Going All the Way (28 page)

“No, ma'am,” Sonny said, twisting in his chair.

“Well, don't you think it looks a little weird?”

“For God sake, Nina,” Gunner said, “what do you expect him to say?”

“I expect him to say what he
thinks
.”

Trying to sound both loyal to his friend and patriotic, too, Sonny said feebly, “Lincoln had one.”

“Oh, so you approve, then,” Nina said, as if her worst suspicions had been confirmed.

“He didn't say that, Nina.”

“I heard what he said.”

“Let me get you a drink,” Gunner said and went to the kitchen.

“I suppose his girl friend likes it too,” Nina said.

Sonny cleared his throat and said, “I really don't know.”

“You're a friend of hers, aren't you?”

“Well,—yes, I guess.”

“Of course, a beard is more common to the Jews. Their rabbis have to have them.”

“I don't know,” said Sonny.

Gunner came in with the drink for Nina and said, “Please, Mother, let's not get on the Jews again.”

“I'm not ‘on' them. I just made a statement.”

She turned to Sonny and said, “My son believes I'm prejudiced. His own mother.”

“Please, Nina.”

“Actually, I've become very interested in their religion and history. They have quite a long history, you know.”

“Yes,” Sonny said, “I understand they do.”

“I've been reading up on it.”

“Oh?”

“She took out a book,” Gunner explained.

Nina got up and handed a library book to Sonny. It was called
Judaism from Ancient Times
. Sonny turned it over in his hands, not knowing what to say.

“Must be interesting,” he finally commented.

“Fascinating,” Nina said. “But there's still a lot I haven't come across yet. Gunner, you say Marty's father's so smart, would you ask him something for me? About one of their customs?”

“What is it, Nina?” Gunner said evenly.

“Well, when they have their funerals—”

“Yes?”

“Is it true that they bury their dead standing up?”

Gunner grasped at his forehead and stared at Nina out of eyes that seemed to have looked at an atom blast without dark glasses.

“No, Mother,” he said in a dry, flat tone. “They lay 'em down, just like the rest of us.”

A few days after they didn't go swimming, Gunner took Sonny to see Marty's studio. It was in an old three-story house in a dingy block down around the museum. A commercial artist and his wife owned the building and rented out rooms for studios and also for living quarters for students who studied at the museum school. Marty's room was on the top floor, and it had one of those curving windows that protrudes like a turret. The room was completely bare except for the art stuff—canvases, paints, buckets of turpentine, a huge easel, a table smeared with colors and cluttered with brushes and tubes and jars. There was also a hot plate with an old coffeepot on it, and a hunk of cheese that looked a couple centuries old. And yet, Sonny felt charged up, just being in the room. There was an excitement about it, a feeling of purpose and creation. Something was happening here. Someone was making something. Sonny felt a tingle that went through his shoulders and his arms, down to his fingers.

“Yeh,” he said, nodding his head.

“The real thing, huh?” Gunner asked proudly.

“Yeh.”

“Would you like to see some of my paintings?” Marty asked.

“Sure.”

Marty seemed different in the room, more relaxed and friendly even. She moved around in it with a kind of authority that was different from the sexy, feminine assurance of her social self, freer in a way, free in the way of a seaman on the deck of his ship. She was wearing a pair of paint-splattered jeans and a raggedy man's white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Here,” she said. “Gunner, give me a hand.”

She had gone to a corner of the room where a dozen or so canvases stretched onto frames were propped against the wall. Gunner helped her as she moved them out, one by one, and placed them against another wall, in the best light. Sonny felt silly because he didn't know how to make the right comments, and he just sort of made sounds, like “Mmmm” and “Yeh” and “Ahhh.” Some of them had people in them, but they weren't the jolly All-American folks of Orville Lockwood's homey magazine covers; they were misshapen, elongated, puffed up, twisted, their heads on wrong and faces distorted in pain and surprise and fear and confusion. They weren't pictures of how people looked but of how people felt. Some of the canvases had no pictures at all, just colors, swirls and patches and planes of color, thickened and lumped, like hunks of emotion.

“I feel like a dumb ass,” Sonny said. “But I know you're doing something real.”

“She has it, all right,” Gunner said.

“I'm learning.” Marty smiled. “I'm learning what color is. God. You take green. Have you ever really thought about green?”

Sonny bit at his lip and then grinned foolishly. “Lucky Strike green has gone to war. That's about all, as far as thinking about it. That I can think of.”

“Or yellow?
God
. Yellow.”

“Cowards, I guess,” Sonny said.

“The sun,” said Marty. “Heat. Energy. Life. Van Gogh's sunflowers.”

“I never saw them,” Sonny admitted.

“They'll knock you out,” Gunner said.

“And goldenrod,” Marty went on, “growing wild.”

“I've seen that, as a kid,” Sonny said. “Does it still grow around here?”

“Sure. You just stopped seeing it. You stopped looking. Most people do.”

“Hell, yes,” said Gunner. “You go stale. You have it as a kid, that way of seeing things, and you lose it. That's what they call ‘growing up.'”

“I guess, yeh,” said Sonny.

“Going back, going back to seeing it fresh, like a child, that's art,” Marty said. Her face had a real glow of excitement. Gunner put an arm around her and hugged her against him.

“This kid's got it,” he said. “She can teach it, too.”

“Better than Artists Unlimited, I bet.” Sonny grinned.

“Oh, man! Wait'll I show you the letter I got. When I didn't do Lesson Number One and didn't send the next fee.”

Gunner went over to where he had slung a khaki jacket over a chair, and he pulled out this letter and handed it to Sonny.

“All over America,” it said, “the lights are burning late at night in the homes of those who are getting ahead. Ambition is burning, while others sleep. We don't think you're the kind of sleepy soul who wants to let opportunity and fortune pass him by. We know you want to complete this course and be right in the forefront of the kind of creative people who will emerge as the great talents and geniuses of their generation. Please send the $10 fee for your next lesson—not for our sake, for yours.”

“Wow,” Sonny said.

“See, they're worried about
me
” Gunner said. “It's not the bucks they want.”

“Of course not, dear,” Marty said mockingly. “It's your future they're worried about.”

“I bet Orville Lockwood himself is worried,” Sonny said.

“Maybe he'll paint a magazine cover showing me staying up late, burning with ambition.”

“Is that what you burn with, dear? Ambition?”

Marty squeezed Gunner and he gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“Sometimes,” he said.

Sonny looked away, imagining Gunner and Marty burning up with lust every night, their bodies tangled in bizarre positions never before imagined. Gunner moved away from Marty and said why didn't they all go out for a nice one. Sonny appreciated that; he felt Gunner must have sensed that he was feeling kind of out of it. Some guys seemed to delight in lording it over you when they had a girl, nuzzling up to her in front of you and sort of looking like “See what I've got and you haven't?” but Gunner was good about that kind of thing. He didn't go in for showing people up, even though he could have if he was that kind of guy.

They had a round of Buds at the Key and then went to Marty's house. She and Gunner were going out again that night, and they asked Sonny to join them but he said he was busy. He just figured it would depress him to be out with them when he didn't have a girl he was hot for himself. They insisted he stop by the house, though, to meet Marty's old man and he said O.K. to that.

The house was one of those imposing brick jobs set way back from the street on Washington Boulevard. It looked like a small castle, with vines running all over it and casement windows. While Marty got dressed to go out, Sonny and Gunner went and sat in the den and had a drink with Mr. Pilcher.

Solomon Pilcher was the first man Sonny ever met in person who could genuinely be described as
suave
. Not slick, not slippery. Genuinely suave. When he made you a drink, he didn't just slosh some booze in a glass and plunk a couple of ice cubes in it. He measured; he poured; he stirred. He proffered the drink to his guests with a manner that made you feel special, like an honor was being bestowed, a bond established. But for all this there was nothing stiff or uncomfortably formal about the man, and Sonny not only felt at ease with him, he felt more sophisticated himself, as if Mr. Pilcher's charm was a kind of light that brightened his guests as well as him. He treated you as a gentleman, and so you felt like one.

The room itself made you feel good, too. Wherever you sat—on the pillow-fattened sofa or one of two matching easy chairs—you sank, softly, into a downy ease. Quiet, intricate music came from a pair of speakers whose parts were all hidden except for a pair of speakers that were blended among the books. The books were fine and old, yet they didn't just seem like decoration. Sonny felt sure Mr. Pilcher really read them, returned to them like honored friends, and chose just the right one to suit his particular mood. Gunner got talking about Japan, and Mr. Pilcher asked interested, interesting questions; he was conversant, of course, with certain aspects of Japanese culture—philosophy, art, the theater. Warmed by the drink and the conversation, Sonny would have been happy to sit there the rest of the evening.

When Marty came down, Mr. Pilcher stood up and Sonny and Gunner scrambled to their feet. Mr. Pilcher asked Marty if she cared to join them in a drink, addressing her like a visiting princess instead of his young daughter fresh out of college. Marty looked tan and cool in a white summer dress that was cut low enough to show the beginning of her cleavage. She wore several interesting rings and a gold sort of band in the form of a serpent on the upper part of her left arm. She had no makeup on except for the dark accentuation of her deep brown eyes. Sonny felt himself getting a hard-on, and he felt crude and uncivilized.

“You look lovely, dear,” Mr. Pilcher said.

“Terrific,” said Gunner.

“Yeh, I'll say,” Sonny added and quickly shut up, his bumbling compliment sounding raw and awkward in the perfumed air. He drained the last of his drink and the ice cubes made a clicking noise against his teeth.

“Let me freshen that.”

Mr. Pilcher was across the room and had the glass before Sonny could decide if it was the right thing to have a second, so he just settled back to enjoy it. Marty mainly talked to her father while Gunner looked on admiringly, and Sonny's concentration floated pleasantly off as he enjoyed the voices, the pleasant tone and feeling of what was being said, without really hearing the words. The comfortable mood, the serenity of the room, was broken by a brittle voice that said curtly, “We're late.”

In the door was a small, sharp-faced lady who was browned in that leathery way that comes to middle-aged women who are serious about their golf.

Mr. Pilcher stood up and said, “You know Mr. Casselman, dear; this is his friend Mr. Burns. My wife, Lilly.”

“Evening,” said Gunner, snapping to attention, and Sonny stood and said, “Pleased to meet you.”

Mrs. Pilcher gave each of the guys a quick glance, almost like a slap, and turned to Marty. “Just remember you have to be up early tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Let's go,” she said to Mr. Pilcher. He smiled, set down his drink, and came over to shake hands with Sonny and Gunner.

“It was pleasant to talk with you. I hope we'll meet again.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sonny said.

“Great,” said Gunner. “See ya soon.”

Sonny was glad his parents weren't home when Marty and Gunner dropped him off; he wanted to be alone and think. He went to his room to put on his favorite thinking record,
The New World Symphony
. It was the only symphony record he owned, and he guessed maybe he liked it because there was a popular song made out of the tune of one part of the symphony, a song called “Going Home,” which was sad and yet somehow sweet and nostalgic. The whole symphony reminded Sonny of wide open spaces, autumn campfires, and wild, strong rivers. America past and pure, still clean and uncluttered. He put on the record and lit a cigarette, thinking what a great guy Marty's old man was, the great way he made you feel just talking to you. Sonny wondered if it was the thing people called “Old World charm,” and whether there was something Jewish about it, some quality they had. Most people thought of Jews as talking too loud and trying to Jew you down, out of your money, but Sonny had several professors who were Jewish and had that special aura of culture and grace that Mr. Pilcher had.

The only other person he knew who had that, though, wasn't Jewish at all. It was Mrs. Hullen, the mother of a girl who Sonny had a real crush on when he was a sophomore at Shortley. Mrs. Hullen came from one of those families where everyone went to the fancy Eastern colleges and all of them had swanky jobs like being presidents of banks and Episcopal bishops and headmasters of expensive little schools, and she married a man from the same sort of clan who graduated from Harvard Law School and was a leading attorney. But Mrs. Hullen didn't seem to Sonny like a snob; she had that way of treating you as a gentleman and so making you feel like one even when you only were a moldy sophomore in high school. She offered you tea and liked to have real conversations, talking about world events and books, not in a dry, schoolmarm way but so it was really interesting and fun, and her eyes were fantastically alive, as if taking everything in and getting a big kick out of it all. Sonny loved just seeing the way she sat in a chair, her back perfectly straight, without seeming stiff or uncomfortable, her hands resting in her lap, occasionally making a graceful gesture but never fidgeting. He could simply not imagine her ever crying or yelling at anyone or going to pieces, and yet she was a mother, with a son and two daughters. Mr. Hullen was polite enough, but he hardly ever said anything and seemed a little scary to Sonny. If it came to picking an All-Star parent team, Sonny would choose Mrs. Hullen and Mr. Pilcher. But that was something you couldn't choose, at least for yourself. You took what you got and made the best of it. Or the worst of it.