Susan inspected him coldly. She had bright, cold, blue, coin-like eyes. “I know about you,” she said. She had the trick of making the simplest statement sound like an accusation. It will come in very handy, Lucy thought, noticing it, if she later decides to become a policewoman.
Jeff laughed. “Maybe you’d better keep it to yourself, Susan,” he said.
“You’re the Dartmouth boy,” she said. “My mother thinks you’re very handsome.”
Jeff nodded gravely, agreeing. “And what do you think?” he asked.
“You’re all right.” She shrugged, a small, plump movement under the loose sweater. “They’d never take you in the movies, though.”
“I was afraid of that,” Jeff said. “And how long are you going to be here?”
“I hope not long,” the girl said. “I like Nevada better.”
“Why?” Jeff asked.
“There was more happening,” Susan said. “This place is dead. It’s got the wrong age groups. They don’t even have movies, except on Saturdays and week-ends. What do you do here at night?”
“We look at the stars,” said Tony, who had been watching her, fascinated.
“Ummn,” Susan said, not impressed.
She may be only fourteen years old, Lucy thought, repelled and amused at the same time, but she sounds as though only the most extreme forms of vice could hold her interest for more than five minutes at a time.
Tony went over to Susan and offered her the telescope. “You want to take a look?”
Susan shrugged again. “I don’t care.” But she took the telescope and put it languidly to her eye.
“You ever look through one of those before?” Tony asked.
“No,” Susan said.
“You can see the mountains of the moon with this one,” said Tony.
Susan looked critically and without favor at the moon.
“How do you like that?” Tony asked, the moon’s proprietor.
“It’s okay,” Susan said, returning the telescope. “It’s the moon.”
Jeff chuckled, shortly, once, and Susan raked him with her policewoman’s eyes. “Well,” she said, “I must be off. My mother will want to know about the bridge.” She raised her hand with terrible grace, as though dispensing a blessing. “Ta,” she said.
“See you tomorrow,” Tony said, and his effort to be nonchalant made Lucy feel she was going to break into a sweat in sympathy.
“Maybe,” Susan said wearily.
Poor Tony, Lucy thought. The first girl he’s ever looked at.
“Delighted to have made your acquaintance, everybody,” Susan said. “Ta, again.”
They watched her walk down the path, her buttocks like two solidly pumped-up beach balls under the tight cloth of the jeans.
Jeff shuddered elaborately as she disappeared around the corner of the house. “I bet her mother is something,” he said. “I’ll give you three guesses why that lady was in Nevada last summer.”
“Don’t gossip,” Lucy said. “Tony, stop lingering.”
Tony slowly came back to the adult world. “She looks funny in pants, doesn’t she? Kind of lumpy.”
“You’ll find they get lumpier and lumpier in pants as you go along, Tony,” Jeff said.
The moment, with its joke about sex, and the memory of the girl’s dry and effortless rejection of her son, made Lucy uncomfortable. Another night, she thought, resenting Jeff, and I would have laughed. Not tonight.
“Tony,” she said, “inside with you. Get into your pajamas. And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
Tony slowly started in. “Jeff,” he said, “will you read to me when I get into bed?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll read to you tonight,” Lucy said, almost automatically.
“I like the way Jeff reads better.” Tony stopped at the door. “He skips the descriptions.”
“Jeff’s had a long day,” Lucy said, stubbornly, sorry that she had started this, but committed now. “He probably has a date or something.”
“No,” Jeff began, “I …”
“Anyway, Tony,” Lucy said, in a tone of sharp command she almost never used with him, “go in and get your pajamas on. Quickly.”
“All right,” Tony said, sounding hurt. “I didn’t mean …”
“Go ahead!” Lucy said, almost hysterically.
Puzzled, and a little frightened, Tony went into the house. Lucy moved quickly, in little jerky movements, around the porch, throwing some magazines together, closing the sewing basket, standing the telescope on the chair next to the glider, conscious that Jeff was watching her closely, humming tunelessly to himself.
She stopped in front of him. He was leaning against the porch pillar, his head in darkness, only a faint gleam showing where his eyes were.
“You,” she said. “I don’t like the way you behave with Tony.”
“With Tony?” Jeff straightened up, surprised, and came into the light of the lamp. “Why? I just behave naturally.”
“Nobody behaves naturally with children,” Lucy said, conscious that her voice was strained and artificial. “There is no such thing. All those sly jokes. All that pretense …”
“What pretense?”
“That you’re so fond of him,” Lucy said. “That you’re really just about the same age. That you want to see him again after the summer …”
“But I do,” Jeff said.
“Don’t lie to me. By Thanksgiving you won’t remember his name. And you’ll raise a lot of hopes in him … and all that it’ll mean to him is a long, disappointed autumn. Do your job,” she said. “And that’s all.”
“As I understood it,” Jeff said, “my job was to try to make him feel like a normal, healthy boy.”
“You’ve made him morbidly attached to you.”
“Now, Lucy …” Jeff said angrily.
“What for? Why?” She was almost shouting now. “Out of vanity? What’s so gratifying about getting a poor lonely little sick boy to cling to you? Why is it worth all the tricks? The Sign of the Ram, the Sea of Fecundity, human sacrifice, the Virgin, the Winter Carnival …” She was gasping, as though she had been running for a long time, and the words seemed to be pushed out past sobs. “Why don’t you go home? Why don’t you leave us both alone?”
Jeff took her arms and held them. She didn’t try to break away. “Is that what you want?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re the wrong age. You’re too old for him and you’re too young for me. Go find someone who’s twenty years old.” With a sharp movement, she pulled her arms out of his grasp. “Someone you can’t damage,” she said. “Someone for the summer. Someone you’ll forget in September just the way you’re going to forget us.”
“Lucy,” he whispered. “Stop it.”
“Go away.” She almost wept.
But he held her again, this time high up on her arms, close to her shoulders, his hands digging into her. “What do you think it’s been like for me?” he demanded, his voice still low, modified by the necessity of keeping Tony from hearing him. “Being so close to you, day after day? Going home and lying awake, remembering how your hand felt when I helped you out of the boat, remembering the sound your dress made as you brushed past me on the way down to dinner. Remembering what your laugh sounded like … And never being able to touch you, tell you … Damage!” he whispered harshly. “Don’t talk to me about damage!”
“Please,” she said, “if this is the way you talk to everybody, if this is the technique you’ve worked out, if this is how you’ve been successful with all your girls … spare me. Spare me.”
His hands tightened momentarily on her arms and she thought he was going to shake her. Then he let go of her. They stood there close to each other and he spoke wearily, without force. “You had a big straw hat last summer,” he said, his voice flat. “When you wore it in the sunlight, your face was all rosy and soft. Now, whenever I see a woman in a red straw hat like that, it’s as though someone has grabbed me by the throat …”