“Fine,” Gabe said. He was even smiling. “I’m not skeptical.”
“Of course. It’s a psychological thing, and I understand how that is, how that comes about.”
“Fine.”
“Though I don’t mean you’re not entitled to express your opinion. We’re both grown men, and you’re an intelligent person, obviously, and of course I’m always interested in your opinion on that ground alone. If you want to express an opinion to me about Fay, there’s no reason for me not to hear it.”
“I don’t have an opinion. I only wanted to know that you wanted this.”
“Well, why should you have any doubts?”
Gabe’s answer was some time in coming. “I don’t want to interfere. It’s not my business to tell anybody how to run his life.”
“No, no, go right ahead. I’m not a fragile icicle. I’d like to hear your objection. Why shouldn’t I be open-minded to all points of view?”
“It’s no objection.”
“What is it?”
“It’s only her drinking. It seemed to me — I might be wrong — a little excessive.”
“Well, it isn’t any more.” The doctor stopped and waited. Would there be some further objection — one he had no answer to?
“You don’t believe me?” the doctor asked.
“I believe you.”
“Because it’s a fact. She has given it up. It was only a temporary thing to begin with, a way for her to forget her husband. That’s the way I analyze it.”
“And now she’s forgotten him?”
“You see, you’re just acting psychological again. That’s not a fair remark. You hardly know the woman.”
“I’m sorry then. I didn’t mean to sound so hard.”
“Giving up something like drinking, even when it’s only been a temporary relief, shows a certain strength of character.”
“I agree. Maybe we ought to stop with this conversation. I only wanted to be sure, that’s all.”
“Sure of what?”
“That this was what you wanted.”
And what more could he say? After all, Fay had given up drinking, and that was proof of some real fiber in her. What other objection could Gabe have that would carry any weight — that she was not as smart as his own mother? Well, at age sixty you come to realize that intelligence isn’t everything. There are other qualities one looks for in a person. To go around expecting that he would meet in one lifetime another woman as fine and intelligent as his first wife was to go around expecting the impossible. Besides, he did not even know if that was what he wanted. Being more intelligent than Fay had turned out to be a pleasure for him — it made him feel like somebody. On the beach, for instance, he could hold his own now with a fellow like Abe Cole, rather than feeling it necessary to sit back and listen while Anna, say, conversed with the psychoanalyst.
Of course, there were moments when he was nettled slightly by the things Fay did not know or care about. Particularly since she had given up drinking, he had found her not so quick and lively a woman as he had been thinking she was. When they discussed the news events of the day, for instance, there was a certain vagueness on her part, and he had discovered that she was weak on geography. But surely that was to be preferred to a zeal and vivaciousness that had been inspired by drunkenness — which itself had been inspired by sorrow and loss. So what objection did he have? That she was not Anna? One, she couldn’t be expected to be somebody else; and two, in certain ways she was a much more natural woman than Anna had ever been. When she was unhappy at least she let you know it — she got drunk. The trouble with his wife had been that she had never needed anyone. Even in dying she had been a perfect lady. But how he had wished that she would break down, how he had wished that she would ask him to close his office and stick by her bed day and night. Surely it was what he would have done had it been he who was dying of leukemia. And still, how he had revered her! How lucky to have been her husband. Her taste, her ideas, her gentility, the way she had of expressing herself … But then that grace and charm had been her power. He had gone through life thinking of himself as not having ideas and preferences of his own. And that was against nature; he knew now it had helped to make him, for all his wisecracking and fitfulness, a very melancholy man. With Fay he positively shone in conversation; he felt an honest-to-goodness surge within him as she sat there nodding her head and listening. If only Anna could hear him now … But it was Fay’s ears that listened, and Fay’s eyes which, though they may not have comprehended all the fine points, at any rate revered him for speaking in their direction.
It was all too confusing; how could a man of his years and station admit to his own child that he did not know what he wanted — especially when the child was a man with whom he could no longer express his love in ways that had been available to him twenty years earlier? You could not toss a man of one hundred and seventy-five pounds up in the air and catch him in your arms. Hardly. And that too served to confuse matters — for even if the son could be persuaded, it might not be as satisfying living with him as Dr. Wallach had once imagined. The young man was occupied with his own affairs; all that brooding about leaving Chicago must have to do with people and happenings of which his father was ignorant, in which his father had no place. There was really no choice about Fay then; she was all he could hope for.
When next he spoke he was in the grips of a vertigo worse than the one that had seized him earlier when he had dived into the ocean with his son. Dizzy, numb, trembling, he had complained of a chill, and come back to the shore, sending the boy off to swim by himself. He had managed then to walk back to his towel without giving a sign of his condition, but now he actually feared that he would stagger in the middle of what he was saying.
What was he saying? He heard his voice but the experience of utterance did not seem to be his. “Look, this reaction isn’t a reasoned one. I don’t want you to feel I hold you entirely responsible.” He found he was not even sure of his subject. Oh, yes — his son and Fay. “After all, it’s Hamlet. Oedipus.”
They were turning up through a ridge that the wind had cut in the dunes; they moved toward the street where the car was parked. “After all,” the doctor said, “this is an ancient thing, very deep and imbedded in the human race, this business between children and men.” His hand was on his son’s shoulder, as if it were the boy he was steadying. “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Now this is quite a case we’re dealing with. This is strictly a case of morality …” The dining room, situated in a turret that extended off the old house, was alive with sunlight. The house itself had belonged, years ago, to a Sag Harbor whaling captain; it still was filled with objects from all parts of the world, many of them worn and chipped and frazzled, but as the doctor had told his fiancée, full of warmth and feeling. The pictures on the walls, old fishing scenes and nautical maps of the Sound, could hardly be seen for the strong light that bounced off the glass that encased them. Fay was holding a match to a cigarette that she had placed in her ivory holder. She looked nothing less than aristocratic in the surroundings, especially with the holder, which the doctor had bought for her because he believed it gave her substance. Gabe, in white trousers and a blue polo shirt, was settled back in his chair sipping coffee.
Breakfast had been a success — except that Dr. Wallach still had to do most of the talking. Fay, of course, had been busy serving, and Gabe had been busy eating. But now, with second cups of coffee on the table, the doctor felt the time had come to draw them out. The sparkle of the brass coffee pot, the light on the rosewood dining chairs, Fay’s ivory holder between her lips, Gabe’s crisp summery good looks, even the simple fact that his son’s hair was still damp, made Dr. Wallach feel more optimistic about his family situation than he had in a long while. When he reached up to scratch his nose, he could smell the salt from the sea on the back of his hand; this too produced hope and excitement in him.