"Good-by, Eric".
"Good-by".
She put down the phone and went on sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed for a while, looking up at a water color of some calla lilies on the opposite wall. Instead of next Wednesday, she would be seeing Marc again in less than an hour.
Downstairs Miriam called out something which she did not hear, then a door slammed, and some minutes later Erica became slowly aware of a clock ticking somewhere in the house. She listened to it for a while, still half dreaming, and wondering idly where it came from, and then finally she recognized the sound. It was the clock in her father’s study.
Chapter IV
At breakfast the following Wednesday morning Erica remarked to her mother, "By the way, I’m going to be out to dinner tonight".
Her father put down his cup with an abrupt movement which spilled some of his coffee over the edge of the saucer onto the cloth, and looking directly at Erica around the corner of the table on his right he asked, "Are you going out with René?"
It was obvious from his expression that he already knew who it was without asking, but she said matter-of-factly, "No, with Marc Reiser".
His eyes left her face and returned to his newspaper. He said nothing.
"More coffee, Eric?" asked her mother.
"Yes, please".
Miriam was not down yet. Erica held out her cup, returned it quickly to her place as she noticed that her hand was shaking slightly, put in some cream and sugar and then said into the silence, "I ran into Marc at the station when I was meeting Miriam and had dinner with him on Saturday night…".
"Do you mean to say that you left Miriam to have dinner here alone on her first night home?" interrupted her mother.
"No, she’d already arranged to go out with a friend of hers from England-some American on the Purchasing Commission".
Her father was still reading his newspaper but he could not avoid hearing her. In order to get it over with, once and for all, Erica went on as casually as she could, "I saw Marc again on Sunday. We went swimming at Oka".
"You could hardly wait for your mother and me to get out of town, could you?" said her father without glancing up from his paper.
"After twenty-eight years I’m not likely to start doing things behind your back, Charles", said Erica calmly. She had no intention of allowing herself to be sidetracked by losing her temper if she could help it; she had seen Anthony and Miriam make that mistake too often.
"You must have known that we wouldn’t like it, Erica", said her mother.
"How was I supposed to know? You’ve never objected to any of my friends before".
There was another silence and finally Erica said, "I think we’d better get this thing settled now. So far as I’m concerned, I like Marc and I respect him, and I intend to go on seeing him…".
"Regardless of our opinions on the subject?" asked her mother.
"You can’t have ’opinions’ on the subject of someone you’ve scarcely met and Charles has never met at all…".
Her father put down his paper and said, interrupting, "We’ve already been over all this, Eric. If some Jewish lawyer nobody’s ever heard of is more important to you than we are, and as you say, you intend to go on seeing him in spite of knowing perfectly well the way we feel about him, then I’m afraid you’ll have to do your seeing somewhere else".
"Do you mean that I can’t even bring him to the house?" Her father did not answer and turning to her mother, she said incredulously, "You’re not going to be as unfair as Charles, are you?"
"It’s not a question of being fair or unfair, Eric. It’s simply a question of facing facts. There’s no sense in going out of your way to create a situation which might turn out to be very awkward for everyone, when you can so easily avoid it. You scarcely know the man yourself, and he can’t possibly mean anything to you".
"And you, Brutus", said Erica.
Her father said angrily, "You have no reason to feel so sorry for yourself, Erica".
"The persecution complex seems to be catching", observed Margaret Drake. With a gesture which had become almost automatic, she straightened the skirt of her pale blue linen dress to keep it from crushing, and then shoved her chair away from the table in order to change her sitting position. Although it was so early in the day, her back had already begun to ache again. She said, "I’ve never known you to behave like this before. You’re usually so reasonable. And apart from everything else, since he is the only person we’ve ever objected to, why can’t you just…"
"You wouldn’t expect me to sacrifice someone I like for a set of objections I don’t agree with, would you?"
She was appealing to that sense of justice which was one of her mother’s strongest characteristics and after considering it, her eyes raised toward the light flowing through the windows of the dining-room, her mother said at last, "No, I wouldn’t, but I would expect you to give us a fair hearing".
"But the only thing you’ve got against Marc is the fact that he’s Jewish".
"No", said her father. "What I’ve got against him is the fact that he’s obviously making use of my daughter".
"How? By taking me out to dinner on Saturday and swimming on Sunday?"
"A man who makes three engagements in five days with a girl he hardly knows is obviously out for something, isn’t he? You’re not exactly high school age, either of you".
"Out for what?"
"Well", said Charles shrugging, "say he seems just a little too eager".
"And just why should you say a thing like that about a friend of mine? Or does the fact that you’re my father automatically give you the right to say anything you choose?"
"I’m not going to quarrel with you, Erica", he said, unmoved. He lit a cigarette, observing through the smoke, "I got your friend Reiser’s number the moment I heard he’d turned up here with René".
"That was remarkably psychic even for you, considering the fact that you were still upstairs and had to form your opinion of Marc’s character through a hardwood floor".
"What’s the matter with you, Erica?" demanded her mother who had been watching her with increasing anxiety and surprise. "I’ve never seen you like this before. You’re not yourself at all".
"I don’t think Charles is either". Looking down at her empty coffee cup, Erica went on without raising her voice, "I told you that one of these days some guy was going to fall for me just for the sake of my beaux yeux. I’m not so bad, Charles-he doesn’t necessarily have to have ulterior motives".
"Why doesn’t he pick a Jewish girl then?"
"That’s not supposed to be necessary in this country", said Erica after a pause.
"Erica, what is the matter with you?" said her mother desperately. "There’s no need to go on about it, is there?"
"Why don’t you ask Charles?" Without taking her eyes from his face she said, "Charles knows everything. The only thing he doesn’t seem to know is that what with the war and various other developments, the Drake connection isn’t quite as important as it used to be, even to a Jewish lawyer. So far as Marc Reiser is concerned, you might just as well be a couple of people named Smith, except that if you were, you wouldn’t be quite so likely to assume that he was ’out for something,’" she added with a slight change of tone. "He’s in the Army, he’s going overseas in a few months, maybe sooner, and he’s got something else to think about besides how to do himself a bit of good by getting to know the Drakes and running after the Drakes’ daughter in order to improve his social, and indirectly his professional standing".
She paused again and then asked, "That’s about it, isn’t it, Charles?"
"No, that is not it!" her mother burst out before Charles, still as impassive as ever, had a chance to answer. She did not know what to make of Erica; she was not only badly hurt, but utterly at a loss to understand her daughter’s behavior. As she had so often said to her friends in the past, in all her life Erica had never given either of her parents a moment of unhappiness or even a moment of worry.