“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Trust me.” She reached for the bell on the small chinoiserie table next to the chair and rang it, a single ding. Granny wasn’t one for wallowing in grief, even for her oldest daughter. “What brings you out to see your old granny today?”
“No reason, except I’ll be shipping out on another tour soon.”
Her lip curled. “Why on earth?”
“Because I’m a soldier, Granny. It’s what I do.”
“There are plenty of other things you could do. Oh! Hetty. There you are. A tray of coffee for my grandson. He’s already eaten, but you might bring a little cake to sweeten him up.”
Right. As if he was the one who needed sweetening.
He waited until Hetty disappeared back through the living room doorway. “Like what, Granny? What can I do?”
“Oh, you know. Like your uncle’s firm. Or law school. I would say medicine, but you’re probably too old for all that song and dance, and anyway we already have a doctor in the family.”
“Anything but the army, in other words?” He leaned against the bookcase and crossed his arms. “Anything but following in my father’s footsteps?”
“I didn’t say that. Eisenhower was in the army, after all.”
“Give it a rest, Granny. You can’t stamp greatness on all our brows.”
“I didn’t say anything about greatness.”
“Poor Granny. It’s written all over your smile. But blood will out, you know. I tried all that in college, and look what happened.” He spread his hands. “You’ll just have to take me as you find me, I guess. Every family needs a black sheep. Gives us character. The press loves it, don’t they? Imagine the breathless TV feature, when Frank wins the nomination for president.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re not a black sheep. Look at you.” She jabbed an impatient gesture at his reclining body, his sturdy legs crossed at the ankles. “I just worry about you, that’s all. Off on the other side of the word. Siam, of all places.”
“Vietnam.”
“At least you’re fighting Communists.”
“Someone’s got to do it.”
The door opened. Hetty sidled through, her long uniformed back warped under the weight of the coffee tray. He uncrossed his legs and pushed away from the wall to take it from her. He couldn’t stand the sight of it, never could—domestic servants lugging damned massive loads of coffee and cake for his convenience. At least in his father’s various accommodations, the trays were carried by sturdy young soldiers who were happy to be hauling coffee instead of grenades. A subtle difference, maybe, but one he could live with.
“Thank you, Hetty. What about this photography business of yours?” She waved him aside and poured him a cup of coffee with her own hands.
“It’s not a business. It’s a hobby. Not all that respectable, either, but surely I don’t need to tell you that?”
“It’s an art, Franklin says. Just like painting.”
“It’s not just like painting. But I guess there’s an art to it. You can say that to your friends, anyway, if it helps.” He took the coffee cup and resumed his position against the bookcase.
“Don’t you ever sit, young man?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I guess that’s your trouble in a nutshell.”
He grinned and drank his coffee.
She made a grandmotherly harrumph, the kind of patronizing noise she’d probably sworn at age twenty—and he’d seen her pictures at age twenty, some rip-roaring New York party, Edith Wharton she wasn’t—that she would never, ever make. “You and that smile of yours. What about girls? I suppose you have a girl or two stringing along behind you, as usual.”
“Not really. I’m only back for a few weeks, remember?”
“That’s never stopped the men in this family before.” A smug smile from old Granny.
“And you’re proud of that?”
“Men should be men, girls should be girls. How God meant us.”
He shook his head. The cup rested in his palm, reminding him of Jane Doe’s curving elbow. “There is a girl, I guess.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized she was the reason he came here to lily-scented Brookline that hot May morning, to its chintz upholstery and its shepherdess coffee service, to Granny herself, unchanged since his childhood.
Jane Doe. What to do with her. What to do with himself.
“What’s her name?” asked Granny.
He grinned again. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly spoken to her.”
“Hardly spoken to her?”
“I think she’s engaged.”
“Engaged, or married?”
“Engaged, I think. I didn’t see a band. Anyway, she doesn’t seem married.”
“Well, if she’s only engaged, there’s nothing to worry about.” Granny stirred in another spoonful of sugar. The silver tinkled expensively against the Meissen. “What kind of girl is she?”
“The nice kind.”
“Good family?”
“I told you, I don’t know her name.”
“Find out.”
“Hell, Granny, I—”
“Language, Caspian.”
He set down the coffee and strode back to the window. “Why the hell did I come here, anyway? I don’t know.”
“Don’t blaspheme. You can use whatever foul words you like in that … that platoon of yours, but you will not take the Lord’s name in vain in my house.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now. To answer your question. Why did you come here? You came here to ask my advice, of course.”
“And what’s your advice, Granny?” he asked the window, the empty street outside, the identical white-trimmed Georgian pile of bricks staring back at him.
The silver clinked. Granny, cutting herself a slice of cake, placing it on a delicate shepherdess plate, taking a bite. “I am amazed, Caspian, so amazed and perplexed by the way your generation makes these things so unnecessarily complicated. The fact is, you only have one question to ask yourself, one question to answer before you do a single first thing.”
“Which is?”
“Do you want her for a wife or for a good time?”
The postman appeared suddenly, between a pair of trees on the opposite side of the street, wearing short pants and looking as if he might drop dead.
Caspian fingered the edge of the chintz curtain and considered the words good time, and the effortless way Granny spoke them. What the hell did Granny know about a good-time girl? Not that he wanted to know. Jesus. “There’s no in between?”
A short pause, thick with disapproval. “No.”
“All right. Then what?”
“Well, it depends. If you want a good time, you walk up to her, introduce yourself, and ask her to dinner.”
“Easy enough. And the other?”
Granny set down