“Oliver …” Lucy said doubtfully. She was afraid of the effect on them of a grim play, afraid of the moment when they came out of the theatre, wary and uncertain of each other, and disturbed by two hours of dark emotion. A musical comedy, inconsequential and pretty, would make things easier.
“It’s Tony’s party,” Oliver said, as they walked toward the steps leading out of the station. “The first thing we’ll do is go into the hotel and see if they can get us the tickets.”
Lucy fell silent, walking between her husband and her son. He’s beginning to make everybody’s decisions again, she thought resentfully.
She conducted the shopping tour through the crowded, holiday-eve markets with an extravagant and almost hysterical open-handedness, piling her purchases indiscriminately into Oliver’s or Tony’s arms, talking steadily, adding to the morrow’s menu, her eyes roving across the hanging rows of turkeys, the piled pyramids of oranges, apples, tangerines, grapefruit, the displays of South American melons and pineapples, the bins of potatoes and chestnuts. Then they were late and they dumped their purchases into the trunk of the car and hurried to the restaurant, where Lucy drank too much, without realizing what she was doing, and where they had to cut the meal short to get to the theatre on time. As she shopped, and rattled on, and nervously ate and drank, Lucy was conscious only of a need for postponement. Dazed by the sudden appearance of Tony, uncertain whether it was an ambush or a reinforcement to her happiness, too unstrung to be able to see what signals either Oliver or Tony were putting up, she fought confusedly to keep from making any decisions herself in those first hours or permitting the others to make any decisions on their own part.
In the theatre, she was drowsy and only listened intermittently to what the actors were saying on the stage. Between the acts she said she was too tired to go out, and sat numbly by herself when Oliver took Tony across the street for a Coca-Cola. And on the long trip home, she sat in the back of the car, not quite awake, not trying to hear what Tony and Oliver were saying to each other in the quiet darkness in front of her. When they got home, she nearly stumbled going up the front steps and said, quite truthfully, that she couldn’t keep her eyes open another minute. She kissed Tony good night, briskly and without emotion, as though the two years had not intervened, and left Oliver with the job of settling the boy down in the guest room.
It was a retreat and she knew it and she was sure that Oliver, at least, and probably Tony, too, understood it, but she was too tired to care. When she got into bed and turned out the light, she had a little weary flicker of triumph. I got through the whole evening, she thought, and nothing happened. Tomorrow I’ll be fresh and I’ll take hold.
As she drifted off to sleep she heard the voices of Oliver and Tony, low, friendly, intimate, on the other side of the bedroom door and the male tread of their footsteps going down the hallway to the guest room at the back of the house. They walk so heavily, she thought. Both of them.
She wondered whether Oliver would come into her room to sleep tonight. And if he did, for whom would he be doing it? Himself? Her? Tony?
She folded her arms across her breasts and held her shoulders, because she was shivering with cold.
She was asleep when Oliver came into the darkened room, and the careful sounds he made as he undressed and got into the bed didn’t awaken her.
Usually she awoke fairly early, but on this Thanksgiving morning, she slept till past ten o’clock, and when she woke she felt heavy and hangover-ish. She moved slowly as she washed and combed her hair, and she dressed with more care than she ordinarily took in the mornings. Whatever opinion he has of me, she thought grimly, at least he’s going to admit that his mother is not bad-looking.
She heard no sounds in the rest of the house and she took it for granted that Oliver and Tony were either in the living room or the breakfast room, off the kitchen, downstairs. But when she went down she saw that the house was empty, shining in the morning sunlight, with two sets of breakfast dishes neatly washed and left in the wire frame on one side of the kitchen sink to dry.
There was a note on the kitchen table in Oliver’s handwriting, and she hesitated before picking it up and reading it, disturbed by absurd fears that there would be news in it of departures, discoveries, denunciations. But when she picked it up and read it, all it said was that they’d had their breakfast and they hadn’t wanted to wake her and that since it was such a fine morning they were going to a high-school football game in town that was to start at eleven o’clock. They would be back, the note went on, in Oliver’s precise and authoritative handwriting, not much later than one-thirty and they would be ready for the turkey. Love, Oliver, it ended.
She was grateful for the respite and she bustled around the kitchen, cleaning the turkey, putting the cranberries up to cook, roasting and shelling the chestnuts, moving swiftly and automatically about her chores, glad that the maid had been given the week-end off and that she had to do the work herself and that she had the house all to herself to do it in. When, during the morning, flushed from her work and the heat of the oven, she thought of Tony, it was almost carelessly. It all seemed so normal—in how many homes throughout the country was the son of the house back from school for the holiday and out watching a football game with his father while the mother prepared the standard feast. And if Tony had not been wildly affectionate the evening before, that was to be expected. He hadn’t been antagonistic, either. His attitude, if it had been an attitude, could be described as neutral. A little warmer and better than neutral, Lucy corrected herself, basting the bird. She hummed comfortably to herself in the sunny kitchen. After all, two years is a long time, she thought, especially in the life of a boy. A lot of things are forgotten in two years—or at least blurred over and softened. She herself, she thought comfortably, setting the table, couldn’t remember clearly just what had happened two years ago and it had all flattened out and lost the power of damaging her. At this distance it was hard to remember just why everybody had made such a crisis out of it.
Looking at the table, with the linen white, the glasses shining, she regretted for an instant that it was only going to be the three of them for the meal. It would have been nice to have some other families in, and other boys and girls Tony’s age. She closed her eyes and imagined what the table would look like, with the grownups at one end and five or six boys and girls, scrubbed, in their best clothes, the girls at that marvelous, shining age when from moment to moment they teetered back and forth between being children and young women.
For Christmas,. Lucy decided, I’m going to arrange something big. Standing there, looking at the glittering table and thinking about Christmas, she was happier than she had been in many years.
She glanced at her watch, went into the kitchen to take a last look around and sniff, luxuriously, all the warm and pungent smells of the dinner. Then she went upstairs and took a long time surveying the dresses hanging in her closet, trying to decide which one might please Tony best. She chose a soft blue dress with a wide skirt and a high neck and long sleeves. Today, she thought, he’d probably prefer me to look motherly.
Oliver and Tony came back at a quarter to two, both of them flushed from the cold and entertained by the game they had seen. Lucy was waiting for them in the living room, in her motherly dress, proud that everything had been efficiently prepared, with fifteen minutes to spare, and that they could find her sitting in the orderly, bright room, calm, leisurely, ready for them. She heard them coming in through the front door and the pleasant male mumble of their voices, and when they entered the room she smiled at them, secretly observing that while he was undoubtedly Oliver’s son, his resemblance to her, the wide brow, the long gray eyes, the fine blond hair, was overwhelmingly strong.