Lucy Crown

7

SHE LAY ON THE NARROW bed with his head on her breast, holding him lightly, watching him sleep. He had said, when she saw his eyelids drooping, “No, how could I sleep on a night like this?” Then he had sighed and moved his head gently against her breast, and had drifted off. He had a triumphant expression on his face, like a small boy who has accomplished something difficult and praiseworthy in the presence of his elders, and she smiled, seeing it, and touched his forehead with her fingertips.

He had also murmured, “Forever,” once, his lips against her throat, and she remembered it now and thought, How young you have to be to say forever.

He had been hesitant and uncertain in the very beginning, but after the first violent awkwardness, he had found, almost as if it had been locked always in him, needing only her touch to free it, a delicacy and gentleness that had moved Lucy profoundly and in a manner in which she had never been moved before.

Now, lying with the sleeping boy pressed against her, her limbs feeling light and powerful, Lucy thought calmly of the moment of passion as though it were already far in the past, something that had happened once, long ago, and would never happen again. They would make love from time to time, perhaps, but it would never again be like this.

The sign of Virgo, she remembered. In the region of the Euphrates, she remembered, almost hearing again Jeff’s youthful, playful voice, it was identified with Venus … Virgoans are shy and fear to be brilliant. Virgoans fear impurity and disorder and are liable to peptic ulcers.

She chuckled softly and the boy moved in her arms. A frown came over his face and he threw his head back on the pillow fearfully, as though he were trying to escape a blow. Lucy stroked his shoulder, which was dry and warm, and seemed still to be giving off the heat of the sun that had fallen on it during the day. The obscure look of terror slowly flowed out of his face and his lips relaxed and he slept steadily again.

The time, she thought. I ought to get up and see what time it is. It must be nearly dawn. But she lay there quietly, feeling somehow that even to be thinking about the hour was a form of betrayal of the boy beside her.

She had no desire to sleep. Sleep, she felt, would subtract from the completeness of the night. She wanted to lie there serenely, conscious of every sound—Jeff’s steady breathing, the peeping of young frogs at the lake’s edge, the call of an owl in the pine forest, the occasional rustle of the wind against the curtains of the bare room, the faraway resonance of an automobile horn on the highway leading to the mountains. She wanted to lie there conscious, above all, of herself. The thought struck her that she felt infinitely more valuable now at three o’clock in the morning than she had felt even so recently as ten the night before or at any other time in her life. Valuable. She smiled at the word.

Examining herself with the critical pleasure of a woman before a mirror, she realized that tonight she felt finally grown-up. She had the feeling that before this a great deal of her life had been devoted to those activities that a child might engage in if the child were anxious to pretend that she was an adult. And there had always been, too, the complementary anxiety that the masquerade would be discovered at any moment. She remembered her mother, dying at the age of sixty, and knowing she was dying, lying in her bed, yellowed and wasted, after a life of pain, trouble, poverty, disappointment, saying, “I can’t believe it. The hardest thing to believe is that I’m an old woman. Somehow, unless I catch sight of myself in a mirror, I still have the same feeling about myself that I had when I was sixteen years old. And even now, when the doctor comes in and pulls a long face, and I know he thinks I’m not going to last through the month, I want to tell him, ‘No, there’s been a misunderstanding. Dying is much too sophisticated for someone who feels sixteen years old.’”

Oliver had been no help, Lucy thought. Secure in his strength and forgiving and even approving of her timidity, he had made all decisions, protected her, kept his troubles to himself, only occasionally scolding her, and even then with a quick, fatherly indulgence, for such mistakes as the lost garage bill. At parties, she remembered, where he seemed always at home, where, at ease, ceremonious, never embarrassed, he was always the center of a group, he would suddenly sense that she was off somewhere in a corner, lost in the social flood, backed to the wall by a bore or desperately pretending to be studying the pictures on the walls or the books on the shelves while hoping that it would soon be time to leave. Then, he would break away from whomever he was talking to and come over to her, smiling and interested, and lead her skillfully back with him, into the middle of things.

She had recognized what he had done through the years and she had been grateful. Now, she thought, perhaps it was wrong to be grateful. Now, she thought, feeling that because what she had done that night was different from anything she had ever done before, everything that came after would also be different, now nobody has to protect me any more.

She wondered what Oliver would do if he found out. Probably, she thought, he would forgive her with the same mannerly, overpowering condescension with which he was no doubt forgiving her for the lost garage bill. Thinking this, she resented him in advance, then could not help being amused at herself for her contrariness.

She remembered a conversation that she and Oliver and Patterson had had about a woman they all knew, who was having an affair with a colonel on Governor’s Island. “That,” Sam had said, “is unpermissible adultery.”

“Wait a minute, Sam,” Oliver had said. “What’s your idea of permissible adultery?”

Sam had put that solemn, close-mouthed expression on his face that he used when he was preparing to say something clever, and had said, “Permissible adultery is when you enjoy it.”

Oliver had laughed heartily then. She wondered if he would laugh now. It had never occurred to her that he might be unfaithful to her just as she was sure that it had never occurred to him to doubt her. Maybe, she thought, that’s what has been missing in our marriage.

Still, there was no reason to make any changes. There was no need for Oliver to know anything. She was so practiced in innocence that now, when she was innocent no longer, the habit and impetus of the years would sustain her. Also, she had lied from time to time to Oliver, always successfully. The lies, certainly, had not been very grave, fibs about overdrafts at the bank, purposely misplaced invitations to parties she did not wish to attend, forgotten appointments. But great or small, they had always gone undiscovered, and Lucy had forgiven and justified them to herself as part of the necessary lubrication to keep their marriage going smoothly. Now, if the lie to be told was more serious in nature, she was confident she could bring it off unhesitatingly and with even greater justification. Tonight, she felt, with a delicious tingle of power, she was capable of handling anything.

It couldn’t be too difficult. After all, she thought, look at all the women who manage it. Mrs. Wales, with her discreet week-end in the mountains and the two or three afternoons a month in New York. Claudia Larkin, with her golf pro, and the pro giving lessons, besides, every Saturday afternoon to Bill Larkin. Edith Brown, who was one of the silliest women alive, but even so appearing serenely on all occasions with her husband, despite the fact that everyone but her husband was certain about her and a chemistry professor in New Haven.

One thing she was sure of, Lucy thought righteously. She would never expose Oliver to anything like that. Her reticence would be complete, and she would make certain, too, of Jeff’s discretion. Whatever happened, Oliver would lose nothing, tangible or intangible. If anything, she felt, although she was a little vague in her own mind about the reasoning that went into the reflection, she would make a better wife than ever to Oliver. Oh, she thought comfortably, it doesn’t pay to make too much out of this. Fifteen years are a long time. There probably isn’t a single marriage we know of that’s lasted half that long without some kind of excursion on somebody’s part …

As for Jeff … She looked down at the thick, dark youthful hair crushed against her breast. Forever, he had said. Well, she thought indulgently, time will take care of that.

She lay still, pleased with herself. I’ve never figured out anything as completely and intelligently as this, she thought. I’ve never been in such control.

And, she thought, luxuriating in a new-found delight in mischief, the next time a young man watches me all summer, I certainly will notice him.

Jeff stirred in her arms, tensed, trembled. His head moved spasmodically against her and his lips opened as though he were trying to scream. She kissed him on the cheek and woke him.

“What is it?” she whispered. “What’s the matter?”

He stared at her. For the moment he didn’t seem to know where he was or to recognize her. “What is it, Baby?” she repeated softly, holding him tighter.

Then he relaxed. “Nothing.” He smiled and moved and lay back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling. “I guess I was dreaming.”

“What about?”

He hesitated. “Nothing,” he said. He ran his fingers slowly through her hair. “Anyway, thanks for waking me.”

“What about?” she asked again, curiously.

“The war,” he said, looking up at the dark ceiling.

“What war?” Lucy asked, puzzled, because Jeff couldn’t have been more than two years old when the war ended.

“The war in which I’m going to be killed,” he said flatly.

“Oh, no,” she said. Is that what young men dream about these days? she thought. While I was lying here, congratulating myself.

“I keep having the same damned dream,” Jeff said. “It’s in a city I’ve never seen and the signs on the shop windows are in a language I can’t quite recognize, and I run and run along the street and I can’t tell where the bullets are coming from and they keep coming closer and closer and I know that if I don’t wake up fast they’re going to hit me …”

“That’s horrible,” said Lucy.

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” he said. “I always manage to wake up in time.” He smiled in the darkness.

Suddenly the whole night seemed changed for Lucy, touched by premonitions, clouded by dreams, and the boy on the pillow seemed strange to her and sorrowfully necessary. She bent over and kissed him. “You mustn’t dream any more,” she said, and then she made her first great claim on him. “It’s disloyal.”

He chuckled, and for a little while, at least, she felt that she had rescued him. “You’re right,” he said. “I shall refrain from dreaming.”

She sat up. “I must see what time it is,” she said. “Where’s your watch?”

“On the table,” he said, “near the window.”

She got out of bed, and walked barefooted across the cold wood floor through the diffuse light of the moon. She found the watch and held it close. It had a radium dial and she could see that it was nearly four o’clock.

“I must go,” she said, bending for her shoes.

He was sitting up in bed now, watching her.

“Not yet,” he said. “Not just yet.”

“I must,” she said.

“Do something for me,” he said.

“What?” She stood, waiting.

“Walk once more,” he said softly, “through the moonlight.”

She put her shoes down, without noise, stood still for a moment, then walked slowly, her body tall and naked and glistening palely, across the room.