The Favor

Driving back to his mother’s house from the tennis courts, Roger rounded a slow curve just past the golf course and saw a woman at the side of the road. She was standing at the end of the sandy lane that led to the little club beach. Against the Caribbean sun she wore a turban and a terry-cloth robe. Her legs were white and stalky, and on her feet were plastic bathing sandals. As the car approached, her hand fluttered up, undecided: not exactly a flag, but different from a wave. Roger stopped the car and she came over, taking tiny steps across the hot sand.

“Well, I suppose you’re in a terrible hurry,” she began.

Roger shook his head. “Not at all,” he said politely. “What’s the problem?” Roger was forty-eight. He had hazel eyes and a narrow face. His cheeks were lined and his forehead was high; his hair was beginning to recede.

“Well, my cah has broken down, you see,” said the woman. She talked very quickly, with an old-fashioned accent, stylized, rather grand. There was an outraged lilt to her sentences, as though it were a scandal that she had to say any of this at all. “I came ovah for a swim, and now it won’t start, don’t you see, and I have to get back home somehow.”

Roger leaned across the empty passenger seat and opened the door for her. “Here, climb in,” he said. “Where do you live?”

The woman pointed back the way Roger had come. “Parrakeet Peak,” she said, getting in.

It was just past noon, blazing hot. Beyond the scrubby trees, the sun was reflected by the ocean and sent back up into the shimmering air. Settling herself into her seat, the woman now took a good look at Roger.

“Aren’t you a Pickering?” she asked, accusingly, as though he were trying to sneak his family past her.

“Roger Conrad, hello,” he said, giving her a grave nod as he backed the car and turned it around.

“Oh, you’re Roger Conrad,” said the woman. “I used to know your fohthah.”

“Did you,” said Roger, pulling back out onto the road. “Now, where is it again that you’d like to go?”

“Parrakeet Peak!” said the woman, surprised that Roger had already forgotten.

“And just where is that, exactly?” Roger asked.

“Oh, it’s way back in, near the Janeways’,” said the woman, waving her hand in a long-distance gesture.

Roger started back toward the clubhouse. The road here ran along the wide white beach, which was edged with a line of palm trees. The trees leaned haphazardly toward each other, scattering shaggy leaves on the fine sand. Across the road, the golf course rolled its smooth gray-green mat across the rising slopes. Beyond the golf course there were low inland hills, covered with dense jungly growth. A few isolated houses were scattered along the crests and ridges. The island was very dry, and next to each house was a whitish open patch—a concrete catchment for rainwater.

The club owned a thousand acres in the southeast corner of the island. Except for the shorefront and the golf course, the club land was uncleared, covered with dense wild scrub. Most of the rest of the big island was open. Brown cattle grazed across broad, peaceful fields of pale grass, where sugarcane had once grown.

Roger’s parents had chosen this place, years ago, for its clean white beaches, the low pretty houses, the golf, and their kind friends there. When Roger was little, the family had come every winter after Christmas. He remembered those times as green, warm, easy. The life of the island was brilliant and foreign to him: the hot spiky growth and the brilliant flowers, the dry swift lizards. The black, black people, with their loose bright clothes and syncopated speech. Roger and his younger brother, Steven, had spent their days outside—on their bikes, or snorkeling in the easy washes around the small coral islands. Paddling slowly through the lucid surges, magically powered by his limber flippered feet, he heard his breathing loud and hollow in his ears. Roger felt privileged to be in this exotic place, following the silvery underwater life, the schools of wary fish, shifting and glittering before him; he felt like a fortunate traveler from another planet.

In those days the weather was steady, the sun benign, the rains brief. In the evenings, his parents went out to parties on wide stone terraces. His mother wore flowered dresses, a white sweater over her smooth brown shoulders.

Roger had not been back in nearly twenty years, but it seemed now that little had changed. The original premise of the club had been simplicity—the houses were modest, and there were no telephones. Now there were some new houses, bigger than the old ones, but still no telephones. The club seemed just the same: a cluster of low stucco buildings, clean, cream-colored, freshly painted, set into the low bluff above the long, perfect crescent of the beach. Vigorous foursomes in bright clothes moved across the golf course in the dazzling sunlight. In the evenings, in the club dining room, with its high thatched ceilings and polished stone floors, Roger’s mother waved and smiled at her friends. These were women who looked like her, in flowered dresses, with white earrings and necklaces. The women were with pink-faced men in colored trousers, men who looked like Roger’s father. It seemed, all of it, just as Roger remembered it: gentle, pleasant, protected.

Roger drove along slowly. The club roads were narrow, made of uneven concrete slabs. On the inland side the brush was hacked short for a scant yard, then gave way to heavy tropical growth, spiky-leaved and hostile. As Roger’s car came around a corner, a honey-colored mongoose, soft and bright-eyed, raised his head at them, then rumpled into invisibility among the gray-green leaves.

“I have to get back, you know, because I have to meet the architect. And the decorator.” The woman shook her head. “It’s so difficult to get things done down here. Of course I haven’t been here for five years. I’ve been in Palm Beach. It’s up along here on the right.”

Roger turned the car inland and started up the long spine of the hill. This road was one he did not remember, though he and Steven had biked around most of these narrow lanes. In those days his family had stayed at the clubhouse. It was before they built their house.

“I’m at the top of the hill,” said the woman. “The highest point on the island. You can see the sun rise and see it set from our house. I joined this club forty-five years ago but I didn’t buy a house until years later. I wanted this one, and I waited until it came on the market. Wiggy Newcombe called me up and said, ‘Cynthia, your house is for sale.’ I couldn’t believe it.” She looked at Roger expectantly, then asked, “Didn’t your fohthah join about the same time we did?”

“And my mother,” said Roger, nodding. “That sounds right.”

“I used to know him well.”

“Ah,” said Roger. This seemed unlikely.

“I knew your mothah, too, but not as well. She wasn’t a golfah. Your fohthah was a golfah.”

“He was,” said Roger.

“But your mothah wasn’t a golfah, was she.”

“She plays golf,” Roger said.

“I don’t remember it,” the woman said flatly. “Are they down here, your parents? Is that where you’re staying?”

“My mother is here,” said Roger. “My father died last summer.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” said the woman, turning in her seat to look at him. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Your fohthah was such an attractive man. A terribly attractive man.”

“He was,” said Roger.

“Give your mothah my sympathy, would you? I don’t know that she’ll remember me. Cynthia Harrison. I used to see her at parties. Tell her I’m terribly sorry about your fohthah. I’d love to see her,” she went on unconvincingly. “Will she be here long?”

“We’re leaving tomorrow, actually,” Roger said.

“Tomorrow, oh, that’s too bad. Oh, I’d love to have seen your mothah,” said Mrs. Harrison, now more confident. She patted her white turban. Her hands were large, and the joints of her fingers thick. She wore deep red nail polish, and her skin was milky. A faint dusting of freckles, like nutmeg, went up the backs of her arms. There were traces of dark lipstick on her mouth. She had an aura of faded and dreadful glamour.

“I used to see your fohthah at Saratoga, too,” said Mrs. Harrison. “He loved it there.”

“Yes,” said Roger.

“Do you go to Saratoga too?”

“No,” said Roger.

“It’s a beautiful spot,” said Mrs. Harrison. “Right along here. Turn left again. It’s really rather spectacular. We can see the sun rise and set from here. You’ll have to come in and see the view. I’ll just be a minute. I’ll have to find my man and send him back down to the cah. Can you take him down? It’s right on your way. Because it won’t start.”

Mrs. Harrison’s house was like all the old ones: low white stucco, with a palm-thatched roof. A tree with violent purple blossoms stood by the front door. On the garage roof squatted three black men wearing shorts and sunglasses. Mrs. Harrison rounded her hands into a megaphone and called up to them.

“Hoo-oo!” she called. “Where’s Mar-tin?”

The men looked at her and shook their heads. Mrs. Harrison turned back to Roger.

“Wouldn’t you know the roof had termites. I wasn’t here for five years—that’s why it’s all such a mess. I’ll get Martin. Rose will know where he is. Because he has to fix the cah. It won’t start.”

She made her way across the scrubby lawn in her transparent plastic sandals. On the other side stood a small whitewashed cottage; a radio inside blared ragged music. Mrs. Harrison stood outside the nearest end. Elbows pressed tight to her chest, she put her hands to her mouth.

“Ro-ose!” she called through the music. Rose did not appear, and she tried again. “Ro-ose!” Her voice was high and impatient. Roger looked up at the men on the roof. One of them, in yellow shorts and reflector sunglasses, was looking at Mrs. Harrison’s narrow back, her bathrobe and turban. He was laughing.

Rose came out of the other end of the cottage. She was black, with an injured expression and a large middle. She wore a loose paisley dress and a white apron.

Mrs. Harrison, not seeing her, leaned into the window full of music. “Rose!” she called despairingly.

“Hello!” shouted Rose, right behind her.

“Oh, there you are, Rose,” said Mrs. Harrison, turning around. “Where’s Martin?”

Rose shook her head with finality. “Don’t know.”

“But I have to find him,” Mrs. Harrison pointed out. “I need him to fix the cah, you see.”

“Don’t know,” said Rose again. She looked at the ground and jumped her hands up and down under her apron.

Mrs. Harrison did not answer. She turned her back on Rose and walked toward Roger. “It’s no good telling them anything,” she said loudly. “They don’t listen to a word you say.” She gave Roger a fretful smile. “Now come inside and let me show you the house.” Roger started to speak, but she held up her hand. “You have to see it. It’s the best view on the island. Come in for one minute. I know you need to get back.”

Roger did not need to get back. No one was waiting for him, and it might be useful to see inside of Mrs. Harrison’s house. Roger was here to help his mother put her house up for sale, and seeing other houses would give him a better idea of the market. He stepped inside.

A large open room led through a wide doorway to a terrace beyond. The ceiling was high and airy, the struts and beams exposed. The sight of this—the orderly right-angled pattern, the architectural skeleton—reminded Roger suddenly of the structure of his parents’ house here, and of the night he had first seen the plans of it.

This had happened in the big gabled brick house in Greenwich where Roger had grown up, and where his mother still lived. It was Roger’s senior year at Middlesex, and he and Steven were both home from school for Thanksgiving. Before dinner that evening their father called everyone into the library, which was his room. It stood off the big, square front hall, and was a narrow room with two tall windows. The walls were paneled in dark wood, and there were high built-in bookshelves. A fire was burning, and the room was warm and lit up. The whole house smelled of the roasting turkey. Roger’s grandparents were coming, and the air was full of anticipation.

Roger, Steven, and their father were all wearing ties, blue blazers, and gray flannels. Roger’s mother, Charlotte, was in a dark green dress. She sat on the leather Chesterfield sofa, and the black Lab, Troy, had crept surreptitiously up next to her. The dog smiled widely at the boys, his eyes narrowed in happiness, his rose-colored tongue hanging out. Their mother, too, was smiling, and their father, who seldom smiled, was jingling his keys in his pocket. He did this when he was either pleased or annoyed, and tonight he was pleased.

“Ready?” he asked the boys. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted. He had a high beaked nose, fierce eyebrows, and a florid complexion. At his temples were bushy gray tufts of hair. He was mostly bald, in a gleaming, powerful way.

Roger and his brother nodded alertly, though they did not know what it was they were ready for. An easel stood in front of the fireplace, a white linen napkin draped over the top of it.

Their father looked at the easel, then back at the boys.

“Get that dog off the sofa,” he said irritably. Troy was strictly forbidden to sit on the furniture, but only Roger’s father enforced this rule.

“Troy,” Charlotte said. At her tone, Troy’s face turned mournful and his body became immobile. “Troy,” Charlotte said again, loudly. She pushed at him, carefully. Everyone watched while Troy climbed reluctantly down and curled up dolefully on the rug.

“All ready?” Their father asked again, brusque. “Stand up straight, you two!” Roger and his brother moved their shoulders dutifully.

Their father lifted up the linen napkin. “Look at that!” he said proudly. On the easel was a drawing of a house, the boys had no idea why.

“Wow,” said Roger politely.

“Wow is right,” said their father severely. “Wow is right. The best-looking house in the whole damn club.” His face was stern but he jingled his keys, radiating satisfaction.

It was an architect’s rendering, drawn in straight and perfect lines. It was an ideal, a paradigm of a house, orderly, calm, supported by logic. Roger stared at it intently. He tried to imagine the drawing as an actual house, built, made real, with the sound of real waves beyond it, real palm fronds crashing around it, in real sea wind. Roger tried, but the transformation from theoretical to real was beyond him. He felt he was encountering his own limitations, and the vast reaches of his father’s strength. He knew the plan would be made real, and it seemed as though the house would be created out of his father’s sheer willpower.

This made Roger feel both proud and baffled, as though his father knew some empowering secret and Roger himself were stretching toward this knowledge, trying to live into what his father possessed so easily—his stern certitude, his absolute grasp of the laws governing the real world. Roger pulled his shoulders back farther, drawing himself up. At his feet, Troy thumped his heavy tail hopefully; Roger, usually his ally, frowned down at him severely.

Now Roger looked around Mrs. Harrison’s living room. It was large and light, but it looked as though it had not been touched in decades—since the nineteen-fifties. The turquoise plaster walls were covered with long, complicated cracks. Black kidney-shaped coffee tables stood on looping wrought-iron legs, and the big curved sofas were made of contoured foam-rubber cushions. At each end were square pillows with abstract shell designs on them. Whatever was not faded turquoise was faded yellow. On a table stood a huge conch shell, glossy, gum-pink inside, with a hard white undulating edge, like congealed icing. A faint, sharp odor of mildew hung in the air.

“Look at that,” said Mrs. Harrison, pointing with satisfaction out beyond the terrace. Below them was the long, sloping hillside of tropical thicket. Roger gazed dutifully at the ocean spread out in the distance, flat and gray-blue, glittering restlessly.

“That’s where the sun sets, right there.” Mrs. Harrison pointed, authoritative. “You can see it in the evening.”

“Very nice,” Roger said.

“Now let me show you the rest of the house,” said Mrs. Harrison. “It’s quite a remarkable place. Martin will be back in a minute, and you can take him down to the cah.”

“Mrs. Harrison—” Roger began, but she interrupted at once.

“Let me just see where Martin is. I hate for him to keep you waiting like this. I’ve told him a hundred times not to go off without telling someone where you’re going. You can’t get them to listen to a word you say.”

“Mrs. Harrison, I’m afraid I have to get back for lunch,” Roger said. He was beginning to think of his retreat.

“I know that, I know that,” Mrs. Harrison said. “That’s why I’m so cross at Martin. Let me just go and find him.” She vanished outside.

Roger did not follow her. He was reluctant to leave her stranded here, with no car and no telephone, but Roger had seen enough of Mrs. Harrison’s house, and of Mrs. Harrison as well. He did not look up again at the rafters. There was a second part to his memory of the house plans; it came back to him unasked, unwelcome.

The next morning, Roger had been called back into the library alone. When he came in, silent on the thick carpet, his father closed the door behind him without speaking and walked to the fireplace. The sky outside was overcast, the light inside was dull. The room was now cold. Thanksgiving dinner was over, the house silent. Roger’s father stood again by the fireplace, which was now black and empty. The easel still displayed the calm and perfect house plans, but this now seemed pallid and irrelevant. Roger’s father did not look at it. He looked at Roger. His face was dark, his eyebrows drawn fiercely together at the top of his high curved nose. He jingled his keys.

“Know why you’re here?” he asked Roger. It was an accusation.

Roger thought he did.

The trouble at school had started with minor offenses—skipping study hall, lights on after lights-out. There had been a forgotten appointment with his adviser. He had missed chapel and been caught. He and some friends had gone off campus without permission one Saturday night and were found walking along the road by a master driving by. There had been warnings about Roger’s attitude. Then, just before Thanksgiving, Middlesex had played its annual football game with its great rival, St. George’s. The game was at St. George’s, and Middlesex won, for the first time in years. It was a great and important victory, and the way to celebrate it had come to Roger in a moment of happy inspiration.

Roger still remembered the silence of the empty stone chapel, the smell of damp walls, the ecclesiastical perfume of hymnbooks and pews, the lightning thrill of illicitness. He remembered running easily up the stairs to the belfry, finding the long coil of heavy rope unguarded. The moment of setting himself onto the rope, fixing his grip on the rough, twisting surface, throwing his whole weight into the effort. He hung in the air, clamped onto the rope, his feet pulled up under him, his whole body willing the great change to begin. For a long moment there was nothing. Then, triumphantly, he felt the rope begin to give ponderous way beneath him, to begin its slow descent. Above him he heard the great sonorous clamor begin, the clanging jubilation sent out into the clear air. It had been his doing. It had been wonderful. He had nearly been expelled.

“You know why you’re here or not?” his father asked again. He walked back and forth in front of the fireplace, his hands in his pockets, his strides menacing. Against the somber sky, the heavy dark green curtains looked black.

“I guess so,” said Roger. He stood up straight, his shoulders pulled back.

His father stopped. “Why do you think you’re here?” His tone was belligerent.

“Ringing the bell, I guess,” said Roger bravely.

His father snorted. “You guess?”

“Ringing the bell at St. George’s,” Roger said.

His father glared at him. “You’re goddamned right. You’re here because of the goddamned bell.” He stopped and stared at Roger for a second, then turned again away. “I don’t know who you think you are,” he said.

Roger said nothing.

“I drove up to your school on Tuesday to talk to the headmaster.”

Roger had known nothing of this. The thought of his father at his school, talking to the headmaster, unbeknownst to him, gave him a chill feeling. He could see his father in his gray suit, frowning, walking rapidly across the gravel of the parking lot toward the brick administration building. It had happened three days ago. Roger felt a darkening of the room.

“Drinkwater said he’d never had a boy like you. He said no one had ever done a thing like that before at the school.” His father turned and faced Roger. His thick eyebrows were pulled angrily together. “I told him I thought he should expel you.”

There was a silence in the room.

“I said, ‘Kick the boy out. Teach him a lesson.’” His father looked at him. His mouth was a wide, bleak line, set by a rigid jaw.

Roger said nothing. He did not know what it would be possible to say. He felt cold, as though the November wind were sweeping right through him, as though the house itself were no protection. The room seemed colder than anywhere he had ever been.

Roger’s father fixed him for a moment, narrowing his eyes, and then began again, walking back and forth before the blackened fireplace.

“He wouldn’t do it,” his father said, his voice contemptuous. “Drinkwater said he wanted to give you another chance.” Roger’s father shook his head.

Now, in the tropical air, Roger could feel again the cold of that morning, hear his father’s voice as he said the word “expel.” He saw the easel, the drawing of the tropical house still there. He had felt ashamed that the house plans had been witness to this.

Roger moved out onto Mrs. Harrison’s terrace. By now his mother would be back from golf, and changing for lunch. Charlotte was tall and thin, with long limbs and dry, mottled skin that wrinkled diagonally along her arms. A spray of fine lines radiated from around her mouth, and her pale blue eyes had milky rims. Her short, dust-colored hair was in neat waves, held back by two combs at her temples. She wore no makeup.

Charlotte had told Roger her plans at breakfast. “I’m having lunch with the Simpsons,” she announced. She squeezed a slice of lime over the narrow prow of a pale green melon wedge. “I doubt they’d interest you. They’re a hundred years old and he’s had a stroke. I’ve known them all my life. Betty’s a saint. I don’t think you’d have much fun with them. Better have a sandwich at the club. Come if you want.” She did not look at him; she was concentrating on spooning a perfect half-moon out of the melon. “You’ll do better at the club. Betty’s cook is famous. Worst on the whole island.”

Roger had not minded his exclusion from lunch at the Simpsons’. In fact, he was relieved at the prospect of solitude: he and Charlotte had spent three whole days almost entirely in each other’s company. Roger had never before spent three days alone with his mother, and before coming down he had wondered if the trip would be uncomfortable, if it might produce some kind of awkward intimacy. What he dreaded, vaguely, was some disclosure from his mother, some unwanted revelation of grief, loneliness, regret—something ghastly, unavoidable. Of course this had not happened. Charlotte had been as she always was: cool, pleasant, composed. Roger was proud of her for this, proud of her emotional reticence and her sense of propriety. And he was proud of himself, too: he gave himself modest credit for maintaining an atmosphere—decorous, civilized—in which an emotional storm would not occur.

Cynthia Harrison now came out behind him. “Rose thinks he’ll be back soon,” she said. “Let me get you a pick-me-up.”

This surprised him: “pick-me-up” was his father’s phrase. Roger did not answer. Mrs. Harrison bustled smoothly back inside to the ice bucket, and Roger followed her. She scooped ice into two fat plastic glasses. “I will say, Rose makes the best rum punch in the whole club. Everyone says so.”

But Roger had not gotten a sandwich at the club, and he did not want his empty stomach invaded by rum punch. He answered in a no-thank-you tone.

“I’m afraid—” he began. But his voice was not quite firm enough, and Mrs. Harrison could hear through it that he had no plans. She waved her hand and interrupted.

“He’ll be back in a moment, Rose says. Because he has to fix the cah.” Mrs. Harrison handed him a glass, took the other for herself, and guided him to a chair. She sat on a sofa, where she leaned back theatrically against the cushions. Her long white legs were crossed at the thigh. The veins in them were bold and blue. Roger wondered how old she was: seventy? A bit more.

“Go on,” she said, “try it. Everyone says she makes the best.”

Roger took a sip: sweet and strong. He would drink half of it and leave, he decided. Then, if Martin was still not back, Roger would drive up to the club and ask the manager to take care of Mrs. Harrison and her car.

“Now, tell me,” said Mrs. Harrison. “Tell me about your fohthah. I’m so sorry to hear that he died. What happened?”

“There’s not much to tell,” said Roger. “He had a heart attack last summer, in Greenwich. He was playing golf. The eighth hole,” he added politely, in case she knew the course.

“Oh, your poor mothah,” said Mrs. Harrison expansively, shaking her head. “I know just what she’s going through. I remember when Eric died. I was devastated.” Her tone had become relaxed and intimate. “It changes everything, death. I mean apart from the grief, from your feelings. Everything is different. You don’t know what time you should get up in the morning. Should you have lunch? Should you go on having the paper delivered? You don’t know what to do, you haven’t the first idea.” She gestured widely. “And then people stop asking you out. They do at first, out of pity, but pretty soon instead of being a widow you turn into a single woman, and then they stop. No one wants a single woman at the dinner table. Your best friend will only ask you to lunch. She thinks you’re after her husband. As though I’d look at John Addington: a drunken sheep!” Cynthia Harrison laughed and shook her head. “But we can’t be picky, of course. None of us can. We aren’t such bargains anymore ourselves.” She suddenly smiled disarmingly, tilting her head self-deprecatingly. Her white hands with their gnarled knuckles fanned out on either side of her face, as though displaying some disappointing merchandise.

Roger looked down at his drink, uncomfortable. He did not want Mrs. Harrison’s sympathy. She was wrong, too, about his mother: Charlotte had been entirely self-possessed when his father died. She had been sad, of course, but calm and rational, not lonely and dithering. Roger could not imagine his mother wondering scattily whether or not to have lunch, any more than he could imagine her wearing blood-colored nail polish and a turban, flagging down cars on the road, asking strangers for favors.

“How long has your—how long have you been alone?” Roger asked. He looked at his watch. He would stay for five more minutes and then leave, Martin or no Martin.

“I was divorced in nineteen fifty-six,” said Mrs. Harrison promptly. “I remarried in nineteen fifty-seven, and then my second husband, Eric, died in nineteen seventy-nine. But I had already known your fohthah long before all that. He was such an attractive man.”

“Did you know him well?” Roger asked, sure she had not.

“At one time I knew him well,” said Mrs. Harrison thoughtfully. “I used to see him in Saratoga. I never saw your mothah there.”

“She didn’t go,” said Roger authoritatively, as though he knew. In fact, the trips to Saratoga had been in the summer, when he and Steven were at camp. He didn’t know whether his mother had gone or not. Still, he refused to let Mrs. Harrison be an authority on his parents.

Mrs. Harrison took another long swallow of Rose’s famous rum punch. So did Roger: it had actually begun to seem like a good idea. The rum was sweet and comforting, and it felt somehow energizing.

“No. I never saw your mothah there. Your fohthah said she didn’t like it.” Mrs. Harrison looked at Roger and paused. “Saratoga, I mean.” There was another pause. Mrs. Harrison seemed to be about to say something more, or waiting for Roger to ask her something, something more about his father.

Whatever it was she wanted, Roger refused her. “I don’t know what my mother likes,” he said abruptly. “Bridge. Golf. She has the garden club. I don’t know what she does. What do you do all day?” he asked, surprising himself by the question. It was the rum, he decided. But he wondered if his mother did get invited to dinner by her friends. He had never thought of this before.

“Oh, I have so much I can hardly get it all in,” said Mrs. Harrison, raising her hand to stem the tide. “You’ve seen what’s going on down here. It’s just as bad at home. Things seem to fall apart as soon as you notice them. Oh, you know what I mean. As soon as you’ve got the pool filter fixed, the maid quits. I’ve quite a lot to do. And I’ve got my boards. I’m very active on my boards. Have been for years.”

“I suppose my mother is on some boards,” Roger said, frowning. He wondered if she was.

“Of course your mothah’s on boards,” said Mrs. Harrison, waving her glass generously. “What else would she do?” She paused and looked at Roger. “What do you do? Are you married?”

“I’m a lawyer,” Roger said shortly.

“Ah!” said Mrs. Harrison inattentively, and stood up. She brought the pitcher of punch back over to the coffee table. She replenished both glasses and sat back down.

“Are you married?” she asked again. Her tone was gentle, and she cocked her head kindly.

“Not anymore,” Roger said, stiff.

Mrs. Harrison shook her head sympathetically. “Oh, it’s so painful, getting divorced. I went through agonies, myself, even though it was my own idea.”

Roger took another swallow of Rose’s punch and did not answer. He would not discuss his divorce with this woman, his failure.

“Well, it’s one thing my parents didn’t do,” he said, reminding her instead of his family’s success. “They always stayed together.”

“You mean they always stayed married,” said Mrs. Harrison lightly.

“They stayed together,” said Roger stubbornly.

“They stayed married. They didn’t always stay together. I knew your fohthah very well,” said Mrs. Harrison.

“And just how was it that you knew him so well?” Roger asked, nettled.

“Saratoga,” said Mrs. Harrison.

“I suppose he stayed with you there?” Roger asked, belligerent. He was now trying to goad her into indiscretion, falsehood, something he could challenge, deny.

“Oh, of course he stayed with us,” said Mrs. Harrison, surprising him with the pronoun. “Lots of times. We had a lovely big house at Saratoga, and he always came to us. Sometimes we’d all motor up together from New York. He loved Saratoga. We had a wonderful pair of linden trees by the terrace. Your fohthah was crazy about those trees. He used to stand underneath them and look up into the branches and close his eyes. He said he liked the sound the wind made in them. He said the sound was different from the wind in other trees.”

Roger made a small noise through his nose. He had never seen his father look up into a tree.

Mrs. Harrison shook her head. “Oh, we always loved having him up to stay. And of course he was wonderful company. He was so funny.”

“Funny?” Roger said, offended. “Roger Conrad?” His father had not been remotely funny.

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Harrison, smiling reminiscently. She took another swallow of rum punch. She looked past him out the doorway. Without any warning she called out suddenly, “Martin!,” in a loud high voice. She listened, frozen, her head raised, frowning. She had put on more lipstick, Roger noticed, and the dark mouth glistened horribly in her faded face. There was no answer from outside. Mrs. Harrison looked back at Roger.

“They laugh at me, you know,” she said in a conversational tone. “The help. It’s all changed here. When we first came down, years ago, they loved us here, because we gave them work. And we loved them, because they gave us this beautiful place. We used to be friends. Now, they hate us because we have money. They hate the scholarship funds we set up for their children, they hate the library we built them, they hate everything we do. Now they laugh at us behind our backs, and now we lock every room when we leave it.” Mrs. Harrison shook her head. “I miss it all,” she said. “I miss being friends with them. My old cook, Rachel, I miss her. Oh, how she used to make me laugh. We used to tell each other the most dreadful things, about our families, and laugh together. Now Rachel’s dead, and I have Rose, her niece. You saw her. Rose barely speaks to me. She won’t look at me unless she has to, and she won’t smile at me at all. Not a glimmer.” Mrs. Harrison shook her head again. “I miss my friends.” She paused, and looked at him candidly. “Of course it’s our fault, too, you know. It’s not just them.”

Roger said nothing. He wanted to deny flatly everything Mrs. Harrison said, but he found he could not. It was true, now that he thought of it, that attitudes had changed here. He saw few smiles now from the island people, and he remembered many when he was young. But Mrs. Harrison was wrong to blame this change on club members. Roger remembered only courtesy toward the island people—meticulous courtesy—from his parents, from their friends, from everyone he knew. This animosity, the change, was not their fault. He was on the point of saying so when he remembered something that had happened that morning.

In the club store he had seen a couple in their early seventies. They were white-haired and pink-faced, the man in bright green pants, the wife in a yellow golf skirt. Both wore round white canvas hats with wrinkly brims, pulled low. They were newcomers—someone’s guests—and they moved through the crowded aisles with an air of gentle confusion. The woman bumped slightly into Roger and turned, giving him an abashed smile.

“I beg your pardon,” she said charmingly.

At the counter, the man paid the black cashier in American money. He was given his change in something else—small darkish bills, rumpled, faintly greasy.

“What’s this?” he asked, moving the strange bills between his fingers. He looked up at the cashier, the bafflement in his blue eyes magnified by his horn-rimmed glasses.

“That’s island money,” said the cashier, impassive. He was a man in his forties, with ashy-black skin, a broad nose. A white short-sleeved shirt.

“But what am I suppose to do with it?” asked the pink-faced man, still holding out the grimy bills, faintly outraged.

“That’s their money, dear,” said his wife. “That’s their money. They use it to buy things.” She gave the cashier a nice smile and plucked at her husband’s sleeve, urging him along, kind, confident.

Roger had paid no attention then to the exchange, but now it came back, vivid and troubling. Now he remembered the cashier’s cold stare when Roger had set his newspaper on the counter and smiled. It made him wonder about those other memories: perhaps what he’d seen as courtesy had been something else, something covering a blithe and insufferable assumption. Roger felt unhappy, less and less certain. Everything seemed so complicated, so opaque.

Mrs. Harrison returned to Roger’s father. She shook her head, smiling. “No, he was wonderful to have around. He was such fun.”

But here Roger was on firm ground. “My father,” he said reprovingly, “was a very serious person.”

“Oh, of course he was,” Mrs. Harrison said, shaking her head. “I don’t mean anything against your fohthah. He was a marvelous man. So funny!”

Roger straightened, magisterial. “Mrs. Harrison, I think I know my own father,” he said. “He was not a funny man.”

Mrs. Harrison raised her eyebrows kindly. “Well, maybe we saw different sides of him. But he used to tell those wonderful stories on himself. You must have heard them. Of course he was a terribly bad boy when he was younger. You’ve heard about all that. He must have told you.”

“No,” said Roger.

“Well, you’ve heard how he was fired from his first job?”

“Fired?” repeated Roger, smiling now. He shook his head. “My father was never fired, from anywhere.”

“He was fired from his very first job, at a bank. For throwing paper bags of water out the window. He hit one of the tellers on her lunch hour.” Mrs. Harrison leaned back, rubbing her papery white throat, and laughed expansively. “You wouldn’t think they’d fire him just for that, would you?”

“It sounds quite reasonable, actually,” Roger said stiffly. He could not imagine his father leaning out into the air, supple, hilarious, looking for targets.

“Not to me,” said Cynthia Harrison. “But it turned out that he’d already done something worse. It was the two things together, you see. You haven’t heard this story?”

Roger shook his head, skeptical.

Mrs. Harrison leaned farther back against the sofa. “Oh, it was years ago. I think he and your mothah were just married. One night they’d gone out somewhere, out to dinner with some friends. It got late: he wanted to go on; she wanted to go home. So she went home and he went on. When he finally went home to the apartment your mothah was pretty cross.” Cynthia Harrison looked sympathetically at Roger. “It was quite late by then. Well, your mothah refused to let him into the apartment. He stood out in the hall, trying to persuade her, but she refused. I think he must have gotten a little loud, you know. The neighbors got involved. Everyone came out into the hall and had a point of view. It got quite lively. But your mothah was determined, and she stood firm. Finally your fohthah realized she wasn’t going to let him in. By then it was around six o’clock in the morning, maybe later. He’d had, really, quite a lot to drink. And so it seemed to him that the best thing to do was to go straight to the office. He didn’t have any other place to go, and he had to be there in an hour or so anyway. It seemed to solve all his problems at once: not being able to get in, finding a place to sleep, and being at work on time.” Mrs. Harrison’s face lit up, as though she herself had just solved all her problems.

Listening to her, Roger could feel his heart pounding more and more urgently. There was a turbulence inside him he did not understand. He felt angrier and angrier at Mrs. Harrison.

“So he took a taxicab downtown. He let himself into the office, which was empty. He sat at his own desk and put his head down and tried to take a little catnap, but you see it felt cramped. So he got up and set off to find a bigger space, somewhere he could be more comfortable. When he found one he settled down and went straight to sleep. And that was where the president of the bank found him at nine o’clock, when he went into the boardroom for a meeting with a client. Your fohthah was fast asleep on that big mahogany table, stretched out full length, flat out. He was still in black tie. Hadn’t even taken off his pumps.” Mrs. Harrison laughed again, closing her eyes with delight. She opened them finally and looked at Roger. “Oh, you must have heard that story.”

Roger had nearly finished his second rum. “I have never heard that story,” he said severely. “And frankly, Mrs. Harrison, I have a hard time believing it.” He stood up to leave. He was dismissing her, her ridiculous story, her ridiculous getup.

“Oh, it’s true, all right,” said Mrs. Harrison, smiling. She leaned back, pulling her legs up sideways underneath her and stretching her arms out along the cushions like a very old starlet. The flesh along her arms was loose and quivery. She took a long sip of the rum and looked up suddenly at the ceiling. “Ticky Cobb was there too, at the bank. Everyone knew about it.” She drank again. “Well, but he was famous, your fohthah.”

Doubtful, Roger said nothing. Ticky Cobb was a very old friend of his father’s. And there had been some business connection, he knew. For some reason this enraged him, it enraged him not to be able to deny this monstrous story flatly, totally.

Mrs. Harrison leaned forward. “Let me freshen your drink. It would be rude not to, since I’m keeping you here.”

“Thank you,” said Roger, “but no. I’m afraid it’s really time for me to leave.” He set down his glass. “I’ll run over to the club and ask them to see about your car. Thank you so much for the drink.” His voice was cold, loaded with contempt: he loathed this woman. He loathed this terrible cacophony she had loosed into the air, the turbulence in his chest, the clamor in his mind. His father had not been like that: this woman was a liar.

Mrs. Harrison stood up too. “You look like him, you know,” she said, and smiled.

But now he had her, Roger thought, triumphant. This was false. Roger did not in the least look like his father. He smiled.

“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” he said with satisfaction. “I don’t at all. Everyone knows that.”

But Mrs. Harrison only smiled back. She was not flattened by his denial, she was not even dismayed. She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe no one else does, but when I look at you I see him,” she said gently.

Mrs. Harrison seemed to have done it again. She had said something that Roger knew was false, but that he couldn’t deny. He couldn’t disprove this, any more than he could disprove the terrible, unwelcome story about his father. For there it was, the thing he had so dreaded hearing down here: the unwelcome revelation, the ghastly disclosure. Only the anguish was his, not his mother’s.

Roger stood looking at her, without speaking. It was rude, but he hardly knew what to say, he felt such confusion inside him. There was something rising up in him, a great surge of rage at Mrs. Harrison, contempt for her, but there was something jubilant that had been loosed as well. Roger felt as though he were again racing up those narrow chapel stairs, alone, running upward toward the wild, dangerous song that only he could make. He felt in a state of chaos, rage and jubilation shifting and glittering together in his head. What held him, what he could not bear, was the thought of his father. His father, stretched out on that mahogany table, in his dinner jacket, his black grosgrain tie limp against his stiff white shirt, his patent leather pumps still on. The terrible, contented smile on his father’s face.

All Roger knew now for certain, the only thing, was the fact that he hated Mrs. Harrison. How could he not? How could he ever forgive her? How could he thank her enough?