by Irwin Shaw
She brushed her hair. She wore it down a little past her shoulders, because Oliver liked it that way. She would have preferred it shorter, especially in the summer.
“Oliver,” she said, brushing her hair, looking at his reflection in the mirror as he quickly and neatly put an envelope full of papers, a pair of slippers, a sweater into the bag on the bed.
“Yes?” He snapped the bag shut, crisply, like a man cinching a horse.
“I hate the idea of your going home.”
Oliver came over to her and stood behind her, putting his hands around her. She felt his hands on her and the cool stuff of his suit against her back, and fought down a sudden quiver of distaste. He owns me, she thought, he must not behave as though he owns me. Oliver kissed the back of her neck, under her ear.
“You have a wonderful belly,” he said, moving his hands, kissing her.
She turned in his arms and held onto him. “Stay another week,” she said.
“You heard what Sam said about earning enough to pay for his bill,” Oliver said. Gently, he stroked her shoulder. “He wasn’t kidding.”
“But all those people at the plant …”
“All those people at the plant are out at the first tee by two o’clock in the afternoon, if I’m not there,” Oliver said good-naturedly. “You’re turning a marvelous color.”
“I hate being alone,” Lucy said. “I’m not good at being alone. I’m too stupid to be alone.”
Oliver laughed and held her tighter. “You’re not stupid at all.”
“Yes, I am,” Lucy said. “You don’t know me. When I’m alone my brain is like an old washrag. I hate the summers,” she said. “I’m in exile in the summertime.”
“I admire the color you turn in the summertime,” Oliver said.
Lucy felt a little touch of anger because he was treating her lightly. “Exile,” she repeated stubbornly. “Summertime is my Elba.”
Oliver laughed again. “See,” he said “you’re not so stupid. No stupid woman would have thought of that.”
“I’m literary,” Lucy said, “but I’m stupid. I’m going to be so lonesome.”
“Now, Lucy …” Oliver moved away and started walking around the room, opening drawers and looking in closets to make sure he had left nothing behind. “There’re hundreds of people around the lake.”
“Hundreds of horrors,” Lucy said. “Women whose husbands can’t stand them. You look at them congregated together on the porch of the hotel and you can almost see the ghosts of their husbands, in the cities, roaring with delight.”
“I promise,” Oliver said, “not to roar with delight in the city.”
“Or perhaps you’d like me to cultivate Mrs. Wales,” Lucy said. “To improve my mind and pick up some interesting facts to amuse the company with when we play bridge with the Pattersons next winter.”
Oliver hesitated. “Oh,” he said lightly, “I wouldn’t take that so seriously. It’s just Sam …”
“I just wanted to let you know that I knew about it,” Lucy said, with an unreasonable desire to make Oliver uncomfortable. “And I don’t like it. And you might tell Sam about it on the way home, since everybody’s being so damned candid this afternoon.”
“Very well,” Oliver said. “I’ll mention it. If you want.”
Lucy began to dress. “I’d like to go home with you,” she said. “Right now.”
Oliver opened the bathroom door and looked in. “What about Tony?” he asked.
“Take Tony with us.”
“But it’s so good for him here.” Oliver came back into the room, satisfied that he had left nothing behind him. He never left anything behind him, in any room, but he never neglected this final, swift checkup. “The lake. The sunshine.”
“I know all about the lake and the sunshine,” Lucy said. She bent over and put on a pair of moccasins, the leather feeling cool and pleasantly tight against her bare feet. “I think his father and mother, all together, will do him more good.”
“Darling,” Oliver said gently, “do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Don’t insist.”
Lucy put on a blouse. The blouse had a long row of buttons up the back and she went up to Oliver and turned around so that he could do them for her. Automatically, he began, at the bottom, his hands neat and quick.
“I hate the idea of you rattling around all by yourself in that big, empty house. And you always overwork when I’m not there.”
“I promise not to overwork,” Oliver said. “I’ll tell you what … Try it for a week. See how you feel. How Tony’s getting along. Then if you still want to come home …”
“Yes?”
“We’ll see,” Oliver said. He finished the buttons and tapped her lightly on the small of her back.
“We’ll see,” Lucy repeated. “Every time you say we’ll see, it means no. I know you.”
Oliver laughed and kissed the top of her head. “This time it means we’ll see.”
Lucy moved away from him, back to the mirror, to put on lipstick. “Why is it,” she asked coldly, “that we always do what you want to do?”
“Because I’m an old-fashioned husband and father,” Oliver said, amused at it as he said it.
Lucy put the lipstick on heavily, because she knew Oliver didn’t like it and she wanted to punish him, even by that little bit, for denying her. “What if one day I decided to turn into a new-fashioned wife?”
“You won’t,” Oliver said. He lit a cigarette, and noticing the lipstick, crinkled his brow a little, which he did when he was annoyed. “You won’t,” he said, keeping his tone playful. “That’s why I married you so young. To catch you before you became set in your ways.”
“Don’t make me sound so malleable. It’s insulting,” Lucy said.
“I swear,” Oliver said with mock gravity, consciously avoiding an argument, “that I find you absolutely unmalleable. Do you like that better?”
“No,” Lucy said. She made a big, garish bow of red on her lips, pouting her lips, using her little finger. Oliver had never said anything about it, but she knew that he disliked the moment at the mirror when her lips were in that vain, self-satisfied posture and the tip of the finger shiny with the red grease, and she prolonged it spitefully.
“We know a lot of modern couples,” Oliver said. He turned away, pretending to be looking for an ashtray, so that he wouldn’t have to watch her. “With both parties making decisions all the time. Every time I see a woman with a dissatisfied expression on her face I know her husband is letting her make decisions for herself.”
“If I weren’t married to you, Oliver,” said Lucy, “I think I’d hate you.”
“Think of the couples we know,” Oliver said. “Am I right or wrong?”
“Right,” Lucy said. “Right. Always right.” She turned and made a mock bow in his direction. “I bend the neck because you are always right.”
Oliver laughed and then Lucy had to laugh, too.
“It’s funny,” Oliver said, coming close to her again.
“What’s funny?”
“When you chuckle,” Oliver said. “Even when you were a young girl. It’s as though there’s somebody else in there”—he touched her throat—“who does your laughing for you.”
“Somebody else,” Lucy said. “What’s she like?”
“Husky-voiced,” Oliver said softly, “with a swaying walk and wild red hair …”
“Maybe I’d better stop laughing,” Lucy said.
“Never,” said Oliver. “I love it.”
“I was waiting to hear that word.”
“Love?”
“Uhuh. I haven’t heard it in a long time.” Lucy held the lapels of his coat and pulled him gently toward her.
“None of the present crop of writers would ever dream of using it,” Oliver said gravely.
“Go ahead.”
“Go ahead what?”
“Go ahead and use it. Nobody’s looking.”
“Mother … Dad …” It was
Tony calling from the living room. “I’m all dressed. Are you ready yet?”
“In a minute, Tony,” Oliver called, trying to pull away. “We’ll be right out.”
“Oh, Oliver,” Lucy murmured, still holding onto him. “It’s so terrible.”
“What’s terrible?” Oliver asked, puzzled.
“I depend on you so much.”
“Daddy …” It was Tony again, calling politely from the other side of the door.
“Yes, Tony?”
“I’ll go up to the hotel and wait for you. I want to ride to the gate with you.”
“Okay, Tony,” Oliver said. “Tell Dr. Patterson I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Righteo,” Tony said.
Oliver winced. “Where did he pick that up?” he whispered.
Lucy shrugged. There was a little smudge of lipstick from her finger on the shoulder of Oliver’s jacket and she guiltily decided to say nothing about it. They heard Tony going out of the house and his footsteps receding on the gravel outside the window.
“Well …” Oliver looked once more around the room. “That just about does it.” He picked up the two bags. “Open the door please, Lucy,” he said.
Lucy opened the door and they went out through the living room onto the porch. The living room was filled with flowers, to take the curse off the shabby rented furniture, and they mingled their fragrance with the constant fresh odor of the lake.
On the porch, Lucy stopped. “I’d love a drink,” she said. She didn’t really want one, but it would delay Oliver’s departure for another ten minutes. She knew that Oliver understood this and that he usually was annoyed, or at best impatiently amused, at what he considered her rattled postponements of farewells, but she couldn’t bear to face up to the moment when the sound of the car would diminish down the driveway and she would be left alone.
“All right,” Oliver said, after a tiny hesitation, putting down his bags. He, himself, made efficient departures, said good-bye once, meaning it, and promptly left. He stood staring out at the lake while Lucy went over to the table against the wall and poured some whisky from the bottle there and some ice water into two glasses.
A hawk wheeled up from the lakeside trees and circled slowly, its wings unmoving, above the water, and from the camp on the other shore, came the faint call of the bugle again, the soldiers’ signals with their echo of gunfire and defeat and victory, calling the children to swimming period or a ball game. The hawk slipped calmly across the wind, waiting for the small, fatal events of the world below him, the movement of grass, the lift of a branch, to disclose the presence of his supper.
“Oliver,” Lucy was saying, coming up to him with the two glasses in her hands.
“Yes?”
“How much are you paying that boy? The Bunner boy?”
Oliver shook his head, dissolving the confused images raised in his mind by the bird and the bugle and the imminence of departure. “Thirty dollars a week,” he said, taking one of the glasses.
“Isn’t that a lot?”
“Yes.”
“Can we afford it?” Lucy asked.
“No,” Oliver said, irritated by her question. Lucy ordinarily was haphazard about money and in his eyes was given to outlandish bursts of extravagance, not from greed or a love of luxury, but because of an infirm conception of the value and difficulty of money. But when she was opposed to something he wished to do, as he knew she was opposed to the hiring of Bunner, she showed an argumentative housewifely parsimoniousness.
“Do you really think we need him?” Lucy asked, standing at his side, watching the slow circling of the hawk over the water.
“Yes,” Oliver said. He lifted his glass ceremoniously. “To the small boy with the telescope.”
Lucy lifted her glass, almost absently, and took a small sip. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do we need him?”
Oliver touched her arm gently. “To give you some time to enjoy yourself.”
“I love being with Tony.”
“I know,” Oliver said. “But I think, for these few weeks, to have a bright, lively young man around him, somebody who can be a little rough with him …”
“You think I’m making him too soft,” Lucy said.
“It’s not that. It’s just that …” Oliver tried to find the most moderate and innocent reasons for his argument. “Well, only children, especially ones who’ve had a serious illness and who’ve had to be around their mothers a lot … When they grow up you’re liable to find them in the ballet.”
Lucy laughed. “Aren’t you silly?”
“You know what I mean,” Oliver said, annoyed at himself because he felt he was sounding stuffy. “Don’t think it isn’t a problem. Read any work on psychoanalysis.”
“I don’t have to read anything,” Lucy said, “to tell me how to bring up my son.”
“Just common sense,” Oliver began.
“I suppose you want to say I’m doing everything wrong,” Lucy said bitterly. “Say it and …”
“Now, Lucy,” Oliver said soothingly, “I don’t want to say anything of the kind. It’s just that maybe I see a different set of problems than you do, that I see things that I want to prepare Tony for that you don’t recognize.”
“Like what?” Lucy asked stubbornly.
“We live in chaotic times, Lucy,” Oliver said, feeling the words ringing hollow and grandiose, but not knowing how else to phrase what he wanted to say. “Changeable, dangerous times. You’ve got to be a giant to face them.”
“And you want to make a giant out of poor little Tony.” Lucy’s voice was sardonic.
“Yes,” Oliver said defensively. “And don’t call him poor little Tony. He’s only seven or eight years away from being a man.”
“A man is one thing,” Lucy said. “A giant is another.”
“Not any more,” Oliver said. “You’ve got to be a giant first these days. Then, after that, maybe you can manage to be a man.”
“Poor little Tony,” Lucy said. “And a snippy little college junior can make a giant out of a son, but a mother can’t.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Oliver. He felt himself getting angry and controlled himself consciously, because he didn’t want to leave on the bitter end of an argument. He made himself speak calmly. “First of all, Bunner isn’t a snippy little college boy. He’s intelligent and poised and humorous …”
“And I, of course,” Lucy said, “am dull and shy and sad.” She walked away from him, toward the house.
“Now, Lucy.” Oliver followed her. “I didn’t say that, either.”
Lucy stopped and turned and faced him, angrily. “You don’t have to,” she said. “For months, I manage to forget it. Then you say something …or I see another woman my age who has managed to escape …”
“For God’s sake, Lucy,” Oliver said, his irritation overcoming his resolution to avoid a quarrel, “don’t go into that song and dance.”
“Please, Oliver.” She lapsed suddenly into pleading. “Leave Tony alone with me this summer. It’s only for six more weeks. I’ve given in on the school—you can give in on this. He’ll be away so long, surrounded by all those little ruffians … I can’t bear to let him out of my sight yet. After what we’ve gone through with him. Even now, even when I know all he’s doing is walking up to the hotel and riding to the gate with you—it’s all I can do to keep myself from running down to make sure he’s all right.”
“That’s exactly what I was talking about, Lucy,” Oliver said.
Lucy stared at him, her eyes suddenly cold. She put the drink down on the grass with a kind of awkward curtsey Then she stood up and made a mocking little inclination of her head. “I bend the neck,” she said, “because you’re always right. As usual.”
With a sharp movement of his hand, Oliver took her chin and jerked her head up. Lucy didn’t try to pull away. She stood there, smiling crookedly, staring at him. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Lucy,” Oliver said. �
�I mean it.”
Then she wrenched her head away and turned and went into the house. The screen door slammed lightly behind her. Oliver looked after her for a moment, then drained his drink and picked up his bags and went to the side of the house, where the car was parked under a tree. He put the bags into the car, hesitated a moment, then said, under his breath, “The hell with it.” He got into the car and started the motor. He was backing out when Lucy came out of the house and over to the car. He cut the engine and waited.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice, standing against the car, her hand on the door.
Oliver took her hand and patted it. “Let’s forget it,” he said gently.
Lucy leaned over and kissed his cheek. She touched his tie with a flutter of her hand. “Buy yourself some new ties,” she said. “All your ties look as though you got them for Christmas, 1929.” She looked at him, smiling uncertainly, pleading. “And don’t be angry with me.”
“Of course not,” Oliver said, relieved that the afternoon and the departure were healed. Or almost healed. Or at least healed on the surface.
“Call me up during the week,” Lucy said. “And use the forbidden word.”
“I will.” Oliver leaned over and kissed her. Then he started the motor once more. Lucy stepped back. They waved at each other as Oliver drove the car up toward the hotel.
Lucy stood in the shade of the tree, watching the car disappear around a turn, hidden by the grove of trees. She sighed and went back into the living room. She sat down heavily on a dark wooden chair. She looked around her, thinking, No matter how many flowers you put in here, this room is impossible. She sat there, remembering the sound of the car, moving away up the narrow, sandy road. She sat there, in the ugly, fragrant room, thinking, Defeat, defeat. I always lose. I am always the one who says, I’m sorry.