Collected Novels and Plays by James Merrill Page B

might have given it a try. Her poise, as she smiled understandingly at Francis, became
     the wistful poise of a child, her mother’s hat drooping over her eyes, her feet lost in her mother’s shoes, pouring out colored water and making conversation. Equally with the ocean room, where each piece was so harmonious and so fine. It no longer appeared to Francis an emblem of the truly adult so much as a naive aspiration towards that state.
    Ah but in a certain light, how the room sustained Enid! How it sustained, against his will, himself! Even a
real
child entering there would have had to sit as Francis did, its little legs crossed, talking of the weather, refusing a second chocolate, charmed into forgetting the friends outside who waited to play leap-frog or “games” in a garage attic.
    Wouldn’t it help, he brooded, to leap up, cry out, smash something? But the room met his eye so trustingly; it was easier to do violence to himself. As if casually he brought his knuckle down upon his knee, once, twice, again and again, feeling the pain that made at last the beautiful room unreal, Enid unreal, and gave Mr. Tanning, when he paused frowning on the threshold, an air of patiently putting up with a good deal of nonsense. “There’s not one
     really comfortable chair in the whole damn house,” he had remarked during dinner. “They’re all either too narrow or too low.”
    Francis hoped his father would never say this to Enid. She was so easily upset.
    For a time the old man stood behind her, stroking her hair. The rhythm recalled words: Let it go, let it go—“In April, 1929,” Mr. Tanningbegan, “I convinced Howie Burr to send out a circular I’d written myself, warning all the firm’s customers, here and abroad, that in
our
opinion the stock market was in a most precarious state. Things were sky high. None of our competitors could understand why in
     hell we were prepared to lose so much business. But it made sense to the President of the United States; he wrote me a personal letter. I’ll get you a copy of it for your scrapbook, Francis, if you like. The recommendations we made were very simple ….”
    Francis swallowed a yawn.
    At eleven o’clock Mrs. Bigelow and Lady Good joined them.
    “Benjamin, I wished for you!” the latter exclaimed. “We’ve seen such a lovely film, all about the friendship between a crippled boy and an English sheepdog. It brought tears to my eyes.” She took it upon herself—while Natalie conveyed in pantomime that it was no good taking
her
to the movies, she couldn’t see a thing—to tell the whole plot, like a bedtime story.
    “Oh, Lily would like that,” said Enid at one point. “She’s been badgering me for a turtle.”
    The others said nothing at all. Mr. Tanning’s eyes never left the speaker’s face until, with a slight drop of his head, he fell asleep.
    They smiled at one another and at him. “Poor little fellow,” said Natalie. “All tuckered out.”
    “Has it stopped raining?” Enid wondered. Nobody could be sure.
    “How one hears the sound of the sea,” Lady Good breathed.
    In silence they let it speak to them, not knowing what else to do. Natalie drew her finger along the leg of the coffee-table, and held it up pensively; they saw it was black with dust.
    Francis got to his feet and stole out. He paused by the hall mirror, whispering, “I’m tired, too.” When he returned with Mrs. McBride the women looked up gratefully.
    “Gracious!” said the nurse. “Do you know what time it is? I’ve let him stay up a whole half-hour later than usual, because tonight was anoccasion.” Mr. Tanning stirred and woke. “I want you to be good now and come along with me. We know what happened last night. That’s why you’ve been so tired today.”
    “Yes, my love,” he groaned. Did he always say that, on waking? It was amusing enough, but soon the old man, worn out, rose to do as he’d been told. He kissed each of them goodnight, solemnly. “I leave,” he