Contrary Pleasure (28 page)

“But he is ever so much better than…”

“Relatively speaking, Mrs. Delevan. Please understand me. He is more
integrated than when he was twelve. Easier to handle. But the gap between him
and the norm has widened. Now he is approaching sexual maturity. In spite of his
poor coordination, he is very strong. I guess you know that. With his emotional
difficulties it is entirely possible—now, understand that I am saying possible,
not probable—that he might take it into his head to approach some female
person.”

She had stared at him. “That’s idiotic, Doctor. He’s much too shy. Why,
it’s—”

“If we could communicate with him more successfully, Mrs. Delevan, it
might set my mind at rest. But it is difficult to know what he is thinking
about. Shelter reports an increase in sexual curiosity. We can expect that. We
cannot predict how he will attempt to satisfy that curiosity.”

“You’re talking about him as though he was a criminal or something! Why
are you talking like this?”

“It might be time to reconsider what we have talked about many times.”

“Send him away? Absolutely not! He’s making fine progress. Mr. Shelter is
very pleased with his progress. You should see the—”

“Mrs. Delevan, I thought you would react this way. But I felt obliged to
suggest it again. You don’t hope any more than I do that we’ll see a change for
the better soon.”

Her indignation faded slowly. “What can change him, Doctor? What can
change him now?”

He shrugged thick shoulders. “It’s hard to say. The shock treatments two
years ago were a failure. We might try again.”

“No. They were dreadful.”

“You have to think of him as being in a sort of prison, Mrs. Delevan. A
captive. Maybe he will be released some day, quite suddenly. Maybe, instead,
there will be a slow increase in the learning curve. And maybe he will never
change. We are dealing with something without a specific name. A severe
emotional shock might jiggle the mechanism just enough so that the wheels would
begin to mesh. Or it might break the mechanism beyond even its limited ability
to function.”

“You see,” she said, leaning toward him a bit, her face frowning and soft
and earnest, “his father and I, we were very healthy people and it just doesn’t
seem right that—”

“Genetics is a tricky thing, Mrs. Delevan. Mitosis is something we half
understand, and cannot explain. The whole area of birth and growth is so
enormously complicated that I sometimes wonder that so many functioning human
beings are born, that the percentage of
chromatid
error is so small. I’m sorry I’ve upset you, but I felt that I had to say this
to you.”

And she had stood up, picking up her purse, thanking him, walking out
with David.

“There are a lot of children playing in the park today,” she said with
that bright and special voice she used for him.

“Playing in the park today,” he said in his deep, rusting voice. And she
knew that he was far away now, hidden and safe somewhere behind the things that
fenced him off from the world, making no effort now to see over or between the
interstices of the barrier, responding only by repeating mechanically the last
few words of anything he heard. There was a differentness about him that was
subtle. Strangers would glance at him and see only a gangling, awkward, ugly
young man. And would glance again and sense the alien, the stranger among them.
And look a third time and then at her and then glance away, aware of some
unknown guilt.

He started to go by the car but she stopped him and he merely stood, not
questioning why he was stopped, and then she said, “Get in the car, dear.”

He looked at it and got in quietly and sat and looked straight ahead
while she got behind the wheel and drove around the park and up Oilman Hill.
This was not one of his good days. This was one of the days when he was remote,
unreachable. Oddly enough it was on such days that he seemed most deft about
the mechanics of living, of dressing and feeding and undressing, washing and
combing and tying knots. On the days of more awareness he fumbled more and
forgot things.

She parked the car and after she spoke to him, he got out and walked directly
toward the studio, not looking back, a thing that had been wound up and placed
on tracks and thus followed the tracks without curiosity, awareness or
interest.

She went into the house. The light was odd in the living room, the late
sun slanting from behind Quinn, where he sat in his usual chair. He was not
reading and the television set was dark. He sat there and looked toward her as
she came in.

“Do you feel better, dear?” she asked.

“I’m not sick. I told you that.”

She went to him preparing to hold the back of her hand against his
forehead and stopped and stared at him, the hand partially raised.

“What happened! Where’s your mustache?”

“I cut it off.”

“But why? It always looked so nice, dear. And Robbie is coming tomorrow
and…
really,
Quinn. You look so dreadfully naked. Why on earth did you
have to do that now?”

He frowned a little and touched his lip. “I don’t know. I just thought
about it, so I cut it off.”

“It will grow back, dear.”

“Yes, I guess it will.”

“Look, is something wrong? Is there anything wrong you ought to tell me,
Quinn? You really are acting odd, you know. You’re acting as strange as can
be.”

“I’m all right.”

She held the back of her hand against his forehead. “You don’t seem to
have any fever, dear. But you don’t look or act right to me. I think you’re
coming down with something. Why don’t you take a nice hot bath now, and put on
your pajamas and robe, and then go to bed right after dinner. It will make you
feel better. Weren’t you listening to me, dear?”

“I heard you,” he said.

“Well?”

“I’m going. I’m going in a minute. Any minute now.”

“You don’t have to positively snarl at me! Anyway, I want to tell you
what the doctor said today about David.”

She stood over him and told him in great detail. He sat there and did not
change expression.

“Well?” she said.

“I’ll go take my bath now,” he said, getting up.

“Haven’t you got anything to say about what Dr.
Endermann
said?”

“Is there anything to say? You settled it, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know if there’s anything wrong with you or not, but you’re
certainly in a terrible mood. And that’s always the first sign when you’re
coming down with something. You always get grouchy. Take an antihistamine.
They’re on the second shelf in the linen closet. The big blue ones the color of
robin eggs.”

He was through the doorway and he did not answer. She sighed and went to
the kitchen. She opened the deepfreeze and looked in. If he was coming down
with something, he’d like something bland. There was a package of frozen shrimp.
She decided she could cream them and have them on toast. There were still two
of the huge steaks left. She would use those when they had Robbie and Susan to
dinner. They would have to have them to dinner. And if David was having a good
day, it might be possible to have him eat with them. Then it would have to be
at the table. David could never manage a buffet dinner. She hoped Susan
wouldn’t be one of those critical ones. Things seem to get in a mess so fast.
David’s curtains aren’t done. The house could stand a thorough cleaning.

She hitched impatiently at her skirt and tugged at her bra straps. Get
things started and then change to something comfortable.

Why in hell had he shaved off his mustache just now?

She began to organize the evening meal, clomping around with cheerful
heaviness, banging pans, her mood improving enough so that finally she began to
sing in her true, husky untrained voice, singing something old about darkness
on the delta and saying
dum-de-dum
at the parts where
the words were gone.

Ellen, curled
in the big chair, saw Brock come in slowly. “Hey!” she said softly and he
turned sharply, startled.

“Didn’t see you. What are you doing home?”

“Nursing a fat eye.”

He came over to her. “Let’s see,” he said, putting his fingers under her chin,
tilting her face up to the light. “Hmmm. Not bad. Sort of a smudge, like. Like
dirt.”

“Were you at the club?”

“Yes. Tennis and a swim with the Yost girl.”

“She’s nice. Was… Clyde there?”

“Didn’t see him if he was. What’s the word?”

“Norma called me. She was real bitter sounding. I guess it was a hell of
a hassle last night when their fathers got there. She was alone in the house,
so she could talk. Seems first off, her father and Bobby’s father were sort of
united front about it. Then Mr. Rawls said something about a little
tramp—something like that anyway—and Mr.
Franchard
hit him and then they grabbed each other and rolled around on the floor
grunting. When that was over, Mr.
Franchard
tried to
hit Bobby and they started it all over again. Well, they got in the car and
nobody said much of anything all the way back and right at the end Mr. Rawls
said he wasn’t going to see his son spoiling his life with any little baggage
like Norma and Mr.
Franchard
said that the furthest
thing from his mind was letting Norma ever see his delinquent son again. Now
Norma says it looks like they want to keep her in the house every evening all
summer and send her to a real strict school in the fall. But she says that
given all summer to work on them, she figures she can get them to ease up, but
it’s going to take a lot of crying. And Bobby is already gone.”

“Gone where?”

“His people put him on the train this noon. Out to some place in South
Dakota where there’s an uncle who has a farm implement business, and Norma said
he didn’t phone or anything before he left. She says he’s been getting tired of
her. She suspected it and now she’s sure of it and it just gave him a chance to
sneak out.”

“She sound sad?”

“Like I said, bitter. I told her I was through with Clyde. She said we
better find ourselves a couple of boyfriends quick. I said I’d call her up
sometime, for lunch or something.”

“Will you?”

She looked up at her brother and felt the unexpected sting of tears in
her eyes. “Darn it, Brock, I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to see
anybody. They’re going to make me take a
p.g
. year at
the high school. I didn’t do anything. It’s a mess. I just wish I was dead or
something.”

“Down, girl. Easy,” he said softly.

“What about you? Is what they said true? I mean enlisting.”

“I opened my mouth at the wrong time.”

“I wish I could. I just wish I could do something like that. You like the
idea, don’t you?”

She saw his reflective, self-questioning look. “Maybe I do. It seems
corny. Tom Swift and his Brown Suit. But maybe I like it.”

“I just wish I knew what I was going to do with myself this summer. It
started out so good and now—
Sshh
!”

She listened, heard the familiar jeep sound, the popping of gravel under
the tires, the plaintive peep of the horn. She stood up uncertainly and said,
“Brock, please. Go tell him to go away.”

“If I tell him, he’ll be back. You tell him. Only you better get him on
his way before Dad gets here. He’s due.”

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders and patted her hair and
went on out. Clyde stood on the far side of the jeep, face moody, thick arms
crossed and resting on the top of the windshield.

“Get in, Ellen. We got to have a talk.”

She stopped a neat distance away and felt neat and prim and cold and
contained. And she looked at him in a new way, seeing that he looked sulky and
petulant and difficult, and not caring.

She looked at him across the hood of the jeep and said, “There isn’t
anything to say, Clyde.”

“I don’t blame you for being sore.”

“But I’m not sore. I’m not the least bit angry with you.”

She saw his look of surprise. “What?”

“I’m not anything. All of a sudden I’m not anything. I think maybe I’ve
outgrown you, Clyde. If I feel anything at all, it’s sort of pity. Like being
sad at looking at old pictures. Now get in your jeep and go away and find
yourself some girl who thinks muscles are lovely.”

“Outgrown me?” His face turned red and then the color faded. “You’re just
a high-school—”

“Good-bye, Clyde. Have a nice summer.”

For a moment he looked like a child watching the other children go to the
party down the street. And she was touched a bit. Then his face hardened and he
got behind the wheel and drove away, and she felt an enormous and wonderful
relief, knowing that he wouldn’t be back. Brock stood in the doorway watching her
approach. She dusted her hands together as she walked, grinning, up to him.

Ben saw his
children standing there together as he turned into his driveway at ten of six.
This day had been bad. It had not been a day of recurrent crises, of threat of
catastrophe. Those days were, somehow, easier to bear than a day such as this
one. Because crisis seemed to generate a sharpening of mind and instinct, a
quick-footed caution, so that in crisis there was something of the stalk and
the hunt and the kill, and the exhaustion afterward was healthier. But this day
had been like driving uphill over cobblestones in an ancient, gasping,
springless
car, with the cumulative effects of the tiny
joltings
sandpapering his nerves. In descending order of
importance there was the Griffin offer, there was the scene with Quinn and his
unexplained absence, there was the absence of the vacationing Miss Meyer, there
was an expensive cancellation, a lost shipment, two minor accidents in the mill
that would bring around both the insurance investigators and the state people,
a troublesome breakdown of equipment, a wrangle about discount. Nothing in
itself that had the smell of crisis. Just a day full of things pressing on him,
and a trip home that, instead of releasing pressure, merely shifted a new
load—the load of Robbie, of Brock, of Ellen—and the overlapping burden of
Quinn. Quinn was not going to be permitted to be a petulant child punishing the
world because his feelings had been hurt.