Lucy Crown

by Irwin Shaw

  Oliver turned and went over to the edge of the porch, his back to Lucy. He leaned against a pillar, staring out across the quiet lake. And I was sure I had it all figured out, he thought. He felt defeated and incapable of further plans or decisions. What I should have done, he thought, with bitter hindsight, was pack everybody up the night I was here and get us all home together. Now, everybody’s had time to dig in.

  He heard a movement behind him and he turned quickly. Lucy was opening the door of the cottage, on her way in.

  “Where’re you going?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Tony’s coming.” She pointed toward the hotel, and Oliver saw Tony walking swiftly toward the cottage. “I think it’d be a good idea if you talked to him.”

  She went inside, the screen door tapping lightly behind her. Oliver watched her shadowy figure disappear through the rusted mesh.

  He shook his head and made himself smile before he turned to face Tony. He walked out onto the lawn a little way to greet him. Tony approached warily, his face grave and watchful, and stopped before he reached his father.

  “Hello, Daddy,” he said, waiting.

  Oliver went over to him and put his hand around Tony’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Hello, Tony,” he said. Still with his arm across the boy’s shoulders, Oliver walked back to the porch.

  “I’m all ready to go,” Tony said, pointing to the bags on the porch. “Should I start carrying things to the car?”

  Oliver didn’t answer. He dropped his arm from Tony’s shoulders and walked slowly over to a rattan armchair. He sat down heavily, like an old man, staring at his son.

  “I thought we were supposed to get out of here by three o’clock,” Tony said.

  “Come over here, Tony.”

  Doubtfully, as though fearing punishment, Tony walked across the porch and stopped in front of the chair. “Are you sore at me, Daddy?” he asked in a low voice.

  “No. Of course not. Why should I be?”

  “For calling you that night,” Tony said, looking at the floor. “For telling you what … what I saw …”

  Oliver sighed. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I had to tell you, didn’t I?” Tony was pleading now.

  “Yes,” Oliver said, after a pause. He stared at his son, wondering how much of this day the boy was going to remember. Children forget everything, Patterson had said. He had also said, Grownups forget everything. But none of it was true. Tony was going to remember clearly, accurately, painfully, and his life was going to be built on the memory. It would be simpler and less painful to slide past this moment, to make an excuse for taking the boy home alone, for packing him off to school alone. It would be easier to put him off temporarily if he asked about Lucy, to be vague and tricky when he wrote from school about coming home for the holidays, to let him discover slowly, by himself, over a period of time, that he had been put outside the boundaries of the family. It would be simpler, less painful, and finally, and with justice, as a grown man, Tony would despise him for it.

  Oliver reached out and drew the boy to him, putting him on his lap, holding his head against his shoulder, as he had done long ago, when Tony had been small.

  “Tony,” Oliver said, and it was easier to talk this way, with the boy’s weight against him, and the bony feel of his legs, and his head averted, “listen carefully. I wish this hadn’t happened. I wish, if it had happened, you never knew about it. But it happened. You found out about it. And you had to tell me.”

  Tony said nothing. He sat tensely, imprisoned in his father’s arms.

  “Tony,” Oliver said, “I’d like to ask you a question. Do you hate your mother?”

  Oliver felt the boy stiffen in his arms. “Why?” Tony asked. “What did she say?”

  “Answer the question, Tony.”

  With a sudden movement, Tony wriggled out of his father’s arms, and stood in front of him, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Yes,” he said savagely. “I hate her.”

  “Tony …” Oliver started painfully.

  “I’m not going to talk to her,” Tony said, speaking rapidly, his voice high and sharp and childish. “She can say anything she wants. Maybe I’ll say yes or no once in a while, when I have to, but I’m not going to talk to her.”

  “How would you feel if you never saw her again?” Oliver said.

  “Good!” He stood there, shoulders hunched, chin out fiercely, like a boy challenging another boy to cross a line drawn in the dust before him.

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Oliver said gently. “She loves you very much.”

  “I don’t care what she says.”

  “But she’s afraid of you …”

  “Don’t believe her. Don’t believe anything she says.” Now he didn’t sound like a little boy at all.

  “And because she’s afraid of you,” Oliver went on, conscientiously, but without hope, going to the end of every argument, “she says she doesn’t want to take you home with us. She doesn’t want to live in the same place with you, she says.”

  For a moment, Oliver thought that Tony was going to cry. He ducked his head and he rubbed his hands jerkily against his thighs. But then he raised his head and looked squarely at Oliver. “That’s okay with me,” he said. “I’m going to school anyway.”

  “Not only school,” Oliver said, persisting. “She never wants to see you, she says. She doesn’t even want to let you come into the house. Not on Christmas. Not on holidays. Never.”

  “Oh.” Tony’s voice was so soft that Oliver wasn’t sure he had said anything. “What if you said, ‘It’s my house, I’ll take in anybody I want.’”

  “Then she’ll leave me,” said Oliver flatly. “This afternoon.”

  “Oh.” Tony glanced, measuringly, at his father. “Don’t you want her to?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Why not?”

  Oliver sighed and when he spoke, he didn’t look at Tony, but above his head, at the blue sky, cold with its premonition of autumn. “It’s hard to explain to a thirteen-year-old boy what a …a marriage is like, Tony. How a man and a woman become—locked—with each other. I miscalculated on myself. Do you know what that means?”

  Tony thought for a moment. Then he nodded. “Yes. You thought you were a certain way and you turned out to be another way.”

  “A certain way.” Oliver nodded. “It turns out that I was wrong.”

  “All right,” Tony said harshly. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’m going to leave it up to you, Tony. If you say the word, I’ll call your mother out here and tell her you’re staying with me. And we’ll say good-bye to her and that’ll be the end of it.”

  Tony’s mouth quivered. “And how’ll you feel then?”

  “I … I’ll feel like dying, Tony,” Oliver said.

  “And if I say I’ll go away?”

  “I’ll take you home and start you in school and I’ll come back for your mother,” Oliver said, still looking over Tony’s head at the cold sky. “I’ll visit you on holidays and maybe in the summertime we could go on trips together. To the Rockies, to Canada, maybe even to Europe.”

  “But I never could come home?” Tony asked, like a man at a ticket window in a railroad station asking all possible questions, to make sure there would be no mistake about the train he was to take.

  “No,” Oliver whispered. “Not for a long time.”

  “Never?” Tony asked harshly.

  “Well, in a year or two …” Oliver said. “Right now your mother’s rather hysterical, but in time, I’m sure …”

  “Okay!” Tony turned away, presenting his back to Oliver. “What do I care?”

  “What do you mean, Tony?” Oliver stood up and walked over behind Tony, but didn’t touch him.

  “Call her out here. Tell her you’ll come back for her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Tony wheeled around and stared bitterly at his father. “Isn’t that what you want?”

 
“It’s up to you, Tony.”

  Tony shouted now, out of control. “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Yes, Tony,” Oliver whispered. “That’s what I want.”

  “Okay,” Tony said recklessly. “What’re we waiting for?” He ran over to the door and threw it open and shouted in. “Mummy! Mummy!” Then he turned back to his father. “You talk to her.” Moving very quickly, his hands fumbling, he started to pick up his valises. “I want to put these old things in the car!”

  “Wait.” Oliver put out his hand to restrain him. “You’ve got to say good-bye. You can’t just go off. Maybe, at the last minute, she’ll change her mind …”

  “I don’t want anyone to change their mind,” Tony shouted. “Where’s my telescope?”

  The door opened and Lucy came out. She looked pale, but composed, her eyes going from Oliver to Tony and back again.

  “Oliver …” she said.

  “I’m taking Tony with me now.” He tried to sound routine and matter-of-fact. “I’ll call you. I’ll be back for you some time next week.”

  Lucy nodded, her eyes on Tony.

  “We might as well get started now,” Oliver said, with shaky briskness. “It’s pretty late as it is. Tony, are these all your things?” He pointed at the two valises.

  “Yes,” Tony said. He avoided looking at his mother, and gathered up the bat, the telescope, the fishing rod. “I’ll carry these.”

  Oliver picked up the two valises. “I’ll wait for you in the car.” His voice was choked and muffled. He tried to say something to Lucy, but nothing seemed to come out. He walked off hurriedly, carrying the bags.

  Tony stared after him for a moment, then, still avoiding looking at his mother, peered around him, as though making sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind him.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess I got everything.”

  Lucy went over to him. There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye?” she asked softly.

  Tony fought with the movements of his mouth. “Sure,” he said gruffly. “Good-bye.”

  “Tony,” Lucy said, standing close to him, but not touching him, “I want you to grow up into a wonderful man.”

  With a childish cry of anguish, Tony dropped the things he was carrying and threw himself into Lucy’s arms. They held each other tight for a long time, but they both knew they were only saying good-bye and that it wasn’t going to do any good. Finally, Lucy stepped back, resolutely.

  “I think it’s time to go,” she said.

  Tony’s face stiffened. “Yes,” he said. He bent and picked up the bat and the telescope and the fishing rod and started after Oliver. He stopped at the corner of the porch, and Lucy felt that for the rest of her life that was the way she was going to remember him, in the suit that had grown too small for him during the summer, stiff-faced, holding the implements of childhood, outlined against the ruffled blue lake. “If we happen to just see each other,” he said, “you know, just by accident, like people do, on a train or in the street, I mean—what do we say to each other?”

  Lucy smiled shakily at him. “I … I guess we say hello,” she said.

  Tony nodded. “Hello,” he said thoughtfully. He nodded again, as though satisfied, and disappeared around the corner of the porch, following his father.

  Lucy stood still. After a while she heard the car start and drive off. She didn’t move. She just stood there, looking out at the lake, with the wreckage of the phonograph at her feet.

  And that was the summer.

  15

  “WELL, MR. CROWN,” the headmaster was saying, “as in most cases of boys his age, there’s a little of everything to report.” The headmaster raised the bottle of sherry inquiringly, but Oliver shook his head. When Oliver had been in school he was sure that his headmaster had not offered sherry to the fathers of the pupils before lunch. Oliver realized that this was a sign that education had become more relaxed since he was a boy, but he also realized that if he accepted a second glass, a minute demerit would be entered, at the back of the headmaster’s mind, against the Crown family.

  The headmaster put the bottle down ceremonially. His name was Hollis, he was surprisingly young, and he moved delicately in the cheerful library-like room which served as his office, as though to reassure the parents of the boys entrusted to his care that the developing souls would not be harmed by any sudden or uncalculated movement on his part.

  “What I mean,” Hollis went on, smiling boyishly, expertly taking the sting out of judgment, “is that he has his problems, even as you and I did at his age, I’m sure.”

  “When I was his age,” Oliver said, purposely frivolous, to keep from being lectured, “my one problem was that I could only chin forty-three times. I’d set my heart on fifty, by my sixteenth birthday.”

  Hollis smiled dutifully, accustomed to many generations of fathers. “Of course,” he said, “the physical thing cannot be altogether discounted. Because he can’t join in all the games with the other boys, the team games—although I do hear he plays rather good tennis—it’s possible that his—uh—leaning toward solitude, toward going-it-alone, has been somewhat accentuated. Although the school doctor is quite satisfied with his physical condition—we give him very careful over-all examinations once a month, you know. In fact, the doctor has privately expressed the opinion to me that Tony, if he wished, could indulge in a great deal more group activity than he actually does.”

  “Maybe he just doesn’t like the group,” Oliver said. “Maybe if the group was different, he’d plunge in up to his neck.”

  “Perhaps,” Hollis said. The tone was mollifying and polite, but there was a chilly blink of the eyelids over the candid, clever blue eyes. “Although we do have a fine group of boys here, if I say so myself. Most representative.”

  “I’m sorry,” Oliver said, knowing that he had been too brusque to this harmless, conscientious man only because it was impossible to explain anything to him. “I’m sure it’s Tony’s fault.”

  “Well”—Hollis spread his hands forgivingly—“fault is a harsh word. Taste, perhaps. No doubt he’ll change as he gets older. Though, as the twig is bent …” He shrugged and smiled at the same time, administering a warning and a caress at the same moment. “He does particularly well at one thing,” Hollis went on, happy to be able to uncover treasure. “He does the cleverest cartoons for the school paper. We haven’t had a boy as gifted as that in many years. They’re surprisingly mature. Rather acid, I must say …” Again the soft apologetic smile, to put the gloss of manners on the necessary and rather unpleasant truth. “I, myself, have heard some grumblings in certain quarters about the sharpness of some of his caricatures. But, of course, he must have sent them to you, you’ve seen them yourself …”

  “No,” Oliver said. “I haven’t seen them. I didn’t know he did them.”

  “Ah.” Hollis regarded Oliver curiously. “Really?” He bent his head and shuffled through some papers on his desk, then spoke more quickly, tactfully getting away from the subject. “He does fairly well in biology and chemistry. Which is all to the good, of course, since he means to take a pre-medical course. He’s—uh—negligent, I’m afraid, in most of the other subjects, although I’m told he does a great deal of reading on his own. Unfortunately,” again the understanding, practiced, headmaster’s grimace, “almost none of the reading has anything at all to do with his class work. And if he wants to get into a good college in two more years …” Hollis left the sentence hanging, mildly and ominously threatening, like the first delicate puff of wind on a still, dark day.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Oliver said. He stood up. “Thank you very much.”

  Hollis stood up, too, framed against the window, behind which, in the distance, the gray Gothic buildings of the campus glittered dully in the autumn sun. He held out his hand, a spry, intelligent young man in a soft blue shirt, knowingly representing solid, gray-stone tradition, discreetly tempered by progress. The two men shook ha
nds and Hollis said, “I suppose you’ve come up to take Tony back to Hartford with you for the holiday?”

  “We don’t live in Hartford,” Oliver said.

  “Ah?” Hollis said. “I thought I remembered …”

  “We moved almost a year ago,” Oliver said. “We live in New Jersey now. In Orange. I had a chance to sell my plant in Hartford and buy a larger and more up-to-date one in New Jersey,” he explained, giving all the false reasons.

  “Do you like New Jersey better?” Hollis inquired politely.

  “Much,” Oliver said. He did not explain that he would have liked any place in the world better than Hartford, any place to which he and Lucy came as strangers, any place in which they had no friends to ask curious questions about Tony and to fall into strained silence whenever the subject of children came up in conversation. He did not explain, either, that for the last six months of their stay in Hartford, Lucy had refused to see any of their old friends, with the exception of Sam Patterson. Sam Patterson knew most of what there was to be known, and there was no need to lie to him. With all the others, the weight of speculation had finally been too much to bear. “It’s no good any more,” Lucy had said. “After an evening with them, I feel as though I’ve been with a group of cryptographers who’ve been working with all their might to crack a code. And the code is me. I’ve had enough of it. If you want to see them, you go yourself. I’m through.”

  “Well,” Hollis was saying, “Orange isn’t so far. Are you driving Tony home today?”

  “No,” Oliver said. “This Thanksgiving my wife and I’re going down to South Carolina. It’s my one chance to play some golf before the winter sets in. I just came up to have lunch with Tony.”

  “Oh.” A noncommittal blink of academic eyes. “I’ll arrange to have Tony in to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll tell Mrs. Hollis.”

  “Thanks,” Oliver said. “Will there be many boys here?”

  “A few,” Hollis said. “We have a boy whose parents are in India, and there are always one or two from—uh—broken families …” He ducked his head deprecatingly, smiling, deploring and forgiving the ways of the modern world. “Though most of the boys who live too far away, or who don’t go home for one reason or another, usually are invited by friends.” He paused, dutifully, permitting a parent to understand that his son was not the sort of boy who was invited by friends. “Don’t worry,” he said heartily. “Tony will be well fed.”