6

YOUR NAME HONORED ON the shelves of libraries…. Did he know his own name? There was this other man, using his name, leading another life. Vigorous, not lying in a strange bed, with the sound of surf or blood in his ears…

“How was the weekend?” Judith Quinlan asked.

“Conspicuous consumption,” Strand said. “In the best sense.”

Judith laughed. “I can guess what you mean.” It was a raw afternoon, with gusts of rain, and they were seated by the streaked window of the coffee shop after school, glad to be out of the weather for a quarter of an hour with the day’s work done. Strand had told Judith a little about Hazen and, trying not to boast, had described Caroline’s adventure in the park. He sipped his coffee gratefully. He was in no hurry to get home. He had had a trying night with Leslie on Sunday after Conroy had deposited them in front of their apartment building. The traffic coming in from the Island had been bad and the trip had taken a long time and his face was burning from the two days of sun and he knew that Leslie had noticed he was brooding about something and would get after him about it as soon as they were home. He was not in the habit of hiding things from her and had no practice at it and he knew that he would sound either foolish or sullen when she started on him.

And, for the first time in their married lives, when he had tried to make love to her on Saturday night, he had been impotent. Leslie had pretended that it was nothing and had fallen peacefully asleep next to him, but he had tossed uneasily all night and when he did sleep had vague, ominous dreams. And then, on Sunday, she had said she had a slight headache and had kept to her room all day. He had not wanted to have the whole thing out with her until he had decided what position he was going to take about Hazen’s offer for Caroline, so his only refuge was silence. Since he was not ordinarily silent with Leslie, he sensed her growing disquietude and was aware of the searching looks she kept giving him in the car, although she didn’t say anything with Jimmy and Caroline seated beside her.

Eleanor had driven into town with Gianelli. Leslie had been a little sharp with Eleanor, too, because although she had told Strand that she would be present for dinner Saturday, she had called at the last minute and said the gang (whoever that might be) had decided to go to Montauk for dinner. She hadn’t come back by the time they had gone to bed and there was no telling what hour she had finally come in. Then on Sunday she had packed her bag in the morning and gone off with Gianelli, saying there was an all-day party on at a movie director’s beach house in Westhampton and there wouldn’t be any sense in coming all the way back just to ride in with them in the evening.

Jimmy, too, had found a girl in the bar in Bridgehampton and missed lunch and dinner to go to her place and had arrived at Hazen’s house just in time to get into the car with them.

Only Caroline, who had played ten sets of tennis during the two days, and who now, exhausted, was sleeping with her head on her mother’s shoulder, seemed to have enjoyed the weekend completely, saying, just before she dozed off, “What a dreamy way to live.” Strand wondered if she would have been so content if she had heard what her sister had said about her in those few minutes at the pool. Finally, he knew, he would have to tell Leslie all the things that were bothering him, but he had to sort them out for himself first. Without asking Leslie if she wanted to listen to the radio, he had turned it on in the car to make conversation difficult, and he knew Leslie was going to ask him about that, too.

The memory of the night before made him frown as he stirred his coffee and looked out at the rain beating at the window.

“You don’t look as though the weekend did you much good,” Judith said.

Strand touched his face, which was beginning to peel. “I’m not used to the sun,” he said.

“I don’t mean that,” Judith said. “Did anything bad happen in school today?”

“No. Nothing happened. Neither good nor bad.”

Romero had slouched into his office, surly, with the familiar mocking grin on his face and said, “I consulted with myself like you said I should and I decided, What the hell, what have I got to lose, just carfare, I might as well see the man and see what he’s selling.”

“He’s not selling anything.” Strand wrote Hazen’s office address on a piece of paper and gave it to Romero. “Write him a letter saying you’re interested. That way you won’t even be out carfare.”

“Ain’t you going to go there with me?” Romero sounded almost frightened.

“I think Mr. Hazen would prefer to handle this just between the two of you.”

Romero looked at the address uncertainly, then squashed the piece of paper into his jeans pocket. “Write a letter, for Christ’s sake,” he said aggrievedly. “I ain’t never written a letter in my life.”

“I have one suggestion to make, Romero,” Strand said. “If you do write the letter, make it sound like the papers you give me, not the way you talk.”

Romero grinned. “I got dual nationality, don’t I?” And slouched out of the office.

Strand had not told Judith about Romero and now, in the coffee shop, he was tempted to speak about him, perhaps get her to help tame the boy. But he knew Romero had never been in any of her classes and it would be no favor to her to expose her to that mocking smile, that impenetrable insolence.

“No, as Mondays go,” Strand said, “it was even a little above average. But I do have a couple of problems.”

“Animal, vegetable or mineral?”

Strand laughed. “All three. The weekend actually passed off quite well…quite well.” This was technically almost true, if you did not consider the last weary hours of Sunday night, with the prospect of a week’s labor looming darkly over the spirit.

Or if you didn’t include Hazen’s drunken tirade or the argument in the bedroom.

Strand and Leslie rarely argued. He had always told her she was a serene woman and that that was one of the things he loved most about her. But there was nothing serene about her as she sat on the edge of the bed, her mouth grim, her eyes scanning him like weapons, while he fiddled, hanging up his jacket, taking off his tie.

“What is it, Allen?”

“What is what?” he said.

“You know. You’re hiding something from me. What is it?”

“Nothing. I’m tired.” He yawned, almost convincingly. “I had a long talk with Hazen about the fate of Romero—that’s the young boy who…”

“I know who he is,” Leslie said shortly. “I also know that isn’t what’s bothering you.”

“I’m tired,” Strand said weakly. “I have a hard day ahead of me tomorrow. Why don’t we just postpone it until…?”

“I will not be left out of things. I’m your partner or I’m nothing.”

“Of course you’re my…”

“It has something to do with the family,” Leslie said harshly. “Something you know and I don’t. Is it that young man who came to pick up Eleanor? You talked to him. Did he worry you? I saw him from the window. He looked perfectly all right to me. It’s not because he’s Italian, is it?”

“You know me better than that. As far as I could tell, he’s fine. Now, please, let’s go to sleep.”

“Did you have a fight with Eleanor?” Leslie persisted. “Another one of your medieval attacks?”

For a moment, Strand was tempted to tell his wife what his talk with Eleanor had really been about. The preposterous idea that Caroline thought she was ugly. The ludicrous discussion of Caroline’s nose. And Hazen’s troubling suggestion about sending Caroline off to a distant college. But he wasn’t up to it yet. He felt bone-weary, badgered, uncertain. If he let it all out he’d be up the entire night struggling with Leslie. From the way her mouth was quivering he knew there would be tears. Her tears unmanned him at the best of times.

“I just have to go to sleep now,” he said.

“Go to sleep,” she said. She got off the bed and strode out of the bedroom. A moment later he heard her at the piano, all doors open, both things disastrous indications of storm at that hour of the night.

He sighed, put on his pajamas and went to bed.

He went to sleep almost immediately and when he woke in the middle of the night, Leslie was in bed, too, but on the other side, not touching him.

In the morning she pretended to be asleep when the alarm clock woke him and he left the apartment without going in and kissing her as he did on other mornings. She was a serene woman with a good temper and she did not like to fight, but when she was angry, the anger lasted for days, cold and distant and untouchable, making him feel he was an exile in his own house.

Strand looked across the table at Judith Quinlan, drinking her coffee with her two hands around the mug in that affecting, childish way she had, her soft pale eyes sympathetic and concerned. Suddenly he felt that he had to confide in this nice simple woman who was intelligent and understanding and not involved in his problems and who could be depended upon not to break into tears.

“Some things came up,” he said. “Family things. Nothing tragic. Decisions to be made. After you’ve brought up two children you think you’ve learned the trick and can handle the third. Not true. They’re all different. What went with one doesn’t necessarily go with the others, at all. Maybe I worry too much, maybe I ought to let things just happen…. The way I was brought up…” He shrugged. He had been an only child, he had been lonely, his father had been much older than his mother, a sickly, failing man who had no time for a scholarly son and who used what energy he had left when he came home from work to argue with his wife about money. “My own family life…” Strand said, “well, there was no overflow of love.” He chuckled dryly. “Maybe I developed a sentimental notion of what a family might be. Anyway, it made me feel that when I had children of my own I’d be responsible for them, protect them. And luckily, or maybe unluckily, my wife had always felt the same way. We’re involved, maybe too involved, selfishly involved, in their lives. I don’t know. As a man said to me over the weekend, I’m out of joint with the times…. It’s hard to unlearn.”

“Are they in trouble?” Judith asked, her eyes grave. He could see that in her mind she was running through all the possible troubles young people could get into in New York City these days and thinking how dire those troubles could be.

“Nothing gruesome.” Strand smiled. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite.” Then he told her about Hazen’s offer to send Caroline away to college and the reasons for it. He didn’t tell her about Eleanor’s reaction and what Eleanor’s reasons were for believing that Caroline should be kept at home. That would have been too painful…. Even as he spoke he felt again the resentment against his older daughter that had risen in him when she had spoken to him and he was afraid the resentment would show. “My immediate reaction was to say no,” he said. “I’m afraid my pride was hurt. That I was being left out of the decision-making process, that I wasn’t capable of taking care of my own child—somehow Hazen, the whole weekend—made me feel like a loser….”

“Nonsense,” Judith said sharply. She had sat quietly, playing with the coffee mug while he had talked, and now she impatiently pushed the mug away from her.

He patted her hand gently. “I’m touchier than I seem,” he said.

“What does your wife think?” Judith asked.

“That’s another thing. I haven’t told her yet.”

“Why not?” Judith looked surprised.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. We were surrounded by strangers. In someone else’s house. Then, at home, she sensed something and I…I didn’t know what I really felt myself and I dissembled. I’m awful at dissembling. And we had a little argument. Which,” he said, “I’m afraid will continue this evening. That’s neither here nor there,” he said, with false briskness. “It’ll blow over. What do you think?”

“Of course,” Judith said, “I don’t know your daughter, but if she were mine, I’d grab the chance for her. Charity or no charity. Of course, I’m probably warped—the job I have here, the kind of school we’re in—but to get her out of the city these years to a good college—I’d think it was a gift from heaven. Education in this city, why, it’s just a continuation of war by other means.”

Strand laughed. “Clausewitz couldn’t have said it better. I have to tell that to my friend Hazen. Maybe we ought to have it engraved above the portals of every school in the system.” He left a tip for the waitress. “I think we ought to go now.”

“What are you going to do?” Judith asked, gravely.

Strand hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ll decide between now and the time I get home.”

Outside, it was raining harder and it was impossible for the tall man and the tiny woman both to keep dry under her umbrella. “I’ll splurge today,” Strand said. “We’ll take a taxi. I’m beginning to like the habits of the rich.”

They were both quiet in the taxi for a long time.

“I hate to see you bothered like this,” Judith said. “With all the other things you have to cope with. Why don’t you just let Mr. Hazen talk to Caroline and let her make up her own mind?”

Strand nodded. “I suppose you’re right. My wife might suppose differently, though. Very differently. As for me…” He sighed. “I’m struggling between selfishness and wisdom. Only I don’t know which is which.”

As the taxi drew up before Judith’s building, which was only three blocks from Strand’s, she said, “If you’re not in a hurry, why don’t you come upstairs with me and have a drink? A little whiskey may make things look clearer.”

“That’s a fine idea,” Strand said, grateful for Judith’s feminine concern, her appreciation of the uses of postponement.

He had never been in her apartment before. It was high up in an old building and had been designed as an artist’s studio, with a big window facing north and a bedroom off it. The walls were lined with books, the furniture was brightly colored (he had expected dark brown) and everything was neat and crisply tidy. There were no signs that a man had ever been there before.

He sat in a corner of the big sofa watching her getting out ice from the refrigerator in the kitchenette that was separated from the main room by white-painted louver doors. She was so small that she had to stand on tiptoe to reach the whiskey bottle and two glasses from the cupboard on the side of the refrigerator. He noticed that the whiskey bottle was only half full and he wondered if Judith Quinlan sat alone at night and drank herself to sleep.

She poured the Scotch over the ice cubes, ran some water into the glasses from the tap and put them on a little tray with a saucer of salted almonds. She placed the tray on a low coffee table in front of the sofa and said, “There,” and sat down beside him.

They took their glasses and as she lifted hers, Judith said, “Welcome to my house.”

The whiskey tasted fine. “Imagine,” Strand said, “drinking on a Monday afternoon. The very path to ruin.”

They laughed comfortably together.

“What a nice place this is,” Strand said. “So quiet. And it seems to be so far away from…” He stopped. It was hard to say what the room was far away from. “Well,” he said, “just far away.”

Judith put her glass down firmly. “Now,” she said, “I’m going to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.” With a quick movement, she knelt on the couch beside him, her arms around him, and she kissed him.

Amazed, he sat rigidly, conscious of the glass in his hand, afraid that the whiskey would spill. But after the first moment, with her lips soft but determined on his, he relaxed, leaned back, pulling her down with him, not caring about the whiskey anymore. He put his free arm around her and kissed her, hard. He felt her hand fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. She opened the shirt and her hand, soft and light, caressed the skin of his chest, then down to his belly. Astonishing Miss Quinlan. She kissed his cheek, many small, tender touches, whispered into his ear, “I need you, I need you.” He leaned back further, her hands like petals on his body, proving to him that the impotence of Saturday night had been merely temporary.

Suddenly she stopped, wriggled out of his encircling arm, jumped up and stood before him. Her hair was mussed, she was smiling, there was a look he had not seen before in her eyes, playful, mischievous. She looked beautiful, he thought, in the cold light of the big north window, and most desirable.

“Well,” she said, “shall we?”

He stood up, saw that the whiskey hadn’t spilled. “That was lovely,” he said. “Surprising and lovely.”

She laughed, lightly, gleefully. “I didn’t ask for a description,” she said. “I asked about an action.”

He shook his head sadly. “I would love to,” he said. “But I can’t. Anyway, not now.”

Her face grew grave. “You’re not offended, are you?”

“God, no,” he said. “I’m flattered. Delighted. But I can’t.”

“Will you think about it?” Her eyes were downcast now and it hurt him that he was hurting her.

“Of course I’ll think about it,” he said.

“You came up here to get away from your problems,” she said, with a low, sorrowful laugh, “and now I’ve given you a new problem. I was clumsy. I have no talent for such things.” She lifted her head, looked at him squarely. “Still, at least now you know. We both know.”

“Yes,” he said.

She came over to him and buttoned his shirt. He kissed the top of her head. “Now,” she said, “let’s finish our drinks.”

As he walked slowly in the wet dusk toward his home, his feelings were mixed. He was elated and dissatisfied with himself at the same time, but he didn’t feel like a loser this afternoon. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before and certainly not since his marriage. He had not considered himself attractive to any woman but his wife. And her attachment to him had been built, he was sure, on her appreciation of his intellectual and moral qualities rather than his physical attributes.

Hazen had asked him if he believed in the Ten Commandments and he had answered that he did. Believing in them and obeying them were not one and the same thing. Even if he had not committed adultery, from time to time he had coveted his neighbor’s wife, which was natural and inevitable although contrary to the fiat from Mount Sinai. The messenger of the God of Israel in the desert, announcing the Law to a wandering tribe, could not have known what it would be like millennia later on the highways and byways of the City of New York.

Then he remembered the tone of Judith’s voice when she said, “Now I’m going to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.” A long time, he thought. I’m fifty, he thought, there isn’t all that amount of time to think about anything. On the corner of his own block he nearly turned to go back. But then he saw Alexander leaning against the front of the building and knew that Alexander had seen him. He walked briskly down the block and said, “Good evening, Alexander. Miserable weather, isn’t it?”

“Miserable,” Alexander said, huddling into his combat jacket and chewing on his cigar.

When he opened the door to his apartment, he heard Leslie playing. He stopped and listened for a moment. It was a Schubert sonata, in a minor key, low and haunting, fitting for a dark, wet afternoon. He took off his raincoat and hat and hung them up neatly in the foyer. Then he went into the living room. “Good evening,” he said.

Abruptly Leslie broke off playing and stood up and faced him. “Good evening,” she said coldly. She did not move to kiss him. No better than last night, he thought, or this morning. Still, the ritual of the homecoming kiss was as old as their marriage. He went over to her where she was standing before the piano bench and leaned over and kissed her cheek.

“You’re late,” she said. She sniffed. “And you’ve been drinking.”

“I stopped in at a bar,” he said. Not quite the truth, but easy to say—shamefully easy. “I got wet and chilled. One whiskey.” He shrugged. “Is Caroline home?”

“No. She went to the library.”

“Anybody call?” The words were the usual words after the day’s absence, but the tone was not at all usual.

“No.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your playing. I’ll go into…”

“You’re not interrupting anything. I’ve played enough.”

The telephone began to ring. “I’ll get it,” Strand said, grateful for an excuse to leave the room.

It was Hazen, “Sorry to have left you in the lurch at my place the way I did,” Hazen said. “But the wires were burning in New York, I hope everything was all right.”

“Couldn’t be better,” Strand said with false heartiness.

“Something has come up,” Hazen said. “The police called my office this afternoon. They think they may have caught at least one of my attackers. At least, the boy was involved in the same sort of job they tried on me. They’d like Caroline and me to come to the twentieth precinct. It’s near you—”

“I know where it is.”

“At nine o’clock tomorrow morning to see whether we can identify him. Do you think Caroline would mind very much?” Hazen sounded anxious. “Of course, if she doesn’t want to do it, they can’t force her. But a single identification probably wouldn’t hold up as conclusive in court and…”

“Caroline’s not home yet,” Strand said. “I’ll ask her when she gets in.”

“Good,” Hazen said. “I’d like to see the rascal put away for a few months, although with the way the courts are these days, that’s probably too much to hope for. You can call me back at the office. I’ll be working late tonight. Oh, by the way, I’ve already talked to my friend at Truscott and he says he can arrange to have one of their alumni who does some scouting in New York for them take a look at Caroline.”

“Good God, don’t you have anything better to do with your Monday mornings?”

“It only took me five minutes.”

When Strand went back into the living room, Leslie was standing at the window, looking out at the rainy street.

“That was Hazen,” Strand said. “The police think they may have found one of the boys. They want Caroline and Hazen to come down tomorrow morning and identify him.”

“What did you tell him?” Leslie still kept looking out the window.

“That I’d ask Caroline and call him back. I don’t particularly relish the idea of Caroline getting mixed up in something like that.”

Leslie nodded. “Neither do I. Still, she may have strong feelings about it.”

“Leslie, darling, please sit down,” Strand said gently. “I have some things to tell you. The things I didn’t want to talk about last night.”

Slowly, she turned away from the window and sat down facing him. “It was after Caroline had played tennis with Hazen,” Strand said, “and he and I were walking back to the house…” Then he told her everything: Hazen’s offer and his arguments for sending Caroline off, the possibility of the athletic scholarship, and as completely as he could remember, about his conversation with Eleanor.

Leslie listened quietly, her face showing no emotion, her hands folded in her lap. When Strand had finished, she said, “Eleanor is right, of course, about Caroline. She does think she’s unattractive. She does hate her nose. She is painfully shy. She hides it from us, she’s been hiding it from us since she was a child.”

“You knew?” Strand asked, incredulously. “You knew all along and you didn’t tell me?”

Leslie reached out and touched his hand. “What good would it have done?” Her tone was gentle now and loving. “Don’t you have enough to worry about?”

“I feel like an absolute fool,” Strand said.

“You’re not a fool. Sometimes you’re unobservant, that’s all,” she said. “Especially about your children. Now, the question is, what are we going to do about it?” She smiled. “Notice I said we.”

“Hazen wants us to let him talk to Caroline.”

“Tempt her with visions of perpetual western sunshine.” Leslie smiled again. “Well, why not? A little perpetual sunshine would be a welcome change for us all.”

“But to study to be a veterinary, for God’s sake! How do you think she got an idea like that?”

“Don’t know,” Leslie said. “Maybe she read the Englishman’s book—All Creatures Great and Small—and it seemed like an interesting profession—meeting different kinds of people, out in the open air and all that. If she’s really got her mind set on it, I wouldn’t stand in her way.”

“Why didn’t she ever say a word to either of us about it?” Strand knew he sounded aggrieved.

“Maybe she was just waiting for the right moment. Girls learn early not to blurt out everything to their parents.”

“You’d be for letting her go away?”

Leslie nodded.

“Well,” Strand said, “they’ll probably be seeing each other tomorrow morning at the police station. They can talk there. It’s an ideal place for temptation.”

Leslie stood up and moved toward him and leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. She touched his hair. “You need a haircut,” she said.

When Caroline came in a little before dinner time, Strand told her about Hazen’s call. Leslie was giving a lesson to her policeman pupil in the living room and they went into the kitchen to get away from the clanking chords that the representative of the law was clubbing out of the poor piano. “Mr. Hazen said he was going to go to the police station, but that if you didn’t want to go, they couldn’t force you.”

Caroline’s face grew very sober and she ran her hand through her hair. Strand hoped she would say she didn’t want to go, but she said, “I’ll go.”

“You’re sure now?”

“Positive. Those boys shouldn’t be on the street. I can’t forget what they were like—a pack of wild animals, grunting, stabbing, hitting, grabbing. I just hope they found the right one.”

“All right.” Strand sighed. “Your mother and I’ll go along with you.”

“There’s no need. I’m not a baby.”

“I said we’d go with you,” Strand said.

Caroline sighed and started out of the kitchen, but Strand stopped her. “Sit down for a minute, Caroline. There’s something I have to talk about with you.”

Caroline looked at him suspiciously but seated herself in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Strand sat facing her. “I understand from Mr. Hazen,” he said, “that you talked about going out west to college.”

“Oh,” Caroline said, sounding on the thin edge of guilt, “he told you.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t say I was going,” she said. “I just said that if I had my druthers that’s where I’d like to go. I also told him I had no druthers.”

“He told me that there was a chance you could have what you call your druthers.”

“He did?” Caroline looked surprised. “He didn’t tell me.”

“He wanted to talk to me first.”

“What else did he tell you?” Now she was wary.

“That you wanted to go to an agricultural college to prepare for a veterinary’s degree.”

“Is that a crime?” Her voice was hostile.

“Of course not,” Strand said soothingly. “But your mother and I would like to know why you want to do it and why you didn’t tell us long ago.”

“I wasn’t sure long ago. I didn’t want to say anything while I was undecided. Besides, I was afraid you’d laugh at me and tell me I was a sentimental little girl. Well, now it’s out. Laugh if you want,” she said.

“Nobody’s laughing, Caroline,” Strand said gently.

“Anyway, it’s pointless even talking about it.” She made a gesture of dismissal with her hand. “Fairy tales for the young. It’d take money, a lot of money. We’re rich in affection around here,” she said ironically, “but when it comes to worldly goods…” She shrugged. “I’m not blind. When was the last time you bought a new suit?”

“Let’s come to that later,” Strand said. “Right now I’m interested in your reasons. What do you know about animals?”

“Nothing, yet. Well, I do know something. That they suffer and suffer horribly and deserve to find relief. Is it so weird to want to use your life to make this awful world just a little more human?” Her voice rose in anger, as though she felt she was being attacked.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Strand said. “In fact, I find it admirable. But people suffer, too. Yet you don’t want to be a doctor.”

“I don’t want to be a doctor or a politician or a general or a social worker, because I’d be no good at any of those things. Eleanor could be anything she wanted but I can’t. I may be stupid, but there’s one thing I know and that’s me. I don’t get along easily with people and they’d scare me and I’d be clumsy and say all the wrong things and feel they were always laughing at me behind my back.”

Oh, my poor dear daughter, Strand thought sorrowfully.

“Animals’re better.” Caroline went rushing on. “They don’t talk. Or at least not so we can understand them. They wouldn’t embarrass me.” Now she was on the brink of tears.

Strand leaned over the table and patted her hand. “All right,” he said. “Now I know how you feel, although I think maybe you’re too hard on yourself. As you grow older, I think you’ll have a higher opinion of your value.”

“If I have to stay in this city, fighting day and night to try to keep up with all the smart kids around me, I’ll just be wiped out for good.” She was wailing now.

“What if I were to tell you,” Strand said, “that you’ve convinced me and that I think it would be better all around if you went away to school?” He paused. “And there may be a way we can swing it, worldly goods or no worldly goods.”

Caroline looked at him disbelievingly. “What’re you and Mummy going to do—get jobs at night to send me to Arizona?”

“Nothing as drastic as that.” Strand laughed. “No, Mr. Hazen has come up with an idea.”

“You’re not thinking of asking him to lend you the money, are you? I wouldn’t go if…”

“Not that, either,” Strand interrupted her. Then he told her about Hazen’s plan for an athletic scholarship. She listened, wide-eyed. “He’s already talked to his friend at the school,” Strand went on, “and they can arrange for an alumnus who ran on the team and who lives in New York to talk to you and time you. If you’re really serious about the whole thing, I advise you to do a little practicing.”

“I’m serious all right,” she said. “Boy, am I serious.”

“I’ll talk to the head of the physical education department at your school and maybe they can give you a little coaching.”

“It sounds bananas,” Caroline said, shaking her head wonderingly. “I run one race in my whole life against girls who would take all week just to get around the block and for that some dopey school is going to pay my way for four years? I think Mr. Hazen was kidding you, Daddy.”

“He’s not the sort of man who goes in for kidding,” Strand said. “Whom you were running against doesn’t matter—it’s the time that counts.” Strand stood up. “By the way, the name of the school is Truscott. And Mr. Hazen said it has a strong agricultural department. If you’re positive you want to give it a try, your mother and I will do all we can to help you. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll look for something else.”

Caroline looked pensive, rubbing her nose. “Arizona,” she said. “It sounds yummy. Positive! Hell, I’ll run for my life.”

“You can talk to Mr. Hazen about it,” Strand said as he started out of the kitchen, “after you get through with the police tomorrow morning.”

But Caroline didn’t get a chance to talk to Hazen the next morning, because after she had pointed at the young boy with the livid scar fresh across his forehead and the bridge of his nose, and said, very calmly, “Yes, I am sure, that was the one with the knife,” she began to scream, putting the heels of her hands into her eyes and bending over, weaving from side to side. She was still screaming when Strand carried her in his arms out of the station house with Leslie and Hazen hurrying beside him. Conroy was there with the Mercedes and they took her directly to Dr. Prinz’s office and he gave her a shot and after a while she lay on the couch, silently, her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.

She stayed home from school for two more days, not going out of the apartment, quiet and subdued, her room gaudy with the flowers and littered with huge boxes of chocolates that Hazen sent her. Hazen called twice a day to find out how she was. During one of his calls he mentioned that his friend at Truscott was arranging to have someone in New York take a look at Caroline when she felt she was ready to perform. Hazen too wanted to see her but was understanding when Leslie told him that for the time being it was better if she were left alone.

Then, on Thursday morning, Caroline came into the kitchen, dressed to go out, as Strand was having breakfast. She was humming and the color had returned to her cheeks and she told Strand she was going to school. “Are you sure it’s the right thing to do?” Strand said. “After all, it’s only a couple of days. You can wait till Monday.”

Caroline shook her head. “I don’t want to hang around the house anymore. Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m over the glooms. I don’t know what came over me back there—in the police station—seeing that awful scar on that boy’s head and knowing I did it. And he was so young, like a scared baby. And looking at me with a funny, puzzled look on his face, as though he couldn’t understand why I was doing that to him. And the way that detective gripped his arm, like a handcuff, and he was going to be put behind bars just because a silly little white girl pointed at him…. I was so mixed up, Daddy,” she said, trying to keep back tears, “all I could do was scream.”

“Don’t think about it. You did what you had to do. Now forget it.”

Caroline nodded slowly. “I’ll try. But I’m not going into the park anymore, I’ll tell you that.” While she was drinking her juice and boiling some eggs for herself, he went into the bedroom and awoke Leslie to ask her what she thought about allowing Caroline to leave the house. “She’s digested it,” Leslie said, after a moment’s thought. “Or she’s pretending she’s digested it. Anyway, the best thing we can do is let her act normally, or what she thinks is normally.” Still, Leslie dressed hurriedly and, making an excuse that she had some early shopping to do, walked to school with Caroline. Before she left, she told Strand that she was going to invite Hazen to dinner. She was sure, she said, that he would accept. Which he did. Immediately and with pleasure. “I get the impression he eats dinner alone every night of the week,” Leslie said to Strand when he came home in the afternoon.

“Funny,” Strand said. “I had the same feeling that first night.”

“I also told him,” Leslie said, “that we would be grateful if he could manage to get Caroline into that school.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said he wished all young people knew what sort of education they wanted and were as eager to get it as Caroline.”

“He should have been a headmaster.”

“I guess law pays better,” Leslie said.

When Hazen came into the apartment that evening he was carrying a sports bag with a warmup suit in it and a pair of track shoes. Caroline blushed, somewhere between gratitude and embarrassment, at the gift. “I’ll fly with these,” she said.

“You just give me a week’s notice,” Hazen said, “as to when you think you’ll be ready and I’ll make sure everything is arranged correctly. There’s a track on Randall’s Island. I suggest you get some starting blocks and try out the shoes a few times.”

During dinner they all carefully avoided talking about the scene in the police station. Hazen did most of the talking, telling them what the summers had been like in East Hampton when he was a boy and of the great tennis tournaments that had been held there on grass before the game became professionalized—when the best players were glad to come merely for the pleasure of playing and going to the parties and being put up for the week at the houses of the club members. For the first time he spoke of his family and Strand learned that he had a younger brother who taught philosophy at Stanford and a sister who was married to an oil man in Dallas and had her own private plane. He did not mention his own children or his wife. But he seemed relaxed and happy to talk, like a man who had spent too many silent evenings in his lifetime. He even told a joke on himself, with his father as the hero of it. “When my father died,” he said, “I inherited his old secretary, among other things. A forbidding lady by the name of Miss Goodson. One day she was in my office while I was lighting a pipe, a habit, among others, I had picked up from him, as well as the practice of law. She looked at me sternly. ‘If I may say so, Mr. Hazen,’ she said, ‘you remind me of your father.’ Naturally, still a young man at the time, I was gratified at the remark. My father had been one of the most distinguished attorneys in the country and had served brilliantly on several important government committees and as president of the New York Bar Association. ‘Just exactly how do I remind you of my father, Miss Goodson?’ I said, preening a little. ‘You drop your lighted matches into the wastebasket and start fires just like him,’ she said.” Hazen laughed with the rest of them. They were having dessert by then and Hazen sighed contentedly as he put down his spoon. “My, what a delicious meal. I’m afraid,” he said to Caroline, “you won’t be able to eat like this when you get to Arizona.”

“If I get to Arizona.”

“If whoever is using the stopwatch is honest, I have every confidence you’ll get there,” Hazen said, making it sound like a judgment at the bar. “You won’t have to give up your tennis. There’ll be time for both. But I don’t imagine you want to play in the park anymore.”

“Never,” Caroline said.

“In that case, we’ll have to arrange something else, won’t we?” he said, as he sipped at his coffee. “I’m a member of the Town and Country Tennis Club on East 58th Street. Would you like to play some doubles with me on Saturday morning?”

“That would be super,” Caroline said.

“I’ll introduce you around,” Hazen said. “There are quite a few players there worthy of you and you can go whenever you want as my guest.”

“Aren’t you going out to the Island this weekend?” Strand asked. He didn’t like the idea of Hazen piling up debts of gratitude.

“Not this weekend,” Hazen said. “I have an appointment in town Saturday evening.”

“I’m afraid you work too hard, Mr. Hazen,” Leslie said.

“Russell, please,” Hazen said. “I think it’s about time we moved on to a first name basis. Leslie?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. Work.” He paused reflectively. “It’s my pleasure. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I didn’t work. If possible, I plan to die before I have to retire.” He chuckled, to take the sting out of his words. “Anyway, I’m the senior member of the firm so they can’t push me out to pasture, no matter how gaga I get. Well,” Hazen said, standing, “I must be getting on. I have some dull reading to do before I get to bed. Thank you for a most agreeable evening. Good night, Caroline, Leslie.” He hesitated, then said, “Good night, Allen.”

“I’ll see you to the door,” Strand said. He cleared his throat. “Russell.” At the door, where they could hear the faint clink of dishes from the kitchen, where Leslie and Caroline were cleaning up, Strand said, “By the way, that Romero boy came into my office the other day. He said he was interested. I told him to write you a letter. To spare you his presence as long as possible.”

Hazen laughed. “Is he as bad as that?”

“Worse.”

“I’ll look for the letter.” Hazen stared gravely at his host. “You’re not regretting it, your decision about Caroline, I mean, are you?”

“Not yet,” Strand said.

“You won’t,” Hazen said. “I guarantee. Oh, by the way, the Yankees are playing Boston this Saturday. If the weather’s fair, can you get away?”

“I’m sure I can.”

“Good. I’ll call you Saturday morning after I introduce Caroline at the club.”

The two men shook hands and Hazen went out the door.

Later, in bed, Leslie said, “We have a very happy little girl in the house tonight.”

“Yes,” Strand said.

“You’re not so happy, though, are you?”

“I’ll get over it,” Strand said. Then, bitterly, “Why the hell is she so anxious to get as far away from us as possible?”