They laughed.

  “Mildred,” Sandra, still laughing, addressed Mrs. Snell, “you’re gonna miss your bus if ya don’t get a move on.”

  Boo Boo closed the screen door behind her.

  She stood on the slight downgrade of her front lawn, with the low, glaring, late afternoon sun at her back. About two hundred yards ahead of her, her son Lionel was sitting in the stem seat of his father’s dinghy. Tied, and stripped of its main and jib sails, the dinghy floated at a perfect right angle away from the far end of the pier. Fifty feet or so beyond it, a lost or abandoned water ski floated bottom up, but there were no pleasure boats to be seen on the lake; just a stern-end view of the county launch on its way over to Leech’s Landing. Boo Boo found it queerly difficult to keep Lionel in steady focus. The sun, though not especially hot, was nonetheless so brilliant that it made any fairly distant image—a boy, a boat—seem almost as wavering and refractional as a stick in water. After a couple of minutes, Boo Boo let the image go. She peeled down her cigarette Army style, and then started toward the pier.

  It was October, and the pier boards no longer could hit her in the face with reflected heat. She walked along whistling “Kentucky Babe” through her teeth. When she reached the end of the pier, she squatted, her knees audible, at the right edge, and looked down at Lionel. He was less than an oar’s length away from her. He didn’t look up.

  “Ahoy,” Boo Boo said. “Friend. Pirate. Dirty dog. I’m back.”

  Still not looking up, Lionel abruptly seemed called upon to demonstrate his sailing ability. He swung the dead tiller all the way to the right, then immediately yanked it back in to his side. He kept his eyes exclusively on the deck of the boat.

  “It is I,” Boo Boo said. “Vice-Admiral Tannenbaum. Née Glass. Come to inspect the stermaphors.”

  There was a response.

  “You aren’t an admiral. You’re a lady,” Lionel said. His sentences usually had at least one break of faulty breath control, so that, often, his emphasized words, instead of rising, sank. Boo Boo not only listened to his voice, she seemed to watch it.

  “Who told you that? Who told you I wasn’t an admiral?”

  Lionel answered, but inaudibly.

  “Who?” said Boo Boo.

  “Daddy.”

  Still in a squatting position, Boo Boo put her left hand through the V of her legs, touching the pier boards in order to keep her balance. “Your daddy’s a nice fella,” she said, “but he’s probably the biggest landlubber I know. It’s perfectly true that when I’m in port I’m a lady—that’s true. But my true calling is first, last, and always the bounding—”

  “You aren’t an admiral,” Lionel said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You aren’t an admiral. You’re a lady all the time.”

  There was a short silence. Lionel filled it by changing the course of his craft again—his hold on the tiller was a two-armed one. He was wearing khaki-colored shorts and a clean, white T-shirt with a dye picture, across the chest, of Jerome the Ostrich playing the violin. He was quite tanned, and his hair, which was almost exactly like his mother’s in color and quality, was a little sun-bleached on top.

  “Many people think I’m not an admiral,” Boo Boo said, watching him. “Just because I don’t shoot my mouth off about it.” Keeping her balance, she took a cigarette and matches out of the side pocket of her jeans. “I’m almost never tempted to discuss my rank with people. Especially with little boys who don’t even look at me when I talk to them. I’d be drummed out of the bloomin’ service.” Without lighting her cigarette, she suddenly got to her feet, stood unreasonably erect, made an oval out of the thumb and index finger of her right hand, drew the oval to her mouth, and—kazoo style—sounded something like a bugle call. Lionel instantly looked up. In all probability, he was aware that the call was bogus, but nonetheless he seemed deeply aroused; his mouth fell open. Boo Boo sounded the call—a peculiar amalgamation of “Taps” and “Reveille”—three times, without any pauses. Then, ceremoniously, she saluted the opposite shoreline. When she finally reassumed her squat on the pier edge, she seemed to do so with maximum regret, as if she had just been profoundly moved by one of the virtues of naval tradition closed to the public and small boys. She gazed out at the petty horizon of the lake for a moment, then seemed to remember that she was not absolutely alone. She glanced—venerably—down at Lionel, whose mouth was still open. “That was a secret bugle call that only admirals are allowed to hear.” She lit her cigarette, and blew out the match with a theatrically thin, long stream of smoke. “If anybody knew I let you hear that call—” She shook her head. She again fixed the sextant of her eye on the horizon.

  “Do it again.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Why?”

  Boo Boo shrugged. “Too many low-grade officers around, for one thing.” She changed her position, taking up a cross-legged, Indian squat. She pulled up her socks. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though,” she said, matter-of-factly. “If you’ll tell me why you’re running away, I’ll blow every secret bugle call for you I know. All right?”

  Lionel immediately looked down at the deck again. “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because I don’t want to,” said Lionel, and jerked the tiller for emphasis.

  Boo boo shielded the right side of her face from the glare of the sun. “You told me you were all through running away,” she said. “We talked about it, and you told me you were all through. You promised me.”

  Lionel gave a reply, but it didn’t carry. “What?” said Boo Boo.

  “I didn’t promise.”

  “Ah, yes, you did. You most certainly did.”

  Lionel resumed steering his boat. “If you’re an admiral,” he said, “where’s your fleet?”

  “My fleet. I’m glad you asked me that,” Boo Boo said, and started to lower herself into the dinghy.

  “Get off!” Lionel ordered, but without giving over to shrillness, and keeping his eyes down. “Nobody can come in.”

  “They can’t?” Boo Boo’s foot was already touching the bow of the boat. She obediently drew it back up to pier level. “Nobody at all?” She got back into her Indian squat. “Why not?”

  Lionel’s answer was complete, but, again, not loud enough.

  “What?” said Boo Boo.

  “Because they’re not allowed.”

  Boo Boo, keeping her eyes steadily on the boy, said nothing for a full minute.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” she said, finally. “I’d just love to come down in your boat. I’m so lonesome for you. I miss you so much. I’ve been all alone in the house all day without anybody to talk to.”

  Lionel didn’t swing the tiller. He examined the grain of wood in its handle. “You can talk to Sandra,” he said.

  “Sandra’s busy,” Boo Boo said. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk to Sandra, I want to talk to you. I wanna come down in your boat and talk to you.”

  “You can talk from there.”

  “What?”

  “You can talk from there.”

  “No, I can’t. It’s too big a distance. I have to get up close.”

  Lionel swung the tiller. “Nobody can come in,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Nobody can come in.”

  “Well, will you tell me from there why you’re running away?” Boo Boo asked. “After you promised me you were all through?”

  A pair of underwater goggles lay on the deck of the dinghy, near the stem seat. For answer, Lionel secured the headstrap of the goggles between the big and second toes of his right foot, and, with a deft, brief, leg action, flipped the goggles overboard. They sank at once.

  “That’s nice. That’s constructive,” said Boo Boo. “Those belong to your Uncle Webb. Oh, he’ll be so delighted.” She dragged on her cigarette. “They once belonged to your Uncle Seymour.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I see that. I see you don’t,” Boo Boo said. Her cigarette was angled peculiarly between her fingers; it burned dangerously close to one of her knuckle grooves. Suddenly feeling the heat, she let the cigarette drop to the surface of the lake. Then she took out something from one of her side pockets. It was a package, about the size of a deck of cards, wrapped in white paper and tied with green ribbon. “This is a key chain,” she said, feeling the boy’s eyes look up at her. “Just like Daddy’s. But with a lot more keys on it than Daddy’s has. This one has ten keys.”

  Lionel leaned forward in his seat, letting go the tiller. He held out his hands in catching position. “Throw it?” he said. “Please?”

  “Let’s keep our seats a minute, Sunshine. I have a little thinking to do. I should throw this key chain in the lake.”

  Lionel stared up at her with his mouth open. He closed his mouth. “It’s mine,” he said on a diminishing note of justice.

  Boo Boo, looking down at him, shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  Lionel slowly sat back in his seat, watching his mother, and reached behind him for the tiller. His eyes reflected pure perception, as his mother had known they would.

  “Here.” Boo Boo tossed the package down to him. It landed squarely on his lap.

  He looked at it in his lap, picked it off, looked at it in his hand, and flicked it—sidearm—into the lake. He then immediately looked up at Boo Boo, his eyes filled not with defiance but tears. In another instant, his mouth was distorted into a horizontal figure-8, and he was crying mightily.

  Boo Boo got to her feet, gingerly, like someone whose foot has gone to sleep in theatre, and lowered herself into the dinghy. In a moment, she was in the stern seat, with the pilot on her lap, and she was rocking him and kissing the back of his neck and giving out certain information: “Sailors don’t cry, baby. Sailors never cry. Only when their ships go down. Or when they’re shipwrecked, on rafts and all, with nothing to drink except—”

  “Sandra—told Mrs. Smell—that Daddy’s a big—sloppy—kike.”

  Just perceptibly, Boo Boo flinched, but she lifted the boy off her lap and stood him in front of her and pushed back his hair from his forehead. “She did, huh?” she said.

  Lionel worked his head up and down, emphatically. He came in closer, still crying, to stand between his mother’s legs.

  “Well, that isn’t too terrible,” Boo Boo said, holding him between the two vises of her arms and legs. “That isn’t the worst that could happen.” She gently bit the rim of the boy’s ear. “Do you know what a kike is, baby?”

  Lionel was either unwilling or unable to speak up at once. At any rate, he waited till the hiccupping aftermath of his tears had subsided a little. Then his answer was delivered, muffled but intelligible, into the warmth of Boo Boo’s neck. “It’s one of those things that go up in the air,” he said. “With string you hold.”

  The better to look at him, Boo Boo pushed her son slightly away from her. Then she put a wild hand inside the seat of his trousers, startling the boy considerably, but almost immediately withdrew it and decorously tucked in his shirt for him. “Tell you what we’ll do,” she said. “We’ll drive to town and get some pickles, and some bread, and we’ll eat the pickles in the car, and then we’ll go to the station and get Daddy, and then we’ll bring Daddy home and make him take us for a ride in the boat. You’ll have to help him carry the sails down. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” said Lionel.

  They didn’t walk back to the house; they raced. Lionel won.

  Franny

  Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend—the weekend of the Yale game. Of the twenty-some young men who were waiting at the station for their dates to arrive on the ten-fifty-two, no more than six or seven were out on the cold, open platform. The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries.

  Lane Coutell, in a Burberry raincoat that apparently had a wool liner buttoned into it, was one of the six or seven boys out on the open platform. Or, rather, he was and he wasn’t one of them. For ten minutes or more, he had deliberately been standing just out of conversation range of the other boys, his back against the free Christian Science literature rack, his ungloved hands in his coat pockets. He was wearing a maroon cashmere muffler which had hiked up on his neck, giving him next to no protection against the cold. Abruptly, and rather absently, he took his right hand out of his coat pocket and started to adjust the muffler, but before it was adjusted, he changed his mind and used the same hand to reach inside his coat and take out a letter from the inside pocket of his jacket. He began to read it immediately, with his mouth not quite closed.

  The letter was written—typewritten—on pale-blue notepaper. It had a handled, unfresh look, as if it had been taken out of its envelope and read several times before:

  Tuesday I think

  Dearest Lane,

  I have no idea if you will be able to decipher this as the noise in the dorm is absolutely incredible tonight and I can hardly hear myself think. So if I spell anything wrong kindly have the kindness to overlook it. Incidentally I’ve taken your advice and resorted to the dictionary a lot lately, so if it cramps my style your to blame. Anyway I just got your beautiful letter and I love you to pieces, distraction, etc., and can hardly wait for the weekend. It’s too bad about not being able to get me in Croft House, but I don’t actually care where I stay as long as it’s warm and no bugs and I see you occasionally, i.e. every single minute. I’ve been going i.e. crazy lately. I absolutely adore your letter, especially the part about Eliot. I think I’m beginning to look down on all poets except Sappho. I’ve been reading her like mad, and no vulgar remarks, please. I may even do my term thing on her if I decide to go out for honors and if I can get the moron they assigned me as an advisor to let me. “Delicate Adonis is dying, Cytherea, what shall we do? Beat your breasts, maidens, and rend your tunics.” Isn’t that marvellous? She keeps doing that, too. Do you love me? You didn’t say once in your horrible letter. I hate you when your being hopelessly super-male and retiscent (sp.?). Not really hate you but am constitutionally against strong, silent men. Not that you aren’t strong but you know what I mean. It’s getting so noisy in here I can hardly hear myself think. Anyway I love you and want to get this off special delivery so you can get it in plenty of time if I can find a stamp in this madhouse. I love you I love you I love you. Do you actually know I’ve only danced with you twice in eleven months? Not counting that time at the Vanguard when you were so tight. I’ll probably be hopelessly selfconscious. Incidentally I’ll kill you if there’s a receiving line at this thing. Till Saturday, my flower!!

  All my love,

  Franny

  XXXXXXXX

  XXXXXXXX

  P.S. Daddy got his X-rays back from the hospital and we’re all so relieved. Its a growth but it isn’t malignant. I spoke to Mother on the phone last night. Incidentally she sent her regards to you, so you can relax about that Friday night. I don’t even think they heard us come in.

  P.P.S. I sound so unintelligent and dimwitted when I write to you. Why? I give you my permission to analyze it. Let’s just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible, especially me. I love you.

  Frances (her mark)

  Lane was about halfway through this particular reading of the letter when he was interrupted—intruded upon, trespassed upon—by a burly-set young man named Ray Sorenson, who wanted to know if Lane knew what this bastard Rilke was all about. Lane and Sorenson were both in Modern European Literature 251 (open to seniors and graduate students only) and had been assigned the Fourth of Rilke’s “Duino Elegies” for Monday. Lane, who knew Sorenson only slightly but had a vague, categorical aversion to his face and manner, put away his letter and said that he didn’t know but that he thought he’d understood most of it. “You’re lucky,” Sorenson said. “You’re a fortunate man.” His voice carried with a minimum of vitality, as though he had come over to speak to Lane out of boredom or restiveness, not for any sort of human discourse. “Christ, it’s cold,” he said, and took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Lane noticed a faded but distracting enough lipstick streak on the lapel of Sorenson’s camel’s-hair coat. It looked as though it had been there for weeks, maybe months, but he didn’t know Sorenson well enough to mention it, nor, for that matter, did he give a damn. Besides, the train was arriving. Both boys turned a sort of half left to face the incoming engine. Almost at the same time, the door to the waiting room banged open, and the boys who had been keeping themselves warm began to come out to meet the train, most of them giving the impression of having at least three lighted cigarettes in each hand.

  Lane himself lit a cigarette as the train pulled in. Then, like so many people, who, perhaps, ought to be issued only a very probational pass to meet trains, he tried to empty his face of all expression that might quite simply, perhaps even beautifully, reveal how he felt about the arriving person.

  Franny was among the first of the girls to get off the train, from a car at the far, northern end of the platform. Lane spotted her immediately, and despite whatever it was he was trying to do with his face, his arm that shot up into the air was the whole truth. Franny saw it, and him, and waved extravagantly back. She was wearing a sheared-raccoon coat, and Lane, walking toward her quickly but with a slow face, reasoned to himself, with suppressed excitement, that he was the only one on the platform who really knew Franny’s coat. He remembered that once, in a borrowed car, after kissing Franny for a half hour or so, he had kissed her coat lapel, as though it were a perfectly desirable, organic extension of the person herself.