The Towers of Love (21 page)

Gee, but she was good to me-e-e-e—

And then, finished with that song, she sang a vaguely Oriental number, the sentiment of which was that every man should have a geisha of his own and, after that, she launched into her own extraordinary version of “Lovely Hula Hands,” which she supplied with elaborately over-done and comic business, pretending to get bits of the grass skirt caught in her jewels. His mother, he had often heard it said, was a born comedienne. “She should have been on the stage!” people often exclaimed when they heard her perform. As little girls, he had heard, she and Reba had written and acted out their own little plays, and one of the guests at the house one time had been the young Ruth Draper, and Ruth Draper had admired the girls' performance and had asked their father for permission to coach them. Ogden Pryor had, of course, refused. But sitting there in the library chair and watching her, and remembering these things, he was also remembering how he and Pansy and Billy had loved the stories that she told them as children. She knew dozens of fairy tales by heart, and to these she had always added original touches of her own, and she had varied the familiar stories with new stories that she created herself from some well of fiction in her mind—long and fanciful and romantic tales of maidens and princes, of goblins and dragons and treasures and bewitched palaces, of sea voyages and sheikhs and questing knights, of amulets and philtres and potions. “Once upon a time there was a very rich and cruel king who commanded that a lake be built a thousand miles long and a thousand miles wide, and that the lake be filled with tears.…” As he watched her singing, he could see her sitting in a chair with bits of white paper pasted on her long fingernails saying, “Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill, one named Jack and the other named Jill. Fly away, Jack. Fly away, Jill. Come back, Jack.… Come back, Jill.…” But suddenly, at the height of the song, she stoped singing, shattering the mood.

“For God's sake, Allen,” she said. “What are we conducting this circus for? You've had too much to drink again. You're hitting all the wrong notes.” She crossed the room and sat down again, and picked up her teacup.

His father sat looking dazed and unhappy at the silent piano.

“You're stinking drunk,” she said sharply.

He shook his head slowly back and forth.

“Why do you deny it?” she asked sharply. “You are.”

“Sandy, please—” Hugh said.

Then his father nodded. “She's right,” he said. “I am, I suppose. Well, Sandy, it used to be fun, didn't it, when we got drunk together?”

“Oh, don't be stupid,” she said.

“Look—” Hugh began.

But his father was standing up. “To hell with it,” he said, and he walked stiffly out of the room.

Hugh sat staring at his mother. “Sandy,” he said, “will you please tell me what the hell you did that for?”

“I'm sick of it,” she said. “I'm sick of watching
that
little performance every night.”

In the distance, they could hear the front door open, then close.

“Well, you don't have to treat him like that,” he said. “You don't have to be cruel, and—”

“Well, what about me?” she cried. “What about his cruelties and indignities to me? How much cruelty am I supposed to be able to bear? Did you hear what he said? ‘It was
fun
, wasn't it, when we got together!'
God
!”

“But it doesn't help to talk to him like that, does it? Does it?”

She said nothing for a moment. Then she smiled at him. “Well, what difference does it make?” she said.

“Go on out there after him. He's out on the terrace. Go out there and tell him you're sorry, and bring him back, Sandy.”

“No,” she said. “He's gone. He's gone in the car. He won't be back to-night.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I
know
? Baby, I've lived with him. I know him. He won't be back to-night.”

“How long has this sort of stuff been going on between you two, anyway?” he asked her.

“Really, what difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference to me. I don't like to see you being unkind to him.”

“Unkind to him? Oh, baby, baby. Thank God, you're just a baby and don't know. Thank God, you're just an innocent little baby.”

“I'm not an innocent little baby, Mother,” he said.

“Aren't you? Well, perhaps you're not. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it any more.”

“Well, I do.”

“Why? Why should you? Why should you want to dwell on unhappy things?” She stood up and started moving restlessly about the room, carrying her teacup. “Look at me,” she said. “I've had my share of suffering, haven't I? More than my share, some people think. And yet I don't dwell on it. I believe in gaiety, and laughter.”

“Do you?” he asked her.

“Of course I do!” she said. And then, suddenly, she said, “Did you have a good time last night?”

“Yes, I had a good time last night.”

“There,” she said. “Do you see? Do you see what I mean?”

And he nodded, looking away from her, though he did not see, not really, what it was she meant.

“He drinks too much,” she said.

“You ply everybody with liquor,” he said. “You make everybody drink too much.”

“But I expect people to have a little sense about it,” she said. “A little self-control. Is that too much to expect of people—that they have a little self-control?”

And he remembered that once, when he had been in college, he had come home drunk from a party. He had fallen on the terrace and cut his wrist and, when he had finally made it into the house and had started up the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister and holding his bleeding wrist, he had looked up and seen her waiting for him on the landing, standing tall in her silk robe beside the bronze Venus. He had looked up at her, smiling and unsteady, and said, “Hi, Sandy.” She had waited for him and, when he reached the landing, she had stared at him for a moment and then, raising her hand, had slapped him twice, sharply, across the face. “You're drunk,” she had said. “Get up to your room.” And he had continued past her, up the stairs, saying nothing.

“Is that too much to ask?” she repeated. “A little self-control?”

“No,” he said quietly. “That isn't too much to ask.”

“Oh, the trouble with me,” she said, continuing around the room, “the trouble with me is that I've simply got to get away from here for a little while. I'm simply vegetating here and rotting away. I've got to take a trip, a cruise or something. The
Caronia
is sailing, and I want to be on it. I want to go to the West Indies. I want to unwind in the tropics! I want to bring Shakespeare to the natives—I want to direct a native production of
Hamlet
, or something. Or, what do you think? Perhaps I should do it in the South Seas, in Indonesia. I've never been to Bali, or Fiji, or Samoa. I've never seen the Vale of Kashmir. Do you think the Indians in the Vale of Kashmir would like to do a native production of
Hamlet
?”

“Well,” he said, “I just don't know, Sandy.”

“I could find out, couldn't I?” she asked.

“Sandy, as long as I've known you, you've been saying you had to get away from here. You never go.”

“I know. Oh, sometimes I think I've just got to get out of this house—just for a little while.”

“You were in New York all day.”

“That's not the same thing. It's just—buying furniture for this house, and it's not the same thing at all. Do you ever go to the movies, baby?”

“Yes, I go to the movies,” he said.

“Alone? Have you ever gone to the movies alone?”

“Yes, I've been to the movies alone.”

“I wish I had the courage to go to the movies alone. Sometimes I think my evenings wouldn't be—wouldn't be as hideously lonely—if I could simply have the courage to go to the movies alone. I took Pappy to the movies once, you know. I'm sure he thought I was very strange to want him to go with me, but I made him go. I bought us two tickets at the little window. I said, ‘One adult and one child,' and can you believe it—they let Pappy go in as a child! Or perhaps it was me they thought was the child. Anyway, Pappy couldn't have enjoyed it more. It was a terrible old Ginger Rogers movie, but Pappy seemed to just adore it. He laughed so loud all the way through it that nobody in the theatre could hear a thing. The usher made us move our seats twice because Pappy was causing such a disturbance! Anyway—”

“Sandy,” he said, “can we talk seriously for just a minute about you and Dad?”

“Why?” she said. “Why should we?”

“Because he's such a nice guy, Sandy.”

“Ha!” she said. “Such a nice guy indeed. Where do you think he's gone now?”

“I have no idea where he's gone.”

“Ask him to-morrow. He'll say he's gone to see a client.”

“He works awfully hard.”

“Ha!” she said again. “The client's name is Mrs. Schiller. Did you know that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“See?” she said. “I told you you were just an innocent baby. The client's name is Mrs. Caroline Schiller. This has been going on for years, my sweet.”

“I don't believe it,” he said.

“Don't you?” she said, turning to him. “Well, it happens to be true. Caroline Schiller lives in town. She used to be married to Dr. Schiller, the dentist. When I found out about it, I thought: How amusing! I've never known a dentist socially.”

“I don't want to hear any more of this,” he said.

“Don't you? Are your innocent little ears offended? Well, you asked for it, baby mine.”

“And I don't believe any of it.”

“That's right,” she said. “Keep your innocent illusions about your father. Caroline Schiller, he says,
understands
him. Can you imagine that? He says that she understands him. I said, ‘Christ, Allen, can't you come up with a more novel excuse than that?'”

“You mean you've discussed this with him?”

“When I found out about it, he didn't deny it. He admitted it all very readily. He'll admit it to you, I'm sure, if you ask him. So ask him, if you want. Ask him about Caroline Schiller.”

“I wouldn't insult him by asking him,” he said. “Because I know it isn't true.”

“Do whatever you wish,” she said. And then, coming to him with a bright smile, she said, “I'm sorry I shattered your poor illusions. But you
pressed
me so.” She bent and kissed his forehead. “I'm going to bed now,” she said. “Don't let me upset you, darling. Don't let your poor old parents' silly little squabbles upset you. Because I don't
mind
about Caroline Schiller, really. My God, I believe in sex! So don't fret. It's still early, so you take the other car and go out somewhere. Go out and find a girl or something. Make love to her, muss her dress. Take her up to the end of Giles Lane in the car and—”

“Quiet,” he said. “Please be quiet, Mother.”

She started out of the room. At the door she stopped. “Just do one thing for me, Hugh,” she said. “If you ever feel like going to the movies alone while you're here, let me know. Take your poor old grey-haired mother with you when you go, will you? Will you?”

He didn't answer her. And when she was gone, he sat for a while staring at his empty brandy glass.

And when he met Edrita at ten o'clock, as they had planned, on the road outside the house, they lighted cigarettes and walked slowly, side by side, in a night so crowded with pulsing stars that the two glowing ends of their cigarettes seemed like just two more orange dots among them, and for a long time they walked saying nothing.

“Don't ever leave me, Hugh,” she said. “Don't ever.” And then, a little later, she said, “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” he said automatically.

“About Anne?”

“No, not about Anne.”

“About that Ellen Thorn?”

“No, not about Ellen Brier, either.”

She laughed softly. “About what then? Tell me.”

“Oh, my mother and father had a fight to-night,” he said. “I guess I'm thinking about that.”

She stopped him with her hand on his arm. “Hugh,” she said, “you've got to get away from here. I've got to get away too. We both have to get away.”

“I know,” he said. “I just wish I didn't keep thinking that they need me somehow.”

“They don't,” she said. “They don't need you. They've never needed you. Nobody needs either of us, except each other.”

“I wish I were sure of that.”

“You've got to be!” she said. “I am. I know that now.”

“Do you, Edrita?”

“Yes. Since this afternoon. I've been thinking—thinking how life has to be a kind of adventure. Sometimes, though, that idea gets away from you and you forget that that is what life is supposed to be, and the adventure doesn't seem possible. But then something happens, and you're reminded of what it has to be, and then suddenly everything—the whole adventure—does seem possible.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

They started back along the road towards the house.

“I know it,” she said. “It all became very clear to me—that we had to get away from here, both of us. And we've got to go together now, don't we, Hugh? Don't we?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You've got to go and take me with you. It's as simple as that!” But for all the bright confidence of her words, Hugh thought he heard a shrill note of hysteria in her voice.

“Yes,” he said again.

“Where will we go?” she asked him, holding his arm tightly. “Tell me where we'll go.”

“To the Vale of Kashmir,” he said.