by Irwin Shaw
For three days she had avoided being left alone with Jeff and ten times during the three days she almost told him hat he had better leave, but she didn’t do that, either.
Lucy was one of those women who achieve innocence in marriage. As desirable as she was, and she never realized the full power of her beauty or the real effect she had on men, she was so clearly unapproachable that she had rarely been approached.
The only notable exception had been Sam Patterson, one night at a country-club dance, when he had been rather drunk and had found himself alone with her on the terrace and had taken her into his arms, which she had permitted, momentarily mistaking amorousness for friendliness.
“Lucy, dearest,” he had whispered, “there’s something I have to tell you that I …”
She had caught on then, from the tone of his voice, and she knew that whatever he had to tell her it would be better not to hear.
She had twisted away and laughed good-naturedly, and said, “Now, Sam, how many drinks have you had?”
He had stood there, ashamed, defiant, almost tragic. “It’s not the drink,” he said. But then he had turned away and walked swiftly back into the club, and she had thought, It’s only Sam, everybody knows about him, and when she had gone inside she had entertained herself by looking around the room and taking a count of the women that Sam Patterson had had affairs with, and there were three that she was sure of, two that she was almost sure of, and one that she guessed. She had never said anything to Oliver about it, because what was the use, and Oliver would be certain to be harsh about it and stop seeing Patterson, and everybody would lose by the whole thing. Patterson had never mentioned the night on the terrace again and neither had she and it had been long ago, when she and Oliver had only been married for five years, and sometimes now she had the feeling that it had never happened.
Her fidelity was not so much a matter of morality as a mixture of love, gratitude and fear of Oliver. It was her conviction that Oliver had rescued her from an uncertain and tormented youth and the memory of that escape, as she regarded it, made her reject almost automatically whatever fleeting desires she might have felt through the years for other men.
Despite his debonair manner, Jeff was inexperienced enough so that to him most women were equally approachable or unapproachable. And rather surprisingly, considering his good looks, he was completely humble, and had blurted it all out one afternoon, while they were seated on the lawn after lunch. They were alone for an hour because Tony was taking the daily nap which was a fixed part of his regime.
There was a mid-day hush over the lake and the morning’s wind had died down and even the insects seemed to have drowsed off. Lucy, in a flowered cotton dress, was seated leaning against a tree, her legs stretched out in front of her, her ankles crossed, a book, open and face-down, on her lap. Jeff was kneeling on one knee a few feet away from her, like a football-player resting during a time out. He had a piece of grass in his mouth and he kept his eyes down and from time to time plucked a clover stem and examined it and threw it away. It was cool in the shade of the tree and Lucy felt, sitting there, with her skin still remembering the soft touch of lake water from the morning’s swim, that she was at one of those perfect silent moments of her life that she would have wished to prolong unchanged indefinitely.
Jeff was wearing faded blue denim trousers and a white collarless T shirt with short sleeves. In the flickering shadow of the foliage above them, his skin looked mahogany against the white of his shirt. His arms were smooth but muscular, and when he plucked at the grass, Lucy noticed how the tendons moved delicately under the dark skin above his wrists. He was barefooted and his feet were squarish and much lighter in color than the rest of him and somehow they seemed to Lucy to be childishly vulnerable. Somewhere along the line, Lucy thought, I’ve forgotten what young men look like.
Jeff was squinting at a leaf in his hand. “All my life,” he said, “I’ve been on the hunt and I haven’t found one yet.”
“Found what yet?” Lucy asked.
“A four-leaf clover.” He tossed the leaf aside. “Do you think it’s significant?”
“Profoundly,” Lucy said.
“That’s what I think, too,” said Jeff. He sat down in a neat, economical, folding movement, holding his knees.
The narrow, flexible waists of young men, Lucy thought. She shook her head and picked up her book and stared at the page. “Everything turned out badly,” she read. “There were mosquitoes at Arles and when they got to Carcassone they discovered the water was turned off for the afternoon.”
“I want to know the conditions,” Jeff said.
“I’m reading,” said Lucy.
“Why’ve you avoided me for the last three days?” Jeff asked.
“I can’t wait to see how this book comes out,” said Lucy. “They are rich and young and beautiful and they travel all over Europe and their marriage is going on the rocks.”
“I asked you a question.”
“Have you ever been to Arles?” Lucy said.
“No,” said Jeff. “I haven’t been anywhere. Do you want to go to Arles with me?”
Lucy turned the page. “That’s why I’ve been avoiding you for three days,” she said. “If you keep saying things like that, I really think it might be better if you leave.” But even as she said it she knew she was thinking, Isn’t this pleasant, sitting here under a tree, listening to a young man talking foolishly like that, Do you want to go to Arles with me?
“I’m going to tell you something about yourself,” Jeff said.
“I’m trying to read,” Lucy said. “Don’t be rude.”
“You are letting yourself be wiped out,” Jeff said.
“What?” Lucy put down her book, surprised.
“By your husband,” he said. He stood up and talked down at her. “He’s got you locked in, stowed down, vaulted, stifled …”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucy said, all the more vehemently because from time to time she had said almost the same thing to Oliver in practically the same words. “You hardly even know him.”
“I know him, I know him,” Jeff said. “And if I didn’t know him, I’d know the type. My father has ten like him for friends and they’ve been in and out of my house since I was born. The holy, superior, soft-voiced, all-knowing, Ivy-League owners of the earth.”
“You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Lucy said.
“Don’t I, though?” Jeff began to stride restlessly back and forth in front of her. “I watched you all last August. I sat behind you in the movie house, I hung around the soda fountain when you came for ice cream. I pretended to be buying a magazine in the bookshop when you came into the circulating library. I rowed past here three times a day. I had my eye on you, I had my eye on you,” he chanted wildly. “Why do you think I came back here this summer?”
“Sssh,” Lucy said. “You’re making too much noise.”
“Nothing escaped me,” Jeff said melodramatically. “Nothing. Didn’t you even notice me?”
“No,” Lucy said.
“You see!” Jeff said loudly, as though he’d scored a point. “He’s put blinkers on you! Blinded you! You don’t even see anything except through those cold, filing-cabinet eyes.”
“Well, now,” Lucy said reasonably, hoping to calm Jeff down, “I don’t think it’s so unusual for a married woman of my age not to notice nineteen-year-old boys in drugstores.”
“Don’t call me a nineteen-year-old boy,” Jeff shouted in anguish. “And don’t call yourself a married woman of your age.”
“You are the most difficult boy,” Lucy said. She picked up her book again. “Now I’m going to read,” she said firmly.
“Go ahead and read.” Jeff crossed his arms and glared down at her. “I don’t care whether you hear what I have to say or not. But I’m going to say it anyhow. I watched you because I thought you were the most magnificent woman I had ever seen in my whole life …”
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�After Carcassone,” Lucy read aloud, her voice clear and melodious, “they were stopped by floods and they decided that Spain would probably be boring anyway, so they turned north in the direction of …”
With a choked sound, Jeff leaned over and grabbed the book. Then he threw it, with all his strength, far out across the lawn.
“All right.” Lucy stood up. “That’s enough. It’s one thing to be an irresponsible and amusing boy. It’s quite another to be an insulting and overconfident boor … Now, please leave.”
Jeff faced her, his lips tight. “Forgive me,” he said huskily. “I’m not overconfident. I’m the least overconfident man in the world. I keep remembering what it was like to kiss you and I …”
“You must forget that completely,” said Lucy crisply. “I let you kiss me because you begged like a puppy and it was like kissing a nephew good night.” Even as she said it she was pleased with herself for the intelligent way she was handling him.
“Don’t lie,” he whispered. “Whatever else you do, don’t lie.”
“I asked you to leave,” Lucy said.
Jeff glared at her. Anybody watching us, Lucy thought, would be certain that he had just finished telling me he hated me. Suddenly he turned, and strode, bare-footed and straight-backed, over to where he had thrown the book. He picked it up and smoothed out a crumpled page and walked slowly back to her, under the tree.
“I return the book,” he said, giving it to her. “I admit I am a fool. I admit everything.” He grinned at her tentatively. “I even admit I was nineteen years old last summer. I don’t remember anything you don’t want me to remember. I don’t remember that I ever said that you were a magnificent woman and I don’t remember that I ever did anything but praise Oliver Crown as a paragon among men. And above all, I don’t remember that I ever kissed you. I am abject in the most Eastern, Oriental, abject way and I promise to remain abject from this date until Labor Day.”
He waited for her to smile, but she didn’t smile. She found her place again in the book.
“I am as humble as the worm,” Jeff said, watching her closely, “I am as respectful as a millionaire’s butler, I am as sexless as a seventy-year-old eunuch in a home for aged Turks … There,” he said triumphantly. “You laughed.”
“All right,” Lucy said, seating herself again. “You can stay. On one condition.”
“What condition?” He looked down at her suspiciously.
“You must promise not to be serious.”
“I will be so frivolous,” he said gravely, “that little children will turn from me in disgust.”
Across the lake the bugle from the boys’ camp blew, and as if this were a signal for him, he made a stiff, wide salute, and turned, with military precision, on his heel, saying, “I leave you now. I go to devote my life to the pursuit of the three-leaf clover.”
He walked off slowly, head down, staring at the ground and started a methodical, quartering course over the lawn, stopping from time to time to bend over and pick one of the small plants. Lucy sat there, against the tree, her eyes half-closed, conscious of the white-shirted figure moving across the sunlit grass with the lake shining behind him and the mountains pale blue in the mid-day heat. He watched me all summer, she thought drowsily, now what about that?
6
“NOW LOOK, LUCY, YOU must remember where you put it,” Oliver was saying over the phone, his voice loaded with the weary patience which Lucy knew so well and which always froze her into a state of near-amnesia, because she knew what exasperated impatience it disguised. “Think hard.”
“I am thinking hard,” Lucy said, and she knew she sounded sullen and childish, but she couldn’t help it. “I’m sure I left all the bills in my desk.”
She was standing in the living room in the cottage as she spoke, watching Tony and Jeff playing chess under the light of a lamp at the big table in the middle of the room. Both of them were concentrating, heads close together over the board, Tony because he was determined to win and Jeff because he was being polite and did not want to seem to be listening to the conversation on the phone being conducted six feet away from him.
“Lucy, darling,” Oliver’s voice now compounded both the weariness and the patience, “I’ve looked twice in your desk. It’s not there. You’ve got bills from 1932 there and recipes for fish soup and an invitation to the wedding of two people who were divorced three years ago—but the bill from the garage is not there. I repeat,” he said slowly, in that maddening voice, “the bill for the garage is not there.”
She felt like crying. Whenever Oliver got after her for the inefficiency with which she ran the household accounts, she had a flustered, tragic sense that the modern world was too complicated for her, that unknown people came into her room when she was absent and maliciously rifled her papers, that Oliver was sure she was an idiot and regretted marrying her. If Tony and Jeff hadn’t been there she would have cried, which would have had the advantage of making Oliver relent and say, “The hell with it. It isn’t that important. I’ll straighten it out somehow.”
But even though neither Tony nor Jeff was watching her she couldn’t cry, of course. All she could say was, “I’m sure I paid it. I’m absolutely sure.”
“Jenkins says no,” Oliver said. Jenkins was the owner of the garage and Lucy despised him because he had a trick of turning from the warmest affability to whining protest when people made him wait for his money past the fifth of the month.
“Whose word are you going to take?” Lucy asked. “Jenkins’ or mine?”
“Well, it’s not in the checkbook,” Oliver said, and she could have screamed at the thin, distant persistence of the voice on the phone, “and I can’t find the receipted bill and he was most obnoxious about it today when I stopped in for gas. It’s very embarrassing, Lucy, to have a man come up to you and say you’ve owed him seventy dollars for three months, when you’ve thought you’ve paid it.”
“We have paid it,” Lucy said stubbornly, not remembering anything.
“Lucy, I repeat,” Oliver said, “we must have the bill.”
“What do you want me to do?” she cried, her voice rising, despite herself. “Come down and look for it myself? If that’s what you want, I’ll take the train tomorrow morning.”
Jeff looked up quickly at this, then returned to the game.
“Guard your queen,” he said to Tony.
“I have a deadly plan,” Tony said. “Watch.”
“No, no,” Oliver said wearily. “I’ll talk to him myself. Forget it.”
When he said, Forget it, Lucy knew that it was a sentence on her, a small, recurrent, punitive, mounting sentence.
“How are things up there?” Oliver asked, but coolly, disciplining her. “How’s Tony?”
“He’s playing chess with Jeff,” said Lucy. “Do you want to talk to him?”
“Yes, please.”
Lucy put the phone down. “Your father wants to talk to you, Tony,” she said. She started out of the room, as Tony said, “Hi, Dad.”
She was conscious that Jeff was watching her as she went out onto the porch and she had a feeling that she looked tense and humiliated.
“We saw a deer today,” Tony was saying. “He came down to the lake to drink.”
Lucy moved off across the lawn toward the shore of the lake because she didn’t want to have to talk to Oliver again. The moon was full and it was a warm night and a slight milky mist was rising from the water. From the opposite shore came the sound of the bugle. Every night after taps at the camp there, the bugler gave a short concert. Tonight he was playing French cavalry calls, very well, and the strange, quick music made the whole scene, with the borders of the lake softened and almost obscured by the rising mist, seem unfamiliar and melancholy.
Lucy stood there, holding her bare arms because of the little chill along the edge of the water, allowing her irritation to be soothed by the moonlight and the bugle calls into self-pity.
She heard the steps behind her, but she didn’t turn ar
ound and when Jeff put his arms around her she had the feeling not of a woman being pursued by a young man, but of a child taken under mature protection. And when she turned around and he kissed her, although it soon changed into something else, she had the feeling that she had been bruised and that her hurt was being assuaged. She felt his hands, smooth and hard, on the bare flesh of her back, gentle, searching, demanding. She pulled her head away and, still embraced, put her face against his shoulder.
“Oh, Lord …” Jeff whispered. He put his hand under her chin and tried to pull her head up, but she resisted and pushed deeper into the loose flannel of his shirt.
“No,” she said. “No. No more …”
“Later,” he whispered. “I have the house all to myself. My sister’s in town for the week.”
“Stop it.”
“I’ve been so good,” Jeff said. “I can’t any more. Lucy …”
“Mother …” It was Tony’s voice, high and childish, carrying across the lawn from the house. “Mother …”
Lucy broke away and hurried across the lawn.
“Yes, Tony,” she called, as she reached the porch.
“Daddy wants to know if you want to talk to him again.”
Lucy stopped and leaned against the pillar of the porch, trying to breathe properly. “Not unless he has something he particularly wants to say to me,” she said, through the open window.
“Mother says only if you have something you particularly want to say to her,” Tony said into the phone.
She waited. There was silence for a moment and then Tony said, “Okay. I will. So long,” and she heard the click of the phone as he hung up. He poked his head out through the window, lifting the screen.
“Mother,” he called.
“I’m here,” she said, from the shadows of the porch.
“Daddy said to tell you he can’t come up this week-end,” he said. “There’s a man coming in from Detroit he has to see.”