Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  “I asked her and she seemed shy—embarrassed, perhaps—about answering,” Hazen said. “She just mumbled something about private reasons. So I didn’t press her.”

  “What do you think about the idea?” Strand said, almost aggressively.

  Hazen shrugged as they walked along. “I believe in this age it is the fashion to allow young people their own choice of careers. It’s as good a policy as any, I suppose. It’s my feeling—perhaps an illusion—that I would be a happier man today if my father had not dictated what I was to do with my life. Who knows?” He turned his head and peered curiously, his eyes narrowed, at Strand. “Supposing, all other things being equal, when you were your daughter’s age, you could have made a choice—would you have chosen as you did?”

  “Well,” Strand said uncomfortably, “no. My dream was to be a historian, not to feed a few hand-me-down facts about the past to unruly children. If I could have gone to Harvard or to Oxford, spent a few leisurely years in Europe among the archives and libraries—” He laughed ruefully. “But I had to make a living. It was all I could do to find enough odd jobs to keep me going long enough to get my B.A. at City College. Perhaps if I had been stronger…. Well, I wasn’t stronger. Old ambitions.” It was his turn to shrug. “I haven’t thought about them for years.”

  “Supposing,” Hazen said, “somehow, you had gone to Harvard, had the years in Europe, been able to become the man you had hoped to be, seen your name honored on the shelves of libraries, wouldn’t you have been—well”—he searched for the word—“more satisfied, shall we say, than you are now?”

  “Perhaps,” Strand said. “Perhaps not. We’ll never know.”

  “Do you want me to call the man at Truscott?” Hazen, Strand recognized, was gifted at putting witnesses in a corner, where the answer had to be yes or no.

  Strand was silent for a moment, thinking of what the apartment would be like with Caroline gone for months at a time while she was at school, then permanently after that. He and Leslie, too, would then have to face up to the problems of vacant rooms. “I can’t give you an answer now,” Strand said. “I’ll have to talk this over with my wife. Don’t think I’m ungrateful for your interest, but…”

  “Gratitude has nothing to do with it,” Hazen said crisply. “Remember there’s a lot I have to be grateful for. It’s well within reason to believe that I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you today—or anywhere, for that matter—if it hadn’t been for Caroline’s intervention in the park.”

  “She didn’t even know what she was doing,” Strand said. “Ask her. It was just a reflex action on her part.”

  “And all the more admirable for that,” Hazen said. “There’s no great rush. Speak to your wife and the girl and let me know what you decide. Lunch is at one. I’ve invited some friends, among them two men you might be interested in talking to—a history professor from Southampton College and an English instructor.”

  The perfect host, Strand thought. If his guest were a test pilot Hazen probably would have dug up two other test pilots to compare crashes with at lunch.

  As they reached the house Strand saw a tall, very thin boy, standing in the driveway, holding a fielder’s glove and a catcher’s mitt. “There’s the other half of the battery,” Hazen said. “Would you mind umpiring?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Strand said.

  “Good morning, Ronny,” Hazen said. “This is Mr. Strand. He’ll call the balls and strikes.”

  “Good morning, sir.” Ronny handed Hazen the catcher’s mitt. Hazen punched at the pocket of the mitt as they walked across the driveway to the lawn that bordered it. He put his towel down as home plate and Ronny, his face very serious, paced off to his pitching distance. Hazen crouched behind the towel, bending easily, and Strand took his position behind him, trying not to smile.

  “You get five warm-up pitches,” Hazen called to the boy, “and then it’s play ball. The usual signals, Ronny. One finger for the fast ball. Two for the curve, three for the pitchout.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ronny said. His windup was elaborate, with a succession of little jerking motions and a final turning of his body, so that his back was facing the plate before he turned and threw.

  Strand recognized the style from watching the Yankees on television. The boy had obviously been impressed by Luis Tiant, the old Cuban pitcher who had the most spectacular pitching motions in baseball. Once again he had to mask his smile.

  The ball came over the towel slowly. Strand guessed that the boy had intended a curve.

  After the fifth pitch, Strand called, “Batter up.”

  “Right in there, baby,” Hazen said. “Breeze it past ’em.”

  Ronny bent over to peer at the sign, very Tiant-like, lifted his left leg and threw.

  “Ball one,” Strand barked, getting into the spirit of the game Hazen was playing with the boy.

  Hazen looked over his shoulder, glowering. “What’s the matter, Ump, you blind? Aren’t you going to give us the corners?”

  “Play ball,” Strand said loudly.

  Hazen winked broadly and turned back to face the pitcher.

  After fifteen minutes in which Strand generously had counted ten strikeouts against four walks, Hazen stood up and went out to Ronny and shook his hand, saying, “Good game, Ronny. In another ten years you’ll be ready for the big leagues.” He gave his mitt to the boy, who was smiling for the first time, and he and Strand went into the house.

  “That was a nice thing to do,” Strand said.

  “He’s a good kid,” Hazen said carelessly. “He’ll never amount to anything as a ballplayer, though. He’s about a half second too slow and he’ll never get there. The day he realizes it will be tough for him. I used to love the game and when the day came that I knew, in my bones, that I’d never hit the curve I could’ve cried. So I turned to hockey. I had the talents.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Brutality and cunning. Thanks for the umpiring. See you at lunch. I’m ready for my shower now. You’d be surprised what work it is to bend your knees like that for ten minutes.” He went toward his wing of the house.

  Strand didn’t go up to the bedroom where he supposed his wife was still enjoying the comfort of doing nothing on a Saturday morning. He wasn’t ready to talk to Leslie just yet. Instead he went out to the pool where he found Eleanor and Jimmy sunbathing.

  Eleanor was stretched out on a mat on her stomach, in a bikini, with Jimmy squatting beside her rubbing lotion on her back. She had undone the straps of her bra so that she wouldn’t have any white lines across her eventual tan and her position, with her breasts almost showing, was, at least for Strand, decidedly erotic. Her body, with its slender waist, swelling haunches and satiny skin, reminded him disturbingly of her mother’s, and after a first glance, as he sat down on the edge of a beach chair, Strand kept looking out to sea. Eleanor and Jimmy were playing a word game, one of them giving a letter and the other adding to it with the object of forcing the opponent into the letter that would make a word and thereby losing the point.

  “E,” said Eleanor. “Hi, Dad. How’s Miss Wimbledon 1984 doing out there?”

  “Making the boys run,” Strand said, wishing she’d tie up her bra.

  “V,” Jimmy said.

  “Obvious, Jimmy,” Eleanor said. Then to Strand, “We ought to give the old terror of Central Park a unanimous vote of thanks for all this splendor she’s introduced us to. I, Jimmy. I haven’t seen our genial host yet. What’s he planning for our entertainment?”

  “Lunch,” Strand said.

  “Sorry about that,” Eleanor said. “Will you make my excuses? I’m asked out to lunch. Man I happened to meet at Bobby’s Bar’s coming to pick me up for lunch with the lit’ry set. He writes poetry. For the little magazines. Don’t look so aghast, Dad.” She laughed. “The poetry’s pretty poor but he’s got a regular job. I, Jimmy.”

  “Happened to meet,” Jimmy said. “He was waiting for you last night, gasping. C.”

  “Astute of you, Jimmy.” Strand didn’t
know whether she meant Jimmy was astute for saying C or for realizing that the meeting the night before had been prearranged. She sighed. “You’re a clever fellow. I challenge you. What’s the word.”

  “Evict,” Jimmy said triumphantly.

  “Got me,” Eleanor said. “You have a tiresome way with words. He always beats me,” she said to her father. “And I’m supposed to be the smart one in the family.”

  “You’re done,” Jimmy said, putting the cap on the bottle of lotion. “Want to play some more?”

  “Not for the moment,” Eleanor said. “The sun stuns me. I’ll just bake until my cavalier comes to claim me.”

  “I’m going to take a few turns in the pool,” Jimmy said, standing. He was tall and thin, like his father, with his ribs showing and his big fierce nose jutting below the same beetling full dark eyebrows. Without pleasure, Strand made the comparison between his son and the young men he had just been watching on the tennis court. Where they were lean and long-muscled, Jimmy was plain skinny and didn’t look as though he could last even one set on the courts. Jimmy professed to find all forms of exercise sweaty and life-shortening. When he was teased by Caroline about his sedentary ways, he quoted Kipling’s jibe about the gentleman athletes of Britain—“flannelled fools at the wicket…muddied oafs at the goals.” At least there was no danger, Strand thought, that Hazen would attempt to send Jimmy off to school on an athletic scholarship.

  Jimmy dove into the pool with a great splash and happily paddled about in a stroke that Strand would have been hard put to describe.

  “Who’s the cavalier, as you call him, who’s coming to take you to lunch?” Strand asked.

  “You don’t know him,” Eleanor said.

  “Is he the one you told me about? The Greek island one?”

  Eleanor hesitated for a moment. “The same,” she said. “He thought it would be a good idea for us to meet on neutral ground. You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I want to,” Strand said.

  “He’s presentable, if you’re worried,” Eleanor said.

  “I wasn’t worried about that.”

  “Good old Dad.”

  “Do you think it’s polite to go off like that without telling Mr. Hazen? After all, you haven’t even seen him here yet and you’ve spent the night in his house.”

  “It’s not my fault he didn’t make dinner last night,” Eleanor said. She sounded defensive. “Anyway, he’s paying his debts to Caroline and you and Mother, and I’m sure that’s enough for him.”

  Debts, Strand thought. An unpleasant way of putting it. “Will you be back for dinner?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “I want you to.”

  Eleanor sighed. “I’ll be back.”

  “Eleanor,” Strand said, wishing she would sit up and tie her bra, “I’d like to ask you a question.”

  “What is it?” She sounded wary.

  “It’s about Caroline. Do you think she’s old enough to go away to college?”

  “I went at her age,” Eleanor said. “Anyway, I thought she was going to City. That’s not away. It’s just uptown.”

  “Supposing we changed our mind about it?”

  “What are you and Mother going to do about her tuition and board and all that? Take on other jobs? I don’t think at your age…”

  “What if we thought we could manage it?”

  “How?”

  “Somehow.” He was afraid Eleanor would hoot at the idea of Caroline in a track suit.

  Finally Eleanor tied the bra straps behind her back and sat up. “If you want the truth,” she said, “I think she’d be better off at home. She’s younger than I was at her age. By a long shot. For one thing, there never are any boys around the house or calling her on the telephone. Haven’t you noticed that?”

  “Not really,” Strand admitted.

  “When I was her age, the phone was ringing day and night.”

  “It certainly was.”

  “She thinks she’s ugly,” Eleanor said. “She thinks she turns boys off. That’s why she likes to beat them on a tennis court. I at least confound men with my brains.” She laughed complacently. “It’s more dignified—and more permanent.”

  “Ugly?” Strand was shocked. “Caroline?”

  “Parents,” Eleanor said. “Do you think when I’m a parent I’ll be blind, too?”

  “But she’s not ugly. Just now, Mr. Hazen went out of his way to tell me how delightful she was.”

  “Geriatric praise,” Eleanor said. “Not worth one eighteen-year-old squeeze in a movie theater.”

  “What if I told you that I think that she’s—well—if not exactly beautiful—a very pretty girl?”

  “Geriatric fatherliness,” Eleanor said curtly. “You asked me what I thought about my sister. Now, do you want me to humor you or do you want me to tell you what I think?”

  “That’s a loaded question,” Strand protested.

  “Loaded or not, what do you want?”

  “There’s only one answer to that,” Strand said, trying to sound dignified.

  “She thinks she’s ugly because of her nose. It’s as simple as that. Kids have been making fun of it since she was in the first grade. It’s your nose and it’s great on you and it’s okay on Jimmy, he’ll grow into it. But for her—with noses like Mother’s and, let’s face it, mine, in the family, it’s the doomful curse of the Strands. Understand me, Dad,” she said more gently, seeing the stricken expression on her father’s face, “I’m not saying she’s right to feel the way she does or that she isn’t a marvelous little girl, but that’s the way it is. If a girl feels she’s not pretty and she’s off on her own, away from the loving support of good old Mother and Dad and a nice safe bed to run home to every night, she’s very likely to…oh, hell, to fall into the arms…into the life of the first boy or man who says she’s pretty, no matter what his motives are and how good or bad he is for her. You asked for my advice? Keep her home with you until she grows up.”

  Jimmy was climbing out of the pool, shaking the water off his torso and pulling at his ears.

  “Don’t ask him any questions,” Eleanor said. “That’s more advice.”

  “Some day, Eleanor,” Strand said, “I’m going to ask you what you think I ought to do with my life.”

  “Stay as you are.” She got up and kissed his cheek. “I couldn’t bear it if you changed.”

  Strand was alone on the terrace. Eleanor had gone up to dress for her lunch and Jimmy had wandered off along the beach. Strand was glad that Leslie hadn’t come down. When he was worried, as he was now, she invariably sensed it and she would have pried out the reasons and her blissful lazy morning would have been ruined. One member of the family tormented by the problems of life in the twentieth century was enough for today.

  Strand was considering going up and getting into bathing trunks and taking a swim in the pool. For the moment there was nobody around to notice the poverty of his legs or the resemblance of his gaunt frame to Jimmy’s. Just as he was about to stand up Mr. Ketley came out of the house. “Mr. Strand,” Mr. Ketley said, “there’s a gentleman here for Miss Eleanor.”

  “Tell him to come out here, please,” Strand said.

  When the young man came onto the terrace Strand rose to greet him. “I’m Eleanor’s father,” he said, and they shook hands. “She’ll only be a minute. She’s getting dressed.”

  The young man nodded. “I’m Giuseppe Gianelli,” he said. “Embarrassingly melodious.” He laughed. Strand guessed that he was twenty-eight, twenty-nine. He had a deep easy voice and he was strikingly handsome, large green eyes that seemed to have golden flecks in them, a dark face and thick black curly hair. He was almost as tall as Strand and was dressed in white slacks, sandals and a blue polo shirt that left his muscular tanned arms bare, stretched tightly over his wide shoulders and was loose around the middle. Strand was thankful that he hadn’t been caught in bathing trunks.

  “Nice little place they hav
e here,” Gianelli said, looking around. “Somebody had thoughtful ancestors.”

  “My son said, ‘That’s some hunk of architecture,’ when he saw it last night.”

  Gianelli chuckled. It was an easy, soft sound that went with his slow, slurred voice. “Good old Jimmy,” he said. “He had quite a time for himself last night.”

  “What did he do,” Strand asked, “get drunk?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that.” Gianelli smiled. His face, which was almost sculpturally masculine in its bold lines of brow, nose and jaw, softened suddenly and surprisingly. “If he’d been drunk, naturally I wouldn’t say anything about it to his father. No, he had only a beer or two. He gave a concert.”

  “On what?” Strand had prevailed upon Jimmy not to take his electric guitar along on the weekend, convincing Jimmy that there were limits even to a millionaire’s hospitality.

  “Some girl had a guitar lying around,” Gianelli said. “She played a song or two. You know, one of those mournful, why am I alive, why is the world so mean to me sort of jingles. When she finished, Eleanor asked her if she’d lend her guitar to Jimmy and Jimmy went to town, along with the pianist. He really can play, you know, Mr. Strand.”

  “So far,” Strand said, “I haven’t educated myself enough in the new music to fully appreciate him.”

  “You should have been there last night,” Gianelli said. “He must have played more than an hour. Didn’t Eleanor tell you?”

  “We had other things to discuss this morning,” Strand said and knew that he must sound stuffy to the man. “Jimmy keeps saying he’s looking for a new sound and I’ve taken it for granted that when he finds it he’ll tell me the news.”

  “I don’t know what he found last night,” Gianelli said, “but he found something.”

  “In the future,” Strand said, “perhaps I ought to accompany my children when they go out at night.”