16

For several moments after Pringle departed, Page and Sunny did not speak. Sunny was too proud and hurt to start begging again and Page was still too mixed up to declare himself. But Pringle had stated the challenge for them now, and a decision had to be taken.

They were afraid of losing the fragile tie Pringle’s presence had bound between them, and suddenly they spoke each other’s names at the same instant.

“We seem to have a talent for that,” Page said, smiling. He went to her and touched her hair. “Come with me, Sunny,” he said fondly.

“Right now? Without knowing where we’re going or how we’ll end up or—”

“How can we know that now, darling? We’ll figure it out while we’re traveling. We’ll get to know each other all over again.”

She had sworn she wouldn’t go back to him until he made it formal and final that she was his wife for the rest of their lives. But, like her mother, she was made to yield. She still hoped she could bring him around as long as she was physically close to him.

He saw her indecision and clasped her tightly to him. “Sunny, it’s the only way. We can’t leave the thing hung up.”

And she began to understand what he wanted: a chance to test himself and his temper and his nerves; to test his love in different places with different people; to see how he and Sunny made it together, confined with each other in a motel room or a car twenty-four hours a day. Maybe it would work. If it convinced Page he could take it, Sunny was willing to try it.

“All right,” she said finally. “But if this doesn’t do it—”

He interrupted her with a kiss. She could feel him fighting himself, trying to keep things fraternal. But they went radically out of bounds in a matter of seconds. His mouth opened on hers and he began to rock her with his hips. He tried once more to stop, burying his face against her neck and shuddering with the effort. Then she heard him murmur helplessly, “Oh, the hell with it.”

“That’s the spirit, darling,” she whispered, laughing softly. “After all, if it’s going to be a honeymoon....”

Page swung her up in his arms and carried her to the unmade bed. He stretched out with her, and the weight of his big body made her groan with pleasure.

“Oh, God!” he exclaimed, moving over. “The baby!”

“Baby wants more,” she told him, green eyes twinkling. Reassured, he embraced her again. “Mmmm,” he whispered. “Pepsodent.”

Sunny laughed again and hugged him in a spasm of pure joy. When he began that silly intimate teasing that always led to love, she knew what he was feeling and she was temporarily sure of the world.

* * *

“We’ll have to call Mom and Dad,” Sunny said later.

Page looked up from the map he was examining. “They’ll only worry,” he said. “Let them think we’re still out here till we show up in Hillsburg.” He tickled her beautiful face. “When are we going to tell them about me, honey?” he asked.

Sunny looked at the ceiling, bristling all over with alarm. “Never, I hope,” she said with forced calm.

“Is that fair? I’m their own child, their first-born son.”

“It would kill them,” Sunny said. “Page, believe me, they couldn’t love you more if they did know ... and the knowledge might destroy Mother.”

“On the other hand, it might make her very happy,” he said. “Women are peculiar creatures. I can’t help it, darling, I think they ought to know. My step-parents know. Don’t my real parents deserve the truth at least as much?”

“Not when it’s so painful.”

“You’re exaggerating,” he said flatly, and she saw that he was not going to give in. But thanks to Richie Settick, he was afraid to press the argument. Instead he would file it away and fetch it out to fluster her with in a day or two.

He folded the map and said, “Let’s get going, honey. I’ll help you pack.”

She obeyed him docilely, glad it was Page giving the orders now and not Settick. “Poor Richie will worry himself sick when he finds out I’m gone,” she said. “So will Brian. That’s his brother, darling. The doctor I’m seeing out here.”

“Well, let them worry,” Page said with heartless satisfaction. “Damn country is infested with Setticks and they don’t care how I worry.”

Sunny made him call Hillsburg before they left. She told the Rothelis they would be in Los Angeles another couple of weeks, and allowed June to think they were reconciled.

It was a good day to start a trip: clear and fair and warm. They drove east on the San Bernardino freeway. Page wasn’t used to the recklessness of Los Angeles’ drivers, and he wasted some breath swearing at them.

They got off on Route 66 in the town of San Bernardino and traveled north over the Cajon Pass toward the beautiful high desert country. Sunny loved the great green mountains and blue vistas, the flat white tape of highway pasted over the hills, the cactus and the Joshua trees.

By late afternoon they were near Apple Valley on the desert, thirty-five-hundred feet above sea level. The air was brittle-clear and cooling fast as the sun descended. Apple Valley was five miles off the main road, and they turned in to spend the night.

They got a room and had dinner at the Apple Valley Inn.

“I haven’t eaten so much in months,” she laughed. Page clasped her hand across the table and smiled at her.

“And Settick told me the mere sight of me would give you a miscarriage,” he snorted.

“It nearly did,” she said, sobering.

“Did I make up for it?” he asked, and she nodded. They were serenaded during dessert by an ambulant trio who took them for newlyweds until they spotted Sunny’s maternity dress. Their embarrassment sent her into gales of laughter.

Later they walked around the hotel grounds, hand in hand in the starlight. And then went to bed and made love and slept like winter squirrels until ten the next morning.

They decided to skip breakfast and drive a while before they ate. It was clear and warm with the promise of real heat by noon. They went only thirty-five miles before Sunny announced she was starving.

“You see? I’m a good influence on your appetite,” Page said.

They stopped at the next place they saw: a little hamburger joint outside the town of Barstow. Sunny ordered two hamburgers and a beer.

“Shouldn’t you be drinking milk?” Page said.

“Not when there’s beer around. I’ll drink a quart of milk for lunch, I promise.”

“You’re happy, aren’t you, honey?” he said, smiling at her.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” she grinned.

* * *

Their breakfast was almost gone when George Pringle came in. He made his way toward their table, watching them with worried eyes. Sunny gasped when she saw him, awed by his determination.

“Sit down, Page,” she told her angry husband, who was half out of his seat, “or I swear to God I’ll have this baby right now. In your lap.”

He sat down.

Pringle hesitated a second and then sat next to Sunny.

“Children,” he began, but Page interrupted.

“We are not children,” he said sharply. “If you’d ever get that into your head it’d solve half our problems.”

“I thought I’d lost you for a while when you turned off 66,” Pringle said, avoiding for the moment the urgent subject that brought him there.

Sunny put a hand on his arm. “Mr. Pringle, we won’t go through this again with you,” she said. To her surprise, instead of arguing he put his head in his hands in a gesture Page had made familiar to her. It dramatized the profound influence Pringle had had on his unruly step-son.

“I couldn’t let you get away without trying once more to make you see reason,” he sighed, looking up.

“You just make me see red,” Page retorted.

“There’s no need for cruelty, Page,” his father said.

“Cruelty?” Page said skeptically.

But Pringle meant it and his face showed it. He looked for the first time like an old man. Page felt a guilty shock to realize he was not the only one who was suffering. He had never let himself think of George Pringle as a vulnerable human being like himself. He cherished the mental image of a cold, correct, remote man. It was an image Page had formed in his early childhood and one that had long since ceased to bear any resemblance to his step-father. It had suited Page to think he could lash out at Pringle without hurting him. Now the hurt was vividly visible and Page had a good long look at it. His shame and surprise quieted him.

“Do something for me, Dad,” he asked. “Go back to Los Angeles and take the next plane home, before we end up enemies. We’ll call you when we get back and let you know what we’ve decided.” The affection he had always felt for Pringle was reasserting itself for the first time in many years, at this odd time and place. It shook Pringle up and moved him to surrender. Perhaps if he yielded now he could salvage that love Page still felt in spite of everything. Perhaps it was worth more than the strict morality he was trying to force on the younger man. Pringle trembled inwardly with self-rebuke. He was becoming as soft and sentimental as Lucia! But he couldn’t stop himself.

“All right, Page, if it has to be that way,” he said with misgivings. He seemed too tired, too irresolute, to keep battling with them. There was nothing more he could do and he even sensed that he might drive them back together if they teamed up against him in their resentment of his meddling. He left them at last, proud and silent but with a noticeable slump in his back.

* * *

“So he left you in peace?” Jack asked Page. “Have an apple.”

“It was screwy, you know?” Page said as he took the fruit. “I thought I hated him. The more he followed us the madder I got. But suddenly, in Barstow, everything changed. I felt sorry for him. And that made it possible for me to love him again. All of a sudden he was a human being like the rest of us, and miserable over my unhappiness ... trying so hard to save us both, as he saw it. And he stood to lose even the little love I still felt for him. It was a brave thing he did. A little stupid but brave. I didn’t know that before.” He took a bite from the red winesap in his hand.

“When Dad caught up with us, another crazy thing happened. I felt closer to Sunny; more like a husband and less like a brother.”

“Why haven’t you told the Rothelis who you are, Page?” Laura asked, huddling close to the men so the strangers in the waiting room couldn’t eavesdrop.

“I will when Sunny’s all right,” Page said. “They should know the truth.” His jaw hardened and he stopped chewing his apple.

“You’re right,” Jack said shrewdly. “That’s the way to get even with them.”

“Get even? That’s a lousy way to put it.”

“Why, hell, man, they gave you away when you were a baby, didn’t they?” Jack said, and Laura understood at once what he was trying to do. “They made you suffer, didn’t they? All these years you’ve been miserable because you didn’t know who you were. And what were they doing? Living comfortably and forgetting all about poor little Roger. What the hell, they have Chuckie now.”

“Jack, that’s a pretty rotten attitude,” Page said stiffly. He didn’t recognize his own undressed desire for vengeance. He had always hidden it under the robes of justice and retribution, and it had looked so noble. Now it was parading in Jack’s words like a heartless whore on a streetcorner.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable attitude,” Jack said with mock chagrin. “They ought to know what they did to you. They ought to suffer a little themselves. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“Well, they did suffer,” Page said uncertainly.

“But that was years ago!”

“Jack, you’re making it sound like—”

“No news yet!” Laura broke in, in an over-bright voice, and Page shut up as June and Ben rejoined them. They sat down next to their tense son, who glowered in silence at his old roommate. Jack, afraid Page in this temper would blurt out the truth, suggested the two of them go out for a drink. It was a chance to patch things up again before they got out of hand.

Page refused at once, but everybody insisted.

“Go over to Jocko’s, why don’t you?” Laura said. “It’s only a block away. I’ll call if anything happens.”

Jack hauled Page, resisting nervously, down the main hall.

“God damn it, Jack, they’ll come to get me and I won’t be here,” he said. “They’ll have to tell Sunny I’m out getting swacked with a drinking buddy. What will she think?”

“She’ll think old Jack did the right thing and got you out of everybody’s hair for half an hour,” Jack grinned.

* * *

It was late afternoon, pearly light and mild. Jack hustled his charge along for a block and turned him into Jocko’s. He ordered two double dry martinis and after a circumspect silence, put a hand on Page’s shoulder. “Take it easy boy,” he said. “I had no business being so rough on you then. You’ve got enough on your mind.”

Page, in his befogged state, had forgotten his gripe. “What? Oh, sure,” he said, lighting a cigarette and singeing a finger in the process. “God,” he murmured. “She’s got to be all right.”

“Women are a lot tougher than they look,” Jack said kindly.

Page wiped his sweaty forehead with a damp handkerchief and made Jack chuckle. “If there ever was a nervous young father, Page, you’re it,” he said.

“If there ever was a father with good reason to be nervous, I’m it too,” Page countered.

When the drinks came he emptied half his glass. Jack watched him a moment and said, “I have something on my mind that I probably should have told you sooner. Only things have been so unsettled—”

“I’m too far gone for confessions right now,” Page said.

“You ought to know this, though,” Jack insisted. “I met your step-father.”

“You did?” Page turned to look at him with an interested stare. “How did that happen? Did you call him up?”

“No, he called me. In fact he came over and had dinner with us.”

“He did? For God’s sake,” Page said. “How did he know who you were?”

“I didn’t ask him. The Rothelis, or maybe you mentioned us.”

“What did he want?” Page asked.

“Do you know anybody named Winkler?”

“Winkler? No. What is this, Jack?”

“Think hard. Anybody?”

“Some remote cousins of Mother’s have that name, I think. But I don’t know them personally.”

That was enough for Jack. He ran a wet finger around the edge of his martini glass until it sang.

“Your father told us his name was Winkler,” Jack said. “I wondered where he picked up the name. He stayed till five in the morning.”

Page frowned. “What the hell did he do that for?”

“I guess he wanted us to reassure him. He’d just gotten back from California and he felt as if he’d failed with you. He wanted to know your whole story from A to Z, as if he’d never heard it. He wanted to know if you’d leave Sunny, and if you’d forgive him for interfering the way he did.”

“He asked you all that?”

“Not directly. He didn’t want us to know who he was. Just said he had run into you in Barstow and thought you were a nice young couple. And you told him to look us up.”

“The old son of a gun,” Page said, shaking his head with amazement. “He must have been damn worried to do such a thing. It’s not like him.”

“I didn’t think so,” Jack smiled. “I hadn’t been talking very long before I got the picture. He carried it off pretty well, but when he asked questions you could tell the main thing he cared about was how a father and son should get along. And whether a moral man could tolerate incest.”

“How did he take it?”

“Well, some of it hurt, all right. But he showed guts. He heard me out. Now and then, when it got bad, he asked the things he had to know, but he didn’t condemn you. Or me, either.”

“Did he tell you who he was before he left?”

“No. He got a bit flustered. Wouldn’t let me call him for fear I’d find out his real name. I’m still supposed to think he’s ‘Mr. Winkler’. Laura never did catch on, by the way. Shall I tell her?”

“If you want to. I trust you two.”

“You don’t feel bitter about him now, do you?” Jack said.

“Not any more. There was so much love for us in all his bungling. Maybe it’s a good thing in a way that he did it. It made me realize how much I mean to him after all these years.”

“Why don’t you call him? He doesn’t even know you’re back,” Jack said.

“Sure,” Page said, looking at Jack as if it had just occurred to him. He left his bar stool and went to the pay phone in the back of the bar.

When he returned Jack had ordered another round.

“He was pretty relieved,” Page reported. “So was Mother. I don’t know what you said to him, Jackson, but I don’t think he feels as bad about things as he did. He may never approve of us—Sunny said that once—but I don’t think he’ll fight it any more.”

“Good.”

“And I called the hospital,” Page said. “It’s still going on. Ben says they haven’t heard any more.”

“Well, bottoms up,” Jack said judiciously. “We’ll finish this one and head back. You can tell me what happened on the desert.”

“You in a mood for horror stories?” Page said with an ironic grin.