Toni shrugged at this talk. So? A lot of the returning GIs were like that. They had seen too much, experienced too much, to go rah-rah at football games. So far as being admitted to the college was concerned, Bat was an outstanding student. So far as she was concerned, if he was privileged to be at Harvard, Harvard was privileged to have him.
She had met his mother but not his father. He told her, finally, that he'd never met his father and wasn't sure he wanted to. Mexico City and Cordoba were too far away for him to go home often. He had gone last summer, but would not go home for Christmas. He accepted her family's invitation to spend Christmas with them in Florida.
Dr. Maxim was not pleased to have his daughter talking about marrying the illegitimate son of Jonas Cord but was reconciled to the idea after he watched Bat land a big tarpon. The young man had fished from a boat out of Vera Cruz and was experienced and skilled at fighting a big fish. What was more, he passed a test put to him by Dr. Maxim — he backed Maxim's smoothly into its slip, steering with its twin screws more than its rudder. The doctor was prepared to accept him after watching him do that.
Morgana liked him better after several evenings of dinner and after-dinner conversation. When he said he thought President Truman might be reelected — and backed his judgment with reasons — she decided she liked him very well indeed.
When Toni and Bat caught the train to return to Boston, the Maxims did not comment on the obvious fact that they would be sharing a roomette. They were in fact traveling as Mr. and Mrs. J. Batista, as their luggage tags indicated — because railroads in 1947 would not allow an unmarried couple to share a roomette.
"They like you," Toni said as she waved at her parents through the window.
"I tried," he said.
"Well, they do like you," she said. "They do. They've bought the idea of our marriage. Not one hundred percent, but ... no parents ever accept one hundred percent the marriage of a son or daughter to some stranger they did not choose. Of course" — she grinned wickedly — "if they knew I go down on you, they'd kill you."
"We should just go ahead and marry," he said. "Then we could live together."
"Soon ..." she whispered, glancing one more time at her parents on the platform as the train pulled away. "We have to let them give me a wedding."
Toni could not move in with him in his apartment in Lexington, but she spent hours there almost every day. She spent as little time as possible in her college living quarters — only from 1 a.m. to dawn, as the rules demanded. She kept most of her clothes in Lexington, most of her books, and her two portable typewriters.
She had two portable typewriters because she had one that typed Greek characters. During her senior year she wrote a thesis for a class in public ethics, in Greek. She won the award for the best senior thesis of the year. The title was Δεμοκρατια εσχατη τυραννις, a quotation from Plato that translates "Democracy passes into despotism."
Bat was proud of her. Dave made him prouder by marveling over her Greek typewriter and her Greek thesis. Dave encouraged Bat to go to law school, and Toni joined in that. It would be a fine career for him. Besides, he needed focus. He had been thinking of law school anyway. His mother, too, urged it. He applied for the fall class in 1948 and was admitted. So far as Bat was concerned, everything was settled.
7
"We can buy a house," he said to Toni one afternoon in the spring. "Or lease an apartment in Boston." He grinned. "We can't go on living with Dave. I'm going to accelerate law school, go all summer and so on, and graduate six months earlier. Then — New York. Or would you rather live in Connecticut?"
"Bat ... What about my thing in Washington? I told you it's almost certain I'm going to be appointed an aide to Senator Spessard Holland."
He stiffened. "You mean, even if we are married, you —"
She nodded. "Of course. It's what I've wanted to do. I've planned for it, studied for it. Washington is where a person may be able to make a difference."
"What about children?" he asked.
"I don't want to have any children for a while. I want to see what I can do. Then ... There'll be time. I'm only twenty-two."
"The perfect time for children," he said.
"I didn't say I want to wait ten or fifteen years. But I didn't come to college to learn to be a housewife. That's what my mother and my stepmother are. There are more important things in this world than shopping for groceries and doing laundry and playing golf. An arrangement can be worked out, Bat. An element of it is that I'm not going to have children for a few years."
"And that's that," he said, his voice rising to a testy sneer. He got up and walked across the room. "That's the way it's gonna be, huh? You've decided."
"There is nothing we can't discuss," said Toni.
"Except that our marriage would be subordinate to your 'career'," he scoffed.
"Oh? Well ... hasn't your father's marriage — and his affairs — always been subordinate to his?"
"No. I'm not that contemptible norteamericano asshole!"
"Really? Tell me how you're going to be different."
"My ... 'father' — That man whose biology is in me, and nothing else? All right. From what I know of him, all his life he has subordinated everything to his career — his love for my mother, his love for his wife, his home, his friendships ... everything. Time says he has a daughter who never saw him until she was fourteen years old. He has a son who hasn't seen him yet. He wouldn't marry my mother. He married another woman, then walked away from her, and she divorced him ... and then he married her again. I love you, and —"
"I love you, Bat," she interrupted. "But I'm a person too. If we are going to marry, we'll have to work out something that recognizes that."
"I do recognize it."
"Then don't ask me to move into a house or apartment in Massachusetts and be there waiting for you every evening when you come home, with a roast in the oven. I'm going to Washington. I am going to Washington."
He sighed. "I guess we'd better put off marrying. For a while. Till I graduate from Harvard Law. Till you ... do whatever it is you think you have to do."
"If I didn't love you so goddamned much, I'd tell you to go to hell," she muttered. "I ought to. If I didn't love you, I would."
"I love you, too," he said.
Toni nodded. "So maybe it will work out some way. Listen, I have to be in Washington on June sixteenth. I'm going to be down there all alone, missing you so much. Come down that weekend. Promise me you'll come down that weekend."
"Sure. I'll try," he said.
She understood that meant he wouldn't. And he didn't.
12
1
BAT? WHY BAT? BECAUSE YOU'VE USED THE NAME Batista?"
Jonas and Bat were together in Bat's Porsche 356. Bat had told him that moving into a hotel floor in Acapulco was foolish, that he could live in a comfortable house in a good neighborhood here in Mexico City, for a fifth of the cost. Besides, privacy and security and communications would be easier from the city than from Acapulco.
Jonas had accepted the idea. It seemed to him that his chances of establishing a good relationship with his newfound son would be improved if he accepted the boy's suggestion about something important.