By the time we reached the lake, we were famished. We spread out our blanket away from the families that were clustered on the beach. Our luncheon—deviled eggs, celery and bacon sandwiches, pickles, strawberries, lemon tarts—all quickly disappeared.
The lake glinted merrily, sequined by the sun. Children played in the water near the shore, diving under, their legs suddenly shooting above the surface, then bending and listing precariously. The littlest children sat at the edge of the lake, filling pails or splashing madly with their hands. Diccon began to speak of the children in his novel, why they behaved the way they did. He grew animated. He said that the children—despite their surreal and grotesque predicament as pirate captives, despite their feet being eaten by winged cockroaches and their hands permanently tarred and greased, and despite witnessing animal fighting and the pirates’ prolonged attempts to cut off the gangrenous tail of a drunken monkey—despite all these things, the children remained innocent at core. They might seem like animals, but they were innocent. Diccon was sure of this.
He was silent a long while, his gaze fixed on the children swimming in the lake.
“I think I have it, Pammy—the title. I shall call the book The Innocent Voyage.”
I nodded. “It’s a good title, Diccon.”
We sat there in silence a long while, lost in our reveries.
Eventually we decided to swim far out, to the middle of the lake. It was glorious to feel so alive, laughing and paddling about. The swim restored Diccon’s spirits, and when we returned to the blanket, he told me how glad he was that we’d decided to make the journey. The lake and the breezes had cooled and refreshed me, but Diccon’s words made me feel all warm inside.
? ? ?
Late in the afternoon, I walked up the hill to the Lakeview Inn to find the ladies’ bathing house. On my way back I stopped to look at Diccon in the distance, where he sat hunched over on the blanket. He looked like a little boy, with his thin back, his hair sticking out here and there, his neck all white and vulnerable. I was flooded with affection. The desire to hold him overwhelmed me.
I was foolish. I should have restrained myself.
Diccon didn’t hear me approaching across the sand.
I reached the blanket and in one motion I fell to my knees behind him and wrapped my arms around his chest. My breasts and thighs, barely clothed in the thin damp cotton of my swimming suit, pressed against his back.
“It’s so lovely here, isn’t it, Diccon?”
I felt him jerk, then freeze within the circle of my arms.
Mortification, a sharp pain, shot through me in hot electric waves.
I released him.
I felt all empty. Collapsed. Not a real person at all. Why do I make a mess of everything? What is wrong with me?
I began to pack up the picnic things.
“Well, shall we go, then? We’ve a long walk back.” My voice was dull.
On the hike back to Merryall, we talked of the most boring things. The weather. Clouds are gathering . . . perhaps a storm tonight. What might be for supper. I think Cecil said she was making some sort of casserole. Had we seen that hollowed out log on the way in? Don’t remember it; I think not. It took all my effort just to put one foot ahead of the other. We were two soldiers marching home, stalwart and unified in our mission: remain friendly, cheerful.
And why not? Nothing had happened.
Nothing at all.
Words, I kept thinking. It was words I had trouble with. Henry had said I must always say what I felt. Why couldn’t I just talk to Diccon, ever? I burned inside, and I wanted to tell him how I burned. And I was so curious about everything. What was Diccon thinking? Did he think of me at all? What was he feeling? There was no way to tell.
I’d failed miserably in following Henry’s instructions. In fact, I’d been getting quieter as the summer progressed. Now I was almost mute.
When we packed up to return to New York in September, Diccon said he thought he’d stay on in Connecticut a bit longer. Cecil and Teddy were heading to Pennsylvania; they said he could have the house to himself.
God, I thought. Not again.
I was angry. It was going to be just the same as when he’d stayed in the Catskills and never, ever came to New York. I knew it.
Diccon did not return to the city.
It took ages for me to catch on.
pamela
As soon as I got back to my studio, I began to paint again. I thought I’d surprise Diccon, do some “real” work, as he called it. My plan was to finish my illustration work during the day and paint at night. I got up even earlier, stayed even longer in the studio. It wasn’t a wise plan, for I was trying to please both my father and Diccon, and it was all wrong. I was using my brain— my fevered brain—and my hands, but not my heart. I pushed and pushed, and in the end neither my illustrations nor my painting were any good.
I wrote Diccon from Macdougal Alley more than once, asking when did he think he’d be back in the city. Five weeks went by, and only one letter from Diccon. It made no mention of plans to return to the city.
My work did not go well. I got up at six and worked until dark making bloody drawings and half the time ripped them up as soon as I was done. I blamed Diccon for my frustration with my work. I fumed. Why didn’t he write? Why didn’t he come to the city?
And then I finally understood.
It was not a letter from Diccon that clarified the situation, but a conversation with Cecco.
I knew, of course, that Cecco looked up to Diccon, that they were great friends. But I hadn’t thought they’d get together without telling me. We were all part of a family, weren’t we? And so when Cecco came back from a weekend at Merryall and started to tell me about it, I said it would have been nice if he’d told me, I might have wished to go, too. Cecco just shrugged.
My thoughts were childish. Cecco was twenty-two that summer, a man. He had a job at the Museum of Natural History and a steady girlfriend. And he had decided to go up to Merryall for a weekend. Why should he consult with me? Oblivious to my precarious state of mind, he spoke casually of what he had witnessed in the country.
“Well, our Diccon appears to be quite busy.”
“Writing, you mean?”
“There’s that, of course, but what I meant was he seems to have attached himself to Jane Cassidy . . . it’s the horses, I guess . . . they spend an awful lot of time riding.”
“Riding . . . ?”
Cecco said that they rode together all the time, that they regularly went off on long moonlit rides.
I wrote again to Diccon. I shouldn’t have, for I composed my letter after I’d downed a good deal of wine. I told him I’d spent all week drawing a dead queen picking fruit off a fig tree. I told him I hoped he was having a nice time with Jane riding in the moonlight while I had no moonlight at all, on account of the tall buildings. I told him I was generally suicidal.