CHAPTER XVI
This Friday, Robin and I packed a bag, bought groceries and liquor, got into the car and got off The Rock. We drove out toward Trenton, and ten miles this side of Princeton Junction we turned off the express highway onto Gun Hill Road, went through the fat Jersey farmland and finally reached Stokewold, a village of one church, one supermarket, one bank, one—Oh, one of each. You take the right fork out of Stokewold around the pond and it's two miles to Gabby and Jake's house which they've named Cooper Union.
By the time we reached Stokewold we were halfway into a laughing jag. We always start laughing on the way to visit the Lennoxes. You think about their accidents and adventures building their house and you can't stop.... The three second-hand cars Gabby bargained for and bought which, one after the other, broke down as soon as she got them home, turning the place into a Used Car lot. The time Jake got arrested for trucking their nine-foot plate glass picture window on the express highway. The big July Fourth party weekend when the water system went haywire and Gabby tried to empty out a hundred gallon tank with a teacup. Privately, Robin and I call the house Hysteria Cottage.
Outside of Ned Bacon, Robin and I are the only people from the business who like to see the Lennoxes. The Rock's turned its back on them. But we love to come down to Cooper Union and help Gabby and Jake build their house. We hammer and saw and paint while Gabby lectures to us from Builder's Guides. Robin plants, mostly, and I'm the king of the concrete, I have a touch with a trowel that astonishes people ... including myself.
The reason the house is still building is that they blew all their money on the property. They have about a hundred acres of farmland, meadow, timber, and whatever else they call rural-type land. The house (what there is of it) is on a small hill shaded by elms. A hundred yards behind the house is a tiny extinct quarry which was flooded out by natural springs years ago. We swim there in summer and the water's glacial.
Gabby's pregnant. Gabby's the cute type. Her figure's exactly the same except she looks like she swallowed the head of a torpedo. Ned Bacon, who lets on to be a shingling expert, spends all his time finding out if it's going to be a boy or a girl. He makes her lie down, borrows a wedding ring (Gabby doesn't have one yet), and dangles it on a string over her stomach. The theory is, if it swings in circles it'll be a girl and if it swings back and forth in a straight line it'll be a boy. So far the odds are seven to three on a boy.
Gabby hasn't changed a bit. Robin and I were there in April when they held a town meeting and we drove in with them. There were about a hundred people sitting on camp chairs in the church basement, and half of them were glowering at the Lennoxes because of the way the unfinished house looks. They're all rich Squares who write stinging letters to the Stokewold Star Times beefing about the gutter-bred Lennoxes who are turning their township into a slum.
This didn't make any difference to Gabby. She was on her feet a dozen times, lecturing and admonishing the township on ethics, fair play and civic corruption. Lennox sat solemnly alongside her and nodded his head emphatically to her points. Once he caught my eye and winked, but the laugh was on him because Gabby got him elected chairman of the Garbage Committee.
Jake does a few scripts now and then, most of them under a pen name now that Macro and Audibon have had him blacklisted (not officially) for Communism, which is a laugh. He sells a few stories. They struggle along. It isn't easy with those two trips a week to the talk-doctor to pay for, but they don't complain. Gabby tells me that Jake is having a rough time getting straightened out, but he doesn't bleat. Both of them are so grateful for their fighting chance that they act as though they've won already. That's why we like to visit them.
We never bring our troubles out to Gabby and Jake. You can always find someone on The Rock who'll enjoy listening to your headaches. In fact most people get sore at you if you don't complain a little. Happiness is the problem. You have to share it with someone to get full enjoyment out of it, but there's no one you can do this with on The Rock. If you tell one of the tight rope walkers you've had a lucky break, he's so jealous he's ready to kill you. So we save the good luck stories for the Lennoxes.
Gabby and Jake are glad if anyone else gets a break. They beam and shake your hand and she delivers a ringing lecture on how creative you are and how much you've deserved success. And they write you follow-up letters to ask how your success is doing and they make you forget that they've got problems too. The result is, you can't wait to be invited down to break your back building their house.
So we drove up the little hill this Friday afternoon and honked the horn, Gabby and Jake came pouring out of the house followed by the Siamese who looked like amateur tigers. Gabby kissed me. Jake kissed Robin. I wasn't too jealous because I've got a kind of yen for Gabby.
We yakked all that Friday night and didn't get to bed until three. Eight o'clock Saturday morning we were awakened by Gabby who was making weird noises in the unfinished study. When we investigated, she explained that she was trying to hammer quietly. We began to laugh, got into our work clothes, had breakfast with Jake and didn't stop laughing all day.
Sunday, the volunteer slaves started arriving to spend the day. Bacon pulled in with Olga Bleutcher. Then came the friends of exile ... the odd people who live on The Rock and never let it bother them. Eugene K. Norman brought a man with a guitar. Two of the prettiest girls I ever saw in my life drove up with a man wearing a red beard. In their car was a wicker picnic basket the size of a steamer trunk. They were artist friends of Gabby and spent the afternoon painting L*E*N*N*O*X on the RFD mail box.
After lunch, Lennox and I strolled down the hill, across the little valley and up into the rise where his stand of timber was. I looked back at the house and was suddenly struck by a resemblance.
"Jake," I said.
"Yes, Kit?"
"Look at the house from here, will you?"
He looked.
"What does it remind you of?"
"Should it remind me of anything?"
"Yes. That place you showed me out in Islip. Where you were a kid."
For a moment his face lost its calm and I had a glimpse of the agonizing road he was climbing toward adjustment. It shocked me and I was ashamed of my slip. I tried to change the subject. He stopped me.
"It's all right, Kitten," he smiled. "You haven't done anything wrong. These things have to be faced. The house does look like the old place in Islip."
"You see it?"
"I feel it." He was silent for a moment. "It's a funny thing. I spent half my life running away from that clam-shack, and here I am right back in it again."
"Any idea when you'll get this place finished?" I asked, still trying to change the subject. This time I succeeded.
"Who knows?" Jake said. "There's no rush."
"Don't those letters in the paper bother you?"
"Hell no!" He laughed. "You've seen Gabby's plans. You know how beautiful the house'll be when we're finished. What's the hurry?"
"Your neighbors'd like you to hurry."
"Squares!" he grunted. "They're just like the noodnicks on The Rock, Kitten. You find them everywhere. Rush. Rush. Rush. Nobody wants to work for the work's sake. They want it done overnight so they can have the result quick. But it's the work that's the fun. I finally found that out. Nobody's going to hustle me into rushing through the best part."
"How long do you expect to take?"
"There you go thinking like The Rock again. You mean three months or six months or a year, don't you?"
"It couldn't take longer, could it?"
"I hope it takes three generations," he said.
I didn't have any answer.
Sunday night we were the last to leave. It's a point of pride with us to show that we're the Lennoxes' favorite friends. We kissed them goodbye, drove down the hill and started back toward The Rock. We looked up and saw them, silhouetted against the lights of the house, arms around each other, waving madly. We started to laugh again.
"Crazy kids," I said.
"They're pure gypsy," Robin said.
"When the baby comes he'll have to get to work again."
"Gabby says they're going to name it Sam if it's a boy."
"What if it's a girl?"
"She says they'll name her Ned to teach Bacon a lesson."
We chuckled and rehashed the weekend and the glow lasted all the way to the George Washington bridge. There The Rock loomed up before us like a vast purple volcano, lights flaring over it sulphurously, the sky above reflecting the burning craters below. Robin began to cry.
"What's the matter, Robin?"
"Somehow I can't help feeling sorry for them."
As we drove across the chasm of the river back to the private chasms of our lives, we both knew she was lying. The weak never weep for the strong; they weep only for themselves.
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]