by James Salter
“Be quiet.” They were talking above his head. Near the corner they stopped for a while. Christopher was silent as they went on talking. He felt his hair being tugged but did not look up.
“Say good-bye, Christopher.”
He said nothing. He refused to lift his head.
In midafternoon the sun was like a furnace. Everything was dark against it, the horizon lost in haze. Far down the beach in front of one of the prominent houses a large flag was waving. With Christopher following her, Truus trudged through the sand. Finally she saw what she had been looking for. Up in the dunes a figure was sitting.
“Where are we going?” Christopher asked.
“Just up here.”
Christopher soon saw where they were headed.
“I have mices,” was the first thing he said.
“Is that right?”
“Do you want to know their names?” In fact they were two desperate gerbils in a tank of wood shavings. “Catman and Batty,” he said.
“Catman?”
“He’s the big one.” Truus was spreading a towel, he noticed. “Do we have to stay here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” he asked. He wanted to go down near the water. Finally Truus agreed.
“But only if you stay where I can see you,” she said.
The shovel fell out of his bucket as he ran off. She had to call him to make him come back. He went off again and she pretended to watch him.
“I’m really glad you came. You know, I don’t know your name. I know his, but I don’t know yours.”
“Truus.”
“I’ve never heard that name before. What is it, French?”
“It’s Dutch.”
“Oh, yeah?”
His name was Robbie Werner, “not half as nice,” he said. He had an easy smile and pale blue eyes. There was something spoiled about him, like a student who has been expelled and is undisturbed by it. The sun was roaring down and striking Truus’ shoulders beneath her shirt. She was wearing a blue, one-piece bathing suit underneath. She was aware of being too heavy, of the heat, and of the thick, masculine legs stretched out near her.
“Do you live here?” she said.
“I’m just here on vacation.”
“From where?”
“Try and guess.”
“I don’t know,” she said. She wasn’t good at that kind of thing.
“Saudi Arabia,” he said. “It’s about three times this hot.”
He worked there, he explained. He had an apartment of his own and a free telephone. At first she did not believe him. She glanced at him as he talked and realized he was telling the truth. He got two months of vacation a year, he said, usually in Europe. She imagined it as sleeping in hotels and getting up late and going out to lunch. She did not want him to stop talking. She could not think of anything to say.
“How about you?” he said. “What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m just taking care of Christopher.”
“Where’s his mother?”
“She lives here. She’s divorced,” Truus said.
“It’s terrible the way people get divorced,” he said.
“I agree with you.”
“I mean, why get married?” he said. “Are your parents still married?”
“Yes,” she said, although they did not seem to be a good example. They had been married for nearly twenty-five years. They were worn out from marriage, her mother especially.
Suddenly Robbie raised himself slightly. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Your kid. I don’t see him.”
Truus jumped up quickly, looked around, and began to run toward the water. There was a kind of shelf the tide had made which hid the ocean’s edge. As she ran she finally saw, beyond it, the little blond head. She was calling his name.
“I told you to stay up where I could see you,” she cried, out of breath, when she reached him. “I had to run all the way. Do you know how much you frightened me?”
Christopher slapped aimlessly at the sand with his shovel. He looked up and saw Robbie. “Do you want to build a castle?” he asked innocently.
“Sure,” Robbie said after a moment. “Come on, let’s go down a little further, closer to the water. Then we can have a moat. Do you want to help us build a castle?” he said to Truus.
“No,” Christopher said, “she can’t.”
“Sure, she can. She’s going to do a very important part of it for us.”
“What?”
“You’ll see.” They were walking down the velvety slope dampened by the tide.
“What’s your name?” Christopher asked.
“Robbie. Here’s a good place.” He kneeled and began scooping out large handfuls of sand.
“Do you have a penis?”
“Sure.”
“I do, too,” Christopher said.
She was preparing his dinner while he played outside on the terrace, banging on the slate with his shovel. It was hot. Her clothes were sticking to her and there was moisture on her upper lip, but afterward she would go up and shower. She had a room on the second floor—not the one Mrs. Pence had—a small guest room painted white with a crude patch on the door where the original lock had been removed. Just outside the window were trees and the thick hedge of the neighboring house. The room faced south and caught the breeze. Often in the morning Christopher would crawl into her bed, his legs cool and hair a little sour-smelling. The room was filled with molten light. She could feel sand in the sheets, the merest trace of it. She turned her head sleepily to look at her watch on the night table. Not yet six. The first birds were singing. Beside her, eyes closed, mouth parted to reveal a row of small teeth, lay this perfect boy.
He had begun digging in the border of flowers. He was piling dirt on the edge of the terrace.
“Don’t, you’ll hurt them,” Truus said. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to put you up in the tree, the one by the shed.”
The telephone was ringing. Gloria picked it up in the other part of the house. After a moment, “It’s for you,” she called.
“Hello?” Truus said.
“Hi.” It was Robbie.
“Hello,” she said. She couldn’t tell if Gloria had hung up. Then she heard a click.
“Are you going to be able to meet me tonight?”
“Yes, I can meet you,” she said. Her heart felt extraordinarily light.
Christopher had begun to scrape his shovel across the screen. “Excuse me,” she said, putting her hand over the mouthpiece. “Stop that,” she commanded.
She turned to him after she hung up. He was watching from the door. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No.”
“Come, let’s wash your hands.”
“Why are you going out?”
“Just for fun. Come on.”
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, stop, will you?”
That night the air was still. The heat spread over one immediately, like a flush. In the thunderous cool of the Laundry, past the darkened station, they sat near the bar which was lined with men. It was noisy and crowded. Every so often someone passing by would say hello.
“Some zoo, huh?” Robbie said.
Gloria came there often, she knew.
“What do you want to drink?”
“Beer,” she said.
There were at least twenty men at the bar. She was aware of occasional glances.
“You know, you don’t look bad in a bathing suit,” Robbie said.
The opposite, she felt, was true.
“Have you ever thought of taking off a few pounds?” he said. He had a calm, unhurried way of speaking. “It could really help you.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
“Have you ever thought of modeling?”
She would not look at him.
“I’m serious,” he said. “You have a nice face.”
“I’m not quite a model,” she murmured.
“That�
�s not the only thing. You also have a very nice ass, you don’t mind me saying that?”
She shook her head.
Later they drove past large, dark houses and down a road which unexpectedly opened at the end like the vista she knew was somehow opening to her. There were gently rolling fields and distant lights. A street sign saying Egypt Lane—she was too dizzy to read it—floated for an instant in the headlights.
“Do you know where we are?”
“No,” she said.
“That’s the Maidstone Club.”
They crossed a small bridge and went on. Finally they turned into a driveway. She could hear the ocean when he shut off the ignition. There were two other cars parked nearby.
“Is someone here?”
“No, they’re all asleep,” he whispered.
They walked on the grass to the other side of the house. His room was in a kind of annex. There was a smell of dampness. The dresser was strewn with clothes, shaving gear, magazines. She saw all this vaguely when he struck a match to light a candle.
“Are you sure no one’s here?” she said.
“Don’t worry.”
It was all a little clumsy. Afterward they showered together.
There was almost nothing on the menu Gloria was interested in eating.
“What are you going to have?” she said.
“Crab salad,” Ned said.
“I think I’ll have the avocado,” she decided.
The waiter took the menus.
“A pharmaceutical company, you say?”
“I think he works for some big one,” she said.
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. It’s in Saudi Arabia.”
“Saudi Arabia?” he said doubtfully.
“That’s where all the money is, isn’t it?” she said. “It certainly isn’t here.”
“How’d she meet this fellow?”
“Picked him up, I think.”
“Typical,” he said. He pushed his rimless glasses higher on his nose with one finger. He was wearing a string sweater with the sleeves pulled up. His hair was faded by the sun. He looked very boyish and handsome. He was thirty-three and had never been married. There were only two things wrong with him: his mother had all the money in a trust, and his back. Something was wrong with it. He had terrible spasms and sometimes had to lie for hours on the floor.
“Well, I’m sure he knows she’s just a babysitter. He’s here on vacation. I hope he doesn’t break her heart,” Gloria said. “Actually, I’m glad he showed up. It’s better for Christopher. She’s less likely to return the erotic feelings he has for her.”
“The what?”
“Believe me, I’m not imagining it.”
“Oh, come on, Gloria.”
“There’s something going on. Maybe she doesn’t know it. He’s in her bed all the time.”
“He’s only five.”
“They can have erections at five,” Gloria said.
“Oh, really.”
“Darling, I’ve seen him with them.”
“At five?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “They’re born with them. You just don’t remember, that’s all.”
She did not become lovesick, she did not brood. She was more silent in the weeks that followed but also more settled, not particularly sad. In the flat-heeled shoes which gave her a slightly dumpy appearance she went shopping as usual. The thought even crossed Gloria’s mind that she might be pregnant.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“Darling, do you feel all right? You know what I mean.”
There were times when the two of them came back from the beach and Truus patiently brushed the sand from Christopher’s feet that Gloria felt great sympathy for her and understood why she was quiet. How much of fate lay in one’s appearance! Truus’ face seemed empty, without expression, except when she was playing with Christopher and then it brightened. She was so like a child anyway, a bulky child, an unimaginative playmate who in the course of things would be forgotten. And the foolishness of her dreams! She wanted to become a fashion designer, she said one day. She was interested in designing clothes.
What she actually felt after her boyfriend left, no one knew. She came in carrying the groceries, the screen door banged behind her. She answered the phone, took messages. In the evening she sat on the worn couch with Christopher watching television upstairs. Sometimes they both laughed. The shelves were piled with games, plastic toys, children’s books. Once in a while Christopher was told to bring one down so his mother could read him a story. It was very important that he like books, Gloria said.
It was a pale blue envelope with Arabic printing in the corner. Truus opened it standing at the kitchen counter and began to read the letter. The handwriting was childish and small. Dear Truus, it said. Thank you for your letter. I was glad to receive it. You don’t have to put so many stamps on letters to Saudi Arabia though. One U.S. airmail is enough. I’m glad to hear you miss me. She looked up. Christopher was banging on something in the doorway.
“This won’t work,” he said.
He was dragging a toy car that had to be pumped with air to run.
“Here, let me see,” she said. He seemed on the verge of tears. “This fits here, doesn’t it?” She attached the small plastic hose. “There, now it will work.”
“No, it won’t,” he said.
“No, it won’t,” she mimicked.
He watched gloomily as she pumped. When the handle grew stiff she put the car on the floor, pointed it, and let it go. It leapt across the room and crashed into the opposite wall. He went over and nudged it with his foot.
“Do you want to play with it?”
“No.”
“Then pick it up and put it away.”
“He didn’t move.
“Put … it … away …” she said, in a deep voice, coming toward him one step at a time. He watched from the corner of his eye. Another tottering step. “Or I eat you,” she growled.
He ran for the stairs shrieking. She continued to chant, shuffling slowly toward the stairs. The dog was barking. Gloria came in the door, reaching down to pull off her shoes and kick them to one side. “Hi, any calls?” she asked.
Truus abandoned her performance. “No. No one.”
Gloria had been visiting her mother, which was always tiresome. She looked around. Something was going on, she realized. “Where’s Christopher?”
A glint of blond hair appeared above the landing.
“Hello, darling,” she said. There was a pause. “Mummy said hello. What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“We’re just playing a game,” Truus explained.
“Well, stop playing for a moment and come and kiss me.”
She took him into the living room. Truus went upstairs. Sometime later she heard her name being called. She folded the letter which she had read for the fifth or sixth time and went to the head of the stairs. “Yes?”
“Can you come down?” Gloria called. “He’s driving me crazy.
“He’s impossible,” she said, when Truus arrived. “He spilled his milk, he’s kicked over the dog water. Look at this mess!”
“Let’s go outside and play a game,” Truus said to him, reaching for his hand which he pulled away. “Come. Or do you want to go on the pony?”
He stared at the floor. As if she were alone in the room she got down on her hands and knees. She shook her hair loose and made a curious sound, a faint neigh, pure as the tinkle of glass. She turned to gaze indifferently at him over her shoulder. He was watching.
“Come,” she said calmly. “Your pony is waiting.”
After that when the letters arrived, Truus would fold them and slip them into her pocket while Gloria went through the mail: bills, gallery openings, urgent requests for payment, occasionally a letter. She wrote very few herself but always complained when she did not receive them. Comments on the logic of this only served to annoy her.
One morning Gloria was upstairs when something happened to catch her eye. The door to the little guest room was open and on the night table, folded, was a letter. It lay there in the silence, half of it raised like a wing in the air. The house was empty. Truus had gone to shop and pick up Christopher at nursery school. With the curiosity of a schoolgirl, Gloria sat down on the bed. She unfolded the envelope and took out the pages. The first thing her eye fell upon was a line just above the middle. It stunned her. For a moment she was dazed. She read the letter through nervously. She opened the drawer. There were others. She read them as well. Like love letters they were repetitious, but they were not love letters. He did more than work in an office, this man, much more. He went through Europe, city after city, looking for young people who in hotel rooms and cheap apartments—she was horrified by her images of it—stripped and were immersed in a river of sordid acts. The letters were like those of a high school boy, that was the most terrible part. They were letters of recruitment, so simple they might have been copied out by an illiterate.
Sitting there framed in the doorway, her hand nearly trembling, she could not think of what to do. She felt deeply upset, frightened, betrayed. She glanced out the window. She wondered if she should go immediately to the nursery school—she could be there in minutes—and take Christopher somewhere where he would be safe. No, that would be foolish. She hurried downstairs to the telephone.
“Ned,” she said when she reached him—her voice was shaking. She was looking at one of the letters which asked a number of matter-of-fact questions.
“What is it? Is anything wrong?”
“Come right away. I need you. Something’s happened.”
For a while then she stood there with the letters in her hand. Looking around hurriedly, she put them in a drawer where garden seeds were kept. She began to calculate how long it would be before he would be there, driving out from the city.