“I think it’s time to go,” she said.
Tony’s face stiffened. “Yes,” he said. He bent and picked up the bat and the telescope and the fishing rod and started after Oliver. He stopped at the corner of the porch, and Lucy felt that for the rest of her life that was the way she was going to remember him, in the suit that had grown too small for him during the summer, stiff-faced, holding the implements of childhood, outlined against the ruffled blue lake. “If we happen to just see each other,” he said, “you know, just by accident, like people do, on a train or in the street, I mean—what do we say to each other?”
Lucy smiled shakily at him. “I … I guess we say hello,” she said.
Tony nodded. “Hello,” he said thoughtfully. He nodded again, as though satisfied, and disappeared around the corner of the porch, following his father.
Lucy stood still. After a while she heard the car start and drive off. She didn’t move. She just stood there, looking out at the lake, with the wreckage of the phonograph at her feet.
And that was the summer.
15
“WELL, MR. CROWN,” the headmaster was saying, “as in most cases of boys his age, there’s a little of everything to report.” The headmaster raised the bottle of sherry inquiringly, but Oliver shook his head. When Oliver had been in school he was sure that his headmaster had not offered sherry to the fathers of the pupils before lunch. Oliver realized that this was a sign that education had become more relaxed since he was a boy, but he also realized that if he accepted a second glass, a minute demerit would be entered, at the back of the headmaster’s mind, against the Crown family.
The headmaster put the bottle down ceremonially. His name was Hollis, he was surprisingly young, and he moved delicately in the cheerful library-like room which served as his office, as though to reassure the parents of the boys entrusted to his care that the developing souls would not be harmed by any sudden or uncalculated movement on his part.
“What I mean,” Hollis went on, smiling boyishly, expertly taking the sting out of judgment, “is that he has his problems, even as you and I did at his age, I’m sure.”
“When I was his age,” Oliver said, purposely frivolous, to keep from being lectured, “my one problem was that I could only chin forty-three times. I’d set my heart on fifty, by my sixteenth birthday.”
Hollis smiled dutifully, accustomed to many generations of fathers. “Of course,” he said, “the physical thing cannot be altogether discounted. Because he can’t join in all the games with the other boys, the team games—although I do hear he plays rather good tennis—it’s possible that his—uh—leaning toward solitude, toward going-it-alone, has been somewhat accentuated. Although the school doctor is quite satisfied with his physical condition—we give him very careful over-all examinations once a month, you know. In fact, the doctor has privately expressed the opinion to me that Tony, if he wished, could indulge in a great deal more group activity than he actually does.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t like the group,” Oliver said. “Maybe if the group was different, he’d plunge in up to his neck.”
“Perhaps,” Hollis said. The tone was mollifying and polite, but there was a chilly blink of the eyelids over the candid, clever blue eyes. “Although we do have a fine group of boys here, if I say so myself. Most representative.”
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, knowing that he had been too brusque to this harmless, conscientious man only because it was impossible to explain anything to him. “I’m sure it’s Tony’s fault.”
“Well”—Hollis spread his hands forgivingly—“fault is a harsh word. Taste, perhaps. No doubt he’ll change as he gets older. Though, as the twig is bent …” He shrugged and smiled at the same time, administering a warning and a caress at the same moment. “He does particularly well at one thing,” Hollis went on, happy to be able to uncover treasure. “He does the cleverest cartoons for the school paper. We haven’t had a boy as gifted as that in many years. They’re surprisingly mature. Rather acid, I must say …” Again the soft apologetic smile, to put the gloss of manners on the necessary and rather unpleasant truth. “I, myself, have heard some grumblings in certain quarters about the sharpness of some of his caricatures. But, of course, he must have sent them to you, you’ve seen them yourself …”
“No,” Oliver said. “I haven’t seen them. I didn’t know he did them.”
“Ah.” Hollis regarded Oliver curiously. “Really?” He bent his head and shuffled through some papers on his desk, then spoke more quickly, tactfully getting away from the subject. “He does fairly well in biology and chemistry. Which is all to the good, of course, since he means to take a pre-medical course. He’s—uh—negligent, I’m afraid, in most of the other subjects, although I’m told he does a great deal of reading on his own. Unfortunately,” again the understanding, practiced, headmaster’s grimace, “almost none of the reading has anything at all to do with his class work. And if he wants to get into a good college in two more years …” Hollis left the sentence hanging, mildly and ominously threatening, like the first delicate puff of wind on a still, dark day.
“I’ll talk to him,” Oliver said. He stood up. “Thank you very much.”
Hollis stood up, too, framed against the window, behind which, in the distance, the gray Gothic buildings of the campus glittered dully in the autumn sun. He held out his hand, a spry, intelligent young man in a soft blue shirt, knowingly representing solid, gray-stone tradition, discreetly tempered by progress. The two men shook hands and Hollis said, “I suppose you’ve come up to take Tony back to Hartford with you for the holiday?”
“We don’t live in Hartford,” Oliver said.
“Ah?” Hollis said. “I thought I remembered …”
“We moved almost a year ago,” Oliver said. “We live in New Jersey now. In Orange. I had a chance to sell my plant in Hartford and buy a larger and more up-to-date one in New Jersey,” he explained, giving all the false reasons.
“Do you like New Jersey better?” Hollis inquired politely.
“Much,” Oliver said. He did not explain that he would have liked any place in the world better than Hartford, any place to which he and Lucy came as strangers, any place in which they had no friends to ask curious questions about Tony and to fall into strained silence whenever the subject of children came up in conversation. He did not explain, either, that for the last six months of their stay in Hartford, Lucy had refused to see any of their old friends, with the exception of Sam Patterson. Sam Patterson knew most of what there was to be known, and there was no need to lie to him. With all the others, the weight of speculation had finally been too much to bear. “It’s no good any more,” Lucy had said. “After an evening with them, I feel as though I’ve been with a group of cryptographers who’ve been working with all their might to crack a code. And the code is me. I’ve had enough of it. If you want to see them, you go yourself. I’m through.”
“Well,” Hollis was saying, “Orange isn’t so far. Are you driving Tony home today?”
“No,” Oliver said. “This Thanksgiving my wife and I’re going down to South Carolina. It’s my one chance to play some golf before the winter sets in. I just came up to have lunch with Tony.”
“Oh.” A noncommittal blink of academic eyes. “I’ll arrange to have Tony in to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll tell Mrs. Hollis.”
“Thanks,” Oliver said. “Will there be many boys here?”