“Oh …” Oliver was saying. “One more thing … Sex.”
Patterson waved his hand warningly. “Now, Oliver, now I think you’ve really gone too far.”
“Tony has no brothers or sisters,” Oliver explained, “and as I say—for the most natural reasons in the world, he’s been rather overprotected. And I’m afraid both his mother and myself have ducked the question up to now. If all goes well, he’ll be going to school this autumn and I’d rather he heard about sex from a bright young man who is studying to be a diplomat anyway than from the thirteen-year-old lechers of a fashionable private school.”
Bunner pulled gravely at his nose. “Where would you like me to begin?”
“Where did you begin?” Oliver asked.
“I’m afraid I’d have to begin later than that,” Bunner said. “Remember, I told you I have four older sisters.”
“Use your discretion,” Oliver said. “After six weeks I’d like him to have a calm … uh … understanding of the theory, without a violent desire to plunge into the … uh … practice—immediately.”
“I’ll do my best to be explicit,” the boy said, “without being lascivious. Everything in grave scientific language. No word under three syllables. And play down the more … uh … pleasurable aspects as much as possible?”
“Exactly,” Oliver said. He looked out over the lake. The boat was nearly into the shore by now and Tony was standing in the stern waving at him, over his mother’s shoulder, the sun reflecting off his smoked glasses. Oliver waved back. Still staring at his wife and his son, he said to Bunner, “I suppose I sound a little like a crank on the subject of the boy but I hate the way most children are being brought up these days. Either they’re given too much freedom and they grow up into undisciplined animals—or they’re clamped down and they become secretly vicious and vindictive and turn on their parents as soon as they can find some place else to get their meals. The main thing is—I don’t want him to grow up frightened …”
“How about you, Oliver?” Patterson asked curiously. “Aren’t you frightened?”
“Terribly,” Oliver said. “Hi, Tony,” he called and walked down to the water’s edge to help beach the boat.
Patterson stood up and he and Bunner watched Lucy drive the boat up onto the shingle with two last strong sweeps of the oars. Oliver held the bow steady as Lucy gathered a sweater and a book and stepped out. Tony balanced himself, then jumped off, disdaining help, into a few inches of water.
“The Holy Family,” Patterson murmured.
“What’s that, Sir?” Bunner asked, surprised, not sure that he’d heard what the doctor had said.
“Nothing,” said Patterson. “He certainly knows what he wants, doesn’t he?”
Bunner grinned. “He certainly does.”
“Do you think it’s possible for a father to get what he wants in a son?” Patterson asked.
Bunner glanced at the doctor, looking for a trap. “I haven’t thought about it,” he said carefully.
“Has your father got what he wanted from his son?”
Bunner almost smiled. “No.”
Patterson nodded.
They watched Oliver approach, flanked by Lucy on one side and Tony, carrying his fishing rod, on the other. Lucy was putting on a loose white sweater over her bathing suit. There was a slight gleam of perspiration on her upper lip and forehead, from the long row, and the wooden clogs on her bare feet fell noiselessly on the short grass. The group passed in and out of the sunlight between the trees and Lucy’s long, naked thighs shone, briefly and goldenly, when she emerged from the shadow of the trees. She walked very straight, keeping her hips in a strict line, as though trying to minimize her womanliness. At one point she stopped and put her hand against her husband’s shoulder and lifted her foot to dislodge a pebble from her clog and the group was posed there, immobile for one midsummer moment in slanting leafy sunlight.
Tony was talking as the group approached Patterson and Bunner. “This lake is all fished out,” he was saying. His voice was a clear, high childish alto, and although he was tall for his age, he seemed frail and undeveloped to Bunner, with a head too big for his body. “It’s too close to civilization. We ought to go to the North Woods. Except for the mosquitoes and the moose. You have to be careful of the moose. And you have to carry the canoe in on your head, Bert says. There’re so many fish, Bert says, they splinter the paddles.”
“Tony,” Oliver said gravely, “do you know what a grain of salt is?”
“Sure,” the boy said.
“That’s what you need for Bert.”
“Do you mean he’s a liar?” Tony asked.
“Not exactly,” said Oliver. “Just that he should be taken salted, like peanuts.”
“I’ve got to tell him that,” Tony said. “Like peanuts.”
They stopped in front of Patterson and Bunner. “Mr. Bunner,” Oliver said, “my wife. And Tony.”
“How do you do?” Lucy said. She nodded briefly and buttoned her sweater up to the neck.
Tony went over to Bunner and politely shook hands.
“Hello, Tony,” Bunner said.
“Hello,” said Tony. “Boy, your hand is calloused.”
“I’ve been playing tennis.”
“I bet in four weeks I can beat you,” Tony said. “Maybe five weeks.”
“Tony …” Lucy said warningly.
“Is that boasting?” Tony turned toward his mother.
“Yes,” she said.
Tony shrugged and turned back to Bunner. “I’m not allowed to boast,” he said. “I have a hot forehand, but my backhand has flaws. I don’t mind telling you,” he said candidly, “because you’d find it out anyway, in the first game. I once saw Ellsworth Vines play.”
“What did you think of him?” Bunner asked.
Tony made a face. “Overrated,” he said carelessly. “Just because he comes from California and he can play every day. You’ve been swimming.”
“Yes, I have,” Bunner said, puzzled and amused. “How do you know?”
“Easy. I can smell the lake on you.”
“That’s his one parlor trick,” Oliver said, coming over and ruffling the boy’s hair. “He had his eyes bandaged when he was sick and he developed the nose of a bloodhound.”
“I can swim, too. Like a streak,” Tony said.
“Tony …” It was Lucy again, with the tone of warning.
Tony smiled, caught out. “But only for ten strokes. Then I go under. I don’t know how to breathe.”
“We’ll work on that,” Bunner said. “You can’t go through life not knowing how to breathe.”
“I have to put my mind to it,” Tony said.
“Jeff’ll teach you, Tony,” Oliver said. “He’s going to stay with you until the end of the summer.”
Lucy glanced sharply at her husband, then dropped her eyes. Tony, too, stared at Oliver, carefully, with guarded suspicion, remembering nurses, medicines, regimes, pain, captivity. “Oh,” he said. “Is he going to take care of me?”
“Not exactly,” Oliver said. “Just help you catch up on a couple of things.”
Tony examined Oliver for a long moment, trying to discover just how candid his father was being. Then he turned and silently inspected Bunner, as though now that their connection had been announced it was necessary to start the process of judgment immediately.
“Jeff,” Tony said finally, “how are you as a fisherman?”
“When the fish see me coming,” Bunner said, “they roar with laughter.”
Patterson looked at his watch. “I think we’d better be going, Oliver. I have to pay my bill and throw on some clothes and I’m ready.”