AT LONG LAST THE script was done. The studio was ecstatic with the first rushes which had been shot even as Harry was completing the script. He had adeptly transferred the impact of his prose to the screen. The moguls planned to have the film ready by December. It would be their biggest release. The buzz in the industry was that the studio had a blockbuster in the making. All the signs—stars, script, direction—pointed to a record success.
At long last Harry returned to The Meadows. The day after he came home, he sat at breakfast with Lily. It was a beautiful morning and he felt at peace with the world. The recollection of the night with Jennifer had faded to a benign memory. He assuaged his guilt by telling himself that her advances had been utterly unsolicited. She had seduced him, and after that night he was as good as his word: The only relationship he had with her was a professional one.
Retreating from the memory of that fateful evening, Harry embraced his family all the more. “Darling, it’s wonderful to be home,” he told Lily. “I want you to cancel the kids’ summer camps. I don’t want them to go away. And I especially want Jeremy home.”
“But Harry, you said that he needed to go to summer school.”
“Well, forget it. I want him home this summer. I haven’t seen the kids in six months and I want to try to make it up to them a little.”
But when Lily called Jeremy, she was startled to hear him say, “No, Mom, I really need this extra tutoring.”
“Oh, no you don’t, honey! As far as I’m concerned, you’re doing just fine in school. And your father is very anxious that you come home.”
“Dad wants me home?”
“Of course he does, darling. He hasn’t seen you for months and he misses you.”
After struggling through a few years at Deerbrook, Jeremy had managed to get into Exeter. He well knew he needed summer school to give him a head start. And although deep down he still loved his father and craved his approval, the long years of striving in vain to meet Harry’s expectations had chastened his feelings. Since going to Deerbrook, Jeremy had retreated into himself. He had turned from an open, confiding child, to a quiet, withdrawn boy who kept all confidences to himself, not even sharing his fears with his mother or with Drew.
Drew, for his part, was extremely unhappy at having his plans for summer camp scotched. He had been headed for a special baseball camp and was hoping that with the extra practice he might make pitcher.
But of the three of them, Randy was the most disgruntled. Cousin Randolph had invited him to spend the entire summer with him, and now Harry’s insistence that they spend the summer as a family had dashed his hopes and plans.
Melissa was almost as upset as Randy.
Pouting, she complained, “All my friends will be at camp, having loads of fun. I’m going to miss everything.”
Lily tried to soften the blow. “We’ll have a lot of fun here, too, Melissa. It’s not too often that we have Daddy around.”
At that, Melissa brightened a bit, a plan beginning to form in her mind. “Will he take me to New York for lunch at Delmonico’s, and buy me a doll house as big as Amy’s?”
“I’m sure he will if you ask him, darling.” Lily smiled. She was so thrilled at the prospect of having Harry and the children all together at home for the summer that she would have promised anybody anything at this moment. At last her dreams were coming to fruition and the family life she had dreamed of for so long was becoming a reality. But as the summer began, Harry and Jeremy started things off on the wrong foot by arguing about his grades from Deerbrook.
“You say I’m right,” Harry shouted, “but you don’t ever seem to do anything about it!”
Lily put a cautioning hand on Harry’s arm. “Don’t badger him, Harry.”
Impatiently he shook it off. “Lily, this is between me and Jeremy. All right, son, what do you have to say for yourself?”
By the time the evening was over, the tone of the summer was set.
Drew was livid over Jeremy’s distress, while Randy retreated to his room and Melissa was in a sulk because Daddy hadn’t yet promised to take her to Delmonico’s.
Harry had been full of plans for excursions and outings, but the sullen atmosphere dimmed his own enthusiasm and the children’s as well. They didn’t want to go on any family picnics, or even out to Coney Island. And they rebelled against every other suggestion Harry made.
Still, remembering Lily’s admonition, Harry persevered. He held his tongue even at the times he was sorely tempted. Come July, the family set off in the big Chrysler station wagon for two weeks in Nantucket, full of high hopes.
But the trip fast turned to fiasco. After two days of constant bickering, Harry exploded. “This is it! We’re going home; pack your bags.” The moment they arrived home, he went straight to his round tower study, and closed and locked the door.
Lily was sick with disappointment. What would it take to get this family together? After wrestling with the subject for days, resisting the urge to face Harry with recriminations, she could hold back no more.
“Harry, I want to talk to you about the situation between you and the children.”
“What about it?”
“You were the one to disrupt their plans, just so that you could see them—but after a few tries at being Daddy, you shut them out and went back into your ivory tower—all because you couldn’t stand the stresses and strains of fatherhood.”
“You’re blaming me for the fact that they answer back to me and argue?”
“Harry, you’re half the problem.”
“How so?” he asked angrily.
“You have to try to interact with the children. They’re not just to be ordered about and controlled. You have to show a little understanding.”
“When have I not been understanding, for God’s sake?”
“Well, you weren’t very kind to Jeremy.”
“Oh, so we’re back to that again.”
“You must have noticed how withdrawn he’s become.”
“Because of me? Lily, you have a problem—you don’t understand that your children are growing up. You’ve indulged them so much that they expect the world to cater to them!”
“Harry, you’re far too hard on Jeremy. You always have been.”
“Jeremy’s starting to become a man. He’s quiet because there are things he doesn’t care to share with us.”
“Doesn’t that trouble you?”
“Not at all. I didn’t run home with every little thing to Mom and Dad when I was that age.”
“You and he are different people, Harry!”
“Lily, you’ve always had this idea that children need constant love and attention. Well, maybe what they need is a little more discipline and a little less coddling!”
“It doesn’t help to criticize them constantly.”
“Dammit, I try to be the best father I know how. And if that doesn’t suit you, Lily, then that’s just too damn bad!”
Abruptly he switched off his bedside lamp, pulled up the covers, and shut his eyes.
By the time Lily woke up the next day, Harry was in his study, working with a feverish compulsion, and the door remained closed for virtually the rest of the summer.
After Labor Day, Drew and Randy were off for Deerbrook Academy. It came as no surprise to Lily that, unlike poor Jeremy, the younger boys were actually eager to leave home.
Lily was apprehensive about the coming departures but she comforted herself with the thought that Melissa would still be hers. But to her utter shock, her daughter had other plans. “Amy is going to Miss Parker’s, and I want to go, too!”
“But Melissa, darling, you don’t want to leave Daddy and me, do you?”
Melissa was defiant. “The boys get to go to boarding school. I should too.”
Lily was saddened to the point of depression by the prospect of losing all her children at once, but the three younger ones headed off to their new schools without so much as a backward glance. Only Jeremy seemed to share his mother’s unhappiness. His somber face haunted her as he stood on the steps at Exeter, his arm forlornly upraised in what she took to be his wave farewell.
Inwardly Lily wept. This should have been the most memorable summer of his life—the last of his childhood—and he had spent it knowing himself to be a failure in his father’s eyes.
No, Lily could not forgive Harry, and there was cold silence in the car as they drove back from New Hampshire.