"I don’t think", said Miriam with her back to Erica again. "I just hope".
"How old is he?"
"Forty-two".
"Here are your oranges, Miss Miriam", said Mary from the door.
"Put them over there by the bed, will you, please?"
On her way out again Mary said, "I’ll take your bags up to the store room if you’re ready with them, Miss Miriam".
"Thanks, Mary".
Erica helped her move the bags as far as the hall, closed the door again and went over to the chaise longue in the corner. She lit a cigarette and smoked in silence while Miriam changed into a flowered house-coat, and sitting cross-legged in the center of her bed, began peeling an orange. Finally Erica asked, "Why are you so much in love with him, Mimi?" thinking that anyone who had known Miriam before had only to look at her now to realize how much that was.
It was a silly question to ask anyone, particularly Miriam who had always disliked personal questions even when she knew the answer, and Erica was startled to hear her say rather slowly a moment later, "You don’t know how much he’s done for me, Eric. He’s given me something that I’ve never had before. I didn’t think I ever would have it. Some women manage to be philosophical about it-they even manage to go on being married and make up for what they’re missing by raising a family and having ’outside interests’. I don’t know how they do it. I couldn’t".
She ate two slices of orange and said, "The worst of it was that I didn’t look the part, and I got so sick of having men make passes at me that by the time I met Max, I’d reacted so violently against the whole business that what I really needed was a psychiatrist".
"Or Max", said Erica.
"Yes", said Miriam, half smiling to herself. "Or Max. Are you shocked?"
"What about?" asked Erica, bewildered. "What kind of person do you think I am?"
"You?" Miriam scrutinized her in silence and said finally, "You’re the best of the three of us, you’re the one everybody depends on. Tony and I just do what we want, but you spend your life doing what other people want. You’re the sucker. They say there’s one in every family", she added.
"Thanks", said Erica.
There was a bird singing in the tree outside the bedroom windows and they could hear the fountain splashing in the garden across the street. Downstairs the telephone began to ring and Miriam turned her head toward the door to listen, then as Mary’s footsteps retreated into the kitchen again she said, relaxing, "I guess it must have been for Mother or Dad".
"Do you think he’ll call you today?"
"I don’t know. I sent him a wire to the Mount Royal because he expected to be in Ottawa this week and said he’d be here for the week-end but he may not have been able to make it".
"Why don’t you phone and find out?"
"If he’s here he’ll call me".
"What’s his last name?"
"Eliot".
"Throw me an orange, will you?" asked Erica. She caught it and began peeling. "What did you mean when you said I was a sucker?"
"I don’t know. You’ve never even thought of getting out and living somewhere else, have you?"
"Why should I?"
"Because you’re the sort of person who ought to be married, not staying home and keeping your parents company year after year".
Miriam lit a cigarette, looked about for an ash-tray and failing to see any but the one Erica was using on the other side of the room, she rolled over and reached out for the waste-basket. The waste-basket was some distance away and anyone else, thought Erica, watching her fascinated, would have fallen off the bed. But not Miriam. She stretched out, half her body apparently supported by nothing, picked up the basket and deposited it beside her, then rolled over and back all in one movement until she was lying down with her head against the pillows again.
"I suppose you realize that there’s never going to be anyone Charles will let you marry".
"Why not?"
"You’re too important to him. Sometimes I think he could get along without Mother better than he could without you, at least in some ways. It isn’t just that he adores you. It’s more complicated than that".
Miriam paused, frowning at the wall above Erica’s head. Finally she went on, "I remember when he and Mother were in London last time he was always saying how interested you would have been in some speech or other and cutting things out of the papers to send to you. More or less radical ideas that should have shocked him, didn’t seem to shock him at all…".
"Charles is a lot more radical than most people think", interrupted Erica. "He just doesn’t want to be labeled, that’s all. I don’t know exactly where he stands, but it’s certainly somewhere to the left of center…".
"Because of you", said Miriam.
"It’s not because of me", Erica said impatiently. "He’s too much aware of things and has too much heart to belong on the Right".
"Maybe, but he’s pretty deeply rooted in the past too". Miriam paused again, watching the smoke from her cigarette drifting toward the window, and finally she remarked, "I don’t think you or I can begin to realize how completely cockeyed everything must seem to people who are so aware of events and at the same time so conditioned by pre-depression ideas on almost every subject as Charles. If he could fool himself like his friends he’d be all right, but he can’t. He knows he’ll never be rich again…".
"That isn’t what matters", said Erica. "Fundamentally, Charles isn’t really awfully interested in money".
"I know. What does matter, though, is the fact that everything looks so horribly unsettled. He doesn’t know where he’s at now, and still less where he’s going to be ten years from now. All he knows is that whatever is coming, it won’t be his kind of world and he’s scared, or he would be if it weren’t for you. He has a lot of respect for you-you know the way he’s always saying that ’Erica’s got her head screwed on straight’. And besides, you know how to talk to him without putting his back up…".
"It’s perfectly simple…" began Erica.
"It may be simple for you but it isn’t for the rest of us! Anyhow, the point is that Charles will listen to you. You’re about the only person who isn’t hopelessly committed to the past that he will listen to. So far as he’s concerned, you’re about his only bridge between the past and the future because you can translate ideas into terms he can understand and because, when you say something, it makes sense. He’s going to hang on to you as long as he possibly can, and I’m willing to bet you anything you like that no matter whom you pick, Charles will try to stop you from marrying him".
"There’s no way he can stop me", said Erica. "This is 1942, not 1867…".
Looking at her rather oddly, Erica thought, Miriam interrupted, "And as a situation, it’s been so overdone and it’s so out of date that it just couldn’t happen to you, could it?"
"What do you expect Charles to do? Lock me up in my room and feed me on bread and water until I come to my senses?"
"He doesn’t have to do that, Eric-so long as you’re living here, he can work on you without your ever even realizing it".
"Look", said Erica patiently. "You got married when Charles thought you were far too young and Tony married someone he didn’t approve of at all-even if Charles doesn’t want to let me go, if you two could get away with it, why can’t I?"
"He didn’t care half as much about us". She said rather deliberately, "And we didn’t care half as much about him either".
"You forget one thing", said Erica. "I have far more influence on Charles than you ever had".
"You’ll probably need it".
A door slammed somewhere downstairs and Miriam started, then said lightly, "If you’re determined to stick around until someone decides to come and rescue you from your overly devoted father, at least pick a man who’s got all the necessary qualifications and a couple of extra ones for good measure, so that Charles won’t have any valid grounds for objecting. He’ll object anyhow, but you might just as well make it as tough for him as you can…".