"Does he!" Leslie murmurs.
Persia says, "When I found out he'd betrayed me, gone outside the marriage-" "Betrayed you? How do you mean?" Leslie asks. "Not with other women?"
"In different ways, Persia says quickly. "I don't want to go into details. If you love and trust someone he can betray you with a word.
.. an expression on his face. You know. Or maybe," she says carelessly, "you don't know."
"Well," says Leslie, smiling at his long bony fingers, "that's possible."
"When I first found out, I was almost happy... the way you are when something has been decided for you. Because when you love another person there is something off-center in you, like, you know your soul is partly inside that person; it's been drawn out of you and it's in someone else? and might be injured? And you can't know you really can't know if it won't be? My parents are just farm people I guess you would say I mean, Duke did say simple people I suppose, they're Methodists, and they believe in Jesus Christ as their redeemer, and that sort of thing, but if you asked them to explain or to analyze, the way Duke analyzes things, to shed a little light on the subject, as Duke says, they'd clam up.
they'd be embarrassed and resentful. Because there are things you don't talk about. Because there aren't the words. And falling in love with someone so different from yourself and anyone you know getting married, having a baby, starting a family, living, you know an adult life, living what you believe to be an adult life, a real lifenobody talks about these things, nobody seems to know the words.
Like dancing, and suddenly the old steps aren't there for you, or the beat is wrong, so you have to improvise." She speaks quickly, half angrily, lifting her hair from the nape of her neck and fanning it out and letting it fall several times, not knowing what she does.
"But you love him," Leslie says softly.
"But I can't live with him," Persia says. She smiles, she's triumphant. "I won't."
So they talk together, Leslie and Persia. It is as if they're beneath a waterfall, sheltered there, snug and secretive and conspiratorial.
They talk in lowered voices... drift into silence..
resume talking again... following the natural drift, Leslie Courtney is thinking, of whatever happens.
There is the conviction in him, lodged in his breast like a heartbeat , that an understanding of a profound sort is passing between him and Persia Courtney... if only Persia will remember in the morning.
Says Duke Courtney reverently, "Is there anywhere on earth more.
.
. unearthly... than a racetrack on the day of a big race?"
At Schoharie Downs, this first Saturday in October, the air has a brittle whitish cast. The sky is a perfect blue like washed glass.
It's the afternoon of the Eastern States Sires harness-racing competition for two-year-old trotters, and the stands, which will seat approximately nine thousand people, are quickly filling.
Voices sound and resound like windblown strips of confetti; a giant American flag whips raglike above the green-shingled clubhouse roof.
When the Courtneys enter the Downs, several drivers are doing warm-up exercises with their horses on the track. The horses are Standardbred trotters, uniformly dark, sleek, high-headed, with the breed's broad strong chest and powerful legs. Behind them their drivers in brightly colored silks appear child-sized; the two-wheel sulkies, "bikes," appear scarcely larger than toys, wheels spinning dreamlike above the dirt track. Iris stares as if she has never seen racing horses before, never felt the visceral shock of such beauty, such animal grace, strength, power.
Like Persia, Iris has cultivated a hardness of heart, a cuticle to protect her heart, against such places: the mysterious places to which Duke Courtney is drawn. Yet here, like Persia herself, she is suddenly weakened. Is there anywhere on earth more...
unearthly?
PRIVATE-MEMBERS AND THEIR GUESTS ONLY hangs in commanding slick-white letters outside the tinted glass doors of the clubhouse cocktail lounge. But Duke Courtney is a guest of course.
Duke Courtney, guiding his wife and daughter, pushes on happily through.
A good deal of money is going to change hands here today.
Duke Courtney's host Mr. Yard, Duke Courtney's new friend, millionaire Standardbred breeder and owner from Pennsylvania, the gentleman with the clubhouse privileges and the wide wet porcelain-white smile, nearly bald, shiny-headed, in a striped lemon-and-gold blazer with brass buttons and a red carnation in his lapel, this nerved-up gregarious man paces about rubbing his hands briskly together as if in anticipation of the fact that it will be those hands... those very hands...
into which some of the money will fall. With a happy sigh he says, "That's the one sure thing! The one absolutely incontestable and unavoidable sure thing! A good deal of money is going to change hands here today."
Duke has explained to Persia and Iris that Mr. Yard is the owner of several horses, the most promising a two-year-old trotter named Lodestar, entered in the Eastern Sires race, for which the first-prize purse is $45,000. Naturally, Duke has bet on Lodestar, a combination bet-in which, should the horse win, place, or show Duke stands to win-"a reasonable bet, a friendly bet, not at all excessive," as he assures Persia. Though Lodestar isn't the favorite, though the odds are 4 to 1 against his beating out the favorite, he's clearly one of the most promising horses, since his track time has averaged 1.59 and has been steadily improving. In the car driving to Schoharie, Duke and Persia spoke together quietly, carefully, gently, of numerous things, things of the sort Iris might be allowed to hear, felt herself in fact meant to hear, and only when Duke parked their car in the massive parking lot behind Schoharie Downs did Persia ask how much he'd bet.
Duke said, "Only one hundred dollars. Cross my heart."
And he'd turned to wink at Iris.
Mr. Yard, Mr. Calvin Yard, whom Duke has described as warm and unpretentious and "wholly democratic" despite his wealth, is with a party of some fifteen people, drinking and talking and laughing together in the cocktail lounge, when the Courtneys appear. It's flattering: he does seem to be genuinely happy to see Duke Courtney, to shake hands with him as if they were old friends, as if Duke were a younger brother perhaps, and to meet Duke's wife and daughter. "Here they are, Cal-my girls! My Persia, and my Iris!" Iris feels her father's hand at the small of her back, nudging.
With Iris, Mr. Yard is warm and courteous; with Persia, Mr. Yard is warm and exuberant, grasping her hand, staring at her, murmuring, "Persia Courtney-at last! My dear, I've heard so much about you." Mr. Yard is in his mid-sixties, thick-necked, with small pinkrimmed eyes, a kindly mouth, no wife or immediate family in attendance; and Persia Courtney, though not entirely relaxed, far from her usual party self, manages to smile prettily, if a bit archly.
'Ah-I'd better not ask what."
Mr. Yard throws his head back and bawls with laughter. It's the kind of happy human sound others just naturally echo.
October 6, 1955: a week to the day since Duke Courtney has moved back to the Holland Street flat. Not all his things are there yet-his things are scattered throughout Hammond, it seemsbut he's there..
.
in his rightful place, as he says. Where his heart has been all along.
As he says.
A black waiter neatly uniformed in white brings drinks to Mr. Yard's party; not long afterward, he returns with more drinks..
that same waiter or another. There are several black waiters and it's easy to confuse them in their uniforms; a uniform has the effect of making individuals look alike but with these clubhouse waiters it's their manner too, their coolness inside their friendly smiles, Yes, sir, No, sir, Right, sir! Iris notes that all the clubhouse patrons are white, all the waiters black. If Schoharie Downs is like other tracks Duke has taken her to there will be few black faces in the stands, no black drivers.
Iris once asked Duke why, and Duke's answer came quick and glib: They'd be out of place, sweetie.
Iris notes too that, of the men in the cocktail lounge, her father is surely the most attractive... as Persia, even in her subdued mood, is surely the most attractive woman. Energy seems to shimmer from Duke like heat waves above a summer highway; an interior radiance glitters in his eyes, not icy now. Duke Courtney is the man in any group who shakes hands most vigorously and happily... a man who is most himself when shaking hands or causing hands to be shaken in his presence.
And laughter: there's always laughter in Duke Courtney's presence.
Now Duke sees Iris watching him, winks, and flashes her the high sign.
.. thumb and forefinger forming a little 0.
To Iris's surprise her father comes over to join her where she's standing alone, lonely seeming, by a plate glass window overlooking the track.
"Been missing my little girl, all this time," Duke says, "those months.
Like a piece of my heart was bitten out, y'know?"
Though Duke doesn't sound sad: sounds very cheerful, in fact.
It's the racetrack high. Iris has heard Duke speak of it, even philosophize about it: a definite sensation, in the chest, guts, groin.
Oh, yes.
In the car, as they'd left Hammond and approached Schoharie, Duke had begun to hum under his breath, hum and sing a bit as, around the house, in good moods and bad, Persia so often sings.
my heart is aglow!"
Duke repeats he's missed his little girl so much but Iris can't think of a single word to say in response, her brain seems to be struck blank: here's Daddy squeezing her against him with an arm slung around her shoulders so her heart quickens with pleasure sharp as dread, Daddy's big gold Masonic ring prominent amid the gold-glinting hairs of his knuckles, and she's tongue-tied; he's a little hurt but teasing.
"It sure doesn't sound as if my best baby missed me."
Iris mumbles yes of course she did, yes Daddy of course.
Duke doesn't hear, so she has to repeat it. "Yes, Daddy. Of course.
The past several months have been "knotty" times, Duke says.
As Iris knows. Working his ass off, driving that canon commission, no salary-in the hick regions of the state. But he's determined to get that load of debt off his shoulders and begin again; he'll make it up to Iris, to Iris and Iris's mother, she knows that, doesn't she?
Iris says yes she knows It.
Duke says, lowering his voice as if imparting a secret, "Sometimes, honey, it's the hardest thing on earth, I'd say it was the most courageous thing, to keep your distance from the very people you love more than your own life. Because you can love too much and you can do injury with your love, lose sight of proportion, perspective. Someday when you're older you'll understand." They are standing at the window; Duke's attention is being drawn down to the track where, in their colorful silks, more drivers are warming up their horses. The grandstand is nearly filled, there's movement everywhere. A sky lightly feathered with clouds. Even through the plate glass the tension of the racetrack can be felt like the quickening before an electrical storm.
Iris is startled by the sudden shift in her father's voice: "Can't you at least look at me? Here I am for Christ's sake baring my heart to you and... you can't even look at me?" Laughing, annoyed.
"Bad as your mother."
Iris says, "I am looking at you, Daddy."
It's true, however, that Duke Courtney's daughter's eyes are narrowed and cold beneath those straight pale eyebrows: icy seagreen-gray so like his own.
It's possible that both father and daughter are remembering the identical episode: one vague morning in Duke Courtney's life about a year ago when he came to consciousness on the living room sofa aware of a presence in the room silent and watchful.
watching him... and only after a confused period of time (minutes?
an hour?) did he realize that this presence was his own daughter, his little girl Iris: standing some feet away staring at him, wordless and detached with an almost clinical absorption in the struggle of a badly hung-over man to come to his senses, and he'd mumbled, Iris? Honey?
Can you give your old man just a... just a hand? because it seemed to him he needed only to be sitting up, his full strength and rationality would flood back if he were only sitting up, but Iris hadn't responded, she stood her ground just watching, wordless and terrible in her detachment, and when he finally managed to get his eyes open and sit up it was a long time afterward and the room was empty, the apartment empty, both Iris and Persia were gone... his little girl gone.
Slipped away from him in his hour of need, without a sound.
Duke Courtney stares at his thin-faced pretty daughter wondering if she has begun to menstruate yet. Has Persia informed him?