Chapter Two

Part One of the Examination — A Quick Peek at Lydia, Proteus, Ma-ah, and Josef

THE PRESENT (MORE OR LESS)

Lydia felt nervous, as if someone was watching her, beside Lawrence. It was a thunderstormy morning, eleven o’clock, with great dashes of rain pounding against the windows. She was seventy-three, and angrier than usual about it on dark days.

Lawrence sat on the blue couch. “Well, what do you say? I do wish you’d quit prowling around and give me some kind of an answer,” he said.

She frowned and put down her rye and ginger. “My kids won’t like it much, not that it makes any difference. God, they’re hitting fifty, and Anna in particular is pretty pompous. But I just might do it, Larry. The aged poetess on her last binge! I like college-age people, too. They haven’t got into the establishment yet and we’re out of it, thank heaven. My kids would okay the idea of a tour, of course. But you and me traveling around the country together in a trailer, unmarried—well, you know how conventional they are. But they can hardly call you a dirty old man, since I’m older than you are! So to hell with it. I’ll go.”

He was so excited that he almost dropped his pipe. “We’ll fill the camper with books and food and liquor—”

“And two of my cats. Tuckie and Greenacre have to go, and Mr. George, my goldfish.”

He groaned. “The two cats, and Mr. George.”

She wanted to cry but she wouldn’t. Defiance rose up so that she thrust her head backward in an old gesture that had been startlingly dramatic when she was young. “I’ll make out papers before we leave, giving the house to my children. I don’t imagine really that we’ll be coming back.”

“We will. Goddammit, we will.” He stood up, but knowing how she was, he didn’t put his arms around her. He only said, again, “We’ll both come back.”

“Oh, to hell with it. If you say we will, we will. After all, what difference does it make? Forget it. You know, I meant to tell you—not to change the subject—that those dreams of mine are getting nuttier all the time. Last night none of them made sense. Yet right now, talking to you, it almost seems as if they did, if only I could remember them.”

Lawrence said: “When you talk like that, then I’m sure that we’ve known each other before—before we met, I mean. You are, after all, what? Fifteen years older than I am? But in some odd manner it always seems to me that you’re younger.”