She shook her head. “The two families aren’t getting married, Father. Only Pres and I.”
“I’m not going to be there to give you away?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m not being secretive. I really haven’t quite made up my mind. But when it happens, if it happens, I’m going away, and the next tune you see me I’ll be married.”
“Is that what Preston wants, too?” said her father.
“It’s very much what he wants,” she said.
“Is it what his family want?”
“They haven’t been told. I’ve met them all, except the brother in Mexico. They’ve had a look at me, so when they get the news they’ll be able to say they’ve met me. That I’m white, young, and not hideously ugly.”
“I said I wouldn’t ask you anything, but I seem to be doing nothing else,” he said. “This is the only question of any real importance. Why are you unable to make up your mind?”
“So many answers to that, Father, and I don’t know which is the right one. The real one.”
“Then I guess I didn’t ask you the right question. Do you love him?”
“No,” she said.
“Is it because you’re afraid to love him?”
“Possibly,” she said. “You mean afraid because of what happened abroad?”
“I didn’t say that, Tina. I asked if you were afraid to love him.”
“I’m not afraid to love him, Father. I just don’t.”
“Then what is this marriage based on?” he said.
She thought a moment. “Compatibility. Friendship. Companionship. Sex. Mutual protectiveness.”
“I thought so! And fear,” he said.
“Fear of what?”
“You know what, Tina. Let’s be honest with each other. No one’s listening. I’m all for this marriage if it’s what you want. But be sure you know what you may be getting in for.”
She smiled, a pleased smile that was the last thing he expected of her. “Good for you, Father!” she said.
“Good for me?”
She fondled the watch in the fingers of her right hand. “He wondered if you would remember, and you did. He thought you would, but he wasn’t quite sure. I said you would, that you never forgot anything.”
“Make sense, girl. Make sense.”
“The first day Pres came here, he told you about his friendship with the gymnasium teacher at school.”
“He certainly did,” said George Lockwood. “I wasn’t likely to forget that.”
“Naturally you concluded that the friendship was more than just a friendship.”
“I did,” said her father.
“Well, you were right. Pres has had relations with both sexes. He has had since he was a boy. And he doesn’t know whether marriage will cure him or not.”
“I can tell you, Tina. It won’t, if you mean curing him of homosexuality. Is that why you’re afraid to marry him? Or so hesitant?”
“No. The homosexuality is what the friendship was based on. The problem. He had his problem. I had mine. I have mine.”
“What is yours? You’re not a Lesbian,” he said.
“No. My problem—the polite word for it is promiscuity,” she said.
“One of two affairs in Europe,” said her father.
“Hah!”
“Well, you’re twenty-six. It depends on your definition of promiscuous,” he said.
“An odd subject for the breakfast table,” she said. “Father, I’ve only had one real affair in my life. With the trackwalker. That was the only affair that lasted long enough to be called an affair, and that’s why I was so upset when it broke up. I thought I’d found a man who could keep me from being a whore. But the whore came out, and he dropped me. I told you about an opera singer whose husband was drunk half the time. I was caught in bed with him. And I was almost sure I would be, but I went to bed with him anyhow. If I lived abroad, Father, with those people, I’d be only one of many. Here—in the United States, I mean—and among the people I’m most likely to see, I’m a marked woman.”
“A marked woman,” said her father. “I should think you’d be marked in more ways than one.”
“I am,” she said.
“I wasn’t only referring to your character.”
“Neither was I,” she said. “Don’t expect any grandchildren from me, Father. Three years ago I had an operation that took care of that.”
“You had an abortion?”
“Oh, nothing as mild as that,” she said. “I caught a disease, and that’s why I had the operation. Uncle Pen knew all about it, and Aunt Wilma. Uncle Pen paid for everything. And I think that’s why he left me that money, in cash. You’re stunned. You look stunned.” She put her hand across the table and rested it on his arm. “Tell me to go abroad, Father.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said.
“I’d go if you told me to,” she said. “Otherwise, I think I’ll marry Pres.”
“Does he know all this?”
“Most of it. The worst of it. He had a few things to tell, too,” she said.
“Yes, I guess he did,” said her father.
“Most people start their marriage with high hopes. We’d start with hardly any at all.”
He patted the back of her hand. “Don’t be deceived by that. Don’t think things couldn’t get worse.”
“You’re not as much for this marriage as you were a few minutes ago?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t had time to think. But I’m not going to tell you to go abroad. Don’t try to shift that over on me, Tina. If your Uncle Pen were still alive, he’d know what to say. But I don’t.”
“Don’t be hurt because I went to Uncle Pen. I didn’t dare go to you. I wouldn’t have gone to you six months ago. But here I am now, asking you what to do.”
“Whatever I tell you, Tina, is going to be wrong unless you really want to change your ways. And I don’t know whether you can change your ways. They have these psychologists, psychoanalysts, but I don’t know how much help they are.”
“I slept with one in Paris. A hideous little man. A gnome. He was a Russian Jew with a long moustache, and I towered over him. He’s the only psychoanalyst I ever knew, but he wasn’t helping me. I was helping him, and he said so quite frankly.”
“You see, Tina? I couldn’t possibly be the one to advise you, to tell you what to do. You have another personality that I’m just hearing about for the first time.” He looked out at the gardener who had begun to mow the lawn. “And yet, I know where it all came from. All of it.” He cupped his hand under her chin. “I know where the eyes came from. The cheekbones. The shape of your head.” He dropped his hand. “And most assuredly I know where the rest of it came from, good and bad. I doubt if any Jew with a long moustache, or for that matter any Gentile with no moustache could make you different from the way you are. And I wouldn’t want them to.”
Instantly she broke into tears, got up and left the table. They had had all they could stand, and she had the privilege of yielding to a more complex emotion than she was used to yielding to.
The basic routine intervened before he could lose himself in retrospection. The maid swung open the kitchen door. “Isn’t Miss Tina ordering her breakfast?” she said.
“Not just yet,” said George Lockwood.
“I heard her go upstairs, and she likes her bacon crisp. I could have it ready by the time she came down again. You don’t know what kind of eggs she wants?”
“Golden eggs,” said George Lockwood.
“Golden eggs? Is that your way of saying sunny side up? You know, Mr. Lockwood, you don’t always talk very plain. Sometimes I can’t hardly understand what you’re saying. It runs in this family.”