Lucy Crown (13 page)

“I let him,” Susan said flatly.

“Why?”

“Why not?” Susan said. “But when he tried to rub me I told him I would go to the principal and he stopped. He’s very artistic, Mr. Bradley. When he plays the violin he closes his eyes. In the movies when they kiss they always close their eyes too. Your mother,” she said, “she’s at the movies now?”

“I told you.”

“I just wanted to make sure,” Susan said. She took a slow deliberate turn around the porch, going up on her toes like a ballet dancer on each step. “Did you ever kiss a girl?” she asked.

“I … I … sure,” Tony said.

“How many?”

Tony hesitated, searching for a reasonable number. “Seventeen,” he said finally.

Susan came up to him and stood in front of him. He noticed uncomfortably that she was at least two inches taller than he was. “Let me see,” she said coldly.

“What do you mean?” Tony, said, stalling for time and trying to make his voice low and gruff.

“Let me see.” A weary flicker of a smile twitched across Susan’s face without making a change in her cold, coinlike, mistrustful blue eyes. “I bet,” she said, “you never kissed a girl in your whole life.”

“I did so,” Tony said, feeling cornered and wishing he was at least two inches taller.

“I dare you,” said Susan.

“Okay,” Tony said. He felt as if he had a fever and he wished that somebody would come in quickly and interrupt them. But nobody came. He advanced warily and kissed Susan. His aim was off for the first kiss and he landed more or less on her chin. She bent her knees a little and this time he found her mouth. He kissed her quickly, just long enough to show that he wasn’t afraid to do it. “There,” he said, his arm still around her.

“Take your glasses off,” Susan said.

Tony took off his glasses and put them carefully on the phonograph. Then he kissed her again. She tasted pleasantly of spearmint chewing gum and he began to enjoy it.

Satisfied in her experiment, Susan stepped back. “This place is dead,” she said. She took a pocket mirror and a lipstick out of her blue jeans and fixed her mouth, making Tony wish that he didn’t feel so feverish and that he was at least five years older. “If there were any boys of my age group around,” said Susan, “I wouldn’t even be here.”

Tony stared at her, puzzled. He knew that he was hurt but he didn’t know why he should feel that way. Distractedly he picked up his telescope and stared at the sky. “The ceiling is lifting,” he said.

Susan studied him bleakly, the animal trainer deciding to try one last turn before closing the cage for the night. “Do you know what grownups do when they go to sleep together?” Susan asked.

“Sure,” Tony said falsely.

“What do they do?” Susan asked.

Tony remembered what young Barker had told him on this subject. But it was all so confused in his mind and Barker had been so vague about actual details that he was afraid that to try to repeat what he had heard to Susan would only show her how hopelessly ignorant he was. “Well,” he said uncomfortably, “I only know kind of …”

“Do you or don’t you?” Susan asked implacably.

Tony reached down and got his glasses and put them on again, fighting for time. “Jeff started to tell me something the other day,” he mumbled. “He said my father wanted him to. Something about … about seeds.”

“Seeds,” Susan snorted disdainfully. “That shows how much you know.”

“How do
you
know so much?” Tony asked, hoping to save himself by attack.

“I watched my mother and father one night,” said Susan. “My second father. They came home late and they thought I was sleeping and they forgot to close the door. Didn’t you ever watch your father and mother?”

“No,” said Tony. “They never do anything.”

“Sure they do,” said Susan.

“They do not.”

“Don’t be a kid,” Susan said wearily. “Everybody does.”

“Not my mother and father.” His voice was very high now. He didn’t know why he felt he had to deny it so hotly, but it had something to do with the grunting piglike noise Albert Barker had made.

“Stop saying that,” said Susan.

He felt himself on the verge of tears and he hated her for being there and talking like that. “You’re dirty,” he said. “You’re a dirty girl.”

“Don’t call me names,” Susan said warningly.

“You’re a dirty girl,” Tony repeated.

“Go see for yourself,” said Susan. “And not with your father either.”

“You’re a liar,” Tony said.

“The movies!” Susan made a contemptuous gesture with her hand. “There are no movies except on Saturday and Sunday. They can tell you anything, can’t they, and you’ll believe it? What a kid!” She made a savage, pointing gesture behind her. “You go down to his sister’s house and look through the window the way I did and you’ll see whether I’m a liar or not.”

Tony swung at her with the telescope, clumsily, but she was very quick and stronger than he was. They wrestled for the telescope for a moment and she tore it from his hands and tossed it onto the floor. They stood there facing each other, panting. “Don’t you hit me,” Susan said. She pushed him away disdainfully. “Baby,” she said. “Stupid little baby. And don’t forget to take your glasses.” She turned on her heel and went off, her hips swinging under the tight blue jeans.

Tony stared after her, biting back tears. Then, without knowing why he did it, he went into the house, into his mother’s room and sat down on his mother’s bed. The room smelled of his mother’s perfume and the special soap she used that she had sent up from New York. Then he jumped up and went out on the porch again. It was quiet and the clouds had come even lower and the lake looked meaner and grayer than before. He stood there in the silence for a moment, then jumped off the porch and began to run through the woods, along the lakeshore, in the direction of Jeff’s sister’s house.

10

I
T WAS ALMOST DARK
as Lucy and Jeff approached the cottage. Through a break in the clouds the sun could be seen setting behind the mountains, its level rays without heat turning the lake into a leaden rose color. Across the water a bugle blew. It sounded much farther away than usual, wavery and muffled and saddened by the thick weather. Lucy was wearing a raincoat draped like a cape across her shoulders and it fell in stiff archaic folds around her body as she walked slowly, with Jeff a pace behind her, across the lawn toward the cottage. She climbed the two steps to the porch and stopped, listening to the bugle. She started to take the coat off and Jeff reached out and lifted it from her shoulders and put it down on a chair and turned her around slowly. She ducked a little and smiled up at him, her head tilted to one side. His face seemed to be fragmented in the oblique sunset light into four or five different expressions, as though he were not quite sure whether he was, at the moment, the conqueror or the conquered, whether he was happy remembering the afternoon or in despair because it was over. The brass notes from across the lake died away and Lucy went over to a table and picked up a package of cigarettes that was lying on it.

“No matter where I am,” Jeff said, lighting her cigarette, “whenever I hear a bugle call from now on, it will make me remember.”

“Shh …” Lucy said.

Jeff tossed the match away and stared at her, at the long, gray, half-closed, smiling eyes, with their incongruous hint of the Orient and their look of guarding a secret she would never disclose, at the full soft lips that now, without any lipstick on them, blending into the tan skin of her face, seemed almost colorless. “Oh, Lord,” he said softly. Without embracing her he ran one hand slowly and lightly down her side and then made a slow, caressing movement across her belly. “What an excellent place,” he whispered.

Lucy chuckled. “Shh …” she said.

She captured his hand, raised it to her mouth and kissed the inside of the palm.

“Tonight,” Jeff began.

Lucy kissed his fingertips with a light brisk smack of the lips, as one might kiss a child’s hand. “That’s all,” she said. She dropped his hand and opened the door of the cottage. “Tony,” she called into the house. “Tony, where are you?” There was no answer and she turned back to Jeff. He had picked up the glove and ball that Tony had dropped an hour before and was tossing the ball up and making fancy little backhand catches.

“He’s probably still on the hayride,” Jeff said. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“I want to go in and change my clothes,” said Lucy.

Jeff put the glove and ball down. “Please don’t,” he said to her. “Stay here. You don’t have to change. I’m crazy about this dress.” He touched the cotton where it flounced out at the hip. “I’m cruelly attached to this dress.”

“All right,” she said. “We do anything you want because …” She paused.

“Because why?” Jeff asked.

“Because you’re twenty years old,” said Lucy.

“That’s a hell of a reason,” Jeff said.

“There are no better ones, little boy,” Lucy said lightly. She lay back on the glider against the pillows, her legs over the edge, her feet on the floor. Jeff stood looking down at her as she let her head fall back, the smoke of the cigarette making her close her eyes.

“Oh, Lord,” Jeff murmured.

“You must stop saying ‘Oh, Lord,’” Lucy said.

“Why?”

“Because it brings in an entirely new concept. You’ll end up by making me feel guilty and I don’t want to feel guilty. And sit down. You mustn’t loom over me all the time.”

Jeff sat on the floor, his back against the glider, his head near her waist. “I like to loom over you.”

“Only at carefully specified hours,” said Lucy. She touched his head with her fingertips, on the back of his neck. “Delicious,” she said. “You must never let your hair grow long.”

“Okay,” said Jeff.

Lucy ran her hand over his head. “You have a hard, persistent skull,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Your hair smells like Tony’s,” said Lucy. “Like summertime. Dry and sunshiny. When men get older their hair smells different. Cigarettes, worry, fatigue, barber shops.”

“What does fatigue smell like?” Jeff asked.

Lucy considered this. “The way aspirin tastes,” she said finally. “If I were a man I’d only make love to seventeen-year-old girls, glossy, plump, brand new.”

“If I were a man,” Jeff said, “I would only make love to you.”

Lucy chuckled. “What nice manners you have! Tell the truth. How many girls have you had?”

“One.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “That makes two, including me.”

“That makes one, including you.”

“You really do have nice manners. Of course I don’t believe you.”

“All right,” Jeff said. “I’ll confess. I’m a dazzler. Half a dozen women have committed suicide for me since I was fifteen. I’m a bigamist. I’m wanted in ten different states by other names. I seduced by grandmother’s best friend at the age of four and I’ve been busy ever since. I’m barred from the campuses of all the leading women’s colleges in the East. My book, ‘How to Win, Hold and Get Rid of Women’ has already been printed in a dozen countries, including several where the people only speak languages that have been dead two thousand years.”

“Enough. I get the idea,” said Lucy, laughing. “You’re funny. I thought young men today were terribly—well, you know, loose.”

“I’m the opposite of loose,” said Jeff.

Lucy lifted her head and examined him curiously. He didn’t turn around. “I believe you are,” said Lucy.

“I was waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you,” Jeff said.

“Be serious.”

“I am serious,” said Jeff. “I was waiting for something”—he hesitated—“something overwhelming. I don’t believe in anything casual or unimportant or imperfect. The girls I knew.” He shrugged. “They were pretty or cute or they were amusing. Never overwhelming.”

“My,” said Lucy. “You
are
a romantic boy.”

“Love is either romantic,” Jeff said didactically, “or you might just as well go to a gymnasium.”

Lucy chuckled. “You
are
peculiar.” She sat up and spoke more seriously. “And you thought I was overwhelming?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the first time anybody ever thought anything like that about me,” Lucy said.

“How about your husband?” Jeff asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said carefully. “I imagine he thinks I’m comfortable.”

“It’s not enough,” said Jeff.

“No?” Lucy’s tone was guarded now. “It has been up to now.”

“And now?”

Lucy tossed her cigarette away and straightened the folds of her dress with two or three efficient movements of her hand. “And now,” she said, “I think I’d like to go down to the bar and get a drink.” She stood up.

Without turning around, Jeff threw his arm back, to push her down gently again. “What’s it like—your marriage?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I have to know,” Jeff said. “I want to know everything about you. I want to see pictures of you when you were a little girl. I want to know what your maiden name was.”

“Hammond,” said Lucy.

“Hammond,” Jeff repeated. “Lucy Hammond. Excellent. I want to know what books you read when you were fourteen years old.”

“Wuthering Heights,”
said Lucy.
“Das Kapital
and
Little Women.”

“Excellent,” said Jeff. “I want to know what you expected to do with your life before you got married. I want to know what you talk about at dinner, at home with your husband.”

“Why?” Lucy asked.

“Because I want to own you. I want to own your past, and all the time you are away from me, and your future.”

“Be careful,” Lucy warned him.

“And I don’t want to be careful,” he said. “What about your marriage? The fundamental marriage?”

“I always thought,” Lucy said, speaking soberly, “that it was satisfactory.”

“And now?”

“From the middle of September on I’ll think it is satisfactory—again.”

Jeff stood up and walked toward the edge of the porch and leaned against the pillar, staring out at the lake.

“Lucy,” he said.

“Yes?”

“When he comes up here,” Jeff said in a low voice. “Crown. Are you going to go to bed with him?” He turned and faced her.