Summer at the Lake Page 22

  “She’s very young still, Phil,” I temporized.

  “Yeah, but we won’t marry for a couple of years and she’ll be old enough then. Please, Leo, she likes you and she won’t mind you interceding for me. I love her so much.”

  Phil was good at playing the poor, pathetic role so I let myself be manipulated into playing the game—though I had grave doubts about the outcome.

  The next night as I was driving Jane home from the Rose Bowl (we usually walked but it was a rainy night), I thought about Phil’s plea and decided that tonight was not the right time. Perhaps only because I wanted to kiss her.

  I parked the car near the gate of the Devlin Old House—an imitation Georgian country manor—with a large “park” around it, mostly trees and underbrush, a form of landscaping not approved by the other inhabitants of the “Old Houses.”

  Hand in hand we walked up to the gate.

  “Doesn’t the warm sand feel good under your feet?” Jane asked, taking my hand in hers.

  Once she had acquired her “lake feet” (after the first week of summer) Jane refused to wear shoes, save at Mass and at her job and on dates with Phil.

  “It sure does.”

  “I do so love this place.”

  “So do I…I also love the young woman who lives at this house.”

  “Sure,” she said skeptically.

  “I do.” I enfolded her in my arms to confirm if not my love at least her desirability.

  “Hey,” she protested weakly.

  I had never kissed her quite that way before. There was not only intensity in that kiss—we were old pros at the intensity game—but demand, a demand that was all the stronger because I would have to carry a message from my rival to her tomorrow or the next day.

  I came up for air.

  “Lee,” she moaned. “I don’t know…”

  “I do.”

  I returned to my task of telling her with my lips that she was my woman and I wanted her…a message to which I was not yet fully committed.

  Finally I let her go. She leaned against me, breathless and exhausted.

  “That’s the way Marine officers kiss their women?”

  “It’s the way this Marine officer’s candidate kisses this woman.”

  “I see,” she gulped. “Well, you always were a good kisser and you’ve gotten better. Now I’m going into the house and don’t try to stop me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Yes you would,” she whispered in the night as she ran up the driveway to her home, a driveway that was forbidden ground to me.

  I watched her long white legs in the darkness. I wanted all of her.

  But I still had promised a favor to Phil.

  Leo

  “I will die young, Leo,” Jim Murray shook his head gloomily. “I know that. I’m resigned to it. Then I will go to hell. I’m doomed. I have no choice.”

  We were walking through the woods of the State Park. The trail on which we were walking (wearing shoes I hasten to add) was wet and muddy. We dodged an occasional small puddle. Leaves and tree branches on the forest floor, blown off by the ferocious night storm, and the glowering gray sky above the forest arch were all signs of autumn, signs of the end of summer, which I hated then and hate even more now.

  “Bullshit, Jimmy. No one is doomed. No one knows when they’re going to die. You should forget that stuff.”

  We had arranged for a tennis match, but the courts were too wet to play. Jim proposed that we walk in the State Park instead. He was tired of tennis anyway, he said, tired of everything.

  So we ambled down a trail, stepping over the fallen limbs of the great oak and maple and occasional pine trees that the Chicago lumber companies had somehow missed.

  How had such amiable and fun-loving parents produced such a morose child?

  “Have you ever screwed a woman, Leo?” he asked suddenly.

  “No,” I said, “not exactly.”

  No, not even inexactly.

  “I have. All summer. It’s heaven. It also means hell for me. I don’t care. I’m going to hell anyway.”

  I had no response ready for that.

  “It’s not poor little Angie.”

  “I didn’t think it was.”

  “She’s just a child.”

  “Damn pretty child.”

  He waved his hand. “Pretty if you like that type, but not very interesting.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Do you want to know who it is?”

  “If you want to tell me.”

  Clearly he did. He was both proud of his conquest and terrified by its portents for his eternal damnation.

  “Iris!”

  “Mrs. Clare!”

  How many eighteen-year-old boys, I wonder today, would be able to resist seduction by a beautiful and skillful older woman?

  Would the eighteen-year-old Leo Kelly be able to fight off her enticements?

  Probably, but because of meanness, not virtue. And stubbornness. Like I say the eighteen-year-old Leo was a very stubborn kid. Very mean too. Which is probably why he’s still alive.

  Also probably why he sleeps by himself at night.

  And he hasn’t grown any less stubborn since then.

  “I see.”

  “She’s a wonderful woman, Lee. Those bastards don’t treat her right. They patronize and freeze her out. Doctor Clare can’t…make love most of the time.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Packy had hinted at that. But if the woman was hungry for a lay, why couldn’t she pick on someone her own age? Why a kid and a kid who would suffer terrible guilt over what he was doing? Were her pants that hot? Or did she enjoy being perverse? Or did she have a couple of lovers on the line?

  Today I would withhold such judgments, partly for reasons of ideology and mostly I hope for reasons of wisdom, the little bits of it that I have.

  “Someone has to love her,” he continued.

  “Why you?”

  “Because she loves me.”

  “This summer.”

  “We don’t think beyond this summer.”

  “Then it will stop?”

  Certainly it would stop. Matrons turning forty soon lose interest in their youthful conquests, especially when they’re sad sacks like Jimmy.

  “I don’t care about the future…the present is so wonderful. We do all the things that men and women do to each other, Leo. All of them.”

  I wasn’t sure then what “all” comprised. I’m not even sure that I’m sure now. I didn’t want to know then and I still don’t want to know.

  Well, maybe I do a little bit.

  “How do you get away with it, Jimmy?”

  “When they’re out playing golf. The servants don’t care because they like her and they hate the other two.”

  “I see.”

  “We do it almost every day, Leo. Some days several times. One day we did it ten times.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  “It was, but, oh God, Leo, it was so wonderful. She’s an incredible lay.”

  “I can believe that.”

  I had heard other men brag about their sexual conquests, but none with such awe for the woman.

  He wanted to brag so I let him brag.

  “She taught me how but now I’m in charge, Leo, I can do whatever I want whenever I want. She’s kind of my slave. There’s nothing like it. No pleasure in the world can match it. It’s worth going to hell for.”

  “You’re not going to hell, Jimmy. Forget that bullshit. God still loves you.”

  “If there is a God.”

  “If there isn’t, how can you go to hell?”

  “I’m pretty sure there isn’t.”

  “Then why worry? Fuck her to your heart’s content and enjoy it.”

  “But what if there is a God after all? What if God is playing a trick on me to punish me for my lack of faith?”

  “Then it will be all over by September anyway.”

  I was becoming exasperated by
his self-indulgent inconsistency, his sick mixture of pride and fear.

  “God won’t forgive me.”

  “That’s heresy, Jimmy.”

  So the argument went on, a bootless argument at that. Jimmy wanted to talk about his woman (though he avoided clinical details) and he wanted to feel he was damned. All I could do was to hope that he’d get over it.

  I don’t think the poor kid is in hell, if there be such a place. Packy says that there’s a German theologian named Urs something or other, who contends that everyone is saved. Seems reasonable enough to me, though there’s a couple of Asian camp guards I wouldn’t want to meet in the heavenly city.

  They’re long since dead because Mao and Kim, intent on destroying evidence, liquidated them all. And Peng, the commander of the Chinese Army in Korea, was tortured to death during the Great Cultural Revolution. I resist feelings of satisfaction in both matters.

  I did outlive the bastards, however.

  But poor Jimmy Murcay was right about one thing: he didn’t have long to live, only two more years, almost to the day.

  After we had escaped the woods, I drove him home in my rumbling Ford and then stopped by the Nicola house to report to Angie who, in charcoal gray slacks and a frilly pink “New Look” blouse, looked like she had stepped out of a fashion magazine. We walked to the gazebo halfway down their huge front lawn.

  “Any luck, Leo?” she asked hesitantly.

  “It’s a bad summer for him, Angie. I think he’ll be all right next summer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No guarantees in life, kid.” I took her hand in mine. “But give him time.”

  “I’m going to St. Mary’s the year after next and I’ll be right across the road from him and able to take care of him. But what will he do till then?”

  “Not a very good idea even to think that way, Angie. At our age we can’t take care of anyone besides ourselves. And that not always very well.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if Jane were in the same kind of trouble.”

  “I don’t know what Jane’s troubles are, if any. I do know that if she has them I can’t solve them. Moreover, she wouldn’t want me hanging around trying to help her unless she asked me to. And I’m pretty sure that Jimmy hasn’t asked, has he?”

  “No, but…”

  “No,” I said firmly squeezing her hand.

  “But,” she insisted, “you have to take care of those you love, suffer for them.”

  “Only when they’re ready for it. Till then you wait.”

  “I suppose so,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I know I’m not going to date next year.”

  “It’s your senior year in high school, Angie, you should enjoy it.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she giggled, “the guy that was never a senior.”

  “That,” I insisted, happy that I had made her laugh, however unintentionally, “is beside the point.”

  She thanked me and kissed my cheek. I was pretty sure that the enthusiasms of the senior year would sweep away her crush on Jimmy. Anyway Iris might have spoiled him for a fresh and gentle young woman like Angie, worse luck for him.

  I also wondered, briefly, where she had picked up that notion of suffering for those you loved. Probably from her mother. Up to a point, it was sound religion, I suppose, but somehow it didn’t fit the case.

  I made up my mind that, although Jimmy had not imposed secrecy on me, I would tell no one about his love affair with Phil’s mother. It was the sort of story that ought to be kept secret and would not remain secret for long if I told anyone else.

  If he wanted to brag about his conquest to someone else, that would be his problem not mine.

  Then I collected Jane at the Rose Bowl, and after consuming my usual malt with four butter cookies, I walked her down to the car, carrying her tennis racket, which she had used before going to work.

  Filled with virtue and proud of my sympathy for poor Jimmy and reassurance for poor Angie (both of which were hollow triumphs) I decided I’d discharge my obligation to Phil.

  Mistake. Big mistake.

  “I want to talk about Phil for a minute.”

  “That slob!”

  “Jane, please sit down,” I gestured toward a bench under a streetlight above the parking lot across the street from the pier.

  “Oh, all right!”

  This was not the time to talk about Phil. I would certainly offend and anger her. But there would be no good times for the conversation and I might just as well get it over with.

  She sat down and slammed her racket against her tennis shoe. “What about him?”

  “He says he loves you.”

  “I know that. He’s been saying that for years. All it means is that he lusts after me.”

  “He may not be the only one.”

  “You’re different,” she patted my shoulder.

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “I am sure. You lust after me respectfully. He doesn’t.”

  “I hope that’s true.”

  I had decided that if I were to do Phil’s favor for him, the only way was to play it straight. I could not beat around the bush with her as he wanted me to. You didn’t beat around the bush with Jane Devlin.

  “Well, what does he want?”

  So I’d play it straight and God help me and protect me from her fury.

  “He wanted me to ask you if it was all right with you if you and he became informally engaged this year at Christmas?”

  “What!” She exploded from the bench. “What!”

  “He wanted me…”

  “I heard what you said. All he really wants is to sleep with me. I won’t do that, not ever! Go tell him that, do you hear me, tell that asshole that he can wait till the day after the last judgment and I won’t sleep with him! Do you hear me!”

  “He thinks you love him and will marry him eventually.”

  “Two days after the last judgment and tell him that too!” She punched her tennis racket dangerously close to my nose.

  “I was just doing him a favor by asking,” I said meekly.

  “Don’t ever do that kind of favor again or I’ll break this tennis racket over your head!” She waved the racket threateningly.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “And wipe that silly grin off your stupid face.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She stalked away.

  I followed after her at a safe distance, feeling very happy despite the failure of my foolish Miles Standish mission. She turned on me and swung the racket again. “I can walk home, thank you very much.”

  I followed her with my car.

  “Lunkhead,” she shouted as I pulled alongside her. “I said I wanted to walk home.”

  “Yes, Milady.”

  How wonderful she was when she was angry.

  Leo

  So I told Phil that he ought to back off for a while. Reluctantly he agreed. Jane phoned me the next morning and apologized.

  “I’m sorry I shouted at you. I know you were only trying to make that asshole feel good. He’s so good at making us not want to hurt his feelings. But don’t do it again.”

  “No ma’am.”

  “But if you do I won’t swing my tennis racket at you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What would you have done if I said yes?”

  “Maybe died or at least broke down with inconsolable grief.”

  She giggled. “You can take me to the Bijou tonight.”

  “I’m forgiven?”

  “I’m the one who needs to be forgiven for losing my temper.”

  So our romance continued for the rest of the summer, a glowing summer love that would never die, but which I often felt in the depths of my soul could no more survive the winter of life than do the leaves of the crab apple or jasmine trees.

  Back in Chicago I lived on campus instead of with the family—my mother would not tolerate the purchase of yet another and bigger house—and saw very little of the summer crowd during the sch
ool year. Even Packy drifted out of my life.

  I lived in two different worlds, summer and winter, and never did the two meet.

  Why did I keep my two worlds separate? Mostly I suppose because I didn’t think I belonged in the summer world, that it was a temporary fantasy that was not real and never could be real. Jane was the love of my life at the Lake. But back in the city she was an utterly unattainable dream.

  Looking back on that reaction it was evidently pure folly, my mother’s veto in the depths of my unconscious. But then my behavior seemed completely rational, a decision made in the clear light of day after a night of indulgence in illusions. Hence when I would later storm away from the Lake in a fury of injured pride it was easy to believe that it all had been inane illusion, a daydream that had never really happened and could never really happen.

  Crazy, absurd, idiotic? I admit it. But I guess I went to the Lake each summer with my fingers crossed, hoping against hope that the fantasy had survived another winter and knowing that it could not endure.

  For some reason my friends at the Lake accepted this bifurcation of my fife. Perhaps they took it for granted that I was just a little crazy.

  One night after Christmas on Rush Street I encountered Angie, dressed in the tight-waist, full skirt, frilly bodice and phony hints of lingerie, which had been dubbed “The New Look,” looking like she was twenty-four instead of seventeen. Her date, who on sight didn’t like me, listened impatiently as we gossiped.

  “Eileen is going to St. Mary’s with me. Phil is leaving school in January to work on the Board of Trade. Jimmy seems a lot better. We never see Packy. I guess his brother finally found that loathsome Maggie person, right here in Chicago. I suppose they’ll get married. No, I haven’t seen her yet. I’m sure she’s ugly. Jane loves college, but that terrible drunken woman is giving her a hard time about it. Two years at the most she keeps saying, like she is some kind of family disgrace. And you’ve heard the news about Phil’s mother, haven’t you?”

  “What news?”

  “She’s pregnant, can you imagine that? At her age!”

  “When does the baby come?”

  “In May, I guess. Doesn’t that amaze you?”

  “It certainly does.”