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  He went to the window and peered out at the big blue globe of light shining from the house across the street. The TV set, holding folks in thrall, like a gigantic fireplace in front of which the family gathered in a ritual of togetherness. In the olden days, before his grandparents had been born, they’d probably blown out the candles and hopped into the sack for lack of anything better to do. Which was why they’d had such big families, he figured. And the kids were put to work hoeing and butchering hogs when they were barely out of diapers. Those days appealed to him. He’d never done a hard day’s work. This summer he wanted to land a job working outdoors. Anything that might help to build up some muscle. He’d like to work on a farm, but farms were going out of style. Last year he’d lifted weights. Then he’d strained his back and wasn’t able to play football. His father’s forearms were bulging and beautiful. When he was little, he remembered stroking them, thinking of his father as a good giant. Now he was taller than his father, to his great delight, but his father still had bigger muscles. How come he hadn’t inherited any? At night he did pushups and checked the “For Sale” ads, looking for one reading, “Slightly used barbells, good condition,” but none appeared.

  His grandfather, usually a reliable purveyor of bygone customs, had told him that in days of yore, folks had huddled around the radio listening to President Roosevelt. Or, if they were Republicans and hated Roosevelt’s guts, they could tune in to Jack Benny or Fred Allen, pretty funny guys in their day. “We made our own fun in those days,” his grandfather had said, on one of his infrequent visits. “I guess you do the same, eh, John,” and he’d winked. “Times haven’t changed that much, I suspect.”

  He liked to talk to his grandfather. Grandy was a rare bird. A class act, Leslie called him. He wore a Homburg and had a pair of pearl gray spats, which he’d promised to leave to John when he died. “If and when,” Grandy had said. “I’m not ready to go yet, John. Not for a long while. There are too many things I haven’t done, places I haven’t yet seen.” Grandy was flamboyant. So was Keith. He, John Hollander, was not.

  Call me Walter Mitty.

  He turned away from the window, thinking again of Leslie. Boy, if she knew how glad he was that she was coming home. Too bad she was bringing a friend. He would’ve liked it better if she came alone. When it was just the two of them, she talked to him, really talked. He could ask her anything, tell her anything. Almost anything.

  Maybe he’d call Keith. He felt like talking. And Keith was the only person, other than Les, he could talk to without crapping around. Except Keith had said it would be better if he didn’t call. Don’t call me, I’ll call you, Keith had said, laughing because he was dead serious. No telling what might be going on over there. Better leave it alone.

  A desire for solitude followed quickly on the heels of wanting to talk. Sometimes it happened that way. He was alone, yet he wanted solitude. Odd. That’s when he went to his room. It was a lifesaver, that room. His hideaway, one of the few places where no one could get to him. Safe. Inviolable, that room. He made for it, was halfway there when he remembered his homework. He went back downstairs to get his pile of books.

  Walter Mitty indeed!

  The room had one window. The solitary pane of wobbly old glass looked out on the lawn that sloped down to the pond. Now, in late February, a thin film of green-black ice usually coated the pond’s surface, gleaming enticingly, inviting folks to try it out. Last week there’d been a few days of warm sun, almost shirt-sleeve weather. Last night it had snowed. Winter was capricious in southern Connecticut. Spring came slowly, dragging its muddy feet.

  He looked down at the pond, layered now with a dusting of last night’s snow that hid the dark ice. That’s the boy. One step. That’ll do it. Walk slow, careful now. Doesn’t even creak. Sound as a dollar. Safe as your own bed. A couple of canards, those. Not to worry.

  And the blue-eyed boy was hurled down, down into the terrible iciness that grabs the ankles and won’t let go. Three little boys, brothers, drowned last week up in New Hampshire. He watched as they pulled the bodies from the water on the six o’clock news. Three of them. A family. No more trio of stockings hung by the chimney with care. He’d closed his eyes against the sight of their mother’s face when she got the news.

  The room was nine by twelve. Tacked onto the house by some errant builder nursing a hangover, it was cozy and dark, its smallness appealing. Cobwebs festooned the low ceiling with a proprietary air, swaying in the slightest breeze like a lacy curtain. A bordello-type curtain, or what he imagined a bordello-type curtain to be. When even he couldn’t stand the room’s ambience, he cleaned, wildly wielding the mop, stiffing up dust balls the size of jumbo eggs. The sofa bed beckoned, last year’s castoff from a style-conscious neighbor. He had hauled it, with no little effort, from the Tuesday curbside trash heap before the antique dealers could get wind of it. It was definitely collectible. Thin and threadbare, it resembled nothing so much as a wrestling mat. And about as comfortable. He had dreams of wrestling there, on some hot and windless summer night, the humidity unbearable, the family away for a long weekend. If luck was really on his side, they were caught in a massive holiday traffic jam, delayed for hours. Days, even. His partner on the mat will be soft and enthusiastic, an experienced wrestler.

  Two chairs cowered in a corner, leaning against each other for support; their springs rested on the floor. This was the furniture that cluttered the room. The decor suited him. He thought of it as understated elegance.

  No one was allowed here except by invitation.

  “So this is where you hole up, is it?” His father had to stoop to enter.

  “Dad,” he heard himself say. And was unable to continue. Dad what? His mother, he knew, was responsible for this visit. “Go talk to him,” he could hear her say. “Show him you care. He’s your son, after all. Talk to him.” His mother had a way with words. It was his father’s maiden visit. First and last. They stared at each other, uncomfortable alone together, each waiting for the other to speak. His father’s eyes were the first to fall. His father, who thought of himself as fastidious, backed out at last, grossed out by the swaying cobwebs, the dense, fetid atmosphere of the place, an atmosphere that discouraged further intimacy. He thought often of that visit, that moment, wished he could call his father back, run through it again. He would handle it differently. “Sit down, Dad,” he would say, “and let’s chew the fat. Wait here and I’ll get us some grass and we can smoke and let down our hair.” His father would raise an eloquent hand, rejecting this plan. Ignoring the gesture, he would reach inside his secret cache and produce some pretty good stuff procured by Keith, and they would light up and everything would be all right between them.

  “This stuff is as good as, if not better than,” his father would say at last, relaxed, friendly, “any martini I ever had.” It was the highest form of compliment his father knew how to pay. A warm rosy glow suffused the room, their faces. Joy crowded their hearts. They were as one.

  Now he stood looking out at the willows that ringed the pond, struggling for survival. When spring stirred itself, the willows would be the first to know. And would turn pale yellow overnight in celebration.

  In summer an occasional swan, an arrogant, small schooner of a bird, sometimes established residence at the pond, advised of this place’s existence, no doubt, by some peripatetic relative with a long memory and a love of quietude. The swan, bad temper well in hand, appetite quickened by the succulent slugs that nestled under the water, was ready to bite the hand that fed it. And often did.

  He lay on the sofa bed and fished underneath with a long and dangling arm, looking for a surprise, a book he hadn’t read. He had read and reread them all many times. He kept a sizeable supply there, waiting for his attention. These books were his source of joy and wonder. His palliative.

  The arm came up with one of J. Thurber’s collections. Good. Good. He was in need of a few laughs. Somewhere, recently, he had read that laughter wakes up the mind. He believed thi
s to be true. He settled down to read. And was deep into “The Catbird Seat.” Mr. Martin had, in fact, just turned down the street on which Mrs. Ulgine Barrows lives, his pocket heavy with the unfamiliar package of cigarettes, which weighed like a small revolver, when John heard, like Radar in M*A*S*H, the family car. Or cars. His mother and father traveled in separate cars as others flew in separate planes. If an accident occurred, there would be someone left to look after the children, they reasoned. A habit started when the children were very young, it persisted, like most habits. Doubtless they would travel in separate cars when the children had flown the nest and were titans of commerce, writers of renown. He had a secret plan: when he was middle-aged, about thirty-five, he planned to find a village named Renown so he could settle there and then, when he died, his obituary could truthfully read “John Hollander, writer of Renown.”

  Quickly he doused the light. His ear was finely tuned. He hadn’t been caught with his light on in ages. He didn’t feel like answering any questions or talking to anyone right now.

  He sat in the dark listening to himself breathe. Then, silent as a cat, he crawled through the room’s opening into his own bedroom, pretending he was a second-story man, or perhaps a rapist, creeping with great cunning and boldness to the bed, prepared to place the chloroform-soaked rag over the mouth and nose of the beauty lying asleep, supine, starkers. Just as he reached out, she opened her eyes, like Snow White, and sighed, “You’ve come at last.”

  He made it to the bed, just in time. He heard footsteps coming up the stairs, down the hall, stopping outside his door. He knew they would check on him, see that he hadn’t succumbed to crib death or, worse, run off to some gin mill. He wondered if they would ever stop checking on him, and he knew they would not. When he was gray and gnarled, or bald and bulbous, however it went, they would continue to run a bed check on him. As long as they were around. Maybe he’d be one of those sons who continues to live at home well into his dotage. And theirs. The way they did in Ireland. The thought made him want to laugh out loud. But caution prevailed. He saw himself, middle-aged, querulous from dentures and/or irregularity, still having his television time rationed, his work habits overseen. If he ever went on a honeymoon, which was doubtful, they would run a bed check on him from their room next door. Of that he was sure.

  Actually, he thought, that wouldn’t make a bad skit. Middle-aged gent with extravagantly sexy bride, escorted on honeymoon by doddering parents, who made sure that everything was on the up and up.

  The door opened. His eyelids fluttered, but not unduly. He hoped she wouldn’t stand there looking at him too long. He rather liked the look of the supine and starkers beauty and was afraid his mother would frighten her off. Timing. In affairs of the flesh, as in most others, timing was all.

  The door closed. He lay rigid, waiting for the sound of silence out there.

  “He’s asleep,” he heard his father say. So. It had been his father giving him the old one-two all along, willing those fluttering eyelids to part. His father, the architect. The idea startled him into wakefulness. Long after the house had settled down for the night, creaking and groaning its tired old bones, and the beauty had picked up her marbles and gone, he lay staring at the ceiling. There was something about a dark and quiet house that made for a wakeful night. There was something decidedly unsettling about knowing his father had stood on the threshold of his room, gazing fixedly at him without a by-your-leave. It was hours, or so it seemed, before he stopped thrashing, turning, thwacking at his pillow, which unaccountably had been filled with lumps of coal when he wasn’t looking, and slept.

  2

  When he tottered downstairs the next morning, the brash sun already had the kitchen in its grasp. He kept his eyes at half-mast in an effort to shut out the glare, the brilliant colors in the wallpaper. He had a theory, well-tested, never proven, that if he stayed in a semicomatose state until he reached school, his mind would be better able to cope with what the day held.

  His mother, alas, had a theory diametrically opposed to his. Hers was the hot cereal bit. Hot cereal to warm the body, feed the brain, coat the tongue. Resolutely he picked up his spoon and, in full truck-driver crouch, attacked the bowl of lumps she’d set so proudly before him, sending clouds of steam into his face. If she ever turned out a vat of lump-free gruel, she’d feel in some small way she’d let him down.

  His mother watched him eat and thought what lovely bones he had. And his head was beautiful. Well-shaped. She loved having him around the house, even though he drove her crazy at times. He needed a new sports coat, she mused. Those sleeves barely covered his elbows.

  He looked up, caught her watching him. “Hey, Ma. Quit it. You make me nervous when you stare at me.” Her morning face was slick with moisturizer. She moisturized the bejesus out of her face ever since she’d turned forty. Locking the barn door after the horse had been stolen, she called it. Kiss her good-bye in the morning and you slid off the edge of her cheek. Her lashes, palely brown, barely discernible, lay against her face, delicate as the wings of a moth. When she was suited up to meet the world, they were thick and black and lustrous. He liked her morning face better. She seemed to him then to be less a mother, more a friend.

  “You’re getting army,” she said.

  “My arms too short to box with God,” he said.

  “I’ll have to see if I can find you a jacket at the Thrift Shop. I’m working there today. I’ll look for one.”

  “Ma,” he rolled his eyes. “One request. Lay off the Thrift Shop, okay? Those clothes you bring home from there always smell like cat.”

  “Anybody call last night?” she asked, ignoring his crack about cat smell. He knew she would buy him a jacket at the Thrift Shop, one whose sleeves grazed his knuckles. She would take it to her little man who would shorten the sleeves at great price.

  “Yeah. You did,” he said. She gave him a look. “And also my money man—my broker—and a couple of girls hit me with obscene phone calls. That’s about it.” He washed down some lumps with a swallow of milk laced with coffee and studied the ceiling, trying in vain to remember any more calls.

  “John, I can tell from your expression that someone did call. Who was it?”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot.” He took another swallow and swirled the café au lait around like mouthwash.

  “Les called,” he said as slowly as he dared.

  “I knew it!” she crowed. “What’d she want?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing much. Just checking to see how we all were. Said she wanted you to send some chocolate chip cookies.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her push up the sleeves of her bathrobe, an old one of his father’s she’d managed to shrink pretty much down to her size.

  “John, I haven’t got all day.” He could hear his father moving around upstairs.

  “She said to tell you she’s coming next week on her spring break.”

  “I thought so! Wonderful! When, exactly? Why on earth didn’t she let us know beforehand?”

  “She did. This is beforehand. She’s not coming until Sunday.” He took his cereal bowl to the sink and squirted water into it, sending the remaining lumps down the disposal, fleeing for their lives. “She’s bringing a friend.” He watched his mother’s eyes dart around the spotless kitchen, checking for pockets of filth she might’ve overlooked.

  “A friend? Who?”

  “She didn’t say and I didn’t want to pry,” he said primly. “All she said was her friend was outrageous.” Leslie had brought several young men home her first year at college and they’d been reasonably wimpy, he’d thought. Feckless, his father had called them.

  “It must be a girl,” his mother said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “If it was a man she’d say he was interesting or attractive or amusing, but she wouldn’t say ‘outrageous.’ You’re sure she didn’t say who the friend was? That’s not like Les.”

  “Nope.” There was no reason to withhold information from her. Still, he liked doin
g it, liked being the sole person in the house who knew Leslie’s friend was a girl. His father appeared in the doorway.

  “Does anyone know where my gray socks are?” His father thrust out one bare foot, giving him a significant stare. His father was paranoid about him stealing his socks. Which he did only when desperate. “I can only find one, John. Did you take any socks from my drawer?”

  “Dad,” he said, “I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing your socks.” If only the dog hadn’t died. Check the dog. He must’ve eaten it. Why don’t you order an autopsy? Check out the poor bastard’s stomach. One sock, hardly chewed, only a little bit slimy. Death due to one chewed sock.

  “Henry, I put some clean socks on top of your bureau yesterday,” his mother said. “Did you check there?”

  “What a strange place to check for clean socks,” John whispered as his father limped back upstairs, as if wearing one sock made for some sort of disability.

  The telephone rang. His mother, by virtue of superior maneuvering, got to it first.

  “Hello? Yes, he’s here. He’s eating,” she said, which wasn’t true. “All right.” Her voice was irritable. It must be Keith.

  “I’ve got probs here.” Keith’s voice was low and raspy. “She got herself clobbered last night. Brought some guy home for a nightcap and the guy started throwing things and hollering and some asshole of a neighbor called the cops. I didn’t get much sleep.”

  His mother pointed her ear at the phone as if it were a dowsing rod and she was searching for water. He moved away from her. No good would come of it if she heard what Keith was saying.

  “Yeah, that’s all right,” he said in a phony, bright voice. “I can handle that. Sure, fine.”

  “What?” said Keith. “Tell Gleason I have an earache. Or herpes. I don’t care what you tell him. Tell him I’m on my way to the doctor. If he asks, that is. I don’t know when I’ll make it to school. Maybe not at all. Front for me, okay? Some day I’ll return the favor,” and with a ghoulish laugh, Keith hung up.