Evan Hunter - Sons

“Why are you so late?” I asked her.

“I ran into someone.”

“Who?”

“An old friend.”

“Where?”

“In Boston, where do you think? My God, Wat, it’s only...”

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I wasn’t anywhere near a phone.”

“Well, where, what do you mean, there’re phones all over Boston, how could you possibly not be anywhere near a phone? Didn’t you know I’d be worrying?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Well, I was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Where were you?”

“By the river.”

“What river?”

“There’s only one undergraduate river in Boston, which river do you think?”

“I’m not that goddamn familiar with Boston.”

“The Charles,” Dana said softly.

“With who, whom?”

“With Max.”

(The close shot of Wat Tyler’s eyes reveals jealousy, fury, fear, unreasoning black rage, all represented by a superimposed fireworks display erupting in each pupil. The soundtrack features his harsh breathing. The Stones’s “Satisfaction” has segued into The Yardbirds’ “I’m a Man.” It is wintertime in the film, the window behind Wat Tyler is rimed with frost, there is the distant jingle of Dr. Zhivago sleigh bells on the icebound street outside. In the room it is May and Lenny Samalson has put flowered Bonwit Teller sheets on the bed in celebration of spring, but it is a dank winter in Wat Tyler’s mind; her body will hardly have deteriorated at all when they find it naked in the snow a week from now.)

“Max,” I repeated.

“Yes. Max.”

“You ran into him.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I didn’t exactly run into him. He called.”

“When?”

“This afternoon. I went back to the dorm to pick up my bag, and Max called.”

“To say what?”

“To say how was I, and it had been a long time, and all that.”

“So how’d you end up by the river?”

“He said he had a few minutes and would I like to go for a walk or something? So I said I was on my way to catch the train to Providence, and he said Oh, in that case. So I felt sorry for him and I said Okay I’ll take a walk with you, Max.”

“So you went by the river for a few minutes, and now it’s ten o’clock at night when you should have been here by six-thirty.”

“We didn’t stay by the river.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Wat, I’m very tired. I really would like to put on my nightgown and go to bed. Can’t this wait until morning? Nothing so terrible happened, believe me.”

“What did happen?”

“We went up to Max’s room, and we had a drink.”

“And then what?”

“And then we had another drink.”

“Did he try to lay you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you let him?”

“No.”

“Why’d you go up there, Dana? Didn’t you know he’d try?”

“No, I didn’t know he’d try. I wanted to see if he’d try.”

“You were sleeping with the guy for a month before we met, did you expect him to get you up in his room and discuss the weather?”

“I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t seen him since December, when we ended it, and I was surprised when he called and... I was curious, all right? I wanted to see.”

“See what?”

“I wanted to see if... there was anything there any more.”

“What did you expect to be there?”

“Damn you, Wat, I loved him once!”

“The way you love me.”

“Yes. No. Right now, I hate you.”

“Why? Because I don’t like you kissing around with your discarded boyfriends?”

“We didn’t... oh, all right, yes, he kissed me, all right? He kissed me several times, all right?”

“Good old trustworthy Max.”

“You’re a riot, do you know that? You even expect Max to be faithful to you!”

“I expect Max to get run over by a bus!”

“Go make a little doll, why don’t you?”

“I’ll make two while I’m at it.”

(The image on the screen, the Victorian strait-laced stuffy impossible image of Walter Tyler, Esquire, is amusing even to himself. He cannot believe the soundtrack, he cannot believe that these words are issuing from his mouth, and yet the camera never lies, and he can see his lips moving, he can hear the words tumbling sternly from his prudishly puckered mouth, what docs he expect from her?)

“I expected more from you.”

“More? Than what?”

“Than... whatever you want to call it. An adventure in some guy’s room. Kissing you and... getting you drunk...”

“Oh, crap. Wat, I’m not drunk. Do I look drunk?”

“You look like a cheap cunt.”

“Thank you,” she said, and rose suddenly and swiftly from the bed, and walked immediately to the lone dresser in the room where she began pulling out slips and bras and nightgowns and stockings, flapping each garment angrily into the air like a battle Hag.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I said.

(The words are familiar and clichéd, they suddenly reduce this love affair to the absurd, taking from it even its dullness, its lack of uniqueness. His face in closeup is clichéd, too, it expresses the emotional range of a stock company James Garner. He looks by turn indignant, terrified, self-righteous, and a trifle ill.)

“I’m going back to Boston,” Dana said.

“You just got here,” I said.

“Yes, and I’ll get back, too.”

“I thought you loved me.”

“You don’t own me,” Dana said.

“I don’t own you. but I thought you loved me.”

“I do love you, but you don’t own me.”

“Well, stop flapping your goddamn clothes around like that.”

“They’re my clothes, I’ll flap them however the hell I want to flap them, you silly bastard,” she said, and burst out laughing.

In bed there was no quarrel, there was never any quarrel.

(There is no film, either. There is no second Wat Tyler when he is in bed with her, no alter ego, no schizophrenic super-image hovering somewhere in the air-conditioned spectator darkness.)

The long limp line of her lying still and spent against the rumpled sheet.

I came out of the bathroom and was surprised anew by her, each fresh glimpse a discovery. One arm raised above her head, elbow bent, hand dangling, she lay on her side with eyes closed and lips slightly parted, distant, oh so distant from me and the apartment and Providence and the world, cloistered in whatever sun-dappled female glade we had led her to together. I stood with the bathroom door ajar behind me, one hand still on the knob, and watched her quietly, and knew something of her selfsame mood, felt it touch me from across the room to include me in a sweet and silent private peace.

The first time she blew me, I yelled when I came and the guy next door banged on the wall.

“Who taught you that?” I whispered later. “Max?”

“Oh no, sir,” she said. “That was my very first time.”

“Sure,” I said and smiled. Max could not have mattered less. We were still discovering each other, Dana and I. We were falling in love over and over and over again.

Dear Will,

I met a girl last night who said she knew you. (Actually, what she said was “Your brother and I are acquainted.”) Anyway, I gave her your address, and she said she might write. Her name is Margie Penner, are you “acquainted”? She seemed a bit fast, brother dear.

So now what? I swear, Will, I’m having the darndest time trying to keep up with your meanderings. You left Mississippi on the sixth of May, and this is only June 11th, so I guess you’re still in California. But when do you go into the pilot pool, and where is the pilot pool (Are enlisted men allowed to swim with you guys, hee-hee) and does this mean you’ll be going overseas before long? (Daddy says I shouldn’t ask you about when you’re going overseas because you can’t answer me, anyway, but how about a little hint, huh?)