Evan Hunter - Sons

I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.

The wind came roaring in over the lake, blowing snow devils across the ice, and Nancy shuddered deeper into her cape, the fabric hanging in loose folds around her so that she blended with the rock, her green eyes never wandering from my face, her feet together, her muffed hands resting in her lap.

At last she said, “Bert, we hardly seem to know each other.”

I did not answer her.

“Bert,” she said, “were there other girls? French girls?”

I shook my head.

“Is it that you don’t love me any more?” She turned away suddenly and looked out over the lake. “If it’s that, you can tell me.”

“I don’t know what it is,” I said.

“Pardon?” she said, and turned swiftly toward me, her eyes brimming, and said, “I’m sorry, Bert, I didn’t mean to say that, I know you don’t like me to say that. But I... I didn’t hear you, Bert.”

“I said I don’t know what it is.”

“When I saw you at the station,” she said, “I didn’t know who you were.”

“I recognized you right away.”

“I’ve lost so much weight. I lost twelve pounds when I had the flu.”

“You look fine,” I said.

“I’m too skinny. I never did have a bosom, but now...” She shook her head. “I didn’t know who you were, and I thought to myself That isn’t Bert, that isn’t who I love. But then you kissed me and I looked up at you, and I thought, Well of course it’s him, you can cover the sky with clouds, yet still there’ll be the stars and the moon above. But now I think maybe it’s me who’s changed, maybe I’m not what you thought I was or how you imagined me to be when you were over there.”

“You’re how I imagined you to be, Nancy.”

She was about to cry. I wished she would not cry. I put my gloved hand on her shoulder and tried to tell her with a slight pressure that Please, I did not want her to cry, I was not worth crying over.

“What... what do you suppose it is, Bert?” she asked.

“Nancy,” I said, “it’s just that I don’t know where I belong any more.”

“Maybe you belong with me.”

“Nancy...”

“Because I love you.”

“Nancy, I wake up in the middle of the night, and I don’t know who I am.”

“You’re Bertram Tyler.”

“Or where I am.”

“You’re home.”

“That’s just it. I don’t feel as if I’m home.” I took a deep breath. “Nancy,” I said, “I think I want to leave Eau Fraiche.”

“All right,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, and nodded.

“But why?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Where would you go?”

“Milwaukee,” I said. “Or Paris.”

“Paris?” Nancy said, as surprised as I myself was, and then suddenly she burst out laughing. “What in the world would you do in Paris?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess I’d sit and drink wine or something,” and then I grinned, and then I began laughing, too.

“Paris,” she said, “well, well.”

Her laughter trailed. She took one hand from her muff, wiped at the corners of her eyes, and then quickly tucked it away again. We sat silently on the huge rock overlooking the frozen lake.

“Bert,” she said, “if it’s because you don’t love me, please don’t feel... please don’t go away because of that.”

“No, it isn’t that.”

“Bert,” she said, “please don’t go to Paris.”

“I wouldn’t go to Paris.”

“Please don’t go anywhere.”

“Well...”

“Without me,” she said. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “I thought...” She shook her head. “Here I am being so forward and you’ve... made all sorts of plans that don’t include me.” She readied up suddenly with one clenched hand and pressed it to her cheek. “Forgive me,” she said.

“Nancy,” I said, “I killed seven men.”

“Pardon?”

“I killed...” She lifted her face to mine, her eyes immediately seeking my lips. I took her naked hand in both my own, and very softly said, “I killed seven men.”

“Yes, Bert,” she said.

“I shot one of them in the back.”

“Yes, Bert.”

“I stole from dead soldiers. A ring from one German and a pair of boots from another. I threw away the ring.”

“Yes.”

“In a town one day, I can’t remember the name of it, we... Nancy, there were five of us on patrol, and there was this dead horse in the courtyard and a French girl standing in the doorway, and we... we took her upstairs to where one wall of the house had been blown away, and they, on a straw pallet up there, they did it to her, Nancy. J’ai treize ans! she screamed. Une vierge! But they forced her, Nance, and... I... I didn’t try to stop them, I didn’t do anything to stop them. And then we left her there and walked down the wooden steps and out into the courtyard again where the horse lay dead in bright sunshine with flies buzzing around his bleeding mouth, and a soldier named Kerry showed us a silver pendant necklace he had taken from the second bedroom upstairs where the girl’s mother was dead on the floor from the shell that had hit the house, and which he said would bring him luck, I didn’t try to stop them, I didn’t even try.”

I was out of breath. I bent and put my forehead down on Nancy’s hand. She sat unmoving.

Then she said only, “Yes, Bert.”

“Did you hear me?” I said.

“Yes, Bert,” she said. “I heard you.”

On the weekends I had to play, I would die from wanting Dana.

I had got together with three other freshmen guys at Yale, one of whom was in pre-med and who had suggested the name for the group, a great name, The Rhinoplasticians, a rhinoplastician being a doctor who docs nose bobs. We didn’t sound as great together yet as the old Dawn Patrol had, but we were getting there, and also we were beginning to play a lot of local jobs, especially at preppie parties in the vicinity, where college MEN made a big hit with all the little girls from Miss Porter’s. We usually pulled down about twenty-five bucks a man whenever we played, and we played approximately once every other weekend, which meant that I was earning between fifty and seventy-five dollars a month, more than enough to pay for the apartment in Providence. I was living on a tight allowance from my father, and I didn’t think it was fair to ask him for additional money to pay for the apartment, so the new group was a godsend. But at the same time, whenever I played to earn money to pay for the apartment, I couldn’t get up to Providence to use the apartment; it was something of a dilemma, not to mention painful besides.

The apartment belonged to a guy named Lenny Samalson, who was studying graphic design at Risdee. Lenny had a girlfriend in New York, and her name was Roxanne, and she went to Sarah Lawrence but her parents were very strict, making it necessary for Lenny to go down to the city each weekend if he wanted to see her. Roxanne lived in the same building as Dana, on Seventy-ninth and Park, and when Dana casually mentioned, you know, that it would be convenient if she and I had, you know, a place where we could be alone together on weekends, Roxanne said, Well, how about Lenny’s place in Providence? and we grabbed it. Lenny was delighted to let us have it because I paid him thirty dollars a month for using it only on weekends, and not every weekend, at that. On the other hand, we were delighted to get it because it was only two hours from New Haven and an hour from Boston, which meant that Dana and I could both leave for Providence after our respective Friday afternoon classes, and get there for dinner, by which time Lenny was already on his way to New York and the carefully guarded Roxanne, who, Dana said, had lost her virginity at the age of fourteen on the roof with the boy from 12C.