“When you go into the city, a lot of people scurry around trying to keep you happy, don’t they?”
“It’s sort of a reign of terror.”
“I’m serious. You have important friends all over the world, and when you say something, the newspapers report it. Isn’t Mary Agnes aware of all that?”
“I guess she thinks I’ve run some kind of a bluff and the whole structure might collapse any moment.”
“To her, darn it, you’re fumbly old helpless Boyd Robbins. Doesn’t she know you’re rich and famous because you’re so darned bright? Do you really hear the tone she uses when she speaks to you in front of other people? As if you were a dog that shouldn’t be on the rug. Boyd, she’s a tiresome, trivial, empty woman, and… and she gives you no honor!”
He picked up the bottle and put a little bit more rum into each cup.
“I have no right to talk to you like that,” Gretchen whispered.
“Maybe you do. I want you to understand. I want your respect. That should give you some rights. Listen, nothing is going to change Mary Agnes. And she does get on my nerves when I see too much of her. So I don’t see too much of her. If there is a problem in Seattle. I go solve it myself and do it better than the man I might have sent. So, in that sense, credit her with my success, Gretch.”
“But now you have it, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Boyd, doesn’t a man have to have honor from some special person? Doesn’t he have to work for some person who’ll keep telling him he’s great?”
He stared at her with a sudden and bitter surprise. “Do you want to know something hilarious, girl? For years when I’ve done some difficult thing and been proud of it. I’ve told you about it — in my mind. And you have beamed upon me and told me I was great. You see, you were my second time around. Through Jimmy. But ever since he said he was bringing a new girl home I’ve known my little game was over. It’s taken something away from me. I’ve felt restless and sort of out of focus ever since— Hey! Don’t! Please don’t, Gretch.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I can’t help it.”
“Let’s try ironic laughter, dear.”
“Ho, ho, ho,” she said, and sobbed aloud and bowed her head.
“I used to even feel guilty about it sometimes,” he said wonderingly. “I wondered if — being so very fond of you was an entirely good thing — liking the way you look and walk and react to things. Liking what you are.”
“Please shut up, Boyd. Please.”
“I looked at the three of them in my living room before I went out to walk on the beach. They all have blue eyes and narrow faces and clean skin. Their mouths all curl the same way. They talk so politely to each other. I love Jimmy. If he knew I felt sorry for him he would never be able to understand.”
She put her cup aside and pushed her tan hair back with both hands and said despairingly, “Will you stop!”
“I wanted to tell you these things. I can stop. Yes.”
“Maybe it’s the talk. Maybe it’s the rum or the weather. I think I’ll tell you something, Mr. Robbins. And we’ll all have some nice hollow laughter.”
“Tell me what?”
She made an ugly mouth. “Something I’ve denied a thousand times since November. It’s really quite a common psychological phenomenon.” She leaned toward him and spoke with a cold precision. “I was seven when Daddy died. Did you ever stop to think, sir, that your son was just a substitute for what I really wanted?”
He stared at her. His mouth went dry the moment he understood what she was saying.
“But I’m old enough to be—”
“Ten thousand other people would say that, Boyd. And snicker. You’ll be forty-four on the third of July. I’ll be twenty-five on October sixteenth. When I’m forty you’ll be fifty-nine. Do you want the whole neurotic routine? All the wicked dreams? You could quit working, and there’d be enough for us and enough for Mary Agnes too. I’m sure she would adore Atlanta — and martyrdom. Off in the Gay Lady then, Boyd, for a year of stars and talk and sailing, and then I… then I’d start filling this old crock boat with healthy babies for you. And I would always — love and honor and respect… you… because you… you are good!” She dropped her head into her arms and began to howl.
Shaken, he spoke her name and put his hand on her shoulder and snatched it away as hastily as if he had burned himself. He tried to comfort her. After a long time the crying slopped. She got up and found a towel and wiped her face. She tried very hard to smile at him. “What did they put in that rum?” she asked.
“Truth serum?” he said. He looked at her and knew he would never again see her as a girl. This was a woman.
“I’m a mess,” she said. “And now I’m so ashamed. Please don’t stare at me.”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking I’m just now getting acquainted with you.”
“Don’t bother, Boyd. The whole thing is impossible. You better lake off. You better make a strategic retreat to home and fireside. Run from the dangerous female. Not dangerous — just sort of silly. And I have to clean this craft for market.”
He stood up. He was a tall man, and there was not quite enough head room below decks for him. They smiled at each other with excessive courtesy. They both started to speak at once and slopped, each waiting for the other. Then with a long, gliding step she came into his arms. It was very awkward. He felt shocking guilt. They could not get their arms right, and their noses were in the way. Suddenly the guilt was gone, and it was right. She was no longer Jimmy’s girl, Jimmy’s ex-girl, Jimmy’s anything. She was his Gretchen, sweetly, sensuously alive. Then she took a great breath and wrenched herself away and tumbled headlong onto the bunk. “Go ’way!” she yelled. “Get off my boat!”
He went down the ladder on weak legs. When he reached the shed he looked back. The sky was a dark gray, and night was moving in. The ports of the Gay Lady glowed with orange light.
He leaned against the shed for a little while. The vision she had given him was as romantic as the look of the yard at dusk. Shuck the old life and the old wife. On with the new. Find all the old visions and dreams.
It is the special penalty of the middle years, he thought, to know that even the wildest impulse leads to the commonplace. Youth, in its innocence, can truly believe itself unique.
But what a dream this one is, he thought. The golden girl and the tropic seas under a moon like a huge pewter plate, with hot days and hard work to firm the office flesh, brown the hide, cleanse the eye. And there she was, fifty yards away, examining, just as he was, this longing which had been so suddenly and unexpectedly wrenched out into the light, perhaps wondering, just as he was, how much self-deceit was involved. Can this timeworn man and this vibrant girl find happiness as they sail off into the sunset? he asked himself bitterly. Well, for two or three minutes back there it was a nifty idea. He walked to the dark beach and turned toward home.
Going in the back way, he noticed that the Mercedes was gone. There were lights on in the kitchen, but none in the rest of the house. He tossed his old tweed jacket onto a kitchen chair and wandered into the big living room. The fire was down to a few embers. Suddenly, startling him, a table lamp at one end of the couch clicked on. Mary Agnes had been sitting there in the dark. Her features seemed bunched in the center of her face.
“You cruel, selfish, stinking thing,” she said in a low, grinding voice.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I knew you’d try to act innocent. You try to humiliate me in every way you can think of. You try to spoil things for me. You really hate me, don’t you?”
“What is it this time?”
“As if you didn’t know! How do you make that lovely, lovely girl of Jimmy’s feel at home? You brood in a corner, and then you leave without a word to anyone. You knew we were taking them to the club for dinner. I sent them along, naturally. I didn’t know when you’d be back or what condition you’d be in. You prowl around in those ratty clothes looking like a bum, and you do that to humiliate me too. Jimmy and I get very sick and tired of having to make excuses for you.”