The Graduate Page 5

  “That’s right.”

  “Well that’s right up there by Shasta. You must have been right up there in the Shasta country. That’s beautiful country.” Benjamin nodded.

  “How did they pay you on a deal like that,” his father said.

  “Five an hour.”

  “Five dollars an hour?”

  “That’s right.”

  “They give you the equipment and you go in and try to put out the flames.”

  Benjamin nodded.

  “Well what about the Indians. I was reading they transported some Indians up there from a tribe in Arizona. Professional fire fighters. Did you see some of them?”

  “I saw some Indians. Yes.”

  Mr. Braddock shook his head. “That is real exciting,” he said. “What else happened.”

  Benjamin didn’t answer.

  “You didn’t have any trouble getting rides.”

  “No.”

  “Well tell me where you stayed.”

  “Hotels.”

  Mr. Braddock nodded. “Maybe this trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all,” he said. “Did you have any other jobs besides the fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well what were they.”

  “Dad, I washed dishes. I cleaned along the road. Now I am so tired I am going to be sick.”

  “Talk to a lot of interesting people, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Dad, I talked to a lot of people. None of them were particularly interesting.”

  “Oh,” his father said. “Did you talk to some of the Indians?”

  “Yes Dad.”

  “They speak English, do they?”

  “They try.”

  “Well what else did you—”

  “Dad, the trip was a waste of time and I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Oh?” his father said. “Why do you say that.”

  “It was a bore.”

  “Well it doesn’t sound too boring if you were up there throwing water on that fire.”

  “It was a boring fire.”

  It was quiet for a few moments. “Can’t you tell me a little more about it?”

  “Dad—”

  “Let’s hear about some of the people you bumped into.”

  “You want to?”

  “Sure,” his father said. “What kind of people stopped to give you rides.”

  “Queers.”

  “What?”

  “Queers usually stopped,” he said. “I averaged about five queers a day. One queer I had to slug in the face and jump out of his car.”

  “Homosexuals?”

  “Have you ever seen a queer Indian, Dad?”

  “What?”

  “Have you ever had a queer Indian approach you while you’re trying to keep your clothes from burning up?”

  Mr. Braddock sat frowning at him from the chair. “Did that happen?” he said.

  “Dad, for what it was worth I did the whole tour. I talked to farmers. I talked to—”

  “What would you talk to them about.”

  “The farmers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Their crops. What else do they know how to talk about.”

  “Who else did you talk to.”

  “I talked to tramps. I talked to drunks. I talked to whores.”

  “Whores?”

  “Yes Dad, I talked to whores. One of them swiped my watch.”

  “A whore stole your wristwatch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not while you were talking to her.”

  “No.”

  Mr. Braddock looked down at the rug. “Then you—then you spent the night with a whore.”

  “There were a few whores included in the tour, yes.”

  “More than one?”

  “It grows on you.”

  “How many then.”

  “I don’t remember,” Benjamin said, putting his hands up over his eyes. “There was one in a hotel. There was one at her house. There was one in the back of a bar.”

  “Is this true, Ben?”

  “One in a field.”

  “A field?”

  “A cow pasture, Dad. It was about three in the morning and there was ice in the grass and cows walking around us.”

  “Ben, this doesn’t sound too good.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I think you’d better go down and have yourself looked at.”

  “Dad, I’m tired.”

  “Is she the one who took your watch?”

  “No. The one in the hotel took it.”

  “Ben,” Mr. Braddock said, shaking his head, “I don’t know quite what to say. Where did you find these girls.”

  “Bars.”

  “They came right up to you?”

  “Please let me sleep.”

  “I suppose you did quite a bit of drinking on the trip,” Mr. Braddock said. Benjamin nodded. “You did.”

  “Well it’s not too likely I’d spend the night with a stinking whore in a field full of frozen manure if I was stone cold sober, now is it.”

  “Good God, Benjamin.”

  Mrs. Braddock returned to the room with a glass of milk and a plate with a sandwich on it. She set them down on the table in front of Benjamin.

  “Now,” she said. “Let’s hear all about the trip.” Benjamin shook his head and reached for the sandwich. “What did you do,” his mother said. “Not much.”

  “Well, can’t you tell me about it?”

  “Mother, I saw some pretty scenery and had a nice time and came home.”

  “And you’re sure you’re all right.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you look awfully tired.”

  “Go on to bed,” Mr. Braddock said. “I want to talk to Ben a few minutes.”

  Mrs. Braddock waited a moment, then walked out of the room. “Ben, how do you feel about things now,” his father said. “What things.”

  “I mean are you—do you feel a little more ready to settle down and take life easy now?” He nodded. “You do.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well what are your plans. Do you think you’ll go back to graduate school this fall?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Braddock frowned. “Why not,” he said.

  “Dad, we’ve been through this.”

  “You still—you still feel the same way about teaching.”

  “That’s right,” Benjamin said. He reached for his milk.

  “Well, do you have any plans?”

  “I do.”

  “Can you tell me what they are?”

  “I plan to take it easy,” Benjamin said. “I plan to relax and take it easy.”

  “Good,” his father said. “I’m glad to hear you say that. You plan to put in a little loafing time around home.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “Sure,” his father said. “Rest up. Call up some girl who’d like to see you.”

  “I plan to.”

  “Good,” Mr. Braddock said. He sat in the chair across from him while Benjamin finished eating the sandwich and drank the glass of milk. Several times he glanced up at Benjamin, then back down at the floor. “Ben?” he said finally.

  “What.”

  “You sound—you sound kind of disillusioned about things.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you disillusioned? Or are you just tired.”

  Benjamin stood up and wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t know what I am, Dad, and I don’t particularly care,” he said. “Excuse me.” He walked out of the room and up the stairs and went to bed.

  ***

  Two days after he got home from the trip Benjamin decided to begin his affair with Mrs. Robinson. He ate dinner with his parents in the evening, then went up to his room to take a shower and shave. When he had shined his best pair of shoes and dressed in a suit and tie he returned downstairs and told his parents he was going to a concert in Los Angeles. He showed them the article in th
e morning newspaper announcing the concert. Then he climbed into his car and drove to the Hotel Taft.

  The Hotel Taft was on a hill in one of the better sections of town. A wide street curved up past large expensive homes until it neared the top of the hill, then there was an archway over the street with a sign on the archway reading Taft Hotel and as it passed under the archway the street turned into the entranceway of the hotel. Benjamin drove slowly under the archway, then up the long driveway until he came to the building itself. He had to slow his car and wait in a line while other cars, most of them driven by chauffeurs, stopped by the entrance of the building for a doorman to open the door for their passengers. When Benjamin was beside the entrance an attendant appeared at his car and pulled open the door.

  “Thank you,” Benjamin said as he climbed out.

  Others the same age as Benjamin were walking across a broad pavilion leading to the doors of the hotel. A few of the boys were wearing suits but most were wearing summer tuxedos with black pants and white coats. A girl who had on a shiny white dress and a white orchid on one of her wrists walked arm-in-arm with her escort up to the door and in. Benjamin followed. Just inside the door a man smiled at Benjamin and pointed across the lobby of the hotel.

  “Main ballroom,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Are you with the Singleman party?”

  “No,” Benjamin said.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  He nodded at the man, then walked into the large lobby, looking around him at the main desk and at the telephone booths against one wall and at the several elevators standing open with their operators in front of them. He walked slowly across the thick white carpet of the lobby to the door where the others had gone and for a long time stood looking into the ballroom. There were tables around the sides of the room covered with white tablecloths and in the center of each table was a small sign with a number on it. Some of the couples were wandering around the room looking for their tables and others were already seated talking together or leaning over the backs of their chairs to talk to someone at the next table. Just inside the door of the ballroom two women and a man were standing in a line. Each time a girl and her escort walked through the door the two women and the man smiled and shook their hands. Then the man reached into his pocket for a sheet of paper and told them where to sit.

  “I’m Mrs. Singleman,” the woman closest to the door said to Benjamin after he had stood to watch several couples go in.

  “Oh,” Benjamin said. “Well I’m not—” She was holding out her hand to him. He looked at it a moment, then shook it. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said, “but I’m—”

  “What is your name,” she said.

  “My name’s Benjamin Braddock. But I’m—”

  “Benjamin?” she said. “I’d like you to know my sister, Miss DeWitte.”

  Miss DeWitte, wearing a large purple corsage on one of her breasts, stepped forward smiling and extended her hand.

  “Well I’m glad to meet you,” Benjamin said, shaking it, “but I’m afraid—”

  “And that’s Mr. Singleman,” Mrs. Singleman said, nodding at her husband.

  “How are you, Ben,” Mr. Singleman said, shaking his hand.

  “Let’s see if we can’t find you a table here.”

  “Well that’s very kind of you,” Benjamin said. “But I’m not with the party.”

  “What?”

  “I’m—I’m here to meet a friend.” He nodded and walked back past them and into the lobby.

  Across from the ballroom was a bar with a sign over its door reading The Verandah Room. Benjamin walked across the lobby and under the sign and into the bar. He found an empty table in one of the corners of the room beside a large window that stretched across the entire length of the wall and overlooked the grounds of the hotel.

  Although he seldom smoked Benjamin bought a package of cigarettes when he ordered his first drink and smoked several of them as he drank. He kept his face to the window, sometimes watching the reflection of people as they came in through the door of the bar and found tables, but usually looking through the glass at the lighted walks and the trees and the shrubbery outside.

  After several drinks he gave the waitress a tip and left the bar for the telephone booths in the lobby. He looked up the Robinsons’ telephone number, memorized it and closed himself into a booth. For a long time he sat with the receiver in one hand and a coin in the other but without dropping it into the machine. Finally he returned the receiver to its hook and lighted another cigarette. He sat smoking it inside the closed booth and frowning down at one of the booth’s walls. Then he ground it out under his foot and walked out of the booth and into the one beside it to call Mrs. Robinson.

  “I don’t quite know how to put this,” he said when she answered the phone.

  “Benjamin?”

  “I say I don’t quite know how to put this,” he said again, “but I’ve been thinking about that time after the party. After the graduation party.”

  “You have.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I wondered—I wondered if I could buy you a drink or something.”

  A boy wearing a summer tuxedo closed himself into the booth beside Benjamin. Benjamin listened to him drop his coin into the telephone and dial.

  “Shall I meet you somewhere?” Mrs. Robinson said.

  “Well,” Benjamin said, “I don’t know. I mean I hope you don’t think I’m out of place or anything. Maybe I could—maybe I could buy you a drink and we could just talk. Maybe—”

  “Where are you,” she said.

  “The Taft Hotel.”

  “Do you have a room there?”

  “What?”

  “Did you get a room?”

  “Oh no,” Benjamin said. “No. I mean—look, don’t come if you—if you’re busy. I don’t want to—”

  “Will you give me an hour?”

  “What?”

  “An hour?”

  “Oh,” Benjamin said. “Well. I mean don’t feel you have to come if you don’t—in fact maybe some other—”‘

  “I’ll be there in an hour,” Mrs. Robinson said. She hung up the phone.

  Exactly an hour later she arrived. She had on a neat brown suit and white gloves and a small brown hat. Benjamin was sitting at the corner table looking out the window at the grounds of the hotel and didn’t see her until she was standing directly across the table from him.

  “Hello Benjamin.”

  “Oh,” Benjamin said. He rose quickly from the chair, jarring the table with his leg. “Hello. Hello.”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Of course,” Benjamin said. He hurried around the table and held the chair for her as she sat.

  “Thank you.”

  Benjamin watched her remove the two white gloves and drop them into a handbag she had set on the floor. Then he cleared his throat and returned to his chair.

  “How are you,” Mrs. Robinson said.

  “Very well. Thank you.” He looked down at a point in the center of the table.

  It was quiet for several moments.

  “May I have a drink?” Mrs. Robinson said.

  “A drink,” he said. “Of course.” He looked up for the waitress. She was on the other side of the room taking an order. Benjamin whistled softly and motioned to her but she turned and walked in the other direction. “She didn’t see me,” he said, rising from his chair and jarring the table. “I’ll—”

  Mrs. Robinson reached across the table and rested her hand on his wrist. “There’s time,” she said.

  Benjamin nodded and sat down. He kept his eyes on the waitress as she made her way to the bar and placed an order with the bartender. As she turned around and waited for him to fill it Benjamin waved his arm through the air.

  “She saw me,” he said.

  “Good,” Mrs. Robinson said.

  They drank quietly, Benjamin smoking cigarettes and looking out the window, sometimes drumming his fingers on the surface of the ta
ble.

  “You’ve been away,” Mrs. Robinson said.

  “What?”

  “Weren’t you away for a while?”

  “Oh,” Benjamin said. “The trip. I took a trip.”

  “Where did you go,” Mrs. Robinson said, taking a sip of her martini.

  “Where did I go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did I go,” Benjamin said. “Oh. North. I went north.”

  “Was it fun?”

  Benjamin nodded. “It was,” he said. “Yes.”

  Mrs. Robinson sat quietly a few moments, smiling across the table at him.

  “Darling?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t have to be so nervous, you know.”

  “Nervous,” Benjamin said. “Well I am a bit nervous. I mean it’s—it’s pretty hard to be suave when you’re …” He shook his head.

  Mrs. Robinson sat back in her chair and picked up her drink again. “Tell me about your trip,” she said.

  “Well,” Benjamin said. “There’s not much to tell.”

  “What did you do,” she said.

  “What did I do,” Benjamin said. “Well I fought a fire.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. The big forest fire up there. You might have—you might have read about it in the newspaper.” She nodded.

  “It was quite exciting,” Benjamin said. “It was quite exciting to be right up there in the middle of it. They had some Indians too.”

  “Did you put it out?”

  “What?”

  “Did you get the fire out all right?”

  “Oh,” Benjamin said. “Well there were some others fighting it too. There were—yes. It was under control when I left.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Benjamin picked up his glass and quickly finished the drink. “Well,” he said. “I’ll buy you another.”

  Mrs. Robinson held up her glass. It was still nearly full. “Oh,” Benjamin said. He nodded. “Benjamin?”

  “What.”

  “Will you please try not to be so nervous?”

  “I am trying!”

  “All right,” she said.

  Benjamin shook his head and turned to look out the window again.

  “Did you get us a room?” Mrs. Robinson said.

  “What?”

  “Have you gotten us a room yet?”

  “I haven’t. No.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Well,” Benjamin said. “I don’t—I mean I could. Or we could just talk. We could have another drink and just talk. I’d be perfectly happy to—”