I thought of Sandy James asleep in the train coach, curled on the seat and from the wrist under her cheek the trembling droop of her five-and-ten charm bracelet, a tiny tarnished lady’s shoe, a tiny tarnished bottle, a tiny tarnished steam engine.
Bennett had changed too, he was in an interesting derelict state of mourning. A gray stubble grew on his face and he wore the same plaid flannel shirt day after day. The white hair of the careful shining pompadour was uncombed, shocked forward over his forehead and suggesting from a flash of boyishness what he might have been had he not been a Bennett — a farmer perhaps, a logger, or heavy-chested stevedore of some honest life. We took our meals together, the two of us alone, with a manservant serving heated canned food. All the women of the light green were gone, as if having lost Lucinda Bailey Bennett he wanted the race expunged. A couple of the outside men were now doing the household work and the cooking. In the kitchen the dishes were piled unwashed. I saw roaches going along the floor. It was as if the establishment was in some accelerating state of decrepitude, beginning with Bennett’s heart and working outward. The grounds were immaculate as ever, Loon Lake was groomed for its spring. The stables were clean and horses shining and fit. But if he went on like this, the men of dark green too would be sent away and the boats would sink in their berths, the earth around the dolmen would grow back and the fence around the tennis court would fall and the clay court would crack like the surface of a blasted planet. Mourning had illuminated the natural drift of his life to isolation, and if it was not corrected it would go on, outward in all directions, spreading out over the universe in some infinite looming reclusiveness.
But his eyes were curious when they lit on me for a moment or two at each measured meal. And the days were, after all, timed just as they had been, the hours appointed for drinking and eating, and naps, and exercise. He looked at me as if he were waiting. I met him each day in a renewed wonder of my own. I had seen his kingdom and I appreciated him almost more for the distracted humanity he displayed, broken as easily as anyone by simple events. For men all over the country he was, finally, a condition of their life. Yet he wandered about here in his grief, caring for nothing, barely raising his head when the phone rang. He moved slowly, almost listlessly, which brought out the natural lurch of the short-legged top-heaviness of him.
In the mornings I heard the horses stomping in the stable, and looking out the window, saw Bennett come out galloping, having spurred his horse from the very portal.
At noon we took lunch on the terrace if the day was fair and he’d glance at the sky over the lake as if expecting a plane to appear.
At night while the guards in their belted uniforms walked the floodlit grounds with their dogs I heard him playing his phonograph records, his favorites, I heard the song of the night of my arrival.
I know why I’ve waited
Know why I’ve been blue
Prayed each night for someone
Exactly like you.
He began to talk of Lucinda Bennett, imparting confidences that at first excited me inasmuch as I was there on the terrace in the sun at Loon Lake, in all the world the only one privileged to receive them. His voice lacked regret, his delivery was thoughtful, he chose his words as someone does who wants in as orderly a way as possible to impart information. So I hoped he was giving these thoughts to me, as instruction, and I trusted that his reasons would be forthcoming, that he had some plan, and that by being patient and attentive I would eventually learn what it was. Then I wondered if the confession itself was the gracious means by which I would pass through some subtle imperceptible moment of assumption from being something to being something else. But he went on, and the obsession of the subject became so apparent to me, and the confidences so intimate, I couldn’t believe he was aware that I listened or that he would seriously divulge them if I did not lack all importance to him. Day after day I listened. I watched the white clouds disembowel themselves in the high pines across the lake. His man served canned soup, canned spaghetti, canned peaches. Bennett grew shaggier and smellier, looking more like a troll every day. I watched his beard grow. While I waited for a place in his mind I tested my status with the staff. I rode a horse one day with the stableman beside me showing me the elementais. I went upstairs to the storerooms that the maid Libby had shown me so long ago and took several outfits for myself, white ducks already cuffed, argyle sweaters, saddle shoes, shirts, ties, a pair of boots. I had the man in the boathouse bring out the mahogany speedboat and hold the line while I boarded her. I got the hang of it soon enough. I cruised around looking at the beaver lodges, the islands where the loons made their nests, and saw from the water the concrete ramp and hangar where Mr. Penfield and Mrs. Bennett began their round-the-world flight.
“She was a student when I met her. She was then, and remained, the most handsome woman I had ever seen. I secured a divorce to marry Lucinda. And in the years as they went by, no matter what passed between us, whenever she saw fit to spend time with me I was pleased to see her, I mean that no matter what the state of our affections I was always pleased when she came into a room. If she came into a room I had to look at her. I could not not look at her.
“I respect character in a man but I revere it in a woman. I am done in when I find it in a woman. That little doxie had it in a cheap sort of way. But in Lucinda it tested like the best ore, through and through, in the bones and in the beam of the eye.
“Long ago she lost the pleasure of — what? — the engagement. And I was able to appreciate her character in the depth of her withdrawal from me. And then how I wished she had less of it! Less pride, less distaste for — surprises. Less neatness of soul. I told her she liked the sky because it was clean. She liked to go up in rain. I never flew with her because I sensed that it was her realm. But everyone told me what a wonderful pilot she was. How cool. How capable. And then she began to pull down the prizes and I knew it was so.
“I was very proud of her. I bought her whatever she needed. She may have fallen in love with a fellow, some mail-service pilot, one of those adventurer types, and I was going to have it looked into. But when I thought about it I knew Lucinda would never permit herself an affair. It was not something to which she would give rein. And gradually she ceased to mention him. If it were possible for Lucinda to exist without a body she would have chosen to. Her body was of no interest to her. She did not like it … handled. She was a very orderly woman, Lucinda. If you look upstairs in her apartment you will see the order of her mind. She did everything with precision, and so was she affectionate with precision.
“She flew planes but her tastes were very delicate and refined. She knew art, she knew music. She had small bones as befitting a fine mugwump family. They none of them liked me. I took great relish in that. It was one of those things. I have no taste of my own but I could recognize the quality of hers. She could look at something for a long time, a painting, a piece of porcelain. Then I knew it was fine. I envied her vulnerability — that she could be transfixed by something that was beautiful. She became pregnant just once and immediately took measures to have it rescinded. We had no children. I have one child by my first marriage but he is an incompetent, I mean legally, a macrocephalic, he has water in the head, and he lives in a home in Sweden. They take too good care of him. By all rights he should have been dead years ago.
“Lucinda went once to see him. Thereafter she sent him thoughtfully chosen gifts, toys, tins of cookies, picture books appropriate to his mental age. She always sent him things. She liked helpless beings. I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I mean she had a heart for people. It was she who saved Penfield a jail sentence. Penfield was from the working class and he decided to come here in the late twenties to assassinate me. You knew that of course. Well, the fellow was pathetic but she kept him on as a sort of a cause in personal rehabilitation. A sort of one-woman Salvation Army, except without the prayer. Lucinda was not religious except perhaps in some vague pantheistic way. She decided the poor man was a poet. I got to like him myself. He read aloud very well, he probably should have been an actor. He read Wordsworth and Keats, all that kind of thing. He was a sort of house pet she kept on and I indulged her. But then of course I did something I shouldn’t have. I took Penfield’s own verses to the president of the New York Public Library and asked him his opinion. In turn he called on a professor who was an expert in the field of literature. Oh my. And I showed Lucinda this fellow’s letter. She perceived, accurately, that the opinion didn’t matter so much as my malice in having asked for it. She threw the letter in the fire. She was a wonderful woman. She was not a prey to fashion, didn’t give a damn for it. She always looked smart by looking herself. She always wore her hair the same way, cut short and brushed back from her temples. I thought it was most seemly. She had a thin, fit body. Thin waist. Ribs showed. She had good hands, small and squarish, nails trim, cut close. She would not paint her nails or wear make-up. I liked her mouth, a generous mouth. Sweet smile. A light came into her eyes when she smiled. She had almost no bosom. Just a slight rise there with good thick nipples. She told me once if I liked her body I must really like boys.”