“This is so far-out.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She suddenly grinned at him. “A different woman every night. I thought men your age were supposed to slow down.”
He drew a blank for a moment. Then it dawned on him.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No, no. You made an assumption and I let you hang onto it. Linda and I never had sex.”
“But—”
“I brought her here. Primarily to meet you, as a matter of fact. Then sex did seem a possibility, but she decided she wasn’t ready for it. So I drove her home. You assumed I’d been to bed with her and it seemed easier to let it go at that than to get into an awkward conversation. Though it could hardly have been as awkward as the one we’re in right now.”
“I know. It’s so weird how we keep learning how to relate to each other.”
“Yes, it is. I’m enjoying it, kitten.”
“So am I.”
The conversation shifted to easier areas when Mrs. Kleinschmidt made an appearance. Over breakfast they talked easily, with Mrs. Kleinschmidt ultimately joining the conversation and, inevitably, taking it over. Hugh was grateful, glad to let the old woman take up the burden of filling time with words.
Jeff.
The black boy.
Man, he supposed he meant. Only Caucasians could be referred to as boys. At what age, he wondered, did blacks bridle at being called boy?
The same afternoon he was in the living room reading a magazine. He looked up when the front door opened. She bounced into the room, asking if she was interrupting. He told her she wasn’t.
“Untrue,” she said, gaily. She dropped into his lap like a child and memories clutched at his heart. “Of course I’m interrupting. What I meant was do you mind awfully?”
“I do not mind a bit.”
“Good. What were you reading?”
“Article about blood banks. Commercial blood banks.”
“What’s there to say about commercial blood banks besides yecchhh?”
“That’s about what the article said. How drunks and junkies sell their blood and it spreads hepatitis and other unpleasant things.”
“And that’s what you were reading? I don’t think I feel at all guilty for interrupting. Actually I have an ulterior motive.”
“Oh?”
“See, it’s a beautiful day, I was thinking it would be fantastic to take a walk in the woods, but suppose there are bears there? I mean, I wouldn’t feel safe unless I had company.”
“I see.”
“And I’m sure you would never forgive yourself,” she said, “if I were eaten by a bear.”
“How well you know me. If you get up, then I could get up.”
“Deal.”
And in the special stillness of the woods, she said, “I was thinking about a habit I have. Of jumping to conclusions. The only way to avoid it is to come out and ask, isn’t it?”
“Ask what?”
“Well, you did have sex with Melanie, didn’t you?”
He started to laugh, then assured her that he did. A few steps farther she said, “I didn’t.”
“Oh?”
“With Jeff. What you didn’t do with Linda, I didn’t do with Jeff.” She turned from him, bent to pick up a dead branch. She straightened up and punctuated her speech with little slaps of the branch into the palm of her hand. “By the time we got upstairs I realized what I was doing. I mean I realized all along in a way but I didn’t see how rotten it was. I was doing a number.”
“We’ve both been feeling each other out a lot, kitten.”
“But this really sucked. It was like I was saying, ‘I’m testing you by bringing home a spade, and if you can handle this one, tomorrow I’ll bring home a kangaroo.’ And I was using Jeff. I wasn’t even using him as a person, I was using him as a spade. Which is a racist thing.”
“Well—”
“It is. I was trying to show that you were a racist, or that you weren’t or... fuck it, I don’t know what I was trying to prove, I honestly don’t. But I was into a racist thing myself in doing it.” She slapped the branch harder against her palm and it snapped. She stared at the piece still in her hand, then opened her hand and watched it fall.
She said, “I wonder if he knew what I was doing. He didn’t say anything but he must have picked up on it. Maybe he didn’t care. You know, anything to get laid. Do men really have that attitude?”
“Some of the time. Most of the time, maybe. More than women, certainly.”
“That’s kind of depressing, that he could see what I was doing and still want to ball me. But when I saw, I don’t know, I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know what it was exactly but I couldn’t. I knew I had to get out of it without being horrible. I told him — what was it I said? I told him I couldn’t do anything with you in the house, that it just made me clutch completely. He wanted me to go somewhere else but I wouldn’t.” She stared at him suddenly. “I wonder if I told him the truth without meaning to! Maybe I was uptight about that without knowing it.”
“It’s possible.”
“I just thought of that. What I thought after he left was that maybe I was a racist in another way, that once we were upstairs there I was all alone with this black guy and I couldn’t go through with balling him because he was black. I never made it with a black person before. It’s so hard to know why you do things and what’s good and what’s bad. Sometimes I—”
“Kitten.” His arm encircled her. “Just let it go. You don’t have to keep picking at scabs.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“I think so.”
“Maybe. Could we sit down for a minute? Because I’m getting tired.”
“Sure.”
They sat with their backs against the trunk of an oak. A breeze was blowing, and he watched the dancing pattern of sunlight filtered through the leaves overhead, bright green dots dancing on the dark green forest floor. She settled her head on his shoulder. He patted his pockets, searching for a pipe, but he hadn’t brought one. It would have been pleasant to smoke a pipe now while watching the sunlight pattern and enjoying her presence beside him.
“No bears,” she said.
“Hibernating.”
“This time of year?”
“I snuck into their dens in January and turned off their alarm clocks.”
“When will they get up?”
“As soon as they stop hibernating.”
“Daddy? Can I ask you something?”
“About bears?”
“No. Heavier than bears.”
“Bears are pretty heavy.”
“Daddy?”
“What is it, kitten?”
“I just, I don’t know — I say that all the time, don’t I? ‘I don’t know.’ I never realized I did that until the psychiatrist pointed it out. But I still say it.”
“When were you seeing a psychiatrist?”
“At school. I got... oh, things bothered me a lot. Or I thought they did. I saw him three times. No, four. He said I was all right. Daddy?”
“What?”
“Does it get easier?”
She was so vulnerable, so soft and open and vulnerable. He said, “Do you mean sex or love? Or both?”
“I mean the whole thing. You know. Life. When I was a kid I always thought when you grew up everything was perfect, and I’m eighteen years old, and I always thought eighteen was when you got to be grown up, and then, I don’t know.”
After a moment he said, “I was trying to remember what it was like when I was eighteen. It’s hard to see your own past with any real clarity. I was much less mature at your age than you are. I didn’t really get around to the kind of growth you’re going through until after the war. The war had something to do with it but not everything. Kids grow up much faster than they did. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad.”