Four

The dining-room had come from some château on the Loire, and stretched across the ceiling between the fruited garlands of carved plaster were four frescoes that were supposed to represent the four seasons. But the frescoes were dim now in the table’s candlelight, which were caught and refracted by the pear-shaped prisms of the chandelier, and the gambolling seasonal figures were merely shadows that swam in the vague upper air. He reached the table slightly ahead of his mother and, when she came into the room, he saw that she had put on a long grey chiffon dress and that, twisted in the bracelets of both wrists, she had hung two long matching grey chiffon scarves which floated at her sides as she walked, like strange, gauzy wings.

“Sit down, darling,” she said, waving one plumed arm towards him. And when they were seated, at opposite ends of the long table, he saw that she had disappeared completely behind a large and, he thought, rather pompous arrangement of gladioli that sprouted from a bowl at the centre of the table. Pappy, in his white coat, came from the kitchen with cold soup.

“Pappy, darling,” Alexandra Carey said, “please take away those damn’ flowers.” Pappy set down the soup plates hurriedly, bowed and moved quickly towards the centrepiece. “Pappy, I love you dearly,” she said, “but I do wish you wouldn’t try to do flowers. Leave that sort of thing to the Japanese. And now,” she said, when the flowers had been removed to the sideboard, “champagne. Champagne to welcome home our Hugh. And the good champagne, please, Pappy. You know where it is. Ice two bottles quick-quick-quick.” She clapped her hands, which sent sprays of chiffon outwards on either side of her.

“I don’t have to have champagne, Sandy,” he said.

“Nonsense. It’s your second night home. We want champagne. We want to get absolutely gassed on champagne to-night.”

“Well, we don’t need two bottles, do we?” he asked, but Pappy had already left the room, scurrying across the rug in his slippered feet.

“We can’t get gassed on one bottle, for God’s sake,” she said.

The “we” here, of course, was theoretical because his mother no longer took a drink. And though Pappy now brought two champagne glasses to the table and set them at their places, Hugh knew that his mother would have cold ginger beer, as she always did, from a little crockery bottle. And, sure enough, the next thing that arrived in the dining-room was the champagne cooler with the two green champagne bottles settling in the ice along with the smaller bottle of her soft drink.

“Oh, goody,” she said. “We’re going to get positively sozzled, aren’t we?”

“I guess we are,” he said.

They sipped their soup.

“Hugh,” she said, “you look so solemn, baby. Are you feeling solemn about something, baby?”

“No, I’m not feeling solemn about anything, Sandy,” he said, smiling.

“Oh, don’t be solemn! Gaiety, gaiety. We must have gaiety. Damn it, Pappy, isn’t that champagne ready yet?”

“A minute, miss,” Pappy said, bowing.

“You’re not angry with me, are you—for dragging you up here?”

“You didn’t drag me, Sandy,” he said. “I was glad to come.”

“Were you? Were you really? I thought you sounded—oh, just a tiny bit reluctant when I called you on the phone.”

“It wasn’t that,” he said. “I just hadn’t quite made up my mind what I was going to do.”

“Oh, you probably wanted to take some nice trip by yourself, or go off to some place like Boca Grande with Anne. The last thing in the world, I’m sure, that you wanted to do was to come up here and spend a few days with your poor old dowager mother.”

“It’s always good to be home, Sandy,” he said. “Really.”

“Oh good. Then don’t be solemn. Tell me about your walk.”

“We had a nice walk.”

“Where did you walk to?”

“Down to the old field in back—the one we used to call the Enchanted Valley. And to the brook.”

“The Enchanted Valley. How charming. I’d forgotten we ever called it that. Who named it that, I wonder?”

“It was Dad,” he said.

“Oh, was it? Was it really? How surprising. That must have been in his extreme youth, mustn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess it was—in his extreme youth, Sandy.”

“You’re being solemn still! Hurry, Pappy.”

“A minute, miss.” He was slowly turning bottles in their nest of ice.

“Well, I’m glad you had a nice walk. I’m glad you had a visit with Edrita.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not still fond of Edrita, of course. Are you?”

He looked at her down the length of the table.

“What’s the matter? Oh, you mean Pappy? My God, don’t you know that Pappy can’t understand a word we’re saying? Can you, Pappy darling? Pappy, what are we talking about?”

“Pardon, miss?”

“You see? He doesn’t understand a word. Pappy only understands me when I talk a certain way, don’t you, Pappy?”

Nodding, Pappy said, “Yes, miss.”

Pappy and his wife Maria, who was the cook, had been in the house for nearly twenty years. And by now, Hugh supposed, they did understand his mother, when she spoke to them a certain way, and possibly even loved her. Pappy and Maria were another of the changeless things about the house.

“Well,” she said, “you’re not, are you?”

Though he knew what she meant, he said, “Not what?”

“Not still fond of Edrita.”

“I’ve always liked Edrita.”

“Oh, of course you’ve always liked her, darling. I don’t mean that. I mean fond of her. That way.”

“No, I don’t think I am,” he said.

“Well, forgive me for asking, but when I saw you together this afternoon I couldn’t help, you know, wondering, and remembering.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure, Sandy.” He spooned his soup, concentrated on it.

“You were wise about that,” she said. “Wise about her. She was never for you, and you were very wise to realise it when you did. You’ve always done the wise thing. I’m proud of you for that.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Anne was the right one for you, the perfect one. You were wise to see how right Anne was.”

“Yes.”

Behind him, with a soft pop, he heard the first champagne bottle being opened. “Oh, goody!” his mother said.

Then she said, “Oh, I hope you don’t think it was too dreadful of me to tell you not to bring Anne. It’s just that you and I have always been able to talk so well together, just by ourselves. So I was being selfish. I wanted it to be so that your father and I could have you all to ourselves for a little while.”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, Anne’s pretty busy right now.”

“I know. She’s always so busy with everything. How I admire her. How I wish I had her energy.”

“Yes,” he said.

Pappy stood beside him now and was filling his champagne glass. Then he moved down the table and filled his mother’s glass with ginger beer.

She lifted her brimming glass. “To you,” she said, “to the returning conqueror!”

“Thank you.”

“I’m so happy.”

Soup was removed and dinner came. The food was always good in his mother’s house. He sipped his champagne.

“Of course,” she said, “when I first heard that you and Joe Wallace were breaking up, that he was buying you out, I was terribly alarmed. Yes, alarmed is the word—and shocked. That was why I telephoned. I simply couldn’t believe it.”

“Well, there was no need to be alarmed,” he said. “It was a perfectly friendly thing.”

“I know. And of course, when you explained to me about the financial side of it—how very nicely you had made out—I realised that made all the difference in the world. Getting all that money puts quite a different complexion on it, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I suppose so, if you want to look at it that way,” he said.

“My first thought was: How could you? I mean it seemed so terribly sad that you’d invested so much time—nearly seven years—with Joe. It seemed impossible that after spending so much time there you could suddenly just throw it all over, just on an impulse.”

“Well, that wasn’t quite the way it was,” he said. “It wasn’t a sudden impulse. It was something Joe and I had been discussing for a long time.”

“Oh, I know. And it’s too late for you to change your mind about it now, anyway, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” he said.

“The main thing is, you’re sure you did the right thing.”

“That’s right.”

“But I admit, when I first heard about it, I was terribly upset. I didn’t know what you could be thinking of. And when Joe Wallace told me—”

“Oh?” He looked up at her. “I didn’t realise you’d been talking to Joe.”

“Oh,” she said, waving her hand, “it wasn’t that I was talking to him, really. And it was months and months ago. I just happened to run into him. I was in New York for one of my assignations with Titi, and Titi and I were lunching—where was it? Oh, yes, it was at the Baroque. I’m sure it was at the Baroque. We were lunching there, and Joe Wallace just happened to walk by. And he spoke to me.”

“I see,” he said.

“And he mentioned—oh, he mentioned it only very casually—that you and he were having some sort of disagreement about something, and he asked me to speak to you, and really I guess I wasn’t paying any attention to what he was saying because it didn’t make much of an impression on me. I’ve really forgotten what it was he said. I didn’t think it could possibly be anything serious.”

“Joe asked you to speak to me?”

“Well, yes.”

“I wonder what Joe wanted you to speak to me about?” he said.

“Well, I suppose he wanted me to try to persuade you to change your mind.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Actually, if I had known what it was you were planning to do—if you’d told me—I would have asked you to think it over carefully, and not do anything hasty.”

“Well, as you said, it’s too late now,” he said.

“Yes, and I’m sure you’ve done the right thing. And the important thing now is not what you’ve done, but what you’re going to do next.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I suppose you have some plans.”

“I have one or two ideas.”

“Oh, good. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what they are, would you?”

“Well, not quite yet,” he said. “I haven’t really decided anything yet, Sandy.”

“Of course. Well, there’s lots of time, isn’t there? Acres of time.”

“Yes.”

“Of course I did have one thought—and don’t for a minute think I’m trying to arrange your life for you, darling, because I’m certainly not—but I did have one thought.”

“What was that?” he asked her.

“It occurred to me, now that you have all this money, you might just start an advertising agency of your own, mightn’t you? I mean, who needs Joe Wallace? Why not start your own company? I’m not saying you should do it, of course. It’s just an idea.”

“Yes, it’s an idea,” he said.

“But—you do as you wish. You’re your own man, darling. You’re very much your own man, and I’m proud of you.” She smiled at him. “Drink up!” she said. “And eat. Your dinner’s getting cold and your champagne’s getting warm. Pappy! More champagne, Pappy! No one’s had nearly enough to drink.”

He took another swallow from his glass. “Say,” he said, “you were going to tell me about the mystery guest to-morrow night. Who is it?”

“Oh!” she cried. “Forgive me! Well, guess. Just guess.”

“I just can’t guess.”

“Try. It has to do with Pansy.”

“I still can’t.”

“Well, our little Pansy is engaged.”

“No kidding?” he said. “Well, say, that’s wonderful.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Unofficially, of course. Nothing in the papers yet. More champagne for Mr. Hugh, Pappy. We’re trying to get sozzled. Yes,” she repeated. “I suppose it is.”

“Why do you just suppose it is? Who is the guy?”

“Oh, I mean I suppose our Pansy had to marry somebody, didn’t she? I mean she’s too pretty not to marry anybody, and end up an old maid like Reba. So I suppose it is wonderful.”

“Well, who is he?”

“His name is Austin Callender. I’ve met him. He’s very nice.”

“You like him then? You approve?”

“Oh, yes, I approve. He’s one of the Callenders. From Boston. He’s Andover ’fifty-one, Harvard ’fifty-five. Hasty Pudding and all that rot. Spee Club. Too bad it couldn’t be Porcellian, but Spee will have to do. Very rich, not bad-looking, very dull—perfect for Pansy.”

“Well,” he said again, “I think it’s wonderful. She—I suppose she loves him.”

“Oh, she insists she adores him. And he insists he adores her. They were here for a week-end. He was very sweet. He said, ‘I hope you’ll forgive me for wanting to take your beautiful daughter away from you, Mrs. Carey.’ As though I were Mother Carey and Pansy were one of my chickens! I said something very witty and original. I said, ‘Don’t be silly, Austin. I’m not losing a daughter. I’m gaining a son.’ And do you know what he said then?”

“What?”

“He said—‘Gee, thank you, Mrs. Carey.’ He’s a stockbroker.’

“Well, I still think it’s nice.”

“Yes. Nice is exactly what it is. I mean, he’s perfect for Pansy. She needs somebody exactly like that.”

“You didn’t have anyone else picked out for her, did you?”

“No, not really. Oh, of course if I were picking husbands for Pansy—which obviously would be impossible—I might have picked someone a little more exciting. A prince, for instance, or at least an ambassador. But this one will do, I guess, as well as any other.”

“You don’t sound exactly overjoyed about it,” he said.

“It’s taking me a little time to get used to it, that’s all,” she said. “Oh, he’s very substantial. All that side of the Callender family—he’s Henry Callender’s son, his mother was a Mead—are substantial. Of course there are other Callenders, and thank God he’s not one of them. He said to me, ‘Mrs. Carey, I want you to know that I have a private income of ten thousand a year.’ I said, ‘Why, Austin, how perfectly astonishing!’”

“Well,” he said. “Well, well.”

“Yes. Anyway, you’ll meet him to-morrow. He’s the one who’s coming. You’ll probably like him. He’s dull, but nice. You may find him amusing.”

“What about Pansy? Where’s she going to be?”

“Oh, that’s the other thing. Pansy phoned me to-day from Boston. She’s flying to Colorado Springs to visit Joanne Gibbs again, for a rest. She was just there at Christmas, of course—for a rest. What she needs another rest for, I can’t imagine. My God, she’s been resting ever since she got out of Vassar.”

He laughed softly.

“She’ll be gone for two weeks. She and Austin want to be married in June. When else? She sent you her love. She said she was sorry not to be able to see you, but I said you might still be here when she gets back. As far as I was concerned, I told her, I wanted you to stay here for ever and ever.”

He sipped his champagne and swirled it slowly in his glass.

“Do you think you might still be here—two weeks from now?”

“I don’t know, Sandy. I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s what I told Pansy. I told her your plans were still indefinite. I told her your news, how you’d sold your business for an enormous sum to Joe Wallace. She was so pleased, sent you her love, her congratulations, her good wishes, and all that. I told her I just didn’t know how long you would be staying, that I’d like it to be for ever and ever. Was that the right thing to tell her?”

“Yes, that was the right thing.”

“Because your plans are still indefinite, aren’t they? Oh, I know you must have lots and lots—lots of schemes and ideas. I know that’s something your father will want to find out tomorrow—what they all are. You can tell him, if you’d like, but I don’t even want you to tell me about them, baby, I really don’t, because you know me—I probably wouldn’t understand any of them! I’m such a dumb-bell when it comes to business, but I know you have lots and lots of plans.”

“Yes,” he said. “Lots and lots.”

She looked at him. “Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice?” she asked him. “Is this what success has done to you?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that I’m quite capable of making my own plans, Sandy.”

“Of course! Of course you are. I never meant to imply you weren’t. Oh, I’ve upset you somehow. You’re angry with me.”

“You’re the one who seems upset,” he said. “I can tell. Just leave my future to me, please, Sandy.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just—oh, it’s just so many things on my mind at once. I guess it’s the thought of my little girl going that upsets me. The passage of time. Before I know it, I’ll be a grandmother.”

“It was bound to happen some time, Sandy,” he said.

“You don’t think Pansy would dare do that to me, do you? Make me a grandmother? Do you? Pappy!” she cried. “Pappy! More champagne. Why aren’t you pouring champagne?” The little Filipino hurried into the room, took the bottle from the cooler, and quickly refilled Hugh’s empty glass. “Are we ready for the second bottle yet, Pappy? Don’t you dare stop pouring champagne until we tell you to. No one’s nearly soused enough yet. We want to get fried. We want to get absolutely stinko, Pappy.”

It was a characteristic of hers—a defence, perhaps—that whenever liquor was being served she inevitably urged people to drink more and more. “Quick!” she would cry. “More cocktails! We want to get potted. Nobody’s even tiddly yet and we want to get simply squiffed. What in the world is the matter? Where in God’s name is the hooch?” All the while, of course, she drank nothing. It was a tactic that was possibly designed to cover up the fact that she was not drinking. Or possibly, by getting everyone else to drink more than he should, she reinforced her own morale, her own stalwart abstinence. It had been—he tried to think now—it had been at least twelve years since she had stopped drinking and had begun substituting, for alcohol, quantities of tea and ginger beer.

It had been right after his brother Billy’s death in 1947 that her drinking had become so much worse, and the years following that had been terrible years for them all. Those years had receded now, and faded, but he could still remember the old, chilling fear he had felt at seeing his mother drunk. Drinking, for some curious reason, had not made her gayer or wittier, as one might have supposed it would. Instead, it withdrew her, pulled her into some dark and solitary place, some cavity where, removed from life, she could not be reached at all. Drinking had made her quieter, sullen and taciturn, instead of livelier. She never laughed when she was drunk, though he remembered sometimes she had screamed. Most of it she had done during the day, alone, though she had often shared her drinking bouts with his Aunt Reba; and so, for the most part, coming home in the evening, the rest of the family saw only the results, the disaster, saw her sitting silently in the corner of a room—on a little stool, perhaps, or even on the floor—her eyes dazed and unblinking in the masklike ruin of her face, her shoulders hunched and still, her partly finished drinks around her. During those two or three years the quiet terror of her drinking had stalked through the house. Sometimes she would burst out of her silence into a violent tantrum. Once, he remembered, she had gone to the kitchen and, in front of Maria’s weeping eyes, had systematically broken all the dishes. And she had had a number of serious falls. Once she had come into his room late at night and fallen on the floor. A week later she had fallen on the stairs and, when they found her, her hip was broken, and it was this injury that had meant she could never ride again. She had recovered from that, and the drinking continued. The family—all of them—had tried to do everything they could, and finally, when she had lost so much weight and seemed so sick that they had decided to put her in a sanatorium—she had suddenly stopped.

She had just stopped. No member of Alcoholics Anonymous had reached her, no clergyman. The family doctor had admitted that he could take no credit for it. It had been something, apparently, that she had resolved on her own to do. And that, Hugh supposed, was one of the most remarkable things about her. Perhaps it was something she had been brooding about and planning to do during all those evenings and afternoons, sitting in her solitary corner; perhaps not. They never knew. All they knew was that from somewhere, some reservoir of strength within her had been tapped, and she had stopped and never had a drink again. “The more I know of your mother,” an old family friend had said to him once, “the more I think that she is truly a magnificent woman.” There was some kind of magnificence in her, surely. She had never talked about the drinking years, never mentioned them. All she had ever done since had been, whenever there was a party, to go from guest to guest and cry, “Nobody’s had enough to drink. Quick, more cocktails! Nobody’s tight enough. What’s the matter with everybody? Let’s get frazzled!”

They were finished with dinner now, and Hugh realised that, at her bright insistence, he had drunk a whole bottle of champagne. He was feeling a little lightheaded, but he supposed he should be grateful that she had not managed to get him to drink the second bottle. They were rising from the table, and his mother was saying, “Baby, I’m going to turn in early. Do you mind? I’d love to play gin or backgammon with you, but I’ve got such a busy day tomorrow. Your father’s coming home in the morning, and then the party to-morrow night and Austin Callender coming. Will you excuse me?”

“Sure, Sandy,” he said, smiling. “You get a good night’s sleep.”

“But don’t feel you need to go to bed. Have a brandy or something. Have fun. Do something. Take the car and go somewhere. Do something gay. Don’t let your poor old grey-haired mother dampen your fun. After all, this is your holiday.”

“I think I may go for a walk,” he said.

“Oh, good. Kiss me good night.”

He kissed her cheek and she squeezed his arm. “So proud,” she whispered, and he went with her out into the hall and watched her as she mounted the stairs, chiffon fluttering all around her. At the landing, in front of Venus, she turned and blew him a kiss.

“Good night, Sandy.”

He went out on to the terrace. The night was very dark; there was no moon and only a few remote stars. He stood for a while in the cold darkness, admiring it, his hands in his pockets, and the champagne raced warmly in his blood. He extracted a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lighted it. Then he started slowly across the invisible terrace, feeling his way with his feet as he went. It had been so long since he had walked on this terrace at night that he had forgotten its contours, forgotten where the levels sharply changed, where steps ran down. Over the sound of the waterfall he could hear the splashing of the fountain that stood in the centre of the terrace and he walked towards it, guided by the sound. Then, in the blackness near his feet, he saw four pale discs. He knelt to see what they were and, with his hand groping towards these spots of whiteness in the dark, he found that they were four white narcissus blossoms that had opened in the circle of planting around the fountain; only four. He lowered his face to the blooms and sniffed the sharp, swift, sweet odour, and it dizzied him so that he almost fell forward on his hands in the flower-bed, and he thought: Of course I wanted to come home. He had been willing to come home because this was where it all began; the sudden springs that blossomed into summers, the hesitant at first, then hurrying, falls, the plunging winters; friends, school, family, all the speeding seasons of his life began here. And he stood up and walked slowly around the fountain.

There were lights now that he could see on the opposite hill from the Everetts’ house, which was spread out, low and rambling, against the trees and the night. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven lighted windows. And then, as if he had commanded it to do so, the Everetts’ front door was opened, creating a new rectangle of light, and he saw Edrita’s slim figure outlined in front of it. Then the door was closed and, for a second, he couldn’t tell whether she had gone in or out. Then he could see another light—an orange dot that came and went, came and went—her cigarette. It moved quickly, nervously, back and forth as though she were pacing the same short strip of lawn over and over. He watched her, wondering what she was thinking, wondering if she could see the light of his cigarette too, and as he watched, something that he was not willing to define, and yet in a way could define, stepped up its beat in his body. He walked to the edge of the terrace and, raising his two index fingers to his lips, he had been about to give the long, low whistle that had always been their signal, when something that had begun to happen behind him made him stop and turn. It was a dark, flickering light that bobbed about against the closed curtains of his mother’s window. He felt suddenly sick. Oh, God, he thought. Is she doing that again? Hasn’t she ever stopped doing that?

He knew what the quivering light meant. In her room there was a movie projector and a screen. She was running the projector. There was only one reel of film that she ever watched. It was the reel of Billy, the only reel of him she had. If Billy had lived, he would be twenty-eight now, but he had been just fourteen when he had died—killed in that senseless accident in a soccer game on the playing fields of Exeter. He had been kicked in the head (just lightly, lightly), as goalie, and the boy whose toe had accidentally struck him when he had fallen, leaping to block the ball, had never been able to believe that he had done more than to knock Billy out. They had called time in the game and waited—waited for Billy to wake up, but he never had. “I just tapped him in the head with the toe of my shoe, lightly, so lightly …” he could remember that other boy’s pale face saying; saying it to them when they had arrived; saying it to the others in the school; saying it to his own parents, who had also come; saying it to everyone, to anyone who would listen. (“So lightly, so lightly.”) But that light, light toe-touch had killed him, and suddenly there was nothing left of Billy but a reel of home-movie film taken the summer before he died.

The film lasted barely five minutes, and Hugh had seen it so often that he did not have to be in the room any more to see it. Watching the flutter of changing light behind the curtains, he could see the film’s action clearly in his mind. Its only sound was the clicking projector’s sound. It began with Billy running down the wide stone steps of the house. It was not at all a good movie. His mother’s hand had wobbled badly while she was taking it. Billy’s fair face—he had been blond, like his mother—advanced and receded in focus so that in one instant it was clear and in the next it was blurred. Shafts of jagged white light pierced through the film in all directions as his mother had let her lens drift into the sun. The image moved up and down with his mother’s hands on the camera; it bleached out, became strong, disappeared, but still it was Billy. At the foot of the steps Billy stopped, smiled, and waved at the camera. Then his mouth worked for a second or two, forming words with his lips that his mother had never been able quite to make out, and that she had never been able to remember from that summer. (“I think he’s saying that he has a new filling in a molar. See—see how he’s opening his mouth very wide, to show. I’d taken him to the dentist that week. I’m sure that’s what he’s saying”; then she would stop the projector, rewind the film a little way, then play that part again: “See—see how he’s opening his mouth?”) Then Billy lifted one leg high in the air, reached out for it with his hand and touched his toe, spun around twice on his left heel, showing off for the camera. Then Billy seemed to stoop, as if to pick up something, some object on the ground, and in that instant the screen went inexplicably dark and, when it burst into light again, it was a different scene, a different day, another part of the summer, and Billy was on the beach at Chatham in a pair of yellow-and-white-striped swimming trunks. He stood on the sand, his chest rising and falling as if he had been running, arms akimbo. He noticed the camera, smiled, and waved at it again. Then he ran towards the surf, and the camera followed his run, bouncing up and down, as he made it all the way to the water, stopped short as the water touched his feet, winced, turned, and said something that was very clear—“It’s cold.” He kicked a wave arrogantly, scornfully, then turned, and started up the sand again, running. And there, with Billy running towards the screen, it ended.

Hugh walked across the terrace and into the house. He went up the wide front stairs and down the hall to his mother’s room. As he reached her door, he heard the projector click off, and he hesitated, his hand on the knob, feeling somehow that he couldn’t enter the room so soon, while Billy’s presence was still so freshly there. Then he opened the door, and the room was dark.

A light snapped on. “What do you want?” she cried.

“Are you doing this again, Sandy?” he asked her.

“What’s wrong with it? What’s wrong if I am?”

He saw that the roll of film was in her hand and she had been about to rewind it, with all the scratches and splices that it had by now. And he saw that she was in tears, as she always was after it.

“I thought you promised,” he said.

“I never promised anything!”

“Don’t you see?” he began. “Don’t you see how stupid it is, how senseless and awful it is—”

She bowed her head. The long tail of film trailed from her hands. “He was such a little boy,” she said. “Such a little boy.”

“Sandy,” he said. “Please, Sandy. Don’t do this. Don’t do this any more. It’s wrong, Sandy, to keep doing it—over and over.”

“All I want—” she said. “All I want is little mementoes of happy times. What’s wrong with that? Other people have them. Why can’t I have mine?”

“But don’t you see?” he said. “It’s just a—it’s a kind of emotional masturbation, Sandy.”

She looked up at him, her eyes blazing. “How dare you speak to me like that!” she said. “How dare you use a word like that about my son! Get out of here, you disgusting young man! Leave me alone! Get out of here!”

He walked out of the bedroom quickly and closed the door behind him.