“Okay,” he said. She passed three cars in a row, causing temporary pandemonium in the westbound lanes.
“I meant everything I said to you today,” she said. “I’m not Moonie Firestone or Posy Tuttle. My idea of paradise isn’t a rich husband and a lodge at Eagle Lake and a trip to Europe every other year. We really did see the Tuaregs and the lascars, and I saw places I’d never seen before in my life, and I really found out some things, and I met two amazing women who haven’t seen you in seven years and still think you’re wonderful.” She floored the Mercedes to pass a carriage on the right. “Every time Hattie Bascombe said ‘Mr. Rembrandt’ I wanted to hug her.”
She cut in front of the carriage, and its driver shouted a string of four-letter words. Sarah flipped her hand up in a mocking wave and tore off through the traffic again.
“Oh, well,” she said when they skirted Weasel Hollow, and when they passed the St. Alwyn Hotel on Calle Drosselmayer, “She is really beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Every now and then I thought she looked sort of like her stuffed hawk,” Tom said.
“Her stuffed hawk?” Sarah turned to him with her mouth open and an expression in her eyes that convicted him of a profoundly irritating idiocy.
“Inside that big cage.”
She snapped her head forward. “I don’t mean Hattie. I mean that Nancy Vetiver is really beautiful. She is, isn’t she?”
“Well, maybe. I was sort of surprised by her. She turned out to be another kind of person than I thought she was. My mother used to say she was hard, and she certainly isn’t, but I can see what she meant. Nancy’s tough.”
“And she’s beautiful besides.”
“I think you’re beautiful,” Tom said. “You should have seen yourself in that cape.”
“I’m pretty,” Sarah said. “I own a mirror, I know that much. People have been telling me I was pretty all my life. I was just lucky enough to be born with good hair and good teeth and visible cheekbones. If you want to know the truth, my mouth is too big and my eyes are too far apart. I look at my face and I see my baby pictures. I see a perfect Brooks-Lowood girl. I hate prettiness. It means you’re supposed to spend half your time thinking about how you look, and most other people think you’re a sort of toy who will do whatever they want. I bet Nancy Vetiver hardly ever looks in the mirror, I bet she cut her hair short because she could wash it in the shower and dry it with a towel, I bet it’s a big deal for her to buy a new lipstick—and she’s beautiful. Every good thing in her, every feeling she ever had, is in her face. When I was in that little room, I even envied her those little lines on her face—you can tell she doesn’t let other people make her do things. In fact the whole idea of being like me would strike her as ridiculous!”
“I think you ought to marry her,” Tom said. “We could all live together in Maxwell’s Heaven, Nancy and you and me. And Bill.”
She punched him in the shoulder, hard. “You forgot Bingo.”
“Actually, Bingo and Percy seemed made for each other.”
She smiled at last.
“What’s all that stuff about being a toy, and doing what other people want?”
“Oh, never mind,” she said. “I got carried away.”
“I don’t think your eyes are too far apart. Posy Tuttle’s eyes are actually on opposite sides of her head, and she sees different things out of each of them, like a lizard.”
Sarah had turned from Calle Berlinstrasse into Edgewater Trail, and coming toward them from the opposite direction, smiling and raising his homburg from the seat of his trap, was Dr. Bonaventure Milton. “Sarah! Tom!” he called out. “A word, please!”
She pulled up alongside the pony trap, and the doctor looked earnestly down at them, removed his homburg, and wiped his sweaty head with a handkerchief. “I have an apology for you, Sarah. I saw your little dog running loose around the hospital earlier this afternoon, and took him up here with me—thought I’d drop him off at your place when I was through with my calls. The little fellow got away from me somehow, I’m sorry to say, but I’m sure he’ll come back as soon as he gets hungry.”
“No problem,” she said. “In fact, Bingo’s been with us all afternoon.”
Hearing his name, Bingo popped his head out of the well. He barked at the doctor, whose horse twitched sideways in his traces.
“Well,” said the doctor. “Well, well, well. Hah! Seems I was in error. Hah!”
“But you’re so sweet to worry about him, Dr. Milton. You’re the nicest doctor on the whole island.”
“And you’re looking remarkably pretty today, my dear,” the doctor said, smiling and bowing in a ghastly attempt at gallantry.
“You’re so complimentary, Doctor.”
“Not at all.” He raised his hat again, and shook his reins. His trap rolled away toward the hospital.
“I’m going home,” Sarah declared. “The Redwings are coming over in a little while, to discuss airplane etiquette or something, and I have to take a bath. I want to look just like my baby pictures.”
“You’re pretty quiet,” Victor Pasmore said. “Excuse me, did somebody say something? Did I say ‘you’re pretty quiet’ just now? Nobody said anything back, so maybe I was just dreaming.” They were eating a dinner Victor had prepared with many grumbles and complaints, and though Tom’s mother had not emerged from her bedroom since he had returned home, a plate of unidentifiable meat and overcooked vegetables had been set for her. Booming noises from the television mingled with the dim sound of music that drifted down the stairs.
“What the hell, you’re always quiet,” Victor said. “This is nothing new. I oughta be used to this act by now. You say something, and your kid plays with his food.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom said.
“Jesus Christ, a sign of life!” Victor shook his head sourly. “I must be dreaming. You think next your mother will come downstairs and eat this food? Or will she just stay up there listening to Blue Rose over and over?”
“Blue Rose?”
“Yeah, you mean you never heard of it? Your old lady plays the damn thing over and over, I don’t think she hears it anymore, she just—”
“Blue Rose is the name of a record?”
“ ‘Blue Rose is the name of a record?’ ” His father’s voice was a mincing drawl. “Yeah, it’s the name of a record. Glenroy Breakstone’s famous all-ballad record, which your mother would rather listen to than come down here and eat the dinner I made. Which is par for the course, I suppose, like you sitting there looking goofy when I ask you what you did all day.”
“I went for a ride with Sarah Spence.”
“Big man, aren’t you?”
Tom looked across the table at his father. A smear of grease shone on his chin. Sweat stains darkened the armpits of the shirt he had worn to the office. Broken veins and black pores covered his nose. Dark, wet-looking hair stuck to his forehead. His father was hunched over his plate, holding on to a glass of bourbon and water with both hands. His black eyes glittered. Hostility seemed to come from him in an icy stream. He was much drunker than Tom had realized.
“What did you do all day?” he asked.
Tom saw his father considering saying something he thought astounding—he really wanted to say this astounding thing, alcohol and anger pushed it up into his throat, and he lifted the glass and swallowed whiskey to keep it down. He grinned like an evil dwarf. His eyes had absolutely no depth at all, and the pupils were invisible—light bounced right off them.