“I hadda wait till your mother was asleep. This concerns her.”
The boy nodded.
“Didja see her tonight, kid? Didja ever see her so happy in years? The truth now.” He sat beside his son’s body.
The boy shook his head.
“That’s the kinda people your mother needs. People like that. They bring out the best in her. There was no headache tonight, no nothin’. I tell you, it was like when we were young. We were awful happy then, kid, before the headaches came.”
“Mother’s told me.”
“Now I wanna get somethin’ straight, kid. I’m not telling you what to do. Nossir. You don’t get that kinda stuff from me. Your life’s your own, and that’s that.” Sid paused. “We’re having the Markses for dinner next week. How ’bout that?”
“Wonderful.”
“I invited them. ‘Dolly,’ I said, ‘how’s about it?’ and they’re coming. Esther said I shouldn’t ask, but you know how Esther is. Afraid to try anything. A week from tonight. Lou and Dolly Marks, coming here. That’s something, y’know? It could mean a lot to your mother.”
“Yes,” the boy said.
“I don’t give a shit about the country club, not for myself, y’understan’? I move around a lot anyway; I meet people. But your mother. Well, it would do her so much good I can’t tell you, being with people like that. She needs being with that kinda people, kid. Didja see her tonight? That’s what I mean. You could really help her. You could really make your mother happy.”
The boy lay very still.
“Don’t blow it,” Sid said then.
“Pardon, Father?”
“Kid, I see things. I hear, I see, I pick up what I can. Dolly Marks, she looks at you a lot.”
“Oh, I don’t think she does.”
“She plays; so, she’s rich, she can afford it. The latest was this goyem builder from Chicago, McCandless, something. He was there tonight. Left early. The word is, it’s all over.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that.”
“That’s why I’m telling you. Listen to your father. It’s your own life, but you still gotta think about other people sometimes, like your mother. So it’s my guess Dolly Marks don’t hate you, O.K.? There’s nothing wrong with that. Now, I’m not telling you to take advantage, understand. Follow your own heart—that’s the only way to move through this world. I mean, I’m not telling you to throw a bag over her head and do it for Old Glory. That’s the farthest thing from what I’m telling you. God forbid I should ever tell a thing like that to my son.”
The boy shook his hearing aid.
“You didn’t miss anything,” Sid said. “I was just rambling on. The main point is, kid, don’t make waves. Be nice, that’s all I’m telling you. They like you. Keep it that way. Play tennis, smile, see your dentist twice a year. You follow me, dontcha?”
“I follow.”
“That’s all I wanted to say, kid. Go on back to sleep.” He patted his son’s shoulder. “And remember: you’re helping your mother. You got a chance to really make her happy. ’Night, kid.”
“ ‘Night,” Rudy said. He stared, eyes wide, at the ceiling until his mother came in half an hour later.
She shook him. “Put on your thing.”
He made the appropriate gestures.
“Your father mustn’t hear.”
The boy nodded.
“They’re coming, Rudy. Here.”
“Who?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Marks.”
“Ah.”
“To our house.”
“How wonderful.”
Esther sat down heavily on the bed. “I’m very tired,” she said. “I should be. Frisking around like a fool that way. I had to do it, Rudy. I couldn’t let him down. He was so full of life tonight; Sid.”
“Yes.”
Esther sighed. “I’m so tired. Not just from the frisking. It’s been a hard life, Rudy, for your father and me. A long struggle. No one has ever had to struggle any worse, I promise you that.”
“I know.”
She sighed again and touched her eyes. “Sometimes, way back behind the eyes, I can feel one forming. A migraine. Like a thunderstorm they tell you is over Kansas on the weather report.”
“You should rest,” Rudy said.
“Some parents, they push their children. Sid and me, we ain’t like that. We would never be. It was very important to us. Almost a pact. We love you so, Rudy. You make us so proud. Everybody loves you. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know what a cruel place this world is? I know. So does your father.”
“I’m very lucky,” Rudy said.
“He’s had to fight. For everything. It crushed him when they turned him down from that silly club. I, myself, would never go. You know that. How little I care about silly things like country clubs and canasta and sitting by the pool and having someone bring you lemonade. I’ve always gotten my own lemonade, Rudy. You know that. We’ve had a lousy marriage, Rudy, your father and me.”
The boy closed his eyes.
“Because he’s had to fight so hard. Rudy, he doesn’t know who he has to fight and who he doesn’t, so he fights me. His own wife sometimes. We love each other and we always have, but sometimes we fight too much. If only he could get into that club, though. Then there’d be no place else for him to get to. He’s got everything else, Rudy. And once he had that he’d stop fighting and be so happy.”
“You haven’t had a lousy marriage,” the boy said.
“Of course not; who said that? We love each other like anything. I didn’t mean we had a lousy marriage. My God, we’ve been so happy sometimes you could bust. But what I mean is, every so often your father—well, it would make him so happy, being at last a member. Do that for him, Rudy. Help him.”
“What would you like?”
“Tell them, the Markses, tell them what a fine man he is and what a fine addition he would make. Tell them I don’t care, I don’t even have to set foot in the place, that would suit me, but your father—they’re coming to dinner, Rudy, and you know it’s going to be jokes from him and from me nothing but nerves and they won’t see what a fine addition he would be. You must tell them. They like you. You they listen to. You they understand. Do this for your father, Rudy. End the fighting. Make him happy. Help him. It’s up to you. You know it is. Help him.” She sighed again, kissed her son on the cheek. Then she got up. “You go to sleep now.”
“I’m halfway there already.”
“This has been an important talk, Rudy, don’t you think?”
The boy nodded. “I’m really glad you brought it all to my attention.”
Late the next afternoon, as he was closing up the tennis shack, he saw her waving to him from the parking lot. He walked over. “I have to correct an impression,” Dolly said.
“Pardon?”
“Get in.”
The boy walked around the Jaguar.
“We all have these images of ourself, you know?” She roared up the hill toward the club exit.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t like the impression I made last night.”
“I thought you were very nice.”
“I should not have discussed my faults.”
“Faults?”
“Playing.”
“Ah.” The boy squinted up at the billowing clouds and what was left of blue sky. Then, as the car turned, he said, “We’re going to your house?”
“I thought we might.”
The boy nodded.
“I spoke to your father. He said it would be fine.”
The boy smiled.
“This used to be my favorite time, when I was young. Just before the rain. Everybody’s in a hurry then, you ever notice that? Everybody’s scurrying around just as fast as they can; they haven’t got a second to notice you or anything else. They’re all in this tremendous hurry. You can do crazy things and no one ever knows it, just before the rain.” The car picked up speed. “One time, back in Ohio, there was this dress I hated. It
made me look all fat and dumpy and you’ll never know how much I hated that dress. Pink. For God’s sake. Pink and frilly and this tremendous rain appeared way off on the horizon. All of a sudden. You could see it coming closer and closer and it got dark out and a terrible wind started and, like I said, everyone’s in a hurry then, nobody notices you, so I ran upstairs and I put on this dumpy pink dress—that’s all; I was barefoot and everything—and I went outside just as the wind was reaching a peak and across the street and down the block you could see everybody all hunched over, scurrying around, and I—very slowly—I took off that dumpy dress and I held it just as gracefully as I could, just like a lady, the tip of one sleeve between two fingers, and the trees were bending, and I was standing there naked, holding this dress, waiting for just the right gust of wind, and when it came I opened my hand and it flew away like Dorothy to Oz, and I stood there waving and shouting ‘Bye-bye, bye-bye’ and nobody noticed me or anything. People ran past, this way, that way, but I knew they wouldn’t see me, and they didn’t, not with the first big drops of rain coming down.” Dolly laughed then. “I am known far and wide for my abilities as a storyteller. For an encore I’ll shut up a while.” She drove silently until they reached her house. Then she got out of the car, said “Come on” and followed the path around to the great back lawn.
Nothing had changed.
The colored tents still stood, the stakes, the torches. But the torches were dead, the people gone. Other than that, nothing had changed.
“This is the real party,” Dolly said then.
The boy said nothing.
“There’s no music. We can dance now.”
He took her in his arms and they began to glide across the green lawn, turning and bending, silent beneath the blackening sky.
“I thought you’d like it but you don’t,” Dolly said.
“Why do you think that?”
“I can tell.”
“You’re wrong.” They continued to dance. “It’s very lovely, but a bad thing happened to me today. This morning. Something upsetting. I haven’t gotten over it yet.”
“What was it?”
“Well, this friend of my mother, she gave me a lift to the courts this morning. She picked me up and took me there. A very lovely lady. Truly. Except on the way there she stopped the car. At her house—”
“And she made a pass at you,” Dolly said.
They were in the center of the lawn now, two turning spots of color, white for the boy, yellow for Dolly, white and yellow over green, beneath black. “I suppose so.”
“And you don’t find her attractive.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“But not very young.” Dolly dropped her arms. “She must be a goddam fool. Doesn’t she know? The worst thing in the world is to be rebuffed. You don’t mind it so much when you’re young, but when you’re not young anymore ... What a goddam fool.”
“At any rate,” Rudy said, “this is very nice here, but I’m still sort of upset.”
“There are only two possibilities of why a woman does that. Either they think they’re going to succeed ...”
“Or?”
“Desperation.”
Rudy turned away, faced the tents, the cold torches. “When will this come down?”
“Tomorrow. I could have had it done today but I like leaving it up as long as possible. I like ruins. Did you see my dollhouse?”
“Yes. Last night, remember?”
“But you didn’t see in it. That’s the treat. Come.” She started walking toward the path. “Do you have a cigarette? No, that’s right, you don’t smoke.”
“And you don’t inhale.”
Dolly hurried along the path, then stopped, pointing to the swing and the teeter-totter. “Not so erotic in the daylight, I guess.” She pushed open the door of the dollhouse, stooped, went inside. He followed. “Sit,” Dolly said. They sat on the floor. “Pretty snazzy, huh?”
The boy glanced around the tiny room. There was a sink and a stove and an icebox and a bed and dozens of stuffed animals and hundreds of dolls. He nodded.
“The dolls are mine. From since when I was a kid. Dorothy—Dolly. Get it? The rest I had fixed up when the baby came, but then she died. Stoppage of the heart. She was very small, so it didn’t bother me all that much; I never got to know her all that well. I’m going to have all this pitched some—oh, I told you all that.”
“That’s all right.”
“No; I talk too much sometimes. I should never have told you about my playing.”
“That’s all right too.”
“When I started—playing, that is—I made a rule: I had to care. It wasn’t so bad until I began breaking it. This was a long time ago.”
“And your husband?”
“My husband inherited a shoe business. He buys things with the profits. Trinkets. You are looking at a trinket. He is a physical coward and a mental gull and I am in all ways his equal. If you’re asking does he know, the answer is yes.” She smiled. “Can you hear?”
Rudy tilted his head to one side.
Dolly pointed up. “Rain on the roof.”
Rudy nodded.
“That’s supposed to be romantic, rain on the roof is. I’ve got this thing about getting old—no, I told you that too.” She pushed the door of the dollhouse wide open and stared out at the rain. “I must have a cigarette. Why don’t you smoke?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ve got this terrible fear you’re going to turn me down.”
“Shut up.”
She started coming toward him, moving into his arms. He held her close and they lay flat on the dollhouse floor. “Don’t laugh at me,” she said. “See? My hands are shaking. Don’t laugh.”
“It’s not funny; I ought to.”
“Help me,” Dolly whispered. “Help me.”
And then the boy was shouting, “I ... am ... so ... sick ... of ... people ... asking ... me ... to ... help ... them! I am sick unto death of people asking me to help them! All my life everybody always asks me to help them but you don’t want my help!” He scrambled across the doll-house floor, bolted out into the rain, sped along the path onto the great lawn. The rain was thick and steady and he stopped, staring at the ruins of the party. “Everybody says help me but nobody means it; they only mean do what I want.”
Dolly touched him. “Listen ...”
“No!” He ripped his earpiece from his ear. “I hear nothing!” He shut his eyes. “I see nothing!”
Her arms went around him.
His hands ripped at her body; he kissed her mouth. “That’s what you want but that’s not helping you. That is only what you get from everybody. Helping you is saying no! But you don’t want that. You want my help? I’ll help you—I’ll say no!”
She held him tighter.
“Act your age!” Rudy cried.
She started to slap him, changed her mind, changed it back, slapped him twice, drew blood.
That evening there was a knock on the door. “Who can it be?” Esther said.
“I know this terrific way of finding out,” Sid said, and he went to the door. Lou Marks stood outside in the rain. “Lou!” Sid said. “Lou! Come in.”
Lou Marks stayed where he was. He wore a monogrammed white shirt and a pair of pale-blue trousers, soaked.
“What is it, Lou? My God, what happened to your hand?”
Lou Marks raised his right hand, swathed in bandages. “I just slammed the car door on it. I bandaged it myself. It hurts like crazy.”
“What’s going on?” Esther asked, coming up.
“Your son tried attacking my wife,” Lou Marks said.
Sid said nothing.
Esther gasped.
“Earlier this evening. She managed to beat him away.”
“Jesus God,” Sid said.
Esther began rubbing her temples.
“Dolly’s pretty upset,” Lou said.
“Oh, no, oh, no” from Esther.
“The boy came home not lo
ng ago, Lou. He went to his room. He seemed upset but—”
“He tried to rape her. My wife. On the lawn.”
“Lou,” Sid said. “Lou, believe me when I say—”
“The boy should be punished,” Lou Marks said.
“No,” Esther said.
“Of course, of course.” Sid nodded. “Yes. Definitely. Lou, it takes a while to adjust to—”
“He should be punished!”
“He will be.”
“Sid—” Esther cried, and her fingers pushed at her eyes. “My medicine.”
“I would do it,” Lou Marks said. “But ...” and he indicated his damaged hand.
“I’ll do it,” Sid said. “Rest easy. I’ll do it.”
“How do I know that?”
“You have my word,” Sid said.
“Sid, my medicine—”
“The word of the father of a boy who tried to rape my wife?”
“Like son don’t mean like father, Lou. Believe me. All my life I’ve had nothing but my word to go on. That’s all that’s meant anything—”
“I would love to punish him, but my hand ...” He held up the bandages again. “Dolly told me and I slammed the goddam car door on it, I was so upset. I can’t punish him with just my left hand.”
“Are you sure ...” Sid said. “There could be no mistake?”
“You’re calling my wife a liar—you know that.”
“No-no,” Sid said. “I would rather die. Rudy! Rudy! Lou, this will all work out, you’ll see, you’ll see, I swear to you.”
The boy stood above them on the landing.
“Go back, Rudy,” Esther cried. “Run!”
“Did you—tonight—did you—how could you do it how—did you attack Mrs. Marks?”
“In desperation,” Dolly Marks said, moving in front of her husband.
“Did you?” Sid said. “Did you?”
The boy looked down at them. “If I said no, who would believe me?”
“He didn’t deny it,” Lou Marks said.
“Run, Rudy,” Esther cried.
“God!” Sid smacked his forehead. “Rudy, how could you—attack the wife of a man like Lou Marks, a woman like that. How—my God—this is not a thing you can excuse. They were nice to you—he took you into his house—this is how you repay a man like that, a man on the board of clubs, a director of companies—you get dirty with his wife. Rudy, Rudy, what must be done to you?”
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