by Farris, John
“Is that so?” Chris replied, his favorite expression of the week.
“Chris!” Lucy’s voice called. And Practice lifted his eyes from the cigarette he was rolling.
“Don’t tell her we’re here,” Chris said.
“Too late, I think. What are you two playing, anyway?”
“Hiding buttons. I’d rather shoot something.” Chris dipped into the pocket of his jacket, and Practice saw a brass button as big as a milk-bottle top gleaming in the boy’s palm for an instant. Then he felt Chris’s hand at one cuff of his trousers and Chris was standing back guilelessly with his hands at his sides.
“C’mon,” he said. “Lift me up.”
Lucy Childs appeared around the corner of the mansion. She was a tall girl who wore a rust-colored sweater and skirt, with a long-sleeved yellow blouse, the cuffs almost as deep as gauntlets and secured by little brass arrows. There was a gleam of ornamental brass slanting at one slender wrist. She wore her black hair long and full, and her skin seemed to have soaked in the lambent moisture and light of spring, so that it glowed as tenderly as the boughs of the dogwood all around her.
For a moment Practice forgot his cigarette, and a small unconscious smile appeared on his frequently melancholy face. Lucy had been born with the kind of style that many women spend a fortune and a lifetime trying to achieve: like Dore Guthrie, the Governor’s wife, who adored Lucy, envying her flair but without malice.
“You’re getting warm,” Chris said to Lucy with an uncharacteristic giggle.
Lucy began to move in a wide circle, approaching them slowly, sizing up every likely hiding place. Practice continued with his cigarette, not taking his eyes from the girl. Her gaze flickered over the elm, then returned.
“Cold, cold, cold!” Chris shouted as Lucy reached into the bole of the elm and drew out the brass button. Lucy laughed delightedly and Practice shuddered at the sound of her laughter.
“You know something about Lucy?” Chris asked as Practice gave him a boost up the wall.
“What?”
“She was crazy once.”
Practice looked at the boy. There was nothing in Chris’s face to indicate he was troubled by what he had just said. Like as not, the meaning of the word was vague to him, but Practice wasn’t willing to let the matter drop.
“Where did you hear a thing like that?”
“In the kitchen. I was playing with the mousetraps and I heard cook talking to her cousin.”
Practice drew a long breath. “Lucy was real sick one time and had to go to the hospital.”
Chris nodded, occupied with the scuffed toe of one of his shoes. He knew about hospitals.
“Why did cook say ...”
“Cook was wrong, no matter what she said. Listen, Chris”—Practice glanced up to see if Lucy was within earshot—“remember the time you had that strep throat? When you couldn’t swallow or talk?”
The boy’s penetrating eyes were on him. “Yes.”
“Well, when Lucy was in the hospital, she hurt as bad as you did. But for a longer time.”
“A month?”
“A year. Two years. That was a good while ago, but she still wouldn’t want to be reminded of it. Just remember how you felt when your throat was sore.”
Chris’s tongue prodded his cheek. For a moment his expression was quite tragic, then he swallowed forcibly and began to brighten, wriggling in anticipation on the wall. “Don’t tell Lucy where the button is.”
“Don’t tell Lucy what?” she asked, joining them. “Hi, Jim.”
“Did you see me put the button in the tree?”
“No, but I know how your mind works, pal. About ready to go in? It’s story time.”
“Find the other button.”
“I’ll just do that,” Lucy said spiritedly. She retreated a couple of steps and surveyed them both carefully, while Practice grinned and Chris applied his own brand of hex, crossing his eyes and fingers and ankles.
Lucy’s eyes were green, with a suggestion of serious mischief in them at the moment, but usually her expression was serene, nearly smiling. On more trying days the fine humorous softness tended to disappear, replaced by a fitful sadness, and if the mood continued for a long period, her face hardened as if she were trying consciously for self-control. When their relationship had been different, he had tried to help Lucy, comfort her, and gradually the color would come back into her face. Lucy had never let anyone else be close to her at such times.
For months after Lucy had come to the mansion to look after Chris—with excellent references, after her year and a half of therapy—she had been friendly but withdrawn, and Practice, intrigued by her contradictory nature, stirred in a way nearly forgotten during his bitterest years, had at last penetrated Lucy’s reserve. He found that she could be dependent and adoring. At other times she would glory in self-possession, and be as untouchable as a swan.
One night their romance had become openly physical. They faced up to the most unpleasant details of their fragmentary lives, and concluded that they were stronger in each other. Then, without warning, Lucy began to draw away from him. The relationship was now in delicate balance, still comfortable in many ways, but without the eager physical intimacy they had enjoyed. Practice didn’t know why she wanted it so, and at first nursed a bruised sexual vanity, but she had shamed him out of this mood. He was puzzled by the vision of an oblique, distant Lucy, but he kept the threads of their relationship intact, there being nothing else he could do. Despite her attitude of firm restraint, and of irresolution, Practice felt that Lucy still needed him, that she was watching him with great concentration, critically and expectantly. His own desire and needs were far from consistent. He just didn’t know what was expected of him. His one proposal of marriage had been conclusively refused.
Lucy had moved closer, and, with a look at Chris to see if he was giving anything away, took one of Practice’s hands in her own and turned it over.
“No button,” she said. “You’ve got me this time, Chris.”
Chris yawned and appeared uninterested in the game and in them.
“Here,” he said, reaching into Practice’s cuff. “Can we go in now? I want to ask Mother something.”
“She’s probably busy, Chris. She just came home an hour ago, and she has to get ready for the dinner tonight.”
“I don’t care,” he said stubbornly, and got down from the wall.
Lucy looked sadly after him.
“Dore’s probably made some wild promise to Chris and forgotten all about it. But he never forgets. I’d better go in with him.”
“Why don’t I stop by after the rally tonight?” Practice suggested. “We can look in the fridge for some of that crock cheese and maybe work up a Perquackey game with Dore.”
“Oh ... I don’t think tonight, Jim.”
“What would keep you?”
“Well ... Fletch said he was coming over, some family business he wants to discuss. His life insurance or something like that.”
“Shouldn’t take all night.”
“Please, Jim, couldn’t we make it some other—” She seemed about to become annoyed, then smiled automatically. “What about tomorrow night?”
“Sure, Lucy.”
—
He watched her as she walked briskly away after Chris. Lucy’s brother Fletch—Dr. Fletcher Childs—was an avid amateur politician who hankered to run for Lieutenant Governor in the next election. It wasn’t likely he would leave the rally and the informal smokers that followed until the early hours of the morning. Practice shrugged, still annoyed with Lucy and all the rubble she had diligently stacked between them the past few months. Not a wall, exactly. He could have walked right into it and knocked it down and come face-to-face with her. But he was afraid to try.
Paul Dunhill, the Governor’s secretary, came out through the kitchen entrance to the mansion and stood in the drive for a moment, trying to fit another batch of papers into an already gorged briefcase. He flicked away the hair that
was forever hanging down to the rims of his eyeglasses and looked around. Probably half blind in the twilight, Practice thought. But Paul saw him and beckoned furiously, an unmistakable gesture. The Governor wanted him.
Practice lingered long enough to finish his cigarette. The land was gathering shadows and the gold of evening. Far across the river, tractors and discs were driving out from the turned fields to the barn lots, and Practice could almost smell the brown clods and the sweetness of elm and sycamore. He had come from a different soil, where the smell was grease and ashes and unwashed bedding. His old man had farmed a hundred and forty acres in the bootheel and Jim Practice was just so much slave labor, a cut above the croppers because he got to sleep on the porch, almost in the house, after the new woman came. Then he didn’t get much sleep at all, because her brothers trickled down one by one, a couple of them from the reformatory, and ran him off. He could have taken the beatings because he was big-boned and strong, held his own despite the fact that there were four of them, but his old man didn’t seem to care one way or another and he couldn’t, wouldn’t, stand for that.
He had never returned, although a time or two he was tempted to stroll through the brick and tin-roof town and show off a little. That was after the war, when he had his Captain’s bars and the two longish rows of ribbons that included a silver star. He might have been tempted again after his graduation from the state university, because he’d learned how to wear clothes and was driving a used Buick, but he stayed away; and the mild urge never troubled him again, particularly after Steppie, his wife-to-be, came along. She wouldn’t have made the trip, even for laughs.
He got up then, the seat of his pants cold from the stone wall, and fired his cigarette butt away, down the steep bluff, its limestone outcroppings dyed black from a century of coal smoke and cinders. The horn of a diesel blatted on the tracks below. He looked idly down at the blue and silver streamliner, knowing where it was going—first Kansas City, then the mountains. It would be nice to see the mountains in spring, he thought; and quite suddenly and painfully, for the first time in months, he wanted a drink.
• 3 •
He used the gray and white marble stairway at the front of the house to get to the Governor’s apartment on the third floor, taking it slowly, enjoying the elegant emptiness of the front hall, with its gleam of old silver and fireplace brass and figured tile and cool fabrics. The carpet before the high double doors of the apartment was gold; there were a couple of high-backed Italian chairs against one wall for those rare individuals awaiting a call into the Governor’s private quarters. The doors were oak, very heavy, but moved with minimum effort.
Inside the suite was an entrance hall, with two closets and gold-on-white silk wallpaper; the carpet became a claret shade. Through an arch Jim entered the sitting room, where three windows looked out over the river, now with a red glaze from the setting sun. Sun motes through the windows picked out highlights of gold thread in the draperies.
The Governor’s bedroom was on the left, his wife’s opposite; in a niche behind the entrance hall was a small kitchen. The sitting room was empty, impeccably arranged, silent; not even the two antique windup clocks whispered to him.
Practice had expected to find the Governor waiting there. When he didn’t see him, he crossed to the bedroom door and opened it without troubling to knock.
Dore was in the bathroom with her husband, and, from the sound of their voices, they were having an argument. Practice hesitated, then went in, shutting the door behind him.
There was not much light in the bedroom. He intended to go out on the small north balcony until Guthrie and his wife were through, but he found the doors stuck; they had been painted over. Sloppy workmanship, he thought, holding the draperies and gazing out at the top of an oak. He gave his attentions to the voices in the bath.
“I knew if I let you out of my sight for a few days you’d figure out some way to make an ass of yourself.”
“I’m not listening to you.”
“Every time my aunt and uncle come down here you’re all over them trying to get invited to their house. All right. They had to invite you, and I had to let you go. You don’t understand a damn thing about people like that, how they live ...”
Her voice was squeaky, humble. “They’re your folks and I’ve always wanted to know them.”
“You couldn’t sit quietly around for a couple of days and drink tea at the right times and talk about Flemish art and go out to concerts ...”
“I’m not listening!”
“You had to get next to some wop concert pianist who haunts families like mine to make a living ...”
“Oh, that isn’t true at all. Paul is Polish! And he’s a wonderful pianist.”
“How would you know? Dore, I’ve got a headache. Let’s forget it.”
“He’s recorded three albums! Your aunt said so.”
“She’s a sucker for greaseball artistes herself.”
“Greaseball! You don’t know what you’re talking about, so shut up! We had dinner—the four of us had dinner—and I danced with him. After that we had brandy and Paul played exclusively for us. And I invited ...”
“What?” Guthrie said ominously.
“I ... invited ... Paul ... to ... to ...”
“Good goddamn.” There was a sharp silence. “Uninvite him.”
“W-why?”
“Oh, stop. Why?"
“He gave me his card, Johnny. Honest, he’s so nice. You’ll like him. He wrote on his card: to one of the world’s loveliest women.”
“When the hell are you going to learn?” Guthrie said. “Uninvite him.”
“Okay,” Dore said tearfully. “Johnny—we got along just fine. Everybody liked me, Johnny.”
“All right, Dore, go put on some clothes.”
“Don’t you want me to ... to give you your bath?”
“I’m tired and I want to soak, that’s all.”
“Aren’t you glad everybody got along? Johnny? I didn’t do anything wrong. And I missed you all the time.”
“Dore, get out of here.”
“Are you sick?”
“I think so.”
“What can I do?”
“Just go, Dore.”
“Do you want me to fix you something to eat before we go to the Governor’s Day ...”
“No. We? We aren’t going.”
“We ...”
“I don’t want you along tonight, Dore. It’s going to be a rough evening.”
“I won’t bother you.”
“I didn’t say you would. But you can’t go, I won’t have time to ...”
“Jim can sit with me.”
“He’s not going, either. There’s something I want him to do. Now, go put on your clothes and write a letter to that goddamn pianist who was sucking up to you.”
Her voice was shrill. “People will think ...”
“Dore!”
“Just answer one question. When did you stop caring whether I lived or died?”
“Get out, Dore. I can’t say a damn thing to you when you’re acting like this.”
Practice sighed and turned toward the Governor’s desk, a cherished leftover from his college days. Over the desk, in defiance of the order and tranquillity wrought by the decorator, was a display of cheaply framed documents and photographs: John Guthrie as a law student, as a jazz musician in the murky Chicago night haunts of the late thirties, as a pilot in the RCAF during the battle for Great Britain. John Guthrie had lived hard in his youth without being pretentiously glamorous, and had survived the excess of his energies to fight a more subtle and involved battle with Starne Kinsaker.
It was not the kind of fighting he had a taste for, Practice thought. It pinched at his nerves and soured his blood, so that he was given to sullen and irrational moods. Politics had made his reputation as a man, but had shackled him to a curiously crippling half-life at the same time.
Practice didn’t hear Dore, and thought she must have come out of the bathroo
m, seen him, then made her exit through the kitchen to her own bedroom. After waiting a couple of minutes, he turned around and almost jumped.
Dore was standing in the middle of the carpet, completely nude, her shoulders hunched, one fist pushed up hard against her forehead, between her eyes. She was sobbing without a sound, digging her toes into the carpet.
In moving the draperies to get at the balcony doors, Practice had allowed a shallow stream of light into the bedroom. It angled sharply across Dore’s body at the small dimple of her navel, so that he could see the straining muscles of stomach, thighs, and calves. Even in such an unbecoming pose there was something quite gentle and tender, almost childlike, about Dore’s body. It was as if no eyes but hers had ever seen it, as if she had never borne a child or loved a man.
She was twenty-eight, and her hair had probably been a natural, if streaky, blond before she started sitting in at the beautician’s three afternoons a week. Dore had a figure which Lucy had once wryly described as “colossal”: long legs, just enough hip, and high, slightly elongated breasts that kept their shape and their rise without support. Her eyes were big and sooty blue in a catlike face that might have been prettier; an unfortunately carnal mouth diminished the effect of softly planed cheeks and jaw.
But there was something timorous and indefinite about her sex that a man would rarely identify, and that was a shame. Perhaps because of a confusion of emotions, she made the obvious choice and dressed to be sexually meaningful, was afraid of her purpose, and thus a failure. Frequently she believed that people were thinking badly of her—an intercepted smile or misunderstood wink would crush her—but she’d only try more frantically to be liked. Perhaps the moment might come when she could slip away from the party; Practice had seen her at such moments because he spent his time observing, not participating. He had seen her sitting under the trees in a dark landscape, staring at nothing, and when he could arrange to do so, he went out and sat with Dore and silently shared a cigarette with her. He sat with her not out of pity but in recognition, because in a distorted way the fact of Dore’s life repeated his own. Knock, knock, and you went in where you didn’t belong, in your best clothes, and somebody dumped a bucket of slops on your head.