat, he sank into the one easy chair.

He sat there, slumped deep in the chair, sunk in his rumpled trenchcoat, with his cap back on his head, holding his glass in his two hands, looking like an aging soldier just returned from a defeat, caught for a moment in an escapable posture of exhaustion and despair. “Ah, God,” he said. “Ah, God.”

Outside the door, down the hotel corridor, the elevator shafts howled softly, ominous and jittery in the metropolitan night.

“A son,” Oliver said, mumbling. “Why does a man have sons? Ordinarily, you don’t ask yourself a question like that. If you lead an ordinary life, if you sit down to dinner with him every night, if you crack him across the ears once in a while because he’s annoying you, you take it for granted. What the hell, everybody has sons. But if the whole thing is torn apart, ruptured, departed”—he drawled out the verbs of division and farewell with mournful pleasure—“that’s another story. Another story.” Oliver sipped at his drink, deep in the chair, mumbling. “You ask yourself—why did I do it? What was in it for me? You want to hear? You want to know what I decided?”

Tony turned away from the window and moved soothingly over toward the chair and stood in front of his father. “Do you want me to help you get ready for bed?” he asked.

“I don’t want to get ready for bed,” Oliver said. “I want to tell you about sons. Who knows—one day you might have some of your own and you might be curious on your own hook. You have a son to renew your optimism. You reach a certain age, say, twenty-five, thirty, it varies with your intelligence, and you begin to say, ‘Oh, Christ, this is for nothing.’ You begin to realize it’s just more of the same, only getting worse every day. If you’re religious, I suppose you say to yourself, ‘The goal is death. Hallelujah, I hear them tuning the golden harps, my soul is in training for glory.’ But if you’re not religious—if you say, ‘That’s more of the same, only it includes Sunday,’ what have you got? A bankbook, unpaid bills, the cooling of the blood, what have we got for dinner, who’s coming to dinner—Last week’s menu, last year’s guests. Take a train full of commuters on their way home at six o’clock any evening in the week and you’ll have enough boredom collected in one place to blow a large-sized town off the face of the map. Boredom. The beginning and end of pessimism. And that’s where a child comes in. A little boy doesn’t know anything about pessimism. You watch him and listen to him and he’s in a fury every minute he breathes. He’s in a fury of growing, feeling, learning. There’s something in him that tells him it’s worthwhile to get bigger, to learn to communicate, to learn to eat with a spoon, to learn to go to the toilet, to learn to read, fight, love … He’s on that big wave, pushing him ahead—anyway he thinks it’s ahead—and it never occurs to him to look back and ask, ‘Who’s pushing me? Where am I going?’ You look at your son and you see that there is something in the human race that automatically believes in the value of being alive. If you had a father who walked into the waves at Watch Hill, that can be a damned important consideration. When you were three years old I used to watch you sitting on the floor trying to learn how to put on your own shoes and socks, working hard, and I would roar with senseless laughter. And while I was sitting in your room, among the toys, laughing like a farmer at the circus, I was on the wave with you, I leached away some of the optimism for my own uses. I was grateful to you and I treasured you. Now …” Oliver sipped his drink and grinned cunningly at Tony over the rim of the glass. “Now I don’t treasure you at all. More of the same. A young man with a grudge who reminds me of myself when I was younger, who reminds me of a pretty woman I happened to marry, who reminds me we screwed up the whole works …”

“Father,” Tony said painfully, “there’s no need for all this.”

“Sure,” Oliver said, mumbling into his glass. “Sure there’s a need. Last will and testament. On the way to the wars. The wars help, too. You can’t have a son, have a war. That’s another wave. No time to look back and say who’s pushing me, where am I going. An illusion of purpose, of accomplishment. Take a town. Don’t ask what town. Don’t ask who’s in it. Don’t ask what they’re going to do after you’ve passed through. Don’t ask if it had to be taken. Just hope the war lasts long enough and the supply of towns holds out and that you don’t come back …”

“You wouldn’t talk like that if you weren’t drunk,” Tony said.

“No? Maybe not.” Oliver chuckled. “That’s a good reason for being drunk. You don’t remember, because you were too young, but I used to have a high opinion of myself. I thought I was God’s own combination of intelligence, honor, industry and wit. Ask me anything in those days, and I’d come up with the answer, quick as the Pope or an electric brain. I was solid as the Republic and none of the wires was crossed and certainty was my middle name. I was certain about work and marriage and loyalty and the education of children and I didn’t care who knew it. I stared out at the world with a clear and lunatic eye. I was the product of a solid family and a suicide father. I had prosperity behind me and a good college and a proper tailor and lightning couldn’t crack me if it hit me between the eyes on the Fourth of July. And then, in fifteen minutes in a little stinking summer resort beside a lake, the whole thing collapsed. I made the wrong decision, of course. But maybe the only right decision was to take you and hang you by the heels and drown you in the lake, and of course my social position wouldn’t permit that. Abraham and Isaac would never go down in Vermont no matter what angels were on the premises. What happened, of course, was that I turned the knife on myself, although I’m sure you have a different opinion. What the hell,” he said belligerently. “How bad was it for you? You left home a little earlier than usual and you were lonely on a couple of holidays, that’s all.”

“Sure,” Tony said, bitter now and remembering the seven years. “That’s all.”

“As for me,” Oliver said, ignoring his son, “I merely turned up dead. Later on, when I looked back on it, knowing I was guilty, I said it was sensuality that did it. And maybe it was. Only after a little while there wasn’t any sensuality left. Of course, we pretended, because when you’re married there’s a certain obligation to politeness in that department, but by that time there were too many other things in the way, and finally we just about dropped the whole thing.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Why not? You’re twenty years old,” Oliver said. “I hear you have a rising career as a collegiate stud. I’m not raping any virgin ears. Know Thy Father and Thy Mother. If you can’t honor them, at least know them. It’s not the next best thing, but it’s a thing. The war has made me virile again. I had an affair with a waitress in the town of Columbus, North Carolina. I outlasted a warrant officer and two captains from the Adjutant-General’s office on the crucial week-end. It was a hot week-end and all the girls were going around without stockings. If I were a Catholic, I would seriously think of taking orders. You are my priest,” he said, “and my favorite confessional box is located on the ninth floor of the Hotel Shelton.”

“I’m going,” Tony said, moving toward the door. “Take care of yourself and let me know where I can write you and …”

“For absolution,” Oliver said. “Three slugs of Bourbon. Where’s the bottle?” He asked peevishly. “Where’s the goddamn bottle?” He felt around on the floor next to the chair and found the bottle and poured himself a third of a tumbler full of whisky. He put the bottle down again and, closing one eye, like a marksman, flipped the cork across the room into the wastebasket. “Two points,” he said, with satisfaction. “Did you know that I was an athlete in my youth? I could run all day and I was deft around first base, although the best first basemen are all left-handed. I also hit a long ball, although not often enough to make it finally worthwhile. I also had leanings toward being a military hero, because a great-uncle was killed in the Wilderness, but the First World War cured me of that. I spent all my six months in France in Bordeaux and the only time I heard a shot fired in anger was when an MP fired at two Senegalese who were breaking the window of a wineshop on the Place Gambetta. Don’t go yet,” he pleaded. “Some day a son of yours might ask you, ‘What are the great moments in the family history?’ and you’ll be sick at heart that you didn’t stay another five minutes and soak in the old traditions. On our shield are the three Great Words—Suicide, Failure and Adultery, and I challenge any red-blooded American family to do better.”

“You’re raving now,” Tony said, not moving from the door. “You’re not making any sense.”

“That’s a court-martial offense, Son,” Oliver said gravely, from his chair. “Charity begins at the Hotel Shelton.”

Tony opened the door.

“Don’t,” Oliver cried. He struggled out of the chair, rocking a little, carefully holding his glass. “I have something for you. Close the door. Just five more minutes.” His face worked painfully. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a hard day. Close the door. I won’t drink any more. See …” He put the glass shakily on the dresser. “The ultimate sacrifice. Come on, Tony,” he coaxed, his head lolling. “Close the door. Don’t leave me alone yet. I’m getting the hell out of the country tomorrow and you’ll be free of me for God knows how long. You can spare five more minutes. Please, Tony, I don’t want to be alone just yet.”

Reluctantly, Tony closed the door. He came back into the room and sat stiffly on the bed.

“That’s it,” Oliver said. “That’s the boy. The truth is I drank today for your sake. Don’t laugh. You know me—I’m not a drinking man. It’s just that there’re so many things I wanted to tell you—and I haven’t been able to communicate with you for so long … Those goddamn dinners …” He shook his head. “First of all, I want to apologize.”

“Oh, Christ.” Tony put his head in his hands. “Not now.”

Oliver stood over him, wavering a little. “We sacrificed you. I admit it. The reasons looked good at the time. How did we know they wouldn’t hold up? If what you’re looking for is revenge, look at me and you’ve got it.”

“I don’t want anything,” Tony said. “I’m not interested in revenge.”

“Do you mean that?” Oliver asked eagerly.

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Son.” Suddenly Oliver reached over and took Tony’s hand with both of his and shook it crazily. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Is that all you wanted to say?” Tony lifted his head and looked up at his father, standing, half-bent, unsteady and bleary-eyed, above him.

“No, no.” Oliver dropped his hands and spoke hastily, as though he were afraid that if he stopped talking for one moment he would be left alone in the room. “I told you I have something for you.” He went over to the open Valpack and got down, with a thump, on his knees in front of it and began rummaging in the interior. “I’ve been meaning to give this to you for a long time. I was afraid the proper occasion might not come up and … Here it is …” He pulled out a little package wrapped in tissue paper, with a rubber band around it. Still on his knees, he tore clumsily at the paper. He dropped the paper, now in shreds, on the floor and held up an old-fashioned gold watch. “My father’s watch,” he said. “Solid gold. I’ve always carried it for luck, although really I prefer a wristwatch. He gave it to me two weeks before he died. Solid gold,” Oliver said, squinting at it in the lamplight and turning it over slowly and shakily. “An old Waltham. It’s over forty years old, but it keeps perfect time.” He stood up and came back to Tony, still admiring the watch. “You don’t have to wear it, of course, it’s terribly out of date, but you could keep it on your desk, something like that …” He held it out, but Tony didn’t take it.

“Why don’t you hang onto it?” Tony said, with a twinge of superstition. “If it’s brought you luck.”

“Luck.” Oliver grinned painfully. “You keep it for me. Maybe the luck’ll work better that way. Please.”

Tony put his hand out slowly and Oliver dropped the watch into his palm. The watch was surprisingly heavy. It was thick and the gold of the case was elaborately chased and the face was yellowed a little and marked with thin, old-fashioned Roman numerals. Tony looked at it and noticed that it was after eleven. Damn it, he thought, I’m going to miss Elizabeth. She’ll never wait.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll give it to my son, when the time comes.”

Oliver smiled anxiously. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the idea.”

Tony put the watch in his side pocket and stood up. “Well …” he began.

“Don’t go yet,” Oliver said. “Not yet. There’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?” Tony tried to keep his impatience with his father, with the evening, with the sad and littered little room, out of his voice.

“Wait. Just wait.” Oliver made a wide, mysterious gesture with his hand and went over to the telephone. He sat down on the bed, still in his cap and trenchcoat, and picked up the phone. He clicked the instrument impatiently. “I want Orange 7654,” he said. “That’s in New Jersey.”

“Whom’re you calling?” Tony asked suspiciously.

“That’s right,” Oliver said, into the phone. “Orange.” He turned to Tony, holding the instrument to his ear. “You knew we moved to New Jersey a few years ago?”

“Yes,” Tony said.

“Of course. You were there. Happy Thanksgiving.” Oliver grinned painfully. “It turned out it wasn’t really practical to live in Hartford any more,” Oliver said. “And in one way, it turned out very well. The plant was obsolete, anyway, and I had a chance to buy in New Jersey and we expanded enormously. The move made a rich man out of me.” He laughed. “The romance of business,” he said vaguely. “I could even afford to be a patriot and join up when my country called. Operator, operator!” he said impatiently into the phone.

“Whom’re you calling?” Tony asked.

“Your mother.” Oliver’s face was tight, almost as though he might cry; although it was probably only the whisky, and his eyes were full of pleading.

“Oh, come on now,” Tony said. “What’s the sense in that?”

“Just once,” Oliver said. “Just this last night. Just for the both of us to say hello to her, together. How much harm can that do—just to say hello?”

Tony hesitated, then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said wearily.

“That’s fine,” Oliver said happily. “That’s a sport.”

That’s a sport, Tony thought. The vocabulary of my father.

“Come over here.” Oliver waved to him vigorously. “You take the phone. You speak to her right off. Come on, come on.”

Tony walked over and took the phone and put it to his head. He heard the regular distant ringing sound in the receiver. His father was standing close to him, liquorish-smelling, breathing fast, as if he had just run a long distance. The phone rang and rang.

“She’s probably asleep,” Oliver said anxiously. “She hasn’t heard it yet.”

Tony didn’t say anything. He listened to the ringing.

“Maybe she’s taking a bath,” Oliver said. “Maybe the water’s running and she can’t hear it …”

“There’s no answer,” Tony said. He started to hang up, but Oliver grabbed the phone from him and put it to his own ear, as though he didn’t trust Tony.

They stood still, the thin, mechanical double sound surprisingly loud in the quiet room.

“I guess she went to a movie,” Oliver said, “or she’s playing bridge. She plays a lot of bridge. Or maybe she had to work late. She works very hard and …”

“Hang up,” Tony said, “she’s not home.”

“Just five more rings,” said Oliver.

They waited for the five more rings, then Oliver hung up. He stood staring at the phone on the shabby bed-table scarred with cigarette burns and the marks of wet glasses.

“Well, isn’t that too bad?” he said, very low, shaking his head, staring at the phone. “Isn’t that just too bad?”

“Good night, Father,” Tony said.

Oliver didn’t move. He stood looking at the phone, his face serious, reflective, not especially sad, but remote and thoughtful.

“I said good night, Father.”

Oliver looked up. “Oh, yes,” he said flatly. He put out his hand and Tony shook it. There was no force in his grip.

“Well …” Tony said uncomfortably, suddenly feeling the weight and embarrassment of saying good-bye to the wrong member of the family who was going to the war. “Good luck.”

“Sure. Sure, Son,” Oliver said. He smiled remotely. “It’s been a nice evening.”

Tony looked hard at him, but his father obviously had nothing further to say. It was as though he had exhausted all his interest in him. Tony crossed to the door and went out, leaving his father standing next to the telephone.

He took a cab down to Number One, hoping that Elizabeth hadn’t gone. She wasn’t at the bar when he went in and he decided to have one drink and wait fifteen minutes and then, if she hadn’t arrived, go home.

He ordered a whisky and idly put his hand in his pocket and felt the watch. He took it out and stared at it. It was like having 1900 in your hand. A fat man was standing in a spotlight next to the piano, singing a song called “I Love Life.”

Tony turned the watch over. It was almost dark at the bar, but if he held the watch down low on the bar a beam of light from a small lamp behind the bottles struck it. The lacily engraved gold gleamed in his hand. There was a little catch on one side of the watch and Tony flicked it and the back snapped open. There was a picture in it and Tony bent over to look at it. It was a photograph of his mother, taken when she was very young. Her hair was in a funny dowdy bun, but it didn’t matter, she was beautiful just the same, staring out of the aging photograph with wide, candid, rather shy and smiling eyes in the slanting, furtive light that the barman used to mix his drinks while the show was on at the piano.

Oh, God, Tony thought, what did he want to do this to me for?

He looked around for a place to throw the photograph, but at that moment he saw Elizabeth making her way among the tables toward the bar. He closed the watch and put it in his pocket, thinking, I’ll do it when I get home.

“Wicked, wicked,” Elizabeth whispered, chuckling, and squeezed his hand. “Is Papa safely in bed?”

“Yes,” Tony said. “Safe and sound.”