Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

Suddenly.

“Mom!”

His father was going over the side.

“Mom, he’s caught in the—”

“What? What is it?”

“The rope! The rope! The rope!”

The scream hung on the silent shimmering air, the single word echoing and re-echoing across the lake, the rope, the rope, the rope, the rope, assaulting his ears in waves of echoed sound. He held the binoculars tight because all reality was suddenly imprisoned in the circle of their focus, there was nothing real except in the twin tubes he held in his hands, reflected in the lens, the shouted word died out, and through the binoculars he watched the lake, waiting for his father to surface, waiting, waiting, he could hear the ticking of the watch on his wrist, loud in the sudden terrifying silence.

“ Dad! ” he shrieked.

He was running toward the lake front. He had thrown away the binoculars, and he was running now, his heart hammering in his chest. He felt the water touch his trousers. I’m wearing sneakers, he thought, and he made a shallow dive, his arms thrashing immediately, his legs wildly kicking as he swam toward the boat and the widening circle of ripples on the water.

The boat was so far away.

He was crying when he reached it. The tears ran down his face, and his arms and legs were weak, and he trembled with exhaustion, and he repeated over and over again to the awful red hat floating on the water, “Dad, Dad, Dad...”

It was not very long before George Devereaux discovered he hated David Regan. The idea did not surprise him. He accepted it calmly and even recognized that the hatred had possibly been there from the very beginning, a thing that had been growing steadily over the months. He knew, too, that he was acting somewhat childishly in expecting David to meet impossible standards, but the childishness did not disturb him. He did wonder about it, though. He was, after all, thirty-six years old, and he had been disappointed by students before. But if the boy had no talent, why had he put him through the ordeal of a rewrite? Why, indeed, even though his original premise had been strengthened, did he still persist in asking for more revisions on the same terrible story?

He has to be punished, Devereaux thought.

But he would not leave it at that. He was an intelligent, educated man and he wanted to know why David had to be punished. So he turned the question inward, and the answer he found was He has to be punished because he has to be punished . He has to be punished because he fooled me. But I’ve been fooled before; I have singled out a student and come up with a dud. Why does this boy have to be punished? Why am I behaving so childishly? He has to be punished, all right, admit it, he has to be punished because I made a mistake, yes, that is why. I’ve been away from teaching for too long a time. Maybe I’m losing my touch, my grasp. Maybe all this naval-communications bull is beginning to suffocate me. Maybe I don’t know a good story from a bad one any more. He has to be punished because he has taught me I’m getting rusty, that’s absurd.

He recognized the absurdity at once.

He was certainly not putting the boy through the ordeal of constantly rewriting a story about his own father’s drowning simply because he was beginning to doubt his own professionalism. That was specious reasoning, and George Devereaux was too honest to allow it to pass unchallenged. And so, as the revisions progressed, he continued to probe his own motives more deeply, and he finally concluded that he missed his students, that was it. And, because he missed them, he was elevating David Regan to the position where he represented all students; he was trying to make him the embodiment of every good student he’d ever had, a role David could never possibly fill. But that was all; that was the only reason. He missed his students.

And then he began wondering which of the students he missed particularly, and he began to call up names and faces, and he began to remember excellent stories that had been submitted in his classes, and he began to remember the wonderful quadrangles of the U.C.L.A. campus, and the young coeds in sweaters and skirts, fresh-looking, carrying their books to class, stopping to chat with fellow students, always in the casual postures of the very young, Ardis Fletcher, the entrance gates to the univer...

He caught himself and quickly said to himself, I’m thirty-six years old with a pregnant wife and an eight-year-old son, cut it out.

But the name came into his mind again, Ardis Fletcher, and with the name a flood of coed memories, those sweet fresh faces in his classroom hanging on his every word, Ardis Fletcher, so innocent those faces, he would quirk his eyebrows purposely and twist his mouth into an enigmatic little grin, he would deliver his lecture to each and every one of them personally. “He makes you feel as if he’s talking to you alone, doesn’t he?” he had overheard one of his students say, Ardis Fletcher, I’m thirty-six years old, my wife’s name is Abby, she is pregnant, I have an eight-year-old son.

He realized, without shock — it was amazing how none of these revelations seemed to shock him, he accepted them quite calmly, as if he had known them all along — he realized that perhaps he did miss his female students more than he missed any of the male students, well, perhaps he did play up a little to the girls in class, but that was only natural. He was only human, and there was something terribly gratifying to one’s ego, all those sweet clean-scrubbed faces and those innocent eyes searching, so what if he did become a somewhat vain male at times, what if he did assume the role of a freshman matinee idol, even Abby said he had bedroom eyes, what was wrong with that, so long as he never touched any of them. Except that once. And even that was not my fault and not as if I actually touched her, she only rested her, it was quite casual, on my arm, a gentle soft touch, she wasn’t even aware, cushioned by the wool of her sweater, on my arm, how soft, how young, “Yes, Mr. Devereaux, I understand, but I thought I covered that in the second paragraph, here, do you see, here,” how soft, but he had not touched her, not really.

Her name... he had forgotten her name, it was not at all like Fletcher, not anywhere near Fletcher, nor was she a redhead. Black hair, he could remember that well, falling in a hanging curtain over one eye as she leaned over the desk, soft against his arm, he could remember, not a redhead, Alice, yes, that was it, Alice.

And he sighed and admitted that possibly, just possibly, the letters from Regan to the girl in Talmadge had only possibly reminded him of a life he had loved, yes, of course, the campus and the pretty young girls and the balmy California air, Alice, yes, all right, even Alice, all those things, the letters from Regan had recaptured for him a youthful recklessness he once had known, that was all, and so he’d naturally been impressed, the letters were quite vivid, quite a good style the boy had, I wasn’t interested in content, Regan. I was only interested in style . Face to face with it, now, he asked himself whether this was true, and he knew it was not. I should have, he thought, but she was such a child, and yet she was not unaware, I should have, that was no accident, the pressure against my arm. I should have, I should have!

So.

He sat in his cabin and stared at the gray bulkhead and thought, So. So let the boy go. Let him alone. What did he do? Knock over a roundheeled kid in Connecticut? Let him go. Let him go

But he was still angry.

He was angry because he had recognized something about himself, and the knowledge was somewhat painful. And he was further angered because he believed that David, no matter how much anguish the revisions brought on, could not possibly be in as much pain as he was in at this moment. It seemed terribly unfair to him. Unfair that this kid with peach fuzz on his face could have this sweet ripe Ardis Fletcher in Connecticut, and unfair that this encounter, which he had provoked with his letters, should leave him relatively unscathed while it was causing his instructor such pain. Oh, what the hell, I’ve been in the Pacific too long, he thought; eight months is too long a time, I’m not thinking clearly. I’ll tell Regan tomorrow that his story stinks to high heaven and will he please stop bothering me with it.