9

The bay window where her grandmother sat faced the garden; it was actually a five-windowed turret, and inside, below its sill, ran a narrow window seat covered with five green velvet cushions. The turret was on the sunny, southeast side, but the upper sash of each window was of stained glass—a random mosaic of amber, green, lavender and ruby pieces—so that the sunlight that came through seemed shifting and uncertain, a gaudy rainbow of oily colours. It was not a religious light even though in the centre window, in letters of twisting lead, the glazier had inscribed the motto:

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth;

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.

Tall weeds and sunflowers overbore the garden now. God, or whatever mortal had tended it, had long since given up the chore. Lambs’-quarter and mustard-plant, wild morning glory and low fluffy clumps of chickweed hid a place where, once, even borders of perennials had run, where delphinium and peonies and lupins had bloomed, and where still could be seen a few abandoned clumps of purple iris. In this ruin there was a kind of rank, billowy beauty now—like a once-lovely woman who has lazily let herself go in middle age. There was visible a shape, or memory, of what had been an intricate design of paths, measuring the garden into a series of triangles and hexagons. But now the luxurious summer weeds, their leaves hanging wilted in the brilliant morning sunshine, blurred the original geometry and turned the formal garden into a tropical rain forest topped with huge, improbable sunflower faces. In the exact centre, almost hidden by tall grass, a silver gazing globe on a stone pedestal glittered in the sun. The sun moved now, slowly into the window where Barbara stood, fell upon the heavy twisted fringe of the velvet curtain. Her grandmother, as she often did these days, had dozed, her small head fallen forward on her bosom, gently breathing. Mrs. Zaretsky, the nurse, looked up from her knitting. ‘We get tired very easily,’ she said to Barbara. ‘But we’ll wake up before we know it.’

‘Do you think I should leave?’ Barbara asked.

‘Oh, we love having visitors!’ Mrs. Zaretsky said cheerfully.

‘I hope I’m not tiring her.’

Mrs. Zaretsky smiled a knowing nurse’s smile behind her steel rimmed glasses. ‘It’s just as well,’ she said. ‘After one of these little snoozes we’ll just forget to wake up, and that will be that.’

‘Yes,’ Barbara said quietly.

‘It’s simply remarkable,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said. ‘Doctor McDonald says that what she really is is sort of a freak. Her heart is fine, her hearing’s perfect, she has all her own teeth! Imagine! Of course her eyesight’s failed and—upstairs—’ she tapped her head significantly with her finger, ‘she’s got terribly fuzzy. But still and all, it’s just remarkable. She’s a remarkable old lady, she really is.’

Barbara nodded silently. She turned to the window again.

‘The blood doesn’t get up to the brain fast enough,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said, dropping her voice to a loud whisper. ‘That’s why she can’t think straight. But sometimes she’s just as clear as a bell! It’s remarkable! Why, just the other day she all of a sudden started telling me about Burketown—the old Burketown she knew as a girl, and how it’s changed and all. And believe it or not, I thought: Why she’s really a very remarkable person! She remembered when they had trolley cars on High Street—everything. Now what I wish is that when she gets that way, you know, lucid, that somebody would come with one of those watchamacallits, those things they take things down on, a recording machine. I thought that to have those remarks of hers down on a recording machine would be worth something, as a historical document, I really did. I mentioned it to Mr. deWinter when he was here on Wednesday and he said he thought it was a very good idea.’

To change the subject, Barbara said, ‘Does she have someone to take care of the garden?’

‘The garden? Oh, you mean that garden? Well, old Joe Martino comes to cut the grass, but goodness me, there isn’t much point in trying to fix up that old garden, is there? I mean when she’s gone they’ll probably tear this house down, won’t they? Or sell it to someone who could really use it for something?’

Barbara turned to her grandmother again, and with a little start, the old lady lifted her head and opened her eyes. ‘Oh!’ she said.

Loudly, Mrs. Zaretsky said, ‘Your granddaughter’s here to see you, Mrs. Woodcock. Remember?’

‘Did you have a nice nap, Nana?’ Barbara asked.

‘Yes, dear. Thank you. I’m sorry. What time is it, dear?’

‘Ten-thirty, Nana.’

Mrs. Zaretsky consulted the heavy chronograph on her wrist. ‘Just ten thirty-four, Mrs. Woodcock,’ she said. ‘Would you like a nice, hot cup of broth?’

‘No, thank you, not yet,’ Mrs. Woodcock said. ‘It’s a lovely day, isn’t it.’

‘It certainly is,’ Barbara said. She sat down on the little footstool by the chair and patted her grandmother’s hand. ‘But it’s going to be hot I’m afraid.’

‘The house is always cool, even on the hottest days,’ her grandmother said.

‘It’s wonderful to see you again, Nana,’ Barbara said. ‘You look so well.’

‘Thank you, dear.’

If there had been any change, Barbara thought, in her grandmother’s appearance since she had seen her last, it was only that she seemed to have grown, imperceptibly, smaller. She had always been a tiny, doll-like woman, barely five feet tall, with a pale and fragile face. She had always been proud of her size, of her small feet which wore a size-four shoe. A difficulty, in her old age, had been finding dresses that looked mature enough for a very old lady and yet were small enough to fit her delicate frame. Her dress size was seven, a size that in most department stores was reserved for teen-age girls. But she sat now in a black silk dress that had been made specially for her, and became her, turned her into a simple composition of black and white. Her eyes were so pale they seemed to have no colour to them, her carefully curled hair was pure white, and the flesh of her face and tiny hands seemed to be composed of soft, chalky powder. About her neck she wore a silver and onyx lavaliere. Her only other jewellery was the wide gold wedding band that she had never removed. She sat, hands folded, in the wheelchair and across her knees was a white knitted afghan. She had been a picture-book child—posed, in a daguerreotype, holding a fluffy white kitten to her cheek; she had been a picture-book young woman, much admired for her graceful performance of cotillion figures, and, in a later photograph, a white lace fan had replaced the kitten at her cheek. And now, at ninety-three, sitting in her panelled library, beginning her day, which consisted of a series of little journeys between sunny windows, she still had much of the artificiality and perfection of a cameo, the picture of a little old lady that might have been used to decorate a box of candy.

She was a woman, Barbara had often heard, who had not been built for child-bearing, and yet she had managed to have two children—though the first, a baby girl, had lived only nineteen hours and a tiny headstone in the Burketown cemetery marked the grave of Cecilia Mary Woodcock, born January 7, 1894, died January, 8, 1894. Beneath the dates the inscription read, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ Seven years later she had her second child, Preston, and the ordeal, it was understood, had nearly killed her. Though she had never been an invalid, she had, when she recovered, been given an invalid’s care and attention. ‘Your grandmother,’ Barbara could remember her grandfather saying proudly, ‘is a woman who needs a man’s arm to take her wherever she goes.’ And Barbara could remember her grandmother being guided and steered, helped and directed, through the rooms and passageways of life. She remembered that whenever a guide was not immediately there to offer Grandmother his arm she got lost; there had been many fond and indulgent searches for a little white-haired lady who, stepping from a hotel elevator, had turned as if by instinct the wrong way, or who had stepped out on to the sidewalk in front of Penrose’s store after an afternoon of shopping and—not seeing her car—had decided to walk home along Maple Street which led, of course, toward Hanscomb Corners. Unwilling to ask directions, she would forge on resolutely away from her destination as if determined to escape her goal. Even in her own house, Barbara could remember her grandmother moving from the living room into the hall, then hesitating, uncertain as to where she was bound. ‘Preston?’ she would call to her husband and he would answer ‘Just a minute, Mary,’ and when he appeared he would offer her his arm and set her on her course again. The wheelchair, then, possibly answered more than a physical need after her most trusted guide had gone; in its arms she felt confident, sure that whoever was pushing her would know better than she did where she wanted to go. It was curious that, just lately, she had made several attempts to get out of the chair.

Barbara sat silently, letting time pass; in the background, Mrs. Zaretsky’s knitting needles clicked efficiently. Making conversation with the aged is always difficult but it was especially difficult with her grandmother. Nothing much had ever interested Mary Owens Woodcock, even as a young woman, outside of shoes and hats and dresses. These interests now had long vanished from her mind. She had never seemed, despite what Mrs. Zaretsky had said, to be concerned with changes or events in the world. To observe that there had once been trolley cars on High Street did not seem to Barbara to be a significant revelation. She had, at one time in her life, dipped her toe daintily into several fashionable religious cults—Couéism, Moral Rearmament, Christian Science, Spiritualism—but none of her experiences here seemed to have left any profound effect upon her soul. Mrs. Zaretsky sometimes read to her, but her enjoyment in this had never seemed to go beyond the lulling pleasure of hearing another human voice. So it was hard, as Barbara sat there, allowing a decent interval to elapse before leaving, to think of anything to say. At last she said, ‘Would you like me to read to you, Nana?’

‘No, thank you, dear. Not right now,’ her grandmother said.

Mrs. Zaretsky glanced at her oversized wristwatch. ‘Quarter to eleven,’ she said. ‘Almost time for our medicine.’

‘Which medicine is it?’ Mrs. Woodcock asked.

‘The kind you like,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said.

Mrs. Woodcock turned suddenly to Barbara. ‘Did you find the papers you wanted, dear?’

‘What papers, Nana?’

Mrs. Zaretsky looked quickly at Barbara and gave her a humorous wink. ‘That was your other granddaughter, Mrs. Woodcock,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said. ‘That was Peggy. This is Barbara.’

‘Oh of course,’ her grandmother said. ‘Of course, Barbara. Well, ask Peggy if she still wants those papers, if she’s found them. I haven’t had a chance to look for them. I don’t know quite where to lay my hands on them.’

‘What papers, Nana?’ Barbara said again.

‘Something your sister wanted,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said. ‘I’m sure she’s found them, whatever they were.’ And she shook her head slowly back and forth, advising Barbara to pursue the subject no further.

‘Ask Peggy to come to see me,’ her grandmother said.

‘I will,’ Barbara said.

‘She was just here on Friday,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said. ‘She comes to see you nearly twice a week.’

Barbara opened her purse. ‘I have some pictures of my little boys here, Nana,’ she said. ‘Would you like to see them?’

‘Oh, I’d love to, dear,’ her grandmother said.

Barbara held two snapshots up. ‘See? Haven’t they got big?’

‘She can’t see them,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said.

‘I can see them perfectly,’ her grandmother said. ‘They’re beautiful children.’

‘They’re your great-grandchildren,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said.

‘Beautiful children,’ Mrs. Woodcock said. Barbara put the pictures back in her purse.

Mrs Zaretsky put down her knitting. ‘Time for our medicine now,’ she said briskly, and then, ‘Oooh! I’m so stiff from sitting.’ Bending forward, her large hands pressing her thighs, she walked slowly out of the room.

Barbara sat quietly on the footstool and her grandmother nodded her head, up and down. ‘Beautiful children,’ she said again.

‘Dobie and Michael,’ Barbara said.

‘Yes. My husband’s father was named Dobie. Such a handsome man.’

Mrs. Zaretsky returned with a small tray that held a bottle, a spoon and a glass of water.

‘What is this now?’ Mrs. Woodcock asked.

‘This is the kind we like,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said. She filled the spoon and held it toward the old lady. ‘Open wide,’ she said. ‘Atta girl!’ She popped the spoon inside. ‘Now here’s a nice glass of water to take away the taste.’

Mrs. Woodcock took a swallow from the water glass, then smiled. ‘Why do you say it’s the kind I like, Binky, when you know it’s the kind I don’t like?’

Mrs. Zaretsky, called Binky since the days before she was married and had worked in the hospital as Loretta Binks, drew back, pretending shock, ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘We like everything that’s good for us, don’t we?’

‘Not necessarily,’ the old lady said.

Barbara stood up. ‘I really must go, Nana,’ she said, giving her grandmother’s powdery hand a gentle squeeze. ‘I’ve got to get back to the farm. But I’ll drop by to see you again before I go.’

‘Thank you, dear,’ her grandmother said. ‘It’s always so nice to see you.’ She lifted her face to be kissed and Barbara bent to kiss her.

‘Good-bye,’ she said.

‘Bye-bye. Come again,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said. ‘We’re always home.’

‘Good-bye, I will.’ She blew her grandmother a kiss, turned and walked out into the hall to the front door.

She went down the front steps into the harsh sunlight that glittered on the concrete driveway. She opened the door of her car, got in, and reached in her purse for the keys. Then, in the rearview mirror, she saw another car turn into the driveway behind her. She turned and saw that it was Barney.

He got out of his car and walked up the driveway toward her. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello, Barney,’ she smiled. ‘What are you doing here?’ He was dressed in a dark business suit, white shirt and tie.

‘I had to pick up a couple of things at the office,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d drop by here on the way back—just to say hello to your grandmother.’

‘I’ve just spent about half an hour with her,’ Barbara said.

‘How is she?’

‘Oh, just about the same. A little muddled. She got me mixed up with Peggy once, but otherwise she doesn’t seem much different.’

Barney looked toward the house. ‘I come by to see her from time to time,’ he said. ‘It’s funny—I’ve always rather liked old people. Talking to her is very calming.’

Barbara laughed. ‘Calming? With old Binky Zaretsky interrupting all the time?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind her.’

‘She’s such a ghoul!’

He rested the palms of his hands on the side of her car and stared down at the driveway beneath his feet. ‘Well—’ he said.

‘Are you going in to see her?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. She may be tired now. Having just had a visitor.’

‘Yes—she may,’ Barbara said and suddenly the strip of sunlight between them seemed oddly crowded, the air thick. He raised his eyes and looked at her, frowning; she looked at him, then away, toward the corner of the drive.

‘Did you—?’ he began.

‘What?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Were you finally able to get to sleep last night?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said brightly. ‘Yes—I was asleep the minute my head touched the pillow!’ she laughed, a little wildly, ‘Did you—get to sleep?’

‘Yes.’ he said, ‘Finally.’

‘You scared me half to death,’ she said. ‘Seeing you—like that—in the hall.’

‘I thought you were a ghost,’ he said. ‘I thought you were the ghost of Harlow J. Lerner, come back to haunt us.’

She laughed.

‘What were you doing? Walking through the house with no lights on?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was. I don’t know why I was.’

He continued to stand, his hands on the door of her car, and she resisted looking at him, though she could feel his eyes on her. She looked straight ahead, her hands resting on the steering wheel. ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I must get back.’

He stepped away from the car. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose you have to.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

He seemed to hesitate. ‘Do you have to get back right away?’

‘I think I should,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘I wondered—would you like to go for a drive?’

‘A drive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well—what time is it?’

‘Around eleven,’ he said. ‘Lunch isn’t until one.’

‘Well—’ she said.

‘It’s a nice day.’

‘Yes, it is a nice day,’ she said. And then, ‘All right.’

‘You will go?’

‘All right.’

‘My car’s blocking yours,’ he said. ‘Let’s take mine.’

‘I guess I can leave mine here for a minute,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ he said.

She got out of the car and walked slowly ahead of him along the driveway to where his car was. She opened the door and got inside. He walked around the car and opened the other door and slid into the seat beside her.

‘I’m glad you don’t have a car like Woody’s,’ she said. ‘That little thing of his is just too rakish for me!’

‘There’s something to be said,’ he said, ‘for a conservative model of the lower-priced three.’

She laughed.

He started the car and backed it out of the driveway.

‘Where shall we go?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer her, but at the corner of Prospect Avenue and High Street he turned left.

‘Do you remember when you first drove me around this town?’ he asked her after a moment.

‘Oh yes,’ she said.

‘That was a pleasant summer, wasn’t it?’

‘It was,’ she said.

They were driving through the West Hill section of Burketown now, a section of small, identical, boxlike houses that had been built immediately after the second World War. It was not Barbara’s favourite part of town. Because it was a development, it reminded her of Sunrise Heights in Locustville. Along its winding streets, West Hill presented a panorama of brightly coloured rooftops—red, blue, white and green; its backyards were aflutter with clotheslines decked with brightly coloured wash; its front yards were a dotted pattern of sidewalks edged with round yews, square boxwoods, pyramidal spruces—foundation planting. Presently they were past West Hill, in the open country, heading toward the hilly woods that ringed the valley. Stone fences lined the road; here and there appeared a pasture, a farm house or barn. The road was narrower, and in the heat, the tarred surface seemed to swim ahead of the car in a shining haze. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘Just driving. Do you care?’

‘I guess not.’ She put her head back on the seat. ‘Poor Nana,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I think one of the things that upset me the most was seeing her garden all gone to weeds. It used to be such a beautiful garden. Now somebody’s planted sunflowers all over the place. Everything else is dead.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘when things start dying it’s just as well to let them die.’

She looked at him. ‘That’s cheerful!’ she said. ‘You sound like Mrs. Zaretsky. She’s ready for Nana to die at any minute.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s true, isn’t it? If she’s going to die, she’s going to die.’

‘What a gloomy mood you’re in!’

‘Ah—’ he said.

He slowed the car now, pulled it to one side of the road and stopped. ‘Have you ever been here before?’

She looked around. A short path led between two boulders at the road’s edge to a ravine where, between large rocks, a brook ran down.

‘Why, yes!’ she said. ‘I remember this place. We used to go swimming here! It was quite illegal, though. How did you discover it?’

‘Just driving around one day. It’s still illegal.’ He pointed to a NO TRESPASSING sign.

‘It was a very daring place to go when I was in school,’ she said. ‘We used to come here at night.’

‘Let’s look at the brook,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’d mind if we trespassed just a little.’

‘All right.’

They got out of the car. They went down the path to a wide, flat rock that jutted out above the water. ‘We used to jump from here,’ Barbara said. ‘That brook’s terribly cold. It comes out of a spring somewhere.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Have you been swimming here?’

‘Just once.’

‘When?’

‘At night one time,’ he said.

‘How are your swimming lessons coming?’

He laughed shortly. ‘I haven’t had any,’ he said. ‘I didn’t come here to swim. I just rolled up my trousers and went wading—just as far up as the spring.’

‘At night?’

‘It’s very pretty here at night.’ He sat down on the flat rock, made a pillow of his hands behind his head and lay back, crossing his feet. She stood above him. He looked oddly out of place, in a dark business suit and tie, stretched out there, squinting up at her against the sun. She sat down beside him.

He lifted one arm now and with one finger he delicately touched the thin ridge of her nose. ‘You’ve got a little sunburn,’ he said. ‘You’re peeling—right there.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your face always has a gleam,’ he said. ‘A kind of brown gleam, a shimmer. You look—always very fresh.’

She turned her head away from him to discourage any further appraisal of it.

‘It was one of the first things I noticed about you—your gleam. The way a very little girl’s face gleams. Those first few days, when I first came to the farm, everything seemed to have a gleam like that.’ He smiled distantly. ‘Then I got to know it,’ he said.

‘Barney,’ she said, ‘tell me what’s the matter.’

‘You know what’s the matter.’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘Why do you think I brought you here?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘Do you realise, it’s been at least fourteen years since I’ve been to this place? It makes me realise I’m not a little girl any more. So—so, I think we ought both to try to be more mature, more sensible.’ She looked at him; he was staring straight up at the sky. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’ she asked.

He reached in his pocket for cigarettes, found them, and offered the pack to her. He rolled over on his side and gave her a light. He tossed the match toward the water. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘You’re absolutely right.’

‘So let’s forget about that other—that crazy summer,’ she said. ‘In fact, I—’

‘In fact what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘In fact you’ve forgotten?’

She said nothing.

‘Have you, Barbara?’

When she still did not answer, he turned on his stomach and lay with his face burried in his folded arms. He said something that she couldn’t hear.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘I said, so we’ll just go on and let everything die around us.’

‘Let what die?’

‘Your marriage and mine.’

She laughed. ‘Nothing’s dying. I’m very happy, really. And so are you. Or you ought to be.’

‘Everything is dying,’ he said, his voice coming from far away in the cavern between his folded arms.

‘Oh, Barney!’ she said gaily. ‘Don’t be silly!’

‘Listen,’ he said intensely, turning his head to look at her again, ‘Everyone used to shine—your mother, your father, Peggy—everybody—when I first came here, just as though they’d been freshly painted. In two years, the paint’s chipped off.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘When I say things are dying, I mean it—literally. It’s not just your grandmother and her flower garden, and it’s not just Peggy and me. I was only half kidding about old Mr. Lerner’s ghost. There is some kind of ghost haunting this whole family! The paper company is dying—did you know that? At best, I give it ten more years unless something radical is done. Your father’s dying—committing suicide with drink! it’s not that I understand it—I don’t. And I don’t know what to do about it, to stop it. Perhaps it can’t be stopped. The only thing I know is that I was alive—or thought I was—when I first came here. But I don’t seem to be any more. And you seemed alive, too, at first. Are you still? Or have we both caught the disease—?’

‘There’s no disease,’ she said. ‘How could there be? Please don’t talk this way—’

‘Listen, listen to me!’ he repeated. ‘Want to hear my symptoms? Want to know what’s happened to me? I’ll tell you what I did today. I lied to you. I didn’t have anything to pick up at the office this morning. I went to church. To Saint Mary’s. I went to Mass—but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t go in. I got up the steps, to the door, but I couldn’t go in. I saw that that wasn’t the answer. It was no good trying to pray my way out of whatever I’m in. I couldn’t. I stood on the steps of the church and heard the Mass begin and knew I was a hypocrite. Then I remembered your mother said this morning that you’d gone to your grandmother’s house. So I went there, looking for you.’

Her hand trembled as she lifted her cigarette to her lips. ‘Is it true what you said about Daddy?’ she asked.

‘What? That he’s drinking himself to death? He drinks a quart of gin a day—sometimes more. How can you help seeing that it’s true?’

She held her hand across her eyes, shielding them from the sun, and wondered if she was going to cry. ‘Please, Barney—’ she said.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I am crazy. I think Peggy thinks so sometimes. But I’ve seen it—your family, here, this company, and everything—they’re all hopeless. They’re walking, happily, hand in hand, swinging along toward the grave. And Peggy is—’

‘What’s the matter with Peggy?’

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Never mind Peggy. The only thing I know is that you and I—perhaps—can get away from it. Because we love each other.’

She stood up abruptly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not true. Let’s go back.’

‘Because we love each other,’ he repeated.

‘Please take me back.’

He stood up now and faced her. She closed her eyes, pressing back tears. ‘Please,’ she said again.

‘I love you,’ he said.

They stood there and she thought he seemed remarkably resolute, standing very still, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. She could feel, again, the thickness of air between them, thick as glass, thick because the distance between them was too wide to cross. She thought: I must say something, not stand here like a schoolgirl on a rock, where he has taken me because it has a pretty, romantic view. It was an innocent place for him to have brought her, full of memories of summer vacation nights, boys boldly changing into their trunks behind the shadows of bushes, girls, daringly wriggling into their suits in the car—a place of flashlights, damp hair and towels, slips and screams in the icy water. It was hard to translate this place into the present, to the two of them, this summer Sunday morning. She said quietly, ‘All right, Barney. Suppose you do. Suppose we love each other. What are we going to do next?’

‘Go somewhere,’ he said.

‘Where? Where will we go?’

His eyes wavered, just slightly. ‘We’ll get our divorces first. Then get married.’

‘And live where?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘Just anywhere?’

‘Yes.’

‘We could never come back here, to this town.’

‘We wouldn’t want to live here.’

‘You wanted to once.’

‘I was wrong,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You see? You haven’t thought it out at all! You’re the one who’s impractical! You’re the one who’s the dreamer. It’s impossible. And you’ll be happier when you admit it. There’s nothing you or I can do about it—ever. Now, take me back to Nana’s house.’ She turned quickly and her heel slipped on the rock’s smooth surface. He reched out and gripped her arm, steadying her.

‘Barbara,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, pulling free.

‘All right,’ he said, releasing her.

She started up the path toward the car and he followed her.

At 1045 Prospect Avenue the telephone rang. Mrs. Zaretsky got out of her chair and went into the hall to answer it.

‘Oh, hello there, Mrs. Woodcock!’ she said cheerfully. ‘Yes, she was here. Oh, we had a nice long visit and she left—oh, I’d say about half an hour ago. Her car’s still here, though. What happened was, just as she was about to drive out, your son-in-law, Mr. Callahan, drove in. They talked a minute in the driveway, I happened to see, and then they got into his car and went somewhere. But I suppose she’ll be back pretty quick, to pick up her car and all. If I see her when she comes back, want me to ask her to call you? All right, Mrs. Woodcock, then I won’t try to be on the lookout for her. I know she’ll be back soon because she said she had to get back out to the farm. That’s all right, Mrs. Woodcock yes, We’re all fine. ’Bye now.’

‘No, it wasn’t for you,’ Mrs. Zaretsky said as she came back into the room.

Sundays at the farm were relaxed affairs. Because none of the Woodcocks were regular church-goers, Sunday breakfasts were served most of the morning, whenever people got up. And, by twelve o’clock—in summer especially—the cocktail hour started, because it was Sunday. And, because it was Sunday, there was none of the ritual of the weekday evening cocktail hours. It was informal, easy, as the day progressed slowly toward lunchtime.

Everyone was at the pool. Barbara sat with her mother on a folding canvas chair, holding a gin-and-tonic that someone had given her; they watched the crowd in the water. Barbara’s cousin Jeffrey, just out of Yale, was there with his pretty fiancée, Marcia Symington. Jeffrey’s older brother, Talcott, and his wife, Monique, were also there. Sally deWinter Pratt, who was Woody’s older sister, had dropped by for a swim with a bearded man who, much to the family’s displeasure, seemed to be Sally’s present choice for a second husband. Peggy and Barney were both in the pool, too. Barney stood at the shallow end and Barbara watched as Peggy nimbly climed the ladder to the high board, stepped forward, and performed a neat jacknife into the water.

Her mother was telling her about her morning. She had gone, after breakfast, to see her ‘family’ on the hill, the Millers. Mrs. Miller, a widow, had seven children. They lived in great poverty, and caring for the Millers, supplying the smaller ones in winter with warm coats and boots, bringing them baskets of food, and generally seeing to their well-being, was Edith Woodcock’s particular personal charity in Burketown. She grieved for the Miller children as she might for her own.

‘I brought them six little roasting chickens this morning,’ Edith said. ‘I had Mr. Kaplan pack them in dry ice for me. Poor Mrs. Miller! I don’t know what she’s going to do, poor thing. Lottie, the oldest daughter, is pregnant! She’s fifteen. What could I say? Mrs. Miller’s upset enough about it. Always afraid, she said, that Lottie’d “turn out bad.” Turn out bad! If she was afraid she’d turn out bad, why didn’t she do something at the time? Talk to Lottie. Or something! Now it’s a little too late. And Lottie! Barbara, you should see her. Fifteen years old, four months pregnant, and pleased as punch about it! Just delighted! She told me she hopes it’ll be a little girl. Honestly, those people. I think I shall have to call the state social worker and have her talk to Lottie. I can’t think of anything else to do. It makes me so sad, though, to think how poor Mrs. Miller’s tried—so hard—to bring those children up. And now, to have this, which will set an example for all the younger ones, you can be sure of that. Mrs. Miller asked me what I thought she should have done, when she first suspected Lottie was misbehaving, as she put it, with this man. Who’s married, by the way—of course! I was tempted to tell her—though of course I didn’t—that her family’s moral welfare was really not up to me.’

Barbara sipped her drink. She nodded sympathetically. She had heard so many of the Millers’ problems before. ‘Where’s Daddy?’ she asked.

‘Resting. He’ll be out in a minute.’

The crowd in the pool was very gay. There was laughter, splashing. The blue water foamed and glittered in the sun about dark shoulders, white bathing caps. Sally’s beau was showing himself to be something of a diver; he walked on his hands toward the end of the diving board, his feet pointing straight up in the air and his black beard pointing straight at the water. He waited, poised, then gave a powerful spring with his arms, arched in the air, curled into a miraculous high somersault, then dived straight as an arrow. There were cheers and applause.

She looked at Barney. It hurt her to see him there, standing at the shallow end of the pool, leaning back, resting his elbows on the coping, the line of water just below the top of his trunks. He looked so proud and defiant, as though anyone who touched him or made him move either forward or backward would set off an angry trigger instantly within him. He stood, tall, slim and arrogant, creating inadvertently an illusion of hauteur while actually, she thought, the illusion he was trying to create was something quite different. She wanted to get up, to go to him and speak to him, but it was too painful. She couldn’t move. From the chair, holding the drink in her hand, she could only watch him helplessly.

Then Edith said quietly, ‘Barbara, you were with him this morning, weren’t you. You went for a drive. Barbara, I’ve warned you before and I’ll warn you again. Don’t. Don’t do this. If you must have someone, pick someone else—not him.’ Then Edith stood up. ‘I’m going to get my suit,’ she said. ‘It’s just too hot a day to watch other people cooling off.’

A little later, Barbara watched Barney come up the steps out of the pool and start toward the house. He went slowly, stepping gingerly in his bare feet across the hard, hot stones.

Presently Peggy came out of the pool dripping wet and sat down beside her.