Prudence (5 page)

“We’re taking on water!” he said.

“Paddle fast, boys, or we’re going down!” cried Ernie. Frankie laughed. There was nothing for it. So paddling fiercely, the bottom slowly filling with water, the canoe canting dangerously to one side and then the other, they sprinted across the river.

“Ballast!” shouted Ernie.

“No! My uniform is in there. You can’t. I don’t have time to get another!”

They made it across without drowning and without drowning their luggage. Ernie jumped out when the water was still knee deep, ruining his pants. Frankie and David followed suit. But once the nose was secure next to the boathouse, Billy, using his paddle as a cane, walked down the middle of the canoe and off the bow and onto dry land.

“Well, look at him!” said Frankie in open admiration.

Felix met them on the dock. He called Frankie “Mr. Frankie,” and it sounded solemn and funny at the same time. He shook Ernie’s and David’s and Billy’s hands in turn. Within moments, Emma was fluttering across the open yard, and Jonathan sauntered out of the house with his pipe in his hand and talk turned to the
German.

T
he morning had been all Jonathan could bear. As he sat in the chair next to the fireplace and tried to read the papers, he could actually
hear
Emma’s worry, even though she said very little from where she stood looking out the front windows across the river. When she brushed past him—flounced was more like it—her anxiety and meddlesomeness trailed after her, carried in the breeze of her skirt with those stupid little bohemian plaits of straw that made such an annoying sound. It was not a sexy sound. Not like the sound of high heels on the linoleum of his office floor or the clink of earrings hitting the metal tray he kept on his desk or the slight snap of garters slipping their stays.

The sound of Emma’s skirt, as she flounced down the hall and into the kitchen, was to him the sound of sweeping, a broom sound, a broom that did little to clean but made the emotional dust she was always trailing billow up around him. In that dust was her worry about Frankie. He was, in addition to the Pines, her chief project, her principal worry.

He heard the kitchen door swing open and shut. Felix, for all his diligence, hadn’t gotten around to oiling that blessed door yet. It could be heard throughout the main house, and during a busy day it groaned without stop, like the braying of an abused mule. He tried to resume his reading, but the papers were of no use. His mind had
somehow been pulled along after Emma. She had been successful in capturing his consciousness even if she had not convinced him to go with the others, the yokels and Indians, after the German. He could hear Emma’s voice posing questions in her high whine, and the brief, soft, self-effacing answers of the Indian girls at work around the table:
yes, ma’am
and
no, ma’am
and
almost finished, ma’am
.

It was sad, really, that they shrank to such small size when Emma was in the room. Usually, after she left, Jonathan heard them erupt into excited talk, which would continue until Emma came back to the kitchen. Even if he had heard what they were saying, he could not have understood it; they spoke in their language, a concatenated glide of syllables with precious few consonants as far as Jonathan could tell. But it was nice, how they spoke to one another. They sounded like the family of otters that had collected at the dock for a summer years back, most likely trying to break into the bait cage. Jonathan had liked the otters, and he had, for the two weeks he’d been there that year, brought a folding canvas chair down to the dock to read. No one spoke to him down there. Not the otters. Not Felix. It had been pleasant. Those kitchen girls would be good company in bed. That’s how they seemed anyway. Sure, they wilted when Emma came into the kitchen to scold them and make a great show of how advanced she was, but the girls knew the score. In bed . . . now, that would be different. Jonathan imagined their true nature would show; they would become as sexually sleek as their skin looked; as glossy, as liquid, as sure, cavorting like otters around his supine body.

Not that he had tried to get any of them to give it up to him. Not that he had made any advances to any of them, even after Emma caught that one—was it Betty, the older one, or Stella, the youngest?—with Ernie and Frankie in one of the guest cabins. Ernie was a robust drinking, card-playing college boy. He was the kind of son Jonathan had always imagined having, with grass stains on his chinos
and skinned elbows and mischief in his heart. Emma had been outraged, but Jonathan couldn’t see the harm in it. That’s what it was to be young, and the girls weren’t complaining. A little whiskey and a warm room and attention were all they really required. And why not? What was the harm? Where was the hurt in finding some pleasure between the smooth, stout, clasping legs of an Indian girl?

Or masturbating, for that matter. He was a man of science. And in all his years he had never seen a male patient who was blind or had hair on his palms, or warts. He himself, when he wasn’t on with one of the nurses or other girls who worked in the building, masturbated every day, and with no ill effect. He wasn’t tired, or sapped of his will, or a degenerate. He supported his family and gave to charity and all that. He was no Rockefeller, but still, he did his part. One of the many attempts to toughen Frankie up a bit had been to make him join the Boy Scouts. It was supposed to make a man of him, to introduce him to the outdoors, and to a fellowship of adventurers. Baden-Powell had been onto something. But then, in a desperate moment, with nothing else to read, Jonathan had picked up the
Boy Scout Handbook
. He’d spent the evening laughing to himself in his study. The parts about puberty were especially hilarious.
You might wake up with an erect penis
, stated the book.
Sometimes you might have funny dreams and feel a tickle and your undershorts will be damp because you’ve emitted a nocturnal fluid
. The manual made it seem so mysterious, so complicated. And the “nocturnal fluid” sounded occult. What had they been
thinking
? What was their
aim
in writing this stuff? The Boy Scouts were supposed to make men of boys, not to make boys afraid of their own dicks.

Frankie, however, did seem to be afraid of his cock. In all the years living at home, Jonathan never caught him in the act, never found the telltale washcloth (not that he did the laundry, but you find these things, even in a house as big as theirs), never caught him looking longingly at the women he, Jonathan, looked at as they walked
down Michigan Avenue. He’d never even caught Frankie making small talk with the kitchen girls, much less making love to them. And, truth be told, he wouldn’t have minded at all if Frankie had been with one, or two, or three. It would have given him a wealth of pleasure, a catalog of experiences he could draw upon. It would give them something to joke about when Frankie had a family of his own and Jonathan was old, a pleasant old grandfather. But Frankie didn’t joke. He was cheerful but serious; pleasant in conversation and able to keep up, but underneath his banter, even Jonathan could sense a fearful reserve, a watchful, waiting, measuring consciousness.

He heard Emma leave the kitchen. The girls continued their work, but did not begin, at least not immediately, to speak to one another. Emma must still be close by, looking over the wretched garden, maybe. Oh, she loved that garden and went on and on about what good shape Felix kept it in, how he could get all the weeds out without even bending over; how it was simply a matter of using the hoe and using it regularly. And how they had to purchase so little—just cream and eggs and bacon, really—while the Pines was running from May through mid-September. It was nice to look at; the rows of peas and beans and carrots, turnips, radishes, and mounds of potatoes and squash (for the blossoms, since the squash themselves would come in, for the most part, too late for the Pines). And the corn, too, regal and green. The peas and beans were nice, garden-fresh beans were always nice. But the lettuce was bitter. The tomatoes were unevenly ripe. One had to wait too long for the corn. The raccoons always dug up the potatoes and bit into the melons. The vegetables, what there were of them, had too much individuality. You never knew what you were going to get. Vegetables these days—it was the 1940s, after all—should, with the help of science, be more dependable, more uniform; should ripen at the same time; should all be, more or less, of the same size.

Jonathan sighed and was just folding the papers and stacking
them in the copper bin next to the fireplace when he heard shouts and the banging of a canoe against the dock. He sauntered into the front room and peered out of the southeastern-most window down the slope of the hill to the dock. Maybe it was the returning search party. Perhaps they’d found the German and were returning in triumph, having saved the north woods from a single, solitary submariner sans submarine. But no.

Frankie had arrived.

Evidently, since the Chris-Craft was still being used by the search party, Frankie, Ernest, Billy, and that other boy had found a canoe, one of those big cedar-ribbed canvas ones, and with Ernie in the front and Frankie and that other boy in the middle, and Billy paddling stern, they’d crossed the river.

Emma must have heard them, too. She stood at the foot of the dock, her silly skirt blowing in the hot wind and her hands clasped to her mouth in shocked, happy surprise.

Her surprise, even that, seemed hokey and staged. She must have heard them coming from the back by the garden and she had to catch and hold her “Oh! Frankie!” and carry it across the lawn and let it ripen while she stood and waited for the boys to quit their Ivy League guffawing and carousing and get out of the canoe so she could clasp him to her breast. It was that precious surprise and tenderness (as though one had opened the cupboard to fetch the salt and found a baby girl in there instead) that, more than anything else, made Jonathan wither. More than her constant worrying; more than her manner of dress (it would never occur to her to wear a suit, like the smart ones all the secretaries were wearing now); even more than her dripping, drooping monologue about their wonderful son; more than the occasional (and it had happened less and less over the years) day or two when she couldn’t get out of bed and would cry and cry and, asked what was the matter, would only say, “Josephine, poor baby Josephine.”

Jonathan sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t see very well at this distance, but for the few seconds it took for Frankie to emerge from the canoe and come down the dock, Jonathan thought Emma might actually be right: he had grown into a man. Jonathan could see, even from all the way across the lawn, the white flash of his teeth, a broad, tan smile (acquired, it seemed, from a trip to Key West after graduation), and strong, level shoulders almost even with Billy’s. And then Frankie was lost in his mother’s hug.

Jonathan let the curtain back down. He knew he had to greet his son, though the thought of it made him irritable. He stopped by the fireplace to collect his pipe kit from next to the easy chair and filled his pipe as he walked out the front door, down the steps, and toward the dock. By the time he strolled across the lawn (Felix was good at keeping the grass down, even Jonathan had to admit that) and filled his pipe, Frankie had managed to free himself from his mother’s hug, and he ducked his head as she tried to tuck his hair behind his ear.

“They’ll be cutting that off soon, won’t they? In the Air Force. They’ll give you a haircut.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mother,” he said, grinning sheepishly, looking back at Billy and Ernest and David (that was his name, Dave Gardner!), and then up at Jonathan, who had stopped nearby.

“I’m just saying,” said Emma shyly. “I’m just saying you’ve got beautiful hair.”

“I don’t care about that,” said Frankie, but his hand betrayed him and rose to re-part his hair and smooth it down, finishing his mother’s gesture by tucking it behind his ear.

Ernie said something to Billy and David that made them laugh.

“Father,” said Frankie, straightening. He stuck out his hand stiffly, and Jonathan, feeling a little foolish, reached out. They shook hands.

“The Air Force. That’ll be exciting, won’t it?”

“I hear we have a fight on the home front.”

“Where are the others? Weren’t there supposed to be more of you?” Jonathan felt uncomfortable, and it was all he could think to say.

“Couldn’t make it. Naval cadets. They had to go right after graduation.”

“Oh.”

“Sounds like we’ve got a German submariner to find,” said Frankie, smiling.

“An escaped German. Just one lonely submariner out in the woods. Not much of a fight.” Jonathan turned away from the imaginary wind and lit his pipe.

“Felix, I’ve been looking for you all morning,” said Emma, turning to where Felix stood in front of the boathouse.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes. Well, I expect you’ll go with the boys after the German. Jonathan would go but he’s got his journals, studying up on cases, you know. Anyway, you’ll go after the German with the boys. We can’t have him running around here doing all sorts of mischief. That’s for sure. But after, before it gets dark, the beach needs to be cleaned, there must be some dead fish under the dock—the smell is getting awful, just awful. And if we’re to swim here tomorrow—and you boys will want to, right, just like the old days?—well . . . it
does
need to be cleaned.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jonathan, pipe going, turned back to face the group. Frankie was different, as Emma had said. Broader, tanned.

Frankie nodded at his father and turned to look at Felix.

“Old Felix. Old Felix, it’s good to see you. Really good.”

“Mr. Frankie,” said Felix. This was as close as he got to affection.

“You don’t look any older.”

Felix smiled.

“We’d best get after that German,” said Frankie. “The longer we wait, the more time he has to cause trouble. Felix, is the Winchester still on top of the cupboard?”

Felix nodded.

“Hey, Pops, we’ll need to use the Winchester. Nothing like a Winchester 101 to convince a German to come in quietly.”

“All we have are rabbit and grouse loads,” said Jonathan.

“There’s double aught,” said Felix.

Jonathan narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like to be contradicted, especially by an Indian.

“Yes.”

“We’ll be loaded for bear, then, right, Felix?”

“Loaded for man,” said Ernie, smiling. “You’ll be loaded for man.”

Jonathan couldn’t bear any more of this banter, the bright chitchat, and he wished them good hunting and said he’d see them at dinner. They continued in the same vein as he turned and walked back up to the house. He went to the kitchen for a glass, and the girls, who had been watching and listening at the window, scampered mice-like back to their chairs and resumed shelling peas and peeling potatoes.