People Like Us by Dominick Dunne Page A

facial expressions. His Altemus father, and his Van Degan grandfather, uncle, and cousin had all gone to St. Swithin’s and Harvard, but Hubie had been asked to leave St. Swithin’s, under embarrassing circumstances, and then went to several other schools of lesser stature. He was kicked out of Harvard in his first year for cheating in a Spanish examination and called before his Uncle Laurance, who was the head of the family. “Cheating in
Spanish?
The language of maids,” Uncle Laurance had said contemptuously, as if it would have been a lesser offense to have cheated in economics or trigonometry.
    “Just tell me one thing, Hubie,” said Lil.
    “What?”
    “Is it murder?”
    “Good God, no. How could you ask me that, Mother?”
    “Drugs, then?”
    No.
    “You haven’t embezzled, or stolen, or anything like that?”
    “Of course not.”
    “I just wanted to get rid of all the serious things first. So, you see, whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter. You’re not overdrawn again, Hubie? Oh, please don’t tell me that.”
    “I’m not overdrawn.”
    “Don’t make me play guessing games, for God’s sake, Hubie.”
    Hubie breathed in deeply. “Lewd conduct,” he said.
    “What does that mean?”
    “What it sounds like.”
    “Well, explain it to me.”
    “I was caught—” He stopped, unable to finish his sentence. He turned away from his mother before he finished his confession. “I was caught, doing it, in Central Park, with a man.”
    For a moment Lil was tempted to say, “Doing what?” for innocence was her trademark in the family, but she knew what he meant, and she knew, too, that her son would answer her question with the sort of words she could not bear to have repeated in her presence. Instead she said, quietly, “I don’t want to hear.” Her copy of
Vogue
slipped from her lap and fell to the floor. She turned her forlorn face toward the fireplace. Hubie, scarlet now, looked down on his mother as she stared at the fire. Her King Charles spaniels, Bosie and Oscar, awakened by the sound of the magazine hitting the carpet, jumped on the side of Lil’s chaise, trying to get her attention. Without looking at them, she reached over to a damask-draped end table and took two cookies from a plate and threw them in the air for the dogs to leap at. Hubie watched for a minute and then turned and moved quickly toward the door of his mother’s room. “Isn’t this what happened at St. Swithin’s?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “And in Newport that summer with the lifeguard?”
    “Yes.”
    “You promised me when Uncle Laurance got you into Simsbury that it wouldn’t happen again.”
    “It did. At Simsbury, and at college too.” Hubie opened the door.
    “Don’t go, Hubie,” said Lil. “Look, we’ll figure this out. Come over here. Sit down. Uncle Laurance will know how to get this fixed without any publicity, or fine, or anything. You’ll have to go and see Uncle Laurance, Hubie.”
    “I can’t.”
    “It will be just as important to Uncle Laurance as it is to you, Hubie, that this thing is handled with dispatch.”
    “I can’t go to see him, Mother. I can’t. He hates me. He makes me feel like I’m nothing. He’s always comparing me to young Laurance. I can’t go to see him. I’d rather go to jail,” said Hubie, whose body was twisted in anguish. For a minute Lil was afraid Hubie was going to start to cry.
    “Don’t cry, Hubie. Please don’t cry.”
    “I’m not crying, Mother.”
    “I’ll go to see him.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “If you knew, simply knew, how I hate to have to go to see your Uncle Laurance.”
    “I’m really sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
    “I’ll tell you what. After this is all over, you and I will go away for a little vacation together. We could go to Venice, and stay at the Gritti, and swim at the Cipriani, and have lunch at Harry’s. It’ll be divine. Alessandro will be there, in that heavenly old palace of his, and I tell you, Hubie,