Lucy sat down on the couch, putting the milk and crackers on the coffee table in front of her. From where she was sitting she saw Oliver in profile, and the lines of his face were unaccustomedly sharp and aquiline, stripped down by fatigue.
“You should have let me know you were coming,” she said, sipping at her milk.
“I didn’t expect to come,” Oliver said. “I only had the one night in New York and I decided to spend it with Tony.” His voice was low and a little hoarse, as if he had been shouting orders outdoors, in bad weather.
“How is he?” Lucy asked, because she felt Oliver expected her to ask.
“No good,” Oliver said. “No damn good at all.”
She didn’t reply, because there was nothing to say. She sat tensely on the edge of the couch, watching his profile, worn, coinlike, memorial, against the lamplight, sensing the double reproof, of himself and of her, in his judgment on their son.
He twisted his head slowly and peered at her, regarding her with a tipsy, scholarly gravity. “That’s a pretty dress,” he said surprisingly. “Have I seen it before?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you choose it yourself?”
“Yes.”
He nodded approvingly. “You were always a marvelous-looking woman,” he said “but you wore the wrong clothes. You underplayed yourself. Now you’ve learned how to dress. I like that. It makes no difference, but I like it.”
He turned his head again and leaned back against the chair and didn’t speak for more than a minute. His breathing was steady and Lucy wondered if he was falling asleep.
“We called you from New York, Tony and I,” he said suddenly, out of his immobility. “He was willing to talk to you. He’d have come out here with me, I think, if you’d have been home.”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice.
“This one night,” Oliver said. “Why couldn’t you have been home this one night?” He stood up and faced her, a bulky, almost shapeless figure in the creased trenchcoat, with the belt dangling open. “Where were you?” he asked, his voice flat and unaccented.
Finally, Lucy thought, making herself look up candidly at him. “I was out,” she said. “I had an appointment.”
“You had an appointment.” He nodded, drunkenly agreeable. “An appointment to do what?”
“Now, Oliver, be reasonable,” Lucy said. “If I had known you were going to call, I certainly would have stayed home. It was just bad luck …”
“Just bad luck,” he said, plunging his hands in his pockets, lowering his head, his chin resting on his chest. “I’m tired of the bad luck. When does the good luck begin? I asked you a question—an appointment to do what?”
“I went out to dinner,” Lucy said calmly. “With a soldier, a young lieutenant I met at the hospital. A pilot.”
“Dinner with a pilot,” Oliver said. “You ate slowly. It was past three o’clock when he left you at the door. What else did you do?”
“Now, Oliver …” Lucy began. She stood up.
“What else did you do?” Oliver repeated in the same flat, unemotional voice. “Did you let him make love to you?”
Lucy sighed. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“He made love to me. Yes.”
Oliver nodded, still agreeable. “Was it the first time?”
Lucy hesitated, tempted to lie. Then she rejected the idea. “No,” she said.
“Do you love him?”
“No.”
“But you enjoy going to bed with him?”
“Actually, no.”
“Actually, no,” Oliver said gravely. “Then why did you do it?”
Lucy shrugged. “He was hurt when he was in Africa. Badly hurt. And he’s terribly frightened because he’s going out again, to the Pacific …”
“Oh, I see,” Oliver said reasonably. “It’s a form of patriotism.”
“Don’t make fun of me, Oliver,” Lucy said. “I pitied him. That’s understandable, isn’t it? He’s young and frightened and damaged. It seemed to mean a great deal to him …”
“Of course, I understand,” Oliver said, speaking gently. “Of course, in a hospital these days, there are hundreds of boys who are young and frightened and damaged. I, of course, am not young and I’m not frightened. But I guess you could say I’m damaged. Do you want to go to bed with me?”
“Oliver …” Lucy made a move toward the door. “You’re in no condition to talk right now. I’m going to sleep. If you insist on plowing through all this, I’ll answer any questions you want in the morning.”
Oliver made a gesture with his hand, stopping her. “I won’t be here in the morning. And I’m in marvelous condition for a talk like this right now. Drunk, insomniac and on the way out. When a man goes to war, there’s certain things he likes to leave in order behind him. His will, his memory, the exact status of his wife. Tell me,” he said conversationally, “there’ve been others, haven’t there?”
Lucy sighed. “A long time ago,” she said, “I told you I wasn’t going to lie to you any more, Oliver.”
“That’s exactly why I’m asking,” he said. “I want the true bill to take away with me.”
“Yes, there have been others,” Lucy said. “So?”
“When you stayed in the city overnight after the theatre,” Oliver said, “it wasn’t only because you didn’t want to come home alone so late on the train?”
“Yes.”
“Have you loved any of them?” Oliver peered at her closely now and took a step nearer her.
“No.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I regret to say it, but I haven’t,” Lucy said.
“Why not?”
“Maybe because I’m incapable of loving,” Lucy said. “Maybe because I love you. I don’t know.”
“Then why do you do it?” Oliver asked, standing in front of her, barring the way to the door. “Why the hell do you do it?”
“Maybe because it makes me feel important and ever since I was a girl I felt unimportant. Maybe because I feel empty. Maybe because for a few minutes each time it seems as though it’s going to mean something, as though there’s a puzzle I’m finally going to find the answer to. Maybe because I’m disappointed in myself and in you and in Tony. Maybe because I’m worthless or my mother left me alone one night when I was two years old.” She shrugged. “Maybe because it just happens to be the style these days. I don’t know. Now I’m going to sleep.” She took another step toward the door.
“One more question,” Oliver said, his voice low, hollow with fatigue. “Are you going to keep on?”
“I suppose so,” Lucy said wearily. “There must be an answer to the puzzle somewhere.”
They stood facing each other, Lucy rigid and defiant, Oliver stooped a little, thoughtful and questioning and rumpled in his dangling, stained coat. “Tell me, Lucy,” he said, and his voice was kindly, almost elegiac, with a tone of tender farewell in it, “are you happy?”
“No,” she said.
He nodded. “That’s the unforgivable thing,” he said, “not to be happy.”
He moved close to her, his hands hanging at his sides, staring deeply into her face, searching.
“You’re a clumsy, frivolous woman,” he said quietly.
Then he hit her. He hit her hard, with his closed fist, as though he were hitting a man.
She fell back a little, against the wall. She didn’t cry out and she made no move to defend herself. She stood there, straight, her back supported by the wall, looking steadily into his eyes. He sighed and took another step nearer her.
Then he hit her again, heavily, punishing her, punishing himself.
She felt the blood come to her lips and the lights of the lamps began to dance redly before her eyes, but she still didn’t try to defend herself. She stood with her chin up, watching him impersonally, with the blood dripping from her mouth, waiting. He had never struck her before, but it didn’t seem strange or unjust that he was doing it now. And even as he rained blows on her, heavily, soberly, with the ceremonial inevitability of a sentence being carried out, she kept staring into his eyes, forgivingly, understandingly.