by Irwin Shaw
“All right, Tony,” she said, watching Jeff coming slowly through the moonlight across the lawn toward the house. “Now, if you’re going to sleep out here, you’d better start getting your bed ready.”
“We haven’t finished the chess game yet,” Tony said. “I have him in a gruesome position.”
“Finish it tomorrow,” said Lucy. “You’ll still have him in a gruesome position.”
“Righteo,” Tony said, and pulled his head inside the house, letting the screen fall with a bang.
Jeff came onto the porch and stood in front of her. He started to put out his arms toward her, but she moved off and switched on the lamp that stood on the rattan table near the big glider on which Tony was going to sleep.
“Lucy,” Jeff whispered, following her. “Don’t run away.”
“It didn’t happen,” she said. Nervously, she pushed one of Tony’s shirts, on which she had been sewing buttons that afternoon, into a sewing basket that was on the table. “Nothing happened. Forget it. I beg you. Forget it.”
“Never,” he said, standing close to her. He put out his hand and touched her mouth. “Your lips …”
She heard herself moan and even as the sound came from her she was surprised at it. She had the feeling that she was losing control of the simplest mechanical gestures, the movement of her arms, the voice in her throat. “No,” she said and pushed past Jeff, scraping harshly at her mouth with the back of her hand.
Tony came out, loaded with bedclothes, and dumped them on the glider. “Listen, Jeff,” he said. “You’re not to study the board until tomorrow morning.”
“What? What’s that?” Jeff turned slowly toward the boy.
“No unfair advantages,” Tony said. “You promise?”
“I promise,” Jeff said. He smiled stiffly at Tony, then bent over and picked up Tony’s telescope, which was lying under a chair, and seemed to become absorbed in polishing the lens with the sleeve of his shirt.
Lucy watched Tony as he began to arrange the sheets and the blankets on the glider. “You’re sure you want to sleep out here tonight?” she asked, thinking, I will be motherly, that will bring me back. “You won’t be too cold?”
“It’s not cold,” Tony said cheerfully. “Millions of people sleep out in the summertime, don’t they, Jeff?”
“Millions,” Jeff said, still polishing the lens of the telescope. He was seated now and he was bent over and Lucy couldn’t see his face.
“Soldiers, hunters, mountain climbers,” said Tony. “I’m going to write Daddy and ask him to bring me a sleeping bag. Then I can sleep out in the snow, too.”
“You’ll have plenty of time for that,” Jeff said. He stood up and Lucy, watching him, saw that his face was quiet, unchanged, and that his expression was once more the usual one of friendly and skeptical indulgence that he displayed to Tony.
I have to be careful of him, Lucy thought. He is too resilient for me. It is not only the waists of young men that are flexible.
“Plenty of time, Tony,” Jeff said carelessly. “In World War Twelve.”
“That isn’t funny,” Lucy said sharply. She went over and started helping Tony make up the glider for the night.
“Pardon,” Jeff said. “World War Fifteen.”
“Don’t be sore at him, Mummy,” Tony said. “We have a deal. He talks to me just as though I was twenty years old.”
“There won’t be any World War Twelve or Fifteen or World War Anything,” Lucy said. She was frightened of the idea of war and she refused to read any of the news from Spain, where the Civil War had been going on for a year, and she had successfully prevented Oliver from buying tin soldiers or air-rifles for Tony when he was younger. Actually, she would not have been so touchy on the subject if somehow she could have been guaranteed that whatever war took place would come at a time when Tony was either too young or too old to be involved in it. If she had been forced to state her position she would have said that patriotism was only for people with large families. “Talk about something else,” she said.
“Talk about something else, Tony,” Jeff said obediently.
“Did you look at the moon tonight, Jeff?” Tony asked. “It’s nearly full. You can see just about everything.”
“The moon,” said Jeff. He lay down on his back on the floor of the porch and took one of the wooden chairs and up-ended it, holding it steady between his knees. He used the crossbar as a rest for the telescope and squinted off into the sky.
“What’re you doing there?” Lucy asked, almost suspiciously.
“Tony showed me this,” Jeff said, adjusting the telescope. “You’ve got to have a steady field, don’t you, Tony?”
“Otherwise,” Tony said, working busily on the glider, “the stars blur.”
“And one thing, we won’t have around here,” said Jeff, “is blurred stars.” He made a final quarter turn on the tube. “Consider the unblurred moon,” he said professorially. “An interesting place to visit, if you like traveling. Sail on a stone boat across the Mare Crisium … In English, Tony?”
“Sea of Crises,” Tony said automatically.
“Crises,” Jeff said. “Even on the cold, dead moon.”
He couldn’t have meant what he said before, Lucy thought resentfully, he was just trying it on, if he can play like this with Tony now.
“And to the south,” Jeff was saying, “a more pleasant place. The Mare Foecunditas.”
“The Sea of Fertility,” Tony said promptly.
“We will dip you in that two or three times, just to make sure.” Jeff grinned, lying there on his back, with the telescope pointed toward the stars.
“Jeff,” Lucy said, warningly.
“The Sea of Tranquility, the Marsh of Sleep, the Lake of Dreams,” Jeff went on, as though he hadn’t heard her, his deep youthful voice with its pleasant, educated touch of Boston making a trance-like music out of the names. “Maybe the moon is the place to move to this century, after all. When were you born, Tony?”
“March twenty-sixth,” Tony said. He was making an elaborate hospital corner with the sheets and the blankets on the lower edge of the glider mattress.
“Aries,” Jeff said. He put the telescope down and lay with his head back on the wooden flooring of the porch. His eyes were closed now, as though he were searching for visions, listening to unworldly voices, waiting for omens from the heavens. “The sign of the Ram, the horned beast in the heavens. Do you know how the Ram got there, Tony?”
“Do you believe in that stuff?” Tony stopped his work on the bed for a moment and looked at Jeff.
“I believe in everything,” Jeff said, still with his eyes closed, his voice liturgical and solemn. “I believe in the Zodiac and luck and transmigration of souls and sacrifice and secret diplomacy, secretly arrived at.”
“Human sacrifice,” Tony said incredulously. “Did people ever really do that?”
“Of course,” Jeff said.
“Until when?” Tony asked skeptically.
“Until yesterday at three-fifteen P.M. It’s the only kind of sacrifice that ever does any good,” Jeff said. “Wait until you’ve tried it two or three times, Tony, and you’ll see what I mean.”
“All right, Jeff, that’s enough of that,” Lucy said, thinking, He’s deliberately provoking me, he’s revenging himself on me. “Tony, pay attention here.”
“Phrixus and Helle,” Jeff said, almost as if she hadn’t spoken, “sons of the King of Thessaly, were badly treated by their stepmother …”
“Is this educational?” Lucy said, determined to show nothing.
“Enormously,” Jeff said.
“What was her name?” Tony asked.
“Who?”
“The stepmother.”
“That’s in the next lesson,” Jeff said. “So Mercury took pity on the boys and sent a ram with golden fleece to help them escape. The ram carried them on his back, high above the earth and everything was going fine until they came to the strait that separates Europe from Asia. Then
Helle fell and was drowned and they call the water the Hellespont to this day. And when Phrixus reached Colchis, which was a lively town when the weather was right, he sacrificed the ram in gratitude and Jupiter set the poor dead flying beast among the stars in recognition of his service to the king’s son …”
Lucy looked down curiously at Jeff. “Did you know all this before you met Tony?” she asked.
“Not a word,” Jeff said. “I go home and study every night so that Tony will think I’m the smartest man that ever lived.” He smiled. “I want him to be disappointed with every teacher he has from now on and get disgusted with education and never listen to any one of them again. It’s the least I can do for him.” He sat up suddenly, his face naïve and open, his eyes shining candidly in the light of the lamp. “Tony,” he said, “show your mother how you breathe when you swim.”
“Like this,” Tony said, ducking his head and making a swimming motion with his arms. “Kick, one, two, three, four, BREATHE!” He put his head to one side and opened his mouth wide at one corner, as though it was half in and half out of the water, and sucked in air with a loud, wet sound.
“Isn’t there a more gentlemanly way to breathe?” Lucy asked, thinking, The danger is over, everything is back to normal.
“No,” Jeff said, “I taught him that, too.” Sitting cross-legged on the floor now, he addressed Tony. “Do you think your father is getting his money’s worth out of me?”
“Well,” Tony said, teasing him, “almost.”
“Lie a little in your next letter,” Jeff said. “For friendship’s sake.” He stood up, picking up the telescope. He put the telescope to his eye and regarded Tony, at a distance of ten feet. “You will have to shave,” he said solemnly, “in exactly three years, two months, and fourteen days.”
Tony laughed and rubbed his chin.
“I have a question to ask you, young man.” Jeff came over to the glider and leaned against the chain, making it swing a little. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if I went home with you after Labor Day and stayed with you this winter to smarten you up some more?”
“Do you think you could do that?” Lucy could see that Tony was deeply pleased with the idea.
“Don’t stop, Tony,” Lucy said sharply. “Jeff was joking. He has to go back to college and be sensible again until next summer. Stop swinging on the chain, please, Jeff, it’s hard enough to make this up as it is.”
“One thing I don’t like about summers,” Tony said, “toward the end, they go too fast. Will I really see you this winter, Jeff?”
“Of course,” Jeff said. “Get your mother to bring you up to Dartmouth. For the football games and the winter carnival.”
“Mother, do you think we can go?”
“Maybe,” Lucy said, because she didn’t want to make an issue of it. “If Jeff remembers to invite us.”
“Tomorrow, Tony,” said Jeff, “I’ll stab myself in the hand and print the invitation in blood and that constitutes a holy contract. We’ll pull wires and get your mother elected Queen of the Carnival and they’ll take her picture sitting on top of a snowball and everybody’ll say, ‘By gum, there’s never been anything like that in New Hampshire before.’”
Lucy glanced uneasily at Tony. If he were a year older, she thought, he would catch on. Maybe even now … “Stop it,” she said to Jeff, risking alerting Tony. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” Jeff said slowly. He walked to the edge of the porch and looked once more at the sky through the telescope. “Mars,” he said, making his voice throaty and dramatic. “The low, baleful, red, unwinking planet. That’s your ruling planet, Tony, because you’re Aries. Favorable to slaughter and the arts of war. Become a soldier, Tony, and you’ll take a hundred towns and be at least a lieutenant colonel by the age of twenty-three.”
“Now, really, Jeff,” Lucy said, “that’s enough of that nonsense.”
“Nonsense?” Jeff said, sounding surprised. “Tony, do you think it’s nonsense?”
“Yes,” Tony said judiciously. “But it’s interesting.”
“People have been guiding their lives by the stars for five thousand years. The Kings of Egypt …” Jeff said. “Lucy,” and his voice was like a mischievous boy’s now, “when were you born?”
“A long time ago.”
“Tony, what’s your mother’s birthday?”
“August twenty-fifth.” Tony was enjoying this and he appealed to Lucy. “It can’t do any harm.”
“August twenty-fifth,” Jeff repeated. “The sign of Virgo. The Virgin …”
“Mother …” Tony looked inquiringly at Lucy.
“I’ll explain some other time.”
“In the region of the Euphrates,” Jeff went on, now pretending to be a lecturer and speaking rapidly and with no inflection, “it was identified with Venus, who was sad and perfect and was worshiped by lovers. The ruling planet is Mercury, the brightest star, which always keeps the same side turned to the sun and is frozen on one side and burning on the other. Virgoans are shy and fear to be brilliant …”
“Now,” said Lucy, feeling he had gone far enough, “where did you pick up all this foolishness?”
“Madame Vietcha’s Book of the Stars,” Jeff said, grinning. “Thirty-five cents at any good bookstore or at your druggist’s. Virgoans fear impurity and disorder and are liable to peptic ulcers. When they love, they love passionately and place a high premium on fidelity …”
“And how about you?” Lucy interrupted, almost with hostility, forgetting Tony for the instant, challenging Jeff. “What about your horoscope?”
“Aaah …” Jeff put the telescope down and wagged his head. “Mine is too sad to relate. I’m in opposition to my stars. They sit up there”—he waved sadly at the sky—“winking, defying me, saying, ‘Not a chance, not a chance …” I want to lead and they advise me to follow. I want to be brave and they say, Caution. I want to be great and they say, Perhaps in another life. I say, Love, and they say, Disaster. I’m a hero in the wrong twelfth of the Zodiac.”
There were footsteps on the gravel path alongside the porch and a moment later Lucy saw a young girl in blue jeans and a loose sweater come into view. For a moment Lucy didn’t recognize her, then saw that it was the daughter of a Mrs. Nickerson whom she had met at the hotel that afternoon. Tony halted work on the glider to stare at her.
“Hello,” the Nickerson girl said, coming onto the porch. She was a plump and prematurely developed girl and the blue jeans were stretched tight across her solid little behind. Her hair was streaked and Lucy noted disapprovingly that it had almost certainly been touched up. “Hello,” she repeated, standing with her legs widespread and her hands plunged into the pockets of the blue jeans. She looked around her with the unabashed self-possession of an animal trainer. “I’m Susan Nickerson,” she said, and if you closed your eyes you would have been sure it was a mature and rather unpleasant woman speaking. “We were introduced this afternoon.”
“Of course, Susan,” Lucy said. “This is my son Tony.”
“Delighted,” Susan said crisply. “I’ve heard a great deal about you.” Jeff made a face.
“My mother sent me over, Mrs. Crown,” Susan said, “to ask if you’d like to make a fourth at bridge tonight.”
Jeff glanced swiftly across at Lucy, then leaned over and picked up the chair that he had up-ended on the floor to observe the stars.
Lucy hesitated. She thought of the veranda of the hotel and the seared ranks of seasonal widows there. “Not tonight, Susan,” she said. “Tell your mother thank you, but I’m tired and I’m going to bed early.”
“Okay,” Susan said flatly.
“Bridge,” said Jeff, “has put this country further back than Prohibition.”
Susan inspected him coldly. She had bright, cold, blue, coin-like eyes. “I know about you,” she said. She had the trick of making the simplest statement sound like an accusation. It will come in very handy, Lucy thought, noticing it, if she la
ter decides to become a policewoman.
Jeff laughed. “Maybe you’d better keep it to yourself, Susan,” he said.
“You’re the Dartmouth boy,” she said. “My mother thinks you’re very handsome.”
Jeff nodded gravely, agreeing. “And what do you think?” he asked.
“You’re all right.” She shrugged, a small, plump movement under the loose sweater. “They’d never take you in the movies, though.”
“I was afraid of that,” Jeff said. “And how long are you going to be here?”
“I hope not long,” the girl said. “I like Nevada better.”
“Why?” Jeff asked.
“There was more happening,” Susan said. “This place is dead. It’s got the wrong age groups. They don’t even have movies, except on Saturdays and week-ends. What do you do here at night?”
“We look at the stars,” said Tony, who had been watching her, fascinated.
“Ummn,” Susan said, not impressed.
She may be only fourteen years old, Lucy thought, repelled and amused at the same time, but she sounds as though only the most extreme forms of vice could hold her interest for more than five minutes at a time.
Tony went over to Susan and offered her the telescope. “You want to take a look?”
Susan shrugged again. “I don’t care.” But she took the telescope and put it languidly to her eye.
“You ever look through one of those before?” Tony asked.
“No,” Susan said.
“You can see the mountains of the moon with this one,” said Tony.
Susan looked critically and without favor at the moon.
“How do you like that?” Tony asked, the moon’s proprietor.
“It’s okay,” Susan said, returning the telescope. “It’s the moon.”
Jeff chuckled, shortly, once, and Susan raked him with her policewoman’s eyes. “Well,” she said, “I must be off. My mother will want to know about the bridge.” She raised her hand with terrible grace, as though dispensing a blessing. “Ta,” she said.
“See you tomorrow,” Tony said, and his effort to be nonchalant made Lucy feel she was going to break into a sweat in sympathy.