The Fundamentals of Play Page 23

  CHAPTER 20

  It was the last weekend of May when Nicko found out he wasn’t going to be asked back, the school’s way of intimating that he had flunked out. They decided to let him sail that weekend anyway. It was the last regatta of the season—the high school team-racing championships—and he could go home afterward; it was the least they could do.

  The championships were in Newport that year. I had not been there since I was little, and I have returned only when circumstances have made it unavoidable. Once, in college, my girlfriend Ann Callow wanted to see the Astor mansion for a paper she was writing on the architecture of the Gilded Age. I drove her there and I sat in the car. I have never hated a town in quite the same way I hate Newport. I hate the crowds and the cruising Camaros and the ice cream stands and the fudge and T-shirt “shoppes,” and the cigarette butts that line the cliffs around the mansions; but I hate the mansions, too. I used to muse about the source of my intense dislike, until one day I overheard Robbins telling somebody that Newport was the best town in New England for summer nightlife, and I knew at once why I cannot stomach that town: Newport doesn’t belong where it is. The town has nothing to do with New England; it is like a girl who affects artlessness. It ought to be called New York Port. I met Kate in Massachusetts, in corduroys and Bean boots, and I always associated her with the northern virtues of cold, because the first thing I knew about her was that she spent her summers in Maine. And I often tried to forget that I’d seen her once in Newport, Rhode Island, in gold lamé.

  They put us up in the barracks at Fort Adams. We were winning after the first day, and Mr. Tompkins took everybody out to dinner after we put the boats away for the night. Tompkins felt so bad about Nick’s getting kicked out, and so sorry for himself that the sailing team was going to go down the drain, that he bought Nick his own beer and gave Kate sips of his daiquiri when the waiter’s back was turned. It was a given at school that she could get away with anything. So could Nick, in a different way—at least that’s what we had thought. Boarding schools were different then; they were stricter on the surface, but nobody really cared when you broke the rules, and the last thing any self-respecting parent would have considered was a lawsuit. After dinner we were supposed to go back to Fort Adams and hang out with the other teams till lights out. But Nick slipped away while Mr. Tompkins was getting the van, and Kate slipped away with him. They went down to the piers and waited till dark, and that was the night he tried to persuade her to run away with him. They were going to go down to the Caribbean—it was just as Chat had said—and live on a boat, and get jobs down there. Flip-flops, endless summer: he had it all planned out.

  When it was over and she’d told him no, Kate sneaked into the boys’ barracks and woke me up. She told me Nick was gone. He had taken a boat and left. I remember being conscious of having to rise to an occasion, something larger than myself, and of failing miserably. I wanted to comfort her but I was so tired and so sad—and now we would lose to St. George’s for sure—that I started crying myself.

  “Shut up! Shut up, will you? Shut up!”

  “But they always beat us!” I cried. “And now they always will!”

  Kate seized me by the shoulders and shook me into a teary, frightened silence. “Who cares about a stupid sailing team!” She took a handkerchief from a little evening bag and wiped my face with two strokes. A bracelet set off the fine bone of her wrist, and I noticed she had changed her clothes since dinner. She was all dressed up in stiff, glittery garments. “Don’t you want to have fun tonight?”

  I got hold of myself and told her I did. But what if we got caught? The fear was always, always there for me. I was never not conscious of the money my parents were spending to send me to Chatham; I could not afford to get into real trouble.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Kate, derisively. “I’ve got a note from Granny.”

  We sneaked out of the barracks. Outside there was a taxi waiting. She already knew how to do things like that—how to run her life at the utmost convenience, make the taxi wait, have things delivered. We got into the backseat. Kate gave the address and, groping on the floor of the cab, produced a bottle of vodka. “Now you have to do shots till we get there,” she ordered. “To catch up.” I did a couple of shots and Kate was satisfied. She sat back against the seat. “Where are we going?” I said.

  “Granny’s,” she said. “I’ve just come from there.” She took my hand and held it.

  It was thrilling and yet too abysmally torturing to hold her hand and think of Nick. “Is Nick—?”

  “Oh, shut up about Nick! He’s gone and he’s not coming back. And it’s his fault. It’s all his fault, don’t ever forget. You can’t help people who don’t help themselves.” She snatched her hand back and tipped up the vodka bottle to drink a long shot. “You’re not allowed to mention Nick,” Kate said. “That’s the rule tonight.” As quickly as it had come, the scorn vanished from her face. She lay her head against my shoulder. She smelled lovely—expensive. “We’re almost there.”

  It was a great white house on top of a crag that jutted out above a private beach. The house had its own little guard station at the foot of the driveway, like a toll booth, with a barrier. Kate had the taxi drop us at the gate because she wanted the fun of sneaking past the guard. We ducked under the arm of the booth, and got halfway up the lawn when the man came after us with a flashlight. “Who is it? Who’s there?” “Kate!” I urged, but she wouldn’t say a word. I would be caught, blamed, dismissed—kicked out like Nick. She played every game to the death. The guard ran up and shined a flashlight in our faces. “Oh, it’s you, Katie! Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You should have recognized me, Roger,” Kate informed him.

  “Well, whyn’t you stop and say hello?”

  “I’m busy, if you must know. I’ve had a terribly busy night.”

  “You got a friend tonight, Katie?”

  “Yes! It’s my boyfriend!”

  “Your boyfriend, huh?”

  “That’s right!” Kate said, jutting out her chin.

  “Aw … well, you kids go on and have fun.”

  “ ‘You kids go on and have fun,’ ” mimicked Kate.

  We confronted the house. The first-floor windows had all been thrown open, and the synesthesia of warm light and clinking glasses and the high-pitched punctuations of laughter and the smell of the sea and the salty sea grass made me think I would forever conjure up this house, this moment, when anyone said, as Kate did presently: “It’s the first party of the summer.” Almost imperceptibly, her voice trembled when she added, “It always is.” I glanced at her curiously. Her face in the moonlight seemed to falter; she looked daunted for a moment, as if even she doubted it was hers, as if even she doubted her capacity to rise to the challenge of taking her place over the next decade.

  As we hesitated, a man and a woman emerged from the shadows of the front porch. They were in evening dress. The man lit a cigarette and leaned over the railing of the porch as he inhaled. The woman patted her hair into place, curving her neck like a swan. He made a joke out of the corner of his mouth and the woman laughed. She was silvery blond with long, thin limbs. I remember she seemed very vain to me. They both did, because they were oblivious of the sea, and of Nicko’s being out on it. When they spotted us, the woman’s face soured slightly and the man looked bored and drunk and annoyed—stupefied, rather. I felt the sick shame of the party crasher wash over me. But surely they would recognize Kate!

  But they didn’t seem to know her. And their rudeness seemed to settle something in her. Her face hardened. She tossed her head back as if to reaffirm her entitlement and led me up the steps to the porch and into the house.

  The foyer was crowded with men and women lingering or traipsing glitteringly from one room to another. I had not yet gotten my bearings when Kate whispered, “I’ll be right back!,” squeezed my hand, and was gone.

  I must have stood just inside the door for nearly half an hour. I tried to affe
ct an impatient air of annoyance. I glanced at my wrist several times (I wore no watch) and pretended that I was greatly put out by the behavior of my date—so put out, in fact, that I was not to be approached. My discomfort doubled when I surveyed the throng of people having cocktails and realized that they were far closer to my age than I’d first thought. Many of them looked to be in college or their early twenties—not the age when a fourteen-year-old is more to be indulged than ridiculed.

  When people began to eye me and whisper comments to one another, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I made blindly for a room at the end of the hallway. When I reached the threshold, however, I saw that it was a dining room and that a dinner party was going on inside it. The older crowd, it seemed: I had a flashing impression of gray hair and a silver service. I backed away and turned the corner as fast as I could. I found myself in a little alcove underneath a massive stairway, and there I resolved to hide.

  I had stood there no more than a minute or two when I heard a woman’s shoes clicking up behind me. It was too late to move, and anyway, she giggled and said, “What are you doing under there?”

  “I’m hiding,” I said.

  “I know you are.” She chuckled. “I’m going to hide with you.” And she ducked into the alcove with me.

  She was a sweet, drunk woman—a lovely woman, I saw, when I stole a glance at her face, perhaps thirty-five or forty. She had a large cocktail in one hand, which she shot out for balance as, scrunching herself under the stairs with me, she tottered and nearly fell. I put out a hand to steady her. “My husband,” the woman went on, having regained her balance, and taking a sip from the glass, “is out on the porch with Corny Murphy.”

  I considered this for a respectful moment. Then I said, “I’m George Lenhart.”

  “I know who you are.” My companion giggled. “You’re Jack’s child.”

  “Jack?” I said reluctantly. “No—I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

  The woman smiled pleasantly at me.

  “I’m a friend of Kate Goodenow’s.”

  “Goodenow! Ah-hah! One of the cousins.” She finished her drink and reached around and set the glass down on one of the steps above us. Then she ducked back in. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” I said.

  “Goodenow,” she said again. “Are you with Vivi? You can’t be with Cee Cee!”

  “No, you’re right,” I admitted. “I came with Kate.”

  “Kate?” the woman said blankly. “Oh, Kate! It’s funny,” she observed. “One never thinks of Kate.”

  This was so far from the case at school, where everyone constantly thought, talked, and wildly conjectured about Kate, that I didn’t know what to say.

  “Kate hardly ever comes down to Newport,” the woman volunteered. “And I have a pretty good idea as to why.”

  A waiter passed with a tray of cocktails. “One for me and one for you,” said my new friend. We toasted. My drink was very sweet after the straight vodka in the taxi.

  “She’s a lucky one, Kate.” That sounded more like her.

  “Yes, she is,” I agreed.

  “All the money’s Artie’s. I mean, literally every dime.”

  “Is it,” I said absently, flustered anew, because I had finished the drink in two sips and didn’t know what to do with my glass—whether to hold it and pretend to sip out of it or carelessly demand another.

  “Oh, God, yes. Viv didn’t have a cent when they got married. Not a red cent. They’ve got that house up in Maine and that’s divided three ways, and from what I heard it was practically falling into the sea when she and Artie got married.”

  “Gosh,” I said.

  “You know, people say Wills married me for my money, and I say I’d rather be married for my money and have money than marry someone with no money who—who doesn’t have any.” She paused, as if trying to understand the logic of that.

  “Of course,” I said, peering into her cleavage, which was eye level. “I mean, I can see why.” She was an awfully sweet woman.

  “But what happened to Viv would never have happened to me.”

  “Really. Why not?”

  The woman drained her glass and smiled. “Because I don’t go around screwing the townies, honey, that’s why!”

  At this point the meal in the dining room must have broken up, for there was a sound of chairs being pushed back, and people began to trickle into the hallway. A tall man with gray hair walked by us. Mortified, I shrank back as my partner-in-waiting called out to him. “Artie! Artie, come here! Look at us, we’re hiding!”

  The man stopped and looked around impatiently.

  “In here!”

  When the man saw who had called him, and whom she was with and where, the look on his face was both so contemptuous and so bored that I surprised myself by straightening up from the alcove and returning his glance with a sudden insolence of my own.

  “This is a friend of Kate’s, Artie!”

  “Are you,” said the man, turning indifferent eyes on me. “Linda, come out from there.”

  “I won’t! We like it under here, don’t we? We’re playing Sardines! You”—she tugged at my sleeve—“you come back here.”

  I hesitated a moment, but the dinner-party group had come and surrounded Mr. Goodenow. His expression changed instantly to a host’s condescension. He laughed deprecatingly at something one of the women said. He had taken less notice of me than if I had crashed his party—a real crasher, presumably, Mr. Goodenow would have taken the time to throw out.

  Watching him go, perceiving the insult through her drunkenness, my friend remarked suddenly, “You know, Viv was a goddamn little bitch to me in school!”

  “Maybe she didn’t mean to be,” I suggested, without much confidence.

  “Oh, yes, she did! She did! She hated me. Because I had sex before she did. But I don’t care. Why should I care when she got pregnant? To see her that way! To see her the way she was! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  “Is Mrs. Goodenow here tonight?” I inquired.

  “Granny’s here—it’s her birthday. If you see her, you give her a big kiss for me! Granny and I have always gotten along.”

  “I’m sorry, I meant—Kate’s mother,” I said.

  “Oh, Viv? Oh, no! Viv’s not here! Viv hates Newport. Nothing’s good enough for her but Maine. Well, you know what I say? I say Maine’s a fucking cold bore!”

  I noticed that it was quieter then. The grown-ups’ party had passed through the hallway into another room, tucked away in the bowels of the huge house. Every few minutes you would a hear a car being started and the slurred comment of revelers as it drove away.

  “That’s them going down to town,” remarked my companion, who had stopped to listen as well. “Are you going to go down?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said.

  “How old are you?” she asked suddenly. It was the first moment in our conversation that she had taken on anything remotely like a motherly air.

  “Fourteen,” I said.

  The woman nodded, looking dimly into her empty glass. “I would have liked to have children,” she whispered.

  “Maybe you still can,” I said.

  “You think so?” said my friend. “I’d give anything—anything.” We stepped from beneath the alcove into the deserted hall. “Goddamn it, Wills is still out there on the porch with Corny Murphy!”

  After Wills’s wife went off to retrieve him, I wandered through the huge house listening for Kate’s laugh. There were pockets of laughter here and there, but I had a dread of breaking in where I was not wanted, and eventually I found a small, dark library off the entrance hall. It seemed a safe enough place to wait without being noticed. I sat down on a ladylike sofa and switched on a lamp. When no one emerged from the shadows to accuse me of trespassing, I picked up the book on the coffee table and read it with all my heart. It was a history of the America’s Cup. It was actually an absorbing read, and I was well into the first chapter when I became aware that I was not al
one in the room. I heard a shifting in one of the corners, then perceived human breathing. I looked up from the book nearer to shrieking than I like to remember. The corner was dark, and so it took me a moment to make out the source of the noise. When I did, I felt foolish indeed. My companion was an old woman in a wheelchair. She had evidently slumped down—her head was bent halfway to her waist—and this had made her breath come stertorously. It was a pitiful position, not to mention untenable, and I was steeling myself to go to the woman’s aid when the door to the library opened and a nurse or a maid in a gray uniform came in. “Hello,” I said nervously.

  “Yes, hello,” she said, switching on an overhead light. “And what are you doing hiding away in here?”

  Before I could explain, the old woman started awake. Her hand gripped the side of the wheelchair. “Bea!” she murmured. “Bea!”

  “Yes, yes, I’m here,” said the maid. “I come to take you to bed.”

  “Bea!” the old woman repeated.

  “I’m here, crazy! I’m here, right in front of your face. Now, quiet down. I take you upstairs.” She moved behind the wheelchair and released the stop.

  “Where’s Arthur gone?”

  “Arthur, he go out.” The maid shared an amused look with me. “Arthur, he have fun.”

  “Where? Where did he go?”

  “Town. Everybody’s gone to town. Now you go up to bed. It’s past your bedtime.”

  The old woman frowned angrily, as if she had been duped. “Who is this boy? Who is this, Bea?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  I stood up and said, “I’m George Lenhart, ma’am.”

  “Who invited you? Are you a friend of Arthur’s?”

  “Arthur? He don’t know Arthur! He one quarter Arthur’s age!”

  “I came with Kate,” I said.

  “Kate! Where is Kate? Why didn’t Kate come and say hello to me?”

  I explained that I had lost track of her myself, a little while ago.