“Mother … Dad …” It was Tony calling from the living room. “I’m all dressed. Are you ready yet?”
“In a minute, Tony,” Oliver called, trying to pull away. “We’ll be right out.”
“Oh, Oliver,” Lucy murmured, still holding onto him. “It’s so terrible.”
“What’s terrible?” Oliver asked, puzzled.
“I depend on you so much.”
“Daddy …” It was Tony again, calling politely from the other side of the door.
“Yes, Tony?”
“I’ll go up to the hotel and wait for you. I want to ride to the gate with you.”
“Okay, Tony,” Oliver said. “Tell Dr. Patterson I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Righteo,” Tony said.
Oliver winced. “Where did he pick that up?” he whispered.
Lucy shrugged. There was a little smudge of lipstick from her finger on the shoulder of Oliver’s jacket and she guiltily decided to say nothing about it. They heard Tony going out of the house and his footsteps receding on the gravel outside the window.
“Well …” Oliver looked once more around the room. “That just about does it.” He picked up the two bags. “Open the door please, Lucy,” he said.
Lucy opened the door and they went out through the living room onto the porch. The living room was filled with flowers, to take the curse off the shabby rented furniture, and they mingled their fragrance with the constant fresh odor of the lake.
On the porch, Lucy stopped. “I’d love a drink,” she said. She didn’t really want one, but it would delay Oliver’s departure for another ten minutes. She knew that Oliver understood this and that he usually was annoyed, or at best impatiently amused, at what he considered her rattled postponements of farewells, but she couldn’t bear to face up to the moment when the sound of the car would diminish down the driveway and she would be left alone.
“All right,” Oliver said, after a tiny hesitation, putting down his bags. He, himself, made efficient departures, said good-bye once, meaning it, and promptly left. He stood staring out at the lake while Lucy went over to the table against the wall and poured some whisky from the bottle there and some ice water into two glasses.
A hawk wheeled up from the lakeside trees and circled slowly, its wings unmoving, above the water, and from the camp on the other shore, came the faint call of the bugle again, the soldiers’ signals with their echo of gunfire and defeat and victory, calling the children to swimming period or a ball game. The hawk slipped calmly across the wind, waiting for the small, fatal events of the world below him, the movement of grass, the lift of a branch, to disclose the presence of his supper.
“Oliver,” Lucy was saying, coming up to him with the two glasses in her hands.
“Yes?”
“How much are you paying that boy? The Bunner boy?”
Oliver shook his head, dissolving the confused images raised in his mind by the bird and the bugle and the imminence of departure. “Thirty dollars a week,” he said, taking one of the glasses.
“Isn’t that a lot?”
“Yes.”
“Can we afford it?” Lucy asked.
“No,” Oliver said, irritated by her question. Lucy ordinarily was haphazard about money and in his eyes was given to outlandish bursts of extravagance, not from greed or a love of luxury, but because of an infirm conception of the value and difficulty of money. But when she was opposed to something he wished to do, as he knew she was opposed to the hiring of Bunner, she showed an argumentative housewifely parsimoniousness.
“Do you really think we need him?” Lucy asked, standing at his side, watching the slow circling of the hawk over the water.
“Yes,” Oliver said. He lifted his glass ceremoniously. “To the small boy with the telescope.”
Lucy lifted her glass, almost absently, and took a small sip. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do we need him?”
Oliver touched her arm gently. “To give you some time to enjoy yourself.”
“I love being with Tony.”
“I know,” Oliver said. “But I think, for these few weeks, to have a bright, lively young man around him, somebody who can be a little rough with him …”
“You think I’m making him too soft,” Lucy said.
“It’s not that. It’s just that …” Oliver tried to find the most moderate and innocent reasons for his argument. “Well, only children, especially ones who’ve had a serious illness and who’ve had to be around their mothers a lot … When they grow up you’re liable to find them in the ballet.”
Lucy laughed. “Aren’t you silly?”
“You know what I mean,” Oliver said, annoyed at himself because he felt he was sounding stuffy. “Don’t think it isn’t a problem. Read any work on psychoanalysis.”
“I don’t have to read anything,” Lucy said, “to tell me how to bring up my son.”
“Just common sense,” Oliver began.
“I suppose you want to say I’m doing everything wrong,” Lucy said bitterly. “Say it and …”
“Now, Lucy,” Oliver said soothingly, “I don’t want to say anything of the kind. It’s just that maybe I see a different set of problems than you do, that I see things that I want to prepare Tony for that you don’t recognize.”
“Like what?” Lucy asked stubbornly.
“We live in chaotic times, Lucy,” Oliver said, feeling the words ringing hollow and grandiose, but not knowing how else to phrase what he wanted to say. “Changeable, dangerous times. You’ve got to be a giant to face them.”
“And you want to make a giant out of poor little Tony.” Lucy’s voice was sardonic.
“Yes,” Oliver said defensively. “And don’t call him poor little Tony. He’s only seven or eight years away from being a man.”
“A man is one thing,” Lucy said. “A giant is another.”
“Not any more,” Oliver said. “You’ve got to be a giant first these days. Then, after that, maybe you can manage to be a man.”
“Poor little Tony,” Lucy said. “And a snippy little college junior can make a giant out of a son, but a mother can’t.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Oliver. He felt himself getting angry and controlled himself consciously, because he didn’t want to leave on the bitter end of an argument. He made himself speak calmly. “First of all, Bunner isn’t a snippy little college boy. He’s intelligent and poised and humorous …”
“And I, of course,” Lucy said, “am dull and shy and sad.” She walked away from him, toward the house.
“Now, Lucy.” Oliver followed her. “I didn’t say that, either.”
Lucy stopped and turned and faced him, angrily. “You don’t have to,” she said. “For months, I manage to forget it. Then you say something …or I see another woman my age who has managed to escape …”
“For God’s sake, Lucy,” Oliver said, his irritation overcoming his resolution to avoid a quarrel, “don’t go into that song and dance.”
“Please, Oliver.” She lapsed suddenly into pleading. “Leave Tony alone with me this summer. It’s only for six more weeks. I’ve given in on the school—you can give in on this. He’ll be away so long, surrounded by all those little ruffians … I can’t bear to let him out of my sight yet. After what we’ve gone through with him. Even now, even when I know all he’s doing is walking up to the hotel and riding to the gate with you—it’s all I can do to keep myself from running down to make sure he’s all right.”
“That’s exactly what I was talking about, Lucy,” Oliver said.
Lucy stared at him, her eyes suddenly cold. She put the drink down on the grass with a kind of awkward curtsey Then she stood up and made a mocking little inclination of her head. “I bend the neck,” she said, “because you’re always right. As usual.”
With a sharp movement of his hand, Oliver took her chin and jerked her head up. Lucy didn’t try to pull away. She stood there, smiling crookedly, staring at him. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Lucy,” Oliver said. “I mean it.”