From time to time missis Savage calls out breathlessly, Graice, don't let Byron distract you take care! And, Graice, you're learning!
Lord, are you learning! And, Now, Alan, you take care, don't get reckless Since her operation the previous spring that operation of which, in mixed company in particular, missis Savage is loath to speak , missis Savage has been frequently breathless and tires easily, but today she's clearly the happiest she has been in a very long time.
In another minute she'll go into the house to oversee the preparation of the evening's dinner, but for the moment she's intent upon watching the game: watching Graice Courtney, who's so clumsy and graceful at the same time, and such an attractive girl, the color up in her face, her springy hair laced with silver like frostwork, her young body quivering with life. lean, lightly tanned legs spread, as she swings her mallet with an athlete's natural sense of equilibrium. missis Savage sees a gleam of perspiration on Graice's face and hopes the girl won't overheat herself and turn suddenly sullen, like poor Jenny, years ago.
Jennifer Savage, never good at games, always bested by her older brother.
Thinks Graice Courtney, quickly showering and changing her clothes for dinner, This is the happiest day of my life. isn't it?
In her delicate, musical voice Gwendolyn Savage calls out, Will you all please come in? Dinner is ready
Dinner is served, not in the house but on a screened in porch at the rear of the house, overlooking the dark glittering lake; the table is circular, glass topped, made of wrought iron painted white.
There are four guests, including Graice Courtney, who has begun to perceive the advantage of a public domesticity, to alleviate the difficulties of marriage.
How lovely!
The night air.
the lake, can't you?
a smell of autumn.
A young black woman has been brought out from Syracuse to help missis Savage serve dinner: her name is Evie or Ava, it isn clear which.
She smiles at everyone and no one. A gold filling prominent between her two front teeth.
Drawn by the glimmering pale heat of the candle flames, moths and other insects throw themselves repeatedly against the screen, but very few penetrate it, and there are no mosquitoes at all.
Thank God, says doctor Savage, with a humorous little shudder. If there's one insect I can't abide, it's the mosquito.
Says Alan Savage slyly, engrossed in cutting his food on his plate, That's probably because you haven't had much experience with the bedbug, Father.
Graice hears missis Savage's intake of breath. Tactfully, no one pursues the subject.
Instead, there's talk of sailing on Skaneateles Lake, the most beautiful of the Finger Lakes, where motorboats are forbidden; and the local summer stock production of Porgy and Bess, which is so moving and authentic seeming; and the Moscow Washington, D. C. the lephone hot line installed this very day in the hope of preventing an accidental nuclear war Which doesn't prevent the possibility of a deliberate nuclear war, doctor Savage wryly observes ; and the wayward manners of a prominent resident sheepdog; and since Alan Savage is newly re turned from Europe there is a good deal of talk reminiscing, speculative, complainingof Europe; and there are discreet inquiries into missis Savage's health and Alan Savage's future plans he'll be dividing his time between Syracuse and New York, completing his re search on the Surrealist artist Man Ray primarily, visiting Boston too, and the Rare Book and Manu script Library at Yale ; and Byron Savage's future plans he'll be on sabbatical from Syracuse University but he will continue to edit The Journal of art and Aesthetics between trips to London for purposes of research and his lectures on Constable at the Courtauld Institute ; there is a generalized lament for the passing of summer.
the fact of cooler nights, the scent of autumn, the approach of winter.
Conversation rippling and rhythmic as music, and a celebratory air beneath itthough what, at such times, is being celebrated? Graice Courtney wonders.
She's happy, she's hardly listening. Candlelight blazing in her eyes.
Seated beside doctor Savage on her left and a middle aged man named Flann or Flynn on her right, almost directly across from
Alan Savage, who in this dreamy muted light more clearly re seen bles his mother than he had outdoors on the lawn, and many times during the ninety minute meal Graice feels his eyes shift onto her.
hook onto her. Though he doesn't in fact address her directly at all.
And she lifts her gaze to his and smiles.
Thinking calmly, You're the one.
Her heart beating calmly against her ribs, You're the one.
She sees that the son lacks the father's spirit, yes, she perceives that at once; very likely he lacks the mother's warmth too, that can't be helped. But he's an attractive man. His hair curling over his shirt collar, his skeptical smile, slender shoulders, preoccupied air, brusque at times, yet kindly. yes, Graice is certain that Alan Savage is kindly, in his heart.
missis Savage's word for him is sweet.
It's a word missis Savage employs as the highest praise: sweet.
Graice wonders if she, Graice Courtney, has been described to Alan Savage as sweet.
Thinks Graice, smiling, Am I sweet?
It's memory, or is it fantasy, the way Jinx Fairchild cupped her breasts in his hands, kissed and sucked at the nipples, in play, only in play, Mmmmmmmm, little sweetheart! he'd said. But only in play.
White titties. Black nigger cock.
Only in play.
Graice Courtney has been quiet, though giving every appearance of listening attentively to her elders, listening and laughing and wonderfully absorbed, so like Gwendolyn Savage in this respect, so feminine. She wears crimson lipstick for these occasions, and it suits her. Powders her face with a pale apricot powder, and it suits her.
Jewels for eyes. Fragrance behind each ear. A ready smile, intel ligent sense of humor. She knows she's approved of, otherwise she would not be a guest at this table to which Persia Courtney in all the beauty and charm of her youth would never never never have been invited.
Seeing that Graice hasn't been actively involved in any conversation, missis Savage adroitly draws her out, as missis Savage never fails to do, and there's talk for a brief while of Graice's course work at the university, and is she going to continue to live in that dreary place on Salina Street missis Savage has seen the rooming house from the street , and does she like Skaneateles. it is beautiful, isn't it; the Savages have been coming here for thirty years. Graice agrees that the lake is beautiful. Graice says that the lake is the most beautiful lake she has ever seen. One of the other guests, a stocky middle aged woman with a braid down her back, a summer artist as she calls herself, tells a story of a tragic sailing accident here some summers ago, two young people drowning in a sudden gale, and after a pause Graice Courtney speaks of a tragic boating accident when she was a small child. Her father was involved in local Hammond politics, and the Hammond mayor took a number of his friends and their families out on his yacht, on the Erie Canal, and somehow, Graice isn't quite sure how, it happened that a boy fell over the side and drowneda re d haired boy she remembers distinctly, about eleven years oldmaybe in fact the boy had meant to swim from the side of the yacht; maybe the yacht was docked and most of the adults had gone ashore, Graice can't re member the details. She has no idea why she is telling the Savages and their guests this story but she's speaking rapidly, breathlessly now, sweat breaking out on her forehead and in her armpits. a strange quavering to her voice like the quavering of candle flame. and it's the re flection of candle flame in the glass topped table she's staring at, saying she was too young she can't re member her only clear memory of that day is the sight of the red haired boy's body being lifted from the water, the way the earthen colored water streamed from him, making his features look for a moment or two almost as if he were alive.
She hears her voice rapid and headlong, unable to stop.
Though she knows these people, these strangers, are staring at her, perplexed.
You don't forget. Some things you see, you're a witness to, you never forget. Even if there's no Her voice wavers and goes out, her mind too seems to have gone blank.
She senses in a panic that doctor Savage and missis Savage who are so fond of her are exchanging a startled glance, that she has backed herself into a corner, embarrassing her listeners, and, summoning up her ingenuity, she shakes her head as if she too is perplexed, laughs, makes a joke of it, saying, with just the right degree of appeal and helplessness, Which is why, I think, I never learned to swim. I'm afraid of the water and I never learned to swim.
Both Byron Savage and Alan Savage say, at once, I'll teach you.
Says Graice Courtney, laying down her napkin and rising quickly from her chair when the black woman appears, Now, missis Savage, let me, and in her role as convalescent missis Savage acquiesces with a weak, pleased smile; by this time Graice Courtney is so much a part of the family it seems quite natural for her to help out with a meal now and then in missis Savage's place.
In the kitchen Graice says to the black woman, It's always so friendly at the Savages', isn't it? and the black woman nods emphatically, Yes'm, sure is, the gold filling winking between her two front teeth, and Graice says uncertainly, You're from Syracuse?
and the woman says, Yes'm, I am, as they stack dishes in the sink, set out cups and saucers on a tray, and Graice has something further to say but suddenly can't re member what it is, she's aware of the black woman watching her out of the corner of her eye, a certain tension between them, the black woman is solid, slender, about forty years of age, beautiful purplish black skin like Jinx Fairchild's and, like his, scintillating with myriad pinpoints of light. Graice Courtney has something further to say or to ask but she can't re member and in any case there's no time to waste; the coffeepot is percolating, a rich luscious coffee aroma fills the kitchen.
The candles have burnt to a quarter of their original lengths but the moths continue to throw themselves against the screen, soft pings!
barely audible against the saw notched singing of the crickets.
There's a breeze bearing a chill up from the lake. A frank smell of autumn.
Says Alan Savage, who has been asked about his work by the woman with the braid down her back, Art is art for a specific time and a specific place; art lor all the ages' is bogus, and as he speaks in his carefully modulated voice in which Graice Courtney can hear, so very subtly, the cadences of North Carolina, Byron Savage begins to clear his throat with more and more force, and drums his fingers on the edge of the glass table with more and more impatience, until, when Alan says, As Man Ray says, what is art but the giving of restlessness a material form,' doctor Savage suddenly explodes, saying, I hope art is more than that! More transcendent, I hope, than that! Mere nerves!
Mere twitches!
There follow then some minutes of sharp disagreement between father and son, and missis Savage who has been looking very tired now looks very upset, and the woman with the braid down her back tries humorously to intervene but without success, and finally, after a virtual monologue by doctor Savage the substance of which Graice Courtney has heard many times, in different forms, Alan Savage laughs and says, addressing Graice, The Surrealists believed that personal history is irrelevant, your family background, childhood, all that's merely personal; they believed you must erase the past and begin at zero, and you can see the logic ofit, can't you, Graice? At such times?
Graice Courtney sits staring, wordless. For the first time since her arrival at Skaneateles Lake she cannot think of a re ply.
Graice! Where are you going?
Downstairs in the cavernous foyer the floor is fake marble and polished to a cheap sheen; upstairs the corridors are laid with carpets no color and ratty with age.
It's all interior. Windowless. A sharp medicinal odor to the air.
Rows of office doors stretching out of sight. opaque glass in the doors. names painted in uniform black letters with the initials M.
D.
or D. D. S. after them.
And the tremulous fluorescent tubing overhead.
Graice, come back!
Suddenly she's running. For no reason she's running.
snatches her hand out of Persia's hand. runs. Though the dentist's office is on the twelfth floor and the elevator has stopped at the seventh and each previous time she's been brought uptown to this place she's been subdued and docile, a good girl, suddenly she snatches her damp hand out of Persia's and runs breathless and giggling knowing that Persia will chase her. except this time Persia doesn't.
She runs partway down the corridor; she stops, looking over her shoulder expecting Persia hot eyed and furious to be hurrying after her, running awkwardly in her high heels, that grim look to her mother's pretty mouth that can be so hilariously funny though it presages a scolding and maybe a slapping, but this time Persia isn't following after her; Graice stands paralyzed staring in disbelief and horror as her mother re mains in the elevator unmoving. her face cold and indifferent as a stranger's.