And when Tana started school at Boston University, she was astonished at how different it was from Green Hill, how open, how interesting, how avant garde. She liked being in class with boys as well. Interesting issues were constantly raised and she did well in every class she took.
And secretly Jean was proud of her, although her rapport with Tana was no longer as good as it had once been. She told herself it was a passing phase. She had other things on her mind anyway. By the end of Tana's first year at Boston University, Ann Durning was getting married again. There was going to be an enormous wedding at Christ Episcopal Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a reception, organized by Jean, at the house. At the office, her desk was littered with lists, photographs, caterer' lists and Ann called her at least fourteen times a day. It was almost as though her own daughter was getting married, and after fourteen years as Arthur Durning's mistress and right arm, she felt possessive about the children anyway. And she was especially pleased at how well Ann had chosen this time. He was a lovely man of thirty-two, also previously married, and he was a partner at Sherman and Sterling, the law firm in New York, and from everything that Jean Roberts had heard, he was a very promising attorney, and he had plenty of money of his own. Arthur was also pleased about the match, and he gave Jean a beautiful gold bracelet from Cartier to thank her for all the work she did to make Ann's wedding a success.
“You're really a wonderful woman, you know.” He sat in her living room, drinking a scotch, looking at her, wondering why he had never married her. Once in a while he felt like that, although most of the time now he was comfortable by himself. He was used to it.
“Thank you, Arthur.” She handed him a small plate of the hors d'oeuvres he liked best, Nova Scotia salmon on little thin slices of Norwegian pumpernickel, little balls of steak tartare on white toast, the macadamia nuts she always kept in the house, in case he came by, along with his favorite scotch, favorite cookies … soap … eau de cologne … everything he liked. It was easier to be always ready for him now, with Tana gone. In some ways, that had helped their relationship, and in others, it had not. She was freer now, more available, always ready for him to come by at the drop of a hat, but at the same time, she was much lonelier with Tana gone, more anxious for his company. It made her hungrier, and lonelier, and less understanding when two weeks slid by without his spending a night in her bed. She realized that she should be grateful to him that he came to her at all, and he made so many things in her life easier, but she wanted so much more of him, she always had, ever since they first met.
“Tana's coming to the wedding, isn't she?” He ate another mouthful of steak tartare, and she tried to look vague. She had called Tana about it only a few days before. She hadn't responded to the invitation Ann had sent, and Jean had chided her for it, telling her it wasn't polite, and her Boston University manners didn't apply here, which of course had done nothing to warm Tana's heart.
“I'll answer as soon as I get around to it, Mom. I have exams right now. It only came last week.”
“It only takes a minute to respond.”
Her tone annoyed Tana as it always did now, and she was curt when she replied. “Fine. Then tell her no.”
“I'll do nothing of the sort. You answer that invitation yourself. And I think you should go.”
“Well, that comes as no surprise. Another command performance from the Durning clan. When do we get to say no to them?” She still cringed every time she imagined Billy's face. “I think I'm busy anyway.”
“You could make the effort for my sake at least.”
“Tell them that you have no control over me. That I'm impossible, that I'm climbing Mount Everest. Tell them whatever the hell you want!”
“You're really not going, then?” Jean sounded shocked, as though that weren't possible.
“I hadn't thought about it till now, but now that you mention it, I guess I'm not.”
“You knew it all along.”
“Oh, for chrissake … look, I don't like Ann or Billy. Scratch that. I don't like Ann, and I hate Billy's guts. Arthur is your affair, if you'll pardon the pun. Why do you have to drag me into this? I'm grown up now, so are they, we've never been friends.”
“It's her wedding, and she wants you there.”
“Bullshit. She's probably inviting everyone she knows, and she's inviting me as a favor to you.”
“That's not true.” But they both knew it was. And Tana was getting stronger and stronger as time went on.
In some ways, it was Harry's influence over her. He had definite ideas about almost everything, and it brought something similar out in her in order to respond to him. He made her think about how she felt and what she thought about everything, and they were as close as they had ever been. And he'd been right about BU too. Moving to Boston had been good for her, much more so than going to Green Hill. And in an odd way, she had grown up more in the last year than ever before. She was almost twenty years old.
“Tana, I just can't understand why you behave this way.” It was back to the wedding again, and her mother was driving her nuts.
“Mom, can we talk about something else? How are you?”
“I'm fine, but I'd like to think that you'll at least think about this.…”
“All right!” She screamed into the phone at her end. “I'll think about it. Can I bring a date?” Maybe it would be more bearable if Harry came along.
“I was expecting that. Why don't you and the Wins-low boy take a lesson from Ann and John and get engaged?”
“Because we're not in love. That's the best reason why not.”
“I find that hard to believe after all this time.”
“Fact is stranger than fiction, Mom.” Talking to her mother always drove her nuts, and she tried to explain it to Harry the next day. “It's as though she spends the whole day planning what to say to me so that it will irritate me the most possible, and she never fails. She hits the nail right on the head every time.”
“My father has the same knack. It's a prerequisite.”
“For what?”
“For parenthood. You have to pass a test. If you're not irritating enough, they make you try again until you get it right. Then after the kid is born, they have to renew it every few years, so that after fifteen or twenty years, they've really got it down.” Tana laughed at the idea as she looked at him. He was even more handsome than he had been when they first met, and the girls went crazy for him. There were always about half a dozen he was juggling at once, but he always made time for her. She came first, she was his friend, in fact she was much more than that to him, but Tana had never understood that. “You're going to be around for a long time, Tan. They'll be gone by next week.” He never took any of them seriously, no matter how desperately they wanted him. He didn't fool anyone, he was careful that no one got hurt, he was sensible about birth control. “No casualties, thanks to me, Tan. Life is too short for that, and there's enough hurt out there without making more for your friends.” But there was no pretense offered either. Harry Winslow wanted to have fun, and nothing more than that. No I love you's, no wedding rings, no starry eyes, just some laughs, a lot of beer, and a good time, if possible in bed. His heart was otherwise engaged, albeit secretly, but other interesting parts of him were not.
“Don't they want more than that?”
“Sure they do. They've got mothers just like you. Only most of them listen to their mothers more than you do. They all want to get married and drop out of school as soon as possible. But I tell them not to count on me to help them out. And if they don't believe me, they figure it out soon enough.” He grinned boyishly and Tana laughed at him. She knew that the girls dropped like flies everytime he looked at them. She and Harry had been inseparable for the past year and she was the envy of all her friends. They found it impossible to believe that nothing was going on between them, they were as puzzled as her own mother was, but the relationship stayed chaste. Harry had come to understand her by now, and he wouldn't have dared to scale the walls she had put up around her sexuality. Once or twice he tried to fix her up with one of his friends, just as a friendly double date, but she wanted nothing to do with it. His roommate had even asked him if she was a lesbian, but he was sure that it wasn't that. He had a strong feeling that something bad traumatized her, but she never wanted to talk about it, even with him, and he let it be. She went out with Harry, or her friends from BU, or by herself, but there were no men in her life, not in a romantic sense. Never. He was sure of it.