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Enid, now two, blonde and round, was waiting for them. She leaped at her mother and they embraced and kissed each other again and again. Rudolph carried Gretchen’s bag as he and Gretchen went up the stairs to the guest room. The room was crisp and sparkling, full of flowers.
Rudolph put her bag down and said, “I think you have everything you need.”
“Rudy,” Gretchen said, keeping her voice low, “we ought to skip drinks today.”
“Why?” He sounded surprised.
“You mustn’t tempt her. Jean. Even if she doesn’t take any herself—seeing others drink …”
“Oh,” Rudolph said negligently, “I wouldn’t worry about that. She was just a little upset last night …”
“She’s an alcoholic, Rudy,” Gretchen said gently.
Rudolph made a dismissive, light gesture. “You’re being melodramatic,” he said. “It’s not like you. Every once in a while she goes on a little bender, that’s all. Even as you and I.”
“Not even as you and I,” Gretchen said. “She shouldn’t touch one drop. Not even a sip of beer. And as much as possible, she should be kept away from people who drink. Rudy, I know. Hollywood is full of women like her. In the begi
“Nobody can say I don’t protect her.” There was a thin edge of anger in his voice.
“Rudy, lock up every bottle of liquor in this house,” Gretchen said.
“Calm yourself,” Rudolph said. “This isn’t Hollywood.”
The phone was ringing downstairs and then Jean called up and said, “Gretchen, it’s Billy, for you. Down here.”
“Please listen to me,” Gretchen said.
“Go talk to your son,” Rudolph said coldly.
On the phone, Billy’s voice was very grown-up. “Hello, Mother. It’s wonderful that you could come up.” He had begun calling her Mother when Evans had appeared on the scene. Before that it had been Mummy. She had thought it childish for a boy as big and as old as he, but now, on the phone, she longed for the Mummy. “Say, I’m awfully sorry,” Billy said. “Will you make my excuses to Rudolph? He invited me to come to lunch, but there’s a softball game on here at one o’clock and I’m pitching, so I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for a raincheck.”
“Yes,” Gretchen said. “I’ll make your excuses. When will I see you?”
“Well, it’s a little difficult to say.” Billy sounded honestly perplexed. “There’s a kind of giant beer-fest after the game at one of the houses and …”
“Where’re you playing?” Gretchen said. “I’ll come down and watch you. We can visit between the i
“Now you sound sore.”
“I’m not sore, as you put it. Where’re you playing?”
“There’s a whole bunch of fields on the east side of the campus,” Billy said. “You can’t miss it.”
“Good-bye, Billy,” Gretchen said, and hung up. She went out of the hall where the phone was and into the living room. Jean was on the couch, cradling Enid and rocking her back and forth. Enid was making small cooing noises. Rudolph was shaking up Daiquiris.
“My son sends his regrets,” Gretchen said. “He has weighty affairs that will detain him all afternoon. He ca
“That’s too bad,” Rudolph said. But his mouth hardened for a moment. He poured the cocktails for himself and Gretchen. Jean, occupied with her child, said she was not drinking.
After lunch, Gretchen borrowed the car and drove to the Whitby University campus. She had been there before but now she was struck afresh by the quiet, countrified beauty of the place, with its homely old buildings spread out haphazardly on acres of green, its wandering graveled walks, the tall oaks and elms. Because it was Saturday afternoon there were few students about and the campus dozed in a peaceful su
There were three desultory baseball games in progress on the playing fields. The most desultory, in which almost half the players were girls, was the one in which Billy was playing. The girl who was in field had a book with her. She sat on the grass reading it and only looked up and ran after a ball when her teammates shouted at her. The game must have been going on for some time, because as Gretchen came up behind the first-base line there was a mild argument between the first-baseman and some of the members of the opposing team who were sprawled on the grass awaiting their turn at bat, about whether the score was nineteen to sixteen or eighteen to fifteen. It could hardly have made any difference to anyone whether or not Billy had played.
Dressed in fringed blue jeans stained with bleach, and a gray T-shirt, Billy was pitching, just lobbing it up to the girls, but throwing the ball hard to the boys when they came to bat. Billy didn’t see Gretchen immediately and she watched him, tall and moving lazily and gracefully, his hair too long over the face that was a beautiful, improved version, sensual, strong, dissatisfied, of Willie Abbott’s face, the forehead as broad and high, the eyes deeper set and darker, the nose longer, with tense, wide nostrils, a single asymmetrical dimple in the right cheek when he smiled, his teeth pure, youthful white.
If only he will live up to his face, Gretchen thought, as her son tossed the ball up to a pretty, chubby girl, who swung and missed and cried, in mock despair, “I’m hopeless!”
It was the third out of the i
“I hope I’m not interfering,” she said. The wrong tone, she knew. Love me, I’m your mother.
“No, of course not,” he said. “Say, kids,” he called, “somebody bat for me. I have a visitor. I’ll see you all later at the house.” He didn’t introduce her to anyone. “Why don’t we take a little walk? I’ll show you around.”
“Rudolph and Jean were disappointed you couldn’t come for lunch,” Gretchen said, as they walked away from the game. Wrong tone again.
“Were they?” Billy said evenly. “I’m sorry.”
“Rudolph says he’s invited you over again and again and you never come.”
Billy shrugged. “You know how it is,” he said. “Something’s always coming up.”
“I’d feel better if you went there once in awhile,” Gretchen said.
“I’ll go. Sometime. We can discuss the generation gap. Or how everybody on the campus smokes pot. His newspaper’s great on those subjects.”
“Do you smoke pot?”
“Mother, darling, come into the twentieth century.”
“Don’t condescend to me,” she said sharply.
“It’s a nice day,” he said. “I haven’t seen you for a long time. Let’s not argue. That building over there is the dormitory where I lived when I was a freshman.”
“Was your girl there in that game?” He had written her that he was interested in a girl in one of his classes.
“No. Her mother and father are here for the weekend and she has to pretend I don’t exist. Her father can’t stand me and I can’t stand him. I’m an immoral, depraving influence, her father says. He’s Neanderthal.”
“Have you got a good word to say for anybody?”
“Sure. Albert Camus. But he’s dead. That reminds me. How’s that other poet, Evans Kinsella?”
“He’s alive,” Gretchen said.
“That’s great news,” said Billy. “That’s really sensational news.”
If Colin hadn’t died he wouldn’t be like this, Gretchen thought. He would be completely different. An absent-minded, busy man gets behind the wheel of a car and hits a tree and the impact spreads and spreads, never stopping, through the generations.