Skinny Island by Louis Auchincloss

Author:Louis Auchincloss [Auchincloss, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780312910471
Publisher: St. Martin's
Published: 1987-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

From now on I attached myself, as much as the school schedule permitted, to Eric Stair. Perhaps because he regretted the harshness of his strictures on one so young, perhaps because every man has a corner in his heart for a worshiping slave, a devoted spaniel, he tolerated me. He even allowed himself at times to be amused by me. And he gave me serious instruction now in my art.

The headmaster, the angels, the glory of God, disappeared in a clap of thunder like Kundry's castle in Parsifal. I made desperate plans in my mind—not daring to tell my family—of skipping college and going straight to art school. And then there came a chance of actually introducing my new hero to my family.

Mother and Father never came up to school, but in the Easter vacation of that year they had received the loan of a large apartment in New York from a cousin of Mother's, and all the Abercrombies moved joyfully into town. I had a room with two beds, so I could have a guest, and when I heard that Mr. Stair had no place to go over Easter and was planning to stay at the school, I made bold to invite him to come to us. He accepted, with evident surprise, but with alacrity. I did not know at the time that he had a girl friend in New York.

He and Mother hit it off immediately. I was rather disgusted to note that she seemed to be actually flirting with him! They both showed me sides of themselves I had not seen before: Eric lost his sardonic, superior, detached school air and was full of chuckles and slightly off-color jokes, while Mother showed a concern about modern art and letters that I had not previously suspected.

"Your ma likes a man around," Eric told me one morning when we were alone at breakfast. "She hasn't totally forgotten she's a woman."

I was a bit shocked. "Why should she? She has Father."

"What is it they say? Thirty years is a long time with the same piece of meat?"

"If you're implying, Mr. Stair, that my mother—"

"Isn't dead below the waist? Yes, I am, my friend. Of course, no son can abide the idea that his mother is subject to sexual urges. But that doesn't mean she's neuter."

I was startled by this idea of Mother, so stout and matronly. But my respect for Eric was all-encompassing. What I minded far more than the impertinence of his suggestions was the ease with which Mother had taken him away from me.

He was not, however, as it turned out, discussing sex—or even the fantasy of it—between himself and Mother. He was discussing sex between himself and somebody else. What Mother was doing, incurable romantic (like so many gossips) that she was, was persuading him to marry his girl friend then and there and present the headmaster, at the beginning of the spring semester, with a fait accompli. And she succeeded. One morning at breakfast, as she

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