Summer Crossing Read Online Free PDF Page B

always told the truth, how many people in love do? or can? but at least she permitted him enough truth to account more or less accurately for all the life she had lived away from him. It was her feeling, however, that he would as soon not hear her confessions: he seemed to want her to be as elusive, as secretive as he was himself. And yet she could not quite properlyaccuse him of secretiveness: whatever she asked, he answered: still, it was like trying to peer through a Venetian blind. (It was as if the world where they joined were a ship, one becalmed between the two islands that were themselves: with any effort he could see the shore of her, but his was lost in the unlifting mist.) Once, armed with a far-fetched idea, she had taken the subway to Brooklyn, thinking that if only she could see the house where he lived and walk the streets that he walked, then she would understand and know him as she wanted to; but she had never been to Brooklyn before, and the ghostly lonesome streets, the lowness of the land stretching in a confusion of look-alike bungalows, of empty lots and silent vacancy, was so terrifying that after twenty steps she turned and fled down back into the subway. She realized afterwards that from the outset she’d known the trip would be a failure. Perhaps Clyde, without conscious insight, had chosen best in by-passing islands and settling for the solitude of a ship: but their voyage seemed to have no port-of-call of any kind; and, while they were sitting on the terrace of the cafeteria in the shade of an umbrella, Grady had again sudden cause to need the reassurance of land.
    She had wanted it to be fun, a celebration in their own honor; and it was: the seals conspired to amuse, the peanuts were hot, the beer cold. But Clyde would not really relax. Hewas solemn with the duties of an escort on such an excursion: Peter Bell would have bought a balloon for mockery’s sake: Clyde presented her with one as part of a tenacious ritual. It was so touching to Grady, and so silly, that for a while she was ashamed to look at him. She held fast to the balloon all through lunch, as if her own happiness bobbed and strained at the string. But it was at the end of lunch that Clyde said: “Look, you know I’d like to stay! Only something came up, and I’ve got to be home early. It was something I’d forgot about, or I would’ve told you before.”
    Grady was casual; but she chewed her lip before replying. “I’m sorry,” she said, “that really is too bad.” And then, with a temper she could not detour: “Yes, I must say you should’ve told me before. I wouldn’t have bothered to plan anything.”
    “What kind of things did you have in mind, kid?” Clyde said this with a smile that exposed a slight lewdness: the young man who laughed at seals and bought balloons had reversed his profile, and the new side, which showed a harsher angle, was the one Grady was never able to defend herself against: its brashness so attracted, so crippled her, she was left desiring only to appease. “Never mind that,” she said, forcing a lewd note of her own. “There’s nobody at the apartment now and I’d thought we’d go there and cook supper.”Tower-high and running halfway across a building, the windows of the apartment, as she had pointed out to him, could be seen from the cafeteria terrace. But any suggestion of visiting there appeared to upset him: he smoothed his hair and twisted tighter the knot of his tie.
    “When do you have to go home? Not right away?”
    He shook his head; then, telling her what she most wanted to know, which was why he had to go at all, he said: “It’s my brother. The kid’s having his bar mitzvah and it’s only right I ought to be there.”
    “A bar mitzvah? I thought that was something Jewish.”
    Stillness like a blush came over his face. He did not even look when a brazen pigeon sedately plucked a crumb off the table.
    “Well, it
is
something Jewish, isn’t it?”
    “I’m Jewish.