Cold Spring Harbor

  It was probably better to go to the movies at night, when nothing much but sleep was expected of you afterwards; going in the daytime always meant you had to come out into the blinding streets of reality and find some way to face whatever was left of the afternoon. Even so, the Drakes liked to take a little time to let a movie clear itself out of their minds—they didn’t want to lose the comforts of artifice any sooner than necessary—and they would often walk together in silence for a hundred yards or more before one or another of them broke the fading spell by speaking.

  “Well,” Gloria said. “That was nice, wasn’t it.”

  “Oh, it certainly was,” Rachel said. “And it would have been perfect if Evan could’ve come too.”

  “Well, I don’t know, though,” Phil said. “I sort of liked having it be just the three of us again.”

  But his sister turned on him crossly. “What an unpleasant thing to say,” she told him. “Would you begrudge Evan a movie?”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “Jesus, ‘begrudge.’ Why do you always want to talk that funny way?”

  And the two of them might have gone on cutting and bruising each other all the way home that day if a tall boy on a bicycle hadn’t pulled up at the curb, shaded his eyes from the sun with one arm and waved the other in an extravagant greeting.

  “Hey! Phil Drake!”

  It was Gerard “Flash” Ferris, one of the more dismal social outcasts of the Irving School, and he looked as pleased as if his fortunes had just taken a surprising turn for the better.

  “… Well, how nice,” Gloria said when the introductions were over. “And what a coincidence, isn’t it? Finding another Irving boy here, of all places? Does your family live here, Flash?”

  “My grandmother does, yes ma’am. Out a little ways off Route Nine.”

  “Are you just visiting, then? Or will you be here all summer?”

  “No, I’ll be here. I mean I live with my grandmother, you see.”

  “Wonderful. Then you and Phil can have someone to—” and she almost said “to play with,” but caught herself in time. “Someone to sort of kick around with,” she said instead, uncertainly, as though she could only hope a phrase like that might be acceptable in adolescent usage.

  Watching them talk, Phil felt he could almost read his mother’s mind. Certain things about Flash Ferris—the good manners, the flawlessly tasteful sports clothes, the expensive bicycle—suggested at once that his people had money; and here in Cold Spring Harbor it might easily turn out to be the kind of “old money” that figured so importantly in her yearnings.

  “… Well, we’ll certainly have to keep in touch, then, Flash,” she was saying.

  “Oh, we will,” he promised her, and he tucked the Drakes’ phone number carefully into his shirt pocket before he took a courteous leave of them and pedaled away.

  “What a nice boy!” Gloria said when the family was walking again, and Phil decided he had better acquaint her with a few facts.

  “Listen,” he began. “Can you listen a minute, please? That kid’s a—that kid’s really a—I don’t want anything to do with that kid. He’s a jerk.”

  Gloria stopped on the sidewalk and gave her son the withering look she reserved for times when he’d let her down badly. “Oh, I might have known you’d make some silly trouble,” she said. “You’re a very strange, selfish boy.”

  “Will you listen a minute? Ferris is so hopeless he doesn’t even care who knows it. This whole dopey thing of calling him ‘Flash’ got started as a joke, you see, because he’s so slow and clumsy and he’s always falling down, but then he decided he liked it; now he wants everybody in the world to call him ‘Flash.’ ”

  Gloria had made a little show of patience and self-control while waiting her turn to speak again, and now she was ready to make the most of it. “You listen, Phil. If we have an opportunity to meet a few congenial people out here, I’m not going to let you spoil it for the rest of us. You’d better keep that in mind.” Then she started walking again, and Rachel went along with her.

  “And another thing,” he called after them, hurrying to catch up. “Another thing: I know he’s very tall and he’s got this very deep voice and everything, but you know what he is? He’s fourteen years old.”

  “Oh?” Gloria said. “Well, I don’t see how that necessarily makes any difference at all.”

  And Phil could only plod along beside her in silence, with his head down. He had always been able to recognize the gathering of an impossible situation.

  There was the rare succulence of corn on the cob for dinner that night, which provided enough earnest, two-handed munching to spare anyone’s being expected to talk; even so, it wasn’t long before Gloria managed a few conversation-opening remarks.

  “Well, we met a boy from Phil’s school in the village today, Evan,” she began.

  “Mm?” Evan said without looking up. “Well, good.”

  “He lives near here with his grandmother and he seems very nice, but Phil says we’re not supposed to like him at all. Phil’s developing into a very strict judge of other people, you see. He has no mercy. I think the only person in the world he approves of these days is himself.”

  “Oh, Mother, please,” Rachel said. “Let him eat his corn in peace.”

  That was the first sign Phil had that Rachel wasn’t mad at him any more; still, a line like “Let him eat his corn in peace” was scarcely any better, in its way, than what she’d said about begrudging Evan a movie.

  And the awkwardness of it was plain to Gloria as she rose regally from the table to clear away her own unfinished dinner plate: just before reaching the kitchen door she said, with quiet scorn, “Ha. ‘Let him eat his corn in peace.’ ”

  When the phone rang a day or two later Gloria sprang to pick it up, and Phil listened to her half of the talk with mounting apprehension.

  “… Who? Well, I’m afraid I don’t—oh, you’re Flash Ferris’s grandmother. Oh, well, how very nice of you to call, Mrs. Talmage.… Well, that sounds delightful, and of course we’d love to. I wonder if you could give me a few directions, though, so we can find our way to your—oh, good.” Then she got busy with a pencil, writing things down, and Phil knew there would now be no escape.

  The following afternoon, carefully dressed for tea, he and his mother were a mile from home, walking along the edge of a major highway, and as one sun-brilliant car after another swept past it left a swirl of tan dust that stung their eyes and seeped into their clothing.

  “You sure we’re going the right way?” he asked fretfully.

  “Of course I’m sure. It can’t be much farther now.”

  “Can I take a look at those directions you wrote down?”

  “Well, I don’t want to stop and go through my purse now, dear; besides, I think we’re almost there. Watch for a sign that says Delco Batteries; that’s where we turn left.”

  For the first time, then, it occurred to him that Mrs. Talmage had probably assumed they’d be coming by car. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, “were those driving instructions she gave you?”

  “Well, I suppose so, yes, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a very small community.”

  “Jesus,” he said again. “Oh, shit.”

  “I think you know how I feel about that word, Philly.”

  “Oh, yeah? I thought the one you didn’t like was ‘fuck.’ ”

  “Oh, please,” she cried, and her hand made a move for her breast but didn’t quite connect. “Please don’t start being this way. You’re just going to ruin a nice time.”

  “Yeah, yeah. ‘Nice.’ ”

  But a moment later all the trouble vanished from his mother’s face. “Oh, look!” she said, touching his arm. “See up ahead? ‘Delco Batteries’!”

  There were acres and acres of Mrs. Talmage’s property: wide rolling lawns in a perfect state of maintenance, with evergreens in the distance. Her handsome old house, probably her ancestral home, stood at the end of a well-raked pebble driveway that met your heels in
unexpectedly buoyant, invigorating clicks and crunches.

  “Isn’t this beautiful?” Gloria asked her son in a near-whisper of reverence, as if they were in church.

  In her shaded sitting room, waiting for her guests to arrive, Harriet Talmage had just discovered once again that it could be almost impossible—almost maddening—to have even the smallest kind of talk with her daughter Jane.

  “Well, you certainly needn’t feel obliged to stay, dear,” she said, “if you’d rather get an early start back to town; I just thought it might be a pleasant afternoon. The boy is a school friend of Gerard’s, you see, and Gerard says the mother is a very nice person too.”

  “I don’t get it, though,” Jane said. “Does this kid have to go everyplace with his mother? How come?”

  That brought a mild snort of amusement from Warren Cox, Jane’s “friend,” who sat close beside her in the deep chintz couch. He was a plain bald man of forty-five or so, and his business suit was the color of chocolate ice cream.

  “As a matter of fact,” Harriet explained, “it was Gerard who suggested I ask the mother to come along. He felt it might be a nice gesture, and I agreed with him. She’s new here, she may not know many people, and so on. Actually, Gerard is very mature and very thoughtful in matters of courtesy and consideration for others, as you may have noticed.”

  “Well, no,” Jane said. “Can’t say I’ve noticed anything like that. You noticed anything like that, Warren?”

  “Nope,” Warren Cox reported, “not yet, but I’ve sure as hell noticed how tall he is. Taller’n me, and he’s got bigger hands.”

  The talk subsided then, but Harriet felt she couldn’t relax until one of her daughter’s thighs stopped rolling lazily in its hip socket, away from the other thigh and back, away and back. Having to watch the indolent slattern’s roll of that leg was like having to hear Jane say “I don’t get it” and “this kid” and “how come”: it was enough to make your molars ache.

  Harriet had long been resigned to knowing there were many things she would never understand. She wouldn’t live long enough to make sense of the coarseness and vulgarity that had come to blight every decent impulse in the world today, and she would die without hope of finding any explanation of her daughter’s life. Three stunted, broken marriages, an only child left here as an infant for Harriet herself to raise, and now this bewildering parade of “friends”—what kind of life was that, dear God, for a girl who’d started out with every advantage?

  “Oh, isn’t she marvelous, Harriet?” John Talmage had said many times, long ago. “Isn’t she stunning? Isn’t she a lovely girl?”

  So it was probably a blessing, in a way, that John hadn’t lived to see the woman his daughter had become. He wouldn’t have known what to make of her either, if only because she wasn’t even pretty any more. She was too thin and sharp-faced and sarcastic as she nestled here with Warren Cox—and Warren Cox, God knew, was no prize: a commercial person, a sales person, the kind of man who said things like “x number of dollars.” At lunch today, laboriously trying to explain some business procedure, he had said “x number of dollars” three times.

  But now it was time for Harriet Talmage to rise from her chair and say “So glad,” because the maid had just shown the visitors into the room. “I’m so glad to see you both. This is my daughter Mrs. Ferris, and her friend Mr. Cox—and I don’t know where Gerard is, but I’m sure he’ll be joining us shortly. Won’t you sit down?”

  When Flash Ferris did join them, very tall and sincere in his school clothes, it seemed to Phil Drake that the only thing to do was let the rest of the afternoon have its way with him: get through it, write it off, pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “… So how’s your vacation been so far, Phil?” Flash inquired when they were settled at a low, brightly laden tea table.

  “Oh, not bad.”

  “You got a bike?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “How come?”

  “Whaddya mean, how come? I don’t have one, is all.”

  Flash reached out to gather up two or three very small, neatly made watercress sandwiches. “Well, I don’t know what I’d do here in the summertime without a bike,” he said. “I ride every day. I know all the roads and all the towns. I’ve never liked being stuck in one place, is the thing.”

  And Phil was able to agree that he didn’t much like that either; then, for something else to say, he added that he’d been looking around for some kind of summer job.

  “Well, good,” Flash said. “Good luck with it.”

  “… Oh, but perhaps you know them,” Gloria Drake was saying to Mrs. Talmage over her carefully held saucer and teacup, on the other side of the table. “Captain and Mrs. Charles Shepard? Well, they’re delightful people; I know you’d like them. And their son, you see, is married to my daughter; that’s sort of what brought us all together out here. Captain Shepard comes from an old north shore family, though I believe his wife is originally from Boston. And actually, I’m the only real outsider: I was born and raised in Illinois, but I’ve considered myself a New Yorker for so many years now that I think I’ve learned to feel at home almost anywhere, as long as I’m among congenial friends.…”

  Mrs. Talmage seemed able to take it all in with a fixed, pleasant social smile; but Mrs. Ferris was chewing with her mouth open and staring at Gloria Drake in the way a rude child will sometimes stare at a cripple. And Mr. Cox, snug beside her in the sofa, appeared to be ready for an afternoon nap.

  As if resolved to begin his summer of artificial friendship without further delay, Flash Ferris got Phil away from the tea table as soon as politeness would permit and led him quickly upstairs, saying “Show you my room.”

  And Phil had to admit it wasn’t really uncomfortable to sit around that well-appointed room trading pleasantries and little jokes: predictably enough, Ferris could act like a fairly decent kid when he wasn’t in school. The trouble was that if this kind of thing were allowed to go on it could only make for serious embarrassment later, when school began again in the fall. Ferris was just the kind who’d know how to impose on an accidental summer’s courtesy, and how to exploit it.

  But then he made a shy announcement. “I’m not going back to Irving next year.”

  “You’re not? Why?”

  “Because I’ve been accepted at Deerfield, and it’s a whole lot better school; that’s why.”

  “Well, that’ll be good,” Phil said with a great sense of relief. “You can make a new start.”

  “Yeah.” And the slight flicker of hurt in Flash’s face showed at once that he understood the implications of a new start having to be made. “Well, I did make a lot of dumb mistakes at Irving, that’s true,” he said. “Still, I think I’ll do better now.”

  “Sure you will.”

  Flash was up and slowly pacing the floor, holding his shoulders unnaturally straight and square, almost visibly practicing the way he would carry himself at Deerfield. He stood looking out a window for a while, as if the infinite possibilities of Deerfield could be glimpsed from here; then he turned back and said “Want to go down for some pimple juice?”

  “Some what?”

  “Pineapple juice,” he explained, smiling, and for the first time that day he looked as goofy as his old self. “I call it pimple juice.”

  “You would.”

  There was nothing for Phil to do now but follow his host along a hall past a number of other rooms, then down a back staircase and outdoors onto a wide concrete area meant for the turning and parking of automobiles. On the far side of it was a row of garage doors that looked almost as long as the house itself; at closer range, a big ruddy man in shirtsleeves stood washing down a limousine with water from a garden hose.

  “Well, Flash,” the man said, cocking back the visor of his chauffeur’s cap, and his heavy face came open in an unpleasant smile. “And how are you today?”

  “Hi, Ralph,” Flash said guardedly, and seemed to hurry a little.

  “Still
beating your meat, Flash?” the man asked him. “Still pulling your pudding?”

  “Don’t pay any attention,” Flash said to his guest.

  “So who’s your friend, Flash?” the man inquired. “Is he your asshole buddy? Huh? Or does he take it in the mouth?”

  And the two of them had to walk across the whole expanse of wet concrete before they came to a door that opened into an enormous kitchen.

  A girl who couldn’t have been more than nineteen was working alone in there, very trim in an off-white housemaid’s uniform, rinsing vegetables at a sink.

  “Hi, Amy,” Flash said.

  “Hi.”

  She didn’t look up, but Phil recognized her as the maid who had answered his mother’s ring at the heavy front door today, and who had then brought the tea things into the sitting room. Flash was busy at a great refrigerator, getting out ice cubes and a half-gallon can of Dole; by the time he’d filled two tinkling highball glasses and set them on the kitchen table, the girl had left her work and gone gracefully out across the parking area for a private talk with Ralph, who looked pleased to see her coming.

  “… You don’t want to pay any attention to that guy,” Flash was saying. “He’s nothing. He’s just a big, dumb, Polish son of a bitch. Oh, he’s smart enough to know I’ll never tell my grandmother on him for the way he talks—he’s got that much intelligence—but in every other way he’s dumb as shit. All he knows is how to drive a fucking car.”

  As Phil took small, sweet sips of a drink he didn’t want he kept looking out the window at the maid and the chauffeur and wondering about them. Surely the man was too old to be her boyfriend—he looked about fifty—but maybe he took a fatherly interest in her: maybe she had come to rely on his plain, straightforward advice in meeting the various uncertainties of her young life.

  In any case, they were just concluding their conference when the boys walked out across the parking area again, a few minutes later. The girl was laughing behind her hand at something Ralph had said; then she turned from him and started back to her job.