“Five, six years,” he said carelessly, bringing his head forward again, and pushing his cup thoughtfully a little distance away from him on the table, like a man making a move on a chessboard.
“Do you ever intend to go back?”
Tony shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Who knows?”
“Is it a question of money?”
Tony grinned. “Ah,” he said, “I see that you’ve caught on that we’re not the richest young Americans in Europe.”
“What happened to all the money you got when the will was settled and the business was sold?” Lucy asked.
Tony shrugged again. “The usual,” he said. “False friends, riotous living and bad investments. Easy come, easy go. I wasn’t particularly anxious to hold onto it. It made me uncomfortable.” He peered at her closely. “How about you?” he asked. “Do you feel comfortable with it?” His tone was not censorious, merely inquisitive.
Lucy decided to ignore the question. “If you ever need any money …” she began.
Tony waved, interrupting her. “Be careful,” he said, “this may be costly.”
“I mean it.”
“I’ll remember it,” he said gravely.
“Dora says you’re not particularly happy with your work …”
“Did she actually say that?” Tony sounded surprised.
“Not exactly,” Lucy admitted. “But she said you used another name and …”
“I’m not good enough to make it really worth while,” Tony said thoughtfully, seeming to be talking for himself rather than for her. “And, after that, it’s just a grind. A rather pointless, depressing grind.”
“Why don’t you do something else?” Lucy asked.
“You sound like my wife.” Tony smiled. “It must be a general female optimism—that if you don’t like what you’re doing all you have to do is close up shop and start something else the next day.”
“What happened to the medical school?” Lucy asked. “I heard you were doing very well, until you quit …”
“I dabbled among the corpses for two years,” Tony said. “I had a light touch with the dead and my professors thought highly of me …”
“I heard,” Lucy said. “I know a man from Columbia and he told me. Why did you stop?”
“Well, when the estate was settled it seemed foolish to be slaving fourteen hours a day with all that money in the bank, and suddenly the idea of travel seemed very attractive. Besides,” he said, “I discovered I wasn’t interested in healing anybody.”
“Tony …” Lucy said. Her voice sounded strained inside her head, and muffled.
“Yes?”
“Are you really like this, Tony? Or are you putting it on?”
Tony leaned back and watched two girls in black dresses crossing the street diagonally in front of them. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m waiting for someone to tell me.”
“Tony,” Lucy said, “do you want me to get up from here and leave you alone?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He took off his glasses slowly and put them on the table with great care. Then he looked at her soberly, his face exposed, not defending himself, the deep, familiar eyes sad, considering. “No,” he said finally, and he reached out and touched her hand gently. “I couldn’t bear it.”
“Will you do something for me?”
“What?” Now his voice was guarded again.
“Will you come with me to Normandy today? I want to visit the town where your father was killed, and the cemetery in which he’s buried. I have a letter from a man who was with him when it happened and I know the name of the town … It’s Ozières.”
“Ozières,” Tony said, putting his glasses on again, restoring the barrier, as though he was already regretting the moment of softness. “I’ve passed through there. I saw no plaques.” He laughed sourly. “What a place to get killed in!”
“Didn’t you know?”
Tony shook his head. “No. You sent me a telegram that he’d been killed. That’s all.”
“Did you ever hear how it happened?”
“No.”
“He heard there were some Germans in the town who wanted to surrender,” Lucy said, “and he walked in under a white flag and five minutes later he was dead.”
“He was a little old for things like that,” Tony said.
“He wanted to get killed,” said Lucy.
“Read the papers,” Tony said. “The world is full of people who want to get killed.”
“Didn’t you get that feeling from him when you saw him during the war?”
“I didn’t see him much,” Tony said, staring past Lucy, obviously not wanting to talk about it. “And when I did see him the only feeling I got from him was embarrassment that I wasn’t in uniform.”
“Tony!” Lucy said. “That wasn’t true.”
“No?” He shrugged. “Perhaps not. Perhaps he was only embarrassed that I was alive.”
“Don’t talk like that!”
“Why not?” Tony said harshly. “I made up my mind a long time ago I wasn’t going to lie about the way we felt about each other, my father and I.”
“He loved you,” Lucy said.
“Under a white flag,” Tony said, as though he hadn’t heard her. “I suppose there’re worse ways for fathers to die. Tell me something …”
“Yes.”
“Did you really just see me by accident at that bar last night, or did you come to Paris knowing you were going to look for me?” He was watching her quizzically, his face ready to disbelieve her.
“I didn’t even know you were in Europe,” she said. “And when you went out and I asked the man if he knew where you lived, I think I was hoping he wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t be able to find out.”
Tony nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I can understand that.”
“I knew that, one day, we would have to meet somewhere,” Lucy said.
“I suppose so,” Tony said. “I suppose if you have a son you must eventually see him …”
“I would have arranged it differently,” Lucy said, remembering her fantasies, the deathbed, the kiss, “if I was arranging it.”
“Still,” said Tony, “this will have to do. So now you want to visit the grave … Well, that’s natural enough. I don’t say we should do it, but it’s natural enough. Tell me,” he said conversationally, “did you notice how vulgar he became toward the end?”
“No,” Lucy said.
“Of the dead only good.” Tony smiled harshly. “Of course. Loud and empty, full of officers’ club jokes and patriotic editorials and speculation about chorus girls. He was always asking me if I had enough money to have a good time. He winked when he said it. I always told him I could use an extra hundred.”
“He was a generous man,” Lucy said.
“Maybe that was what was wrong with him.” Tony looked up at the sky. It was clear and blue, burning out whitely toward the south. “It’s a good day for a trip to the country. I have a date for lunch, but I guess I can explain about dead fathers and returned mothers and things like that. I’ll explain I have to travel to a battlefield, under a white flag.”
“Don’t,” Lucy said thickly, standing up. “Don’t come with me if you feel like that.”
“Tell me,” Tony said, without moving, still staring up at the hot sky, “why do you want to do this?”
Lucy held onto the table to steady herself. She felt exhausted. She looked down at the tight, back-thrown face of her son, with the dark glasses casting a sharp, smoky shadow on the taut skin of his cheekbones.
“Because we destroyed him,” she said dully. “You and I. Because we must not forget him.”
Then she saw that Tony was crying. She watched, unbelievingly, clutching her gloves, as the tears rolled down from under his glasses. He bent forward in a sudden movement, covering his face.
He’s crying, she thought. There’s hope. He’s crying.