“What do you mean? Why shouldn’t he?”
“They never got along, you know. Uncle Theodore’s a minister, of course, and Father’s a kind of black sheep. He likes good living and whiskey and women and things like that. One of the reasons he sent me out here, I’m sure, was simply to get me out of the way. With me gone, he can bring a woman to the apartment any time he pleases. I’m too old to go to the kind of camps he used to send me to in the summer, and he had this ridiculous notion that I should not be permitted to work and live alone, and so here I am. I think, besides, that he thought it would be good for me to spend two or three months in the house of a minister. The Christian influence, I mean. Every once in a while, he gets to feeling guilty about the kind of atmosphere he’s subjected me to. It’s silly, of course, and it never lasts long, but here I am, anyhow, and we shall have to think of ways to make the most of it and enjoy the summer together.”
“What do you like to do? Do you like to swim?”
“I love to swim, and I love to lie for hours on the warm sand. Is it far from here to the beach?”
“Not far. We can drive the distance easily in half an hour. I don’t drive yet, though. Not without Father in the car. Do you drive?”
“Of course. I had a car of my own, but I smashed it up, and Father is punishing me by making me wait until I’m twenty-one before I get another.”
“We’ll drive to the beach every day, then, if you wish. I’m sure Father will let us have the car unless he needs it, and he doesn’t very often. Not for a whole day at a time, at least.”
“Won’t I be a nuisance to you?”
“Oh, no. Why should you think so?”
“Well, you’re pretty and almost seventeen. I should think in the summer that you’d be wanting to go places with boys. Do you have lots of boy friends?”
“Not many. Father is very strict about such things, boys and dates and such things, but I don’t really mind. I’m not very interested in boys anyhow.”
“Aren’t you? Why not?”
“I don’t know. Just not. You’re older, though, and may go out as often as you please, I’m sure. After you’ve been seen, there will be all kinds of boys wanting to take you out. Almost all the college boys are home for the summer, of course.”
“I can’t say that I’m terribly excited about it. College boys are a bore, mostly.”
“Do you like older men?”
“I can take them or leave them alone.” Lila looked at Ivy from the corners of her eyes and her lips curved slightly in a strange little secretive smile. “I think I’ll prefer to spend the summer with you.”
Sitting on the glider, watching with an air of abstraction the patterns of sun and shade on the green grass of the side lawn, Ivy had the most delicious sensation of pervading warmth, as if she were sinking slowly into a warm bath. It was the best of good fortune to have acquired her lovely Cousin Lila to love for a whole summer, but to be granted already the implications of being loved by Lila in return was the most incredible fulfillment. She stirred and lifted one hand to her breast, feeling there a sudden and pleasurable pain.
“Is there anything in particular you would like to do now?” she said.
“Your father said that your mother would not be home until this evening. Is that true?”
“Yes. She had to attend a meeting of one of the women’s societies. Of the church, you know. Apparently it was quite important, something she couldn’t miss, and she said to tell you she was very sorry she couldn’t be here to meet you when you arrived.”
“I don’t mind. I quite understand. I wonder what it would be like to have a mother. My father divorced my mother when I was a child. Perhaps you’ve been told about it. I haven’t seen her for years, although in the beginning, right after the divorce, she came to visit me once in a while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t be. I’m not. I suppose she was unfaithful, since Father got the divorce and custody of me. I’m glad it turned out that way. I doubt that Father would be considered a proper parent, but being in his custody has proved interesting for the most part, even though he has often considered me a bother and sent me away, to school or camp or someplace, to be rid of me.”
“Why did you ask about Mother? When she would be home, I mean?”
“I was just thinking that we might go for a walk. It’s pleasant to walk along the strange streets of a strange town. They change, somehow, after the first time, and are never the same again. But I wouldn’t want to be gone when your mother gets home. She might think it was rude.”
“We have plenty of time. We could walk for an hour at least. Would you like to go?”
“Yes. Let’s go. Will it be necessary to tell your father?”
“No. He’ll never miss us. He pays very little attention to anything unless it is brought directly to his attention.”
They had begun to walk, and they continued to walk for an hour under arcs of branches on tree-lined streets, and at some special second in the course of the hour their hands happened to meet and cling, and it was at once a sign of acceptance and a shy beginning of exploration. When they returned to the house, Ivy’s mother had not yet returned, but she did soon after, and after another hour, perhaps longer, they all sat down to dinner and sat with bowed heads while the Reverend Dr. Theodore Galvin said grace with subdued sonority. Ivy looked through her lashes at Lila across the table, and Lila was looking at her at the same moment in the same way, and it seemed to both that they shared an ineffable secret, and they smiled secretly.
If there was any symbol of the summer, it was that secretive smile. It seemed to develop a separate and somnolent existence of its own, so that it permeated the atmosphere and became a quality of the sunlight, the whispering rain, and the silent, moonlit nights. It was always present, the quality of the smile, and it had, Ivy thought, both scent and sound. The scent was the essence of a delicate perfume that was caught only now and then in a favorable instant, and the sound was the softest sound of a distant vibration, like the plucked string of a conceit harp, that could be heard only in the depths of profound stillness. Sometimes in the middle of doing something, of reading or making her bed or playing tennis or coming down the stairs, she would suddenly smell the scent or hear the sound in a brief suspension of all other scents on earth, and she could never remember certainly when she smelled and heard the scent and sound of the secretive smile for the first time, but she thought it must surely have been the first night Lila came to her room, which was a night not long after Lila’s arrival at the house.
She had been asleep, and she ascended slowly from the deep darkness of sleep into the moonlight flooding the room through open windows, and the smile was in the room with the moonlight, the sense and scent and sound of it, and Lila was there too, beside the bed. Spontaneously, with the ease of instinct, Ivy held out a hand, and Lila took it in hers and sat down on the bed’s edge.
“You were sleeping,” Lila said. “I’ve been watching you.”
“Did you speak to me or touch me?”
“No. Neither.”
“I must have sensed you here to have wakened as I did. Do you hear something?”
“No.” Lisa sat listening, her face lifted to the moonlight. “No, nothing. Do you?”
“I think so. Perhaps I’m only imagining it, though, it’s so soft.”
“What kind of sound? Someone in the hall? Someone outside?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s more like music. A string vibrating.”
“It’s the moonlight. Didn’t you know that moonlight makes a sound? Haven’t you ever heard it before?”
“No. It’s lovely, though. I love the sound of moonlight. Why do you suppose I’m hearing it now for the first time?”