The Towers of Love (26 page)

He stood up and walked across the room to the telephone. “I'm not going to explain this to her,” he said. “You'll have to do that.” But it didn't matter. In any emergency, Reba was always one of the first ones to hurry to her side.

Thirteen

In the old days, when he had been at school and college, his mother had been very popular among his friends and classmates. They had vied for her attention and, as she urged them to, had called her Sandy. A particular admirer of hers had been Joe Wallace, whose own home had been broken by divorce and who hardly ever saw his own mother.

“Boy, but I think your mother's great, Hugh,” Joe had often said. “She's just terrific. She's got the most terrific sense of humour, she's a born clown. The minute she comes into a room she livens up everything. There's never a dull moment with her around, is there? She's terrific, and she's never soupy or affectionate the way a lot of mothers are—always telling you to straighten your tie or comb your hair or to sit up straight in a chair, or poking behind your ears to see if they're clean. I wish I had a mother like her—she's really terrific.” It had been in the days when everyone was using the word “terrific.”

It was fun, of course, to have a mother whom your friends all liked. It was better to have that than the other kind—the mothers with fat legs and elastic stockings and white shoes who came, in their little hats, to visit their sons at school, who always wanted to be taken first to see the library, next to see the chapel, and who walked about the campus with their sons on Sunday mornings, sons who, from their glum expressions, always seemed a little bit embarrassed by their mothers. And then there were other kinds of mothers, the Bonwit Teller mothers who came in the junior-cut mink coats with the Brooks Brothers fathers, and there were the society mothers who came in chauffeur-driven Cadillacs and Rollses.

But Sandy Carey, by contrast, had owned a ruby-red Cord convertible whose hood billowed with silver superchargers, and had arrived noisily on the campus with top down, one hand holding a large and improbable hat to her head, scarves blowing. The Cord had a deep and ominous horn, which she blew sporadically wherever she went, and, when she arrived at school, there was never any doubt about it, and the boys gathered around—to look at the car, to look at her. She had always had some horrendous experience on the road—a lecherous hitch-hiker whom she had picked up, a masked bandit who had sprung out at the car from behind a perfectly innocent little syringa clump, a drawbridge that had started to rise while she was crossing it, or some other barely believable near-disaster. And she had brought large picnic baskets, and as many boys who could would crowd into the little car and they would all speed off for a picnic in some remote spot, far from school. And from the baskets she would produce cold turkey and roast beef sandwiches, cakes and champagne, and they would all sit drinking champagne and smoking cigarettes—both of which were illegal at the school—and she would entertain them all with the kind of stories that young boys, at the ages of sixteen or seventeen, considered very daring and sophisticated. There was no question but that she enjoyed the attention of the young boys. After all, she was closer to their age than the other mothers. She flirted frankly and outrageously with them, invented pet names for many of them, flattered them endlessly when they showed off their feats of strength to her, and confessed to many of them that she harboured deep and sinful passions for them, and they had loved her. For a while, she had been the secret agent for the importation of Henry Miller novels to the school, because she said that she felt sex was something it was high time they learned all about, and they all said, “Boy—your mother is terrific, Hugh, just terrific.” And, for the most part, he had agreed with them that she was—“terrific.” She usually drove up alone, but sometimes she brought Reba with her and, on those occasions, the two sisters charmed the boys together.

Hugh was sitting now with Reba Pryor at the card table in the tall living-room window, thinking about his mother and all that had happened since those days, and trying to keep his mind on the game of double Canfield that was spread out between them.

“If you'll put your three of hearts on my two in the tableau,” Reba said, “I can uncover four more cards, darling.”

“Oh. Sorry,” he said, and played the three.

Quickly, she pounced on her now-opened plays. “Oh, look! A lovely little king,” she said. “Just what I needed. I'm winning, darling.”

“I know you are,” he said.

“You're not paying attention, Hugh. You're woolgathering.”

“I know I am. I'm sorry.”

“There!”
she cried. “The last of my misery pile. Now I
have
won.”

“Yes. I'll concede it, Reba,” he said.

She started gathering up the cards. “Shall we count up the score?” she asked him.

“No, I'll concede it. You've won by a big margin, Reba.”

Deftly, with her long fingers, she began separating the cards into two decks—one pile of gold, one pile of silver—the little piles growing with the clicking order of her hands. “Do you know how to play piquet?” she asked him.

“No, I'm afraid I don't.”

“It's very easy. I'll teach you,” she said. She snapped the cards on the table, cut them, and began to shuffle them. She shuffled them once, twice, three times. “Now,” she said, “each of us gets twelve cards—”

“Please,” he said, “I don't want to play anything else, Reba.”

“Don't you want to learn piquet?”

“Not really, no.”

“Oh, but we've got to do something, don't we? To occupy ourselves till Sandy and Pansy get home.”

“I'll play you a game of checkers,” he said.

“Oh, I hate checkers,” she said.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I don't really feel like playing much of anything,” he said.

She consulted a small gold watch, which was buried among her bracelets. “It's just one o'clock,” she said. “They should both be on the plane now. It's two hours earlier out there.”

“Yes.”

“By three o'clock we should be hearing from her. She promised to telephone as soon as the plane gets in.”

“Yes.”

“I do hope nothing has gone wrong,” she said.

“Don't worry, nothing will go wrong,” he said.

“Oh, I just wish I were as sure of that as you are. It seems to me that all sorts of things might go wrong.”

“What? What could go wrong?”

“Just—all sorts of things.”

“Not with Sandy engineering it,” he said. “It will have all gone like clockwork.”

“Will her arguments be effective?”

“Sandy is the most effective woman since Lady Macbeth.”

“You sound bitter, Hugh. Are you bitter about something?”

“I'm just stating a simple fact,” he said. “Have you ever thought that you'd like Grand Central Station moved to Seventh Avenue and Thirty-third Street, and Pennsylvania Station moved to Forty-second and Vanderbilt? Tell Sandy that you'd like it done, and she'll have it done for you by to-morrow morning.”

“Oh, Hugh, that isn't fair,” his Aunt Reba said. “Sandy isn't that sort of domineering woman.”

“Isn't she?”

“No. She simply wants the best possible thing for her family, and she does her best to see that the best possible thing happens.”

“Do you think what she's doing now is the best possible thing, Reba?”

“Well, under the circumstances, yes I do,” she said. “I really do. I know it may seem hard on Pansy for the moment but—in the long run—it must be the best thing.” And she added, “Don't you think?”

“No,” he said. “And I'm not really sure you think so, either.”

“I—” she began. “I feel that it
is
because—well, because Pansy really can't do this sort of thing, can she? I mean she just can't. No young girl can do that—just run off and marry whomever she pleases, the first one who happens to catch her eye. In my day, no young girl would ever think of doing such a thing, and things haven't changed
that
much since my day, Hugh.”

“But what if she happens to be in love with him?” he asked her.

“Oh, I'm sure she probably
thinks
she's in love with him,” she said. “But love is”—and she fingered the heavy pearls at her throat—“love is—” and then, with a little nervous laugh, she said, “What is love?”

“Yes,” he said. “I guess that is the question. What is love?”

“One thing I know,” she said, “is that this kind of love—this kind of sudden and overpowering love—doesn't last for ever. It fades—in time. When you're older and wiser, my dear, you'll realise that.”

“When I am older and wiser,” he repeated. “Reba, I'm thirty-one years old. I've been to college, I've been in the Army, I've been married for over nine years. Why does everyone in this family continue to treat me as though I were just a little boy?”

“Hugh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you were just a little boy. You're a man, and I know that. I'm sorry.”

“But everyone
else
,” he said, “
she
particularly, treats me as though I were nine or ten. Why is that, do you suppose? The other day Edrita Everett and I—Edrita Smith, now—took a little walk in the woods, and when I came back, Sandy said to me ‘Have you been
playing
with Edrita?' See what I mean? That's the way she thinks of me.”

“Oh, I don't think that's so strange or awful,” she said. “I think it's perfectly natural that she should remember that you
were
her little boy once, once upon a time. Don't be unkind about your mother, Hugh. Don't forget everything she did for you.”

“How can I?” he said. “How can I forget that?”

“Of course you can't. That time, when you were sick—it brought the two of you closer together than most mothers and their sons.”

“But what about Pansy?” he said. “Pansy's the one I'm thinking about. She's twenty-four. She should be old enough to make up her own mind, make her own decisions.”

“Oh, I
agree
,” Reba said. “She
should
be. But she doesn't seem to be, does she? I mean, really—look at it this way. She's engaged to Austin Callender. An engagement is a promise, it's like a contract. You don't just break it like that, with a snap of your fingers, and run off and marry somebody else—somebody nobody's ever met. You just don't
do
things like that. It's not a grown-up way to behave.”

“But perhaps she simply doesn't love Austin.”

“Austin is a very sweet boy.”

“I like him, too,” Hugh said. “I'm not arguing about whether Austin is a sweet boy or not. I'm talking about the way she feels, and maybe she just doesn't love Austin, and loves this other guy.”

“But it's impossible,” Reba said. “He's an Air Force cadet. He wants to be a career officer in the United States Air Force. Now you know your sister as well as I do. Is she going to be happy spending her life moving around from one Air Force base to another, playing bridge in the Officers' Wives Club? Can you see her leading that sort of life?”

“But the point is,” he said, “that it should be her decision, somehow—whatever kind of life she wants to lead.”

“But she doesn't seem to be capable of making the
right
decision,” she said. “That's what Sandy is thinking. Sandy is only thinking of helping her make the right decision—for her future happiness.”

“Yes,” he said, “I'm sure that's what she's thinking.”

“So don't be too hard on poor Sandy. All she wants is for her children to be happy.”

“Reba,” he said, “have you heard any talk about Dad and a woman named Caroline Schiller?”

“Oh,” she said. “You've heard about that, then.”

“Is it true?”

“Who told you? Where did you hear it?”

“Sandy told me.”

“Oh,” she said again. “Why would she have to tell you about that?”

“Is it true?”

“Well,” she said, “yes. I'm rather afraid it is.”

“I see,” he said.

“Of course we don't know—no one knows—how deeply involved an affair it is, or even if we should call it an affair. My feeling is—our feeling is—that it really isn't that deeply involved, and that it will all blow over in time. But I'm afraid, yes, that your father has been rather naughty—seeing this Schiller woman as much as he has. He's even been seen with her in public restaurants, and if he's not careful there is going to be talk—important talk. But I can't believe that it's anything serious, Hugh—that it's anything we really need to worry about. I mean, I can't see what he could possibly see in her. She's very fat. Of course I don't understand men—I don't understand men at all. Sandy has been—well, Sandy has been really wonderful about it. Very sensible and philosophical about it, and she says, ‘Well, men will be men.' And we both think that if we just ignore it, and pay no attention to it, and let him have his little fling or whatever it is, it will all blow over.”

“God,” he said, “but this family's a mess.”

“Don't say that! We're
not
a mess! How can you say a thing like that?” She ran her fingers through her orange hair. “Am I a mess?”

And her eyes looked so pleading that he smiled at her and said, “No, Reba, you're not a mess.”

“After all,” she said, “these little things happen in families. They happen, and if you just ignore them, they blow over.” She looked at her watch again. “Oh, I do hope everything's all right with Sandy,” she said. “I do hope nothing has gone wrong.”

“Don't worry. Nothing could possibly go wrong,” he said.