Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (23 page)

“Okay, Dad,” Ben finally said. “I'm sorry. Do you want me to apologize to her, too?”

“No-o-o,” my father said, drawing out the little word. “If you did, I'd have to apologize to you, and I'd hate that.”

It was his only admission that Ben had been right, and all he had to say on the subject, except, “Poor Louise…poor Louise.” He didn't take a nap and he had two more highballs before dinner.

Mrs. Loder called the next morning to ask if she could drive him to the station, but he said he wasn't going to the city that day, and he didn't invite her to tea.

Ben bounced back to his normal elated, energetic state. “He knows he misjudged her, and that's all we wanted,” he told me. “And he's not angry with me.”

“No, he's always known you could be ruthless,” I said admiringly.

A few days later, Louise and I had a talk in the girls' room in school. “Is she still furious with you?” I asked.

“No. The funniest thing happened. We had a real run-in after we left your house, but since then, she and I are getting along much better. It's like the pressure is off, if you know what I mean. She knows
I
know how she really feels about everything, and she doesn't have to pretend she doesn't. How's your father?”

I was thinking so hard about how nice it must be to be ruthless if you felt ruthless, or to have somebody else know how you really felt, or to know yourself the truth of how you felt that I almost didn't hear the question. “Oh, my father? He's the same as ever,” I said comfortably. “When you're his age, you don't change much.”

The removal of Mrs. Loder from our lives—oh, my father saw her now and then, but not as frequently as he began to see other people—imbued us with fresh vitality. Without being aware of it, I smiled more. Boys in my class invited me to football games and parties, and once in a while the movies on Saturday night. The nearest theater didn't sport a midnight show, and I was satisfied to be seen often enough among the girls who were partnered.

With my first date, I was curious, slightly on guard. But after a few experiences, smiling in a conspiratorial, comradely way at the other escorted girls, I learned how to handle the customary good-night kiss, affectionately if not passionately. I bought more clothes and Ben and my father came to accept the facts of my more active social life.

At almost seventeen, I was confident enough to choose the boys I would kiss with more discrimination. Ben, ready to be graduated from high school, had promoted himself from the lead roles in school plays to bit parts in the county's Little Theatre productions. My father didn't talk of dying anymore. He was again buying nearly as much as he was selling; newly purchased antique vases and a collection of water colors helped restore our living room's cluttered appearance, despite Hubert's best efforts. Hubert had spoken perhaps twenty sentences more during the previous year than he had the year before. We were living in what none of us recognized as a hiatus between stirring events.

The first one to develop started after the first performance of the Little Theatre's rendition of
Liliom
, Ferenc Molnár's classic drama about a wife-beater whose wife so adores him that she claims at the end of the play that “someone may beat you and beat you and beat you—and not hurt you at all.” Ben played the Second Policeman with a particularly rich, menacing air. The dressing room shared by the male supporting members of the cast was crowded with actors and visitors. Still, one couldn't help noticing Lois Carrington when she came in.

From the back or three-quarter view, she looked about eighteen, the young, country-eighteen of popular fiction. She had a small, rounded figure with firm upper arms and a straight neck. Yet it was her pinafore dress and braided reddish-brown hair that helped mostly to create the eighteen impression. When she turned about full face, you realized from the tiny hollows in her cheeks and under her eyes that she was nearer forty.

I was there to tell Ben that my father and I had enjoyed the show, that we had a ride home, and that if he didn't want to come with us, he could walk. But it was hard to deliver the message. Lois Carrington was hard to interrupt and she was saying, of the father of three who was playing Liliom, “In all honesty, I do think Carl could be more bitter, more biting, in the third scene. Don't you think so, Ben?”

Ben was removing his makeup. He prefaced his answer with a wry, superior smile. “I'd play the whole thing differently.”

“I
know
you would. I just
knew
it. I've been watching you at rehearsals, Ben, and I must say, I've thought all along, you're the only one who's really
in
the play, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.”

I butted in. “Ben?”

“Oh, Lucresse…how did Dad like it? This is my sister. Lois Carrington, actress and treasurer extraordinaire.”

“Hello. Daddy liked it fine. So did I. It was all right.”

“So you're Ben's
sister!
Ben, you didn't tell me you had a
sister!
”

“Daddy wants to know if you're coming home with us, or walking,” I said, ignoring her.

“Ben, you're not going right
now
, are you? I have my car,” said Lois.

Ben didn't even look at me. “Tell Dad I'll be along later. And here. Take these socks with you. And wash them, will you? They're the only black ones I have.”

“I'll leave them on your dresser for
you
to wash,” I replied. And I about-faced.

My father and I played gin rummy until Ben got home—after two o'clock.

“Did I seem tough enough to you? Did I convince you?” Ben asked my father immediately.

“Yes, you convinced me,” my father said. “Who is Lois Carrington?”

Ben lifted his eyes, and his guard, at me. “She's the treasurer of the company. She could have been a fine actress if she hadn't married the man she did.”

“Carrington…Carrington…” my father mused. “I think I know him. I rode into New York with him on the train a couple of times. Has his own accounting firm, a man about my age.”

“I don't know her husband,” Ben said shortly.

“He let me know he had a very young wife.” My father was unquelled. “Seemed the fact was his special pride.”

“Since you're both so interested, she's thirty-three or thereabouts,” Ben said.

“Or thereabouts,” I said.

“I didn't see old Carrington there tonight,” my father said blithely.

“He never goes anywhere she goes, not that that's any of
our
business,” Ben said.

“See that you don't make it your business,” my father said.

“All I'm interested in is the role I'm playing.” Ben's mouth was wrathful.

“Rather, that's what you're
most
interested in,” my father returned.

“I'm glad you enjoyed the performance so much you couldn't stop talking about it,” Ben said bitterly.

My father met Lois the very next morning. Crisp, with a Peter Pan collared blouse and a dirndl skirt, she dropped in to give Ben what she called with a merry, little-girl laugh, “a small present of something every man should have more than one pair of.” The package contained three pairs of black socks.

Her attention then turned to me. “Are you going into the theater too, Lucresse? It was my first love.”

Many years later, I learned something relatives of famous people know, unless they're asses: how to distinguish between people who are interested in them because their relatives are famous, and sincere people. But this was my first round with someone who wanted to know me because I was Ben's sister, and Ben was not yet famous. I was suspicious, but not wholly antagonistic.

“No, I don't like to act.” I oddly felt as if I were lying.

“How odd,” she might have commented, from her expression, but my father didn't leave her the opportunity.

“I think I'm acquainted with your husband. He's an accountant, isn't he?”

“Yes,” she said.

“A nice man. A very nice man.”

She mouthed a cordial, flattered smile. “That's what most people say when they mean the fatherly type.”

Pure hatred flitted across my father's face. Ben didn't appear to notice. My father forced it away and asked, “So, you're fascinated with acting?”

“Yes, indeed!”

“You and Ben have a good deal in common then. Tell me, what roles have you played?”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Here at Winding Hill.”

“Well, actually, I haven't played any here—yet. There haven't been any roles that suited me.”

“I see,” my father said.

“She's played Desdemona in summer stock,” Ben said.

“I see.”

“I have a good idea, Ben,” she said abruptly. “Let's have lunch and read
Othello
this afternoon.”

We didn't see much of Ben for the rest of the weekend. Once, when Lois honked for him Sunday, three hours before curtain time, my father asked, “Do you and Mr. and Mrs. Carrington eat all your meals together, Ben?”

“He's out of town, didn't I tell you?” said Ben, dashing out.

“Do you think he's in love with her?” I asked after the walls stopped vibrating from the door slam.

“He's in love with himself,” murmured my father, “and she flatters him.”

“That's what I think too.” I hadn't actually thought any such thought before. “It's not like it was with Felicity.”

“No, that was healthy, compared to this.”

“Poor
Mr.
Carrington. I think you ought to make Ben leave her alone,” I said righteously.

“I've thought of Mr. Carrington. Though no doubt he's aware of all the Bens there must have been. But whose advice has the power of a boy's ego?”

Of course I had no answer.

My father's displeasure with Ben pleased me. Somehow it repaired my wounded self-esteem from a lifetime of failed attempts to be
noticed for who I truly was—though my identity still mostly eluded me. If Ben was bad, somehow I was good. Also, it seemed to me that Ben didn't treat me with sufficient respect unless we were mutually embroiled in some crisis, such as the one with Mrs. Loder, and he had been particularly distant and disrespectful since he'd taken up with Lois Carrington.

“Don't try to give him advice,” I said. “Lay down the law to him.”

“
My
law?” my father said, incredulous. “The law of society? Right now, that's not
Ben's
law. He will obey only his own law. And so will she.” His eyes suddenly narrowed, seeing a light that was invisible to me in the darkness of the situation. “And so will
she
.”

“But she's…” I couldn't think of an acceptable synonym for a woman who was promoting an affair with a boy half her age while she was married to a proud man twice her years. I couldn't think of the name for that kind of conscious manipulation and deceit.

My father supplied what I considered a mistaken euphemism indeed.

“She's a coward.” Nevertheless, in view of his disapproval, during the next week, he showed uncharacteristic patience as Ben charged away time after time at the sound of Lois's horn. We watched her slide over to let Ben slide into the driver's seat. She always tapped a quick little kiss on his cheek as he started up the car. My father never asked Ben where or with whom he was going, didn't wait up for him after any of the five
Liliom
performances.

My patience was at a breaking point. And it burst completely the following Saturday morning when Ben, having arisen late, ambled yawning into the living room where my father was still ruminating about whether to hang the watercolors or not. His remarks made me wonder if he'd gone out of his mind.

He started innocently enough. Ben had mentioned trying to find a summer theater job. “Are you still interested?” my father asked.

“Sure,” Ben said.

“All of the summer theater offices are in the city.”

“I know that.”

“How do you intend to get there and back, ‘making the rounds,' as they say?”

Ben moved the watercolor he was fingering a quarter of an inch. “I can take the train, but I can also get a ride.”

“Every day? It may take you a few weeks of looking.”

“Most
every day.”

“With whom?” said my father, as if he really didn't know.

Ben distractedly inspected the watercolor picture. “Lois has a car.”

My father jutted the one he was holding closer to his face. “Seems to me this is a good time to get you a car of your own.”

Ben took him up on the idea instantly, without a pause for thanks or elaboration. He called Lois, and she went with him and my father to a dealer's showroom that very afternoon. Because Ben insisted, I waited at home—consumed by unspeakable rage.

I thought if you told the truth—if you could just figure out what that was—you would win! Louise had told the truth to Mrs. Loder and now they had a good relationship. Ben had been ruthless, and my father had appreciated and respected him for it. But now Ben was sneaking around with a married woman. I had ruthlessly suggested that my father lay down the law and stop it, and instead he was rewarding Ben with a car?! This made no sense at all.

All three—Ben, Lois, and my father—soon returned in a snazzy, red convertible, and Lois kept touching Ben's hand that jingled with the keys and saying she thought it was “just too perfect.”

That afternoon, Ben drove Lois to the state park where they planned to study
Hamlet
, and he didn't return until after my father and I had gone to bed. My father was probably instantly asleep, but I lay awake until one thirty—waiting, listening, wondering how Ben could act any way he pleased and still end up on top—and when I finally drifted off, he still wasn't home.