He began to jog ahead of the boy but, soon tiring, he stopped and resumed walking. Though the boy had not run after him, Preminger knew he was not far behind and that he was still following him. He went deliberately toward one of the tables on Bieberman’s lawn, thinking that when he reached it he would turn to the boy and ask him to bring him a drink. He did not notice until too late that it was Mrs. Frankel’s table he was heading for. The wide, high-domed beach umbrella that stood over it had hidden her from him. He saw that the only way to take himself out of her range was to veer sharply, but remembering the boy behind him and the mistake he had made on the hill, he decided that he could not risk another dopey movement. What if the kid turned with him, he thought. They would wind up alone together on the golf course. He would never get away from him. He considered between Frankel and the kid and chose Frankel because she didn’t need advice.
Mrs. Frankel, in her hot, thick city clothing, looked to him like a woman whose picture has just been taken for the Sunday supplements. (“Mrs. Frankel, seated here beneath a two-hundred-pound mushroom she raised herself, has announced…”) But when he came closer he saw that she would not do for the supplements at all. Her legs, thrown out in front of her, gave her the appearance of an incredibly weary shopper whose trip downtown has failed. Her expression was disconsolate and brooding. It was an unusual attitude for Mrs. Frankel and he stood beside her for a moment. She stared straight ahead toward the useless pool.
“It’s funny,” she said, turning to him. “A little girl.” He had never heard her talk so softly. “Did you see her? Like she was just some piece of cardboard that had been painted like a child. It’s too terrible,” she said. “To happen here? In the mountains? Just playing like that? All right, so a child is sick, it’s awful, but a little child gets sick and sometimes there’s nothing you can do and the child dies.” He was not sure she was talking to him. “But here, in the mountains where you come for fun, for it to happen here? It’s awful — terrible. A thing like that.” She looked directly at Preminger but he could not be certain that she saw him. “Did you see the mother? Did you see the fright in the woman’s eyes? Like, ‘No, it couldn’t be.’ I was there. The child wanted an ice cream and the mother told her that her lips were blue, she should come out. She looked around for a second, for a second, and when she turned around again…” Mrs. Frankel shrugged. “How long could she have been under — five seconds, ten? Is the pool an ocean, they had to search for her? No, it’s more important the lifeguard should be talking to his girl friends so when he hears the screaming he should look up and holler ‘What? What? Where? Where?’ Who’s to blame?” she asked him. “God? We’re not savages. Let’s fix the blame a little close to home.”
He shifted under her direct stare. She had recovered her stentorian coloratura and for this he was grateful. She was running true to form again and her elegy or whatever it had been was only a kind of interlude, as though the woman caught her breath not by ceasing to talk but by lowering her voice. However, her question still hung in the air. He didn’t want to answer it but that didn’t seem to make any difference to these people. At least, then, he could give his testimony on the side he believed in.
“All right, Mrs. Frankel,” he said. “What is it? All morning you’ve been hinting at some dark secret. Is it that the lifeguard wasn’t old enough?” His voice sounded louder than he had intended. He heard it as though he were listening to a recording he could not remember having made. “Is that what’s bothering you? Is that the little secret you’re determined to let everyone in on? Well, relax, it’s no secret. Everybody knows about it. It’s too bad, but even if the kid had been eighteen instead of sixteen the little girl would still have drowned.”
“The lifeguard was only sixteen?” the woman asked. It was impossible that she didn’t know. She must have guessed, must have suspected it. That had to be the reason for her outrage.
“The lifeguard was only sixteen?” she repeated. It was too much; he couldn’t be the one she learned it from. “Only sixteen?” she insisted.
“I don’t know how old he is,” he said, reneging. “That’s not the point. It was an accident. What difference does it make how old he is?” Only now was he conscious that the boy had not left them. He was standing about twenty feet away, listening. Preminger remembered seeing Bieberman stand in the same attitude just that morning, his head bowed low under the weight of his embarrassment, buffered from his enemies by the social director. He was waiting for Preminger to go on with the defense.
Blithely, however, he changed the subject. For no apparent reason he began to tell Mrs. Frankel of the walk he had just taken, of his vague plans for the future. She listened politely and even nodded in agreement once or twice to things he said. He remained with her in this way for about ten minutes, but when he started to leave he caught for a moment Mrs. Frankel’s angry stare. “It’s better we should all get out,” she said.
He lay beside Norma beyond the closed-in tennis court. He watched the moon’s chalk-silver disintegrate and drift icily to the lawn. They had not spoken for a quarter of an hour. He did not know whether she was asleep. The ground was damp. He could feel, beneath the blanket, the evening’s distillation like a kind of skin. He raised himself on one elbow and looked at Norma’s face. Her eyes were closed and he lay back down again and watched the sky.
The lawn was deserted; the exodus of late that afternoon had ended; the last cars from the city had gone back. He thought of Bieberman, alone beside the pool, and could still see the old man’s awful face as he waved at the departing guests, pretending it was only the natural end of their vacation that took them back.
He pulled a blade of grass from beside the blanket.
“The slob,” he said.
Norma stirred, made a small sound.
Preminger only half heard her. “He stood in the driveway and waved at them. He shook their hands and said he’d save their rooms. He even told the bellboy where to put everything.” He tore the grass in half and threw one piece away. “The slob. I was ashamed for him.”
He rolled the grass between his fingers. Feeling its sticky juice, he threw it away in disgust. “Even the social director. Did you hear him? ‘I’m sorry, Bieberman, but I’ve got to have people. I’ve got to have people, right?’ And Bieberman told him, ‘You’re a fine actor. You give a professional performance.’ It made me sick. And Mrs. Frankel didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. He gave himself away.”
“The poor thing,” Norma said. Her voice was low and cool, not sleepy at all. He turned to her and smiled”
“Bieberman?”
“I meant the little girl,” she said. Her voice was flat. He studied her pale face and the skin, which looked cooler and softer than he remembered ever having seen it. She seemed smaller somehow, and, in a way he did not mind, older. It’s the moon, he thought.
He touched her cheek with his fingers. “You would have gone with them, wouldn’t you?” he asked softly. “You would have gone with them if I hadn’t asked you to stay.” She didn’t answer. She turned her head and his hand dropped to the blanket. “You’ve done that twice today,” he said.
“Have I?”
He looked at her body. She lay straight back, her arms at her sides. He rolled toward her quickly and his arm fell across her breast. She tried to move away from him, but he grabbed her arms and pinned them to her sides and kissed her on the mouth. In a few minutes, he thought, my vacation begins. A nice abandoned Jewish girl in a nice abandoned Jewish hotel. She shook her head ferociously. His face fell on top of hers and he forced it with his weight toward the blanket. He felt her body stiffen, her arms go rigid. Then her arms shook in a rage against him and he was helpless to hold them at her sides. She was very strong, and with a sudden convulsive movement she threw him off. She sprang up quickly and stood looking down at him. She seemed unsure of herself.