One Good Turn (7 page)

Still, it was a glorious dream: that she and Luke would continue to see each other, that they’d grow closer, that he’d forgive her for being so blunt and frank—that he’d even like her for it. That their relationship would evolve, that in time kissing him would feel right, that she would look into his eyes and see nothing but warmth, heat, love. That, come autumn, the love wouldn’t evanesce into a fond memory but would endure, and she’d go to Princeton and he’d come to Smith, and he’d chuck the idea of becoming a lawyer and find out what he really wanted to do with his life, and they’d do it together.

Glorious but crazy. She’d only just met him. She had no reason to be mapping out a future with him.

But optimism never hurt anybody, and Jenny was an optimist. So she continued to enjoy her fantasy.

“YALE, STANFORD AND
Harvard, of course,” said Luke’s father, lowering his silverware in order to tick the schools off on his fingertips as he named them. “Columbia, Penn...”

Luke stared at the top his father’s head. A significant number of silver strands laced through the black waves, but it was still as thick as an adolescent’s. He wished he could see his father’s face rather than his hair, though. He wished his father would look up, would talk to him instead of at him.

“Duke would be acceptable, I suppose,” his father droned. “Chicago...”

“Dad.”

His father ignored the interruption. “As far as the second-tier schools—although heaven knows you’d go to one of them only as a last resort—there are plenty to choose from right in the New York area: N.Y.U., Fordham, St. John’s—”

“Dad, please.”
Look at me,
he silently implored.
Just look at me.

James Benning lifted his fork and knife and cut into the pink slab prime rib on his plate. “You remind me of your mother,” he said, his tone implying that this wasn’t a compliment. “She’s always complaining that it’s impolite to discuss business at the dinner table. I say there’s no such thing as a bad time to discuss business. It’s July. You can’t procrastinate when it comes to applying to law school. Now Yale is your first choice, of course. I can speak to some of the law school’s trustees for you. And Roger Chase maintains close ties with Columbia—”

“Dad.” Luke tried without success to keep his voice from revealing his impatience. His father raised his eyebrows in tacit disapproval of his son’s interruption. Luke offered an apologetic smile. “I don’t want you speaking to people about getting me into law school,” he explained. “If I can’t get into law school on my own, then maybe I don’t belong there.”

“That’s a very noble sentiment,” his father said in a condescending tone. He cut another forkful of roast beef and popped it into his mouth. “However, much as I hate to have to remind you at this late date, the first rule of survival in this world is: use what you’ve got. What you are very privileged to have, son, is a father with a network that runs through the best law schools in the country. If you don’t tap into that network you’re a fool.” He set down his fork and reached for his glass of wine. The gold and onyx cufflink at his wrist glinted beneath the sleeve of his jacket.

Luke felt as if he were spinning back in time. Suddenly he was thirteen years old, sitting in the somber walnut-paneled formal dining room at the house in Larchmont. His father sat at the head of the table in the room’s one arm chair—his throne. Luke’s mother sat at the other end of the table, fair and fragile in her silk dress and pearls, with her ash-blond hair swept back into a knot at the nape of her neck, her eyelids permanently at half-mast and the pale, slender fingers of her left hand curled around her martini glass. Across from Luke sat Elliott, dark haired and broad-shouldered, being lectured by their father about his performance on the links at the country club that day, or about the importance of rising to a leadership position on the debate team or the basketball team, or about the significance of the country’s cultivating new Asian markets for American goods. Luke’s mother remained silent throughout the meal, sipping her drink, and Luke attempted futilely to contribute to the discussion. He tried to offer an opinion and his father cut him off, bore down on Elliott and said, “But you see, the zone defense detracts from individual effort.”

Look at me,
Luke silently pleaded.
Look at me, Dad!

His father never attended the soccer games Luke played. No matter how high Luke’s grades were, his father never commented on them, except to say, “That’s nice. Now Elliott, what can we do about this B in trigonometry? Should I hire a tutor for you? We’ve got to raise it to an A if you expect to get into Yale.” So many years later, Luke still felt the sting.

“And I can put in a word for you with Henry Carlisle in New Haven,” his father was now saying. “If only you’d gone to Yale for your undergraduate schooling, you’d be a shoo-in for the law school.”

Look at me, Dad!
He was twenty-one years old, and he was still aching to be noticed. It was beginning to dawn on him that being the focus of his father’s dreams didn’t guarantee that his father would actually notice him. Being the number one son didn’t entitle him to enter the discussion. It wasn’t a discussion, anyway. It was a lecture.

If his father was looking at Luke, the old man certainly wasn’t
seeing
him.

James helped himself to a fresh piece of bread. Luke poked his chicken with the tines of his fork, trying to muster an appetite. The City Tavern served hearty fare, but he wasn’t hungry.

He wanted astronaut ice-cream.

He and Jenny had gone to the Air and Space Museum on Saturday. The place was jammed—it always was jammed—but they’d fought their way through the mobs. Everything seemed to thrill Jenny, from Lucky Lindy’s Spirit of St. Louis to the models of the space shuttle. She’d squealed with delight at the astronaut uniforms and gasped in astonishment at the realization that people had actually flown in the rickety old biplanes on display. Luke had been to the museum countless times before, but he’d never enjoyed it as much as he had viewing the exhibits through Jenny’s eyes.

It was in the museum’s cafeteria, where they’d gone to have a snack, that they’d discovered astronaut ice-cream. He’d tried to convince Jenny that, whatever the stuff was, it was bound to be vile, but she had insisted on buying a a package for them to share.

He’d been right. It was vile. “This is what I’d imagine styrofoam tastes like,” he’d said.

“Only sweeter,” she’d added. “It has a styrofoam texture, but the flavor is kind of like sugary children’s cereal.”

Vile though it was, they’d devoured the entire contents of the package, grimacing and laughing through their self-inflicted torture. And two days later, seated across a linen-draped table from his father in the dining room of an exclusive private club on the southern edge of Georgetown, all Luke could imagine eating right now was astronaut ice-cream.

“You aren’t paying attention,” his father chided. “This is important, Luke. We’re talking about your future.”

My future,
Luke thought glumly. It didn’t sound much like his, though.

“Have you called your mother lately?” his father asked.

Luke eyed his wine glass, then reached for his ice water instead. “Yes, Dad,” he said. “I talk to her twice a week.”

“She’s not in good shape,” his father said blandly. “She’s still eating too little and drinking too much. She misses Elliott.”

Luke nodded. As passive as his mother had always been, she’d become even more withdrawn after Elliott had done his vanishing act a year ago. He had sent his parents a Christmas card postmarked Helena, Montana, but other than that they heard nothing from him. He emailed Luke at Princeton pretty often, but he insisted that Luke keep his whereabouts a secret from their parents, and Luke complied. “If Dad knows where I am,” Elliott wrote, “he’ll charter a jet and come after me. You know he will.”

Luke knew he would. There were times when their father’s pressure tactics became so overwhelming, Luke was tempted to pass along Elliott’s address in Sitka, just so his father would let up on him and redirect his attention to his older son. But Luke would never betray Elliott. In spite of the years he’d spent envying him, he never blamed his brother for receiving the lion’s share of their father’s love. Indeed, now that Luke was receiving the lion’s share, he could empathize with Elliott’s need to run away.

He made a more concerted effort to look interested as his father droned on about his mother’s drinking. But behind his cool amber eyes his mind drifted back to the Saturday he’d spent with Jenny. The museum had been so crowded he’d had to hold her hand in order not to lose her. Her hand was so tiny, it felt like a child’s. Yet her body was definitely a woman’s. He’d been aware of the small, firm swells of her breasts beneath her loose-fitting T-shirt, and the curves of her slim waist, her hips and her calves, visible below the knee-length hem of her denim skirt. He’d been aware of her lightly scented cologne, the feathery whisps of hair that had unraveled from her braid at her temples, the faint sprinkle of golden freckles over the narrow bridge of her nose.

His father kept yammering about how Yale was superior to Harvard, and Luke thought about what it would be like to kiss those freckles, and her smiling lips, and her breasts, what it would be like to run his hands over those supple legs and compact hips, what it would be like...

“So, are you making any friends down here?” his father asked.

Luke coughed and forced his thoughts back to the dinner table. “Yes, a few,” he said evasively.

“Isn’t your roommate’s sister in town?”

“Holly,” Luke informed him. “She’s a summer intern at the Corcoran.”

“Art galleries.” James Benning sniffed. “And her brother wants to go into the restaurant business, of all things. He seemed like a sensible boy, but I don’t know.”

“He’ll be good at it,” Luke defended Taylor. “He’s learned a lot about the business from his uncle, and he loves what he’s doing.” Taylor’s uncle owned a three-star restaurant in Newport, and Taylor had spent his summers working there ever since he was a teenager.

“To each his own,” his father muttered with another sniff. Loving what you were doing was all right for some people, apparently, but not for the second son of James Benning. “Well, you’d be wise to steer clear of Taylor’s sister,” he went on. “Another important rule of survival is: never fool around with your best friend’s sister.” He grinned slyly and winked.

Luke returned his father’s grin. “I’ll remember that.”

“And you’ve probably met plenty of other women down here, anyway.”

Luke opened his mouth to tell his father about Jenny, then shut it. He could predict what his father would say if Luke described her. Smith College was acceptable, but the daughter of insurance salespeople was bad, and red hair, even if determined by genetics and not L’Oreal, was
declassé
. An English major was valid, but a school teacher was not. And someone who actually clapped her hands together and insisted on climbing inside a mock-up of the lunar module was sorely lacking in sophistication.

And Luke hadn’t even gotten her into bed. Why was he wasting his time on a girl like her?

Because, Luke would say if he had the nerve—because the time he’d spent with Jenny Perrin was time spent happily. Because when he thought about it, it seemed as if much of his life had been a waste of time until the moment she’d marched up to him at a party and said “Hi.”

Because Jenny Perrin was a miracle worker. That was why.

“I’M SURPRISED YOU
liked it,” he remarked as he and Jenny left the church building, the interior of which had been gutted and converted into a flexible performance space. He had asked her if she wanted to see one of the Broadway hits whose touring companies were currently playing in town, but she’d suggested instead that they attend a new play at an experimental theater near Dupont Circle. Her theater-major roommate Sybil knew somebody affiliated with the theater, and Sybil had attended an earlier performance of the play and told Jenny it was worth seeing.

The play had been well-acted but depressing. The plot had revolved around the fleecing of an elderly widow by a cabal of selfish, money-mad young people. Yet Jenny liked the show—and Luke was coming to realize that he liked anything and everything he did in her company.

Last night he’d taken her out for pizza, and afterward they’d returned to her apartment to watch TV. They’d caught a rerun of some show she’d already seen, but that didn’t bother her. She and Sibyl and her two other roommates had all laughed and groaned and guessed what the next scene was going to be before it unfolded on the screen. They’d devoured a ton of popcorn and enough diet soda to float a navy, and they’d voted —with Luke abstaining—on who was the best-looking actor in the show.

It had been fun sitting on the lumpy old sofa in the living room, surrounded by four cute college girls yet feeling no compulsion to be cool or suave or seductive. Jenny’s apartment-mates had interrogated him on what it was like working for a senator—like Jenny, they were all summer-temp staff workers in assorted federal departments and agencies. Sybil had inquired as to whether during his three years at Princeton Luke might have come across one “Stephen Ray Fontiere, a renegade cousin of mine who chose to attend that Yankee school of yours,” and Fran had politely requested some assistance in changing the ceiling lightbulb in the kitchen, which none of the four girls was tall enough to change without balancing precariously on a chair placed on top of the kitchen table.

They were a terrific group of women. Sybil was deliciously sultry, Kate was as perky as a cheerleader on speed, and Fran was quiet and scholarly, almost Talmudic as she analyzed the television show.

In Luke’s eyes, though, Jenny outshined the others. Maybe Kate was prettier in a classic sort of way, and Sybil was more voluptuous, and Fran’s soft-spoken reflectiveness appealed to Luke’s intellect. But Jenny...Jenny glowed. She exuded affection and trust. To be with her was to get caught up in her optimism, to experience an incomprehensible sense of well-being.