by Susan Isaacs
Although pained by her foot and, no doubt, by the knowledge that entrée to an Indian Hill estate had come through Jane, Dorothy was working hard, trying to memorize the Grays’ life without seeming too obvious. She observed everything closely: the way Clarissa had held Nicholas’s face between her hands before kissing him lightly on each cheek; the placement in terra-cotta pots of the bushes and small flowering trees that dotted the terrace; how the liquor and champagne glasses were not from one set. She noticed Philip Gray’s posture was one she’d discouraged Rhodes from assuming; he sat with his long legs stretched out, his feet crossed at the ankles. Perhaps he had to sit that way. He walked with a bad limp; his thigh had been shattered by German bullets during World War II, in the battle at Anzio.
She saw that Rhodes, seated across from Mr. Gray, was at least not lounging as if he were a man of position. However, Rhodes was behaving too expansively for Dorothy’s comfort. He was talking too freely—from his lopsided grin, perhaps talking in the snide, quipping manner he fell into whenever he was around Jane, although Dorothy couldn’t hear what he was saying. But he was all too casual, sitting back in his chair with his legs spread apart and his hands clasped behind his head, as if Mr. Gray were a Country Day senior and not one of the biggest investors in the United States—bigger, some said, than John Hart—a man so powerful he received phone calls from Vice-President Johnson. An article Dorothy had read in the Times-Star said he’d inherited a controlling interest in a copper mining company, but it implied that that was the least of Philip Gray’s holdings. Nervous, Dorothy chewed her bottom lip. A great deal was riding on this evening; her son was precisely where she wanted him to be. His whole future could hinge on how he behaved with such a powerful man.
Philip Gray threw back his head and laughed at Rhodes’s remark. Then he took another sip of his gin and tonic. His daughter, Amanda, perched on the arm of his chair, laughed too, but she was painfully self-conscious and laughed with her head lowered and her lips together, as if she had ugly teeth. She did not. Amanda, who was conceived just before Philip Gray went off to war, had inherited her father’s face and gray eyes. She had sleek dark-brown hair, which she wore in a pageboy, and a graceful figure. She was not beautiful but pretty enough, the sort of girl who’d be picked as runner-up for homecoming queen.
Amanda wore a long red skirt and a white blouse with huge belled sleeves and a deep scoop neck far too dramatic for her; it looked like an outfit her mother had chosen. Amanda did not speak. Instead, she listened to the conversation between her father and Rhodes, making her presence known by her laugh or a nervous staccato cough. She seemed so hypnotized by Rhodes she could do no more. She watched him speak. She watched him listen to her father, drink his Coke, twirl a thin pretzel stick between his fingers. Rhodes did not seem to notice her at all. All his attention was focused on his host.
If he hadn’t been bald, Philip Gray, at forty-three, would have looked like an actor sent in from central casting to play a financier. What hair he had on the sides and back of his head was gray and cropped short. His eyebrows, black and straight, gave him a serious appearance but were not heavy enough to make him seem glowering. His features were small and perfectly symmetrical, but what gave his face distinction was his skin: absolutely smooth, deeply tanned like his wife’s and daughter’s, but pulled so taut over his face his bones seemed to be trying to slice through it.
He was tall and slim; his body appeared as tight as his face. Though he wore a blue blazer, white shirt, and rep tie just as Nicholas did, his clothes were far more elegant. His blazer was fitted rather than boxy, and instead of Nicholas’s khaki slacks, he wore white flannels. His white Italian loafers were worn without socks. He was fashionable enough to look well-matched with Clarissa, although he lacked her theatricality and self-conscious chic. He was properly dressed for drinks on the Riviera with French socialites or Swiss bankers, yet he looked right for Cincinnati. In fact, Philip Gray appeared supremely content sitting on his terrace carefully nursing a single gin and tonic, giving his complete attention to an eighteen-year-old boy whose father he clearly considered a zero and whose mother was beneath consideration.
At dinner too, Rhodes was the center of attention, as if the evening were in his honor, a small gathering to celebrate his debut. He had never drunk wine before, but Mr. Gray kept refilling everyone’s glass, so he had four glasses. On the last, Rhodes got up, swayed a little, braced himself by grabbing the back of his chair with one hand, and offered a toast: “To Nicholas and Jane, who are going to be like Lunt and Fontanne.” He lowered his glass but did not see his mother’s signal to sit down. Dorothy bowed her head in humiliation, but raised it quickly when she heard Clarissa Gray’s soft applause and throaty “He’s adorable, Philip.” Amanda, seated beside Rhodes, was staring up at him with an intensity compounded of veneration and desire. Dorothy sighed with pleasure.
After dinner was obviously anticlimactic for her, because Clarissa brought several boxes of family photographs into the living room and she, Amanda, Nicholas, and Jane sat on the rug, passing them back and forth. Jane’s shoulder pressing against Nicholas’s, as if she were already one of them. After a few minutes, Philip Gray, obviously bored with pictures of several generations of Tuttles, offered to teach Rhodes billiards.
Dorothy and Richard sat stiffly and quietly on a gold velvet couch, Richard eating all the chocolate mints from a silver dish that sat on the lacquered Chinese table in front of them. Dorothy fingered the throw pillows of brocaded French silk, wondering what the fabric was called, and peered through the archway into the hall where Rhodes and Mr. Gray had walked on their way to the billiard room.
It was only when Clarissa said, “Down the hall, turn right, the first door on the right,” that Dorothy seemed to realize she’d lost track of time and that the evening had ended. As she stood and hurried after Jane and Nicholas as they went to fetch Rhodes, she barely missed tripping over Amanda. Her apology sounded shrill. She got to the billiard room just as Nicholas was opening the door, so she saw precisely what he and Jane saw.
The light was low. A cue stick lay on the green plaid carpet beside Rhodes’s madras jacket. Farther into the room, an ashtray had toppled onto the floor and cigarette butts were scattered around it. Two empty brandy snifters rested on the edge of the billiard table. The perfume of cognac and cigarette smoke permeated the room, although the doors at the far end of the room were open.
Rhodes and Philip Gray stood face to face in near darkness on the terrace beyond the doors. Mr. Gray appeared to be speaking to Rhodes, but they were so close to each other it was hard to say from whom the murmur rose. Their bodies were close too, just touching; they could have been dancing. Mr. Gray’s hand reached up to Rhodes’s cheek.
“Hello there!” Dorothy called.
Rhodes stiffened. Philip Gray dropped his hand, stepped back from Rhodes, and nodded to them. Then he came through the doors. He walked slowly, seemingly unaware of his limp. With each step, he dragged his left leg up to meet the right. “Hello,” he said. “Rhodes poked himself in the eye with a cue stick. I was just checking it.” Dorothy nodded. “He’s fine now.”
“Good,” Dorothy said. “Good. I hope you’ve been having a nice time.”
“Very nice,” Mr. Gray said. If not for his bad limp, he might have been the hero in an urbane drama. His clothes, his bearing, his enunciation were flawless, but in the low light of the billiard room, any expression on his tanned, tight face was unreadable.
Jane looked beyond him, to her brother. Rhodes stood on the terrace just as Philip Gray had left him, his face still slightly upturned.
“Rhodes,” Mr. Gray called. “Come inside.” Rhodes began to walk inside, as if all he had been waiting for was the command, and came up beside the financier. “How is your eye?” Mr. Gray asked. “Better now? Is it better, Rhodes?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Good.”
Jane stared at her brother. Both his eyes were huge, clear, wide open, and
fixed on Philip Gray’s face. His tie hung unknotted, the top three buttons of his shirt open. His chest and neck glistened with sweat. She glanced back to Philip Gray, but his face remained masklike, and she turned again to Rhodes. His face was so bright he looked illuminated from within, more dazzling than ever before. Jane inhaled so suddenly it was almost a gasp. Nicholas reached for her hand. He squeezed it so hard it became a clear signal to keep silent.
“Thank you for the lovely evening, Mr. Gray,” her stepmother said.
“You’re welcome.” Philip Gray knelt down, picked up Rhodes’s jacket, and handed it to him. “Here, Rhodes.”
“What do you say to Mr. Gray, Rhodes?” Dorothy demanded.
“Thank you for the lovely evening, Mr. Gray,” Rhodes said, his eyes even wider than before.
Jane watched Nicholas sprint down the stairs. He was wearing tennis whites and looked out of place, as if he’d made the wrong turn; he should have found himself on a grassy, sunlight-dappled court at Forest Hills, not on a dark, shabby carpet in a midwestern living room. “Hi,” he said. He stood beside her chair and bent and kissed the top of her head. Next to him was a lamp she’d never really noticed, although it had probably been in the house all her life. But now she saw how ugly it was, with its base—a black cylinder with odd bits of colored glass embedded in it—and yellowed, fringed shade. She wanted to apologize. Instead, Nicholas did. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t butt in. But you could be wrong.”
“Nick, you heard him. He said Mr. Gray wants to give him a summer job and he’s taking him out to dinner to discuss it. Sending his chauffeur to pick him up.”
“Maybe that’s what it is.”
“Rhodes is eighteen years old. Do you think a big tycoon like Philip Gray wines and dines a teenager before he offers him a summer job?” Nicholas shrugged. “Nick, I saw the expression on my brother’s face. I know him better than I know anyone, and I’ve never seen him look like that, as if he suddenly came alive. And you saw them out on the patio.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it look right to you?”
“No,” Nicholas said.
“And now he’s on the phone with him again. How many phone calls does it take to arrange a business dinner? And the way he’s talking, with his hand covering the mouthpiece. Nick, he’s getting himself involved with something he doesn’t begin to understand.”
“Quiet. Here he comes.”
For the first few minutes on the way to the tennis courts, Rhodes was silent, although he responded to Nicholas’s questions about going to Lafayette College in the fall. But soon his natural exuberance, combined with what was obviously his desire to avoid being asked about Philip Gray, took hold and he began to distract them with his usual gusto.
Once out of his silence, Rhodes could neither be quiet nor sit still. He sprawled on the back seat of Nicholas’s car and whistled, while his feet tap-danced on the door. He insulted Jane with greater-than-usual enthusiasm. “You’ll be sorry you ever thought of tennis,” he said to Nicholas. “She’s a human slug.”
Jane could not rise to Rhodes’s baiting. Whenever she turned around, she could only look beyond his white pullover and clear eyes to the scene of the night before, when his shirt had clung to him, damp and crumpled, and his eyes were huge, as if he’d just beheld a miracle.
Rhodes sat straight, edged forward, and suddenly grabbed Jane in a stranglehold. He pulled her back until her ear was close enough to hear his whisper. “How could you let him see you in shorts before you’re married?” Jane tugged at his forearm. “Maybe he has a blanket in the trunk you can wrap around those thighs. Pretend you have a sudden chill. It’s your only hope.” She dug in her fingers and he let go with a whoop of laughter, sprawled back on the seat, then jerked himself up, this time to tell Nicholas about the time he was a little absentminded and wound up with three dates to his junior prom.
Nicholas pulled into a parking lot on the side of Rhodes’s school and he and Rhodes climbed out, bouncing on sneakered feet, whooshing their rackets back and forth as if to blow dust off the strings. Jane sat in the car until Rhodes came around, opened her door, and made a deep bow.
She walked behind them to the courts, squeezing the grip of the old racket Rhodes had given her. It was wrapped with black electrical tape that had dried, and the edges scratched and made a dusty powder on her palms. She sat on a patch of grass just beyond the clay. It was a warm day, but dry. The few puffs of clouds were so crisp against the bright sky they looked as though they had drifted in from New England. “Get up,” Nicholas urged. “We can play Canadian doubles. Me against you and Rhodes.”
She shook her head. “I’ll watch.”
“Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Rhodes said. He opened the can of balls and popped them to Nicholas’s side of the court. “You serve,” he called.
They played two sets, although from the first it was obvious that Nicholas was a stronger, smarter player. His serves smashed up from the ground so close to Rhodes that he reflexively leaped back, or they soared, catching him hunched down. Nicholas was far more aggressive. The muscles in his thighs contracted like thick springs. Jane turned as the ball hurtled straight toward Rhodes, who jumped aside. “You may be my future brother-in-law, but you’re definitely not worth dying for, Nick.” When they finished the sets—Nicholas won both—Rhodes’s forehead and upper lip were hardly more damp than Jane’s. Nicholas’s face was bright red. His hair lay against his scalp in wet strands.
Rhodes grabbed Jane’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “He’s our guest,” he said, “so I let him win.”
She held on to his hand. “Rhodes, I want to talk to you.”
“Leave me alone.” Rhodes pushed past her and started walking to the car.
“Rhodes,” she called and pulled away as Nicholas tried to hold her back. She ran up the incline that led to the parking lot. “Please listen to me. You know I don’t want to embarrass you and the last thing I want to do is hurt you, but you have to understand. What Mr. Gray may want from you isn’t—”
“He wants me to work for him. He thinks I’m very bright. We’re going to discuss it tonight. That’s all. Really.”
“Then why did he call you last night after we got home? It was him, and don’t tell me it wasn’t. And why did you spend almost an hour on the phone with him this morning? Please, Rhodes, I know you think you’re sophisticated, but—”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Okay?”
“Oh, Rhodes.” He looked past her, toward Nicholas, who was coming up behind her. She brushed Rhodes’s cheek with her hand. His skin felt cool. He was so beautiful she ached for him. “Rhodes, you don’t understand what kind of a man he is.”
“I do understand.”
“No, Rhodes. You don’t.”
His skin was unnaturally pale, and for the first time she saw the faint blue shadows under his eyes that underscored his loss of the night’s sleep. She ran her finger across one of the shadows, and at last he looked into her face. “Jane,” he said softly, “if you think I don’t understand what he is, then you have no idea what I am.”
“You are beneath contempt.” Dorothy’s back was toward Jane.
“You were there! You saw what happened!”
“You heard what Mr. Gray said.” Dorothy stood at the kitchen counter rubbing a carrot against the metal lips of a grater so fast her hand was a blur. “Rhodes poked himself in the eye.” She turned and shook an orange stub of carrot at Jane. “And don’t you dare—do you hear me?—don’t you dare tell me my son would get mixed up in anything like that!”
“But you saw them. They were so close they were practically—”
“You shut up!”
“Can’t you listen? He’s your own son! He’s eighteen years old and you’re letting him go with this man…. What is it, the chauffeur? He’s sending his chauffeur for Rhodes, so that makes it all right. You saw—”
“I saw nothing!”
“You saw his face. Listen to me. He’s ge
tting involved in something that can be so ugly, so awful, it can ruin him for life. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand that if you let him go off in that car Mr. Gray is sending for him he’s lost?”
“All these years I thought you were just troubled. A poor, sick, sneaky girl who was too twisted to care about anything good and decent. All these years your jealousy has been eating you up alive, and you come back here trying to destroy my son’s life with your filth.”
“Please. Tell him not to go with Mr. Gray.”
“Mr. Gray is taking him to supper at the Maisonette, which happens to be the most expensive restaurant in the entire city, to talk about a summer job.”
“Why is he taking a beautiful young boy to the Maisonette? Don’t you know what he wants Rhodes for? Don’t you know what they do?”
Dorothy threw the carrot at Jane’s face, but it flew by her head and fell in the middle of the kitchen. “He’s going to groom him!” she screeched at Jane. “He’s going to groom him for a position. A big job right by his side. And maybe an alliance with his daughter. He saw the way she looked at Rhodes, her eyes as big as her head.”
“No! Listen to me! You saw him, the way he touched Rhodes’s face. Caressed it. You know what he is; he’s a homosexual. He wants Rhodes.”
Dorothy stepped forward and, with the force of her entire body behind her hand, smacked Jane on the side of her head. “You’re not going to ruin my son’s chances, you pervert. You whore. You ugly whore. You think I don’t know what you did with your father back in high school?”
“No! I swear! I didn’t do anything!”
“No? You think I don’t know how you lured him into your bedroom late at night? He couldn’t help himself. He’s a weak man. But you! You’re so brazen and disgusting. And so stupid to underestimate me. Don’t you think I heard him get up and tiptoe down the hall? And do you think I can forget how you tried with Rhodes too, whore? Strutting back and forth in front of his room in your brassiere and underpants, everything so tight you were gushing out of it, just waiting for him to see you half naked. You listen to me. You are leaving Cincinnati today and you’re never darkening this doorstep again. And if you dare try and make trouble, just see if I don’t tell your fine Mr. Cobleigh just what kind of a whore you are.”