The Moviegoer

son.”
    â€œYou’re my sweetheart. Do you care if I love you?”
    â€œNayo indeed. But you’re not getting me off down there with those rattlesnakes.”
    â€œRattlesnakes!”
    â€œNo sir. We gon stay right here close to those folks and you gon behave yourself.”
    â€œAll right.” I clasp my hands in the hollow of her back. “I’ll tell you something else.”
    â€œUh oh.” She rears back, laughing, to see me, a little embarrassed by our closeness. “Well you got me.”
    â€œI’m sorry you work for me.”
    â€œSorry! Listen, son. I do my work.”
    â€œI wouldn’t want you to think I was taking advantage of you.”
    â€œNobody’s taking advantage of me,” she says huffily.
    I laugh at her. “No, I mean our business relationship.” We sit up and drink our beer. “I have a confession to make to you. I’ve been planning this all week.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThis picnic.”
    â€œWell I be dog.”
    â€œDon’t kid me. You knew.”
    â€œI swear I didn’t.”
    â€œBut it’s the business part of it that worries me—”
    â€œBusiness and pleasure don’t have to mix.”
    â€œWell, all I wanted you to know was that when I acted on impulse—”
    â€œI always act on impulse. I believe in saying what you mean and meaning what you say.”
    â€œI can see that.”
    â€œYou just ask Joyce what I said about you.”
    â€œJoyce?”
    â€œMy roommate.”
    â€œWhat did you say?”
    â€œYou just ask her.”
    I look up and down the beach. “I don’t see her.”
    â€œI don’t mean now, you jackass.”
    We swim and lie down together. The remarkable discovery forces itself upon me that I do not love her so wildly as I loved her last night. But at least there is no malaise and we lie drowsing in the sun, hands clasped in the other’s back, until the boat whistle blows.
    Yet loves revives as we spin homewards along the coast through the early evening. Joy and sadness come by turns, I know now. Beauty and bravery make you sad, Sharon’s beauty and my aunt’s bravery, and victory breaks your heart. But life goes on and on we go, spinning along the coast in a violet light, past Howard Johnson’s and the motels and the children’s carnival. We pull into a bay and have a drink under the stars. It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh.
    â€œMy mother has a fishing camp at Bayou des Allemands. Would you like to stop there?”
    She nods into my neck. She has become tender toward me and now and then presses my cheek with her hand.
    Just west of Pearl River a gravel road leaves the highway and winds south through the marshes. All at once we are in the lonely savannah and the traffic is behind us. Sharon still hides her face in my neck.
    A lopsided yellow moon sheds a feeble light over the savannah. Faraway hummocks loom as darkly as a flotilla of ships. Awkwardly we walk over and into the marsh and along the boardwalk. Sharon cleaves to me as if, in staying close, she might not see me.
    I cannot believe my eyes. It is difficult to understand. We round a hummock and there is the camp ablaze like the Titanic. The Smiths are home.
    2
    MY HALF BROTHERS and sisters are eating crabs at a sawbuck table on the screened porch. The carcasses mount toward a naked light bulb.
    They blink at me and at each other. Suddenly they feel the need of a grown-up. A grown-up must certify that they are correct in thinking that they see me. They all, every last one, look frantically for their mother. Thérèse runs to the kitchen doorway.
    â€œMother! Jack is here!” She holds her breath and watches her mother’s face. She is rewarded. “Yes, Jack!”
    â€œJean-Paul ate some lungs.” Mathilde looks up from directly under my chin.
    My half brother Jean-Paul, the son of my mother, is a big fat yellow baby piled up like a buddha in his baby chair, smeared with crab paste and brandishing a scarlet claw. The twins goggle at us but do not leave off eating.
    Lonnie has gone into a fit of excitement in his wheelchair. His hand curls upon itself. I kiss him first and his smile starts his head turning away in a long trembling torticollis. He is fourteen and small for his