CHRISTMAS WAS ON A Monday and the holiday began at noon on Friday. Strand and Eleanor could drive down from the school and still be in time to meet Leslie’s TWA plane at Kennedy. Hazen had called during the week and Strand had told him that it wasn’t necessary to send the car to Dunberry. Caroline was flying into Kennedy around one o’clock on TWA and would wait in the terminal and the whole family would drive out to East Hampton together. Hazen had spoken to Romero and said the idiotic kid still insisted on not cooperating when he went into court on January seventh. He had also told Hazen he was satisfied with Mr. Hollingsbee and didn’t want Hazen to waste his time coming out for the trial.
“The kid’s hopeless,” Hazen had said wearily, “and nothing any one of us can do is going to help him. Oh, well—see you on Friday afternoon.”
It had been pleasant having Eleanor around the house although Strand could see that it was only with considerable effort that she maintained an appearance of calm cheerfulness. He knew it was for his sake and was grateful for it. He tried not to notice the way she jumped up and ran to the phone when it rang and the tension in her voice as she said hello. But it was never Giuseppe on the line and she never called Georgia. Late at night, when she thought he was asleep, he could hear her prowling around the house.
Twice when she was out of the house, he had tried calling Giuseppe but Giuseppe had hung up on him each time. Strand didn’t tell Eleanor about his attempts.
She had asked for all the news of Caroline and Jimmy. Leslie had written her a letter, which she had received just before she left Georgia, and she knew of Leslie’s triumph with her two paintings and of her extending her stay in Paris. She said Leslie had sounded like an excited young girl in her letter and that it had been amusing and had touched her. She said she always knew her mother had a real talent and was happy it had finally been recognized, even if it was only for two paintings so far. “You watch,” she told Strand, “she’s going to work like a demon now, you’ll be lucky if she takes enough time off to make you a cup of coffee in the morning.”
Strand had carefully edited the news about Caroline and Jimmy. The burden of waiting and dreading to hear from Giuseppe, or, even worse, from someone else on the paper, was enough for her to bear, Strand thought, without her having to worry about her sister and brother. So he showed her Caroline’s letter in which she wrote about being voted the Homecoming Queen. She laughed as she gave the letter back to Strand. “She’s come out of the cocoon with a bang, my little sister, hasn’t she?”
“You might say that,” Strand said. If he had shown her the letter from the biology teacher’s wife and the letter from Romero, and she discovered just how great the bang was, he doubted that her reaction would have been quite so pleased.
As for Jimmy, Strand merely said that he’d gone to Hollywood on a new job and was making a lot more money than he had been getting on the old one. He also told her that Jimmy had become a fancy dresser and was becoming accustomed to three-martini lunches.
Eleanor made a wry face when she heard this. “Onward and upward, I guess. Winning all hearts and minds on the way. At least he isn’t turning into a complete bum, as he gave every sign of doing when I was in New York. Does he send you any money?”
“We don’t need it,” Strand said shortly.
Eleanor looked at him gravely. “You could stand a couple of good suits, too, you know.” But she left it at that.
The drive into Kennedy from the school in the old station wagon was an agreeable one. The weather was fine, there was very little traffic, Eleanor was a good, careful driver, and they had time enough so that they could stop off and have a leisurely lunch outside Greenwich at a very nice inn whose advertisements Eleanor had seen in The New Yorker. Both she and Strand were amused by the glances they drew from the other diners as they came in—admiring for her and either envious or disapproving for him.
She squeezed his hand and whispered, “They think you’re an irresistible old man sneaking off for a dirty weekend with your secretary.”
“Maybe I’ll try that one day,” Strand said, laughing. “Being irresistible. Only I’ll have to hire a secretary first.” But when she went into the ladies’ room to comb her hair he thought of Judith Quinlan and the girl on the train with the young man in the fur coat and wondered just what a dirty weekend was like and if ever in his life he would have one.
When they went down to the exit from Customs to wait for Leslie and Linda to come out, they saw that Caroline was already there. Caroline squealed as she ran toward them and hugged first her father, then her sister. “Daddy,” she said reproachfully, “you never told me. I thought she was still languishing in Georgia. What a great surprise! Where’s your beautiful husband, Eleanor?”
“Languishing,” Eleanor said. She took a step back. “Let me take a look at you.”
Caroline struck an exaggerated model’s pose, legs apart, one hand on her hip, the other in a dancer’s gesture over her head. “How do you like the new me?”
“Pretty classy,” Eleanor said. “Now I’m glad my husband’s in Georgia.” As she said it, she glanced warningly at Strand and he knew that she wasn’t going to tell Caroline why Giuseppe was in Georgia and what she feared would happen to him there. “You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you?”
“They run me to death every day,” Caroline said.
“It becomes you.”
Actually, Strand thought Eleanor’s “classy” was a sisterly understatement. He was sure it wasn’t merely fatherly indulgence that made him think that Caroline, her face fined down, her eyes bright with health and happiness, her skin a clear, athletic glow, her long legs shapely and firm, was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen in his life. With her new nose and her recently acquired assurance, she no longer bore any resemblance to him, but now looked breathtakingly like Leslie when Leslie was her age. He couldn’t think of a more flattering comparison. Remembering the letters that he would eventually have to talk to her about, he searched for signs of depravity. He found none. She looked untouched, youthfully innocent.
As the travelers came trickling out of Customs, Hazen hurried up. “Hi, everybody,” he said, shaking Strand’s hand and hesitating a second as Caroline came up to him and hugged him and waited to be kissed. Then he kissed her cheek. He hesitated more than a second when Eleanor greeted him, but then kissed her, too. “I was afraid I was late. The traffic out of the city is fierce. Friday night before the big holiday. It’s a good thing Linda’s always the last one off any plane. Between forgetting things and having to go back to look for them and getting her face prepared, the plane’s just about ready to take off again by the time she gets out.”
When Leslie and Linda came out and Leslie saw Eleanor with the others, tears sprang to her eyes and she stopped walking for a moment. Strand was surprised. Leslie usually kept a tight control on her emotions and it wasn’t like her to cry on happy occasions. Then she rushed toward them and kissed them all. Linda kissed everybody, too, amid smiles and laughter and chatter about baggage and who was going to ride in which car and congratulations all around on how well everybody looked.
Once out of the terminal building they decided that Caroline would drive with Linda and Hazen while Strand and Leslie would go with Eleanor in her Volkswagen. The driver, a strongly built youngish man in a chauffeur’s uniform, helped load all the baggage into the back of the Mercedes and on the roof rack.
“Where’s Conroy?” Strand asked.
“I’ll tell you later.” Hazen made a face as though he had tasted something sour and got into the car. Leslie and Strand were left alone on the curb as the Mercedes drove off and Eleanor went to the parking lot to get her car. Strand stared approvingly at his wife. She seemed to have shed ten years and he thought she could easily pass as Eleanor’s prettier older sister. And not much older. Impulsively, he kissed her.
She smiled up at him, still in his arms. “I didn’t know you’ve gone public.”
“I couldn’t resist. Paris has put a new bloom on you.”
“It certainly hasn’t done any harm.” Then her face became grave. “Allen,” she said, “I shouldn’t spring this on you so suddenly, but I’m so full of it I can’t really think of anything else. I was going to write you about it, but I thought I had to see the expression on your face when I told you about it—”
“What are you going to tell me, that you took a lover in Paris?” He hoped he had managed to keep his tone light enough.
“Allen,” she said reproachfully, “you know me better than that.”
“It’s been a long time. A lady might be excused.” But he sighed with relief.
“Not this lady. No, it’s more serious than a lover. What I want to ask is this—do you think there’s any chance that you could get a job in Paris, at least for a year? There’s an American school there and I’m sure Russell knows somebody on the board.”
“There’s the small question of money,” Strand said. “Airplane fares, a place to live. Little things like that.”
“We could swing it,” Leslie said. “I’d be chipping in. The gallery owner promised to finance me, on a very small scale, of course, for a year if I come back and work with the artist who bought my paintings. Working beside him and listening to him has given me a whole new vision of what art can be. I have the feeling that at last I’m finally on the verge of being somebody.”
“You always were somebody, Leslie.” Now he felt bruised and shaken.
“You know what I mean. Do you want us to spend the rest of our lives in a backwater like Dunberry?” She spoke softly, without emphasis, but he could sense the desperation behind the question.
“I haven’t thought much about the rest of our lives. Up to now, I’ve been content to live from week to week.”
“Oh, dear,” Leslie said, “I’ve bothered you. Forget what I said. I won’t say anything more about it. Tell me about Eleanor.” She spoke briskly, as though the idea of Paris was a frivolous one and easily forgotten. “Where’s Giuseppe?”
“I’ll let her tell you about it.”
“There’s trouble.” It was not a question.
He nodded.
“Bad?”
“It might be very bad. I don’t know yet. Get her off to one side. She doesn’t want Caroline or Russell to hear about it. Here she is,” he said, as the Volkswagen drew up to the curb.
He sat in the back to give Eleanor a chance to talk to her mother. Eleanor spoke softly and he couldn’t hear what she was saying over the noise of the old car. From time to time, though, he heard Giuseppe’s name. Although Leslie was not presenting him with an ultimatum as Eleanor had done with Giuseppe, Strand felt that like Giuseppe he was facing a similar choice—go with his wife or stay behind—alone. He had not interfered with his children’s choice of careers and he could hardly be less generous with his wife. He was not facing a bomb as Giuseppe was, but looking at things through Leslie’s eyes he could understand that Dunberry was not much more attractive to her than the Georgia town from which Eleanor had fled was to their daughter. He would see what could be done about Paris.
Once he had reached this decision, the idea of exchanging Dunberry for Paris, if it were possible, began to intrigue him. He closed his eyes, lulled by the motion of the car, and imagined himself sitting at a café table on an open terrace reading a French newspaper in the sunshine and smiled. After all, fifty was not that old. Generals who led armies at that age were considered young men. It would be a challenge, he knew, but there hadn’t been enough real challenges in the last few years, if you could forget the heart attack. And he had emerged from that with a deep feeling of triumph. He knew that both Eleanor and Caroline would approve if they made the move, if only because it would give them an excuse to visit France.
Eleanor’s low murmur stopped. Then he heard Leslie say, loudly, “You did exactly the right thing. It’s monstrous. And if I see him I’m going to tell him so. If he’s foolish and stubborn enough to want to risk his life, that’s his business. Asking you to risk yours is ghoulish.” She turned in the front seat and said, “Allen, I hope you’ve told Eleanor the same thing.”
“In the strongest possible terms,” Strand said.
“Have you tried talking to Giuseppe?”
“I telephoned twice. He hung up as soon as he recognized my voice.”
“Have you told Russell about it?”
“I think this had better just stay in the family.”
“I guess you’re right,” Leslie said, but she sounded dubious.
He wondered if in the low conversation in the front seat Eleanor had told her mother what she had told him—that she was going to try to forget her husband and if she couldn’t she was going back to him. He hoped Eleanor had not gone that far. If she had, Leslie’s anxiety about Eleanor’s possible return to Georgia would destroy all the pleasure she was getting out of her newborn success in France and her plans for the future, pleasure that would be multiplied many times over when he had the chance to tell her that he would see about getting a place on the faculty of the American School in Paris.
It was dark when they reached the house on the beach. The sea could be heard in a low steady rumble and the stars were sparkling in the frozen black crystal of the sky. Strand took a deep breath of the cold salt air and felt his throat and lungs tingle as he inhaled.
Hazen was sitting in one of the twin high-backed leather wing chairs that flanked the fireplace. A driftwood fire sent out sparks of electric blue and green. In a corner was a Christmas tree, its branches adorned with tinsel and colored glass globes that reflected the changing light from the fire. The tree filled the room with a piny forest aroma. Hazen had a drink in his hand and poured a whiskey and soda for Strand while the women went upstairs to unpack.
“I forget how wonderful this place is,” Strand said. “Then, when I come back, it hits me with a rush.” He sat in the chair opposite Hazen, feeling the welcome warmth of the fire on his legs. “I’m going to thank you now—for the whole family—for this holiday and then shut up about it once and for all.”
“Thanks,” Hazen said. “Especially for shutting up about it. It’s too bad Jimmy couldn’t come along.”
“He’s in California.”
“I know,” Hazen said. “Solomon told me.”
“Did he tell you anything else?”
Hazen nodded. “Solomon’s making too much of it. An ambitious young man grabs his chance when he sees it. I’m sure Solomon did worse things when he was Jimmy’s age. And so did I. Don’t be moral about it, Allen.”
“Camelot’s kaput, Jimmy said, when I voiced some objections.”
Hazen laughed. “That’s one way of putting it. It’s been kaput for a long time.”
“How’re things with you?”
“The usual little annoyances.” Hazen shrugged. “I fired Conroy.”
“I wondered why he wasn’t at the airport.”
“I found out my miserable wife was paying him to keep tabs on me. That’s how she knew so much about you and your family in Tours that night. Talk about morality…”
Poor gray-faced, all-purpose Conroy, Strand thought, remembering the embrace of the thin arm in the pounding surf, the embarrassment between them when Strand had tried to thank him for saving his life, the disdainful check for a thousand dollars for services rendered from Hazen, Hazen’s words. “Money means everything to him. He saves like a pack rat.” There had been no thought of reward when the man had plunged into the waves as Strand was being swept out to sea. Morality on varying levels. He knew there would be no use in asking Hazen to change his mind and give Conroy another chance. Betrayal outweighed past gallantry.
“If I may ask,” Strand said, “how are the divorce proceedings going?”
“Badly. She calls my lawyer twice a day from France. She’s driving a hard bargain. And she keeps threatening that if I don’t give in very soon, she’s going to blow the whole thing open in the papers.” He looked bleakly at Strand and seemed as if he was about to say more, then rattled the ice in his glass and said, “Conroy’s told her I’ve made out a new will. Like an idiot I had him witness it. Of course he doesn’t know what’s in it—it’s in the private safe in my partner’s office and my partner’s the only one besides me who’s read it. I typed it myself. But she knows it’s a new one and she says she won’t sign anything unless I show it to her.” He smiled bleakly. “Merry Christmas, one and all.” He took a big swallow of his drink. “You’d think a man my age wouldn’t be surprised anymore by one more piece of evidence of the world’s evil. But Conroy, after all these years…” Hazen shook his head. “When I fired him he said he was glad he was going, he’d hated me from the first day he saw me, only he didn’t have the guts to quit. You have no idea of the amount of venom stored up in that quiet little drab man. He told me he’d had a homosexual affair with my son and my son told him that eventually he was going to commit suicide if I lived long enough because that was the only way he could be free of me. I picked Conroy up and threw him bodily out of the office. If I could have opened the window, I’d have thrown him out of it. From now on I’ll hire a chauffeur for business and drive myself when I have private matters to look after. I’ve hired a pretty twenty-two-year-old girl to be my confidential secretary. At least, being a woman, if she hates me it will show early and I’ll be able to get rid of her. Ah, enough of my troubles. We’re here to relax and enjoy the holiday. I need another drink. How about you?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” Strand watched, with pity in his heart, as the robust, unbowed man went over to the bar and poured himself another whiskey with a steady hand. As Hazen filled his glass he said, “Caroline has turned into a real beauty, hasn’t she?”
“I can only give you a father’s opinion. Yes, she has.”
“Being away at school has done her worlds of good.” Hazen came back and seated himself in the chair by the fireplace. “It’s given her confidence in herself. The way she talked, in the car you had to look and see with your own eyes that it was the little shy girl that went away to Arizona. I must say, she doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind. She says the track coach is a slave driver and she detests him.” Hazen smiled. “The cry heard from all athletes. She also said she hates running. She knows it does her good, but it bores her. The way she put it is she runs fifty miles a week and goes nowhere. And she says she doesn’t like beating the other girls and getting special treatment for it. I don’t think we have an Olympic champion here, Allen.”
“So much the better,” Strand said.
“Well, at least she’s getting a free education and she’s the most popular girl on campus.”
“So much the worse.”
Hazen laughed. “As Leslie would say, ‘You’re being old-fashioned again, dear.’”
Strand didn’t join in the laughter. If Hazen had read the letter of the biology teacher’s wife, Strand thought, he wouldn’t congratulate Caroline’s father on her newfound popularity.
“Well,” Hazen said, “at least Leslie seems to be in terrific form. You ought to give a big vote of thanks to Linda for taking her on the trip to Paris.”
“It did turn out well,” Strand said, without enthusiasm. “Maybe a little too well.”
“What do you mean by that?” Hazen scowled at him.
“She wants to go back.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“She wants to go back right now if she can.”
“Oh.” Hazen stared thoughtfully into his glass.
“She seems to think that the man whose studio she worked in can show her the way to becoming some sort of genius.”
“Did she say that?”
“Not in so many words,” Strand admitted. “She wants to make a career of painting and she thinks Paris is the place where she can get it to happen.”
“What’s wrong with that? You’re not the sort of man who believes his wife should remain eternally chained to the kitchen stove, are you?”
“No, I don’t think I am.”
“You know I thought she had talent, right from the first night in your apartment when I saw her landscapes. Not a big talent, perhaps, but a true one. And now Linda says the people in Paris are very excited about her work and her possibilities. Sometimes it takes strangers to recognize the virtues of things that we’ve been looking at for years.”
“I know all that, Russell, but…”
“But what? What’s the hitch?”
“The hitch is that she wants me to go to Paris with her.”
Hazen didn’t say anything, but whistled softly.
“I didn’t whistle when she said it,” Strand said. “She wants me to ask you if you know anybody connected with the American School in Paris who might be induced to give me a job there. For at least a year. I’d ask Babcock if he’d give me an unpaid leave of absence for the year. Listen, Russell, you’ve done enough for this family. If it’s the slightest bit of trouble for you, just tell me so, and Leslie and I will work something out on our own.”
“Let me see, let me see…” Hazen put his head back in the chair and squinted up at the ceiling. He didn’t seem to have heard what Strand had just said. “Let me see, whom do I know? Of course. Our head man in the Paris office has two kids who go to the American School and he’s on the board. I’ll drop him a note tomorrow. I’d call him, but it’s Christmastime in France, too, and I know he takes ten days off to ski someplace. I’m sure something can be arranged.”
“I hate to use you as an employment agency,” Strand said.
“A lot of other people use me for a lot worse things. Don’t fuss about it.”
Mr. Ketley came in and said, “There’s a telephone call for you, sir.”
Carrying his drink, Hazen went into the library. Strand noticed that he closed the door after him, so that his conversation could not be overheard.
When he came back to the living room, he looked grave. “Allen,” he said, “you’ll have to make my excuses to everybody. I have to go back to New York. Immediately. That call was from my wife. She arrived in New York from Paris this afternoon. She was on Air France. If she’d picked TWA Leslie and Linda would’ve had the pleasure of her company for three thousand miles. She’s drunk and she says that if I don’t get right back into New York tonight she’ll drive out in a limousine and show us one and all that she’s not to be trifled with. One scene like that a year is more than enough. I have to see what I can do. I’m sorry to be a damper on the party. Tell the others it’s business. Tell everybody to eat, drink and be merry.”
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I’ll keep in touch.” Hazen took a long lingering look around the room, shook his head wearily. “God, I hate to leave this place,” and he was gone.
Strand finished his drink, then walked slowly upstairs to tell Leslie their host had been called back to New York on business.
They had eaten and drunk, but had not been particularly merry. Eleanor and Leslie had talked themselves out in the car and Linda was drooping from jet lag and went up to bed early. Caroline was restless and suggested to Eleanor that they drive into Bridgehampton and see if Bobby happened to be playing the piano that night in his bar. “After Georgia and Dunberry I can use a little night life. Like ten brass bands,” Eleanor said and the girls kissed their parents good night and went off.
“Well,” Leslie said, “it looks like it’s old folks by the fireside night, doesn’t it?” She came over to where Strand was sitting and bent and kissed his forehead and ran her hand along the back of his head. He reached and held her around the waist.
“I don’t feel so old,” he said. “And as for you, if you’d gone into the bar with the girls, the bartender would’ve asked to see your I.D. card. This is more like the times we used to wait in the parlor until your folks had gone to bed so we could begin to pet.”
“Oh, God.” Leslie laughed. “I haven’t heard that word in thirty years. Pet. Do you think people still do it?”
“From what I hear they just rush into bed,” Strand said. He let the hand that was around her waist slide down and he caressed her thigh. “A sensible, time-saving custom. We ought to try it sometime. Like right now.”
Leslie leaned back so that she could focus on his face. “Do you mean that?”
“Fervently,” he said.
“Is it all right? I mean…”
“Prinz gave me the green light. Slightly blurred. But green.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“He said, moderation in all things, but…He also said it might kill me or it might make me feel like a twenty-year-old fullback.”
Leslie kissed him hard, on the lips, then took his hands and pulled him from the chair.
It didn’t kill him and he didn’t feel like a twenty-year-old fullback when he gave her a last kiss and rolled over on his back in the soft, wide bed, but it did make him feel enormously happy.
“We’re back home,” she said softly. “It’s somebody else’s house and somebody else’s bed, but we’re finally home.”
“You sleepy?”
“No. Floating.”
“I have an elegant idea.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to go down to the kitchen and steal a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and two glasses and come back here and we’ll have a pre-Christmas, post coitum private party.”
“The party of the other part votes yes,” she said.
When he came back upstairs with the bottle and glasses, Leslie was sitting in front of the fire that she had lit and had drawn up another chair in front of it for him. He popped the cork out of the bottle and poured the cold champagne into the two glasses that Leslie held for him. He took one of the glasses and held it up in a toast. “To Paris,” he said.
She didn’t drink, but looked at him questioningly. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I talked to Russell before he was called away and of course as usual he knows a man and he’s going to get in touch with him and I’m buying a French dictionary tomorrow.”
“Oh, Allen…” She seemed about to cry.
“Drink,” he said and they both drank.
“Allen,” she said, “you don’t have to do this for me.”
“I’m doing it for myself,” he said. “I had a chance to think about it in the car and the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.”
“You’re sure? You’re not making it up just for me? You seemed aghast when I spoke about it at the airport.”
“I wasn’t aghast. I was surprised. It took a little time to get used to the idea, that’s all. My, this is good champagne.”
“May we never drink worse.” She giggled and held out her glass for more. “The way I feel now,” she said as he poured the wine, “I want to say, And then they lived happily ever after.”
Hazen called the next afternoon and told Leslie he would try to make it back for Christmas, but he wasn’t sure. He hoped they were having a good time, he said, and Leslie told him they all missed him and to hurry back.
They spent the day lazily. It was too cold to paint outside so Leslie started a pencil sketch of Caroline for a later portrait in oil. Strand was content merely to sit and watch and occasionally to go over to the other side of the room where Linda and Eleanor played backgammon.
But when Hazen called the next day to say that he couldn’t make it for Christmas, it was Linda who took the call and she came away from the phone with a worried look on her face. “He sounded very strange,” she said to Leslie and Strand, who were in the living room. “Not at all like himself. Very disconnected, he rambled on and on, he kept talking about momentous decisions, I could hardly make sense out of him. I asked him if he was drunk and he blew up and shouted ‘None of your goddamned business, Linda!’ and hung up. Allen, do you know what it’s all about?”
“No.” He hoped he sounded convincing. “Some sort of business, he said.”
“Thank God, Allen, that you’re not a businessman,” Linda said.
“I do just that every night when I say my prayers,” Strand said.
The Christmas dinner, although delicious, was gloomy. Hazen’s absence weighed on them all. They had all put their presents under the tree but decided not to open any of them until Hazen’s return. The gap at the end of the table made all of them, even Linda, glum. The conversation around the table was sporadic and they were glad when the meal was over.
The weather had turned gray and foggy by the time they finished dinner with a Calvados apiece at three in the afternoon, but Leslie and Linda and Eleanor bundled up and went for a walk along the beach, as though something was drawing them out of the house. Caroline settled herself in front of the television set and Strand went up and lay down to take a nap. In his sleep he dreamt that he was locked in a room with Conroy and Mrs. Hazen and had to watch while they tore their clothes off and jumped obscenely upon one another. He woke up sweating, not remembering the dream clearly, but with a sickly sensation of horror at the grotesque turmoil of his sleeping hours.
He went downstairs and saw that the women had not returned. Caroline was on the phone in the library, but when she saw Strand through the door in the living room, she said hastily, “I can’t talk anymore. Good-bye.” She put the phone down and with a quick glance at her father turned and sat down again in front of the television set.
Curious, he went into the library. “Caroline, whom were you talking to?”
“Nobody in particular,” she said, without looking at him.
“Nobody talks to nobody in particular,” he said.
She sighed and pushed the remote-control button to turn the set off. “If you must know,” she said defiantly, “it was Jesus. Jesus Romero. He called me. I sent him a Christmas card from Arizona and the school forwarded it to him. He tried to call us at Dunberry and the cleaning lady told him we were here and he wanted to wish me a Merry Christmas. Is there anything criminal in that?”
Strand sat down on the couch next to her and took her hands gently. “Caroline,” he said, “we have to have a little talk, you and I.”
“We certainly do,” Caroline said. She was angry now or was trying to seem angry. “Why didn’t anybody tell me Jesus was in jail and is out on bail and has been expelled from the school and is going to have to stand trial?”
“We didn’t know you were that interested in the boy. Until very recently.”
“Well I am. Very interested.”
“I gathered that when I heard about the letters you were exchanging.”
Caroline pulled her hands away from his loose grasp. “What do you know about any letters?”
“Quite a lot, at least about the nature of them, although I never read them. Don’t worry, they’ve been destroyed.”
“I’m not worried.” Her tone was harsh.
“Here are two letters that haven’t been destroyed.” He took Romero’s letter and the one from the biology teacher’s wife from his inside jacket pocket, where he carried them to make sure Leslie wouldn’t happen on them by chance. He stood up and kept his back to Caroline. He looked out to sea while she read the letters. Then he heard the ripping of paper and saw her throwing the tattered remnants into the small fire that was spreading a cozy warmth into the small library.
Caroline was sobbing now and she threw her arms around Strand as he came over to her. “Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” she wept, “what’s the matter with me? How can people write such awful things about me?”
“Because you’ve been cruel and hurt them,” Strand said, still holding her, shocked by the violence of her sobs.
“I was just having fun,” she wailed. “Most of the letters I sent to Jesus I copied from love letters the girls in my dormitory got from their boyfriends or I took from Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Henry Miller. I wanted to sound sophisticated and daring, but I thought he’d laugh, too, because when we read those letters, we laughed. Then when he wrote he was coming out for Thanksgiving, he scared me, he was so serious. And old Assistant Professor Swanson just kept following me around like a sick dog and kept saying he and his wife never touched each other and she was leaving him anyway and I took pity on him. And I told him to spend Thanksgiving with his family. I had to get away from him and Romero and I went to Tucson the day after Thanksgiving with a football player who gave me a play-by-play account of every game he played since his sophomore year in high school and I never spent a drearier weekend. That’s the kind of screw I am.” She had stopped sobbing now and she put an angry vehemence into the “drearier,” as though by emphasizing her boredom she was minimizing her guilt. Strand let go of her and gave her his handkerchief to dry her tears. He was relieved that the two letters were finally burned. She looked at him fearfully. “You think I’m awful, don’t you? And you’re going to bawl me out.”
“If I thought it would help I would bawl you out. And I don’t think you’re awful. I think you’ve been thoughtless and sometimes that’s worse than awful. Why did you hang up when you were talking to Romero and you saw me?”
“Does Mummy know about the letters?” She was stalling for time and Strand knew it.
“No. And she never will, if you keep quiet about them. Now—why did you hang up?”
“I was apologizing for not being there when he came to Arizona. And”—she lifted her head and stared challengingly into his eyes—“I invited him to come out here.”
Strand sat down. He feared that it was going to be a long and painful conversation. “This isn’t your house, you know, Caroline,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.
“I’m not inviting him to stay. I said I’d meet him in the village.”
“When?”
“He’ll call and let me know.”
“Why do you want to see him?”
“Because he fascinates me.” She drew out the word as though its sound delighted her. “He did, right from the beginning, when I met him at dinner after he made that fantastic run. I told Mom so, didn’t she tell you?”
“Perhaps not exactly in those words. Have you seen him since that night?”
“No. Only the letters. He’s so fierce and intelligent…”
“He certainly is. Especially fierce,” Strand said dryly. “You said he scared you.”
“That’s part of his attraction. The other boys I know…Professor Swanson.” She wrinkled her nose in derision. “All made out of the same cold, unbaked dough. If Jesus wants to keep on seeing me, I’m going to keep on seeing him.”
“You’ll most probably be seeing him in jail.”
“Then I’ll see him in jail. I’m not going back to that gruesome college, where they say such nasty things about me.
“We’ll discuss that later,” Strand said. “How much of what they say is true?”
“Some. Not much. Oh, Daddy, boys and girls aren’t like what they were when you and Mummy were young. You know that.”
“I know it. And I hate it.”
“Mummy knows it. She doesn’t keep her nose in a book day in and day out,” Caroline said harshly. “Who do you think gave me the pill on my sixteenth birthday?”
“I suppose you’re going to say your mother,” Strand said.
“And you’re shocked.” Strand saw, with pain, that there was malice and pleasure on his daughter’s face as she said this.
“I’m not shocked. Your mother is a sensible woman,” Strand said, “and knows what she’s doing. I’m merely surprised that she neglected to tell me.”
“You know why she didn’t tell you? Because she’s in the conspiracy.”
“What conspiracy?” Strand asked, puzzled.
“We all love you and we want you to be happy.” There was a hint of childish whimper as she spoke. “You have an impossible picture in your head of what we’re like—including Mummy. Because we’re yours you think we’re some sort of perfect angels. Well, we’re not, but for your sake, we’ve been pretending, since we were all babies, that we are. We’re a family of actors—including Mummy, if you want to know the truth. With an audience of one—you. As for Eleanor and Jimmy—I won’t even go into it. Nobody could be as good as you thought we could be and I’ve told Mummy we shouldn’t try, that you’d finally find out and you’d be hurt more than ever. But you know Mummy—she’s made of iron—if she decides to do something, there’s no bending her. Well, now you know. I’m not saying we’re bad. We’re just human. Today human.”
“There’re all sorts of ways to be human,” Strand said. “Even today. Anyway, I owe you—the whole family—an apology. But no matter how blind I’ve been, or how human you are, or how the world is today, I can’t approve of your playing so lightly with people’s lives—that poor woman at the college—Jesus Romero—”
“Daddy—I didn’t change the world,” Caroline cried. “I just came into it the way it was. Don’t blame me for it.” She was crying again, wiping at her eyes with his handkerchief. “And I wasn’t the one who went looking for Jesus Romero. You dragged him into our lives. Do you admit it?”
“I admit it,” Strand said wearily. “And I made a mistake. I admit that, too. But I don’t want you to compound the mistake. If you had seen him, as your mother and I have, going after that other boy with a knife, with murder in his eye, you’d think twice about seeing him.”
“Daddy, if you’re going to sound like a father in a Victorian novel, there’s no sense in my standing here and telling you anything.”
“No, there isn’t.” He stood up. “I’m going out and I’m taking a walk.”
“Here’s your handkerchief back,” Caroline said. “I’ve finished with crying.”
He had to get out of the house. He did not want to see his daughter, her eyes swollen, her mouth a hard line, her fury frozen, staring at the milky blind tube of the television set. The darting reflections of the fire on the Christmas tree ornaments annoyed him and the piny smell in the warm room cloyed in his nostrils. He threw on his coat and wrapped the shabby old woolen muffler that Leslie had been trying to get him to throw away for years around his neck. He went out of the house. It was dark now and the light streaming from the windows made swirling pools in the fog that drifted steadily in from the ocean. The rumble of the ocean was muted by mist and sounded like a dirge. He walked away from the beach, down the long straight road, bordered with cedars, that ran through Hazen’s property toward the distant road. The women had gone to walk on the beach and he did not want to meet them or anybody at the moment. There were questions to be put and answers to be made and he had to try to arrange them clearly and without emotion in his mind before voicing them.
When he had gone fifty yards he turned and looked back. The lights of the house had disappeared. The cedars made a sighing sound in the varying, wet wind. He was alone, floating somewhere between the sea and nothingness, surrounded by a dripping, dark, unpeopled wilderness.