Mrs. Givings, sitting tense as a coiled snake on the edge of the sofa, gently closed her eyes and wanted to die. Sherry in a highball glass! His cap on the bookshelf—oh, and those
clothes. W
eek after week she brought him clothes of his own to wear—good shirts and trousers, his fine old tweed jacket with the leather elbows, his cashmere sweater—and still he insisted on dressing up in these hospital things. He did it for spite. And this dreadful rudeness! And why was Howard always, always so useless at times like this? Sitting there smiling and blinking in the corner like an old—oh God, why didn't he
help
? "Oh, this is lovely, April, thanks so much," she said, tremulously lifting a sherry glass from the tray. "Oh, and look at this magnificent
food
!" She drew back in mock disbelief at the platter of small, crustless sandwiches that April had made and cut that morning. "You
really
shouldn't have gone to all this bother for us." John Givings took two sips of his drink and left it standing on the bookcase for the rest of the visit. But he ate half the plate of sandwiches as he restlessly patrolled the room, taking three or four at a time and wolfing them down while breathing audibly through his nose. Mrs. Givings managed to hold the floor for a few minutes, talking steadily, making such smooth elisions between one sentence and the next as to leave no opening for interruption. She was trying to filibuster the afternoon away. Had the Wheelers heard the latest ruling of the zoning board? Personally she considered it an outrage; still, she supposed it would ultimately bring the tax rate down, and that was always a blessing . . .
Howard Givings, sleepily nibbling a sandwich, kept a watchful eye on his son's every action during this monologue; he might have been a benign old nursemaid in the park, making sure the youngster stayed out of mischief.
John watched his mother, head cocked to one side, and when he had swallowed his last mouthful he cut her off in mid-sentence.
"You a lawyer, Frank?"
"Me? A lawyer? No. Why?"
"Hoping you might be, is all. I could use a lawyer. Whaddya do, then? Advertising man, or what?"
"No. I work for Knox Business Machines."
"Whaddya do there? You design the machines, or make them, or sell them, or repair them, or what?"
"Sort of help sell them, I guess. I don't really have much to do with the machines themselves; I work in the office. Actually it's sort of a stupid job. I mean there's nothing— you know, interesting about it, or anything."
"' Interesting'?" John Givings seemed offended by the word. "You worry about whether a job is 'interesting' or not? I thought only women did that. Women and boys. Didn't have you figured that way."
"Oh,
look,
the sun's coming out!" Mrs. Givings cried. She jumped up, went to the picture window and peered through it, her back very rigid. "Maybe we'll see a rainbow. Wouldn't that be lovely?"
The skin at the back of Frank's neck was prickling with annoyance. "All I meant," he explained, "is that I don't like the job and never have."
"Whaddya do it for, then? Oh, okay, okay—" John Givings ducked his head and weakly raised one hand as if in a hopeless attempt to ward off the bludgeon of public chastisement. "Okay; I know; it's none of my business. This is what old Helen calls Being Tactless, Dear. That's my trouble, you see; always has been. Forget I said it. You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very
nice
house, very
sweet
house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me buddy you've got nothing to apologize for. Anybody comes along and says 'Whaddya do it for?' you can be pretty sure he's on a four-hour pass from the State funny-farm; all agreed. Are we all agreed there, Helen?"
"Oh look, there
is
a rainbow," Mrs. Givings said, "—or no, wait, I guess it isn't—oh, but it's perfectly lovely in the sunshine. Why don't we all take a walk?"
"As a matter of fact," Frank said, "you've pretty well put your finger on it, John. I agree with everything you said just now. We both do. That's why I'm quitting the job in the fall and that's why we're taking off."
John Givings looked incredulously from Frank to April and back again. "Yeah? Taking off where? Oh, hey, yeah, wait a minute—she did say something about that. You're going to Europe, right? Yeah, I remember. She didn't say why, though; she just said it was 'very strange.' " And all at once he split the air—very nearly split the house, it seemed—with a bray of laughter. "Hey, how about that, Ma? Still seem 'very strange' to you? Huh?"
"Steady down, now," Howard Givings said gently from his corner. "Steady down, son."
But John ignored him.
"Boy!" he shouted. "Boy, I bet this whole conversation seems very,
very
strange to you, huh, Ma?"
They had grown so used to the bright, chirping sound of Mrs. Givings's voice that day that her next words came as a shock, addressed to the picture window and spoken in a wretchedly tight, moist whimper: "Oh John, please stop."
Howard Givings got up and shuffled across the room to her. One of his white, liver-spotted hands made a motion as if to touch her, but he seemed to think better of it and the hand dropped again. They stood close together, looking out the window; it was hard to tell whether they were whispering together or not. Watching them, John's face was still ebullient with the remnants of his laughter.
"Look," Frank said uneasily, "maybe we
ought
to take a walk or something." And April said, "Yes, let's."
"Tell you what," John Givings said. "Why don't the three of us take a walk, and the folks can stay here and wait for their rainbow. Ease the old tension all around."
He loped across the carpet to retrieve his cap, and on the way back he veered sharply with an almost spastic movement to the place where his parents stood, his right fist describing a wide, rapid arc toward his mother's shoulder. Howard Givings saw it coming and his glasses flashed in fright for an instant, but there was no time to interfere before the fist landed—not in a blow but in a pulled-back, soft, affectionate cuffing against the cloth of her dress.
"See you later, then, Ma," he said. "Stay as sweet as you are."
Up in the woods behind the house, steaming in the sun, the newly rainwashed earth gave off an invigorating fragrance. The Wheelers and their guest, relaxing in an unexpected sense of cameraderie, had to walk single file on the hill and pick their way carefully among the trees; the slightest nudge of an overhanging branch brought down a shower of raindrops, and the glistening bark of passing twigs was apt to leave grainy black smears on their clothing.
After a while they quit the woods and walked slowly around the back yard. The men did most of the talking; April listened, staying close to Frank's arm, and more than once he noticed, glancing down at her, that her eyes were bright with what looked like admiration for the things he was saying.
The practical side of the Europe plan didn't seem to interest John Givings, but he was full of persistent questions about their reasons for going; and once, when Frank said something about "the hopeless emptiness of everything in this country," he came to a stop on the grass and looked thunderstruck.
"Wow," he said. "Now you've said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out where I used to work, on the Coast, that's all we ever talked about. We'd sit around talking about emptiness all night. Nobody ever said 'hopeless,' though; that's where we'd chicken out. Because maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness. And I guess when you do see the hopelessness, that's when there's nothing to do but take off. If you can."
"Maybe so," Frank said. But he was beginning to feel uncomfortable again; it was time to change the subject. "I hear you're a mathematician."
"You hear wrong. Taught it for a while, that's all. Anyway, it's all gone now. You know what electrical shock treatments are? Because you see, the past couple months I've had thirty-five—or no, wait—thirty-seven—" He squinted at the sky with a vacant look, trying to remember the number. In the sunlight, Frank noticed for the first time that the creases in his cheeks were really the scars of a surgeon's lancet, and that other areas of his face were blotched and tough with scar tissue. At one time in his life his face had probably been a mass of boils or cists. "—thirty-seven electrical shock treatments. The idea is to jolt all the emotional problems out of your mind, you see, but in my case they had a different effect. Jolted out all the God damned mathematics. Whole subject's a total blank."
"How awful," April said.
" ' How awful.' "
John Givings mimicked her in a mincing, effeminate voice and then turned on her with a challenging smirk. "Why?" he demanded. "Because mathematics is so 'interesting'?"
"No," she said. "Because the shocks must be awful and because it's awful for anybody to forget something they want to remember. As a matter of fact I think mathematics must be very dull."
He stared at her for a long time, and nodded with approval. "I like your girl, Wheeler," he announced at last. "I get the feeling she's female. You know what the difference between female and feminine is? Huh? Well, here's a hint: a feminine woman never laughs out loud and always shaves her armpits. Old Helen in there is feminine as hell. I've only met about half a dozen females in my life, and I think you got one of them here. Course, come to think of it, that figures. I get the feeling you're male. There aren't too many males around, either."
Mrs. Givings, covertly watching them from the house, didn't quite know what to think. She was still shaken— the beginning of the afternoon had been worse than the worst of her fears—but she had to admit that John had seldom looked happier and more relaxed than he did now, strolling and chatting in the Wheelers' back yard. And the Wheelers looked comfortable too, which was even more surprising.
"They do seem to—to like him, don't they?" she said to Howard, who was picking through the Wheelers' Sunday
Times.
"Mm," he said. "You shouldn't get so nervous about these things, Helen. Why don't you just relax when they come back, and let them do the talking?"
"Oh, I know," she said. "I know, you're right. That's what I ought to do."
And she did, and it worked. For the last hour of the visit, while everyone but John had another glass of wine, she scarcely said a word. She and Howard sat benignly in the background of the young people's conversation, a peaceful medley of voices in which John's voice was never once more raucous than the others. They were reminiscing about the children's radio programs of the nineteen-thirties.
"' Bobby Benson,'" Frank was saying. "Bobby Benson of the H-Bar-O Ranch; I always liked him. I think he came on just before 'Little Orphan Annie.' "
"Oh, and 'Jack Armstrong,' of course," April said, "and 'The Shadow,' and that other mystery one—something about a bee? 'The Green Hornet."
"No, but 'The Green Hornet' was later," John said. "That was still going in the forties. I mean the real wayback ones; thirty-five and six, along in there. Remember the one about the naval officer? What was his name? Used to come on right about this time? On week days?"
"Oh yes," April said. "Wait a minute—'Don Winslow.' "
"Right! 'Don Winslow of the United States Navy.' "
It wasn't at all the kind of topic Mrs. Givings would have thought they'd discuss, but they all seemed to enjoy it; the sound of their easy, nostalgic laughter filled her with pleasure, and so did the taste of her sherry, and so did the sherry-colored squares of sunset on the wall, each square alive with the nodding shadows of leaves and branches stirred by the wind.
"Oh, this has been such fun," she said when it was time to go, and for a second she was afraid John might turn on her and say something awful, but he didn't. He was talking and shaking hands with Frank, and the party broke up in the driveway with a chorus of regrets and good wishes and promises to see each other soon.
"You were wonderful," April said when the car had disappeared. "The way you handled him! I don't know what I'd ever have done if you hadn't been here."
Frank reached for the sherry bottle, but changed his mind and got out the whiskey instead. He felt he deserved it. "Hell, it wasn't a question of 'handling' him," he said. "I just treated him like anyone else, is all."
"But that's what I mean—that's what was so wonderful. I would've treated him like an animal in the zoo or something, the way Helen does. Wasn't it funny how much more sane he seemed once we got him away from her? And he's sort of nice, isn't he?
And
intelligent. I thought some of the things he said were sort of brilliant."
"Mm."
"He certainly did seem to sort of approve of us, didn't he? Wasn't that nice about 'male' and 'female'? And do you know something, Frank? He's the first person who's really seemed to know what we're talking about."
"That's true." He took a deep drink, standing at the picture window and watching the last of the sunset. "I guess that means we're as crazy as he is."
She came up close behind him and put her arms around his chest, nestling her head against his shoulder blade. "I don't care if we are," she said. "Do you?"
"No."
But he had begun to feel depressed in a way that couldn't be attributed to ordinary Sunday-evening sadness. This odd, exhilarating day was over, and now in the fading light he could see that it had only been a momentary respite from the tension that had harried him all week. He could feel the resumption of it now, despite the reassurance of her clinging at his back—a dread, a constricting heaviness of spirit, a foreboding of some imminent, unavoidable loss.
And he was gradually aware that she felt it too: there was a certain stiffness in the way she was holding him, a suggestion of effort to achieve the effect of spontaneity, as though she knew that a nestling of the shoulder blade was in order and was doing her best to meet the specifications. They stood that way for a long time.