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“When I was just your age,” Colin was saying, “I was sent off to school. I cried the first week. The first year I hated school. The second year I endured it. The third year I edited the school newspaper and I had my first taste of the pleasures of power and although I didn’t admit it to anybody, even to myself, I liked it. My last year I wept because I had to leave.”
“I don’t mind going,” Billy said.
“Good,” Colin said. “It’s a good school, if any school these days can be said to be good, and at the very worst you’ll come out of it knowing how to write a simple declarative sentence in the English language. Here.” He produced an envelope and gave it to the boy. “Take this and never tell your mother what’s in it.”
“Thank you,” Billy said. He put the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. He looked at his watch. “Don’t you think we’d better be going?”
They walked three abreast toward the gate, Billy carrying his guitar. Briefly, Gretchen worried about how the school, which was old New England Presbyterian Respectable, would react to the guitar. Probably no reaction at all. By this time they must be prepared for anything from fourteen-year-old boys.
The plane was just begi
Colin shook Billy’s hand and said. “If there’s anything you need, call me. Collect.”
Gretchen searched his face as he spoke to her son. The tenderness and caring were real on the sharp, thin features, and the dangerous eyes under the heavy black brows were gentle and loving. I didn’t make a mistake, she thought, I didn’t.
Billy smiled gravely, en route from father to father, disturbing journey, and went aboard, guitar held like an infantryman’s gun on patrol.
“He’ll be all right,” Colin said as the boy went through the gate and out onto the tarmac where the big jet waited.
“I hope so,” Gretchen said. “There was money in that envelope, wasn’t there?”
“A few bucks,” Colin said carelessly. “Buffer money. Ease the pain. There are moments when a boy can’t survive education without an extra milkshake or the latest issue of Playboy. Willie meeting you at Idlewild?”
“Yes.”
“You taking the kid up to the school together?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Colin said flatly. “Parents should be present in twos at the ceremonies of adolescents.” He looked away from her, staring at the passengers going through the gate. “Every time I see one of those ads for airlines with pictures of people smiling broadly as they climb the steps getting onto a plane, I realize what a lying society we inhabit. Nobody’s happy getting onto a plane. Are you going to sleep with ex-husband Willie tonight?”
“Colin!”
“Ladies have been known to. Divorce, the final aphrodisiac.”
“Goddamn you,” she said. She started toward the gate.
He put out his hand and held her back, gripping her arm.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I am a dark, self-destructive, happiness-doubting, unforgivable man.” He smiled, sadly, pleadingly. “Just one thing—don’t talk to Willie about me.”
“I won’t.” She had already forgiven him and was facing him, close to him. He kissed her lightly. The public address system was a
“See you in New York in two weeks,” Colin said. “Don’t enjoy the city until I get there.”
“Not to worry,” she said. She brushed his cheek with her lips and he turned abruptly and strode away, walking, as always, in a way that made her smile secretly to herself, as though he were on his way to a dangerous encounter from which he was determined to emerge the victor.
She watched him for a moment, then went through the gate.
Despite the Dramamine, Billy threw up as they were approaching Idlewild for the landing. He did it neatly and apologetically into the bag provided for the purpose, but the sweat stood out on his forehead and his shoulders heaved uncontrollably. Gretchen stroked the back of Billy’s neck, helplessly, knowing that it wasn’t serious, but racked, just the same, by her inability at such a moment to stand between her son and pain. The irrationality of mothering.
When he had finished retching, Billy neatly closed the bag and went down the aisle to the toilet to dispose of the bag and rinse out his mouth. He was still white when he came back. He had wiped the sweat off his face and seemed composed, but as he seated himself next to Gretchen, he said, bitterly, “Goddamn, I’m such a baby.”
Willie was wearing sunglasses as he stood in the small crowd that awaited the passengers from Los Angeles. The day was gray and humid and even before she was close enough to say hello to him, Gretchen knew that he had been drinking the night before and that the sunglasses were meant to hide the evidence of bloodshot eyes from her and his son. At least one night, just before he greets a son he hasn’t seen for months, she thought, he might have kept sober. She fought down her a
Billy saw his father and hurried through the lines of debarking passengers toward him. He put his arms around his father and kissed his cheek. Gretchen purposely walked more slowly, not to interfere. Together, father and son were plainly linked. Although Billy was taller than his father and better looking than Willie ever could have been, their blood co
Willie was smiling widely (fatuously?) at his son’s demonstration of affection, as Gretchen finally approached him. He kept his arm around Billy’s shoulder and said, “Hello, dear,” to Gretchen and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. Two similar kisses, on the same day, on two sides of the continent, departing and arriving. Willie had been wonderful about the divorce and about Billy, and she couldn’t deny him the “dear” or the rueful kiss. She didn’t say anything about the dark glasses or the unmistakable aroma of alcohol on Willie’s breath. He was dressed neatly, soberly proper, just the costume for taking a son to introduce him to the headmaster of a good New England school. Somehow, she would keep him from drinking when they drove up to the school the next day.
She sat alone in the small living room of the hotel suite, the lights of evening New York outside the windows, the growl of the city, familiar and exciting, rising from the avenues. Foolishly, she had expected Billy to stay with her that night, but in the rented car driving into the city from Idlewild, Willie had said to Billy, “I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the couch. I’ve only got one room, but there’s a couch. A couple of springs’re busted, but at your age I imagine you’ll sleep all right.”
“That’s great,” Billy said, and there was no mistaking his tone. He hadn’t even turned around to look questioningly at his mother. Even if he had appealed to her, what could she have said?
When Willie had asked her where she was staying, and she had told him, “The Algonquin,” he had raised his eyebrows sardonically.
“Colin likes it,” she said defensively. “It’s near the theater district and it saves him a lot of time being able to walk to rehearsals and to the office.”
When Willie stopped the car in front of the Algonquin to let her out, he said, not looking either at her or at Billy, “I once bought a girl a bottle of champagne in this hotel.”
“Call me in the morning, please,” Gretchen said. “As soon as you wake up. We ought to get to the school before lunch.”
Billy was on the far side of the front seat as she got out on the sidewalk and the porter took her bags, so she didn’t get to kiss him good-bye and it was just with a little wave of her hand that she had sent him off to di