Cold Spring Harbor (22 page)

“I’m sixteen.”

“Oh; sorry. Still, looking younger than your age is a
luckier thing than looking older, right? For example, I’m twenty-six and most people take me for over thirty—that could give me a few problems in later life, am I right?” And he turned his fading smile to Curtis. “Well, thank you again, sir. Very much.”

As soon as they were out in the brilliance and roar of the street again, Curtis said “Well, I wouldn’t feel bad, Phil, just because some clerk in a store makes a wrong guess about your age. You’ll get your full growth soon enough, and you’ll fill out too. Seems to me that ought to be the least of your worries these days. So. Want to head on over to Grand Central?”

What Phil liked best about the Men’s Bar at the Biltmore, apart from the very name of it, was that nobody’s age seemed to matter there in the brief and profitable seasons of traveling prep-school boys. Soon a tall, cold draft beer was set before him, at one of the little tables along the wall, and a double scotch, with ice and water, had been prepared for his father. Some things seemed never to change: the pallor and fatigue in Curtis Drake’s face would always give way to a look of ruddy health after a few swallows of whiskey, and by the time of the second round there’d be a fine sparkle in his eyes, reminiscent of rare and unexpected Christmas mornings long ago.

“What’s the matter, Phil? You’re not still brooding about that little clothing-store clerk, are you? You don’t want to let things like that prey on your mind. Matter of fact, I was hoping we’d have more time today, so we could talk at some length about this general business of your growing up. I know you can’t make any plans now beyond school and the army—that’s only reasonable, for as long as the war goes on—but I wonder if you’re prepared to grow into a few responsibilities of another kind. What I’m getting at, Phil, is that your mother is a very fragile person.”

“Oh, I know that.”

“She’s extremely insecure and childish; she’s always had to depend on someone else for survival.”

“I know all that, Dad; you don’t have to explain this kind of—”

“Well, all right. But the point is, that burden’s always been mine in the past, and now I’m trying to think about the future. It can’t be your sister’s responsibility because your sister has a family of her own, so I imagine it’s going to be yours. Oh, I’m not saying this is anything that necessarily ought to—you know—ought to concern you greatly for the
pre
sent, Phil, but it’s something to keep in mind. All right? Are we agreed, then? Can I have your hand on it?”

“Sure,” Phil said, and they shook hands as soberly as men closing a deal that involved a fortune, though Phil didn’t yet understand the terms.

“And now,” Curtis said, “if you don’t mind my sitting here like a tired old man, I think you’d better make a run for it. Everything else can wait, you see, but a train doesn’t wait for anybody.”

And Phil made a run for it, hurrying down the Biltmore steps with his cumbersome luggage and out across the floor of Grand Central, getting through the right gate in the nick of time before it rattled shut.

As the sleek, quiet New England train drew out of the tunnel and swiftly past drab uptown tenement blocks, row on row of them, there was nothing for him to do but ride.

“Hey there, Drake.”

“How’s it going, Drake?”

It wasn’t much, but a few other Irving boys were saying hello to him as they moved up the aisle in their search for clusters of happier Irving boys in the cars ahead. One of them even paused at his seat to ask how his summer had been, and called him “Phil.”

But there were no further diversions after the first glimpses of green at the rim of Connecticut. Philip Drake
had peeked and seen his sister locked in copulation with Evan Shepard this morning, and time might never diminish the shame of it. He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate from the rest of your life, but that didn’t mean there’d be any way to keep from knowing it was there.

“Would you like me to heat up the roast lamb tonight, dear?” Gloria asked later that day. “Or would you and Evan rather have some chicken fricassee? That’d be just as easy, really, because all I’d have to do would be—”

“Well, actually,” Rachel said, “I don’t think Evan and I’ll be eating here tonight, Mother; maybe you’d better just fix something for yourself, okay?”

And before there could be any further questions she escaped from the kitchen and went upstairs. Now that the baby was here it was always easy to make these little escapes, but the baby was no convenience in the hours of waiting for Evan to come home. And on this particular afternoon her waiting held a special, unspeakable tension that didn’t begin to break until she heard his heavy shoes on the stairs.

“See what I did, darling?” she said. “I brought up some cold beer for us.”

“Good.”

“And I know you’re anxious to get this whole thing over with—I am, too—but I think it’ll be better if we can talk a minute first, okay?”

“Sure.” He had slumped into a chair by the little hearth-side.

“Would you like me to light a fire?” she asked him shyly.

“A fire? In this weather? You out of your mind?”

“Well, all right, but listen. I know you’ll have to tell her we need privacy and everything, because of course that
is
the most important point; but whatever else you say, don’t tell her about the door curtain this morning, okay? Don’t tell on Philly.”

“I’ll tell her whatever has to be told, Rachel.”

“All right,” she said. “But if you tell on Philly I’ll never—”

“Ah, you’ll never what?”

“I’ll never forgive you. I’ll always hate you for it. And I mean that, Evan.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He got up, belched deeply, wiped his wet mouth on his hand, and made for the door.

The conference downstairs couldn’t have lasted more than ten or fifteen minutes, and it must have been very subdued, because Rachel could hear neither of their voices as she sat twisting her hands and rocking in something close to anguish.

Then she stood up and went quickly to the door because Evan was back. He said it was settled; it was over and done with; he had told her mother they’d be out of here within a couple of days.

“How’d she take it?”

“Seemed to take it okay. Isn’t a hell of a lot else she can do, when you think about it.”

“Did you tell her about the—did you tell on Philly?”

He began to pace the floor, moving away from her, making her wait for the answer.

“Well, I meant to,” he said at last, “and now I almost wish I had, but it wasn’t necessary.”

“Oh, thank God. Oh, thank God for that.”

And he turned on her. “You’re a funny kid, Rachel, you know that? You ‘love everybody’ all the time; you ‘thank God’ for everything—Christ’s sake, you even thanked God the day the army turned me down. I mean you’re a nice enough girl, but you’re soft. You’re soft as shit.”

“That’s not fair, Evan.”

“Yeah, and there’s another one: ‘fair.’ You really think anything’s ever been ‘fair’ in the world? Because listen, kid, I’ve got news for you. There
is
no fair.”

“You know I don’t like it when you call me ‘kid.’ ”

“Kid,”
he said with a vehemence that startled them both. “Kid, kid, kid and child, child, child. Now, why the fuck don’t you leave me alone?”

“I’ll leave you alone,” she told him, “when you stop talking to me in this awful, hateful tone of—”

That was when he moved up close and hit her across the face. It was only a slap but it was hard enough to hurt his hand and turn her head sharply away, enough to send her a few steps back and sideways until the bed caught her and whirled her around and sat her down. She wasn’t crying yet and she wasn’t looking at him, but a dark pink blotch was spreading in her cheek, shaped like the map of Texas, and he knew he’d have to get out of here fast or he’d hit her again.

Driving was the best way Evan had ever found for recovering from rage—for putting his mind back in order and his nerves at rest. You couldn’t be out of control when you had to control an automobile. Shifting and steering, paying attention to traffic lights and speed limits, you always knew it wouldn’t be long before you were thinking rationally again and making rational plans.

His first rational plan tonight was to find a phone booth and say “Oh, Christ, Mary, I’ve got to see you; got to …” But he put that one quickly aside because other, better plans were already developing. This probably wouldn’t be a good night for going to Mary’s place; and anyway there’d be other nights, soon and often. The better thing would be to go home—or rather to go home a good many hours from now, after he’d soaked up enough beer to be heavy and
solemn and sleepy when he hung his head to ask Rachel’s forgiveness.

Soon he was seated among strangers in one of the old roadside taverns where he’d wasted so much time with other factory guys in the lost, drab years of living in his father’s house. His craving for whiskey was keen but he knew better than to trust it: beer was what you needed at a time like this, and if each beer left you feeling it hadn’t quite done the job there would always be more where it came from.

“Oh, my God,” he said a few times, just under his breath. “Oh, my God, I hit my wife.” Each time he said that he had to look quickly around the bar to make sure nobody had seen his lips move; then he subsided gratefully again into the beer. These hours of remorse could be patiently borne as long as he knew he was alone and unobserved, with his car waiting just outside the door like a concerned, attentive companion. When he was heavy and solemn and sleepy enough, the car would take him home.

Some summer after the war, when there’d be an abundance of gasoline again, he thought he would drive all the way to the West Coast—taking his time, seeing whatever seemed worth the sight. This had the feel of a fine, strong, liberating idea, but his imagination couldn’t do very much with it until he had first resolved the beer-fuddled question of who would be riding in the car with him. Rachel and the baby? Mary and Kathleen?

And he was beginning to feel so strong and free now that it took him no time at all to decide. Assuming they’d have him—and why wouldn’t they?—it would be Mary and Kathleen.

There would always be strength and freedom in knowing what you wanted—everybody knew that—and Evan Shepard knew it now in his blood and bones. He could afford to acknowledge, with a sobering nod at his reflection in the
barroom mirror, that it wasn’t going to be easy. There would be sorrowful, disorderly elements in that drive across America—persistent thoughts of Rachel and the baby might hamper him at every turn and sometimes even seem ready to crowd him off the road—but he knew they’d be obliged, eventually, to recede into the past. They would have to yield the right of way.

Rachel was reasonably sure he’d come home before morning, but in the meantime she would have to endure the night. She lay crying only intermittently, as though crying were a luxury she couldn’t yet afford, and in one of the silences between spells of crying she heard an old, slow, defeated person coming upstairs. She knew then, listening to her mother walk away down the hall and close the door, that she would have to get up soon and go in there and comfort her. She would have to say how sorry she was for the way things had turned out, and that wouldn’t be hard—the Drakes had always found their own kind of renewal in tearful apologies and expressions of love—but it would have to wait awhile now because the baby was awake.

When she’d cleaned and powdered him and changed his diaper she brought him back into bed with her to be fed. And almost before she knew it, while his small face worked and pulled at her breast, she was talking to him as if he were old enough to understand.

“Oh, you little marvel,” she said. “Oh, you’re a wonder, that’s what you are. You’re a miracle. Because do you know what you’re going to be? You’re going to be a man.”

Revolutionary Road
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
A Special Providence
Disturbing the Peace
The Easter Parade
A Good School
Liars in Love
Young Hearts Crying