Five Smooth Stones (31 page)

have to go back, and other times he told himself that by fall it would be better, might even go away, and knew that it would be no better, would never go away.

CHAPTER 24

The Kent home in Lakeside Heights, just outside Chicago, was too big for one young girl and her father. It had even been too large in the days when Helen Kent had been alive and lived there with her husband and two daughters. Sara Kent, the younger, had always loved it. There was room for a child to run in; there were banisters to slid down. Later, the small and almost secret rooms that hid behind and between larger rooms had been a delight to a teenage urge for privacy. A huge third-floor room under the eaves, once a nursery, was her own now, a place where she could draw and paint and read and be Sara Kent, alone with herself.

During her first summer home from Pengard she drove to the city each morning with her father for art classes. They tried, these two, to assuage each other's loneliness, and worried, each of them, about the other. Only in the past year had Sara felt that she could reach across and touch her father in the world of grief and loneliness in which he lived.

Now Ellis Kent said, "Sara, are you sure you don't want to fly to Rio and see Martha?"

"I've been there. Let Martha visit us for a change."

"With three children? God forbid, if I do say it of my own grandsons."

"And that husband? God forbid, if I do say it of my own brother-in-law."

They laughed together. They had laughed together more often lately. Kent said, "How's it going in art class, chick?"

"Just lousy, thank you. And I know why, so please don't tell me to be patient. My anatomy instructor keeps at me and at me about having to crawl before I can walk, and walk before—"

"You can run. And you're running with crayon and paint as fast as you do with everything else."

"Would—would you like to see—"

"Some of your work? Immediately!" He followed her up the two flights of stairs to the top-floor room with a step almost as quick as her own. He stood in the doorway of the room and said, "Is it permitted to enter the artist's studio?"

"If you don't muss things up and leave a clutter—"

"Leave
a clutter!"

"Just close your eyes and I'll lead you."

"I'm not like your mother, babe. I don't know a damn thing about art."

"You might as well finish it: but you know what you like, and that's just fine because I can't see why anyone paints or draws or writes or composes or stuff like that if it isn't for people to like, even if they don't like it for the right reasons and even if it makes 'em squirm because it's true—"

"Slow down. You'd give a jury fits, you would. Let me look in peace."

After a moment he turned from the sketches and smiled down at her. "For God's sake, daughter child, breathe! My opinion isn't worth a bean."

"It is, too. Of course it is—"

What he saw in the sketches before him was good; true and meticulous. There were sketches that even he could tell had been disciplined with some pain and much effort; they were like the music of a young jazz musician forced for an evening to play it sweet; there was a sense of straining at the leash about them.

"They're good, chick. They're very good."

"Wait. There's more. Paintings yet—"

She left him to cross to a cupboard on the far side of the room, and he flipped idly through the contents of a smaller portfolio that lay on the drawing board. He stopped suddenly and looked for a long moment at a sketch before him, then picked it up and held it for a closer view. A bust only, showing a young, dark face and strong, muscular neck on broad, sloping shoulders. Dark eyes that were—that were—what the hell were they? Wary? Angry? Pleading? Not pleading, not with that dignity, that poise, that massive, dark silentness.

Ellis Kent felt his daughter's presence beside him again and did not look up from the sketch. "Sara. Sara, this is a little more than good. It's yours?"

"Yes. That's—well, that's the steenth million try—"

"From life?"

"Sort of. Not exactly. I mean it wasn't posed or anything—"

"He wasn't a model?"

"Oh, my gosh, no! He's in my class at Pengard. I'd sketch when he wasn't looking. The first ones I did from memory."

He laid the sketch down slowly, the dark eyes in the young face seeming to look directly at him. Or at Sara, beside him? Or beyond them both? He could not tell. All right, Kent, all right, he told himself. Keep it easy. You're one of America's great liberals, you are; one of America's fighting liberals; take it in stride; if it's true it's only a phase, it's got to be only a phase of youth. Christ! Why was my youngest left motherless and vulnerable! Yet if Helen were alive, if her mother were here, who's to say that it would change things; who's to say that, now her daughter was beyond influence, her mother's presence would do more than worsen the situation? Hypocrite. Lousy, stinking hypocrite, Ellis Kent. A merchant, a tailor, a butcher—my God, you should have been one of those and never developed the intuition of a good trial lawyer, an intuition that's telling you something now that you must run from. But keep it easy; try, for God's sake, try, to know how a young girl thinks, how she feels. Don't crush, don't hurt, let it pass; it's a phase, for Christ's sake, it's only a phase.

His daughter was standing beside him still, a sheaf of watercolors in her hand, and between them on the drawing board, the eyes of a Negro youth were like dark weapons aimed at his heart. His daughter's cheeks were flushed, and he felt the same pain and anxiety he would have felt if the flush had been that of a consuming, mortal fever.

Sara was saying, "Actually, I did a lot of them from memory, last summer. I kept one and then tore it up when I finally finished this one."

"From memory? Last summer?"

"He was at Aunt Eve's when I stayed with them in spring vacation. He was up for scholarship interviews and exams."

"You didn't say anything—"

"Well, gosh, just for dinner, that's all. I guess I didn't even think of it."

Didn't even think of it. He looked away from her. Didn't even think of it? Yet you did a lot of sketches of him from memory after you'd seen him once. Just for dinner, that's all.

He kept his tone level when he asked, "He has a name?"

"His name is David. David Champlin. From New Orleans. He's well, he's a real great person. He's one of Tommy Evans's best friends there. He's going to be a lawyer."

"Sara." Forget the tricky courtroom maneuverings, Kent, the subtleties. With your daughter, with this child, they won't work.

She was straightening the sketches in the portfolio now, stooping over, and a brown wing from the dark cap of her hair had fallen across one cheek, hiding her eyes. She was so small, he thought, so young, yet he feared her at this moment, and reached deep for the courage to say again, "Sara."

"What, Father?" She was tying the tapes of the portfolio.

"You know this boy, David, very well? He's certainly handsome."

"No. And yes. I mean: no, I don't know him well, and yes, he's handsome."

Her voice sounds natural, he thought. Her voice sounds natural and nonconcealing. Relief swept over him and was gone with the suddenness of a switched-off light when he turned and saw her eyes. "Good God, Sara—" She turned her head away, and he prayed for wisdom to the hazy, now-you-see-him-now-you-don't God he had never quite accepted, never quite rejected.

"Like that, Sara? Like that, chick?"

"I—I didn't mean for you to see it. You shouldn't have-have snooped."

"I didn't snoop, Sara. Want to tell me about it?" He didn't want to hear. God in heaven, He didn't want to hear what had passed between his daughter and this dark and lonely-looking boy.

The tears he had seen had not fallen, were still imprisoned by her lids. Now she drew a deep breath, then gulped. Like a baby. Christ! Like the baby he remembered on his wife's lap. "I wasn't crying. I don't know why I puddled up. I guess it was because I, well, I guess I thought I'd never be able to talk about it, never, never, never. And then we were talking about it. And there's nothing to talk about, nothing to tell." Again she drew in her breath unevenly. "Perhaps that's why, too."

"You're so young, chick—"

"Don't! Don't spoil it, Father! Don't spoil it. Don't say I'll get over it. Please. Please, I haven't. Not since that night at Aunt Eve's. And I won't. It's something you
know—"

"Sara, is it because he's a Negro that you puddled up? Because there's nothing—"

She had turned away from him; now she whirled and faced him, her eyes wide, free of tears, direct. "Of course not. Of course not. You couldn't think that, Father. You brought us up, didn't you, to know right from wrong. Didn't you? You shouldn't even have asked."

He stood looking at her, not speaking, one phrase echoing in his mind: "You brought us up, didn't you—" God, yes! I brought you up, you and your sister, to know that if there be such a thing as a sin against the Holy Spirit it is to give to any man or woman less of your respect than you give another. Any man or woman.

"What's the matter, Father? Were you faking? Were you?"

She was slipping away from him, and he called out to her silently, "Sara! Come back. Come back, child!" Then he gave back her own words of a moment before.

"You shouldn't have asked, Sara," he said.

"It's all right, then?"

"Nothing's all right, Sara. Nothing's what you call 'all right' that means the trouble and sorrow you're asking for."

"It—there, won't be. Because he doesn't know I'm alive, even. Except when I'm right there, in the same room maybe. He's all hidden and secret inside and he doesn't know I exist. I—well, actually, really actually, I guess that's why I almost cried, too. Because I don't guess there'll ever be any trouble or sorrow or—or anything good either and I'll
have
to get over it."

"You will, Sara, I'm sure. Sara, would you like to leave Pengard and concentrate on art? You could go abroad—" Say "yes." For God's sweet sake, say "yes." Because I won't force you; I haven't the guts and I've got a little too much sense.

She hesitated for a long enough time for Ellis Kent to feel the burden of many years not yet lived. Then she shook her head.

"No." She was looking at him directly again. "No. Why?"

She had called him "Fader" when she was a child. He could hear that child now, insistent, exasperating. "Why, Fader? Why? Why? Why is a bear brown? Why is the rain wet?" She did not need to go on now; he knew this "Why?" for what it was: a simple, childlike questioning of his integrity. Yet he heard himself say, "If I insisted, Sara?"

"You wouldn't. You couldn't. Not now. You couldn't pull the heavy parent act now. And go back on everything you taught us and believe and—and then don't believe all of a sudden because it's me. I've got to go back, Father. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll get over it. I mean people do, don't they?"

"Yes, Sara. Often. Almost always."

"So. So you see. I'll go back and I'll get over it—" Her voice quavered, and Ellis Kent, facing his daughter, felt like a man without bones or muscles or sinews. "Because," she was saying, "because I'll have to get over it, even if I think I can't. Or—or hate myself for not having any pride when someone doesn't even know I exist—"

"Let's go back downstairs, chick. Suppose I call Bull and Lois Evans—they're at the lake cottage—find out if they have any guests, and if they don't we'll run out there, get out of this hellish heat till Monday morning. There's no statute that says I have to be a damned fool and go to the office Saturday mornings. Or that you have to go to one lousy class. Would you like that?"

All summer, he thought, almost all summer, and Sara hadn't had a date; except one with Tommy Evans and Gwen and a friend of Tommy's. And he'd been too blind to notice.

"I'd love it. And I know the only guest they have is Gwen. We can take some records—"

He wasn't expecting the quick, almost shy kiss, but it did not elate him. It was, he knew, not so much love for him as a gesture of gratitude that he had given her no censure because she was in love with a dark and, to him, unknown boy from New Orleans named David Champlin.

She went down the stairs ahead of him, and Ellis Kent followed slowly, a man who felt that he had fought two battles and lost them both.

CHAPTER 25

Whenever the snow was not so deep on road and footpath that a man could not walk in it, David Champlin ignored the ache that cold and dampness brought to his stiff ankle, and walked for the joy of it, wondering at his own inner response to the alien white and secret stillness, a stillness broken only by the crunch-squeak of his galoshes on the earth's soft carpet. He timed his "Hey!" of greeting to synchronize with a snowball's splattering high between Suds Sutherland's shoulders. Suds, on his way to the campus from the garage where he kept his car, turned and waited for David to catch up.

"I'd smother you, only I'm too bushed," Suds said, and shook his head wonderingly. "You sure get a charge out of this stuff, don't you? Me, I grew up in it and it gives me fits."

They walked together toward the campus entrance a quarter mile distant, and David said, "I think I got me a job."

"Doing what?"

"Laundry truck. Three hours, three afternoons and all Saturday afternoon."

"Swell. That is, if you need it."

"Sure do."

"There goes my B in Latin. I gotta go down to the C again."

"Jeez, how low can you get! Anyhow, I can keep on coaching you. What you think about me? You think I can get by Beanie with better than a C without you? We'll keep on with the skull sessions. We'll work it out."

"You sure you got the job?"

"Pretty sure. I'm going to see 'em again day after tomorrow. I'll have to see what I can do with my schedule."

"That means Cozy."

"Maybe. Maybe not Not if I can work it out some other way."

"You can't."

"I can try. Because if I have to work it out with him, I might as well call 'em and say I can't take the job."