While we were little, Mother and Daddy were anything but permissive parents. The little ones don"t get away with much. But once we get well into our teens- and that meant Xan and Charles and me, and Kate, while she was with us-they moved into a hands-off policy. If we hadn"t learned from all they had tried to teach us when we were younger, it was too late.
And what we"d learned was as much from example as from anything they said.
Our parents were responsible toward each other as well as toward us. What"s more important, they loved each other. Max didn"t need to tell me that. I knew it. It was solid rock under my feet. And love means that you don"t dominate or manipulate or control.
Xan missed a few days of school. Den was the only one to catch anything from him, but Daddy was watching us all, and Den lost only a day. The rest of us were all right, as far as strep was concerned.
What Xan and Kate said shouldn"t have made any difference. I should have thrown it away, forgotten it.
114.
Or I should have asked Daddy when we were out in the lab together if he believed what they"d said about Max and Ursula. But I didn"t ask him. And what"s said is said. Xan"s and Kate"s words were like pebbles thrown into the water, with ripples spreading out and out . . . It kept niggling at the back of my mind.
I didn"t want to think about s.e.x. The male population of Cowpertown High was still in intellectual nursery school. Renny didn"t want me to be anything but a kid sister to him. Who else was there?
Friday night I couldn"t sleep. Finally I got up and went into the kitchen to make myself something warm to drink. We"d put away the winter blankets, and the night was cool. Mother was already there, in her nightgown, waiting for the kettle to boil.
"I"m making herb tea," she said. "Want some?"
"I"d love some," I said, "as long as it"s not camomile."
"I don"t like camomile either, unless I have a very queasy stomach."
"My stomach"s queasy," I said, "but I still don"t want camomile."
"Why is your stomach queasy, honey?"
"What Xan said."
"What, that Xan said? Xan says a lot."
"Xan and Kate. About Max and Ursula."
Mother got two cups from the kitchen dresser and fixed our tea. "I hoped Daddy"d relieved your mind about that."
"It keeps coming back."
She handed me a steaming cup, and we sat at the kitchen table. The windows were partly open and the steady murmur of the ocean came in, and the wind moved through the palmettos, rattling them like paper.
115.
Mother slid one of the windows closed. "Xan and Kate are both fourteen. At that age, children tend to have a high interest in s.e.xual activity, because they"re just discovering themselves as s.e.xual human beings. Their interests do widen after a while, as yours have."
"When I was fourteen, I hardly knew lesbianism existed, and I wasn"t particularly interested."
"You and Xan are very different people. You and Kate, too. For one thing, if you"d heard upsetting gossip at school, you"d have come to your father or me privately. You wouldn"t have brought it up as dinner-table conversation."
"Xan thinks anything"s okay for dinner-table conversation."
"That"s partly our fault. We encourage you to talk about what"s on your minds.
You"ve always been interested in an unusually wide variety of topics. What do you and Max talk about?"
"Philosophy. Anthropology. Lately she"s been on a binge of reading the pre-Platonic philosophers. She says they were the precursors of the physicists who study quantum mechanics."
"Shouldn"t that tell you something?"
"Tell me what?"
"Where your interests lie. And Max"s."
I couldn"t hold the question back any longer. "Mother, do you think Max is a lesbian?"
Mother sighed and sipped at her tea. Outside, a bird sang a brief cadenza and was silent. "The point I thought I was making is that what"s important to you about Max is her interest in ideas. She"s someone who appreciates and encourages the ideas you have. You might not have tried out for Celia if it weren"t for Max."
116.
I couldn"t leave it alone. Maybe I"m more like Xan than I realized. "But if she is a lesbian, wouldn"t that worry you and Daddy-I mean, that I"m over at Beau Allaire so often?"
Mother sighed again. She looked tired. Daddy had been off to Tallaha.s.see with Ursula. Mother had stayed home with us kids. Daddy had been promising her a few nights in Charleston, to go to the Dock Street Theatre, to the Spoleto Festival, but there hadn"t seemed to be time. Or money, Charleston may not be New York, but theatre tickets aren"t cheap anywhere. The neuro-surgeon Dennys had introduced Ursula to, who also knew Daddy, had offered his guesthouse, which put it in the realm of possibility. It just hadn"t happened. Daddy traveled around, to medical meetings, and Mother stayed home, "Polly," she said, "there are a great many areas in which Daddy and I simply have to trust you kids. We have to trust that how Charles lives his life while he"s in Boston is consistent with the values we"ve tried to instill in all of you, just as Dennys and Lucy have to trust Kate while she"s with us. When Kate and Xan- and you-go to a school dance, we have to trust you not to give in to peer pressure and experiment with alcohol or with drugs you know to be harmful and addictive. We"ve been grateful and perhaps a little relieved when Kate has called us to come get her, rather than drive home with someone who"s been drinking, and I suspect Dennys and Lucy feel the responsibility for Charles as strongly as we do for Kate."
"Kate"s got good sense."
"And so do you. And that"s why we trust you; and we trust Max and Ursula not to do or say anything that would harm you. Has our trust been justified?"
117.
"Yes." I nodded agreement. This was how Mother and Daddy thought. This was how they behaved.
"If they were pulling you away from other people, then we"d think that was not a good influence. But you"ve been happier in school, haven"t you?"
"Yes."
"You"ve been asked to be in the chorus, haven"t you?"
"Yes." I did not tell her that the teacher who taught chorus went into ecstasies because she said I had "the pure voice of a boy soprano."
"You"re getting more phone calls from your cla.s.smates. Things are generally easier for you."
"Yes." I"d hardly realized it consciously, but it was true. Except for those sn.o.bs from Mulletville.
Mother continued. "Trusting people is risky, Polly, we are aware of that.
Trust gets broken. But when I think of Max and Ursula, I don"t feel particularly curious about their s.e.x lives, one way or another. They"re opening a world of ideas for you, ideas you"re not likely to b.u.mp into at Cowpertown High. I"m sorrier than I can say that there"s been ugly gossip from the Mulletville girls and that the gossip has touched you. You"re young to b.u.mp into this kind of gratuitous viciousness, but it hits us all sooner or later. I"ve had to sit out a good bit of gossip about your father and female colleagues."
"But it wasn"t true!" "No, it wasn"t true, Polly. That"s the point I"m making. If you can, try to forget Xan and Kate"s fourteen-year-old gossip."
Now I sighed. "I"lll try. But I wish they"d kept their big mouths shut."
"So do I, Polly, so do I."
118.
She had not told me whether or not she thought Max was a lesbian. But perhaps that was part of the point she was making.
April, turning into May, was Benne Seed"s most gorgeous weather. We had a few summer-hot days, but mostly it was sunny and breezy and the air smelled of flowers and the sky was full of birdsong. Kate made a tape of a mockingbird to take home.
Daddy and Ursula drove down to Florida again, overnight. Daddy was to give a paper on new developments in his experiments with octopuses, with Ursula giving another paper about how it could be applied to neuro-surgery on human beings.
I.
found myself wishing that Xan was still concerned about Daddy and Ursula.
Max called when I got home from school, as she almost always did when Ursula was away. I drove over; Urs and Daddy had taken Ursula"s car; a Land-Rover"s not great for long distances. And suddenly, when I was about halfway to Beau Allaire, the fog rolled in from the ocean, and the outlines of the trees were blurred, and the birds stopped singing. There was a damp hush all over the island. Turning on the headlights just made visibility worse, and the fog lights didn"t help much. I slowed down to a crawl, and was grateful to arrive safely at Beau Allaire. We went right up to Max"s room, which is always the pleasantest place when the wind swings to the northeast. When the sun is out on the Island, it"s warm, even in winter. When the sun is hidden by fog, it feels cold, even if the thermometer reads 80.
We were sipping tea when Mother called, to make 119.
sure I"d arrived safely and to say that the visibility at our end of the island was nil. She agreed without hesitation when Max suggested I spend the night and go to school in the morning on the bus with the kids from Mulletville.
That was the only part I didn"t like. I looked into the fire so Max wouldn"t see my face.
But she saw something. "Your mother"s confidence in me means more than I can say. But-"
"But what?" I asked, still looking away from her.
"For some reason you"re not happy about going to school with the Mulletville contingent."
"They"re all sn.o.bs, and anyhow, I"m needed at home to handle the boat."
"And you don"t want the students from Mulletville to know you spent the night here." Her voice was flat.
"If the fog lifts, I"ll get up early. Anyhow, I have to get the car home-Mother didn"t think of that."
"What she was thinking of was your safety. When your father and Ursula get back, Urs can drop him off here and he can drive your Rover home." I didn"t say anything, but I turned to look at her, and her eyes were bleak, the color of ice, and the shadows under them seemed to darken. "I hope this isn"t going to compromise you any more than you"ve already been compromised."
I stared back at the fire. "I don"t care."
I could hear Max draw in her breath, let it out in a long sigh. "It"s taken a long time for gossip to reach you, hasn"t it? I expected it to raise its ugly head long before this."
"Gossip is gossip. Mother and Daddy take a dim view of it. The girls from Mulletville are the b.i.t.c.hiest group at school."
Max sighed again, and I turned once more to look at 120.
her, lean and elegant, stretched out on her side, leaning on one elbow. "I"d hoped this conversation wouldn"t be necessary. Urs said it would be, sooner or later, since the world considers personal privacy a thing of the past.
Have you noticed how, whenever there"s a tragedy, the TV cameras rush to the bereaved to take pictures, totally immune to human suffering?"
"Well-our TV doesn"t work-but I know what you mean."
"And I"m avoiding what I need to say. You"re pure of heart, Polyhymnia, but most of the world isn"t. I wish Urs were here. She could talk about it more sanely than I, so that it wouldn"t hurt you. We-Ursula and I-have been lovers for over thirty years."
I stared down at the white fur of the rug. If Max wanted to avoid this conversation, so did I.
"When people think of h.o.m.os.e.xuals they usually think of-Ursula and I have had a long and faithful love."
In my ears I heard Xan"s words about two d.y.k.es. It didn"t fit Max and Ursula.
Neither did the words I heard at school, gays and f.a.ggots and queers.
"I love you, Polly, love you like my daughter. And you love me, too, in all your amazing innocence."
There was a long pause. I hoped the conversation was over. But Max went on.
"Ursula"-she paused again- "Ursula is the way she is. She"s competed in a man"s world, in a man"s field. There are not many women neurosurgeons. As for me-"
-I don"t want to know, I thought. -Keep this kind of thing in the closet where it belongs. That"s what doors are for. It doesn"t have anything to do with me.
"We"d better go downstairs," Max said. "I asked Nettie and Ovid to set the table on the verandah."
I followed her. Instead of going directly out to the 121 /.
verandah, she paused at the oval dining room, switching on an enormous Waterford chandelier which sparkled like drops of water from the ocean.
Mother and Daddy have eaten in the oval dining room at Beau Allaire. When I ate with Max and Ursula, it was supper, not dinner-sometimes if it was chilly, on trays in the library, or sometimes on the big marble-topped table in the kitchen. Ursula kneaded dough on that table, and the kitchen usually held the fragrance of baking bread.
"Nettie, really!" Max exclaimed, and I saw that two places had been set at the mahogany table, which, like the room, was oval.
As though she had been called, Nettie came in through the swing door whichled to the breezeway and the kitchen. "Verandah"s too damp, Miss Maxa. Table"s wet.
Fog"s thick."
"Fine, Nettie," Max said. "You"re quite right. We"ll eat here." She sat at the head of the table and pointed to the portrait over the long sideboard, a portrait of a man, middle-aged or more, stern and dignified, with white hair and mustache, a nose which was a caricature of Max"s, and a smile which made me uncomfortable.
Ovid came in and lit the candles on the table and in the sconces on the wall.
"My papa." Max nodded at the portrait and her smile matched the smile on her father"s face. I felt cold, chillier than the dampness the fog brought in.
"Looks like him," Max said. "Spitting image, as they say. It"s not a bad piece of work. One has to admire the artist"s perception which transcends the stiffness of his technique. What do you think?"
I couldn"t very well say, "His smile gives me the creeps." I said, "He looks rather formidable."
122.
"Formidable? Oh, he was."
Nettie and Ovid came in with silver dishes, cold sliced chicken, hot spoon bread, served us, and withdrew.
Max said, "When my sister and I were little, we used to think G.o.d looked like Papa, and I suspect he fostered the idea. Papa liked being G.o.d. You don"t make as much money as Papa did without a G.o.d complex. Beau Allaire belonged to Mama, and Papa got a job in the family bank. He was a big frog in a little pond, but he made the money not only to keep up Beau Allaire but to build a hospital.