I saw now, for the first time, another side of Charles, and I did not like it. His face wrinkled into a determined frown.
“You don’t have to convince me you’re smart,” I said peevishly.
He took my shoulders, hands light but insistent. “It isn’t just being smart,” he said. “It’s as if I can see into the future. I’ll be doing really fine work, great work, and I sometimes think, whoever my partner is, she helps me do that work. I have to choose my partner, my friend, my lover, very carefully, because it isn’t going to be easy.”
I could have finished the conversation then with a handshake and a firm good-bye. I did not like this aspect of Charles. He was not half as smart as my father, I thought, yet he was full of himself, a raging egotist, full of such big ideas. “I have my own work to do,” I said, “I need to be more than just somebody’s partner, just a support for their work.”
“Of course,” he said, a little too quickly.
“I have to follow my own path, not just glue myself to someone and be dragged along,” I said.
“Oh, of course.” His face wrinkled again.
Charles, please don’t cry, damn it, I thought.
“There’s so much inside,” he said. “I feel so strongly. I can’t express myself adequately, and if I can’t do that, I certainly can’t convince you. But I’ve never met a woman like you.”
You haven’t met many women, I thought, not very kindly.
“Wherever you go, whatever we end up doing, I’ll be waiting for you,” he said.
I took his hand then, feeling this was an appropriate if not perfect way to get out of a tough situation. “I really feel strongly about you, Charles,” I said. “I’ll always care for you.”
“You don’t want to get married, something I can’t do now anyway, and you knew that… So you don’t want me to consider you a steady partner, or anything else, either. You don’t want to see me again.”
“I want the freedom to choose,” I said. “I don’t have that now.”
“I’m in your way.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Casseia, I have never been so embarrassed and ashamed.”
I stared at him without comprehending.
“You have a lot to learn about men.”
“Of course.”
“About people.”
“No doubt.”
“And you don’t want to learn it from me. What did I do to you to make this end so soon?”
“Nothing!” I cried. I wouldn’t be able to control myself much longer. It was agony to realize that after this, Charles would have to stay the night; there were no trains to the Kowloon depot at this hour. We would have to face each other in the morning, with my parents about.
“I would like to live alone, on my own, and make my own life and see what I’m capable of,” I said, half-mumbling. My eyes filled with tears and I lifted my head to keep them from spilling down my cheeks. “Don’t wait for me. That isn’t freedom.
He shook his head rapidly. “I did something wrong.”
“No!” I shouted.
We hadn’t left the memory room. I took his arm and led him to the warren hub, then opened the door to the tea garden tunnel. I pushed him through, teeth clenched.
The tea garden lay in a cylinder-shaped cell ten meters below the surface. Dense green bushes thrust from walls, ceiling, and floor toward a rippling sheet of portable sun. The leaves rustled in the circulating air. I held his arm and stopped at the south end of the cell.
“I’m the one who’s done something wrong,” I said. “It’s me, not you.”
“It felt so obvious. So true,” Charles said.
“Maybe it would have been, three years from now, or five. But we’ve missed the timing. Who knows what we’ll be doing then.”
Charles sat on a bench. I sat beside him, wiping my eyes quickly with a sleeve. Only a few years ago I had given up playing with dolls and burying myself in LitVids about girlhood in Terrie Victorian times. How could this have come so fast?
“On Earth,” Charles said, “they teach their kids all about sex and courtship and marriage.”
“We’re old-fashioned here,” I said.
“We make mistakes out of ignorance.”
“I’m ignorant, all right,” I said. Our voices had returned to a normal tone of conversation. We might hafe been discussing a tea competition. Martians dearly love their tea; I prefer pekoe. And you?
“I won’t apologize any more,” he said, and he took my hand. I squeezed his fingers. “I meant what I said. And I tell you now… whenever you’re ready, wherever we may be, I’ll be there for you. I won’t go away. I chose you, Casseia and I won’t be happy with anyone else. Until then, I’ll be a friend. I won’t expect anything from you.”
I wanted to jump up and scream, Charles, that is just so dumb, you don’t get what I’m saying… But I didn’t. Suddenly, I saw Charles very clearly as an arrow shot straight to the mark, with no time to lie or even to relax and play; a straight and honest man who would in fact be a wonderful and loving husband.
But not for me. My course could not follow his. I might never hit my mark, and I doubted our two marks would ever be the same.
I realized that I would miss him, and the pain became more intense than I could bear.
I left the tea garden. My father showed Charles the guest room.
After, Father came to my room. The door was sealed and I had turned the com off, but I heard his knock through the steel and foam. I let him in and he sat on the edge of my cot. “What is going on?” he asked.
I cried steadily and silently.
“Has he hurt you?”
“God, no,” I said.
“Have you hurt him?”
“Yes.”
Father shook his head and curled his lip before assuming a flat expression. “I won’t ask anything more. You’re my daughter. But I’m going to tell you something and you can take it for what it’s worth. Charles seems to be in love with you, and you’ve done something to attract that love…”
“Please,” I said.
“I took him to the guest room and he looked at me like a lost puppy.”
I turned away, heartsick.
“Did you invite him here to meet with us?”
“No.”
“He thought that was your reason.”
“No.”
“All right.” He lifted one knee and folded his hands on it, very masculine, very fatherly. “I’ve wondered for years what I would do if anybody hurt you — how I’d react when you started courting. You know how much I love you. Maybe I was naive, but I never gave much thought to the effect you might have on others. We’ve raised you well…”
“Please, Father.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell you something about your mother and me that you don’t know. Just think of it as fulfilling a duty to my sex. Women can hurt men terribly.”
“I know that.” I hated the whine in my voice.
“Hear me out. Some women think men are pretty hard characters and should get as good as they give. But I don’t approve of your carelessly hurting men, any more than I’d approve if Stan started hurting women.”
I shook my head helplessly. I just wanted to be alone.
“Family history. Take it for what it’s worth. Your mother spent a year choosing between me and another man. She said she loved us both and couldn’t make up her mind. I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing her, but I couldn’t let go, either. Eventually, she drifted away from the other man, and told me I was the one, but… it hurt a lot, and I’m still not over it, thirteen years later. I wish I could be gallant and understanding and forgiving, but I still can’t hear his name without cringing. Life isn’t simple for people like us. We’d like to think our lives are our own, but they’re not, Casseia. They’re not. I wish to God they were.”