Lucy Crown (32 page)

“I’m sure,” Tony said.

“You know,” Oliver said, “we could call her and she could be here in two, three hours …”

“No,” said Tony.

“On a night like this,” Oliver said, without looking at his son. “I know it would please her.”

“Why don’t we go get those steaks?” Tony asked.

Oliver glanced at him and sipped at his drink. “I haven’t finished this yet,” he said. “There’s no hurry.” Then he looked at Tony again. “You’re a tough boy, aren’t you?” he said quietly. “You look like a squirt in a size-fourteen collar who doesn’t have to shave more than once a week, but you may turn out to be the tough one in the family.” He chuckled a little. “Well,” he said, “there ought to be one in every family. By the way, did I tell you I ran into Jeff the last time I was in New York?”

“No,” Tony said.

“Lieutenant in the Navy,” said Oliver. “Just in from Guadalcanal or Philippeville or some place like that and very salty. I saw him in a bar and after a while I said what the hell and we sat down and had a drink together. He asked how your eyes were.”

“Did he?” Oh, God, Tony thought, this evening is going to be the worst. The very worst.

“Yes. He turned out very well, I thought. Calmed down a bit. We decided to let bygones be bygones. Shook hands on it. After all, it was a long time ago, and we’re all in the same war together.”

“Except me,” Tony said. “Come on, Father, I think we ought to eat.”

“Sure. Sure.” Oliver took out a wallet and put a five-dollar bill on the bar. “Bygones,” he said vaguely. He flattened the bill out carefully. “A long time ago.” He laughed. “Who remembers it? Ten countries have fallen since then. All right. All right.” He put a hand restrainingly on Tony’s arm. “I have to wait for my change, don’t I?”

But before they could leave, two second lieutenants came in with their girls and it turned out that they had been with a headquarters that Oliver had been attached to in Virginia, and they were good boys, according to Oliver, the best damn boys you could hope to find, and they had to have a drink, and then another, because they were the best damn boys you could hope to find, and everybody was moving off mysteriously to secret destinations, and then they remembered Swanny, who had transferred to Armor and who, somebody said, had been reported missing in Sicily, and they had to have another drink to Swanny because somebody said he was missing in Sicily and by that time one of the girls was looking directly and provocatively at Tony and putting her hands on him when she talked and was saying, “Look, a pretty civilian,” and Oliver, as usual, rushed in to tell about Tony’s eyes, and the heart murmur, and Tony, who had been forced to have another drink in the flood of martial comradeship, and who was feeling it, said, “I’m going to have a sign painted and hang it on my chest. ‘Do not scorn this poor Four F,’ the sign is going to read. ‘He has patriotically volunteered his father on all invasions.’” Everyone laughed, although Oliver did not laugh heartily, and a moment later Oliver said, “Well, I promised the boy a steak,” and he put down another five-dollar bill and they left.

The steak restaurant was crowded and they had to wait at the bar and Oliver had another drink and his eyes were beginning to have a dense, opaque shine to them, but he didn’t say anything, aside from muttering once, staring at the diners, “Goddamn black-marketeers.”

Before they were seated, a girl whom Tony had taken out several times came in with an Air Force Sergeant who wore glasses. Her name was Elizabeth Bartlett and she was very pretty and she couldn’t have been more than eighteen and her parents lived in St. Louis and she was working at something that was not arduous or time-consuming in New York and she was making the most of the war. Each time Tony had gone out with her he had left her, exhausted, with the sun coming up over the rooftops, because part of living through a war for Elizabeth consisted of staying up all night four or five times a week. The Sergeant was no longer young and had the lugubrious air of a man who had done very well before the Army and who suffered keenly every time he looked down and saw the stripes on his sleeve.

Tony had to introduce Elizabeth to Oliver, and she said, throatily,
“Major
Crown,” when she shook his hand. Then she introduced the Sergeant, who said, “Hi,” indicating that he was off duty. Oliver insisted upon buying them a round of drinks and said, “You’re a damn pretty girl,” in a fatherly way to Elizabeth, and, “I don’t mind admitting, Sergeant, that it’s the sergeants who keep this man’s army going,” to the Sergeant.

The Sergeant did not react warmly to this. “I think it’s idiocy,” he said, “that keeps this man’s army going, Major.”

Oliver laughed democratically and Elizabeth said, “He was an industrial chemist and he’s peeved that they put him in the Air Force.”

“I hate airplanes,” the Sergeant said. He looked bleakly around the restaurant. “We’ll never get a table,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“I’ve been thinking about steak all day,” Elizabeth said.

“Okay.” The Sergeant nodded gloomily. “If you’ve been thinking about steak all day.”

Then the headwaiter came over and told Oliver that there was a table ready for him in the corner and Oliver invited the Sergeant and Elizabeth to join them, which made the Sergeant look unhappier than ever. But it turned out that the table was too small and it was impossible to squeeze four people around it. Oliver and Tony, carrying their drinks, left the couple at the bar, and Tony heard Elizabeth saying, “My God, Sidney, you
are
a pill.”

Tony, as he sat down, was sorry they hadn’t joined his father and himself. He was not particularly interested in either Elizabeth or the Sergeant, although Elizabeth had her uses, but he didn’t want to be alone with his father for a whole evening. For so many years now he had sat through these random, uncomfortable dinners with Oliver, in hotel dining rooms in the country towns where Tony had gone to school, in roadside restaurants during vacations when Oliver had dutifully toured the national parks with him when he was a boy, here in the city when Oliver had had his leaves. Sometimes it was worse than others, especially when Oliver was drinking, but there wasn’t a single dinner that Tony remembered with pleasure. And Oliver was certainly drinking now. He insisted upon continuing through the meal with whisky. “I understand Churchill does it,” he said, when Tony suggested wine. “What’s good enough for Churchill is good enough for me.” And he’d looked at Tony proudly and fiercely, linked momentarily with greatness.

There was something strange about Oliver’s drinking this night. He was not a drunkard, and even on the other occasions when he’d had one or two too many, it had seemed almost accidental. But tonight he went at his glass with purposeful intensity, as though there was something to be done before the evening was over that could only be achieved after a certain excessive intake of alcohol. Tony, who had returned to water, watched him warily, hoping to be able to get away before Oliver collapsed completely. Deuteronomy, he remembered, enjoined fathers not to show themselves naked before their sons, but that was before the invention of Bourbon.

His father ate noisily, taking bites that were too large for him, eating fast.

“Best steak in the city,” he said. “They smear it with olive oil. Italians. Don’t believe what you hear about the Italians. Damn good boys.” He spilled some salad on his uniform and brushed it off carelessly with his hand, leaving an oily stain. When he was a boy, when he still lived at home, Tony remembered, he had resented his father’s insistence on fastidiousness at the table.

Oliver ate in silence for a while, nodding with approval over the steak, eating with compulsive rapidity, emptying half a glass of whisky at a time, mixing the food and drink in his mouth. He chewed strongly, his jaw making a small, regular clicking sound. Suddenly, he put his fork down. “Stop looking at me,” he said harshly. “I’ll be goddamned if I’ll have anybody looking at me that way.”

“I wasn’t looking at you,” Tony said, flustered.

“Don’t kid me,” Oliver said. “You want to disapprove of me, do it some other time. Not tonight. Understand?”

“Yes, Father,” Tony said.

“The low, slavering beast,” Oliver said obscurely, “munching on his bloody bones.” He glowered at Tony for a moment, then put out his hand and touched him, gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m feeling funny tonight. Don’t pay it any attention. The last night …” He stopped inconclusively. “Some time,” he said, “it might be a good idea if you wrote me a full report. ‘My Impressions of Father.’” He smiled. “‘Father Drunk, Sober and Mistaken.’ Something like that. Leaving out nothing. Might do us both a lot of good. Might get that strangled look off your face the next time you see me. Christ, you’re an unhappy-looking boy. Even if you had good eyes, the Army’d probably turn you down on grounds of morale. You’d infect a whole regiment with melancholy. What is it? What is it? Ah, don’t tell me. Who wants to know?” He looked around the room vaguely. “We should have gone to a musical comedy tonight. Leave the country singing and dancing. Only all the goddamn tickets’re sold out. You got anything to say?”

“No,” Tony said, hoping the people at the next table weren’t listening.

“Never anything to say,” Oliver said. “Made a big speech at the age of thirteen that astounded his listeners with its brilliance and maturity, then shut his mouth for the rest of his life. That girl is smiling at you with all two eyes …”

“What?” Tony asked, confused.

Oliver gestured obviously toward the door. “The Sergeant’s girl,” he said. “She’s on her way to the latrine and she’s signaling to you like a sailor on a mast.”

Elizabeth was standing at the door and she was smiling and gesturing to Tony with her finger. The room was L-shaped and the Sergeant was seated around the bend of the L and couldn’t see her. He was slouched in his chair, morosely eating a breadstick.

“Excuse me,” Tony said, glad of an excuse to get away from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t hurry on my account,” Oliver said as Tony stood up. “We don’t sail until the wind changes.”

Tony crossed the room to Elizabeth. She chuckled as he came up to her and pulled him out into a little vestibule. “Are you prepared to be wicked?” she said.

“What about the Sergeant?” Tony asked.

“The Sergeant has bedcheck at eleven,” Elizabeth said carelessly. “Can you get away from Papa?”

“If it kills me,” Tony said grimly.

Elizabeth chuckled again. “They’re a riot,” she said. “Fathers.”

“A riot,” Tony agreed.

“He’s pretty cute, though,” said Elizabeth. “In his soldier suit.”

“That’s the word,” said Tony.

“The Village?” Elizabeth asked.

“Okay.”

“I’ll be at the bar in Number One at eleven-fifteen,” she said. “We’ll celebrate.”

“What’ll we celebrate?”

“We’ll celebrate that we’re both civilians,” Elizabeth said. She smiled and pushed him back, out of the vestibule. “Go ahead back to Papa.”

Tony went back to the table, feeling better. At least the whole evening wouldn’t be wasted.

“What time’re you meeting her?” Oliver said as he sat down.

“Tomorrow,” Tony said.

“Don’t mislead the troops,” said Oliver. He smiled mirthlessly and stared at the door through which Elizabeth had disappeared. “How old is she? Twenty?”

“Eighteen.”

“They begin earlier and earlier, don’t they?” said Oliver. “Poor sod of a Sergeant.” Oliver looked over at the Sergeant, safely behind the bend of the wall, and chuckled, without pity. “Paying five bucks a steak and losing his girl at the toilet door to the pretty young man.” Oliver leaned back in his chair and studied his son gravely, while Tony kept his mind on eleven-fifteen that night. “It’s pretty easy for you, isn’t it?” Oliver said. “I’ll bet they heave themselves at you.”

“Please, Father,” Tony said.

“Don’t be ungrateful,” Oliver said, though without heat. “Maybe the best thing in the world is to be handsome. You’re halfway up the hill to begin with. It’s unfair, but it’s not your fault, and you ought to make the most of it. I wasn’t a bad-looking young man, myself, but I didn’t have that thing. Women could constrain themselves in my presence. When you’re older, write me about it. I’ve always wanted to know what it would be like.”

“You’re drunk,” Tony said.

“Of course.” Oliver nodded agreeably. “Although it isn’t a polite thing to say to a father on his way to the wars. When I was a young man fathers were never drunk. That was before Prohibition, of course. A different world. Yes,” he said, “you’ve got what your mother has …”

“Please, Father, cut it out,” Tony said. “Have some coffee.”

“She was a beautiful woman,” Oliver said oratorically, using the past tense as though he were speaking of someone he had known fifty years before. “She couldn’t come into a room without having every head turn her way. She had a modest, apologetic way of walking into a room. It came about because she was frightened, she was trying to make as little impression as possible, but it had a funny result. Provocative. Frightened … That’s a funny thing to say about your mother, isn’t it?” He stared at Tony. “Isn’t it?” he asked, challengingly.

“I don’t know.”

“Frightened. For many years. For long, long years …” Oliver was almost chanting now and by this time the people on both sides of their table were hushing and listening to him. “Long, long years. I used to make fun of her for it. I kept telling her how beautiful she was because I wanted to give her confidence in herself. I thought I had so much myself that I could spare some, without feeling it. Confidence … Nobody has to give you any. You have it, and I’m happy for your sake. You have it and you know how you got it?” He leaned forward belligerently. “Because you hate everybody. That’s pretty good,” he said, “that’s pretty lucky—at the age of twenty to be able to hate everybody. You’ll go a long way. If they don’t bomb New York.” He looked around him fiercely and the people at the other table, who had been listening, suddenly began to talk loudly among themselves. “Wouldn’t that be a laugh,” he said. “All these fat ones sitting here, saying, ‘I’ll have it rare,’ and all of a sudden hearing the whistle and looking up and seeing the ceiling fall in on them. God, I’d like to be here to see that.” He pushed his plate away from him. “Do you want some cheese?”