Lancelot: A Novel by Walker Percy

Author:Walker Percy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 0312243073
Publisher: Picador
Published: 1977-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

6

IT WAS LUNCHTIME when my daughter Lucy came down for breakfast in quilted housecoat, face voluptuous, sleepy-eyed, slightly puffy.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I asked her, remembering it was Tuesday.

“I’m not going back to school.” Her pale heavy face slanted sullenly over her food, eyes blinking regularly. Was she crying?

“Why not?”

“I’ve got a job.”

“Where?”

“With Raine.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m going to be her social and recording secretary.”

“Jesus, what’s that?”

“Daddy, they are the most wonderful people in the world.”

“They?”

“She and Troy. They are the only people I’ve ever known who are completely free.”

“Free?”

“Free to make their own lives.” Lucy looked up at last.

How little we know our own children! I think I had not looked at her in years. How did I size her up, this little stranger? She was not like her mother. The years would not treat her well. At sixteen she was at her prime; later her face would get heavy in the morning. She was like a child whom voluptuousness had overtaken unawares. By the time she becomes fully aware of it, she will have run to fat. Her own chemistry had played a trick on her and her face was heavy with it. This innocent voluptuousness was the sort—and here I shocked myself—to inspire lewdness in strangers.

“We sat up all night in the motel room talking.”

Then perhaps life was as innocent as that: they sat up all night talking. Margot sick and Lucy talking. Why not?

“About what?”

“Everything. Raine, you know, is deep into I.P.D. Did you know she was president of the national association?”

“No.”

“My job will really be to be recording secretary for I.P.D.”

“What will you learn from that?”

“I’ve learned more in the last three weeks than I ever learned in my life.”

“What?”

“About myself. What makes me tick. For example, about the lower centers.”

“The what?”

“The four lower centers. As opposed to the three higher, consciousness, mind, spirit.”

“You mean you want to go back to California with Raine?”

“I’m going to live with Troy and Raine.”

“I didn’t know they were married.”

“They’re not. And I’m glad they’re not. If they were married, I’d be like a daughter or something. This way we’re equals, a threesome, one for all, all for one.”

Is all niceness then or is all buggery? How can a man be forty-five years old and still not know whether all is niceness or buggery? How does one know for sure?

“Have you spoken to your mother? You’ll have to have our permission, you know.”

“She’s all for it. At least she said so this morning. I hope she’s not out of her mind—she said she had a 103-degree fever.”

Then she was sick and all is niceness and not buggery.

“You mean you want to live with Troy and Raine?”

“Yes. Do you want to see their house, rather Raine’s house? Isn’t that neat?”

From her pocket she took out photos of Raine and of the house, the first inscribed with writing: I could only read To my little—Little what? I couldn’t make it out. The other showed an English beam-in-plaster mansion and some California plants trimmed to shapes, spheres and rhomboids.

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