Mothers and Daughters

Book Four Kate

Sixteen-year-old Kate Bridges was curled impossibly into a straw basket chair on the sun porch, the telephone against her ear, one long leg wound around the leg of the chair, the other draped over its arm, so that arms and legs of girl and chair bathed in sunlight gave an impression of straw-colored intertwined warmth. Her blond hair was clipped short, brushed back from an oval face with shining cheeks and shining nose, blue eyes studying the ceiling and then the floor, and then a speck of imaginary lint on the navy-blue cashmere, her free hand picking off a small twisted knot of wool and then dropping to the skin-tight jeans and stroking the faded blue. “Yes,” she said, “Agnes, I am not a total idiot, I can understand your problem.”

Bobby Bridges burst onto the sun porch in a spurt of nine-year-old energy, knocking the telephone book from its stand, nearly knocking the phone itself to the floor in his casual awkward growing way.

“I’m on the phone, Bobby,” Kate said.

“So?”

“I’m on the phone, would you mind?”

“I can see you’re on the phone,” Bobby said.

“Do you want me to call Mother?”

“Why? What am I doing?”

“You make me nervous, bumping into everything. Agnes, would you mind holding on a minute? I’ve got to deal with the vermin.” She put the receiver down in her lap and said, “I’ll give you three seconds to vanish, Bobby.”

“This is my house, too. What am I doing?”

“One,” Kate said.

“Are you going to town?”

“Two.”

“Because if you are, Mommy says you should pick up some model paint for me. Black and red, here’s fifty cents.”

Kate took the money. “All right, now disappear.”

“Who you talking to?”

“None of your business. Bobby, I’m going to call Mother in a minute. I mean it.”

“I only asked who you’re talking to. What is it, a big senator secret?”

“Now just what is that supposed to mean? I wish you wouldn’t use words you don’t understand.”

“Those pants are too tight. Daddy’s gonna take a fit.”

“He’s already seen them.” She picked up the phone. “Just a minute, Agnes.” She put down the phone again. “Bobby, this is important. Will you please get out of here?”

“Everything’s important,” Bobby said. He shrugged his shoulders. “I wish the Russians would drop a bomb on you.”

“If it drops on me, it’ll drop on you, too.”

“I’m impermanent,” Bobby said.

“Impervious,” Kate corrected.

“Tell Agnes she’s bowlegged and has a fat behind,” Bobby said, and he rushed out of the room. Kate rolled her eyes to the ceiling and picked up the phone.

“Who was that?” Agnes asked. “Your brother?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say about me? I heard my name.”

“Nothing. He’s beginning to notice girls, that’s all.”

“At eight years old?”

“He’s nine. Don’t underestimate him.”

“That still seems awfully young,” Agnes said. “Frankenstein didn’t enter prepuberty until at least eleven.”

“Do they get any better at eleven?”

“Worse.” Agnes paused. “Well, what should we do, Katie?”

“I think we should forget the whole thing.”

“That’s only because you don’t like Paul.”

“I like him very much. But if he wants me to go out with him, why doesn’t he call me? I don’t see why he has to go through Ralph, and why Ralph has to ask you to ask me.”

“He’s shy.”

“Oh-ho, he’s shy.”

“He is, Kate. Really, he is. He’s a very shy person.”

“Well, if he’s that shy, I’m not interested. What is this, the Miles Standish bit? He’s got to send someone to ask you to ask me to go out with him?”

“Well, you see, I want to go out with Ralph.”

“I understand that, Aggie. I wish you’d quit telling me you want to go out with him. I know you do. That’s understood. If you want to date him, then go ahead. I’ll sit home and knit.”

“But he won’t go out with me unless you date Paul.”

“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life!”

“Katie, it’s true. I know it.”

“You don’t know it, Ag. You’re only surmising. Did Ralph say so?”

“No, but...”

“All right, you just call Ralph back and tell him my number is Talmadge 4-0712, and if Paul wants to call me I’ll be here for the next five minutes, dressing, and I’ll be happy to hear whatever he has to say.”

“Ahhh, Kate.”

“Well now, really, put yourself in my position. It’s degrading, Ag. It really is.”

“Why? Ralph called, didn’t he?”

“Well, what’s the matter with Paul? Can’t he pick up a telephone?”

“I told you he’s shy.”

“That’s not what Mims said. Mims didn’t think he was so shy.”

“Why? What did he do?”

“Never mind.”

“He did, huh?”

“He’s not so shy, honey-babe, believe me.”

“Well, I’ll tell Ralph to tell him to call you. But I’ll bet he doesn’t. And I’ll bet I’ll be sitting home alone next Saturday night.”

“Aggie, I have to get dressed. Now excuse me, please.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“No, but I’m being picked up in ten minutes, and I don’t like to keep people waiting.”

“Oh?” Agnes said. “Anyone I know?”

“It’s only Mrs. Regan. Really, Agnes, stop being such a creep. I’ll call you later. If Paul wants to reach me, I’ll be here for the next ten minutes. Now goodbye.”

“Hey!”

“What?”

“What did your brother say about me?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, he said he’d love to get into a necking session with you, okay?”

“Bobby said that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kate said, and she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling again.

“Wow, he’s got problems,” Agnes said.

“Honey-babe, the world has problems. Even I’ve got problems. I’ll call you later.”

“Okay.”

“G’bye.”

“G’bye.”

Kate put down the phone, extricated herself from the chair and walked out of the sun porch, a tall, long-legged girl of sixteen with a lithe figure and a coltish walk, not awkward, but not graceful either, a walk that combined womanly polish with girlish directness and succeeded at neither, and yet a walk that was exuberant and alive, a propelling, bursting walk, energy jogging in each long-legged stride, in each compact tight-filled-jeans explosion of youthfulness.

“Mom!” she called.

There was no answer. She paused with her hand on the banister, impatience on her face, waiting.

“Mom!”

“What is it, Kate?” Amanda called from the back porch.

“What are you doing out there?”

“I wanted to see something,” Amanda said. “What is it?”

“Did Parsie iron my skirt?”

“I ironed your skirt,” Parsie shouted from the kitchen. “Whyn’t you ask me, Kate?”

“I didn’t know you were in the house.”

“Where would I be, if not in the house?”

“How do I know where you’d be?”

“Kate, don’t talk that way to Parsie!” Amanda called from outside.

“What way? Where’s the skirt, Parse?”

“Upstairs in your room, hanging in the closet, right where it’s supposed to be. If it had teeth, it’d bite you.”

“I haven’t been up there yet,” Kate said. “Why’s everyone jumping on me? Where’s Dad?”

“In the garage, washing your dog,” Parsie said. She came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, a big colored woman wearing a black skirt and a white blouse, and looking at Kate with disapproval.

“Beverly is everybody’s dog,” Kate answered. “Thanks for the skirt, Parse.”

“I ironed your blouse, too,” Parsie said.

“Oh, thanks, that’s great,” Kate said, and she started up the steps.

“Those pants’re too tight,” Parsie observed. “Your mother seen those pants?”

“Nope.”

“She ain’t gonna like those pants. They’re too tight.”

“I only wear them around the house,” Kate said, and ran up the steps and down the corridor to her room. She closed the door and pulled the sweater over her head, throwing it onto the bed. She unzipped the side of her jeans, took them off, and then stood before the mirror in bra and panties and suddenly shook herself wildly like a burlesque queen. “Zing-zong!” she said to the mirror, laughed, went to the closet humming, took the tweed skirt from its hanger, went to the dresser and turned on the radio, went back to the closet for her blouse, walked to the dresser again to tune in a Stamford station playing popular music, shook herself at the mirror again, studied a small blemish near the flap of her nose, took a half-slip from the dresser drawer, bent over to look at a movie circular on the dresser top as she stepped into the slip and pulled it up over her hips, thwacking the elastic, put on her blouse, stepped into her skirt, zipped it up, and was buttoning the blouse when Amanda came into the room.

She was wearing plaid slacks and an old sweater, her blond hair caught with a bright-red scarf at the back of her head. The sun had put a fine glow on her cheeks. Her blue eyes were sparkling. “Where are you off to?” she asked Kate, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Mrs. Regan’s coming by for me,” Kate said. “She’s got to see Dr. Anderson about something, and she called to ask if I’d like a lift. So I said yes. Mom, this blouse has a spot.”

“Where?”

“See? Right here near the pocket. Do you think it’s all right?”

“You can wear the green cardigan over it. It’s a little chilly today, anyway.” Amanda paused. “I didn’t hear you practicing, Kate.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

“I will, Mom. You were at the piano all morning, so how could I?”

“What are you going to do in town?”

“I have to pick up some things, and I have to look up the partition of Berlin.”

“Are you going out tonight?”

“There’s a party at Suzie’s. Can Dad drive us?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“Well, he’s out washing Beverly, and I’ve got to get dressed.”

“You buttoned your blouse crooked.”

“Did I? Yes, I did. I’m all fingers.”

“Thumbs,” Amanda corrected.

“Sure. Mom, can I use your white?”

“You’ve got your own lipstick, Kate.”

“I’m out of white. Besides, it looks creepy on you, Mom. I mean it. It makes you look positively eerie.”

“Your father likes the way I look.”

“Well, he has no gusto,” Kate said, and she grinned.

“It’s on my dresser,” Amanda said, shaking her head. “If you pass the drugstore, buy yourself one. Charge it.”

“Thanks, Mom. Mom, would you get it for me, please? I still have to comb my hair, and she’ll be here any minute. Mom, how old do I look?”

“What? You look sixteen.”

“Oh,” Kate said dejectedly.

“How old do you want to look?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Mom, could you get the lipstick, please? What were you doing outside?”

“I walked down near the brook. I wanted to see what it looked like now that spring is here.”

“Same as always, didn’t it?”

“Not quite, Kate. It’s always a little different.”

“Mom, could you get the lipstick, please?” The telephone rang. Kate looked at it for a moment and then said, “Would you answer it, Mom? If it’s somebody named Paul, tell him I’m in the living room talking to a fellow about something, and that you’ll get me? Would you, Mom?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Oh, come on, Mom, don’t be a poop. I want to put him on the rack.”

“Put him on the rack all by yourself,” Amanda said. “I’ll get the lipstick for you.”

She left the room. Kate looked at the ringing telephone.

“Ain’t nobody going to answer that phone?” Parsie yelled from downstairs.

The phone kept ringing.

“Phone’s ringing!” Parsie shouted. “Kate? You up there, Kate?”

“I’ve got it, Parsie,” she answered, and lifted the receiver. “Hello,” she said. “Kate Bridges speaking.”

“Hello... uh... Kate?”

“This is she,” Kate said. She looked at herself in the mirror and nodded. It was Paul. He’d finally found a dime.

“This is Paul Marris.”

“Hello, Paul.”

“I guess you’re wondering why I’m calling.”

“Well, yes, that’s just what I was wondering,” she said and made a face at the mirror.

“Did you... uh... talk to Agnes?”

“Agnes who?” Kate said. Her own words nearly convulsed her. She had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing aloud.

“Why... why, Agnes Donohue. Your friend. You know. Agnes? Agnes Donohue?”

“Oh yes, Agnes. What about her?”

“Well, did you... uh... talk to her?”

“When?” Kate asked, and again covered her mouth because she was just being too devastatingly comic for words.

“Today, I guess. This morning. I guess. Didn’t you talk to her?”

“I think I did,” Kate said.

“Well, Ralph said he talked to her, and she said if I wanted to talk to you I should call you personally. That’s what he said, anyway. Ralph, I mean.”

“Oh, is that what he said?”

“Yeah. That’s what he said. I mean, wasn’t I supposed to call you?”

“Well, I don’t know. It’s your dime.”

“No, I’m calling from home,” Paul said. He paused. “The reason... say, is this Katie Bridges?”

“This is Kate.”

“Oh, I thought for a minute... well...” Paul took a deep breath. “You see, Gigi is coming to Stamford Wednesday, and Ralph and I thought you and Aggie would like to see it. On Saturday night. Next Saturday night, that is. If you’re not busy. I mean, you would go with me, and Aggie would go with Ralph. Together, of course. But, you know, you and me, and Aggie and Ralph. If you’re not busy.”

“Saturday night, did you say?”

“Yeah, Saturday.”

“Next Saturday?”

“Yeah, next Saturday.”

“That’s... let me see... that’s the sixteenth.”

“Yeah, the sixteenth.”

“Of May, right?”

“Yeah, May.”

“1959, right?” Kate asked, and covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“What? Yeah, sure, 1959.”

“I think I’m free,” Kate said at last.

“Oh, well, good. Then we’re set, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good. I don’t know what time the show starts, but I’ll check. I’ll call you again during the week, okay?”

“Okay,” Kate said.

“Listen, will you call Agnes?”

“Why?”

“To tell her it’s okay with you, so she can tell Ralph it’s okay with her? I mean, I hate to make this so complicated but... well, you see, it is complicated. You see, this was all my idea, Kate, and I...” He stopped short.

“What was your idea?”

“Well, I thought you might like to go to a show. That’s what I thought.”

“Yes, I would.”

“Well, that’s swell. So I asked Ralph, and it gets sort of complicated, so would you call Agnes and tell her everything’s smooth now, and we’re set, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Well, I’ll see you, Kate. I’ll call you during the week, okay? To let you know what time, okay? You got a curfew or anything?”

“One o’clock on Saturday night.”

“Well, that’s not so bad, is it?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Okay, good. Well, okay,” Paul said. “I’ll say goodbye now.”

“Goodbye, Paul,” she said sweetly. “I’ll be talking to you.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

“So long, Kate.”

“So long.”

“I’ll talk to you.”

“All right, Paul. Goodbye.” Gently she put the phone back into its cradle.

“What opera was that?” Amanda asked from the doorway. “Here’s the lipstick.”

“Thanks,” Kate said. She took off the cap, smeared the white undercoating to her mouth, and then put a bright red over it. “How do I look?” she asked.

“Lovely. Are you sure you’re only going to town?”

“Sure. Where else?”

“I don’t know. You...” Amanda shook her head. “Leave yourself time to practice before you go out tonight, will you? Who’ll be at this party?”

“The usual creeps,” Kate said. A horn sounded outside. “There’s Mrs. Regan!” She bolted for the door. “Mom, if Aggie calls, tell her it’s okay for next Saturday! I’ll see you!”

“Kate, your bag!”

“Oh, hell,” Kate said.

“Kate!”

“Sorry, Mom. Give it to me, will you? ’Bye, Mom.” She kissed Amanda hastily on the cheek, and rushed down the steps and out the front door. Amanda stood at the window in her daughter’s room and looked at the Alfa Romeo parked at the curb. The door on the side closest to the curb opened as Kate came running down the walk. A tall lean man stepped out of the car and held the door open for Kate. For a moment, Amanda didn’t recognize him. And then she realized it was David Regan.

She shook her head, smiled, and went downstairs again as the Alfa pulled away from the curb.

“I almost didn’t make it in time,” Kate said in the car. “A boy called, and he kept me on the phone for a half hour.”

“You must be pretty popular, Kate,” David said.

“Well, it depends on what you consider popular, I guess.”

There was a faint smile on his mouth, not a smile of mockery, but a smile that managed to be tolerant and condescending at the same time. She knew the smile was there, but she would not turn to look at him. She sat hunched between him and his mother and smelling the warm close smell of his woolen sweater and a smell like aftershave, but not the kind her father used, and she knew the smile was on his mouth, and she thought, He thinks I’m just a kid, and she crossed her legs suddenly, and then immediately pulled her skirt over her knees.

“Kate’s very popular, David,” Julia said. “The boys practically camp on her doorstep.”

“I’m afraid your mother’s giving you the wrong impression, David,” she said. She had only begun calling him David in 1957, when she got to be fifteen. Up to that time, she’d called him Mr. Regan, and then she asked her father if it would be all right to call him David, and her father had said, “Why don’t you ask him?” and she had asked him, and he had said, “Sure, why not? Everybody else does,” and so she’d begun. She still called his mother Mrs. Regan though, well, she was about a hundred years old, and that was respect for elders. But David couldn’t be much older than thirty-four, and it was really ridiculous for a young woman of sixteen to be calling one of her contemporaries “Mr. Regan,” especially when she knew his mother so well, for Pete’s sake Julia Regan was practically her best friend in town, next to Aggie Donohue.

“You mean you’re not a popular girl?” David asked, and there was that same tolerant but condescending tone in his voice.

“Oh, stop it,” Kate said. “You’re teasing me.”

“I am,” David admitted.

“Why?”

“Because you’re so damn cute,” he said, and he covered her hand with his affectionately, and then reached into his pocket for a cigarette. The touch was brief and hardly intimate, but she felt herself tensing as his hand covered hers, felt a desire to turn her hand over and clasp his fingers into hers. And then his hand moved away, he was fishing inside his shirt for cigarettes, she sat silently and stiffly on the seat beside him, scarcely daring to breathe, suddenly flustered. He offered the pack to her. Again, there was the smile on his face.

“Do you smoke, Kate?”

She was tempted to take one, but she knew it would be foolish to smoke here in the car on the way to town where everyone could see her, yet she was tempted because the offered package was a challenge, and yet she knew it was foolish.

“Not right now, thanks,” she said, and she knew by the smile on his face that he didn’t believe she smoked, although she really did smoke whenever she and Aggie and the other girls got together alone. And even her father had said she could begin smoking when she was eighteen, which was only a year and a half away, she was practically eighteen already, and there was a half-used package of king-sized cigarettes in the back of her dresser drawer where she kept it with the tiny piece of driftwood she had found at the lake the year before, minuscule and whorled, a tree in delicate miniature.

David offered a cigarette to Julia, who refused with a shake of her head. He lighted up and then threw the match out, lowering the window slightly, turning on the seat. His knee bumped against Kate’s, and together they said, “Excuse me,” and then laughed.

“Now we have to make, a wish,” Kate said.

“All right,” David answered. “What do you want most in the world, Kate?”

She almost said, “You.” Instead, she stared straight through the windshield, and said, “I don’t know. Besides, if I told you, it wouldn’t come true.”

“Oh, sure it would,” David said. “What do you think she should wish for, Mom?”

“Well, when I was a girl her age...” Julia started, and Kate quickly interrupted before she could augment a theme of sweet sixteen, which would remind just everybody in the entire world how old she was.

“Actually, I’ve got everything I need,” she said hastily.

“Have you got a diamond ring?” David asked.

Kate laughed a phony brittle laugh she had heard the married women of Talmadge use at cocktail parties in her house. “No. Shall I wish for one, David?”

“If you want one.”

“No.”

“Well, what do you want? Think hard now, Kate.”

“I’d like to go to Europe,” Kate said.

The car was still for a moment.

“Mims went to Europe last summer,” Kate said into the silence.

David said nothing. She could hear the wind whistling over the cloth top of the car, could hear the tires singing against the road.

“I may go to Europe,” Julia said suddenly.

David turned to look at his mother. Kate saw his eyes in that instant, puzzled, probing. Something odd had come into the automobile with her mention of Europe, and she didn’t know quite what it was, a curious tension that caused her to believe she’d said the wrong thing. And yet she couldn’t understand what was so terribly wrong about mentioning Europe, everyone was going to Europe these days, she had even heard her parents discussing a trip to Europe.

“I didn’t know you’d planned to go abroad, Mother,” David said.

Kate noticed that he’d called her “Mother” and not “Mom” as he had earlier, and she knew this meant something because she never called her own mother anything but “Mom,” except when she was particularly irritated or annoyed, or when she was threatening Bobby... or, wait, when she thought her mother was acting too frivolous and young for her age, like when she danced close to Daddy at a party, that was really degrading for a couple in their forties, well, Daddy was in his forties, still, to act like lovebirds on a dance floor. David was annoyed now, and yet all his mother had said was “I may go to Europe,” but Kate could definitely feel him tensing on the seat beside her.

“I’ve planned to go back to Italy for a long time,” Julia said, not turning to look at David, her hands firm and steady on the wheel, looking straight ahead at the road.

“To Aquila?” David asked.

“No,” she said. “To Rome.”

Kate sat between them and had the oddest feeling they were talking in a code only the two of them understood. She said nothing. David sucked in on his cigarette.

“Is this definite?” David asked. “I mean, have you really made plans?”

Julia laughed, and Kate recognized it as the same phony laugh she herself had used a few moments ago. She frowned. The tension in the automobile had somehow become unbearable. She wanted to get out and walk. If only she could say to David, “Let’s get out and walk to town.”

“Every year since the end of the war,” Julia said, “I’ve made plans to go back to Italy. And every year, something came up to prevent my return. Last year, I thought I’d surely go. And then Millie passed away and...” Julia let the sentence trail. “Maybe I’ll make it this year. Maybe this year, I’ll get back.”

“Maybe you don’t really want to go back, Mother,” David said.

“Maybe not. You young people today...”

Kate was grateful for that. She almost turned and kissed Julia.

“... are too psychologically oriented. I’m not of the school that believes nothing happens by accident. Too many things happen by accident.”

“But nothing’s really prevented you from going to Rome, Mother. Yes, Aunt Millie’s death. But other than that—”

“David,” she said flatly, “I want to go back. I’ve wanted to go back to Rome for as long as I can remember.”

“Then why haven’t you gone?” There was something harsh in his voice. “Why don’t you go back?”

“Maybe I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“What you need is a traveling companion, Mrs. Regan,” Kate put in quickly. She laughed tinnily. “I’ll be happy to apply for the job.”

“I might take you up on that,” Julia said, and laughed.

The car went silent again. David snuffed out his cigarette. They could see the church now, white against the blue sky, dominating the town as they rounded the curve and headed down the hill.

“Where can I drop you?” Julia asked.

“Where are you going?” David said.

“To Dr. Anderson’s office.”

“Why?” David said quickly. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing serious. A little indigestion.”

“Daddy thinks he’s a good doctor,” Kate said.

“He is a good doctor,” Julia said.

“Where are you going, Kate?”

“To the library.”

“I’ll buy you a soda,” David said.

“Okay,” she said casually. Her heart had begun to pound. She clenched her hands over her bag.

“Anywhere along here, Mother,” David said.

Julia pulled the car to the curb, and yanked up the hand brake. “I’ll be an hour or so. Will you want a ride back?”

“Not me, Mrs. Regan.”

“I’ll manage,” David said, and stepped out onto the curb. He held out his hand to Kate. She took it, feeling embarrassed and awkward all at once. They stood on the curb together, watching the Alfa as it pulled away and turned the corner, heading for Anderson’s office.

“Well, where to?” David asked.

“You said you’d buy me a soda.”

“I will. Which is the local teen-age hot spot these days?”

Kate squelched her sudden anger. “Well, the teen-agers hang out in the drugstore, but we can get sodas at the tearoom, and it’ll be quieter and nicer.” She paused. “Unless you have a preference for teen-age hot spots.”

“I was deferring to the lady,” David said, and he made a courtly bow.

They walked up the main street and turned the corner. Down the block, they could see Julia’s car parked near the curb, outside the doctor’s office.

Milt Anderson was a man who didn’t believe in mincing words. Everything about his appearance denied nonsense and frivolity. He wore dark-gray suits in his office, severe ties, white shirts. His thinning hair was iron-gray, and he wore unrimmed spectacles on the bridge of his nose, and if he possessed anything even faintly resembling a bedside manner, his wife Nancy was the only person who had ever seen it. He had been practicing medicine in Talmadge for forty years. Psychology, so far as Milt was concerned, was a fake and a fraud. Before Kohnblatt, the obstetrician, arrived in town, Milt delivered every baby born there, and he nursed them through their childhood diseases and through every ache and pain they ever had, and he did it all without the faintest knowledge of Sigmund Freud. He was an excellent diagnostician, and he practiced medicine as if the human body were an automobile that had to be kept in constant repair. If you needed a clutch job, he didn’t try to tell you about it by explaining that the cigarette lighter wasn’t working.

He sat behind his desk and looked at Julia Regan, who sat opposite him, and he said, “I’ve got the results on that test, Julia. That’s why I asked you to come in.”

“Shall I make out a will?” Julia said jokingly.

“Maybe you should,” he answered seriously. He tweaked his nose, pulled a tissue from the box on his desk, blew his nose heartily, and dropped the tissue into his wastebasket. “I want to explain that test to you, Julia. It’s called the Masters Two-Step or the Masters Exercise Tolerance Test, or sometimes simply Cardiogram after Exercise. Whatever you call it, it’s designed to supplement the ordinary cardiogram and discover what your tolerance to extreme physical or emotional strain would be. The Army uses it as a routine examination for anyone over the age of forty who’s in a responsible position.”

He took another tissue from the box and blew his nose again. “Did you ever hear of a doctor who caught a cold?” he asked. He shrugged, threw the tissue away, and leaned closer to Julia. “Whenever I get a patient in here who’s complaining to me of easy fatigability or indigestion, I might as well tell you I suspect angina immediately, and I arrange for the Masters test to be taken. Which is what I did with you last week.”

“And you’ve discovered that I have one foot in the grave, and should—”

“I’ve discovered that there’s a definite compromise of circulation to your heart, Julia. You want my opinion, I’d say you were a prime candidate for a coronary.”

Julia grew suddenly attentive.

“That’s right,” Milt said. “And judging from the experience I’ve had with similar cases, you can expect it within the next two years... unless you start taking care of yourself.”

“That’s a little shocking,” Julia said.

“I’m a doctor,” Milt answered.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to avoid any strenuous exercise or emotional stress. I’m putting you on a low cholesterol diet, and you’ll begin eating unsaturated fatty acids instead of butter and animal fats. We’re going to try to stop hardening of the arteries, Julia. You’re not such a spring chicken any more, you know.”

“I didn’t think I was, Milt.”

“The way you go racing around in that little car...” He shook his head. “Look, Julia, you’re in the right age group for a full-fledged coronary, believe me. You’d just better slow down.”

“What does slowing down entail, Milt?”

“I just told you. I don’t want you getting overtired or—”

“How about a trip to Europe?”

“Out of the question,” Milt said.

“I was planning—”

“Go on,” he said. “They’ll send you back in a pine box.”

Julia nodded. “What about next year?”

“Maybe. It depends on what progress you make.”

“This is ridiculous,” Julia said.

“Sure, it’s always ridiculous when the body starts giving out. It’s more ridiculous to drop dead one day, believe me. That’s the most ridiculous and humiliating thing that can happen to anyone.” He paused. “Would you like to drop dead in the street one day, Julia? Most of the fatal coronaries, you know, happen to people who’ve never had a clue. No real chest pains, nothing like that. Bam, and there you go. You want that to happen?”

“No.”

“Then slow down. I’ll prepare the diet for you. I want you to pick it up tomorrow or the next day. I’ll give you a call.”

Julia suddenly smiled. “How am I supposed to avoid emotional stress, Milt, would you tell me that?”

“That’s your problem, not mine. When you’re dead, Julia, there’s no emotional stress at all. You might just remember that.”

“I will.” She paused. “It was only a little indigestion,” she said. “I thought I had a good heart.”

“It’s not exactly a rotten heart,” Milt said, “but I wouldn’t go courting any shock or strain beyond your capacity.” Milt shrugged. “Look, it’s your life, Julia.”

“I know it.” She nodded. “I’ll be careful.”

“You can start by slowing down to thirty miles an hour when you’re driving that little bug.”

“I will.”

“Fine. I’ll call you within the next few days.”

“Thanks, Milt.”

“And be careful,” he said to her as she went out of the office.

The tearoom was in the middle of the street. A bell over the door jingled when they entered. Two young boys were sitting at a table near the kitchen, but the room was otherwise empty. David held out a chair for Kate, and she sat and said, “Isn’t this better than the drugstore?”

He sat opposite her. “Indeed it is.”

“We come here sometimes when we’ve got plans.”

“What do you mean, plans?”

“Oh, things to discuss that we don’t want anyone else to hear. At the drugstore, everyone’s on the earie.”

“I see,” David said. He smiled.

“Everyone needs a private place,” Kate said, almost in defense, though she really didn’t see what there was to defend. “Don’t you have a private place?”

“Sure, I do. It’s a little saloon on Sixth Avenue.”

“Do you drink a lot?”

“No, not terribly much.”

“I hate to drink. Even beer. It tastes so awful. Suzie Fox got drunk two weeks ago. On beer. She threw up in the bathroom.”

“Poor Suzie Fox,” David said.

“Do you ever get drunk? And sick?”

“I very often get drank, but I rarely get sick.”

“Well, why do you want to do that?” Kate said maternally, irritated.

“Get drunk? It’s very pleasant. It provides an area of blurred focus, a temporary adjustment with the world.”

“I wish you wouldn’t get drunk,” she said, frowning.

“Why?”

“I just... well, I don’t like the idea of you lying in a New York gutter someplace.” He began laughing. “Really, David, it’s not funny. You’re a grown man, and—”

“Kate, Kate, I don’t lie around in gutters. And I never get that drunk.”

“Well, Suzie Fox got that drank.”

“Honey, Suzie Fox is sixteen.”

“That doesn’t make her exactly an infant, you know.”

“I know. But when I was sixteen, I could get roaring blind drank on three bottles of beer. Unfortunately, I can’t do that any more.”

“How many bottles of beer does it take now?”

“Beer? Beer is very out.”

“Martinis?”

“Martinis are on the way out. On the rocks is coming back in. Very chic.” David winked conspiratorially.

“Do you know the Moses and Jesus joke?” Kate asked suddenly.

“On the rocks?” David laughed. “Sure. But how come you know it?”

“Listen, David, cut it out,” she said sharply.

“What did I do?”

“You just stop that business. I’m not a baby. Now you just cut it out.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said, and he gave a deferential little nod of his head.

“Yes, and that too.”

“What now?”

“What you just did. Just stop the entire whole business or I’ll get very angry.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He was still smiling. “Here’s our waitress.”

“What would you like, David?”

“A chocolate soda,” he said.

“Two chocolate sodas, Connie,” Kate said. “Do you want anything else, David?”

“No, thank you,” he said, smiling.

“Two chocolate sodas,” the waitress said, and walked away from the table.

“Hey, I’ll let you in on a secret,” David said, still smiling.

“Yes, what?” She leaned toward him.

“The man’s supposed to order,” he whispered.

“What?”

“The man—”

“Oh, hell!” Kate said. “I come here all the time, and I know Connie and you don’t, and I was trying to put you at ease, that’s all.”

“What makes you think I’m ill at ease?”

“You’re always ill at ease. You’re always so tense. It must be television does it to you. Television is a rat race.”

“How do you know?”

“I read a book about it.”

“Oh, well then, okay. If you read a book, I guess it’s so.”

“Stop it, David. Look, I’m warning you. Stop treating me that way.”

“I’m only—”

“You’re only laughing at everything I say, and that isn’t fair. I’m not a moron, David. I’m six—” She cut herself off. “I’m almost seventeen years old, and I’m pretty aware of what’s going on around me in the world, and I’m perfectly capable of holding an intelligent conversation, so cut it out!”

“Okay, what would you like to talk about?”

“You. What do you do in New York? Besides getting drunk all the time?”

“I don’t get drunk all the time. I have a drink when I get back to the apartment each evening, and I usually drink something later on in the night. And when I’m in Talmadge, I hardly drink at all.”

“The people in Talmadge are very hard drinkers,” Kate said.

“Do you think so? The people in New York aren’t exactly slouches.”

“I think everyone’s drinking more nowadays. And everyone’s more tense. Don’t you feel that? You’re very tense.”

“I suppose I am.”

“It’s because of the bomb and those stupid Russians. I don’t care what anyone says, I can’t see how the constant threat of atomic disintegration can help but affect a person’s everyday thinking. Subliminal, they call it. I know it affects me. I wake up each morning, and wonder if I’ll still be alive at the end of the day. Of course, I don’t imagine they would bother dropping anything on Talmadge, but if they drop it on New York, everyone’ll rush out of the city like barbarians, and no one will be safe. Daddy says he wants to buy a rifle. Did you read On the Beach?”

“Yes.”

“They’re making it into a movie, you know. But I don’t think it’ll be that way at all, when it comes, I mean. I don’t think everyone will just go off into a corner to die very nobly and very peacefully. I think the world will just cut loose and become positively animalistic. When the bomb comes...”

“When? Not if?”

“Oh, when it comes, David. Everyone knows it’ll come. We all know it.”

“Who’s we?”

“The kids. The... well, the young men and young women of America,” she said pompously, hating herself for having said “kids,” especially when things finally seemed to be going so well, when he was beginning to treat her like a person at last. “Why do you think there are all these teen-age gangs today, and rumbles in the street? It’s because they know the bomb is coming, and they can’t see any sense to living up to a moral and ethical code that has become meaningless. When civilization itself may be wiped out at any second, why bother living by its rules? Well, David, look at the quiz-show scandal... you don’t handle any quiz shows, do you?”

“The firm does, but we’re clean.”

“Well, anyway, look at that, look at the moral deterioration of all those fine people, David. Do you think it was because of the money? Absolutely not. It’s because everyone knows the bomb is coming.”

“I don’t know it,” David said.

“You, of all people, should know it.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re so hard. Or at least you try to pretend hardness. You’re not really hard at all.”

“Do I seem hard?”

“Yes, you seem terribly menacing. You’re the only man I know who has white hair.” She hesitated. “It’s very attractive. Agnes thinks you’re quite the most attractive man she’s ever seen.”

“Thank Agnes for me.”

“Of course, she has no gusto,” Kate said, and she smiled.

“Well, what are you going to do when the bomb falls, Kate?”

“Run like hell,” she said, and then she giggled. “No, not really. I’ll probably find somebody and live in sin with him until the radiation sickness kills us both. I mean, I wouldn’t want to die without having...” She paused. “Well, who knows what anyone will do in the face of extreme emergency? What will you do?”

“I’ll hop on the first plane to Los Angeles,” David said immediately.

“Why Los Angeles?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s as good a place as any to die. Also, it’s going West. And ‘going West’ means dying, did you know that?”

“You’re lying, aren’t you? I can always tell when you’re lying.”

“No, no, scout’s honor.” He raised his hand in the three-fingered salute and grinned. “Going West has passed from the vernacular to—”

“I didn’t mean about that. I meant about why you want to go to Los Angeles. There’s another reason.”

“Nope. No other reason.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Nope.”

“Then why would you want to go?”

“Just to see it. I understand the climate is nice.”

“My plan sounds like a better one,” Kate said shrewdly. “Besides, I think we both have the same thing in mind, only I’m considering it a bit closer.”

David laughed. “Does your father know you talk like this?”

“Of course. We’ve resolved the whole thing.”

“What thing?”

“The Electra bit. We’re buddies now. I’ve decided to leave him to Mom,” Kate said, and smiled again.

“I’m sure Mom is relieved.”

“Well, it can be a strain, you know,” Kate said. “Here’re our sodas.” She smiled at the waitress. “Thanks, Connie.”

Sitting and listening to her, David was enchanted. There was such an impossible combination of reality and fantasy, such a blending of child with young woman, such a mixture of worldly concern with juvenile irresponsibility, that he picked his way through the conversation like a man walking through a mine field, and yet he was enchanted. He was thirty-four years old and, he supposed, an eligible New York bachelor who circulated in a hip television crowd where the questions were fast and the answers were ready, but he had never come across anything as refreshing as Kate. He knew this was because she was still a child, but he saw no reason to belittle charm simply because it was worn by youth. He found her thoroughly enchanting and delightful, shining and new, looking at the world with untarnished eyes, seeing everything so clearly and so simply.

He wondered suddenly if he had been that way at sixteen. It seemed to him he had always been a little uncertain, a little shy. But then, he supposed everyone looked back upon his youth as a time of awkwardness. There was an awkwardness in Kate, too. She was groping out of adolescence toward an adulthood that seemed so very far away to her, seeking acceptance in a world that, just a short while ago, was the world of the “grownups.” But it was not the awkwardness that stamped her youth. It was instead a lack of artifice, a lack of sophistication. She had not yet acquired the gloss, the infinite variety, of the adult. She was Kate Bridges, and sixteen, and herself, and certain of the world and of her place in it, and certain too that a hydrogen bomb would fall on her head one day, and yet accepting the certainty with blithe, almost joyful, indifference. She was Kate Bridges.

He felt a sudden pride. He had known her when she was just a little girl, and he sat opposite her now in a tearoom in the month of May, and she chatted with him like a young woman, and he felt an almost paternal pride in being with her, as if he were responsible in some small way for her growth. And he felt privileged to be sitting here with her at this time of her life, before she had acquired the polish, before she had become too fully aware of the world around her, before age stole in and life forced her to toe the mark. And he felt, too, a fondness for her, a protective fondness, an empathy that cried out over the years like a race memory, I was once this young, my eyes were once this clear. He was glad he’d asked her to have a soda with him. He was glad, even with the missiles poised, even with some trigger-happy nut possibly waiting to push the button, he was glad that he could sit in a tearoom in the month of May with a sixteen-year-old girl and feel something that he could only describe as hope.

And sitting with him, she knew only despair. She was certain that he thought her a fool, certain her love for him was flaming out of her eyes, certain he knew and was teasing her, certain everything she said was absurd and juvenile and hopeless. She lifted her glass and some of the soda spilled over onto the table, and she fumbled for a napkin and saw the smile on his face and felt graceless and stupidly infantile and thought, I should never have come, I should have said No. And then she thought of the person she wanted to live in sin with, David Regan in his New York apartment where he came home each night and had whiskey on the rocks, probably with some damn television actress or some fashion model. She mopped up the spilled soda and went rattling on about the partition of Berlin and how it was the crux of world affairs today, and about the hopelessness of disarmament, all the while convinced that he wasn’t listening to a word she said. She condemned herself for having loved him all these years. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. His mouth looked so hard, but she knew it would be soft. She had kissed him the day he’d put out the fire, the day he’d saved her life. His cheek had been covered with soot, and she had kissed him and got herself all grimy, and fallen in love at once with the man in the swimming shorts all covered with soot, a man she had hardly even noticed before that day. And she had kissed him over the years, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him and kissing him whenever he came up to Talmadge to visit. But she’d stopped kissing him when she became fourteen, and at fifteen she began calling him “David,” and now she longed with all her heart to kiss him again, but not in that childish way, he would know how to kiss, he lived in New York.

I can have babies, you know, she thought, talking all the while about the failure of the United States’ latest moon probe, bitterly complaining about the stupidity of an administration that made our failures public. I am capable of having babies, you know, David, I’m not quite the child you seem to think I am. Louise Pelzer had a baby when she was sixteen, you know, can’t you look at me as if I’m something more than an infant? And knowing this was exactly the way he looked at her, and longing to be alone with him, and plotting desperately, wondering if she could suggest a walk over to the bird sanctuary, knowing he would never never never in a million years kiss her or touch her, a boy touched me, you know, she thought, a boy actually touched me, these are not foam rubber, you know. And wondering why he wanted to go to Los Angeles when the bomb fell, and thinking, Oh damn you, David, I will be seventeen in November, you know, that’s not very far away, you know, David, oh damn you, you are such a cruddy creep.

That November, Gillian Burke came in from the beach driving her sister’s convertible, a gray Thunderbird with the top down. She had figured on a forty-minute drive to the studio, but the traffic was unusually heavy, and even before she reached Brentwood, she knew she would be late. Impatiently, she waited out the traffic light near the shopping center, her fingers moving impatiently on the wheel. The matrons were out in force, wearing their tapered slacks and sweaters, peering into shop windows, idly crossing the street, their hair done in emulation of the latest Hollywood goddesses, it was amazing how many Kim Novaks and Ava Gardners walked the streets of the suburbs surrounding Hollywood.

There must be something wrong with that light, she thought, and in that instant it turned to green. She stepped on the accelerator. A woman had begun crossing the street, and Gillian almost tooted the horn at her before she remembered the California law, which she always forgot when she was in any kind of hurry. She put on her brakes and waited for the woman to cross. Take all your good sweet time, she thought. Go right ahead. Impatiently, she shifted to first again, stepped on the gas, and caught another red light not three blocks from the last one. At this rate, she thought, I should reach the studio by midnight. The light changed. She stepped on the gas and concentrated on making up for lost time, rushing past U.C.L.A. and the Bel Air gates, catching another red light on Beverly Glen. This was a conspiracy, she was certain of it. Someone was manipulating those lights. Someone had made a little voodoo doll of her, and was determined she would be not only late but hopelessly late. She resigned herself to her fate. There was no sense in getting killed in a traffic accident. No job was that important.

The traffic thickened the moment she entered the Strip. It always seemed to thicken there, but perhaps the reaction was purely psychological, perhaps the clutter of neon tubing, the shrieking signs for the strip joints, the restaurant and night-club awnings, the damn Las Vegas cowgirl towering over everything with her bent knee and her boots and hat made everything seem tight and cramped and suddenly bottlenecked. Psychological, hell, she thought. The traffic does get impossible here, and I hate this drive. I should have taken Santa Monica Boulevard, well, it’s too late to think of that now. Let’s go, please. The light is green, madam. Which indicates that it’s now legal and proper to set your vehicle in motion. Stop daydreaming, madam. That man on the sidewalk is not Jack Benny.

She smiled, remembering her sister’s story. Monica had been plagued by visitors from New York who automatically looked her up the moment they reached the Coast. Fortunately, her house in Malibu was fairly distant from the hotels in Los Angeles proper, or Hollywood, or even Beverly Hills, and most visitors were discouraged by the long drive. But she’d never been able to escape the callers entirely, and one girl in particular was convinced that Monica knew every star in Hollywood intimately and could point out their homes on demand. Monica had been a chemistry major in college and was working for a chemical research laboratory, and hadn’t the slightest interest in where or even how the stars lived. But the girl kept asking, “When are you going to show me the stars’ homes?” and Monica soon realized that the only way to get rid of her was to show her where the damn stars lived — if only she knew where. She had passed the old ladies selling maps on Sunset Boulevard a thousand times, sitting on their camp chairs, wearing wide-brimmed straw hats, holding signs that blatantly advertised invasion of privacy for twenty-five cents — but she refused to behave like a tourist in a town she’d come to think of as her home. She would not have bought one of those maps if her life depended on it. Instead, she climbed into the T-bird and drove her visitor through the last Bel Air gate and past the Bel Air Hotel and up through the hills, and every time she saw a house that looked elegant — and they all looked rather elegant — she said, “That’s Cary Grant’s house,” or “That’s Loretta Young’s house,” or “That’s Jack Benny’s house,” and her visitor was completely satisfied. Gillian, delighted with the story, asked Monica what she’d have done if Jack Benny had suddenly stepped out of the house she’d claimed was his.

“I wouldn’t have skipped a beat,” Monica said. “I’d have waved and said, ‘Hello, there, Jack.’”

The anecdote became an inside joke between Gillian and her sister. If ever they were driving past Bel Air together, one would automatically say, “That’s Jack Benny’s house,” and the other would instantly wave and shout, “Hello, there, Jack.”

The joke reached its climax when they were double-dating together one night. Gillian’s date was a contract player at Metro who claimed a familiarity with most of the stars. As they drove through Brentwood, he pointed out the land that belonged to Van Heflin.

“Are you sure?” Gillian asked.

“Sure, I’m sure,” the actor replied. He pointed to the large, fenced-in field on the corner. “You see that?” Both Monica and Gillian turned to look. “That’s Van Heflin’s horse!” the actor said, and the girls began laughing uncontrollably.

She passed the car-wash joints now, and the supermarkets and the huge signs advertising the Hollywood cemeteries. She’d never known a place where people prepared for death so vigorously. The first billboard she’d noticed upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1950, almost nine years ago, was one that announced FOREVERNESS as the slogan of a local cemetery.

Driving in from the airport, stunned by the flatness of the terrain and the temporary look and feel of the buildings, dismayed by the browning grass everywhere — “Ain’t had rain for months,” the cab driver told her — she had seen the billboard and suddenly begun laughing hysterically. Today, she no longer found the signs amusing. Perhaps she had simply grown used to them.

She supposed she had grown used to a lot of things in the past nine years. She had even begun to enjoy eating regularly. There was plenty of work out here, especially in television. More and more shows were being filmed here, the medium had forsaken immediacy and succumbed to the technical ease of film, and she had done three or four television shots of which she was really very proud. The rest... the rest was nonsense. “Background action!” and Gillian Burke and a hundred others like her would move into camera range, “Is this child supposed to be yours, Miss? Would you please take him by the hand? Thank you.” Gillian Burke, good for a television or feature-film restaurant crowd, or a young mother at the bus stop, or now and then a waitress, another town, another agent, another medium, another union card, SAG this time, tucked into her purse and ready to show at the casting window. She was not lacking for work, no, and she ate regularly. She was just offbeat enough to go unrecognized in a crowd scene, she seemed real and believable on the fringes of the stage-center glamour, her beauty did not shriek of professionalism.

She would sometimes look at her own face in the mirror, the bangs on her forehead slightly side-swept, the russet hair brushed to the back of her neck, the slanted green eyes. She came over very well in color. She had played an amusement-park scene for Warners, in color. There had been a close-up of her on the roller coaster, flash, if you blinked your eye you missed Gillian Burke’s big scene. But she had not missed herself, she had seen how well she photographed in color, and had seen the authentic terror and excitement on her face as the roller-coaster car swept by, actually six feet above the ground, filmed in front of a process shot of the sky, she had looked very good. And standing in front of the mirror, she would study her body, study the familiar body, good breasts and hips and legs, she knew they were good, but not this year’s model, thank you, not the overblown cowlike commodity they were buying in 1959, and maybe in 1958, and maybe back to the time of Delilah. She would study herself painstakingly, and she knew exactly where she missed, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

One of her friends, a girl of thirty-seven, had told Gillian she didn’t care if she spent the rest of her life doing extra work. She didn’t even want that meaty character role, the speaking part that brings down the house in the third reel, the hell with that. It meant only two days’ shooting, and here’s your pay check, thanks and goodbye. Gillian’s friend wanted the steady extra part, the perpetual girl on the bar stool in a place the star frequented, there all the time, three or four weeks of shooting, that was for her. But Gillian was not an extra, and she knew she was not an extra, and she would not settle for less than what she was.

She was an actress.

They could fill the fan magazines with 38-28-38, they could provide three-dimensional glasses that made the latest siren pop out of the picture and into your lap, they could evolve screens that enveloped you with sight and sound and now even smell, but she was an actress, and this they could not take away from her. She could act hell out of any part they threw her way, and she knew it, and so she waited patiently for the promised trend toward the offbeat, wasn’t Shirley MacLaine a star, look at Carolyn Jones, somewhere there was a place for her, Gillian Burke, and she hoped meanwhile that her envy didn’t show.

She pulled the car up to one of the booths at the studio gate. A uniformed guard stepped out of the booth and smiled pleasantly at her.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Floren,” she said.

“Yes, Miss. What’s your name, please?”

“Gillian Burke.”

“Just a moment.”

He consulted a list of names and telephone numbers encased in Lucite, picked up a phone from the booth counter, and rapidly dialed an extension. He spoke quietly into the phone while Gillian waited. Then he replaced the receiver, came out of the booth, and said, “It’s in building number seven, third floor. That’s room 306. You can park the car right there, inside the gate.”

“Thank you,” Gillian said. She smiled, nodded, and swung the car over toward the diagonal spaces. She parked, turned the rear-view mirror so that she could see her mouth, decided her lipstick was fine, and then combed her hair. An electrician strolling by turned to look at her as she got out of the car and bent to take her black portfolio from the seat. She suddenly wondered if her skirt was too tight. She had worn a matching suit over a pale blue sweater. Now she wondered if the skirt was too tight, wondered if she shouldn’t have put on some jewelry, a string of pearls perhaps, and instantly checked her legs to see if her seams were straight. Oh, the hell with it, she thought. I’m Gillian Burke. I want a pock in the play.

A white Corvette with zebra upholstery was parked in the space alongside hers. A white poodle sat behind the steering wheel, and Gillian wondered if the car belonged to the dog. She smiled and began walking across the lot. A man in a cowboy suit waved at her. An electric cart buzzed by, a man driving, a blond woman sitting on the jump seat, her legs crossed, facing the rear. It was a mild pleasant day, without much smog. She sucked deeply of the California air, and suddenly wished it would rain. It doesn’t rain enough out here, she thought. Rain gives people a chance to relax. She would not acknowledge what she was really thinking about: the theater legend which held that rain meant success — if you auditioned when it was raining, the part was yours; if you opened on a rainy night, the show would be a hit.

She found building number seven and walked back toward the elevator banks. Two screen writers were waiting for the elevator, talking about a scene that was giving them difficulty with the Shurlock office.

“They’re a bunch of goddamn Catholics there, that’s the trouble,” the first screenwriter said.

“What’s that got to do with it?” the second one answered. “The two people in the scene are Protestants.”

“Look, they want us to get them off the bed, we’ll take them off the bed.”

“Where we gonna play the scene then? The floor?”

“The floor, the ceiling, who cares? You want to fight with a bunch of Catholics?”

“I don’t want to fight with anybody.”

“So stop fighting with me. We’ll take them off the bed.”

“Where’s your integrity, Pete?”

“What’s this got to do with integrity? They can do it on a floor as well as on a bed. If it’s the bed they object to, so we’ll take them off the bed. What difference does it make? We have to be fancy? We have to show them on a bed? You know how many people do it on the floor?”

The elevator doors opened. The screenwriters stepped aside and allowed Gillian to enter first. She stepped into the car and pressed the button for the third floor. The screenwriters came into the car silently. One of them pushed the “2” set into the elevator panel.

Before they got out, one of the writers said, “In Room at the Top, they did it on a bed.”

“That was British,” the other writer explained, and they stepped out of the car.

She got out on the third floor and walked to room 306. She paused outside the door and looked at her seams again, and then wet her lips. Here we go, she thought. Good luck, Gillian. She opened the door. The receptionist looked up as she entered. A small redheaded boy was sitting on the couch reading a comic book.

“Miss Burke?” the receptionist asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re a little late,” she said, looking at her watch. “Mr. Floren just about gave up on you.”

“I’m awfully sorry. The traffic—”

“Yes, would you go right in, please? Mr. Floren’s waiting.”

“Thank you,” Gillian said. She went to the door of the inner office, took the knob, and twisted it. The door did not budge. She turned back toward the desk, and the receptionist pushed her release button. The door clicked open.

Herbert Floren was sitting behind his desk reading a copy of The Hollywood Reporter. He put the paper down when Gillian entered, looked at her in surprise, and said, “That girl never tells me when anyone’s here. Lucky thing I’m not a secret drinker. Are you Miss Burke?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How do you do?” Floren said pleasantly. He rose and extended his hand. Gillian took it. “Sit down, sit down. What happened? Traffic jam?”

“Yes. I came in from the beach, and I guess I didn’t allow myself enough time.”

“Crazy traffic in this cockamamie town, well, that’s all right, sit down, unwind, take it easy.” Floren smiled again. He was a balding man in his early fifties, wearing an impeccably tailored blue suit and a striped gray tie. His nose was too large for his face, and his eyes were shrewd and piercing behind his eyeglasses, but he had a pleasant smile, and he used it extravagantly. “Your agent’s been saying very nice things about you, Miss Burke. Very nice.”

She didn’t know whether an answer was expected or not. She smiled politely and modestly, and kept silent.

Floren nodded. “I saw the thing you did for Warners, the roller coaster. Very nice. I saw some of the television stuff, too. Wagon Train, very nice. General Electric, very nice.”

“Did you see the Playhouse 90?” Gillian asked.

“No, I didn’t. When was that?”

“Last year.”

“Your agent didn’t show it. Listen, everybody goofs now and then. You’re a good actress, Miss Burke.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m doing a picture,” he said, “doing it, I’m up to my ears in it already, a million dollars gone and we haven’t even begun shooting. There may be something in it for you, I don’t know. How old are you?”

She debated lying. She hesitated for a moment, and then told the truth. “I’m thirty-four,” she said, and she watched his face.

“Well, that’s good,” Floren answered, “because this girl is supposed to be a young mother. Thirty-four’s not bad. You look younger, though.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. If you test too young, you can forget all about the part.”

She sat stunned, scarcely daring to breathe. For a moment, she thought she’d misunderstood him. This was not the way it happened. You did not walk into a producer’s office, and he did not begin talking about tests and parts, this was not the way it happened.

“Did you see the kid sitting outside? The little redheaded kid?”

“Yes,” Gillian answered. She was afraid to speak. Suppose he doesn’t like my voice? You have a good voice, she told herself.

“Listen, what are you so nervous about?” he asked. “Relax. I’m a grandfather already. You’ve been hearing too many stories about Hollywood producers. You want a cigarette? You want a drink?”

“No. No, thank you.”

“You don’t smoke? You don’t drink?”

“I smoke. I drink.”

“Have a cigarette. Here. It’ll do you good.” Floren came around the desk and offered her the open cigarette box. She took one and he lighted it for her, reaching behind him for the gold lighter on his desk. “They gave me this when I finished my last picture,” he said. “Not my last picture, God forbid. My most recent one. You interested in this part?”

“Interested?” she said. “Am I interested?”

“All right, relax, relax.” He went around behind his desk again. “I asked you did you see that kid outside?”

“Yes, I saw him.”

“We already signed him. He’s a good little actor. Done a lot of Lassie, and he was in a picture with John Wayne, he’s a good kid, we signed him. You’re supposed to be his mother. He’s got red hair, did you notice that?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Your hair’s not as red as his, but we’ll see how it shows in the test. I want to test you together. Is that all right with you?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s... that’s fine.”

“You’ll choke on that cigarette,” Floren said. “Put it out. Go ahead, do what I tell you. I never met anybody so nervous in my life. What’ll you do during the test? Drop dead? Blow your chance?”

“No, no, I...”

“Okay, we’re set up downstairs, stage three. I’ve had a little crew hanging around since two o’clock, waiting for you to arrive. Marilyn Monroe, yet. You know how much they’re costing me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. But I had no idea...”

“What do you think I called you in for? You know how many girls there are in Hollywood who come around and stick their pictures in my face every day of the week? You think I got time to waste with all of them? Look, if you test okay, the part is yours. You can act, that’s what I’m interested in. This is just one scene, and it’s played in the foreground while the star is sitting on a bench watching, but it’s very important to the picture, it’s like a catalyst for the star, you understand? The things you say to your son, they cause a response in the star, you see? So we need an actress for it. You’ll be on the screen for maybe five minutes all together, unless the director or the cutter decide to snip you out. Five hundred bucks, okay?”

“Okay,” Gillian said.

“That’s too cheap,” Floren said. “What do you want to work so cheap for? You work cheap, everybody’ll hear about it. Lucky thing I’m not a big-mouth. I’ll contact your agent. He’ll probably talk me into a thousand. If you test okay.”

“Well... well... when do I...?”

“I want you to meet the kid first. That shlocky little crew’s been waiting since two o’clock, they can wait a little longer, too, it wouldn’t kill them. What do they care, it’s my money.” He lifted his phone and said into the mouthpiece, “Listen, Miss Surprise Package of 1959, would you send Tommy in? Thank you.” He hung up. “They sent her over from the mimeographing department. My own girl is on vacation, she’s divorcing her husband in Vegas.”

The door clicked open. Tommy walked into the office and said, “Hello, Mr. Floren.”

“Tommy, this is Gillian Burke.”

“How do you do, Miss Burke?” Tommy said, and he shook hands with her. He was perhaps eight years old, but he moved and spoke with all the professional aplomb of a top box-office star. Gillian smiled at him pleasantly.

“How would you like Miss Burke to be your mother?” Floren asked.

“I’d like it fine,” Tommy said.

“Sure, he’d like it fine. Eight years old, the little cockeh, and already he’s casting my pictures for me. You’re going to do a test together. Is that okay with you, Mr. Kazan?”

“That’s fine,” Tommy said.

“Okay. Sound stage three. They’re waiting for you now. Be good, you little vontz, and don’t make Miss Burke nervous, you hear me?”

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Floren,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, you better. And you,” he said to Gillian, “stop worrying. Such a nervous girl I never met in my life. You remind me of my daughter, you know that? I got a nervous daughter like you.” He smiled and extended his hand. “Don’t worry, you hear? You’re a good actress. I got starring in this movie a klutz she couldn’t act her way out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, me, I got stuck with her. Forty thousand dollars a week. Learn your lesson, Miss Burke, never sell yourself cheap.” He grinned again. “I like you. Go. Go take your test. Do a good job, or I’ll never talk to you again.”

“Thank you,” Gillian said. “Thank you very much.”

“Thank your agent. Thank yourself. Go. Take the test.”

She joined Tommy in the reception room outside.

“He’s a nice guy,” Tommy said.

“Yes,” she answered softly. “He’s very sweet-oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

He held the door open for her. They went into the corridor together and began walking toward the elevators.

“Didn’t we work together once?” Tommy asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“On Beaver? Did you ever do any Beavers?”

“No. Never.”

“Father Knows Best?”

“No. Not that either.”

“Hey, what’s the matter with you? You look as if you’re about to cry.”

“I’m all right,” Gillian said.

“It’s only a part,” he told her, and he shrugged and pushed the button for the elevator.

She could not remember afterward what she did or said during the test. Floren’s little crew, which had been waiting since two o’clock, consisted of a cameraman, an assistant cameraman, an operator, a director, an assistant director, a boom man and a mixer, a recorder, three grips, a make-up man, a hair stylist, a wardrobe mistress, four electricians, three prop men, a handyman, and a script clerk, who handed her a mimeographed script the moment she entered the sound stage. She tried to memorize her lines while a lipstick brush traced her mouth, everything seemed hazy and blurred, a pencil touching the edges of her eyes, a comb being pulled through her hair, someone dusting her jacket, someone else asking her to take her jacket off, lights being moved into place, the assistant cameraman stepping in front of the camera with the synch sticks, raising the diagonally lined clapper, the words TEST, GILLIAN BURKE scrawled onto the slate in chalk, and beneath that TAKE #1, SOUND #27, and beneath that the date and the name of the cameraman, and the name of the director, and the name of the producer. “You ready, Miss Burke?” the director asked. She nodded. “Okay, quiet and roll!” the assistant director said. One of the sound men, earphones on his ears, waited for word from the recorder and then said, “Speed,” and the cameraman said, “Mark it!” The sticks came together, the black-and-white lines met, the assistant cameraman said, “Test, Gillian Burke, Take One,” and that was all she remembered. The rest was truly a blur. She had a vague notion that they were stopping too often, that she heard “Cut!” shouted too many times. She thought someone asked her to laugh on the next take, thought someone else asked her to cross her legs, but she could remember none of this clearly, could only remember feeling awkward and clumsy beneath the blazing lights, could remember how professional little Tommy had seemed in comparison.

And when it was over, she was certain she had done badly, was certain there was a sickly smile on the face of the assistant director, was certain the electricians and the cameraman were laughing at her. She put on her jacket, thanked them all, and walked through the stage and pushed open the door, and saw the red light still burning outside and the sign forbidding entrance when the red light was on, and walked slowly toward her sister’s car, feeling despondent and foolish and rejected, and knowing she had thrown away the first real opportunity she’d ever had.

She wondered why things never seemed to work out for her, wondered why the underwater television show had lasted only a season and hadn’t been picked up for reruns anywhere, wondered why the Johnny Thunder pilot had never even got off the ground, wondered why the few decent things she’d done never seemed to get the notice she hoped they’d get, wondered why today she had suddenly become all arms and legs, tripping over herself, barely able to speak, allowing herself to be outacted by an eight-year-old boy, what the hell was the matter with her, anyway?

She could not go back to Malibu that night. She ate dinner in a small Italian restaurant in Hollywood, and then went to a movie. She took a room at the Hollywood Roosevelt afterward, ordered a double Scotch, and went directly to bed. She slept until two o’clock the next afternoon, dressed listlessly, and then went down to check out and pick up the car. The day was suffocatingly hot. She drove out to the beach in a fog of despair. She never failed to respond to the fresh breeze blowing off the open water as she came down the hill from Santa Monica onto the Pacific Coast Highway, but today she sat lifelessly behind the wheel of the car, hating the sun-bronzed bodies cluttered about the hot-dog stands, the girlish shrieks from the beach, the sun blazing on the water, the breakers rolling in against the high wooden pilings under the shore-front houses. When she reached the Mexican restaurant near Castle Rock, she looked at her speedometer. Seven point four, she thought, and then watched it steadily, knowing her sister’s house was six-tenths of a mile past the restaurant, all those damn little Malibu houses crouched behind their highway fences and all looking exactly the same so that you couldn’t tell one from the other without clocking the mileage on your speedometer. She made a screeching turn across the highway in the face of an approaching trailer truck and almost knocked over the garbage cans in front of the house.

The gate was locked. She pulled the cord on the hanging bell out front and waited.

“Monica!” she called.

There was no answer.

She went to the house next door and leaned into the open Dutch door of the gate.

“Anybody home?” she yelled.

A man in a brief yellow-nylon bathing suit was sunning himself on the slatted wooden terrace. He lifted a pair of sun protectors from his eyes, blinked, barely turned his head toward the gate and said, “She’s down on the beach, Gilly. Want to hop over the fence?”

“Thanks, Lou,” she said. She reached over the bottom half of the door, unlatched it, walked past him to the fence separating his house from Monica’s, climbed onto the bench resting against it, and boosted herself up, legs flashing.

Lou sat up and said, “How’d it go?”

“They tested me.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm,” she said, and dropped to the terrace on the other side of the fence. The door of the house was open, thank God for that. She went in, walked clear through the house to the ocean side, walked out onto the deck, and scanned the beach for her sister. She was nowhere in sight. Annoyed, she came back into the house and threw her jacket onto the couch, hating the California modern and the Japanese look of everything in the house, hating the way the house shook each time a new wave crashed in against the pilings, rushing across the beach and striking the wooden logs with force and power, washing up clear under the terrace on the highway side of the house. She went into the bedroom. A fly buzzed against the windowpane. She threw open the window, and the fly escaped. The bedroom was very hot and sticky. She could hear the sound of the surf booming under the house, and far off down the beach, where the expanse was wider and the tide had not yet completely engulfed the sand, the sound of people laughing. She took off her sweater and her bra and cupped her breasts, massaging them for a moment, and then throwing herself full length on the bed, kicking off her shoes, rolling onto her side, and staring at the wall. She could see the small card tacked over the dresser, telling when the grunion were running. She had been on a grunion run only once in all the time she’d been in California. She had been tested for a picture only once in all the time she’d been in California.

I’m thirty-four years old, she thought.

David, I’m thirty-four years old.

She sat up suddenly.

She supposed she should go down for a swim. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, took off her skirt and her slip, and was reaching into the dresser drawer for her bathing suit when the telephone rang. She lifted it from the cradle.

Naked, sobbing, she listened while her agent told her she had got the part in Floren’s movie.

Christmas never came to Hollywood. They could have their parades down Hollywood Boulevard, with Santa Claus sitting on one float and a big movie star sitting on another, Charlton Heston this year, and clowns turning cartwheels in the street, they could do all that but it never felt like Christmas to Gillian, who was used to biting cold and the promise or reality of snow. There was something wilted and pathetic about the Christmas trees inside the Hollywood houses, something that made Christmas a fake. Back East it was perfectly all right to cut down a spruce and drag it into the house and trim it with tinsel and balls, that was perfectly all right, and not at all unnatural. But to do the same thing out here, where the sun was shining and the temperature was in the seventies, this somehow seemed anachronistic, and a little sacrilegious as well.

Nor could she adapt to the concept of January first arriving in a burst of sunshine, the year beginning in the middle of a seeming summer rather than in the dead of winter. She had put on the protective coloration of the natives, but Christmas and the New Year were simply unacceptable to her chemistry, and she always went through the charade of buying gifts and presenting them as if she were an impostor from another planet who went through the ritual artificially and without real feeling.

This year it was worse because she worked on the picture all during the week before Christmas and then through to January fourth, with barely time to do any real shopping — she could never accept the Lord & Taylor in Beverly Hills as the real Lord & Taylor, everyone knew the real Lord & Taylor was on Thirty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue — rising at six each morning and rushing to the studio and then working until five each afternoon. The director was a meticulous man who insisted on shooting and reshooting each scene until he was certain he had it the way he wanted it. Invariably, when he saw the rushes the next day, he decided that the way he’d wanted it had been wrong. So he shot and reshot the same scenes over and over again. They were using a new fast color film that enabled them to work later each day, a boon since much of the work was being done outdoors, on location. But by the time Gillian crawled into bed each night after a full day of trying to re-create a freshness she had felt only at the start of production, she was thoroughly exhausted.

When Floren asked that she join him at the studio one afternoon at the end of a day’s shooting, her first reaction was to beg off. But she could not forget his kindness to her, and so she accompanied him reluctantly and wearily. He introduced her to the cutter on the picture, a man in his late forties, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, sporting a thick mustache over his lip. In the corridor outside, Floren said, “He’s important to you, Gillian. You’ve got only one scene in this picture, and you want to look good in it. Get to know him, and maybe he’ll let you help pick the shots.”

She was allowed to watch the rushes all that week. In the peculiar structure of the Hollywood hierarchy, Floren, who was producing the film, had to get permission from the director, whom he had hired, for Gillian to sit in when the rushes were shown. The director didn’t like the idea at all. He wasn’t even allowing the picture’s stars to see the daily rushes. But perhaps he remembered that he was fourteen days behind his shooting schedule, and that Herbert Floren was picking up the tab, and so he graciously permitted the intrusion. She sat in the screening room all that week and watched herself play the scene over and over again from more angles than she thought imaginable, juggling the shots in her mind, arranging the scene as she thought it would finally be put together. When they showed the first rough cut, though, she finally understood Floren’s advice, and was glad she’d shared so many cups of coffee with the cutter in the studio commissary. They had assembled the sequence so that most of it was played on the face of the male star, who sat on a bench behind her. The shots they had chosen illustrated every nuance of emotion that crossed his features as he reacted to her speech and her bitter tears. She hovered on the edge of the scene and the screen; and for almost two of the five minutes, her job amounted to nothing more than voice over. The best shot of her, in fact, was a close-up of the back of her head. She immediately cornered the cutter.

“What did you do to me, Hank?” she said.

“I didn’t do anything, Gilly,” he said. “This is the way he wanted it. Look, it’s his picture, not mine.”

“Hank, we shot that scene from a hundred angles. You saw the rushes. You know what we—”

“I know,” Hank said, “but this is the way he wants it.”

“Couldn’t we just try it some other way?”

“What other way?”

“Well, couldn’t we start the scene with that full shot of me, and then as the speech builds come in closer and closer until we’re just on my face when I begin crying? We’ve got the footage, Hank. It’s just a question of putting it together.”

“How can I do that? This is the way he wants it.”

“You could say you just did it to get his reaction.”

“With that nut? He’d jump through the ceiling.”

“Or you could sneak it in with the rest of the stuff, the next time you—”

“Gilly, that’s impossible. This is his picture, don’t you understand?”

“Yes, but it’s my scene,” she said earnestly. “I don’t think you know how much this means to me, Hank.”

He studied her silently for a moment. “Maybe I do,” he answered. “Let me think about it.”

He thought about it for several days, and then decided to take the chance. He went through the early rushes again and began the scene with the full shot Gillian had suggested, carefully examining the footage and going from that to a medium shot, and then a close shot, tighter and tighter as the speech gained momentum, cutting back every now and then to the male star reacting on the bench, but for the most part staying with Gillian, closer and closer, full face and profile, finally choosing a tight shot of her eyes as she began crying, and then cutting back to the star on the bench, realization crossing his face as the scene faded. Gillian was on the screen for almost the full five minutes, and for the major part of that time in close-up. Hank spliced the revised scene in ahead of that day’s rushes and then sat back to wait for the explosion when the footage was shown. The director was silent as the scene played. He glanced quickly at Hank when it was over, and then turned his attention to the fresh film. When the lights came on, he lighted a cigarette, shook out the match, and with edged geniality said, “When did you take over the direction of this picture, Hank?”

Hank smiled. “You mean the scene on the bench?”

“Have you directed any others lately?”

“I just wanted to try it on you,” Hank said. “I can still go back to the other way.”

“Okay, you tried it. Now throw it away, okay?”

“Sure,” Hank said. “It was just an experiment.”

“If you don’t mind, I like to handle my own experi—”

“I figure you meant the girl to be in there for a change of pace. We’re on Tony’s face all through the preceding scene, you know.”

“I know, but this happens to be his pay-off scene.”

“Then why’d you take all that footage of the girl? You must have had something in mind.”

“Who remembers what I had in mind? All I know is when I saw the rushes, we discussed the way I wanted it cut, remember? Do you recall that?”

“Sure, I do. But did you see that girl’s coloring? She’s got good coloring, and an interesting face. Look, I may be wrong, but didn’t you want that scene to show what the speech was doing to both of them? If we stay on Tony, we lose half the power of the scene. You shot some beautiful stuff there, kid. It’d be a shame to waste it. That close-up of her eyes is real artistry, I mean it. Reminds me of some of Bergman’s stuff.”

“Ingrid’s?”

“I was thinking of Ingmar, but what’s the difference? Look, it’s your picture. Am I supposed to tell you that one thing you shot is better than another? You did them both, didn’t you? Either way is great. But I think the essence of what you really want to say is in that girl’s face. I know it makes me cry, that’s all. I’ve cut a lot of pictures, kid, but the way you shot that girl... well, it makes me cry.”

“Well, maybe so. But if we lose—”

“And the beauty of what you did is that we get Tony’s reaction at the same time, almost like a double exposure. That takes some doing, believe me, getting a multiple viewpoint on the screen, especially in a crucial scene like this one.”

“You think it comes over? His reaction?”

“Absolutely. And do you know why? Because of what you accomplished with that girl. Do you realize the performance you got out of a bit player? It’s fantastic, that’s all. The camera stays on her most of the time, and it’s still Tony’s pay-off scene. That’s the kind of stuff that makes them sit up and take notice, believe me. The oblique approach, nothing head-on, subtle.”

“Well, we don’t want to get too subtle. If we—”

“Who said it’s too subtle? With those close-ups of the girl’s face? And that shot of her eyes when the tears start rolling? How could that be too subtle? Listen, don’t underestimate yourself.”

“I’m a little worried about that fade at the end, though, aren’t you? I don’t think we stay on Tony long enough to see—”

“Oh, I’ve got footage I can tack onto that. Do you want a longer fade there?”

“I think a longer fade might—”

“Plenty of footage. Longer fade’s no problem.”

“It might round out the scene better, don’t you think?”

“It would make the scene perfect. Just the way it is, with a longer fade.”

“You liked that close-up of the eyes, huh?”

“Beautiful.”

“She really cried, you know. We didn’t use glycerin.”

“It shows. The patience you took with that scene shows.”

“Well, let’s try it this way for now, okay? We’ll see how it fits into the over-all scheme. Maybe we do need a change of pace there, get the hell away from Tony for a while.”

“I figured that was the way you intended it.”

“Probably, but you know how easy it is to forget things. So many damn things going on at once.”

Hank laughed. “Boy, you don’t have to tell me,” he said. “But I think the scene looks just great now, except for that longer fade you want. I’ll give you that. It’ll round things out just the way you want them.”

“I think you’re right.” He nodded, pleased with himself. “About the rushes, Hank. I liked that third take in the saloon, but the color looked a little off to me. Can we get another print on that?’”

The work on the picture consumed Christmas and the New Year, and late in January she went back to the studio to dub in the sound that had been lost on location. She saw the revised scene for the first time then, and rushed out immediately afterward to buy a pair of gold cuff links for Hank, a gift that cost her almost two days’ salary. There was nothing more to do now, nothing but sit and wait and hope the picture would eventually lead to something else. Her agent sent her to audition for a part on Peter Gunn, and she was terribly surprised when she got it because she was hardly the type of curvaceous cutie who paraded across the Peter Gunn screen. But that involved only a few days’ rehearsal and shooting, and then she sat back to wait again. It was February already, and warmer than any California February she could remember. When Ben Cameron called one day and asked if she’d like to go with him on his boat to Catalina, she accepted eagerly. She would have accepted anything that helped to pass the time.

Ben was an actor she saw regularly, a man who’d made his peace with the world and possibly with himself. He’d come to Hollywood after a long run in a Broadway hit, a supporting role to be sure, but one that had got him a screen test and a studio contract. His story was hardly a fresh one. He’d hung around for seven years collecting his salary and doing almost nothing. When his option finally expired, another studio discovered he was an expert horseman and could fall off horses with great realism. He had since fallen off more horses than he could count. He refused to call himself a stunt man. He was an equestrian expert, and he had fallen off horses as an Indian, a Civil War soldier, a Crusader, a renegade outlaw, a Mongolian chieftain, a Foreign Legionnaire, a regimental brigadier, an Arab, and even a mounted policeman. He earned a good living, and he owned a Chris Craft cruiser and a house in Venice in the midst of the beatniks. Every Friday night, he and his friends would gather at his house and he would cook them a lasagna dinner. Lasagna was his specialty. He was a fairly happy guy. He very rarely thought of his days in the theater, or of that single long-run play on Broadway.

Once, though, he said to Gillian, “Do you know what I liked best about the theater? Whenever you came to a new house, a strange dressing room, there was always something written on the mirror. In one place, I remember, someone had written, ‘Don’t look up. There’s no balcony.’ In another place, somebody had written in lipstick, ‘Skunk them!’” He had shaken his head wistfully. “Nobody ever writes anything on a horse, Gilly.”

They talked all the way to Santa Monica, where his boat was moored. Ben was a good sailor, and she helped him with his lines until they were under way, and then she lay on the deck with her blouse tied in a knot under her breasts, soaking up sunshine. The sky was almost cloudless, the ocean calm. Ben dropped anchor off Catalina, and they ate sandwiches and drank Cokes and then lay back on the deck again, Gillian with her eyes closed, Ben with his hand resting gently on her thigh, the boat almost motionless on a calm sea, the sun intense.

“Want to do some diving?” Ben asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“Go on below and change. I’ll get the tanks ready.”

“I’ve never dived with a tank, Ben.”

“You’ve snorkeled, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but...”

“The tanks are easy,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”

“Okay.”

She went below and changed into her suit, a one-piece green wool. When she came topside again, Ben had already taken out the masks and flippers and was opening the valves on the tanks. He taught her how to breathe through the mouthpiece, explaining that the regulator would automatically control the flow of oxygen, giving her as much or as little as she needed for normal breathing.

“We’ll practice near the boat at first,” he said. “Then we can dive a little.”

He strapped one of the tanks to her back and laughed when she sagged under its weight. “Crouch down on the edge of the boat,” he said, “and fall into the water backwards. Don’t worry about the tank. It won’t weigh a thing once you hit the water. Hold your mask now. Go on, Gillian.”

She clung to the boat with one hand, holding her face mask with the other, and then let herself fall back into the water. She bobbed to the surface almost immediately. Her mask had began to cloud. She swam to the side of the boat, pulled off the mask while she clung to the ladder, spat into it, washed it out with salt water, and then put it back on.

“Is the mask tight enough?” Ben asked.

“Yes, it’s fine. Aren’t you coming in?”

“As soon as I get this tank on.”

He came into the water a few moments later. They swam around the boat in idle circles while Gillian got used to the tank and the breathing apparatus. Once or twice, they dove under the boat and surfaced on the opposite side. The ocean was incredibly clear, alive with small fish. Ben had a dagger strapped to his leg. He was a muscular man, and a powerful swimmer, and she felt entirely safe in his company.

“We won’t go too far from the boat,” he said. “Stay with me all the time, Gillian, and don’t panic under water. If you want to go up, just go up. But remember you’re in water, and deep water, and try not to react to anything the way you would on land. Don’t scream, for example. You’d only lose your mouthpiece, and without it you can’t breathe.”

“Okay,” Gillian said.

“All right, let’s go.”

They put on their masks again, stuck the mouthpieces between their lips, and dove under.

Blue and pale-gold sifting sunlight down in silence.

Silence.

Weaving underwater plants, fish darting, bubbles from the oxygen tanks.

Down.

Down in silence deep and sunlight shafted.

Even his hair looked beautiful, caught in watery motion, afloat on his head, his long legs pushing effortlessly, the flippers gently paddling, down, sea urchins clustered like heads of medieval maces, spikes erect, silent and brown, a world without a whisper, a striped yellow fish coming up to peer through Gillian’s face mask, she almost laughed aloud and then remembered she was under water, remembered the sweet suck of oxygen flowing through the regulator and the tubes and into her mouth, the fish turned tail and darted away. She followed it. Ben was by her side again, ever present, his powerful arms pushing through the water, the dagger strapped to his leg. He pointed, and she looked, a school of tiny silver fish, needlelike, hanging on the water without thread, a cluster of glistening needles, she reached out to touch them and they scattered in hurried silence, reforming some five feet away, sunlight fanned the water in a spreading golden wedge, down, deeper, wash of sun vanishing in silence, blue so intense, the shocking stillness of underwater color, the delicate grace of sea life, the lulling rhythm of the water itself, and silence, silence, she saw the shark.

She did not know what kind of shark it was, but she knew it was a shark. She felt panic rocket into her brain, and she knew her eyes had suddenly opened wide behind the mask. She saw Ben back away instinctively, his legs dropping so that he stood erect in the water, like a man standing groundless. He made a placating gesture with his hand, outstretched behind him, a calming gesture, but he did not turn to look at her, he kept facing the shark, which had suddenly come into view and which hung in the water like a white-bellied torpedo circling idly and then suddenly vanishing in a burst of speed. Ben swam closer to her. His eyes kept searching the water, but the shark was nowhere in sight. He gave a slight shrug, and then gestured with his thumb, pointing directly upward, commanding her to surface. She nodded. She noticed for the first time that the dagger was no longer strapped to Ben’s leg. It was in his hand.

He gave a scissors kick with his legs and shot upward, and she followed him, pushing down against the water with her arms, thrusting her legs out in kick after kick, and then she saw the shark again.

He materialized from nowhere on a crest of blueness, blue himself, appearing suddenly and dead ahead and swimming toward her in a rush, directly at her, a giant specimen some fifteen feet long, he arced away from her and she saw the white underbelly and the curved mouth, and her first instinct was to scream, and her second instinct was to run. But she could neither scream nor run, she was under water and Ben was somewhere above her, probably on the surface by this time, she tried to remember everything she had ever heard or read about sharks, where was he now? should she splash? should she make noise? should she swim quietly away, where was he? She looked through her mask with wide frightened eyes, turning her head in short jerks, the wide rubber mold limiting her field of vision, watching, waiting, afraid to move, afraid to attract attention to the bright-green wool of her bathing suit or the bright yellow of her flippers, where was he? afraid to cause the slightest movement in the water, afraid the motion would attract the shark, he appeared again.

He appeared again, seeing her this time, perhaps he had seen her the first time, but definitely seeing her this time, making a long pass at her, a graceful beautiful swift pass, coming as close as six feet away and then circling off, she remembered something about sharks circling before they attacked, or had he attacked already, was that pass the beginning of his attack? She pushed out with her arms and legs and tried to swim away, but the shark was everywhere. He circled her patiently now, judging his distance, coming closer with each pass, what if he came close enough to tear her flesh with his rough skin, would she bleed, would the blood provoke a frenzied attack? She could see two small fish clinging to the shark, could see them in shocking clarity as he completed another pass. She hung witless in the water as he circled her, wishing Ben would come back, wondering why Ben did not come back with his dagger, paralyzed with fear. She felt her mouth going lax, felt the rubber mouthpiece sliding from her lips. She clutched at it greedily, grasped it before it fell completely clear, held it to her mouth, desperately sucked oxygen, certain she was trembling, feeling cold and limp and faint, and knowing she was going to die.

Knowing this.

Knowing it would be terrible and painful, knowing this as the shark cruised silently and patiently, almost as if he were toying with her now, coming closer and closer, his mouth seemingly curved into an evil grin, the water miraculously clear of any other fish, there was nothing in the water but Gillian and the shark, life and death, and she knew she would die.

But don’t, she thought. Please.

Please, I haven’t begun.

She decided to turn. She decided to swim away from the shark. She decided to find the boat. She hung paralyzed in the water.

Turn, she commanded herself.

Swim away.

She looked up. There was no sunlight. She was very deep, she felt heavy all at once, all at once she wondered if her oxygen would run out, and the shark made another pass, terrifyingly close.

Go ahead, she thought. Do it! Get it over with!

No, she thought. No, goddamn you! No, I haven’t begun.

She felt her arms moving in a breast stroke, felt her feet lashing out in a scissors kick, felt herself moving. She would not look back. She knew the shark was there. She knew he was behind her. She knew he was coming from behind, huge and silent, knew that any moment those terrible ripping teeth would cut into her legs, would sever her legs from the rest of her body. She began to whimper soundlessly behind the mask, thrusting with her arms, kicking with her legs, waiting for the razor slash that would end her life.

Sunlight.

A wedge of light fanned on water, breaking, motion.

Something touched her.

She thought, The shark!

She reeled back from the touch, her heart stopping. Something clamped onto her arm, she tried to pull away, her eyes exploding in fear, she saw something through the clouded face plate of the mask, saw, saw, and suddenly relaxed, suddenly went limp, suddenly knew she was about to faint, and felt Ben’s arm around her waist.

“Drink this,” he said. He put the brandy to her mouth. She sipped at it, and then turned her face away.

She had told him brokenly and hysterically about her encounter with the shark, and now she leaned against the bulkhead, her eyes wide, staring down at the deck. The boat rocked. She could hear the creaking of the timber. The world was silent, except for the creaking of the timber.

“Ben,” she said.

“What is it, Gillian?”

“Thank you.”

“I was scared to death, Gilly,” he said, and he began sobbing. “I thought you’d drowned. I kept diving down after you, but I couldn’t find you.”

“The shark,” she said, and she shivered.

Ben blew his nose. “Come on, get out of that wet suit,” he said. “You’ll get a chill.” He lowered the straps, took the suit off her, put her on the bunk and covered her with a blanket. Then he sat on a barrel opposite the bunk and watched her, his face pale. He blew his nose again. Very softly, he said again, “I thought you’d drowned.”

The cabin was silent. She kept staring at the overhead.

“Ben,” she said.

“What, Gilly?”

“I just thought...” She shook her head.

“What is it, Gilly?”

She kept staring at the overhead, her face calm and pale, her eyes wide. She lay still beneath the blanket, and she stared at the overhead and through it and beyond it, and she said, “I just thought... he might die, Ben. He might die and...” She turned her head into the pillow.

Ben was silent, watching her.

“Ben,” she said, “I just hate to think he might die somewhere and never know how much I loved him.”

“Try to get some sleep, Gilly,” Ben said.

She nodded.

“I’m going to start back,” he said.

She nodded again.

“Never know how much I loved him,” she said into the stillness.

Elliot Tulley clawed at his bald pate with long thin talons and then studied his fingernails and then walked to the window and looked down at the wind-swept Talmadge street. The vista never changed. Year after year, the Talmadge main street crawled with life, winter and summer, the faces changed, but the town never did. He turned to look at Julia, sitting in the leather-upholstered chair alongside his desk, the wall of lawbooks forming a backdrop behind her, her legs crossed, a cigarette burning idly in her right hand as she studied the document. She’s still a dish, he thought, but not the Julia Regan who came into this office for the first time almost seventeen years ago, with her head held high, to lay a secret on my desk and to work out a plan. Who the hell are priests? Tulley wondered. Who gets more of the confession business, the lawyers or the sanctified holymen who sit in their little boxes and listen to how many sins you committed last week?

He shrugged birdlike shoulders and walked to where she was sitting, impatiently began reading the document over her shoulder. He was wearing brown sharkskin trousers and a brown vest over a white shirt. The sleeves were rolled up over his scrawny biceps. He was also wearing a clip-on bow tie, but it was in the pocket of his shirt, and the shirt collar was open over a prominent Adam’s apple and a throat nicked with shaving cuts.

“I thought you knew me well enough to skip over the fine print, Julia,” he said.

“I don’t know anyone that well.”

“You don’t trust me, Julia?”

“I trust you, Elliot. But I like to read something before I sign it. And with something like this, I won’t get an opportunity to change my mind, now will I?”

“Why not? Do you plan on dying the minute you leave this office?”

“No, not quite that soon.”

“Then take the will home with you and read it there. If you want any changes made, I’ll make them before you sign. You need two witnesses anyway, Julia. And there are certain formalities I want you to follow.”

“What are they, Elliot?”

“First of all, don’t pick people who are apt to die before you do. If this will is ever contested, we want people around who can testify to their witnessing signatures. That’s the first thing. Pick two witnesses who are younger than you are, preferably not a husband-and-wife team.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” Julia said, smiling.

“That’s right, someone as old as you are with one foot in the grave already shouldn’t have any trouble on that score. Then I want you to get them together, and I want you to say, ‘This is my last will and testament. I have read it, and am asking you to sign it as my witnesses.’ Have you got that? I’ll write it down for you before you go.”

“All right.”

“Then the testatrix — that’s you — signs her name and dates the will. And then you give it to the witnesses to sign it below the attestation clause. That’s all there is to it. But they’ve got to be in each other’s presence when they sign it, Julia. You’ve got that?”

“I’ve got it.”

“Okay. Then now I can tell you this is a lousy will, and I’m sure it’ll be contested, and I think you’re a damn fool.”

“Who’ll contest it, Elliot?”

“You want my guess? David.”

“Why should he?”

“Why should he, huh? Because he’ll think you were out of your bloody mind when you signed it, that’s why. Look at it, Julia. You’ve left half of your estate to be held in trust by a man named Giovanni Fabrizzi quote in the secure knowledge that he will disperse it as agreed upon in prior discussions unquote. Now, what kind of a legal document is that? He can spend the money on a villa somewhere and then claim that was in agreement with your prior discussions. Who’ll ever know what you told Fabrizzi?”

“I trust him,” Julia said. “I’ve trusted him all these years, and I can trust him now.”

“I don’t trust anybody,” Elliot said. “Not when it comes to a will. Not when it comes to an estate the size of yours.”

“There’s only one person who could possibly object to the will, and that’s David. And I don’t think he’s that kind of person. Besides, he’s taken care of adequately.”

“Sure, with half your estate. And the other half goes to a guy in Italy named Giovanni Fabrizzi, and you think David isn’t going to raise a fuss? Julia, don’t tell me about people and estates. Don’t tell me about people and money.”

“I still think—”

“And what do you know about Fabrizzi, other than that he’s handled a penny-ante transaction over the past sixteen and a half years? This is real money, Julia, this is better than three-quarters of a million dollars. That damn spaghetti-bender may just—”

“Don’t talk that way, Elliot.”

“I’m sorry. But I don’t trust him. You want this money to go where it’s supposed to, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then don’t trust Fabrizzi.”

“How else can I—?”

“I’d like you to change the will. I’d like it to read ‘to be held in trust by Giovanni Fabrizzi pursuant to a separate agreement between Mr. Fabrizzi and the testatrix.’” He reached for another document on his desk, handed it to Julia, and said, “This is a rough draft of the separate agreement. It tells exactly where the estate goes, and when. Nothing vague about it, Julia. I’d like you to send it to Fabrizzi for his signature.”

“Nothing vague about it,” she said, and she nodded. “And when I die, Elliot? What happens to this agreement that is anything but vague?”

“One copy stays locked in my safe, and another stays locked in Fabrizzi’s. There are such things as secret trusts, Julia. And if a separate document is mentioned in the will, David won’t have a leg to stand on.”

“And if he contests it, you’ll have to show the separate document, won’t you?”

“No, I doubt it. A will contest very rarely involves the provisions of a will. Your son can’t say such and such a provision is no good simply because it doesn’t happen to appeal to him. He would have to base his contest on trying to prove you were mentally incompetent when you made the will, or that undue influence was exerted on you, or something of that nature. But this wouldn’t necessitate showing the separate agreement, which is a part of one of the will’s provisions. In fact, the separate agreement would be testimony to your mental stability. Only an idiot would leave half her estate to a man three thousand miles away on the basis of a verbal agreement.”

“I wouldn’t want—”

“Julia, I know what you wouldn’t want. This is Elliot Tulley.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll think about it, Elliot.”

“I suggest you think about it very carefully. And I strongly suggest that you allow me to revise the will and to send the separate agreement off to Fabrizzi for his signature and approval. As your attorney, this is what I suggest.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Sure, it’s only money.” Elliot paused. “How’s everything else?”

“Fine.”

“What were you doing over at the travel agency day before yesterday?”

“Elliot, you should have been an FBI agent.”

“How do you know I’m not? Planning a trip, Julia?”

“Maybe.” She smiled and picked up her handbag.

“It wouldn’t be to Rome, would it?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s none of my business, Julia, but this is a small town, and a man who’s alert can’t help hearing things. Milt Anderson says your heart—”

“If I’m going to have a coronary, Elliot, I might just as well have it in Rome, don’t you think?”

“It’s your coronary,” Elliot said, shrugging. “Have it wherever the hell you want.” He paused. “I think it’s amazing you’ve managed to stay away all these years, anyway.”

“You have to be ready to go back, Elliot. Otherwise, there’s no sense going, is there?”

“I guess not. And you’re ready now, are you?”

“I’m fifty-six years old, Elliot. I want to see... I want to go back before I die.”

“Everyone wants to go back before he dies, Julia,” Elliot said. “Call me as soon as you’ve decided on the will, please. I want to make those changes as soon as possible.”

“Elliot, really,” Julia said, smiling. “I do have at least a few weeks, don’t you think?”

Kate Bridges was seventeen.

She had turned seventeen in November, and now it was March; she had been seventeen for four months and the change was remarkable only in that it was nothing at all like a metamorphosis. The person who emerged from the chrysalis of sixteen still resembled Kate, talked like Kate, moved like Kate, and yet was truly a different Kate, the change was indiscernible and perhaps a little disappointing.

But oh, it was good to be seventeen.

It was marvelous to be alive and at the peak of beauty, to have a strong body and uncomplaining muscles, an appetite for life and living. It was wonderful to know you could laugh robustly and cry in unashamed torment. It was good to be able to magnify all the minuscule problems of living, and shoulder none of its responsibilities, it was good to be young, it was good to be seventeen.

Nor was this Booth Tarkington’s seventeen, nor Eugene O’Neill’s, this was not that magic age, that long-awaited phase of adolescence when the braces came off and the kisses got longer. Oh yes, it still included idyllic dreams and fresh discoveries, visions of romance and high ideals, it was still all these things, but seventeen had changed. Kate had been born in 1942 while her father was being exploded on a navy destroyer. She had been nursed on the waning days of a world war, and weaned on the threat of another, and so war or the promise of war was part of the fabric of her life. And yet the adults had managed to do something to the concept, had robbed it of all its glamour and excitement. If war came, there would no longer be the agony of deprivation, the banners-and-music excitement of seeing a loved one off, the free-and-easy love-making in moments stolen from the battle front, the weeping alone while the guns echoed far away, the tragedy of death in combat, the excesses a seventeen-year-old could really appreciate. The adults, instead, had invented the ultimate excess, and now war only meant annihilation.

And in annihilation, there was democracy.

There had been a time, back in those swinging days that were the forties, when a sailor in a San Diego bar, a sailor headed for the Pacific where he could very easily have his head blown off, would not be served a glass of beer unless he could prove he was over twenty-one years old. It was still tough to get a drink in San Diego, but it was fairly simple to get one in your own living room if you were seventeen years old and blessed with modern parents who understood that physically you were capable of doing the same things they did, possibly better, and that mentally you were struggling with the same day-by-day possibility of extinction, with a great deal more to lose since you had experienced a great deal less in the short seventeen years of your life. When the hydrogen bomb fell, if it fell, no one was going to separate the women and children from the men. There would be a blinding flash and ten seconds to say your prayers, and everyone would wonder in those ten seconds who had pushed the button, goodbye Charlie.

So seventeen was a different thing, a new thing, and Kate was a part of this new seventeen, a curious seventeen, which still included a freedom from most adult responsibilities, but which also included an adult attitude of tolerance that permitted participation in many adult activities. You could smoke at seventeen. You could have a drink at seventeen. You could drive a car. You could mix with your parents’ friends at cocktail parties, you could even dance with some of the men, you could discuss everything they discussed, no conversation ever stopped suddenly when you walked into the room, no one ever said, “Shhh, here are the kids.” It was casually assumed that you were almost an adult at seventeen, not quite, but almost. If you could kill at seventeen, if you could be killed in the indiscriminate indifference of a hydrogen bomb explosion, then surely you could be allowed the courtesy of adult treatment.

Kate was allowed this courtesy, as were most of her friends. She accepted it with a supreme ladylike poise that was sometimes astonishing. She could sit in a group of older men and women and discuss anything they happened to touch upon, perhaps too vigorously and with the extreme conviction of the very young, but nonetheless intelligently and knowledgeably. She could smile in maidenly restraint at the too-dirty joke told in her living room — and then later repeat it to Agnes and laugh vulgarly and hilariously when she delivered the punch line. She could listen to a conversation about morality and virginity, knowing she was still pure and relatively untouched, voicing her opinions in a low clear voice, and then pet furiously on the back seat of an automobile with a boy, his hands under her dress, her own hands exploring.

There was in Kate the woman.

They saw this in her, the other women, and the men. They saw in her the woman almost formed, and they were surprised by the glimpse because they could not remember themselves this way at seventeen, and indeed they could not because this was a new seventeen, quite different from what theirs had been. When they told stories of their own youth, they could remember with extreme clarity the single incident that propelled them into the world of the adult, that one memorable instant when their parents at last seemed to accept them as grownups, when they crossed the imaginary dividing line. But for Kate, there had been no crossing, there had been instead a gradual disappearance of the line itself. She had helped serve hors d’oeuvres at one of her parents’ parties when she was only ten. She had danced with one of her father’s friends when she was twelve. She had listened to a conversation about birth control when she was fourteen. There seemed to be no adult aversion to her growing up, no pressure to keep her a child. Instead, the adults surrounding her seemed impatient, even eager, to accept her into their world, to equate seventeen or eighteen with thirty-five or forty. She sometimes felt she was allowing them into her universe rather than being permitted to enter theirs.

The woman was in her — but so was the child.

And they recognized the child, too, especially the women, and saw in Kate something fresh and unspoiled, something that was yet to be determined by, fashioned by, molded by her contact with... and here they hesitated. They hesitated because for each there had been a different experience, sometimes sourly admitted, sometimes joyfully, a different experience, but the same knowledge, and they did not hesitate for long. They saw in Kate something fresh and unspoiled, something that was yet to be molded by... men. They saw the child in her, and they watched the glow. But they waited for the greater change, waited expectantly, like women at a wrestling match, aware that the match was a phony, knowing the outcome was identical each time, and nonetheless screaming for blood.

The child in Kate knew fear.

The child was afraid of too many things, afraid of growing up too soon, afraid of never growing up, afraid of being too passionate, or not passionate enough, or frigid, of being popular for the wrong things, or even unpopular for the wrong things, of touching and being touched, afraid. The child Kate could remember sitting in the middle of a room far away, on a scatter rug covered with her hair, while two women struggled grotesquely. The child Kate could remember coming to a strange house and sleeping in a strange room with night noises in the house, timbers creaking, frightening shadows on the wall whenever an automobile passed outside in the night. The child Kate sometimes dreamed of a woman who was insane wandering down long narrow cramped halls, a scissors clutched in her hand.

The child Kate wondered if something would happen to her one day, something terrible and horrible, something that would drive her finally mad. Like her mother.

Like her mother.

She confided her fears to David once. She had gone to the Regan house one weekend, ostensibly to see Julia, but knowing it was the weekend and David would be there. They sat in the living room while she waited for Julia. Outside, the wind whipped under the eaves of the house.

“That’s a very scary wind,” she said.

“Yes.” He paused. “But you get used to it.”

Kate shivered. “It makes me think of terrible things.”

“Like what?”

“Like losing my mind,” she answered quickly and without hesitation. She looked across the room at him. “Do you ever think of losing your mind, David?” she asked.

“I’ve got nothing to lose,” he said, and smiled.

“No, seriously.”

“No, I don’t think I ever do, Kate.”

“I do. I keep waiting for it.” She paused. “Do you think insanity is hereditary?”

David shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“I mean, do you think something terrible could happen to a person, something, well, frightening and traumatic that could cause... could...” and Julia had come into the room, and she had let the conversation lapse, but she was still afraid.

She was afraid of her relationship with David, too. And here, too, there was a combination of woman and child, one creating phantoms and the other putting them to rout. The child was quite sensibly disturbed by her love for a man twice her age. The woman could speculate upon the ecstasies of such a love, could envision passionate embraces and whispered promises, but the child reared back in something like revulsion at the prospect of ever being held or fondled by David Regan. The woman could plan supposedly chance meetings, could sit opposite him in a living room full of other people and plan the quickest and most direct route to his side, concoct the wildest schemes for coming into chance physical contact with him, the resting of her hand upon his arm to emphasize a point, the casual brushing of a breast against his shoulder as she reached for a magazine — and then the child would pick up her skirts and run. The woman wanted him to know she loved him, wanted him to accept this love, use it, abuse it, do with it what he wanted. But the child was fearful that he would laugh, and more fearful that he would act upon a cue from her, act in a masculine and physical way for which she was not yet ready. And so she thrilled in his presence, she quaked in his presence. She schemed in his presence, she defected in his presence. She wanted him, and she was fearful he would take her.

She was seventeen.

It was March.

It was Sunday. Matthew was still in his robe and slippers, reading the newspaper on the sun porch when the telephone rang. In the living room, Amanda was working at the piano. Beverly, the cocker spaniel, began barking the moment she heard the phone. Matthew scratched the dog’s head, shushed her, put down the paper, and went to the telephone.

“Amanda, could you hold it a minute?” he shouted, and then lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hello. Mr. Bridges?”

“Yes.”

“This is Agnes. May I speak to Kate, please?”

“Just a minute, Agnes. I think she’s still sleeping.” He cupped the mouthpiece and shouted, “Kate? You up?”

“Who is it, Dad?” Kate called from upstairs.

“It’s Aggie.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

He waited until he heard Kate pick up the extension. He put the receiver back into its cradle and went back to reading his newspaper. Beverly dozed at his feet, basking in the sunshine. He had finished a cursory reading of the book section when he heard Kate coming down the steps and going into the kitchen. He put down his newspaper, belted his robe, walked past the living room where Amanda had begun playing again, and then directly into the kitchen. Beverly padded along behind him, sniffing at his bare feet.

“Morning, Kate,” he said.

“Morning, Dad.”

She was wearing a robe-over her pajamas. Her hair was tousled, and there was still a sleepy look on her face. She opened the refrigerator, poured herself a glass of orange juice, and then said, “Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes. But I’ll have another cup of coffee with you.”

“Okay,” Kate said listlessly. She poured coffee into two cups, and then sat opposite him at the table. “That was Agnes,” she said.

“Yes, I know.” Matthew put sugar into his coffee, added a drop of cream, and then stirred it.

“I don’t know what to do, Dad.”

“What’s the matter? Trouble?”

He could remember when she was a little girl. He could remember sitting at this very table with her, explaining the use of a skate key. He lifted his cup. With his dangling free hand, he idly stroked Beverly’s head where she lay by his chair.

“We’re going to the dance at the church tonight,” Kate said. “Paul Marris is taking me.”

“Mmm?”

“He’s going into the air force, Dad. He graduated high school last term, you know, and he’s enlisted, and he expects to be called by the end of the month.” Kate paused. “He’ll be gone for four years.” She swallowed a hasty gulp of hot coffee. “Do you have a cigarette, Dad?”

Matthew felt in the pockets of his robe, handed her the package, and then lighted one for her.

“Thanks,” she said. She blew out a stream of smoke and picked up her coffee cup again. “He’s going to ask me to go steady, Dad,” she said.

“Paul is?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Agnes told me. He’s discussed it with Ralph, his friend. He’s going to ask me to wait for him.” She paused. “He’ll be gone for four years, Dad.”

“I see.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

The table was silent. A car passed by outside, and Beverly leaped to her feet and began barking.

“Shhh, shhh,” Matthew said, and the dog growled once as an afterthought, and then collapsed at his feet again. In the living room, Amanda kept striking the same chord repeatedly as she transcribed it to the manuscript paper. “Well, do you like him, Kate?”

“Yes, I do, Daddy.”

“Well, I think...” He hesitated. He suddenly felt inadequate. “I think you should ask yourself whether or not, well... if he wants you to wait for him, Kate, this would indicate he’s pretty serious, wouldn’t it?”

“It wouldn’t be like getting engaged or anything, Dad.”

“I understand that.”

“But I couldn’t go out with anyone else, either. I’d be his girl.”

“Yes, I know.” Matthew paused again. “Well, he’s a very nice boy, Kate.”

“Yes, he is, Dad. Not at all hoody like some of the other boys around. But...” She shrugged. She picked up her coffee cup and stared into it, and then swallowed another gulp.

“Kate, maybe you’re a little young to be tying yourself down to someone. You’ll be getting out of school this summer, you’ll probably want to make plans for college, you—”

“Yes, I know, Dad. The only thing is, you see, I wouldn’t want to hurt Paul. I think he might be very embarrassed if he asked me to wait for him and I said no. You see, I do like him, and he is awfully nice, and I’m very flattered and all, but... well, I wouldn’t want to hurt him, especially when he’s going away to the air force. Because I like him, Dad.”

“I think it takes a little more than that, Kate. I think you should consider whether there’s more than just liking him.”

“Well, I like him a lot, Dad. But then...” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Mrs. Regan asked me if I’d like to go with her this summer, you know, when she goes to Italy, and—”

“I didn’t know that,” Matthew said.

“Yes. So there’s that to consider, too. I was going to ask you, Dad,” she said hastily. “I wouldn’t just accept without...”

“I know you wouldn’t. But I don’t see how the trip would affect—”

“Being away and all, I mean. And suppose I go to college in the fall... well, I don’t know what to do, Dad. Actually, I may not even go to college.”

“That’s up to you.”

“But I still don’t want to hurt Paul before he goes away.”

“Kate, do you love him?” Matthew asked flatly.

“No.” She paused. She looked into her empty coffee cup. “I love someone else.”

“Then that settles it, doesn’t it? It has nothing to do with the air force or the trip or college or anything but the fact that you love someone else.”

“Well, this other person doesn’t even know I exist, Dad.”

Matthew smiled. “How can anyone not know you exist, Kate?”

“Oh, it’s possible, all right,” she said. She smiled wanly, got up, and walked to the stove. “Would you like more coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

She returned to the table, poured herself a fresh cupful, put the pot back on the stove, and said, “Believe me, Dad, it’s possible,” and the kitchen went silent.

“Kate...” he said, and he paused. Go on, he thought, be the father. Make the father speech. He felt very clumsy all at once. “Kate, you’re a young girl,” he said. That’s a wonderful beginning, he thought. Always start with the obvious, especially when your daughter is someone as bright as Kate. “You’re a young girl and...” He groped for words. Amanda should be doing this, he thought, and then he saw that Kate was watching him, and listening to him intently, and he realized that he’d made the mistake again of thinking she was truly adult, of assuming she already knew what he was about to say. But she didn’t. She was a young girl, and this was all new to her, and she wouldn’t have begun discussing it if she hadn’t hoped for assistance. He suddenly thought of the skate key again, holding the skate and showing her how the key worked.

“Kate,” he said, “the important thing to think of is...” In a split second, he thought, No, don’t tell her that, don’t tell her to hurt this boy, don’t tell her to think only of herself, and he remembered when he was eighteen and he thought of a girl named Helen Kennedy and he wondered suddenly what Paul Marris had done to his daughter Kate. But very carefully, and all in the space of several seconds, he phrased what he was about to say, almost as if he were summing up a case for the jury, but this time he was only summing up a life, so how do you sum up life in a Connecticut kitchen on a sunny Sunday morning to a troubled girl of seventeen, how do you do that? It was so easy with the skate key, he thought, Jesus, it was so easy. How do things get so complicated?

“Kate,” he said, “I like Paul, he’s a nice boy. I’m glad you’ve been going out with him. I think Mother likes him, too. I think he’s sensible and levelheaded and nice-looking, but none of this matters a damn if you don’t love him, because there are a lot of nice-looking, sensible, levelheaded people in this world, and you’re going to meet a great many of them and, Kate, you can like them all, but that isn’t love, and if you loved Paul, you wouldn’t have to think about it twice, you’d know exactly what you wanted to do.” He paused. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I met your mother.”

I’m doing this all wrong, he thought. I sound like the voice of the ages, the wise old man of the hills, she hasn’t experienced this, damn it, she doesn’t know that people come and go, she doesn’t know what life is all about.

Yes, and do you? he asked himself.

“Kate...”

Do you? he asked himself.

“Kate, I’d kill anyone who tried to hurt your mother,” he said. “I’d strangle him with my bare hands.”

Yes, and that explains love, doesn’t it? That explains it all to a seventeen-year-old girl who is going to a dance tonight where someone will ask her to wait for him, did I ask anyone to wait for me? No, but Amanda was waiting. Amanda was...

“Kate,” he said, and suddenly realized he could not talk to her, and was filled with a desperate lonely sadness. I cannot talk to my own daughter, he thought. “Kate,” he said, “you’ll know when you’re in love, don’t rush into anything,” crap, he thought, baloney, bull, crap, nothing, why can’t I talk to her, and tell her what, and tell her of the girl on the hill overlooking the town, and tell her of Helen Kennedy, and tell her of the girls in Boston, and tell her of Kitty Newell, all of whom I loved in a way, all of whom took a part of me, Matthew Bridges, and from whom I accepted something, tell her not to hurt, tell her to be kind, “Kate, don’t hurt him,” he said, tell her of a love beyond the physical exchange, did she know of this already, has she been kissed, has she been touched, what can I tell her, and why can’t I speak to her?

So all the platitudes came out, all the father-daughter jazz evolved from a long line of father-daughter conversations starting with Eve and the biggest father of them all, and ending perhaps with Tracy Lord in Philadelphia, and he thought wildly of love as he explained patiently to her, explained that Paul would be more hurt if she accepted his love when she really couldn’t return it, thought of his very real and long-ago concern with people until somewhere he had lost the capacity, thought how sad it was to be sitting here with a daughter who was almost grown up, a daughter troubled because she didn’t want to hurt someone she liked, and thinking back to all the people he had possibly hurt in the past, and telling her she had a long life ahead of her, and that one day she would find the person she instinctively knew was the right person for her, telling her this while believing there was no single right person in the world for any other person, but giving his daughter all the time-honored crap while recognizing that something very important was happening then and there in the sunny Connecticut kitchen while Amanda played piano in the living room, recognizing that he was about to lose her because they could no longer talk together.

And sitting there with her, shining and new, recognized perhaps that Matthew Bridges was not a very special unique individual at all. Recognized the falseness of a man who shouted rebellion while slowly settling into a comfortable rut where there was really nothing against which to rebel. Who theorized and observed and complained about the culture, but who had nonetheless succumbed to it over the years, and was totally at ease within its confines, recognized this, and was shocked by the recognition. Matthew Bridges was a man who got up to catch the 8:04 each morning, and who read the Times and who voted without much interest and who went to the parties and the picnics and the dances and who devoted time to his wife in the evening and time to his children on Saturday and Sunday, and yet was losing his daughter this very minute, not to another person, but only because he could not talk to her. Or maybe had lost himself a long time ago in the morass of just doing the things that had to be done every single day of the week, like brushing his teeth, or taking Beverly for a walk, losing his own identity in a superficial uniform mass-identity where people spoke in shorthand and where it was important to be liked, but not at all important to be loved.

“It’s important,” he said flatly and harshly.

He wanted to run. In the stillness of the sunny kitchen with the March cold outside and the echo of his words, he wanted to run because the image of himself was suddenly frightening, an image indistinguishable from the countless others who caught their trains and mowed their lawns and lighted their cigarettes and held their cocktails and made love to their wives and had hopeless conversations with their daughters without being able to speak to them. He wanted to run anywhere out into the countryside because he knew he had once been Matthew Anson Bridges, a person in his own right, a very important individual, and that now he was not that person, but someone else — not even someone else, he was everyone else, he was faceless.

“Oh, Christ, Kate,” he said, “keep it!”

She stared at him in puzzlement, there was no communication. She thought he meant something quite different.

“I’d like to get on a train for Boston sometime,” he said.

She stared at her father because he no longer was making the slightest sense. She had already decided how she would handle Paul Marris — honestly and simply; no, she would not be his girl — but this was something else. She looked up at him in confusion and said, “What did you say, Daddy?”

“You know what love is?”

“I think I do.”

“Do you know what it is?” he said fiercely. “It’s accepting things you don’t really want, and giving away the things that mean the most to you.”

She did not answer him.

He thought, She doesn’t understand.

He thought, For Christ’s sake, Kate, your father is a shadow. I loved girls once, do you know that? I killed men once, do you know that? I raced across Connecticut with Amanda once, do you know that? Do you know what I did once, Kate, oh do you know the things I did once?

“Well,” he said, “you can take care of it. You’re a sensible girl, Kate.”

He wanted to run.

“You can handle Paul without hurting him.”

He wanted to be Matthew Anson Bridges.

“I’ve always been able to depend on you.”

He wanted suddenly to see Julia. He wanted someone to look at his face, to take his face between her hands and look at it very hard and then say, “Why, yes. It’s you.” He closed his eyes tight.

Why, yes, of course, it’s you.

April came in alive with plans. April always did. You had to do something in April, you had to burst outdoors in a sweater and suck air into your lungs, you had to leave the house and the winter behind, the season demanded it of you. And because life was suddenly sprouting everywhere around you, because there was visible evidence in everything you touched that the world was turning green again, because April had that magic sound in it, April, you could taste the word, you could sniff it, you could hold it in your arms and love it, because April brought with it the promise of sunshine and languid breezes and romance, it was a time for planning, a time for renewed hopefulness.

Julia Regan was going back to Italy.

There were clothes to buy, and she shopped the stores and studied the designers’ offerings with all the excitement of a young girl going to her first prom. She bought a Brigance walking skirt in taupe with a geometrically patterned matching top. She bought a Jane Derby afternoon dress in black silk surah. From Grès, for the evening, she bought a brown chiffon, and from Galanos a dark-blue print in Italian silk. At Lord & Taylor’s, she found a colorful Pucci silk-jersey print, which she purchased, amused because she was going to Italy where the dress originated, but not at all sure she could get it there. At Ohrbach’s she found two drip-dry cotton shirtwaists, one in madras and one in khaki. She bought impetuously, but with a practiced eye, two Acrilon knits, one in white and the other in black, two pairs of Belgian walking shoes from Henri Bendel, a woolen mohair stole in a burnished mustard, a coral-colored jersey raincoat that could double as a topper, a dark-green cotton suit from Jax with a matching scoop-necked dressy blouse and a striped tailored blouse, a pair of brown satin shoes and another pair dyed to match the blue Italian silk. She bought a simple black bathing suit, and a dozen nylons, and a pair of beige walking pumps with a stacked heel, and a traveling clock, and a cardigan sweater, and a large bottle of aspirin, and cleansing tissues, and paperback books for the plane trip. She bought no new jewelry, but she laid out her pearls and her scatter pins and bracelets, and a ruby pendant Arthur had given her when David was born, and a cameo she’d inherited from her mother, and tried to decide which she should take with her, if not all.

There were arrangements to be made, too. She longed to duplicate the trip she’d taken in 1938. She wanted to begin in Paris as she had with Millie — only this time, Kate would be her companion, Kate would accompany her to the Meurice, and then out of Paris by rented car to Fontainebleau and Sens and Dijon where they would stay overnight at the Hôtel de la Cloche, and then on to Lausanne and the Beau-Rivage, and finally to Interlaken. Kate would be with her when they drove through the Grimsel Pass, and down that magnificent valley to Brig. Kate would be with her when the train pulled into Domodossola, white and shining in the sun. There were hotel reservations to be made, and maps to be marked, the entire route from Paris to Rome, and airline tickets to be purchased, and passports to be applied for and acquired, and vaccinations and shots, and traveler’s checks, and a letter of credit from the Talmadge bank, a hundred things to do before they left from Idlewild on the first of July.

She barely had time to think about Milt Anderson’s warnings in those hurried days of buying and preparing for the trip. Somewhere in a buried corner of her mind, there was the memory of a car stalled on a mountain curve, a bus rushing past, the frightening lurch of her heart as the horn’s sound filled the air, she did not want this to happen again. But she nonetheless planned her trip to duplicate that earlier one, telling herself nothing could possibly happen, she would avoid the physical and emotional stress Milt had talked about. Kate would make it easier for her.

And then, remembering the true intent of her trip, she wondered whether it was advisable to take Kate with her. But yes, there would be no harm, Kate would make it easier all around, easier to accept whatever physical hardships presented themselves, easier to reconstruct the past — and perhaps easier to adjust to the present. So she stopped questioning her judgment. April was a time for planning, and she planned happily and with joyous expectation.

Julia Regan was going back.

April was a time for meetings.

The paneled private office of Curt Sonderman contained six executives of the corporation met in high conclave to discuss a television phenomenon known simply as “the trend to the Coast.” This, when translated from O’Brian, simply meant that New York City was becoming a dead town where television — live, filmed, or taped — was concerned. The trend was not a surprising one, nor had its development gone undetected over the years. The business of Sonderman Enterprises, Inc., after all, was television, and Curt was a shrewd businessman who knew upon which side his onion roll was buttered. But when you’ve got a going firm in a going city like New York, the natural thing is to believe not what your intelligence tells you is true, but what your emotions want you to believe. So what if they opened a big Television City out there? So what if North Vine was crawling with bright fancy studios, and more and more shows seemed to be originating from beautiful stages constructed for the sole purpose of television broadcasting, instead of the leftover legitimate theaters and converted lofts in New York? So what if every major film studio had subsidiaries that were grinding out more filmed television dramas than the public could consume in a month of Sundays, New York would stand eternal. New York would not succumb to the cry of the cannibals on the Coast, New York would remain the inspiration, the creative center of that world of video, yeah, the actors and the writers and the producers and the directors would recognize that Hollywood was just so much flesh in the pan, yeah, movies they could make, yeah, but when it came to television, when it came to that newest of mediums, which had its beginnings and its real roots in the East, yeah, nobody was ready to believe that Hollywood could take the ball away from New York.

Yeah.

Well, it had.

And so Curt Sonderman and six producers of Sonderman Enterprises, Inc., one of whom was David Regan, sat in that lush paneled office and pored over figures that explained without a single doubt, no matter what feelings they had about that mecca of creativity named New York, explained precisely and concisely that most of the television work — live, filmed, and taped — most of the really artistic and creative stuff like Wagon Train and Johnny Midnight and Peter Gunn and Maverick and Gunsmoke and Lawman and Leave It to Beaver and The Man and the Challenge and The Detectives and Air Power and The Real McCoys and Disneyland, all these were being done on the Coast. So where did that leave a New York firm like Sonderman Enterprises, Inc., whose business was producing and packaging television programs for consumption throughout the nation? Where did it leave them especially when New York City was still crawling with investigators who were complaining about perfectly legitimate rigged shows like The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One, and like that?

“What am I in business for my health?” Sonderman shouted, repeating the words his sainted grandfather had been fond of using. “We’re supposed to package shows, we’re supposed to produce shows, we’re paying enough rent in this Madison Avenue glass slipper each month to support a tribe of Arabs for the rest of their natural lives, am I in business for my health?”

David sat watching him, and said nothing.

“Who’s making the money?” Sonderman asked. “Hollywood is making the money. Who’s doing the shows? Hollywood is doing the shows. Where have all the actors gone? Hollywood! Where have all the directors gone? Hollywood! Am I out of my mind, staying here in New York! What’s in New York, would you please tell me? The Bowery? The Statue of Liberty? Grant’s Tomb? What is there in New York that I, Curt Sonderman, should stay here like a baby holding his mother’s hand, what is there would you please tell me? Nothing! That’s what there is in New York for an honest firm trying to do television business, N-O-T-H-I-N-zero! Nothing!”

“That’s not quite true, Curt,” one of his executives said.

“Look, buddy-boy, take a look at the books. This was the hottest firm in the business in 1956, and now it’s 1960, and we are very quickly falling on our big fat butts. You know what New York has? Legitimate theater, that’s what it has! And a little bit of movies is trickling back, they’re shooting up in the Bronx and on the streets. Are we supposed to start producing plays? Sure, try to edge your way into that pretentious crowd. Or movies, maybe? Ridiculous. They can do them better in Hollywood. They’ve been feeding the public crap for so long, the public is used to the product and respects it like a brand name. Television is our business! So where’s television? It’s in Hollywood, that’s where it is.”

“Curt, you’re getting too nervous,” another of his executives said. “You’re always getting too nervous.”

“Yeah, I got nervous when Studio One went to the Coast, and I got nervous when Kraft went off the air, and I get nervous right now when I see all these shows and on the credit crawl it says ‘Filmed in Hollywood at Desilu’ or some other cockamamie mixed-name outfit, yeah, I get nervous. You think I’m in business for my health?”

“What do you want to do, Curt?” David asked.

“I don’t know what I want to do. That’s why I called this meeting.”

“You want to pick up everything, lock, stock and barrel, and go West?” one of the executives asked.

“Maybe.”

“Foolish,” another of the executives said.

“Look, you said For Whom the Bells Toll was foolish when they wanted to do it, so they did it in two parts and it was a big hit.”

“It was a lousy job.”

“Who’s interested in lousy or good? It was a hit.”

“The movie was better.”

“It is only my pistol, Maria,” one of the executives quoted.

“Don’t clown around,” Sonderman said. “We’ve got business here.”

“It’d be foolish to go West, Curt,” one of the men said. “This is just a fad. A few new studios, a few actors and directors with itchy feet—”

“Itchy feet, my nose. That’s where the long green is, Hollywood, California. So we’re sitting here and watching the industry collapse all around us. That’s smart, all right. That’s smart if you’re in business for your health.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“This is April. We’ve still got the season to finish, and with a little luck we won’t be selling apples on the street before the fall. But we’ve got the whole summer to fool around with, while everybody’s showing reruns. I suggest we start fooling around in Hollywood. I suggest we send a man out there to get the lay of the land and to deliver a full report. And if there’s room for us out there, then, gentlemen, we are going out there!”

The executives fell silent.

“You feel like taking a trip to Hollywood, David?” Sonderman asked.

“If you want me to,” David answered.

“When does your show go off the air?”

“The last one’s on June sixteenth.”

“Can you leave by July first?”

“I think so.”

“Yes, or no?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like a vote on this,” Sonderman said.

The executives voted unanimously to send David Regan to Hollywood on July first, just to scout around. David sat and watched the hands go up all around the table in the paneled room. Oddly, only one word popped into his mind.

Gillian.

It was April, and a time for making plans.

Amanda sat down with her uncompleted suite and read it through carefully, and then decided if she was ever going to finish it, she would finish it this summer. Her own tenacity, her own concentration, sometimes amazed her. The suite would lie dormant for months at a time, untouched, barely thought of in the press of her household duties, and then she would begin working at it steadily again, sometimes devoting as much as eight hours to it in a single day. And then the world would close in again, the petty everyday things that had to be done to keep a home running smoothly, and she would put the work aside, once leaving it for as long as six months before returning to it again. There had seemed no real rush, no real necessity for completing the composition. She wanted it to be perfectly right, and so she had taken her time, knowing it was there, knowing she could always return to it. But now she had an idea, an idea she had never considered before, and the idea presented a new field for speculation, and a definite incentive for completing the suite during the summer.

She was, after all, a graduate of Talmadge University, and some of the music instructors there were rather well known in musical circles, and she had always been a good student and a favorite of many of them. As soon as the composition was finished, she would walk over to the school and renew old acquaintances, casually mention that she had been working on an orchestral suite for a good long time now and had just finished it this summer, well no, really I’m sure you wouldn’t want to hear it, no, it’s nothing really, well, if you insist, I’ll play it for you, though I’m not sure the full effect will be realized with piano alone. And then, yes, she would take advantage of whatever connections they had. Then, yes, she would try to get the work performed, try to get it recorded — but first, of course, she had to finish it.

She was thoroughly satisfied now with the major theme, the section she called Genesis, the opening section with its choralelike overtones. The theme ran throughout the entire work, its solemn ponderous chords appearing in the most curious places, illogically springing up in the Revival section where, and she thought this was an innovation, she had actually used clapping hands as a part of the scoring, two sections of clapping hands in counterpoint to each other and to the timpani and brass. The spiritual section still disturbed her, though, despite the gimmickry of the clapping hands, not really an original concept anyway, Bernstein had used it, though not as flamboyantly, still she wasn’t satisfied with the section, it did not have the true ring of an old-fashioned revival meeting.

Nor was she happy with the brief section in the minor key, the section she had titled Episode, somewhat tangential to the concept of the entire work, and with a foreign flavor to it, actually a Russian flavor. She thought Episode described it fairly accurately, a sort of interlude, a filling-in of spaces, a jaunt away from the major theme of the entire work, and yet a section that advanced the first two sections, the introductory section labeled Genesis, and the spiritual, hand-clapping, joyous, happy, loving second-section called Revival. Still, it needed work, she knew that.

The last and final section of the composition was called Judgment Day, and it recalled the major theme again, picking up the tempo and enlarging upon it, striking each note sharply and cleanly, with a great deal of brass and a segue into strings again. Judgment Day, in fact, borrowed from each of the work’s sections, trying to round out a cycle, something begun with Genesis and ending with the final note of the suite, but really a cycle that was never fully completed because after Judgment Day, there would be another Genesis, and another joyous Revival, and perhaps another Episode, and then again into Judgment Day, the cycle was endless and mystifying, somewhat like a medieval round. The problem in the final section — or the problem as she visualized it — was the resolution of the various themes stated throughout the work, themes that certainly needed resolution before the final note was sounded, but which needed resolution in terms of a sudden alteration of tempo toward an overwhelming climax of sound. The last section moved faster, there was the rushing sound of strings in the background, the reeds seemed to flow more swiftly, the brasses tongued their passages in staccato wildness, everything seemed to rush, oh how she hoped it would rush, toward a climax where theme after theme was resolved separately, and where the major theme was stated triumphantly and majestically.

Or at least, that was what she wanted.

And what she did not yet have.

But this was April, and she was brimful of plans. She knew exactly what she hoped to accomplish during the summer. Kate was going off to Europe with Julia Regan, and arrangements had been made to send Bobby off to camp, and this meant that the house would be empty, blissfully, magnificently empty, and that she could spend all day, every day, at the piano until the suite was finished. In the first green rush of April, she made out a tentative schedule, a visual chart that outlined the exact amount of work she hoped to complete by the end of each day. Her chart told her how many new bars she would write, which sections of the work she would revise, where more complete scoring was necessary, when she would tape-record and play back the sections already finished. Her chart was a day-by-day plan of creativity, and she knew that before the summer was through — she had set Labor Day as her deadline — the work would be completed and ready to show to her old instructors at the university. After that, it was anyone’s guess, But at least she had a plan.

It was April, and at least she had a plan.

Matthew got the idea for the second honeymoon some time in April.

He got the idea sitting in his office and looking down at the street. The idea came to him full-blown. Sitting there with spring outside his window, he suddenly remembered that Kate would be going to Europe this summer, and Bobby would be going to camp, and he suddenly thought, It would be nice to go away somewhere with Amanda, a sort of second honeymoon.

That was exactly the way he thought of it. As a sort of second honeymoon.

And yet, though he labeled it that, he knew it was something more, knew it meant a great deal more to him. He could remember with painful clarity that day at the breakfast table with Kate last month, and the knowledge that something in him had changed, that he had become a different person than he once had been, a person unexciting and somehow dead. He longed to be alive again. The children would both be away for the entire summer, and he had a vision of the open road with Amanda beside him, both of them free of all responsibility, laughing, haphazardly crossing the face of America, sleeping when they were tired, making love when they chose to, getting drunk if they liked, doing whatever they wanted, whenever and wherever they felt like it, recklessly, foolishly, in complete abandon. It seemed absolutely essential that this spring of all springs, this spring when he had had a sudden and frightening glimpse of himself as some fossilizing organism, this spring he should plan for a summer that would be revitalizing and rejuvenating. He felt it was absolutely essential.

He went next door to see Sol Stang, the senior partner of the firm, and he said, “Sol, I want to take my vacation in July this year.”

“Okay,” Stang said, “so take it.”

“I want a full month.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“You’d have to prove that allegation with the testimony of either two psychiatrists, or a psychiatrist and a psychologist. I want a full month, Sol.”

“We’ll have a half-dozen cases coming to trial in July, Matt. We can’t spare you for a full month.”

“I know you can’t. But you can’t spare me for two weeks, either, when you get right down to it. But I take two weeks each summer and two weeks each winter, and somehow the firm seems to get along without me. So this summer, I want to take my wife on a second honeymoon. I want a month. That’s that.”

“Who the hell says that’s that?”

“I say it. I’m taking a month, Sol. My daughter leaves for Europe on July first, and my son leaves for camp on July third, and Amanda and I are leaving for parts unknown on July fourth. That’s that.”

“You know, Matthew,” Stang said, “I sometimes wonder why on earth we ever took you into this firm.”

“I’m a good lawyer,” Matthew said, and he grinned. “I just won a decision for a full month, didn’t I?”

“This isn’t law,” Stang said, “this is economics. And besides, you didn’t win any decision. It’s been a standing rule of this firm for as long as I can remember that no single partner would take more than two weeks at any one time.”

“It’s lucky I’m a married partner then.”

“You know what I mean, Matthew. It’s a rule. It’s the way we operate.”

“Rules are made to be broken,” Matthew said. “The same as laws.”

“What?” Stang stared at him, shocked. “What did you say?”

“I said,” Matthew repeated slowly, “that laws are made to be broken.” As he said the words, he felt again this necessity for rebellion, and wondered instantly whether he really believed what he was saying. And remembered again that day at the table with Kate, and realized anew the terrible need for getting away, and said with firmer conviction — still not knowing if he believed himself — “Laws are made to be broken.”

“That’s the goddamnedest thing I’ve ever heard any lawyer ever say.”

“I’m more honest than most lawyers,” Matthew said, smiling.

“What do you mean, laws are made to be broken?”

“Why else do they exist?”

“To protect society. Why do you think?”

“Nonsense,” Matthew said.

“Look, Matt, the law—”

“The law is a body of rules and regulations that are supposed to limit the activities of human beings, am I right? It is illegal to stab your mother, or drown your sister, or get drunk in church. All right, Sol, let’s assume our laws are perfect, which they’re not, and let’s assume our judicial system is functioning smoothly and effectively, which it’s not, and let’s assume that nobody ever breaks any of the laws we’ve invented. Can you visualize that?”

Why am I doing this? he wondered. I don’t even believe this. Why am I taking an impossible stand and trying to prove it? Why am I such a goddamn phony? A dull conformist who pretends to anarchy? Why?

“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” Stang said.

“I’m simply asking you to visualize a civilization with a rigid code of laws that no one breaks. No one speeds, no one spits on the sidewalk, no one commits assault, or burglary, or homicide. Everyone lives within the law. There are no crimes and no criminals. Can you visualize that?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” Stang said, frowning.

“Why do we need the law?”

“What?”

“In a society devoid of lawbreakers, why is there a necessity for law?”

“Well, to... to protect the citizen.”

“From what? No one is committing any crime.”

“Well, to insure that no one does. To guarantee—”

“But you missed my original premise. No one, repeat, no one commits a crime in this ideal society. No one would even think of committing a crime. Years and years of respect for the existing law has made crime unthinkable. So why do we need the law?”

“I guess because...” Stang fell silent.

“If no one is going to break the law, there is no need for it. Therefore, it seems safe to conclude that laws are only made to be broken. The very existence of law presupposes a person or persons who will one day break it. No mice, no need for mousetraps. No lawbreakers, no need for law. It’s simple.” He shrugged. “Laws are made to be broken.”

He felt no pleasure watching the puzzlement on his partner’s face. He felt only an emptiness, a sorrow at whatever had pushed him into this meaningless rebellion.

“There’s something fishy...” Stang started.

“In summing up, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Matthew interrupted, “I can only observe that since laws are made to be broken, and since it is a standing rule, or a law, of this firm to limit each partner to an absence from the office of only two weeks, my full month’s leave during July of this year will constitute an action necessitated, yea, dictated, by the very existence of the nonsensical rule itself. Defense rests, Sol.”

“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Stang said dryly.

“A month,” Matthew said, “thank you, thank you,” and he bowed low from the waist and then went back to his own office, smiling.

And in April, his daughter Kate formulated a plan of her own.

She did not put the first part of her plan into effect until the beginning of May, when she finally worked up enough courage to translate theory into action. By that time, she had learned that David Regan was leaving for California in July, and this knowledge, rather than her own impending trip to Europe, was what lent urgency to her plan. For whereas she knew that she and Julia would be gone only two months, she had the oddest feeling that if David were allowed to go to California without ever seeing her as a woman, he would never again return East. She was seventeen, and she believed this with firm conviction, never once doubting her intuition.

She was used to making plans, because everything about seventeen involved planning. But the planning she had done up to now was usually a group activity and rarely involved anything conceived and executed alone. This was different. She couldn’t even breathe to anyone the slightest hint of what she intended to do or hoped to accomplish. David was her exclusive problem, and so she planned alone all through April and the beginning of May, and when she learned he was going to California, she daringly put her plan into motion.

The plan would only work, it seemed to her, if it were made to appear accidental. If David once suspected she had worked this out in detail, she was certain he would bolt. He still thought of her as a seventeen-year-old, a nice kid who was the daughter of two of his adult friends. She wanted him to know that, yes, she was seventeen, but she was something much more than a nice kid. She was an adult in her own right, and quite capable of loving and being loved. And she wanted him to know this before he left for the Coast.

She began working on Julia weeks before she hoped to launch her main offensive. Like a good general, she studied the terrain and chose her own battleground. She had decided that she and David had to be alone somewhere, away from other people, and she concluded that the Regan house at Lake Abundance would be empty and isolated in May, and would serve her needs excellently. And then, like a good general, she began considering the various approach routes to the house, choosing Julia as the most likely and most reasonable, and beginning her early shore bombardment by casually stating she had begun packing her clothes for the European trip already, and then leading the conversation into the various items of clothing, and finally asking Julia how many bathing suits she should take.

Two days later, she told Julia she had bought a new bathing suit, but couldn’t find a suit she had worn all through last summer, a suit she was very fond of, a basic essential to her European wardrobe. Julia, unsuspecting, innocent, sympathized with her, and told her it would probably turn up somewhere, had she looked very carefully through the summer stuff that Amanda had undoubtedly packed away at the end of the season? Kate let the matter drop.

But casually, within the next few days, as they discussed passports and hotels, she brought the conversation around to that bathing suit, “The red one, don’t you remember, Mrs. Regan? I wore it all last summer at the lake. I practically lived in it. The red wool.”

“Yes, I remember it,” Julia said. “I’m sure you’ll find it before we leave, Kate.”

And again the conversation drifted off into more important matters, or seemingly more important matters; the one thing on Kate’s mind was access to the Regan house at the lake.

The next day, she called Julia and said, “I remember now, Mrs. Regan.”

“What’s that, darling?” Julia said.

“Where I left the bathing suit. The red wool.”

“Oh, good. Did you find it?”

“No, I didn’t. But I remember where I left it.”

“Where, dear?”

“At the lake.” Kate paused. “At your house.”

“My house? At Lake Abundance?”

“Yes, Mrs. Regan. Do you remember once at the end of the summer, we came over for a barbecue? And I’d been swimming, and I went into the bedroom at the end of the house, the little one that has the picture of a ship on the wall, and I changed my clothes in there, do you remember?”

“Well, no, I don’t exactly, Kate.”

“Yes. I put on dungarees and a sweater, don’t you remember?”

“If you say so, Kate. But I had the house cleaned thoroughly before I left it, and I don’t remember seeing your suit anywhere.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s there,” Kate said.

“Well, what would you like to do? Shall we drive out some day to have a look?”

“Yes, but there’s no real rush,” Kate said. “Now that I know where it is.”

“All right, darling, let me know when you want to go, will you?”

“I will,” Kate said, and she hung up triumphantly.

The first part of the plan, then, had been carried off successfully. She had convinced Julia that the red bathing suit was at the lake house — or at least led Julia to believe that she was convinced it was there. And Julia had offered to drive her out one day. The next part of the plan was to make sure that Julia did not drive her out, and this required a little bit of maneuvering and a great deal of luck. For one thing, she had to synchronize David’s presence with Julia’s absence, and this would not be easy. Julia often went into New York on her shopping sprees, but she went invariably on Mondays or Thursdays when the stores stayed open late, and when she could spend the entire day looking and buying. She had, in fact, once mentioned that she wouldn’t dream of going into the city on a Saturday because the stores were unimaginably crowded and the train service was too erratic. But the only tune David came to Talmadge was on weekends, so it was essential that Julia be gone on a Saturday — Sunday would have been equally acceptable, but far too difficult to manage — and it had to be a Saturday when David was there for the weekend. By a series of discreet questions, she learned that David would be coming up on the twenty-first, less than a week away. Desperately, Kate tried to figure a way of getting Julia out of Talmadge.

Her break came unexpectedly. Julia told her that she was going into White Plains that Saturday to pick up a few things she needed, and Kate thought about this all the way home, her heart pounding, and called her the moment she reached the house.

“What time did you plan on going, Mrs. Regan?” she asked.

“Oh, I thought I’d get there before lunch and come back sometime in the afternoon,” Julia said.

Quickly, her voice expressing disappointment, Kate said, “Oh, I thought I could join you.”

“Why not, Kate? You’re entirely welc—”

“I have some library work to do in the morning, Mrs. Regan. Could I possibly meet you there later in the afternoon?”

“How late?”

“Three o’clock?”

“I hadn’t planned on staying that late,” Julia said.

“Oh well, then never mind. I guess I can get a lift back somehow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, one of the girls was going to drive me in, but she’s going right on to New York, and I don’t have a way of getting back home.”

Julia sighed and said, “I suppose I can find something to do until three.”

“I’d certainly appreciate it, Mrs. Regan.”

As soon as she hung up, Kate called Suzie Fox. “Sue,” she said, “I need a lift to White Plains on Saturday.”

“I’m not going to White Plains on Saturday,” Suzie said

“Yes, you are,” Kate said.

“No, I’m not. I have to finish a theme Saturday, and I can’t go rushing off to—”

“Suzie, I’d drive myself, but I’m not allowed to in New York State until I’m eighteen. You can—”

“Ever since my birthday, I’ve become a taxi service to New York,” Suzie said.

“When’s the last time I asked you for a favor?”

There was a long silence on the line.

“I’ll probably fail English,” Suzie said. “The theme is due on Monday.”

“You won’t fail. Two-thirty Saturday. You won’t forget, will you?”

“I won’t forget,” Suzie said wearily.

“Mark it on your calendar.”

“I already did.”

“Okay, hon, thanks a million.”

She was grinning when she hung up. She now knew that David would be in Talmadge on Saturday, that Julia would be leaving for White Plains sometime before lunch and that she would have to remain there until three o’clock. She had arranged for Suzie to pick her up at two-thirty, which gave her at least two hours alone with David. All she needed now was a little co-operation from him.

She was certain she would get it.

The twenty-first of May was a bright cloudless day, somewhat brisk for so late in the month, but a beautiful day with a flawless blue sky and a brilliant sun. She was pleased at first by the splendor of it, and then wondered if the good weather would bring some people to the lake. She did not want anyone at the lake when she and David were there.

She dressed very carefully. Her plan had not taken her beyond the simple premise of adult recognition, but she nonetheless chose her undergarments with the cold precision of a seductress, the most feminine and female she owned. Over these, she put a straight black skirt, a little tight, and a white silk blouse. She wore no stockings. She knew that high heels would have looked absurd for any Saturday afternoon in Talmadge, and she even debated the advisability of wearing a French heel, but she finally settled for it, and then wondered again whether she looked too elegant. She shrugged, polished her nails, applied her lipstick with a brush, and then at eleven-thirty, she called the Regan house. David answered the phone.

“Hello, David,” she said, “this is Kate.”

“Hi, Kate.”

“May I speak to your mother, please?”

“I’m sorry, she left about a half hour ago.” He paused. “Aren’t you supposed to meet her in White Plains?”

“Not until later this afternoon. David, did she mention anything about the key?”

“What key is that, Kate?”

“To the lake house.”

“No. Why?”

“I think I left a bathing suit there, and I wanted to look for it. Your mother said it would be all right.”

“Well, the key is here, if you want it.”

“Oh, good. I’ll stop by for it in a few minutes. Will you be home?”

“Sure.”

“All right, David. Goodbye.” She hung up quickly, her heart pounding. Quietly and unobtrusively, she went out of the house. Parsie looked up when she passed the kitchen, but said nothing. Once outside, she began walking swiftly. The Regan house was a good ten blocks away, but she made it in five minutes. She went around back to the kitchen door and knocked on it. David opened the door. He was wearing a sweat shirt and a pair of khaki pants. There was shaving cream on one half of his face.

“Hi,” he said. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, David,” she said.

“Not at all. I was just shaving. Come on in.”

“I really have to hurry,” she said. “I thought I’d have a car, but I don’t.”

“Just let me get the rest of this off,” he said, “and I’ll find that key for you.”

“All right,” she said, and she followed him into the house. He had not taken the bait, had given no sign that he’d even heard her. She sat in the living room while he finished shaving in the downstairs bathroom. The grandfather clock read ten minutes to twelve. The drive to the lake took at least twenty-five minutes. She wondered suddenly if he’d brought his car up. Suppose he’d taken the train? She tried to remember if she’d seen his car as she passed the garage outside. Nervously, she began tapping her fingers on the arm of the chair.

“When did you arrive, David?” she called to the open bathroom door. “Last night?”

“Yes.”

“Did you come by train?”

“No, I drove.”

She was glad he could not see the relief on her face. “Traffic heavy?” she asked casually.

“No, not too bad.” She heard him turn on the faucet, heard him splashing water onto his face.

“Will you be much longer, David? I may have trouble getting a hitch out to the lake.”

“I’m finished,” he said. He came out of the bathroom drying his face.

She did not want to ask him directly if he would drive her. She wanted the suggestion to come from him. But the suggestion did not seem to be coming. She glanced again at the big clock, rose, and said, “Well, may I have the key? There isn’t a bus running, is there? Would you know?”

“To where, Kate?”

“The lake,” she said. “Daddy promised me the car, and then remembered he had to take it in for a... a greasing.” This was an outright lie, and she wondered if David would notice her father’s car was not in the Talmadge garage.

“I don’t think the buses begin running until after Memorial Day,” David said.

“Well, I’ll get a hitch, I suppose. May I have the key, please?”

He went to the kitchen cupboard and took down a Jar that was half full of tagged keys. He turned the jar over onto the table and began reading the tags, looking for the key to the lake house.

“How long will you be there, Kate?”

“Oh, just until I find the suit. I can’t stay too long. I’m supposed to meet your mother in White Plains.”

“How will you get to White Plains without a car?”

“I’ve already arranged for a lift.”

David found the right key. He handed it to her and said, “This is for the front door. It sticks a little, so pull down on it when you open it.”

“I will. Thank you.”

She turned quickly and started for the door.

“If you like, I can give you a lift there,” David said.

“Oh, thank you, but I couldn’t trouble you, David.” She opened the door.

“No trouble at all, Kate. I haven’t anything planned, anyway.”

She turned and smiled graciously. “That’s very kind of you,” she said. “I’d appreciate it.”

“Just let me get my wallet and my keys,” David answered.

She talked about the trip to Europe all the way out to the lake. She sat on her side of the car with her legs crossed and her skirt demurely pulled below her knees. She didn’t want to seem too excited about the trip because she knew this would appear childish to him. Nor did she wish to seem indifferent to it, because she knew he would detect this as a false attitude. She talked about it enthusiastically, and with a sense of anticipation, but all the while she was thinking, I’m alone with him, I’m alone with him.

The lake was deserted when they got there.

It was twelve-forty, and the sun was directly overhead, shining brightly on the water, giving the lake a curious look, as if it were composed of light beams somehow solidified. He parked the car in the driveway and they walked to the front door together. She didn’t know exactly what she planned to do now that she was here with him, but at least they were alone. David unlocked the door, and they walked into the darkened house. The living room smelled of contained dust and moisture and heat. The furniture was covered with white sheets.

“I’ll open some windows,” he said. “No sense suffocating while you look for that suit.”

She went directly to the small bedroom at the rear of the house, knowing full well she hadn’t left the suit there, but pretending to search through the empty dresser drawers and the empty shelves in the closet. She could hear David opening the windows facing the lake.

“Find it?” he called.

“No, not yet,” she answered. She slammed a drawer shut, and then opened another one.

“I’m going out on the deck, Kate,” he called, and she heard the back door of the house open and then close again. She was glad he’d gone outside. For a moment, she’d thought he would join her and watch while she went through the bogus search. But he was out of the house now, and this gave her some time to consider her next move. She went through the small end bedroom methodically, almost as if she were conducting a real search, knowing she would find nothing, trying to work out a feasible plan all the while. When she finished with the bedroom, she walked out into the corridor and opened the door to the linen closet. There were perhaps half a dozen large towels and two blankets in the closet, leftovers from the summer before. She studied them thoughtfully.

And then the idea came to her.

The idea was a simple one, a cliché she had seen represented hundreds of times in cartoons and motion pictures. But as she stood looking into the open linen closet at the blankets and towels, it seemed to her the idea had two distinct advantages. First, it would make David feel extremely masculine and heroic while presenting her as a helpless, dependent female. And secondly, it would give her an excuse for disrobing. She nodded in agreement with the idea.

She had decided she would drown.

Or, at least, she would pretend she was drowning.

He was waiting for her on the deck outside. He was sitting facing the lake solidified by light.

“I couldn’t find it,” she said. “I was sure I’d left it here.” She shrugged. “It was a nice suit, too. The red wool, do you remember seeing me in it?”

“I think so, yes.” He kept staring at the lake, seemingly absorbed by it.

“It was my favorite suit,” Kate said.

“You looked well in it,” David said.

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. May I have a cigarette, please?” She sat in the chair opposite him and crossed her legs. David offered her the package and she took one and waited for him to light it. She blew out a stream of smoke. “Thanks.” They were silent. The sun blazed on the surface of the lake, reflected dizzily onto the deck. “Mmmm, that sun is good,” she said. “Are you in a terrible hurry, David, or can we just sit here for a while?”

“I’m in no hurry,” he answered. He was still staring at the lake.

“Mmmmm,” she said, and she stretched out her legs, bracing her feet on the deck railing, pulling the tight skirt back a little. She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun. “Oh, that’s really good,” she said.

“I hate this lake,” David said suddenly.

She did not open her eyes. She was thinking, Wading, I’ll say I want to go wading. I’ll slip and fall in. The water’ll be cold. I have to be careful because he knows I’m a good swimmer. I can do it, though, and I know the water’ll be very cold, and that’ll be my excuse. I just have to be very careful.

“Every time I come to this damn lake...” he started, and then shook his head and fell silent.

She was ticking off the seconds. She did not want to wait too long, what time was it already? But neither did she want him to suspect she was executing a preconceived plan. She waited. She could feel the hot sun on her face and on her legs. She pulled her skirt a little higher.

“It’s awfully hot, isn’t it?” she said at last. “I wish I had found that suit. I’d go in for a swim.”

“Water’s still probably very cold, Kate.”

“I think I’ll wade, anyway. Want to join me?”

“I’ll watch you from here.”

“Oh, come on down.”

“Nope. Thanks, Kate.”

“Please, David?”

“All right,” he said reluctantly.

“Take off your shoes.”

“This is against my better judgment,” David said, smiling. He took off his loafers and socks, and rolled up the cuffs of his trousers. Together, they went down to the edge of the lake. She chose her spot carefully, knowing exactly where the rocks were most slippery, knowing exactly where the lake bottom dropped off suddenly after a few shallow feet of shelf. She pulled her skirt up over her knees. She was sure he was watching her. She was sure his eyes were on her legs. She was suddenly glad she’d worn the tight black skirt.

The water was very cold. She felt it attacking her feet and her ankles, almost numbing. She gave a girlish little shriek. David stood on the shore, and she turned, surprised to see he wasn’t watching her but was looking out over the lake instead.

“Come on, sissy,” she said teasingly.

She pulled the skirt high on her thighs, held it there with one hand, and extended the other hand to him. He took it and came gingerly into the water.

“It’s like ice,” he said.

She squeezed his hand playfully. “You haven’t even got your feet wet.”

“That’s all they’re going to get wet,” he said, and he nodded once, emphatically, and then suddenly dropped her hand.

“Hey!” she said.

“I’ll watch you from here,” he called, wading back to the shore.

“Oh, come on back here!”

“My toes are blue,” he said.

“Well, what’s wrong with that? Blue’s a lovely color.”

David laughed. “Go on, enjoy yourself. I’ll sit here and watch your legs.”

She did not miss the reference, and yet there was the usual condescending tone in his voice. He was talking to a child. He was still talking to a child.

She pushed out suddenly against the water.

“Be careful, Kate,” he called. “Those rocks are slippery.”

The rocks were slippery, yes, and the water was truly very cold, and she had the sudden feeling she might really drown if she went through with her plan. She could feel the icy water attacking her legs, rising on her flesh as she waded deeper, over her knees, touching her thighs now. In a moment, she thought. In a moment.

“Be careful, Kate,” he warned again.

She would allow herself to slip, the child in Kate thought. She would allow one foot to reach out tentatively and to slip suddenly, and she would throw both hands up over her head, dropping her skirt, and go into the icy water. The child in Kate thought, I’ll flounder around a bit trying to swim, laughing perhaps, and then I’ll shout, “Help! David, help me!” and I’ll go under, and he’ll jump into the water and pull me out trembling, my clothes clinging to me, he’ll carry me into the house, I’ll undress and come into the living room wrapped in a blanket, the child in Kate plotted as she stood poised on the shelf at the edge of the drop, ready to feign a plunge into freezing deep water.

Go ahead, the child in Kate urged. Take the step. Do it.

But the woman in Kate hesitated. The woman in Kate clung to her skirts, she could feel the slime-covered rocks with the tips of her toes, could feel the numbing water, the woman in Kate weighed the plan silently, the blatancy of the plan, and wondered if it had not been too outrageously conceived. The woman in Kate was suddenly aware of caution and subtlety, and something beyond that, something only unconsciously understood, something that told her instantly and without doubt that the plan was wrong.

She turned and began wading out of the lake.

Clinging to her skirt with one hand, her long legs flashing in the golden sunshine, she extended her free hand to David, and he bent over to reach for it, laughing at her sudden reversal. She clung to his hand tightly. He tugged at it, and she came splashing out of the lake and onto the shore. Impulsively, she allowed the momentum to carry her into his arms. “David, I’m freezing,” she said, “Oh, David, make me warm,” hugging herself to him girlishly, and yet aware that her skirt was still pulled up over her thighs, held there where their bodies met in flat contact, sensing he was aware of this, sensing he knew he was holding a woman against him. She broke away from him suddenly and started for the house, holding out her hand to him. He laughed again and took her hand, and they went up the path together, the lake silent, the woods still.

“We’re all alone in the world, David,” she said, and he stopped suddenly and looked at her curiously, his eyes searching hers.

“It was sweet of you to drive me here, David,” she said softly, and reached up to kiss him, a fleeting, little girl’s kiss, a simple kiss of gratitude, but tinged with slightly more than that, her lips parted slightly for only an instant, the brief increased pressure of her mouth. She pulled away from him swiftly and said, “We’d better go now,” as if he had taken a liberty to which he was not entitled.

She thought she detected a difference in his attitude as they drove away from the lake. She thought there was something new in his voice and on his face. When he stopped the car in front of Suzie’s house, she thanked him and then reached across the seat to give his hand a gentle squeeze. As she got out of the car, her skirt accidentally rode up over her knees. She went up the walk to the house without once looking back at the car, but she was certain he was watching her.

And she was certain now that he would return to Talmadge after his trip.

The two men sat in the screening room and waited for the third man to arrive. The lights were still on, and they sat chatting idly about production problems, not really too concerned with them, but only killing time while they waited. The third man came in breathlessly and took a seat alongside the others, apologizing for being late, but he’d been in conference with a set designer, what was all the shouting about, anyway?

“Herb Floren wants us to see this,” one of the men said.

He was sitting behind the control panel in the miniature theater, and he pressed a button in the face of the panel now, and there was a moment’s wait while the projectionist in the booth upstairs read the signal, and then the lights went out, and the screen was suddenly filled with color as the film began.

“Are we going to have to sit through the whole picture?” one of the men asked.

“No, just this reel. She’s in this reel.”

They sat watching the film. The man behind the panel pressed the button asking for more volume at one point, but for the most part the three men sat very still and watched the reel. They didn’t know quite what was happening because this was the last reel in the film, and it was impossible to get any true picture of plot development by watching a series of climaxes. One of the men lighted a cigar. One kept coughing into his handkerchief.

“This is the girl,” the man behind the panel said.

They watched the new face on the screen. No janitors in the hallway stopped sweeping. The projectionist in the booth did not put down his detective magazine to look at the screen in sudden awe. The three men watched the girl, and the one who’d been coughing into his handkerchief kept right on coughing into his handkerchief. The one who was smoking a cigar kept right on smoking it. The man behind the panel thought he detected a blur on the screen, and he pressed the focus button, and the projectionist put down his magazine and adjusted the focus, and then picked up his magazine again.

The scene was over in about five minutes.

“Is there more of her?” one of the men asked.

“That’s it. That’s her scene.”

“Do we have to watch the rest?”

“No,” the man behind the panel said, and he signaled for the projectionist to stop the film. The lights went on.

“I don’t know where I got this damn cold,” the coughing man said.

“What’s her name?” the man with the cigar asked.

“Burke. Gideon Burke.”

“That sounds phony as hell.”

“So does Rock Hudson.”

“What do you think?”

“I think she’s too old.”

“Look, she isn’t Sandra Dee, that’s for sure. But nobody says she’s supposed to be a teen-ager.”

“She comes over maybe thirty-eight, thirty-nine.”

“I think she comes over younger than that. Thirty-five maybe.”

“So? So that would be perfect, wouldn’t it?”

“The girl in the script has black hair.”

“So she’s got red hair, what difference does that make? We’ll change two words in the script, and she’s a redhead.”

The coughing man put an inhaler to one nostril and sniffed deeply.

“What’d you say her name was?”

“Gideon Burke. Wait a minute, I wrote it down someplace.” He fished into his jacket pocket and consulted a slip of paper. “No, it’s Gillian. With l’s.”

“That’s even worse,” the man with the cigar said.

“Well, what do you think?”

“She cries nice,” the man with the inhaler said, and he sniffed menthol into the other nostril.

“I was hoping for another name we could stick over the title.”

“That costs money.”

“What’d Floren give her for this?”

“He wouldn’t say. We can find out. She’s nobody, she’ll work for coupons.”

“What do you think, Eddie?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “What do you think?”

“What color were her eyes again?” the man with the cigar said.

“Blue, I think.”

“No, green.”

“Then the color was a little off. That’s the new fast film they’re using.”

“I thought they were blue.”

“She’s got buck teeth, did you notice that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah.” Eddie paused. “You think she’s pretty?”

“She’s okay. She’s no raving beauty, if that’s what you mean.”

“Gideon Burke?”

“Gillian, Gillian.”

“Where’d she dig up that one?”

“Look, what do you think?”

“She married or what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that could make a difference, you know. We’re not shooting this around the corner. She may be married with a houseful of kids, who knows?”

“I can find out.”

“Did you hear from New York yet?”

“This morning.”

“What’d they say?”

“Sheila won’t come out to take a test.”

“What?”

“She’s too big to test. The hell with her.”

“Big television shmearcase, she’s too big to test!”

“Look, what do you think of this girl?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“She’s not bad, you know.”

“No, she wasn’t bad, that’s for sure. She cries nice.”

“So what do you think?”

“How much does she get?”

“You want me to call her agent and find out?”

“What do you say, Eddie?”

“She’s supposed to have black hair.”

“Maybe she’ll be willing to dye it.”

“And she’s got buck teeth.”

“So she’ll see a dentist. Look, we know she’s not a beauty.”

“You asked my opinion, didn’t you? I’m telling you. Her hair’s supposed to be black, and her teeth are bucked. If we have to take her all apart and put her together again, we might as well look for somebody else.”

“If you’re finished with that cigar, would you please put it out?”

“I’m not finished with it.”

“So what do you think?”

“Gillian Burke, what a name!”

“This is a big part, Harry. You think we can fool around with an unknown?”

“Who else have we got?”

“What about that one from Fox? What the hell’s her name?”

“She’s such a big star, you can’t even remember her name!”

“If you know a name, and you forget it, that’s one thing. But if you forget it without ever having heard of it, that’s another. Who can remember a phony name like Gillian Burke?”

“Anyway, Fox is out. They want thirty grand and over-the-title for her, and I know she got only eighteen-five on her last lendout, so I told them to go screw. They said we were making a big mistake, they said she was a big star. I told them if she was really big, she’d be asking a hundred grand and a cut, and not thirty grand which she isn’t even worth. So she’s out. What do you think?”

“I’ll tell you the truth, I had in mind somebody like Liz Taylor.” He paused. “She’s got black hair.”

“She’s doing Butterfield 8.”

“She finished that. She’s doing Cleopatra now.”

“Whatever she’s doing, we couldn’t afford her anyway. We got three stars already. Come on, what do you think?”

“We can get her cheap, huh? This Gillian Burke?”

“I think so.”

“What’s cheap?”

“Two grand, twenty-five hundred, maybe three tops.”

“That’s reasonable, Eddie.”

“Floren says she’s gonna be very big once this picture is released.”

“Yeah, they said that about me, too, when I was playing juveniles at Metro.”

“What do you think?”

“There’s more of her in this picture?”

“No. You want me to run the reel again?”

“No, no, that’s okay. Why don’t you call her agent, sniff around a little?”

“What do you want me to sniff around about? Do I offer the part or not?”

“See how much she wants.”

“How high can I go?”

“Offer her a thousand a week.”

“The part’s too big, Eddie. Her agent would laugh at me.”

“Okay, then two grand. Two grand is the highest I’ll go for an unknown with buck teeth when she’s supposed to have black hair.”

“And find out if she’s married!”

“And if she agrees to two grand, do I sign her?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“What do you think?”

“I say sign her.”

“Eddie?”

“Sign her, sign her.”

Her agent called that night. It was eleven o’clock, and she was asleep when the telephone rang. At first she thought it was Monica. She pulled the phone to her and said, “Hello?”

“Gillian?”

“Yes?”

“Sid.”

“Oh, hello, Sid.”

“Did I wake you, Gilly?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Don’t you think it’s time you got out of Hollywood?” he asked.

“What?”

“Get away from this place, huh? Change of scenery? Be good for you, don’t you think?”

“What’s the matter, Sid?”

“I just thought you might like to get away from this town.”

“Oh, God,” she said, “don’t tell me! Please don’t tell me.”

“What, baby, what?”

“They cut me out of the picture.”

“No, no. Matter of fact, Herbert Floren arranged for some people to see that last reel today. Some very important people, Gilly. Some people who are shooting a very big picture with three stars in it, and they need another girl for the picture, a big fat supporting part, and they offered fifteen hundred bucks a week which I grabbed instantly.”

“What?” she said.

“Yeah, baby, yeah.”

“Me?” she said.

“Yeah, who else?”

“Sid, if you’re joking...”

“Baby, I never joke where it concerns money.”

“Me?” she said again.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You ready to leave this town?”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“Can you leave Hollywood?”

“I’m packed,” she said.

“Good, ’cause shooting starts on June fifteenth.”

“Where, Sid?”

“Rome,” he said.

Maybe it came too late.

And maybe it was not what she expected. Maybe, after years of working, and hoping, and waiting, there should have been more. There should have been spectacular fireworks, perhaps, shooting up into the sky in a blaze of trailing sparks and dripping incandescence, there should have been brass bands playing rousing golden marching-songs with heartbeat bass drums pounding out the rhythm, there should have been hordes of people screaming approval. She should have arrived overnight, the overnight success, the miracle of America, she should have arrived in a burst of glittering white teeth smiling in a radiant lovely face, arms outstretched to accept the bushels of offered love, success should have been an overnight shimmering thing, a golden thing, a throbbing, wonderful exciting thing. But it wasn’t.

Maybe it simply came too late.

She cried alone that night.

She lay naked on the bed in the house at Malibu with the sound of the surf rushing up under the timbers, the sticky feel of salt on everything, the sheets soggy, she cried. She cried into the pillow because she knew intuitively that this was the break, this would do it, this was the opening door. She had never really felt this way before, all the things she’d done, the good things and the bad, had never made her feel this way before, she knew this was the one. And knowing it, felt empty. Knowing it, knowing this was only the beginning for her, the fat supporting role in a picture with three top stars, a picture that would have all the ballyhoo bandwagon behind it, a picture that would probably advertise “And introducing Gillian Burke,” she felt empty.

Introducing Gillian Burke, she thought.

And the machinery would whir into motion, and there would be the concocted stories of the overnight success, the dream to feed the kiddies on, this is the story of the overnight success, last night was seventeen years ago when she left home and took the apartment near the river and started classes in a loft with an old man named Igor Vodorin, that was last night, and tonight is this morning, and she was thirty-five years old. And seventeen years of hope and rejection and solid dedication to a premise never doubted and always doubted in a secret corner of the mind, do I have it, do I really have it? seventeen years of extending the deadline, I’ll give it another year, seventeen years of watching that girl child march from a glittering wide-eyed youthful hopefulness into a professional attitude of competence and restraint, and then into a barely disguised hopelessness, this was the culminating event of those seventeen years, the door was swinging wide, a big supporting role in a three-star picture, this was it, this was the reward.

But too late to be a reward.

Too late to be anything. Too late to provoke anything but tears, this was success, hold it in your hand, clutch it tight, it was meaningless. I knew it all along, she could tell herself, I knew this would happen, I know what will happen next, I have dreamed of it often enough, I have gone to sleep with it in my mind, and awakened with the taste of it in my mouth, I knew this would happen one day, and I know what is coming, I can feel it, but it doesn’t excite me, and I can only lie here with my head buried in the pillow and cry.

She did not feel like telling anyone.

It was odd that Monica wasn’t home. It was odd that on the night it came, Monica was out, and there was no one to tell.

She used to tell people. She used to say, “I’ll be on Dragnet next week, watch for me,” until she learned that all the Dragnets in the world did not add up to very much unless this happened, so she stopped telling them. Her agent knew when she would be on, and he informed the people who counted, and they watched — maybe — but the others didn’t matter, the others followed her progress with only a fleeting interest. She was to them a fringe celebrity, they knew someone who was in a play over in Westport, they knew someone who was going to be on television Thursday night. But they also knew private secretaries and they knew receptionists and editorial assistants, and this girl, this Gillian Burke, was only another person with a job, a slightly more glamorous job, but certainly nothing to go shouting about, a fringe celebrity, yes, someone who could give you the inside story on some of the big stars she’d worked with on the edges of the crowd scene, “Is it true what they say about...?” but not someone to consider very seriously because she had not yet been touched by the magic wand of success. She could be as successful as the most successful secretary they knew, but the standards were different here. And so, until this came along, until she exploded on the scene as an overnight sensation, and she knew it would happen, there was no doubt in her mind now that it would happen, until success came big and gaudy, why, then she was a failure. Even though she worked as steadily as the receptionist or the editorial assistant, even though she probably earned more money each year than they did, why, everyone knew — and so did Gillian — that she was a failure. So she stopped asking them to watch for her here and there. She simply went about her business knowing, believing, trying to maintain belief, that one day she would make it.

And now here it was.

And tears.

Too late. Too much hoping. Too much waiting for that phone to ring, announcing this. And staring at the phone silent. Black and silent. Should I call my agent? A pride in the silence of failure. A hopeless, ridiculous pride, I won’t call him. I’ll wait. And waiting. And waiting. And the phone silent. And the call never coming. I’m Gillian Burke. I want a pock in the play. Well, here it is, she thought. A man on a shining white horse has galloped into your life, a ridiculous man with a big nose and eyeglasses, a man who makes me laugh, a man who is making me cry right now, Herbert Floren, knight on a charger, here he is, and he has told the others, he has spread the word, a supporting role on the wide screen in full color with stereophonic sound, russet hair whipping in the wind, green eyes flashing, here it is, Gillian Burke, here’s your part in the play, take it, a gift from God, take it, spend it, enjoy it. Now the pattern will change, now there will be success tucked behind your ear like a flower, the overnight success that took only seventeen years. But it will be just that to the others, Gillian, never forget that. This is the land of the jackpot, this is the land of the quiz show and the newspaper contest, and in the eyes of others you have struck it rich, your ship has come in, you’ve pulled the little lever and scored three oranges and now those quarters will come spilling out of the little spout and cover your feet in shining silver, you were lucky, you are an overnight success.

Please, please, she thought, why do I feel bitter?

Success does not come with soaring elation.

Success comes with a sudden taste of blood and a feeling of utter loneliness. Tears alone on a salt-sodden pillow. Alone.

How do you wear success?

You wear it the way you wore failure, I suppose.

You wear it in your throat and on your face. You are a failure because you’re daring to go for the biggest prize, and you haven’t yet reached it. So you duck people on the street, you see them coming, old acquaintances, and you duck into a doorway and study the items in a shop window, seemingly absorbed in the display, and you lift the collar of your coat because you’re ashamed of failure. You do not want them to say, “I hear you’re up for such and such a part,” you do not want that look of pity and curiosity, she’s not as young as she used to be, there are age wrinkles around her eyes. Character, you say to yourself, they give my face character. Did you notice the wrinkles, they whisper, why does she keep trying, isn’t she grown up enough now to quit this nonsense? So you lift the collar of your coat, and you find the empty doorway and duck the old friend, it is shameful to dream. How can you dream in the midst of concrete and steel? How can you dream? I wore failure like a cloak. And I’ll wear success the same way, and they’ll say, She ducks her old friends now that she’s been lucky, now that she’s an overnight success.

Yes.

I will avoid the dead.

I will avoid those with the dead dreams, those who stepped on their dreams and squashed them flat, who forgot there were ever such things as dreams or dreamers, who knew dreams only in the eyes of others, and who pitied those, and who told themselves dreams were for idiots, yes, I will avoid the dead men with their dead dreams, yes.

Yes, goddamn you, I’m crying tonight, what are you doing? Are you cooking steaks on your patio, are you having friends in for Bloody Marys, are you kissing your neighbor’s husband in the kitchen? Well, I’m crying tonight.

Success is not an acceptance of universal love. Success is a roundhouse slap in the teeth of the world.

She lay on the bed and wept into her pillow and thought, In June, I’ll leave for Rome, and wondered what it was like to be seventeen.

It began as a day of confusion for Kate, confusion upon confusion, confusion compounded until it built to terror, she would remember it always as the most terrifying day of her life.

It began with hot June sunlight sifting through Venetian blinds, stripes of black and gold, and weird discordant music far away, stripes like a prison, stripes like the bars of a cell covering her bed, and somewhere in the distance a strange music, the same music struck over and over again, the ticking of a clock in the silent gold-and-black-striped prison of her bed.

Ten o’clock.

The house still except for the music drifting up the steps and into her room, the sunshine streaking her bed in parallel bars. Mother, she thought.

She touched her hair reassuringly, and drifted back to sleep.

Thunder.

The echoing roll of thunder in a room gone suddenly black, streaks of lightning in a summer sky, what had happened to the sun? Thunder rolling ominously and downstairs she could hear her mother at the piano, the chords rolling like the thunder itself, but where had the sunshine gone, hadn’t there been sunshine? The ticking of the clock again, she looked, she opened one eye and looked as a streak of lightning struck close nearby, and she saw the time, eleven-thirty, and she wondered where the sun had gone, wondered what had become of the Saturday sun.

Confusion.

Voices in the house, the piano stopped now, only the voices coming up the stair well, shaking her from sleep, rain lashing the trees and the lawn outside, she rolled over and pulled the blanket to her throat.

“Amanda, look at what I’ve got. Road maps! Dozens of them! The whole damn country is open to us! We can go anywhere!”

“Excuse me, Matthew, I’m working. Can’t you see that?”

“What? Oh, sure, sure. I’m sorry, Amanda.”

The music again. Discordant, cacophonous, the same chord struck over and over again, resounding up the stair well, a sudden crash of thunder, Kate sat up suddenly and stared into the room.

“Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? We could go there, Amanda.”

“I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, no. Matthew, I’m trying to figure out this passage.”

“Honey, can’t that wait a few minutes? I want you to look at—”

“No, it can’t wait a few minutes!”

Her voice was sharp, a chord punctuated her words. Kate got out of bed in her nightgown and walked into the hallway, and came down the steps quietly. She sat on the third step from the bottom like a little girl, sleep in her eyes. There was a rained-in feeling to the house. She wondered why Parsie wasn’t making any noise in the kitchen, and then remembered Parsie’s little boy was sick, and her mother had sent her home last night for the weekend. She looked into the living room. Her father was stretched on the floor. The floor was covered with opened road maps. Lightning streaked outside again. She huddled in her own arms, suddenly frightened.

“Is something wrong, Amanda?” Matthew asked.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why the hell can’t we—?”

“Matthew, I don’t like swearing in the house!”

“Who the hell is—” He cut himself short and stared at her. “All right, Amanda, what is it?” he asked patiently.

“Nothing. I don’t want to look at road maps right now. I want to work. If you had any respect at all for what I’m trying to do, you’d take yourself out of here and—”

“Honey, we’re leaving on the fourth. I don’t want to sound—”

“I’m not even sure we’re leaving,” she said.

He stared at her silently.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to finish this by the end of the summer.”

“I know you do, honey. But if you don’t finish it by then, you’ll finish it in the fall. What’s so urgent about—?”

“I want to finish it this summer!” she said sharply.

She was sitting at the piano with her hands in her lap, not looking at him, staring down at the keyboard.

“Amanda, we’ll only be gone through July,” he said gently. “When you come back in August—”

“I can’t spare a whole month.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because I can’t, because I told you already, I want to finish this now, this summer, and I’ll need all summer if I’m ever going to—”

“I just can’t understand the rush, that’s all. You’ve been working on that damn thing for as long as I can remember, and now—”

“I told you I don’t like swearing in the house!”

“Oh, what the hell!” Matthew said angrily. “Now listen, Amanda. You just listen to me. I managed to take a month away from the office, I thought it would please you, I thought we could be alone together, and now you... well now, you just listen. We’re going away, and that’s all there is to it. You can begin work again when we get back. August is time enough.”

“No,” she said.

“Well, that’s the way I want it.”

“Well, that’s too bad.”

“Yes, you’re damned right it’s too bad, because that’s just the way it’s going to be.”

“Then you’ll go without me.”

“All right, then I’ll go without you!” he shouted. He stared at her angrily for a moment. Then he let out his breath and walked to the piano and took her hands in his, sitting beside her on the bench, and said, “Honey, I don’t want to go without you.”

“Then don’t.”

“Honey, we’d have a whole month together, just the two of us.”

“I can’t go this summer. I have to finish my work this summer.”

“Your work, your work,” he said, exploding again, “what’s so goddamn important, all of a sudden, about—”

She slapped him, suddenly and viciously. As Kate sat on the staircase, she saw her mother slap him, saw his head rock back with the blow and saw his fists tighten automatically and thought in that moment he would kill her. And then his hands loosened, and Kate sat in confusion watching his face, and watching her mother’s face gone suddenly cold as if he had said something terrible and unforgivable to her.

“All right,” Matthew said very quietly. “All right.” He rose from the bench and walked to where the road maps were spread on the floor. He folded them very quietly and very calmly, pushed them into a neat stack and picked them up, and then walked silently out of the living room. He walked past the hall steps without seeing his daughter. The door slammed when he left the house. A thunderclap ripped open the sky. Lightning flashed, there was more thunder, and then silence. She heard a car starting outside, and then heard the shriek of tires against the driveway gravel. The house was still for a very long time. She expected the music to start in the living room again. She sat on the steps, confused, and waited for her mother to begin playing again.

But Amanda sat at the piano staring at the keyboard with her hands in her lap, her face cold and expressionless, the rain streaking the window behind her.

She did not begin playing again.

Kate watched, waiting.

She wondered if she should go into the living room and say something to her. She had never seen her mother looking that way, and the sight frightened her. Stiff and cold, she sat motionless at the piano and stared at the keys, making no move to touch them. Kate rose slowly and started up the steps. When she reached her room, she lay on the bed and looked out at the rain, and waited for the music to begin again.

It did not begin.

Because Amanda knew.

Because she knew suddenly, or perhaps she had known all along, she knew as the argument with Matthew mounted, she knew as she tried to control her rising rage, knew as she felt her hands tightening, knew when her fury finally exploded against his cheek, knew that she would never, never finish the composition.

And, knowing this, was dead.

And sat dead at the piano and looked at the keyboard in despair. And knew it was false, all the years of false work on it, knew she would never finish it and never wanted to finish it, and sat dead inside because now there was nothing. Now there was nothing to hope for. And knew. Knew it wasn’t really very good, never had been any good, knew she would never be satisfied with it, and knew it would always be unfinished. Like her life.

Unfinished and incomplete.

And she didn’t know why.

But she sat dead at the piano and wondered what she needed, and hated Matthew for having made her realize suddenly she would not finish the suite. Lifelessly, she stared at the unresponsive keys, and wondered what was to become of her. And wished that her son were here with her, wished she had not sent him visiting today of all days when she needed visual proof that she had at least accomplished something in her lifetime. But she was alone.

In a little while, the rain stopped.

Kate was still in her nightgown when she came downstairs later that afternoon. She walked into the living room cautiously, almost as if she expected what was about to come. Amanda was sitting in an easy chair near the window, her face in calm repose. The sky beyond and outside had been torn apart by the wind. Tatters of clouds streaked the horizon, blue patches showed spasmodically, the day was indecisive, lacking the clean look or smell that usually follows a furious storm. The house was very still. Amanda sat in the chair and stared across the room at the piano, large and black in the opposite corner, silent.

“Mom?” Kate said.

Amanda looked up.

“Are you all right, Mom?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Dad back yet?”

“No.”

Kate took a chair alongside her mother’s and pulled her legs up under her.

“I can see through that nightgown,” Amanda said. “Don’t you think you should wear a, robe around the house?”

“Well, there’s just the two of—”

“Put on a robe,” Amanda said.

“I’ll be getting dressed in a few minutes,” Kate said.

Amanda nodded once, briefly. She didn’t seem angry at all, or even irritated. Her face was absolutely calm. Kate looked at her face and tried to remember if it had always looked so calm, so... so lifeless. Suddenly, she could not remember.

“I wish the weather would make up its mind,” she said.

“Why?” Amanda asked. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Well, I have a date tonight, but that isn’t—”

“I thought you might be rushing off somewhere,” Amanda said.

“No. No.”

The room was silent again.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about you, Kate,” Amanda said.

“Oh? Really?”

“Yes.” Amanda nodded. “What do you plan to do in the fall, daughter?” she said.

The word sounded strange to Kate’s ear, the word “daughter” delivered in such a curiously cold way. She didn’t answer for a moment.

Then she said, “Well, we’ve already talked about this, Mom.”

“Yes, I know we have. But it wouldn’t hurt to—”

“I’m going to get a job somewhere,” Kate said.

“And then what?”

“Then I’ll see about going to college.”

“You should go to college, Kate.”

“Maybe I will. I’m just not sure yet.”

“You should go,” Amanda repeated.

“Mom, I’m not sure I want to go. Maybe all I want to do is get married and have children and—”

“I shouldn’t have agreed to this European trip,” Amanda said. “You haven’t had time to think of anything else. Agnes has been accepted by three colleges, do you know that?”

“Well, Mom, she knows what she wants to do. I just don’t.”

“You should know by now. You’re almost eighteen, daughter.”

The word “daughter” again, curiously rankling, and a sudden wall between them, so that Kate felt they weren’t really talking to each other, they were simply hurling words and sentences that neither understood nor cared to understand. In that instant, she decided she should leave the living room. She began to rise, but Amanda’s words stopped her.

“What do you expect to do, daughter?” she asked. “With your life?”

“I’m getting a job in the fall. I already told you...”

“I see.”

“I thought you knew that.”

“Yes, I knew.”

“Well... that’s what my plans are. For now.”

She frowned, confused. She didn’t wish to seem solicitous, and yet she suddenly felt that perhaps she’d overestimated her mother’s intelligence. Perhaps her mother hadn’t really understood the first time they’d discussed all this. “When I get back from Europe, I’ll begin looking,” she said.

“Yes, I understand,” Amanda said.

“Well,” Kate said, and she shrugged, but the frown remained on her forehead. She sat in silence and thought, Why do I have to know what I’m going to do with my life? I’m going to take a job. Isn’t that enough for now?

“What kind of job do you want, Kate?”

“You know,” Kate shrugged.

“No, I don’t know.”

“Receptionist. Something like that.”

“I see. In New York?”

“Yes. Mom, we’ve already—”

“I see.”

The room was silent. Amanda kept staring at the piano.

“Kate,” she said, “I want you to go to college.”

“Well, maybe I will. After I—”

“I want you to go this fall. When you return from abroad.”

“I don’t think I want to do that, Mom.”

“I don’t think this is a question of what you want to do,” Amanda said. “This is a question of what’s best for you.”

“Well, I think it’s best for me to get a job and—”

“Yes, and what makes you think that’ll be enough?” Amanda asked, leaning toward her. “What do you hope to be, Kate? A wife, Kate? A mother, Kate?”

Again, she felt a rage inside her, a rage at the way her mother was using her name, Kate, Kate, like a battering ram, Kate, Kate. “Well... well, wh... what’s wrong with that?” she asked.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Kate, and bright, and it’s wonderful for a young girl to be going abroad, but if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m being perfectly honest with you, I think you’re going to need more than a husband and a houseful of children.”

“Well, I’m... I’m not getting married right this... this minute. I mean, I’m only seven—”

“Yes, but it seems wasteful to me, Kate... oh, not that working in New York wouldn’t have a certain amount of glamour and value, I suppose... but I’d hate to see you wasting six months of your life, perhaps a year, when you could be preparing for something important in that time. You could go to school right here in Talmadge, you know. There wouldn’t be any real reason for leaving Talmadge. Your grades are good, Kate. I’m sure if you applied even now—”

“Yes, but that’s not what I want,” Kate said, somewhat dazed. “I may go to college later, but right now I want to find a job.”

“Yes, I understand, dear,” Amanda said.

“Well, that’s all there is to it then.”

“I think you should ask yourself, Kate, what you want to become.”

“I...”

“You’re old enough now to be thinking of the future, daughter.”

Kate nodded and said nothing.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Amanda asked.

“Yes,” Kate answered. There was an edge of sharpness to her voice. Amanda’s eyes suddenly moved from the piano and rested on her daughter.

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you understand.”

“Yes,” Kate said. “I understand.”

They stared at each other, and Kate thought suddenly and for the first time since she could remember, She’s not my real mother. My real mother wouldn’t be saying these things to me.

“I want to be myself,” Kate said. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Yes, but—”

“I want to be myself!” Kate said fiercely.

Her heart had begun to beat against her chest. She rose swiftly and started out of the living room. Behind her, Amanda said, “Kate?” and she turned.

“I didn’t mean—” Amanda started, and then closed her mouth and simply shook her head. Kate waited for her to continue. But she was silent now, and it did not seem she would speak again.

Quickly, Kate went upstairs to dress.

She heard the station wagon starting in the driveway outside just as she was putting on her skirt. The sound of the engine annoyed her because she’d planned to use the wagon herself, and now her mother was obviously tooling off in it someplace, and she would have to walk. Where was everyone rushing to all of a sudden, everyone leaving the house as if it were too small to contain the separate lives inside it, everyone getting out and away from each other. She buttoned her skirt angrily. She did not want to be alone in this house. She did not understand her mother. And again she thought, She’s not my real mother, and again the image of some isolated soul drifted back to her, a woman with staring eyes and a scissors in her hand, back, back through long narrow corridors, stop it.

Stop it, she told herself.

But her hand trembled as she put on her lipstick.

The blond hair falling to the scatter rug, the women fighting for the scissors, their shadows huge and grotesque on the wall, the taste of hair, and the taste of fear, and...

Stop!

Please, oh please stop.

She rushed out of the room and down the long flight of stairs. The house was empty, and it creaked with strange sounds she had never heard before. Frightened, she passed the empty living room with the piano at the far end, silent, and rushed out of the house. It was chilly outside. There was a strong wind, and the sky was falling apart. She suddenly thought of Chicken Little. Someone had read it to her a long time ago, Minnesota, an old house, organ notes coming from a nearby church, Mother, she thought, Mother, the sky was falling apart.

She wished someone were with her.

“Beverly!” she called. “Here, Bev! Come on, Bev!”

The dog came out of the garage and wagged her tail, but she would not go to Kate. She called once more, and then walked swiftly up the driveway and turned left at the sidewalk and continued walking at a fast pace, looking down at her feet, not daring to look up at the sky where the clouds rushed frantically.

It was several moments before she realized where she was going. She was heading for Julia Regan’s house.

The Alfa Romeo was parked in the driveway when she got there. As she passed the garage, she stood on tiptoe and looked through the windows to see if David’s car was there, but apparently he had not come up for the weekend. She went to the front door and rang the bell.

When Julia opened the door, she said at once, “Mrs. Regan, could we go for a drive, please?”

Julia hesitated only an instant. There was something in the child’s eyes she had never seen there before.

“Yes, of course,” she answered.

She closed the door behind her instantly, and together they walked quickly to the car.

He had burned out his anger on the parkway, speeding up toward New Haven, stopping at a diner for lunch, and then turning back and heading for Talmadge again.

He sat behind the wheel of the car now with only a weary sadness inside him, the anger all gone, wondering why life never turned out the way you expected it would.

You get old, he thought. The damn trouble is you get old.

Everything seemed the same as he turned off the parkway and pointed the nose of the car toward Talmadge. The noises in the brush alongside the road, the lush June landscape, the pines, everything seemed the same. And as he made the turn into the main street, Talmadge looked placid and peaceful, tree-shaded, the big church on the hill, the shops lining the sidewalks, the women in slacks, everything seemed the same, but you get old.

The anger had dissipated under his foot pressed to the accelerator, his eye watching the rear-view mirror for state troopers, the anger was all gone now. There was only sadness now, and disappointment. He had been deprived of something essential. Whatever her reasons, whatever had provoked her vehemence, she had forced him into relinquishing something he had desperately needed and wanted. And he blamed her now for her insensitivity, her coldness, her inability to recognize this need. He wondered what had provoked her attack. What had he done or said to so infuriate her, couldn’t she recognize his need? Damn it, couldn’t she see they were getting old? Couldn’t she understand that?

Coming up the road that led to the driveway of his house, he still could not understand. He knew only that he had been denied. The denial, he felt, was willful and impetuous. If she really loved him, if she really understood him, she would have felt his need, and subjected her own wishes to it, especially now when it was so important, especially...

He applied his foot to the brake gently. There was something in the road ahead, just in front of his driveway, a carton or a discarded garment, or... no, it was an animal, a mole probably, or a beaver, or perhaps even...

He stopped the car on the side of the road.

The animal was a dog.

He opened the door of the car. He knew even before he stepped out that the dog was Beverly. He did not want to walk to her. He saw the blood on the asphalt when he was ten steps away from her. He stopped. Oh, you son of a bitch, he thought. Oh, you bastard, who did this?

“Beverly?” he said, as if by calling her name, by getting no response, he could prove to himself this was not Beverly lying in the road with blood spreading on the asphalt.

As he approached her, he began hoping she was dead.

He looked down at her. There was not a mark on her body, and yet the asphalt was covered with blood, how...? He glanced past the dog, his eyes following the trail of blood she’d left, across the sidewalk, and into the woods beyond. She had come out of the woods then. She couldn’t possibly have been hit by a car.

Her eyes, normally brown, had a strange whitish-blue cast, as if they had been drained of all color, wide and staring in her head. Her body was stiff, as if in shock, and there was a questioning, puzzled look on her face. And as he stood over her, watching, she began to vomit blood, and suddenly she seemed to be hemorrhaging from every opening in her body, and he knew at once she had swallowed something poisonous, knew she had somehow got hold of one or maybe more of those goddamned pellets people were putting around to control field mice and moles, probably softened by the morning rain, a little rancid, Oh you son of a bitch, he thought.

He reached down for her. She whimpered as he picked her up, he had the feeling she would drain away in his hands, had the feeling she would turn to liquid in his hands as he began walking up the driveway to his house, wanting only to take her inside the house someplace, wanting only to make her comfortable. “Please, Beverly,” he said, “please, Beverly.” He walked with her in his arms. He could feel her hot blood on his hands. He was trembling. He wondered, Should I call the vet? What can I do? Oh my God, she’s bleeding to death in my hands. “Please, Beverly,” he said again.

The garage was open.

He took her into the garage and kicked an old pile of rags into place with one foot and then laid her gently on the rags. She whimpered again in pain, and he wondered, What shall I do? Jesus Christ, what shall I do?

“Amanda!” he shouted, and then remembered he had not seen the station wagon in the driveway. “Kate! Kate!” There was no answer. Her blood was spreading into the rags, staining them a bright red, her life was draining out of her as she whimpered in pain, and he thought, I’m alone in the house, I’ll call Julia, Julia will know what to do, Julia will help me, Julia.

And the dog whimpered again.

And he knew there was no time to call Julia, no time to pick up a phone and dial her number and explain about Beverly who was bleeding and dying and ask her to come over to help him, Help me, Julia, he thought, and knew Julia could not help him, no one could help him now, he was Matthew Anson Bridges, alone with a bleeding dog in an empty house, alone.

She died before his eyes. She died swiftly. He closed his eyes, and stood over her with his head bent.

He had not cried when his mother died and they walked through the stifling hot sunshine in Glen City, he had not cried when they lowered his father into his grave and cousin Birdie took a yellow handkerchief from her black purse, he had not cried. Now, standing over the dead dog with his eyes shut, the first tear came.

It squeezed from his closed lids, and he felt it slipping down his cheek, swift and hot. And then, as if this single tear released a larger flow inside him, he began trembling, and his shoulders shook, and he opened his eyes and looked down at the lifeless dog, and began to cry unashamedly and openly, began to cry in great chest-racking sobs because something he had loved very dearly was gone.

He accepted the death.

At long last, he accepted the death, and he cried brokenly in the stillness of the garage.

She saw Matthew’s car parked on the side of the road just ahead of their driveway, and she was puzzled for a moment, but not alarmed. She seemed to be driving effortlessly, the wheel in her hands seemed to move of its own accord as she sat with her thoughts and wondered what she had done to her daughter, wondered what it was she really wanted of her life, thinking quite logically and calmly as she had been thinking for the past hour while driving slowly and effortlessly. She turned into the driveway. A lassitude seemed to have come over her, a resignation perhaps, and yet there was no sadness in the resignation, there was instead a sort of peace. She saw the bloodstains on the garage floor as she made the turn. When she got out of the car, she saw the pile of bloodied rags.

“Matthew!” she called.

He did not answer. She listened for a moment and heard an odd sound behind the house, a scraping sound, coming from out back near the brook. A frown came onto her forehead. She quickened her pace and went around the house.

He was standing silhouetted against the slope of the land, beside the brook, a shovel in his hands, digging silently. She walked to where he was working.

“Hello, Amanda,” he said. He put the shovel down and looked at her, and then very softly said, “Beverly’s dead. I think she got hold of some poison.”

Amanda nodded. She could not think of anything to say to him.

“I was just burying her,” he said. “I thought this would be a good spot, here by the brook.”

“Yes, that’s a good spot, Matthew,” she said.

He picked up the shovel and began digging again. He had wrapped the dog in a tarpaulin, and she lay beside the half-dug grave as he worked.

“I went for a drive,” Amanda said.

“Yes, I did, too.”

He had been crying, she could see that. His eyes were puffed and red-rimmed, there were streaks on his face. She wanted suddenly to touch his face.

“Matthew,” she said, “do you love me?”

She asked the question as if it had been on her mind for a very long time. The words sounded curiously young in the stillness of the day. The brook was the only other sound as Matthew worked with the shovel, and heard her words, and stopped digging, and looked up at her suddenly and with surprise, surprise at her question, and then another curious sort of surprise as he gave his answer, as if his answer were unexpected and startling even to himself.

“Amanda, I love you more than anything in this world,” he said.

She nodded as if she had always known. She lowered her eyes.

“Didn’t you know that, Amanda?” he asked.

She did not answer. She kept looking at the ground. When he stooped to pick up the dog, she said quickly, “Let me help you.”

She took one end of the tarpaulin, and together they lowered the dog gently into the shallow grave. Matthew gave a curious, uncompleted shrug, and then began shoveling the earth back again.

“Where will we go, Matthew?” she asked.

“Wherever we want to,” he said.

“Because... I’d like to go, Matthew. I’d like very much to go with you,” she said.

The trip didn’t matter any more, it didn’t seem as important any more, but he took her hand and smiled limply and said, “All right, Amanda.”

She began shivering in the automobile.

The top was down, and the Talmadge countryside blurred by on either side of the road, and overhead the giant old trees arced, and wind rushed past the car and over it, and she began trembling.

She said, “What am I doing wrong, Mrs. Regan? I don’t understand, I don’t understand.”

And Julia, sitting beside her, driving in the direction of Lake Abundance, took one hand off the wheel and patted her gently on the knee, and tried to console her. The sky overhead had turned a clear startling blue, cloudless. The countryside was rich and orderly, the old homes, the wide vista of lawns, a peacefulness seemed to pervade the landscape, and in the car a young girl trembled and an old woman tried to understand what was happening.

“She said ‘daughter,’” Kate said. “‘Daughter’ and I felt hatred. Why should... why is she pushing me this way? I don’t want to! I want to live my own... my own... daughter! I hate that word! If she’s my mother, why doesn’t she understand?”

“She was trying to understand,” Julia said. “I’m sure she’s only thinking of what’s best for you.”

“It’s best to leave me alone!” Kate said. There was anger and desperation in her voice. “If she were my mother, if she...”

“She is your mother,” Julia said.

“Then why can’t we... she sat there, she sat there like a rock and she said, ‘I want, I want, I want!’ Well, what about what I want? Me! Isn’t that important? I’m getting... my head is burning, it’s... everything is rushing inside. I feel as if...”

“Kate, now stop it!”

“She hit him,” Kate said. “She hit him, and then she sat like a rock and told me what to do, told me cold and... I didn’t know her, she was... her face was different. I looked at her, and I didn’t recognize her, she was just another... another woman sitting there, cold, cold, nothing... my father... they ran, everybody ran... there’s no one there, I feel... oh, everything burning! Oh!” She covered her face with her hands. She would not let the tears come, confusion, everything was confusion, she knew she would lose her mind, she knew without doubt.

The car raced along the Talmadge roads, Julia’s foot pressed tight to the accelerator as if absorbing Kate’s tension and translating it to speed. She sat beside Kate, and she thought, This is what it’s like to have a daughter, and she took one hand from the wheel and squeezed Kate’s hand, and then recovered the wheel again immediately when she saw the car ahead of her. Kate looked up and through the windshield as Julia prepared to overtake and pass.

“There’s a curve ahead,” she said.

“I see it,” Julia answered, and she signaled and swung the car out, and the nightmare began.

The milk truck filled the road, filled the sky, appeared monstrous and metallic as the small sports car rounded the bend. Kate could see the face of the driver as his eyes opened wide, could hear the terrifying bleat of the truck’s horn, an explosion of sight and sound. “Oh my God!” Julia said beside her and wrenched the wheel of the car, skidding into a tight sharp turn as the sleek silvered sides of the truck rumbled past in a horn-blasting rush of air and sound and reflected sunlight, the name of the milk company etched itself into her mind, black letters on the silver truck, the car swerving in a screech of burning rubber, the milk truck gone, the car Julia had passed swinging by on the left, the small Alfa rumbling into a ditch, she thought she heard Julia say, “Renato,” and then the countryside was silent again. She sat still and silent, trembling, unable to speak. The other car hadn’t even bothered to stop. The truck had not turned back. She sat trembling and hating them. She could hear birds chirping in the woods alongside the road. The Alfa was tilted at an angle, the front wheel in the drainage ditch. She suddenly realized she was covered with a cold sweat.

“Mrs. Regan?” she said. She had spoken too softly; her voice was barely a whisper. She turned her head. Julia was sitting erect behind the wheel, as if in shock, staring through the windshield.

“Are you all right?” Kate asked.

Julia did not answer. Her hands clung to the wheel tightly. She kept staring through the windshield.

“Mrs. Regan?” Kate said.

She turned on the seat.

“Mrs. Regan?”

She reached out to touch her.

“Mrs. Regan?”

And then her hand touched Julia’s shoulder, and the scream burst from her mouth in terror as Julia fell over in seeming slow-motion, bending stiffly from the waist as Kate’s hand touched her, falling onto the wheel, her forehead hitting the wheel with a dull hollow thud.

“Mrs. Regan!” she screamed, and knew she was dead, knew those staring eyes meant death, and was suddenly gripped with a cold knifing fear and a desperately urgent need to get out of that small car. She threw open the door and stumbled into the ditch. Her eyes wide, she ran blindly into the woods.

The experts in death surrounded the small car, two state troopers, a reporter from the Talmadge Courier, and Dr. Milton Anderson, who arrived in his automobile and pushed his way through the crowd and pronounced Julia Regan dead after looking at her for only an instant.

“What do you make of it, Doc?” one of the state troopers asked.

“I couldn’t tell for certain without an autopsy,” Milt said. “I imagine it’s a coronary, though, sudden shock, insufficient blood supply to the heart, that’s my guess.”

“Skid marks all over the road,” the second trooper said. “She yanked that wheel over in a hell of a hurry.”

Milt nodded. “She did everything in a hell of a hurry,” he said.

“Saved the girl’s life, though.”

“What girl?”

“Found this on the seat of the car.” The trooper held out a handbag. “There’s a junior driver’s license in it.”

“Whose?”

“Katherine Bridges,” the trooper answered. “That the woman’s daughter, Doc?”

“No,” Milt said. “She only has a son. We’ll have to notify him.”

“You want to take care of that, Doc? There’s one thing I hate, it’s calling up somebody whose—”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“We better start looking for this girl,” the second trooper said.

“I’ll call in for the meat wagon,” the first trooper said.

That’s the way it ends, Milt thought. Rich or poor, full or empty, they call in for the meat wagon.

Darkness came to Talmadge suddenly and swiftly, because black is the color of nightmares. A high wind rose, blowing in off the ridges, penetrating the woods where Kate lay huddled to the ground, cold and frightened. She had no idea what time it was. She knew only that the sun seemed to vanish suddenly, the way it had this morning just before the thunderstorm, completely and swiftly abandoning the sky, and that darkness had followed immediately afterward. She lay in the darkness and whimpered and remembered the lifeless staring eyes of Julia Regan, her face turned sidewards on the wheel, death staring at her inside the tiny automobile, and again she shivered and tried to tell herself she would not go crazy.

But she knew she would. She knew before this day was ended she would lose her mind, and she lay huddled against the ground, feeling the cold wind rushing over her back and her legs, convincing herself she would, knowing she would, until the subtle line between reality and fantasy finally merged, and she wandered through a half-believed insanity, constructing images that were terrifying, almost play-acting a maniac, and then wondering if she had already gone insane, and then telling herself she was completely sane, and then knowing, believing, that crazy people always thought they were perfectly normal, and listening to the wind, and shuddering, and hearing the myriad sounds of night, the insects in the woods, the cars rushing by on the highway, sounds that seemed magnified, a moonless night, and darkness everywhere, the resounding darkness of horror, her flesh was cold, her mind reverberated with the events of the day, sunlight and rain, music and cacophony, the bitter argument, her mother cold and forbidding, her mother, her mother, her mother, she knew she was going crazy.

David, she thought suddenly.

And, thinking of him, all else rushed out of her mind, as if some powerful sucking wind had drawn everything down into a tiny funnel, drawn everything out of her mind to leave it white and blank, with first the single name appearing there on a white blank screen, David, and then the name fading, and the image of David replacing it. A new rush of thoughts followed the image, lucid and clear, his mother was dead, they would have notified him, he would have come up to Talmadge, he was here somewhere, he needed her.

This was the thought.

He needed her.

She got to her feet. She wiped her face. Her blouse was torn, and she had lost one shoe somewhere in the woods, but she stood up and tucked the ends of her blouse into her skirt, and she took off the remaining shoe, and she thought David needs me, and she began walking. She knew instinctively where he would be. She knew because everything suddenly seemed so clear to her, as if the single thought David needs me had erased the confusion of the morning and the bitter uncertainty and frustration of the afternoon, and the frightening terror of the monster milk truck and the wide staring eyes of the dead woman on the seat beside her. She knew where he would be, and she went there instinctively.

There was a single light burning in the house on the edge of the lake. She walked directly to the front door, but she did not knock. She opened the door and walked into the house. She passed a mirror in the hall, but she did not look into it.

He was sitting in the living room with the furniture covered with sheets, facing the window that overlooked the lake. The lamp burned next to his chair. He was sitting quite still, looking out over the lake, when she entered the room barefoot and soundlessly. He did not look up. She did not call his name. She went directly to his chair, and she sat on the arm of it, and he turned to her and looked up into her face, and she reached out gently with one hand and touched the back of his neck. With the other hand, she began unbuttoning her blouse, almost unconsciously, button by button, the hand at the back of his neck softly resting there, the other hand unbuttoning the blouse in a steady inexorable motion, and then she brought his head to her breast. She kept her hand on the back of his neck and gently, tenderly, she brought his head to rest on her breast, cradled there, and she said nothing. She simply held him to her breast with her hand on his head.

She stroked his hair. He seemed so very helpless in that moment. Looking down at his face, she could see the lines radiating from his eyes, the set of his mouth, he was really not a good-looking man, but she loved him very much in that moment, more than she had ever loved him before. And wanted nothing from him. The nights she had lain awake thinking of his kiss, thinking of his hands upon her body, these seemed not to have happened, or possibly to have happened to some child she once had known. She held his head to her breast, and she felt a love new to her, but a love nonetheless, powerful and abiding. He lay against her unmoving. She could hear his gentle breathing. She stroked his hair comfortingly, and she said nothing, holding him to her.

In a little while, she felt his tears on her flesh.

And now there was the will.

Now the shock was done and gone, now that day which had started for him with a telephone call to his New York apartment and the shocking words of Milt Anderson telling him his mother was dead, and the drive to Talmadge, and the body lying cold and lifeless in the mortuary, “Yes, that’s my mother,” he had said, and left the room and driven to the lake, that day was done and gone.

And the night was done and gone, too, the woman who had come to him in the night, not a child he had known, but a woman named Kate Bridges who offered him comfort and solace, who allowed him to cry unashamed, a magnificent woman named Kate Bridges who leaned back into the automobile when he dropped her off at her house and said, “I’ll be worrying about you, David. Call me, please,” and he had nodded and touched her face gently in thanks, the night was done and gone, too, and now there was the will.

The flowers wilting beside the open casket. The relatives and friends who came to express their sorrow. The funeral procession from the old Regan house through the town to the cemetery on the hill where his father was buried. The open grave with the two grave-diggers standing by it silently abused in the presence of a ritual they witnessed over and over again, holding their caps in their hands while the minister read the elegy, and the straps poised over the open earth were pneumatically released and the coffin sank slowly, slowly, into the receptive earth, and he walked homeward silently in the town where he’d been born, in the town where sometimes death came.

And now there was the will.

Now there was the formality of death, now there was only the business of death, the hard transaction of inheritance, and he stood in Elliot Tulley’s office with the window facing the street behind him, and life rushing past below, and he talked to him the way he would to an agent trying to sell a dubious property.

“Who’s Giovanni Fabrizzi?” he asked.

“He’s the person to whom your mother chose to leave half her estate in trust.”

“Don’t give me any double talk, Elliot,” David said. “I understand the will perfectly. Who is he?”

“A man. A person.” Elliot shrugged.

“Look, Elliot, I’m not in the mood for this kind of horse manure, believe me. I’m leaving for Los Angeles on Friday, and I want to settle this before I go, if possible. Either you tell me who this man is and what the separate agreement between them is all about, or I’ll start suit the minute I get back from the Coast.”

“There isn’t a court in the land that can force me to produce that document, David. I think you ought to know that.”

“Who’s Fabrizzi?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that.”

“I’ve gone over my mother’s accounts,” David said, “and settled all her unpaid bills. I had the opportunity of looking through her canceled checks, Elliot. Why’d she give you a check for a hundred and fifty dollars each month?”

“That was something between your mother and me,” Elliot said.

“What kind of something?”

Elliot shrugged. “A retainer.”

“That’s not true. I’ve seen the checks she paid you as retainers. They were all clearly marked as such in her records. These other checks were made out to you in the amount of a hundred and fifty dollars every month since the summer of 1943. Her checkbooks do not indicate why she made those payments. Suppose you just tell me why, Elliot.”

“Suppose I just don’t,” Elliot said.

“I can get rough, Elliot. There are a lot of lawyers around who’d just love to sink their teeth into a portion of such a large settlement. How about it?”

Elliot shrugged again. “You want some advice?” he asked.

“No, I don’t want advice. I want information.”

“I’ll give you the advice, anyway. Free of charge, which is unusual for me. A, you can’t force me to tell you why your mother paid me a hundred and fifty dollars a month or what for. It was a private transaction, and entirely legal, and this is still the United States of America, and you can go straight to hell if you think you’ll find out from me. And B, you can contest this will if you want to, but you’d have to show your mother was incompetent when she wrote it, and that’d be difficult to prove since she was an unusually alert and aware woman right up to the time of her death. And in any case, I wouldn’t have to show the document mentioned in the will. So my advice is to forget all this nonsense and take your half of the estate and be damned happy you got that much. If your mother left the other half in trust, she had a very good reason for it. That should be enough for you.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

“Well, that’s too bad, David.”

“The will gives an address in Rome for Fabrizzi,” David said.

“Yes, that’s true. It does.”

“I can always go to Rome.”

“I suppose you can. I don’t know why you think you’d have more luck with Fabrizzi than you’ve had with me, but you can always go to Rome. That’s true.”

“This is important to me,” David said.

“I imagine it is. Money is always important.”

“It’s not the money!” David said angrily.

“Then what is it?”

“I want to know. I want to know why she left her son only half the estate.” He paused. “I’m her son, Elliot,” he said softly.

Elliot spread his hands wide. “What can I tell you, David? Do you want me to break a trust? Well, I can’t. Go to Rome if you want to. But don’t ask me to be an informer.”

“I’m supposed to leave for Los Angeles on the first of July,” David said.

Elliot did not answer.

“I can get out of it,” David said, almost to himself. “Curt would let me out of it.”

“She’s dead,” Elliot said. “Let her rest in peace.”

“What are you afraid of, Elliot?”

“Nothing.”

“That I’ll find out something terrible in Rome?”

“Only fools go looking for trouble,” Elliot said. “Let it lie, David. There’s nothing for you in Rome.”

The art gallery across the square from the hotel was exhibiting the works of an unknown Sicilian painter, white posters boldly shrieking in huge black letters the single word PANZOLA. A few taxicab stoics nudged the curb in front of the gallery, indifferent to culture, shining, black, impervious to the clinging Roman haze. David cursed their formidability, squinted his eyes against the glare, and then walked swiftly toward the overhanging green canopy of the hotel.

A bellhop idling in the lobby, enwrapped in his dream of a holiday on Lake Como, leaped erect when he saw David approaching, turned on an instant dazzling smile, and rushed to pull open one of the glass doors.

“Thank you,” David said.

“Very hot outside,” the bellhop said, grinning, testing his tourist-trade English.

“Yes,” David answered. He pulled his handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped his brow, wondering if the opening of a door warranted a tip. He decided it did not. Nodding briefly to the bellhop, he pocketed the handkerchief and walked into the lobby past Remus and Romulus suckling at the wolverine in bronze, feeling suddenly thirsty and wishing for a Scotch-and-soda.

The concierge behind the desk was busily pasting Italian airmail stamps to the pile of postcards before him. He did not look up when David approached. Wearing the silver-and-blue uniform of the hotel, his eyes distantly bored behind glasses whose rims were a shocking pearl-gray, he voraciously lapped stamps like a jungle cat licking his chops in the entrance doorway to a slaughterhouse.

“May I have my key, please?” David said.

The concierge did not look up from the postcards. The pink tongue darted out, another stamp gathered moistness.

“Your room number, sir?”

“Four-twelve.”

“Ah, yes, sir. Mr. Regan, sir?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s a message for you, sir.”

He flashed a mercurial and rare smile, and then turned his back to David, his extended forefinger running down the cubbyholes behind the desk. Then he whirled, dropped key and small white envelope on the desk before him, and reached for another stamp, his tongue darting out simultaneously.

“Thank you,” David said.

He looked at the envelope as he walked away from the desk. A meticulously small hand had lettered the name David Regan on the face of the envelope. He turned it over and looked at the flap.

The name Giovanni Fabrizzi sat in the center of the white triangle, and beneath it the man’s business address on the Corso. David pressed the button for the elevator, tore open the flap of the envelope, and pulled out a square of white note paper, which bore the same letterhead and the same studied careful handwriting:

The elevator doors opened. David stepped into the car. “Four, please,” he said.

The elevator boy nodded and set the car in motion. David leaned back against the mirrored wall. A tiny fan tried to stir the hot air in the car. Four o’clock, he thought. Four o’clock and Giovanni Fabrizzi would be happy to see him.

I wish I had a drink, he thought.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. He walked down the corridor to his room, unlocked the door quickly and walked directly to the small ivory panel resting on the night table near his bed. The panel was attached to an electric cord, which ran to some mysterious wall connection somewhere under the bed. There were three rectangular buttons on the face of the panel, one beneath another. Each of the buttons was illustrated with a line drawing.

The top button pictured a man in an apron carrying a pair of shoes. He seemed in great haste. The middle button was a frontal presentation of a woman holding a feather duster. She seemed in no hurry whatever, but the intelligent look on her face indicated she was waiting at the ready to rush wherever beckoned. The last button showed a man in tails carrying a tray. He too seemed in a desperate hurry to get somewhere, undoubtedly to the place where he would collect his tip.

Now which of you little people has the keys to the wine cellar? David wondered. The room waiter, of course, and he stabbed at the third button, pulled off his coat and shoes, loosened his tie, and threw himself down on the bed.

In a few moments, a knock sounded on his door.

“Avanci, avanti,” David floundered. “Come in, come in.” He turned to face the door, thinking how comical it would be if a man the size of the little man on the button walked into the room, a half-inch-high human carrying a minuscule tray. The illusion was shattered instantly by the entrance of a tall gangling man wearing a look of surprise on his sharp features.

“Sir?” he asked.

“A Scotch-and-soda, please,” David said.

“Yes, sir,” the waiter answered, and departed hastily, the same look of surprise on his face, as if he were a baron who had only accidentally stumbled into this hotel where they’d dressed him as a waiter before he could explain or protest.

The drink arrived not five minutes later. David signed the check and tipped the waiter, and remembered only after he was gone that one didn’t tip these buzzards each time they performed a service; one waited until check-out time to drop the brimming sackful of largess. Sighing, he wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to the European way of doing things.

And again he wondered what he was doing here.

Why’d you come to Rome? he asked himself. Why in hell did you come to Rome?

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked through the open shutters to the city beyond. The heat had been insufferable for the past few days, building to an intensity that was felling people in the streets, hanging over the city now in a thick, electrically charged haze, which promised rain. There was blackness in the distant sky. He hoped it would rain soon.

Why did you come to Rome? he asked himself again.

He sipped at his drink.

I came because I don’t like the idea of being cheated out of half my mother’s estate, that’s why I’m here, admit it, face the knowledge, and for God’s sake stop inventing fairy tales!

I’m here because I loved her, he thought.

I’m here because she came back from this place once. She came back and she was no longer the person who had left. And when she returned, there was nothing there any more, nothing but the accidental bondage of birth, the love was gone. And I’m here because I want to know it was she who changed and not me, not her son, it was she who came back without love, and not me who was suddenly unworthy of whatever love she had to give.

Fabrizzi knows, he thought.

He had looked up the man’s name the moment he arrived in Rome, surprised to discover he was a lawyer, dismayed by the knowledge because he had the sudden feeling he’d be facing the Italian counterpart of Elliot Tulley, close-mouthed, legal, infuriating. His premonitions mounted as he made call after call to Fabrizzi’s office, certain he was being ducked, constantly being told by a secretary who barely spoke English that Fabrizzi was away but that she would deliver Mr. Regan’s message the moment he returned. And now the note, and the neat careful hand, another lawyer, a Roman Elliot Tulley.

I should go home, he thought, what the hell am I doing here? Who cares? Who cares where love goes, who cares where it vanishes?

He heard the first rumble of thunder in the sky to the north of the city, saw the lightning flash. It would rain soon, and heavily. He looked at his watch. It was only eleven. There were five hours ahead of him before his meeting with Fabrizzi, there was a whole lifetime ahead of him. He did not relish the idea of sitting alone in his room, waiting out the time. There were gifts he should buy. Something for Curt and Martha. And something for Kate.

Something very special for Kate.

He finished his drink and began dressing. By the time he left the hotel, it was pouring.

He did not recognize the city at all.

Walking in the rain, picking out his gifts and having them sent back to the hotel, he was amazed at how short memory could be, astounded by this timeless Rome surrounding him, a Rome that should have remained sharply etched in his memory, unchanging, and yet a city he barely recognized. He walked through the streets, trying to find the courtyard with the trompe l’oeil arch and statue, locating the Bernini fountain, but confused completely by the identical doors in the street beyond. The ancient cobblestones collected puddles of water, which he tried unsuccessfully to avoid. He was wearing a light raincoat, and he ducked from doorway to doorway looking for a time he had known, but the rain had washed the city clean of memory.

It was still raining heavily when he started back for the hotel. It was only noon. There would be time for a drink and lunch, time to change into some dry clothes before his four-o’clock appointment.

He saw her coming down the Spanish Steps.

He had reached the Piazza di Spagna at the foot of the hotel, passed the patient taxicabs clustered like shining black beetles to the left of the fountain, approached the steps that rose in quiet majesty to the Via Sistina above, and began counting the steps idly as he climbed them, very tired somehow, wet and tired, his head ducked against the driving rain, he knew there were a hundred and thirty-seven steps, he remembered counting them when he had been in Rome with his mother so long ago.

The rain swept across the flat steps that seemed to mount forever to the sky. He kept his hatless head ducked against the relentless spikes of rain, the count of forty-eight, and then perhaps a shadow, it could not have been a shadow because there was no sun that day, a knowledge, a sureness that another person was approaching, and suddenly he knew it was she, he lifted his head, he dared to raise his eyes.

The steps were behind her in a rain-rushing backdrop, her russet hair was the only splash of color in a monochromatic print. She came down the steps in her peculiarly graceful, peculiarly awkward lope, wearing a gray trench coat belted tightly at the waist, a gray skirt showing below the hem of the coat, dark-gray pumps, the coat collar lifted high at the back of her neck, her hair consuming the total grayness like a runaway fire lapping newsprint.

She stopped suddenly.

She looked up. The shock covered her face, starting with the sudden rising wings of her brows, startled in flight, piercing the widening green eyes, flaring nostrils in the angular face, spreading to the incredible mouth, distending the lips slightly, ever so slightly, her lope arrested, she stood stock-still.

“David,” she said. She whispered the word. There was no belief in the word. There was only incredulity and shock.

“Hello, Gillian,” he said.

They stood in the rain. They could have been in Times Square and not on foreign soil thousands of miles from home. It could have been yesterday that he’d seen her last, and not eleven years ago. She was standing two steps above him, a slender girl in a sopping-wet trench coat, and he held out his hand instinctively, and instinctively she took it, and they both laughed, and then stopped laughing, and she said, “We’re in Rome!” again with the same incredulity and shock. They stood in the rain on the Spanish Steps, and he held her hand and listened to her laughter, and he could think of nothing to say to her. Her laughter died. There was nothing to say.

“Shouldn’t we get out of the rain?” Gillian asked.

“Yes,” he said. He could not take his eyes from her face.

But neither made a move. They stood ridiculously on the steps, her hand in his, and neither moved, and suddenly she laughed again, and, clinging to his hand tightly, pulled him down the slippery steps. For a moment, there was no time, no place, only memory full-blown and poignantly painful, the dimly reconstructed image of two innocents running down Eighth Avenue toward a sleazy Chinese restaurant, hand in hand, the sidewalks glistening wet, the thunder booming majestically in the surrounding skyscrapers. The image gurgled away flatly into the sewers of Rome. Eleven years, he thought. A cab door opened and a fat driver in a black cap shouted “Taxi?” and they both shook their heads at the same time and ran down the rain-gutted street.

The yellow-topped tables outside the bar glistened with rain, spanged to the steady tattoo of rain, added a drumming counterpoint to the shouted whisper of rain against the cobbled curb. A white, rain-brimming Cinzano ash tray sat in the exact center of each table on the deserted sidewalk. David threw open the door to the bar. A bell tinkled. She went in first, and he closed the door, shutting out the sound of rain beating on the table tops. The room was silent. It carried the close tight smell of wet garments in a small and secret closet. She shook out her hair and grinned, and they went to a table together and took off their coats and sat, and then looked at each other for the first time really, looked at each other silently across the table.

She had changed. Looking at her, he saw the change and saw her eyes studying his face and knew she saw the same change in him, and remembered again that it had been eleven years.

The knowledge came to them both at the same time perhaps. Eleven years. The knowledge came to them, and they suddenly wondered who, exactly, had met on the Spanish Steps and extended hands to be touched, who had run through the rain together, who? And with the knowledge, with the mutual understanding that it had been eleven long years, there came the strangeness.

“You look well, David,” she said.

“Thank you. So do you.”

“Have I changed very much?”

“No,” he lied.

“Neither have you,” she lied.

They knew they were lying to each other. They studied each other’s faces and tried to find what they had known, but eleven years was a long time.

“What are you doing in Rome?” she asked.

“My mother died, and I—”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“You never met her, did you?”

“No.”

Memory touched, a time long ago, a time shared, you never met her, did you?

“She died last month,” David said. “I had to come to Rome about the will.”

“Will you be here long?”

“No. Just a few days.”

A waiter came over to their table. “Buon giorno, signore, signorina,” he said.

Gillian smiled at him, and said, “Buon giorno. Would you like some coffee, David?”

“Yes, please.”

“Per piacere,” she said to the waiter, “portaci due caffè caldi con latte separato.” The waiter nodded and moved away from the table. There was the strong smell of coffee in the room. The place was empty save for an old man who noisily slurped sherbet through a hanging white mustache. “You have to specify that you want the milk separately,” Gillian explained, “or they bring you a cross between iced coffee and lukewarm bath water.”

“You speak Italian very well,” David said.

“Oh, that was fake, David. Really. I learned to say that from our director. He’s very sweet-oh, but it’s almost the only thing he taught me.”

“Your director? Are you doing a show here?”

“A movie.”

“That’s wonderful, Gilly.”

“Yes, it’s marrr-velous,” she said. She saw the sudden look that came over his face, and she stared at him curiously, and then smiled and said, “It’s a good picture, and I’ve got a wonderful part, and everyone is treating me like a star, it’s all quite wonderful, David.” She smiled again. “Do you like Rome? Is this your first time?”

“I was here a long time ago,” he said, and fell silent.

“What are you thinking, David?” she asked.

“I was thinking how long it’s been since I last saw you.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I feel very strange.”

“I do, too.”

“We mustn’t.” She reached across the table to touch his hand, and then drew it back almost at once. “I’ve thought of you a lot, David. I’ve thought of this day.”

“I have, too.”

The waiter came back to the table. He put down two cups of black coffee, and a small silver pitcher of bubbling milk.

“Oh, see?” Gillian said. “They’ve gone and warmed the milk. Should we send it back? Do you mind hot milk?”

“Not at all.”

“All right, then.” She turned to the waiter and smiled. “Grazie.”

“Prego,” he answered, and left the table.

“Who else but Italians would go around boiling milk?” Gillian said. She pulled the pitcher to her and poured. “You’re still in television, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Producing.” She nodded. “I saw your name on some shows.”

“I saw some of the work you did, too,” he said.

“Really? Which?”

“Oh, some television stuff. And a movie once, I think. It was hard to tell because you weren’t on the screen very long. But I was sure it was you.”

“The roller coaster?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“The roller coaster,” she said, and she nodded. “Well, anyway, here we are.”

“Yes.”

“Alone at last.” She laughed quickly and nervously, caught the laugh before it gained momentum, and sobered immediately. The table was suddenly silent. “I’m glad we ran into each other, David.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her coffee cup. “Are you different now?” she asked.

“Different how, Gilly?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, her eyes refusing to meet his. “Now that you’re successful? I’m different, I know. I feel different, and I look different, I...” She paused. “Have you changed?”

“I guess we all change, Gilly.”

“Yes.”

They sipped at their coffee silently.

“It was a very happy time for me, David,” she said at last.

“And for me, too.”

“There’s been so much in between,” she said. “Will I see you while you’re in Rome?”

“Would you like to see me?”

“Yes. Yes, I would, David.” She raised her eyes. “We shared so much, you see. I’d hate to think...” She shook her head. “I always cry easily. This is very hard for me, sitting here with you. Maybe I’m not quite as grown up as I thought.”

“Shall I get the check?”

“Yes, I think so. I have the feeling... I feel so odd all at once, David. I feel... I wish I hadn’t seen you again. I think... I have the feeling something is ending. I feel so very sad. I’m going to start crying in a minute.”

He signaled for the waiter. They were both silent while he added up the check. David deciphered it and paid him, and then helped Gillian into her coat. The old man with the hanging white mustache had ordered another dish of sherbet.

They went out into the rain. The bell over the door tinkled again. The yellow table tops were still there. Up the street, the cabs were still lined up. Nothing had changed. Everything was still the same.

“Will you walk me to a taxi?” Gillian asked. She thrust her hands into her pockets, and he took her elbow. “Sunny Italy,” she said. They walked silently. As they approached the hack stand, she stopped. “I’m staying at the Excelsior,” she said. “If you want to, you can call me there.”

“Do you want me to call, Gillian?” he asked.

She waited for a long time before answering. Then she said, “I want you to come with me now, David.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered. “I want you. It’s as simple as that.” She hesitated and then said, “Hasn’t it always been as simple as that, David?”

She was a young girl again, trembling with need and anticipation, as innocent as she had been that first time so long ago, trembling on the brink of discovery. He kissed her gently and with infinite tenderness, and her mouth formed to accept his kiss, curving to fit the mold of his lips, pressing his mouth in tentative exploration, softly, gently, lips that were old friends greeting each other anew and with freshness, partially suspicious of the ardor of an earlier time, filled with wonder at the endurance of memory, the persistence of training. She pulled away from him suddenly and looked directly into his face, her eyes meeting his, touching his nose with curious fingers, and his mouth, and his cheekbones, and then back to his mouth again.

“I wanted so much to kiss you in the rain,” she whispered.

“I love you, Gillian,” he whispered.

“Yes, yes, I love you.”

“You’re so beautiful, darling.”

“Yes, call me darling.”

“Darling, darling. Gillian, my darling.”

“Yes, please. You say it with such love. You do love me, David, don’t you? You do love me still?”

“Yes, I do love you still.”

“Yes, and I love you. Would you kiss me, darling? Would you please kiss me again?”

He kissed her, and she suddenly hugged him fiercely. “Oh, it’s so good to be with you again,” she said, holding him tight. “Oh, David, it’s so damn good.”

His hands were upon her again, remembering again with a memory of their own. Her mouth closed upon his, they moved together with the precision of meshing gears, there was, he could hear his watch ticking in the stillness, a breath-holding, clumsy, time-suspended moment when they joined irrevocably, flesh claiming flesh, and suddenly she began sobbing.

She turned her head into the pillow and began sobbing, and he stumbled on the sudden tears, the world stopped dead with her tears, time stopped, she twisted her head, wrenched it from the pillow, looked into his face and his eyes, her own face tear-streaked, and whispered angrily, whispered in confusion and despair and puzzlement, whispered, “Where did we lose it, David? Oh, David, David, where did we lose it?”

He looked at her, startled for a moment, holding her in his arms and staring at the misery on her face, and then he seized her close in fear, held her trembling body close to his because he did not want to let her go now that he had found her again, didn’t she realize they had found each other again? Didn’t she know they hadn’t lost anything? Held her desperately. Clung to her, frightened. Held her, held her, and shook his head, tried to shake the truth from his head, realizing it was the truth, and thinking, Good old Gillian, straight to the point, and then nodding with a weary sort of resignation, nodding, and releasing her, and accepting it as something he had known all along. He had known it on the steps after the first shock of recognition, known it when he took her hand and ran down the street, known it as they sat strangers to each other while the old man spooned sherbet into his mouth. And again when they declared their love feverishly, when they desperately whispered, “I love you, I love you,” they could still say the words, the words were always and ever the same, “I love you, I love you,” but it was done and finished, drowned by time, and now there were only the words and the empty motions, but nothing more.

And nothing more to say, really.

Nothing.

“I’m sorry.” She was sobbing into the pillow. She kept one fist pressed to her mouth and sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Gilly, Gilly.”

“I hate endings. Oh God, I hate things to end. I’m sorry, David. I’m so terribly sorry.”

He kissed her gently, and he cupped her face with his hands and pushed her hair back behind her ears, and she smiled wanly and said, “You know I don’t like that, David.”

He released her hair.

He felt a terrible need to leave quickly. He felt he was suddenly in danger. He could accept the fact that it was over, he could accept the knowledge that their love had changed, that it was gone, that there was really nothing for them any more. But he had the feeling that if he stayed longer he would discover their love had never been. The idea frightened him. He did not think he could bear that knowledge. He had to maintain the belief that they had loved each other once, had loved each other completely and magnificently, had to believe that time could not obliterate memory — it could change people, yes, but it could not destroy what they once had shared.

“I wish you everything, Gilly,” he said. “I wish you everything in the world.”

He kissed her once more, gently, and then dressed and quickly left the room and the stranger on the bed.

The office was in an old Roman building, solid with the dignity of time. He located the lawyer’s name on a brass plaque set into one of the building’s entrance columns and then walked upstairs to the second floor. A blond Italian girl was sitting behind a desk in the small reception room. He told her who he was, and she went into Fabrizzi’s office, returned a moment later, and motioned for David to follow her.

Fabrizzi was standing behind his cluttered desk, a man in his sixties with a full head of shocking black hair, and piercing brown eyes, and a large hooked nose. A thin, angular man, he extended a large hand and pumped David’s hand energetically and said in good English, “Sit down, Mr. Regan. I’m sorry I was away, but the heat...” He shrugged philosophically. “This rain is welcome,” he said. “Rome is only for animals in the summer.”

He smiled as David sat. Watching him, David became suddenly nervous and frightened, nervous because he knew immediately he had been wrong about Fabrizzi, frightened because he knew Fabrizzi would tell him what he wanted to know. He sensed this in the man’s cordial welcome and easy attitude, and he wondered all at once if he really wanted to know at all.

“Do you know why I’m here, Mr. Fabrizzi?” he asked.

“I think so, yes,” Fabrizzi answered, nodding.

“I want to find out about my mother’s will,” David said. He spoke very softly and very slowly.

“That is understandable,” Fabrizzi answered, speaking softly and slowly in return.

He felt suddenly that he knew Fabrizzi very well, felt as if this were an old friend he had come to for advice, a friend with whom he could speak without caution, completely relaxed.

“My mother left half her estate to you in trust, Mr. Fabrizzi,” David said. He hesitated a moment. “The will mentions a separate agreement, an agreement that specifies how the trust is to be handled. Are you familiar with this agreement, Mr. Fabrizzi?”

“I am.”

“And you know, of course, that my mother died last month.”

“Yes. Please accept my deepest sympathies, Mr. Regan. She was a fine and noble woman.”

“You knew her?” David asked, surprised.

“No, not personally. But I have had dealings with her for a great many years. Through her attorney, of course, Mr. Tulley.”

“What sort of dealings?” David asked.

Fabrizzi smiled. “The payments. The checks she sent every month.”

“What payments?”

“Your mother sent a hundred and fifty dollars to me every month,” Fabrizzi said.

“Why?”

“I want to know, Mr. Regan, what you intend to do with whatever knowledge you receive from me. I want to know whether or not you plan to contest your mother’s will.”

“Well, I...”

“Because if you do, Mr. Regan, our conversation is ended, and there is nothing more to be said.”

“I came to Rome because—”

“Yes, I know why you came to Rome. Mr. Tulley called me before you arrived and said I should be expecting you. We had a long talk, he and I, debating the advisability of letting you know anything more than you already know. The will is legal, and so is the accompanying document. We’re not worried about the will surviving the test of legality. But your mother went through a great deal of trouble to—”

“Is that why you went out of town? Because Tulley warned you I was coming?”

“No, no, believe me.” Fabrizzi smiled. “My wife can’t abide heat. I went to the mountains with her and my son and his family. No, believe me, I was not trying to avoid you. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” David said. “I just want to know what this is all about. I have a right to know! I’m her son!”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Will you tell me?”

“If that will be the end of it. If then you will let it drop, why yes, then I will tell you.”

“I can’t promise you that.”

“Then I’m afraid we have nothing to say to each other, Mr. Regan.”

“Look, you don’t understand. I—”

“I do understand, Mr. Regan. Those are my terms.”

David sat still and silent for a long time. Then he nodded and said, “All right.”

“This is the end? I have your promise? There will be nothing further said or done?”

“Nothing. You have my word.”

“There is a girl, Mr. Regan,” Fabrizzi said.

“What?” He stared at Fabrizzi, who stood before the rain-streaked window. “What do you mean?”

“A girl,” Fabrizzi repeated, “a girl born in Rome on July 26, 1939.”

“Well, what about her? How...?”

“The girl’s name is Bianca Cristo.”

“What’s she got to do with—”

“She is your mother’s daughter,” Fabrizzi said.

He tried to understand what Fabrizzi was saying, but everything seemed confused and impossible all at once. My mother’s daughter, he thought. Bianca Cristo, he thought.

“She was born to your mother and a man named Renato Cristo in a room off the Via Arenula. Cristo’s sister, a woman named Francesca, served as midwife. Cristo was a soldier. He had been a farmer before he went into the army, but he died as a soldier in 1943 when the child was four years old. She was living with Francesca at the time. She is still living with her, though of course she is no longer a child.”

“Are you saying my mother—?”

“Yes, I am saying your mother gave birth to a daughter in Rome in 1939, that is what I am saying. I am saying she began sending monthly checks to me for Bianca’s support in 1943 when Renato was killed. I am saying that half of your mother’s estate is being held in trust by me for Bianca Cristo until the time she is twenty-one years old, which will be on the twenty-sixth of this month, that is what I am saying to you, Mr. Regan.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ahh, believe me, Mr. Regan.”

“No! My mother—”

“Believe me.”

“Why would she leave half to... to a... a girl who... who...?”

“Her daughter,” Fabrizzi said.

“No! What the hell are you telling me? You’re telling me my mother and an Italian soldier—”

“Would you like to see a copy of the agreement, Mr. Regan?” Fabrizzi asked.

The office was silent except for the sound of the rain outside.

“Yes,” David said, “I’d like to see it.”

He left the office with nothing but anger inside him.

Now he knew. Now he knew what he had come to Rome to discover, now he knew what his mother was, now he understood everything, the long delay in 1939 while his father wrote frantic letters to her, now he understood, now he knew that his mother was nothing but a slut who produced a bastard child in Rome, that was his mother, that was Julia Regan, his mother, now he knew. And knew, too, why his father had died that day on the lake, and hated this woman who had returned from Rome, this woman who had dropped a bastard sister in a grubby room off the Via Arenula while her lover, a farmer, a soldier, a cheap...

Oh God, he thought.

Oh my God, I wish I didn’t know.

Anger and hatred, anger and hatred, repeated in each sloshing stamp of his feet against the wet cobbles. This was where it had gone, oh yes, this was where the love had gone, first to a soldier, and then to a daughter, and nothing was left for the son in Talmadge, nothing but a whore mother who planned on her return, Every year since the end of the war, I’ve made plans to go back to Italy, nothing but a whore who play-acted the part of mother, there was no thunderclap.

He hated her.

He hated the girl Bianca, too, the girl he had never laid eyes upon, the girl who was his half sister, the girl who had stolen love from him. In his hatred, he wanted to see her. In his anger, he wanted to know what the thief looked like. He was filled with an urgent need to get back to the hotel and ask the desk to locate a woman named Francesca Cristo, and he would call her and say, “This is David Regan. I want to talk to my sister. Put my sister on the phone.” And then he would arrange a meeting. And he would look at her. It was important that he see what she looked like. He wanted to study the face of the thief who’d stolen love from him, there was no thunderclap.

But the anger and hatred, dampened by the rain, gave way to a sadness, a melancholia bordering on self-pity, as he splashed through the puddles wearing the gray day around him, this is the way it ends, he thought, this is the way love ends. You meet a stranger on a flight of steps, and you take her hand in yours, and your mouth touches hers, and she’s a stranger, your life dwindles on the bed of a stranger you once loved more than anything else in the world, your life vanishes completely in the office of a man you’ve never seen before, this is the way it ends. So chalk it all up, he thought morosely, stand somewhere high above David Regan and look down on that poor pitiful bastard as if he is not yourself, and ask him what it’s all about, and he will tell you it ends in sorrow and in tears, he will tell you all love ends, even a love you carried inside you like a cherished hope. Here, at least here, there was love. At least with Gillian, there was love. But even that had ended in Rome where there’d been a beginning so long ago, there was no thunderclap.

But from the anger and the hatred and from the self-pitying moroseness, there came a desperation. He thought if only he could breathe clean air into his lungs, if only the streets could smell clean again after the rain, how he wanted to believe there was something more than duplicity and shallow hopelessness. If only today he had touched Gillian’s hand and found Gillian’s mouth, truly found her, if only today there had been a beginning, the way years ago his mother had found a beginning with a faceless Italian soldier, spawned a half sister and given to her a beginning, too, a life. I don’t know, he thought, I don’t know. I want the world to smell so sweet. Oh Jesus, love me, somebody. Somebody please love me.

There was no thunderclap, there was no sudden recognition.

He walked through the rain with his head bent and his shoulders slumped, and he remembered something Matthew had said a long time ago. They are the love bringers, Matthew had said.

He wondered idly what she looked like, his sister. He wondered if she had his mother’s eyes or nose or chin.

He wondered if she looked like him.

What love had she known, he thought, this girl who’d been born to his mother, what love had been brought to her? A slip of paper every month, was that it? A check for a hundred and fifty dollars in hard American currency, was that what she knew of her mother? Or did they tell her stories of the American woman who had come to Rome before the war, and found a life, and left a life? Did she ask questions, Bianca? The name seemed more real to him now. Repeating it in his mind gave it reality. Bianca. Bianca. Did she ask questions about the American woman? He found it hard to think of his mother as a woman, solely as a woman, found it difficult to construct an image of her here, in this city, a woman. She suddenly seemed like a person he had never known at all. Not his mother, not whatever mother meant, not some distant impossible figure of whom he expected impossible things, but instead a person who’d been in love here, and gone to bed here, and given birth here. A person first, a woman first, and only after this his mother. What had she carried inside her all these years, this woman with the child in Rome? What had kept her away, what could have possibly kept her away, shame, guilt, fear, what? What had gone on in the mind of this woman he’d never known, whom he was closer to knowing in this moment than he’d ever been in his life? He suddenly felt a vast aching sorrow. If there had been a tyranny in silence, there was now a finality in death. If only one or the other of them had held out a hand. It might have been possible. It might have been possible for them to have known each other not as mother and son, but simply as human beings. There was no thunderclap, but he somehow knew for certain that his life was not ending here in Rome. And then he wondered whether there ever were any real endings in life, or whether endings only nurtured new beginnings.

There were people in the streets. He saw them now. They walked with their heads bent against the rain. He could hear them talking to each other. He heard someone laugh. His anger was gone now, his hatred was gone, his self-pity, his desperation, even his sorrow. There was left only a piece of understanding, and not even very much of that, but he could feel the rain hammering him coldly alive again.

He would try to see her. He would call her and say, “Bianca, this is your brother. David. Did you know you had a brother, Bianca?” He would stay in Rome for a little while. And in that time, if it were at all possible to bring love to another person, he would offer love to his sister. If it were at all possible to know another person, he would try to know her.

He walked swiftly across the square.

The rain was cold on his face as he reached the steps and started to climb. He slipped on one of the landings, falling to his knees. But he got up again immediately and climbed the rest of the way without once looking back.

When the telephone rang, she knew it was David.

She left the dinner table and went to the phone swiftly, and then hesitated before answering it, filled with a sudden sense of dread. Apprehensively, she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she said.

“I have a call for Miss Kate Bridges,” the operator said.

“Yes, this is she.”

“One moment, please.”

She waited. There was a terrible crackling and buzzing on the line. She could hear the operator talking to someone else, and then an Italian voice came onto the line, and the American operator said, “Go ahead, please,” and she heard a very faint voice, and then the Italian operator again, and then the American operator frantically saying, “Go ahead, please. Go ahead, your party is on the line.”

“Kate?” his voice asked.

“David?”

“Hello, Kate.”

There was a long silence.

“I’m in Rome,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, I know, David.”

“Kate...”

“Yes, David?”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning here.”

“We were just having dinner,” she said.

“I hope I didn’t interr—”

“No, no,” she said quickly.

“How are you, Kate?”

“I’m fine, David.”

There was another long silence.

From the dining room, Matthew asked, “Who is it, Kate?”

“David,” she answered.

“Who?” Matthew said.

Amanda looked up from her plate. “It’s David Regan,” she said quietly.

“Kate... Kate, listen to me,” David said suddenly.

“I’m listening, David.”

“Kate, I’m an old man.”

“Yes, David?”

“Kate, I was born on October 4, 1924.”

“Yes, David?”

“I shouldn’t be calling you. I know I... but I just wanted to say...”

“Yes, David?”

“It’s dark here. My room is very dark. There’s only your voice, Kate.”

“What is it you want to say, David?”

“I’m coming home tomorrow,” he said in a rush. “My plane arrives at Idlewild tomorrow night at nine-fifteen.”

She did not say anything. She waited. She waited breathlessly for him to speak again. She thought for a moment the connection had been broken. She heard him sigh. She could visualize him lying in the dark, in a hotel room in Rome.

“Kate, will you meet me at the airport?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said instantly.

“Will you?”

“Yes, yes.”

“There are things I want to... to talk about, Kate.”

“Yes, I’ll be there. Yes, David.”

“If the plane is late or anything...”

“I’ll wait.”

“Please wait.”

“David, you don’t know how long,” she said, and her voice broke curiously.

“Nine-fifteen,” he said. “Pan-American. It’s flight one-one-five.”

“Yes, hurry. Come safely, hurry, hurry!”

“Kate?”

“Yes?”

“I won’t be able to sleep.”

“Sleep,” she said. “You must sleep, David.”

“Kate?”

“Yes?”

“You’ll be there?”

“Oh, David, if I have to walk!”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“Good night, Kate.”

“Good night, my—”

The connection was broken. She put the receiver back onto the cradle and stood staring at the phone. When she went into the dining room again, Matthew asked, “Was that David Regan?”

“Yes,” Kate said. She sat opposite her mother.

“Isn’t he in Rome?” Bobby asked.

“Yes. He’s coming home tomorrow.” Kate paused. She looked directly at Amanda and said, “I’m meeting him at Idlewild.”

Matthew put down his fork. “David? David Regan? You’re meeting him at Idlewild?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Matthew asked.

“Because he wants me to,” Kate said, and again she looked at Amanda. Matthew saw the glance and felt peculiarly excluded. Bobby seemed about to say something, and then judiciously closed his mouth. Picking up his fork, Matthew looked at his wife and his daughter, and said nothing.

“How do you propose getting to Idlewild?” Amanda asked. “You’re not allowed to drive outside Connecticut.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Kate said. “I’ll take a cab.”

There was a moment’s silence at the table. Matthew’s fork accidentally clinked against his plate.

“I’ll drive you, if you like,” Amanda said.

“Thank you, Mother,” Kate answered. “I can take a cab.”

Amanda raised her eyes to Kate’s. Very softly, she said, “It’s a long trip, Kate, to make alone. You might want someone to talk to.” She paused for a moment, as if what she had to say now was very difficult. But when the words finally left her lips, they were really quite simple. “I’d like to go along with you, daughter,” she said.

Matthew watched them silently as they faced each other across the table. Amanda smiled tentatively and extended her open hand to Kate. Kate hesitated a moment, and then took the hand wordlessly, her eyes never leaving Amanda’s face. He had the feeling something passed between them in that moment, something almost tangible passed between them as Kate took Amanda’s hand in her own, a love, an understanding, something he could not quite fathom, something like...

He shook his head.

Something like a legacy, he had thought.

“Eat your potatoes, son,” he said.