Had he never realized his kind of checkbook generosity killed love? “Daddy, please, for heaven’s sake!” What do you want now? You’ve never missed me. You’ve never shared anything with me.
His shoulders lifted. “If you’re a single girl in New York — look, the place is just no good for you.”
She said wearily, “Please stop treating me like a child.”
“Why should I? You’re a star-spangled adolescent, Baby.”
“With a mind of her own,” she shot back, and wheeled away.
He caught her by the elbow and spun her around; she almost lost her balance. His fist hurt her arm; she winced and he withdrew it quickly, but not before a sudden hot rage flooded the tissues of her body with a debilitating shortness of breath. “Let go of me — leave me alone!” She took a step backward and braced a hand against the corridor wall.
A dark scowl clouded his face. “Look at her, Carl. What about this escapist generation? Get tired of college so they just bug out — got the attention span of a six-year-old. Baby, time you learned to finish what you start.”
“You were ready ten seconds ago to send me to Europe on a spree.”
“A chance most girls would give their eyeteeth for. You turned it down — why? Out of spite. What have I done to make you hate me?”
Back to that again. She couldn’t make him out; he frightened her — and, by frightening her, angered her beyond reason.
He dragged the back of a hand across his mouth. “Baby—”
“Don’t call me that!” Her voice had climbed; she clamped her lips shut and backed away. Oakley came out of the doorway and put a hand on her father’s arm. Her father shook his head as if dazed and Terry spun toward the front of the house, almost running. She batted through the front room, ignoring Louise’s startled question; ran to the carport and climbed into the red Fiberglas Daimler sports car, tossing books and handbag onto the seat and turning the key hard enough to bend it. When the engine caught she backed out with a spray of gravel and manhandled the car viciously toward the gate. By the time she passed the feeder corrals the Daimler’s eight cylinders were roaring; she fishtailed onto the graded main road at forty miles an hour and kept the pedal floored until the little red car was doing eighty and a speck of thrown dust in her eye brought her back to reality. She rubbed her eye and let the car coast down to a reasonable speed, feeling tear-moisture against her finger. She was sure now that there was no meeting ground with him. She didn’t understand him and never would; he was beyond understanding. The only way to get along with him would be at a distance, where they might achieve some precarious truce; but close to him, she hated him. I do hate him — he’s right. God, I hate him. He had killed her brother. He had driven her mother away, first to the concert stage, then to the sanitarium where she languished now in alcohol-corroded unreality. He’ll do something to me too if I don’t get away.
The wind caught the cover of a book on the passenger seat and flipped it open. She slapped it shut and turned it around on the seat with its spine to the wind. Modern Literary Criticism. The classroom would calm her down. It was a calm place, isolated, locked away from the rest of the world — a place where P.R. meant not public relations but Partisan Review. A room full of pot-smoking short-haired girls and long-haired boys with shaggy moustaches. It was a world that would never be hers, any more than her father’s would be; she despised his world of wealth and business but she would never fit into a literary ivory tower. By the cruel trick of birth she had been forced into a circumstance where the simple desire to be a woman — unsophisticated, without intellectual or financial pretense, just a woman to make a home and have babies — was denied her.
Seething, her mind on fire, not knowing what she wanted or how she felt, she drove at four thirty past a dusty side road that led to some forgotten destination across the hills; a dusty car was parked along the shoulder with two or three vague shapes inside but she didn’t notice it when she went by at sixty miles an hour. Four hours from now she would return by this route and pass the same side road.
Dressed casually for dinner, Oakley entered the splendid dark-oak dining room shortly after six o’clock in time to see Earle Conniston pour a glass of gin and anoint it with a few drops of vermouth. Conniston had got a grip on himself after Terry’s stormy departure and hadn’t said a word about it since. Oakley, his eyes narrowed with conjecture, was only faintly aware of Louise’s approach until she snapped her fingers in front of him and laughed gaily — too gaily, he thought — and, having gained his attention, presented him to the house guest, Frankie Adams, who wore Bermuda shorts and a loud short-sleeved Hawaiian sports shirt, garments which revealed undue lengths of unattractive bony legs and flaccid hairy arms. Adams had a small round head dominated by the biggest nose Oakley had ever seen.
Shaking the little man’s hand was like gripping a fresh-caught trout. Making conversation, Oakley said, “That’s a pretty wild shirt.”
“Yeah. It got arrested twice.” Frankie Adams grinned, showing capped teeth. His hair was slicked back, thick and Indian-black; his narrow face was meticulously shaved to minimize a Mediterranean beard-stubble and he smelled of expensive after-shave. He had the knowing eye of an accomplished procurer, the raspy voice of a pitchman; whatever his past, it had burdened him with a stealthy appearance; yet for all that, Oakley did not find him disagreeable. (He recalled a remark of Conniston’s an hour ago, sour reference to Adams: “Been here six days now. No telling when we’ll get rid of him. Some people can stay longer in a week than others can in a year.”)
Oakley said desultorily, “You and Louise knew each other in New York.”
“Worked some of the same teevee shows,” Adams said, and struck an Ed Sullivan pose. “And on our shew t’night, lez an’ gennulmen, the wunnenonly LLLOOOOZE HARRIS, straight from her starrn role on Browway with Misser HENNRY FONNA— Now lessere it for Franchie Athams, lez an’ gennulmen, Franchie Athams!”
Adams bowed to the audience and coughed behind his wrist.
Conniston came from the side bar with a small round wooden tray holding four drinks. It did not escape Oakley that the liquid in the drinks trembled. Louise was still laughing merrily at Adams’ imitation of Sullivan; Oakley had to admit it had been uncanny, even considering Sullivan’s imitability. The tone and quality of the voice had been exact, the phrasing perfect. Adams wheeled toward Louise and launched into Henry Fonda doing a Wyatt Earp speech from My Darling Clementine, which convulsed her; Conniston looked on, unamused. Louise’s tawny hair gathered light; unconsciously she struck theatrical poses in Adams’ company. (“Seems the sonofabitch out of work,” Conniston had explained. “Camping out with old buddies until his agent can get him bookings. Says he’s broke because he played slow horses. Told me his father was always ahead of his time, went bankrupt in 1928, which was supposed to break me up in helpless laughter. Can’t stand the debauched little bastard.” Understandable, now that Oakley had met Adams: the comedian had a flip manner of a sort offensive to the sanctimonious — and Conniston, in his profane way, was the most pious of men.)
Conniston stood a slight distance apart, drinking quickly, watching Adams distastefully. Suddenly Adams turned toward Oakley, breaking off his drawl, and winked brashly. “Tell you what, Carl, send message Cairo cancel Russian oil leases or we pull out. Hell with widows and orphans. What’s one lousy billion? Teach sonabitch Arabs thing or two. Make him realize Conniston important man.”