Echo House by Ward Just Page B

belonged to you and what belonged to the world, except that her definitions were elastic and she tended to reverse the two. But she wouldn't succeed; too bad for her. When you embarked on such a campaign you had to know how to go about it or you would fail as surely as if you had walked in front of an express train; and you would deserve what you got, because you had been careless. She had no allies, no one she could count on. She had no loyalties. Sylvia never saw beyond herself, and so she invented stories and retailed them to anyone who would listen, even her own son. In that way she was promiscuous. The truth was, Sylvia had never seen the hard way of life. She had not learned the hard lessons.
    The room's heat had grown oppressive, and the boy's stomach was moving in circles. He wanted to open the window but dared not leave his seat lest he be misinterpreted. He set about pinching the candle wax, collecting it in little piles, leaving his thumb prints. He wished he was at the movies downtown, John Wayne and his company of leathernecks—and if it was a rhapsody, so much the better. There were things in the world that you had to see for yourself, and his father could not understand that; anyhow, he didn't. Whatever the film, it would be an improvement on the picture he had in his mind now, the garden room at Echo House late at night, his mother in tears, her words tumbling over themselves, incoherent through the tears, except her accusation, again and again:
He did this to me.
She was disheveled. Heavy makeup concealed the bruises above her eye and the scratches on her cheeks. She talked and he listened, horrified and scared. He had no idea what to say to her, and truthfully he had no wish to listen. She talked on and on, and when she finished, she apologized but said she had no one to confide in. The next day she was gone.
    Alec sneaked a look at his father, who had been silent these many minutes. Axel was perspiring and his eyes were closed. His lips moved fractionally, as if he were telling a story to himself. He was gripping the table's edge, his hands gray and frail but beautifully manicured. To know another was impossible. It was hard enough knowing yourself. His father would forever be a mystery, the facts of his life in dispute, as much as any character from antiquity. His father's hand slipped, his head bobbing—
    Axel felt his chair move and he looked up, blinking. Alec was rising, saying something in a kindly voice, standing behind him now, his hands on the slatted back of the chair. Axel had fallen asleep.

2. Mrs. Pfister
    T HE COMMUNITY saw Sylvia as a creature of Axel. When they met, she was barely twenty years old, while Axel, though not much older, seemed already to have found a settled middle age. Billie Peralta was reminded of the perverse Escher design where a white dove evolves from a black sparrow, or the reverse, depending on beholder's eye. No telling which came first, according to Billie, who freely admitted her bias. She and Axel had walked out together the year before her marriage to Ed and she knew that his reputation was as carefully crafted as a press re-lease, the sober reflection of his blameless daylight hours—the nondescript office at the State Department that seemed to be a kind of clubhouse for younger foreign service officers, the men-only lunches at the Grill Room, tennis on Saturday afternoons, services at the National Cathedral on Sunday mornings. Of course he had been coached by an expert, the ambitious Constance, who monitored his every move, with and without his knowledge.
    Billie had met Axel at one of her parents' dinner parties, an agony of bland food and polite conversation, two ambassadors, an admiral, someone from the National Geographic Society, their mousy wives, and Axel Behl. Her parents always liked to have someone younger to liven the table. In fact the young man was expected to listen and contribute only when asked. The talk that evening was spirited, if