Lucy looked down curiously at Jeff. “Did you know all this before you met Tony?” she asked.
“Not a word,” Jeff said. “I go home and study every night so that Tony will think I’m the smartest man that ever lived.” He smiled. “I want him to be disappointed with every teacher he has from now on and get disgusted with education and never listen to any one of them again. It’s the least I can do for him.” He sat up suddenly, his face naïve and open, his eyes shining candidly in the light of the lamp. “Tony,” he said, “show your mother how you breathe when you swim.”
“Like this,” Tony said, ducking his head and making a swimming motion with his arms. “Kick, one, two, three, four, BREATHE!” He put his head to one side and opened his mouth wide at one corner, as though it was half in and half out of the water, and sucked in air with a loud, wet sound.
“Isn’t there a more gentlemanly way to breathe?” Lucy asked, thinking, The danger is over, everything is back to normal.
“No,” Jeff said, “I taught him that, too.” Sitting cross-legged on the floor now, he addressed Tony. “Do you think your father is getting his money’s worth out of me?”
“Well,” Tony said, teasing him, “almost.”
“Lie a little in your next letter,” Jeff said. “For friendship’s sake.” He stood up, picking up the telescope. He put the telescope to his eye and regarded Tony, at a distance of ten feet. “You will have to shave,” he said solemnly, “in exactly three years, two months, and fourteen days.”
Tony laughed and rubbed his chin.
“I have a question to ask you, young man.” Jeff came over to the glider and leaned against the chain, making it swing a little. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if I went home with you after Labor Day and stayed with you this winter to smarten you up some more?”
“Do you think you could do that?” Lucy could see that Tony was deeply pleased with the idea.
“Don’t stop, Tony,” Lucy said sharply. “Jeff was joking. He has to go back to college and be sensible again until next summer. Stop swinging on the chain, please, Jeff, it’s hard enough to make this up as it is.”
“One thing I don’t like about summers,” Tony said, “toward the end, they go too fast. Will I really see you this winter, Jeff?”
“Of course,” Jeff said. “Get your mother to bring you up to Dartmouth. For the football games and the winter carnival.”
“Mother, do you think we can go?”
“Maybe,” Lucy said, because she didn’t want to make an issue of it. “If Jeff remembers to invite us.”
“Tomorrow, Tony,” said Jeff, “I’ll stab myself in the hand and print the invitation in blood and that constitutes a holy contract. We’ll pull wires and get your mother elected Queen of the Carnival and they’ll take her picture sitting on top of a snowball and everybody’ll say, ‘By gum, there’s never been anything like that in New Hampshire before.’”
Lucy glanced uneasily at Tony. If he were a year older, she thought, he would catch on. Maybe even now … “Stop it,” she said to Jeff, risking alerting Tony. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” Jeff said slowly. He walked to the edge of the porch and looked once more at the sky through the telescope. “Mars,” he said, making his voice throaty and dramatic. “The low, baleful, red, unwinking planet. That’s your ruling planet, Tony, because you’re Aries. Favorable to slaughter and the arts of war. Become a soldier, Tony, and you’ll take a hundred towns and be at least a lieutenant colonel by the age of twenty-three.”
“Now, really, Jeff,” Lucy said, “that’s enough of that nonsense.”
“Nonsense?” Jeff said, sounding surprised. “Tony, do you think it’s nonsense?”
“Yes,” Tony said judiciously. “But it’s interesting.”
“People have been guiding their lives by the stars for five thousand years. The Kings of Egypt …” Jeff said. “Lucy,” and his voice was like a mischievous boy’s now, “when were you born?”
“A long time ago.”
“Tony, what’s your mother’s birthday?”
“August twenty-fifth.” Tony was enjoying this and he appealed to Lucy. “It can’t do any harm.”
“August twenty-fifth,” Jeff repeated. “The sign of Virgo. The Virgin …”
“Mother …” Tony looked inquiringly at Lucy.
“I’ll explain some other time.”
“In the region of the Euphrates,” Jeff went on, now pretending to be a lecturer and speaking rapidly and with no inflection, “it was identified with Venus, who was sad and perfect and was worshiped by lovers. The ruling planet is Mercury, the brightest star, which always keeps the same side turned to the sun and is frozen on one side and burning on the other. Virgoans are shy and fear to be brilliant …”
“Now,” said Lucy, feeling he had gone far enough, “where did you pick up all this foolishness?”
“Madame Vietcha’s Book of the Stars,” Jeff said, grinning. “Thirty-five cents at any good bookstore or at your druggist’s. Virgoans fear impurity and disorder and are liable to peptic ulcers. When they love, they love passionately and place a high premium on fidelity …”
“And how about you?” Lucy interrupted, almost with hostility, forgetting Tony for the instant, challenging Jeff. “What about your horoscope?”
“Aaah …” Jeff put the telescope down and wagged his head. “Mine is too sad to relate. I’m in opposition to my stars. They sit up there”—he waved sadly at the sky—“winking, defying me, saying, ‘Not a chance, not a chance …” I want to lead and they advise me to follow. I want to be brave and they say, Caution. I want to be great and they say, Perhaps in another life. I say, Love, and they say, Disaster. I’m a hero in the wrong twelfth of the Zodiac.”
There were footsteps on the gravel path alongside the porch and a moment later Lucy saw a young girl in blue jeans and a loose sweater come into view. For a moment Lucy didn’t recognize her, then saw that it was the daughter of a Mrs. Nickerson whom she had met at the hotel that afternoon. Tony halted work on the glider to stare at her.
“Hello,” the Nickerson girl said, coming onto the porch. She was a plump and prematurely developed girl and the blue jeans were stretched tight across her solid little behind. Her hair was streaked and Lucy noted disapprovingly that it had almost certainly been touched up. “Hello,” she repeated, standing with her legs widespread and her hands plunged into the pockets of the blue jeans. She looked around her with the unabashed self-possession of an animal trainer. “I’m Susan Nickerson,” she said, and if you closed your eyes you would have been sure it was a mature and rather unpleasant woman speaking. “We were introduced this afternoon.”
“Of course, Susan,” Lucy said. “This is my son Tony.”
“Delighted,” Susan said crisply. “I’ve heard a great deal about you.” Jeff made a face.
“My mother sent me over, Mrs. Crown,” Susan said, “to ask if you’d like to make a fourth at bridge tonight.”
Jeff glanced swiftly across at Lucy, then leaned over and picked up the chair that he had up-ended on the floor to observe the stars.
Lucy hesitated. She thought of the veranda of the hotel and the seared ranks of seasonal widows there. “Not tonight, Susan,” she said. “Tell your mother thank you, but I’m tired and I’m going to bed early.”
“Okay,” Susan said flatly.
“Bridge,” said Jeff, “has put this country further back than Prohibition.”