The Lockwood Concern (46 page)

"Oh, she's made up her mind to. She's only here now because of me. You know how things are between my son and me." "Yes," said Hibbard. "And my brother's death took it out of me, more than I knew at the time. But as I said yesterday, Tina's a very perceptive girl. Have some more coffee." "No more, thanks. I'll return your shirt on Sunday," said Hibbard. "Don't you dare forget," said George Lockwood, and smiled. Tina saw Hibbard at least once a week throughout the summer. There were so many gaps in her unsought explanations of her comings and goings that George Lockwood recognized the signs of an affair. She paid him the courtesy of her explanations, but she grew uncommunicative during their moments together. He did not press her, a strategy that was less inspired by delicacy than by a growing conviction that she had not yet committed herself to love and was mystified by her self-repression. The girl had discovered on her own the complexities in Hibbard that he had unconsciously revealed to her father. George Lockwood wanted to tell her that bisexuality was neither monstrous nor rare; but in return for the information she might laugh in his face. What did he really know of what went on in that well-shaped head or between those now sunburned thighs? Who had kissed her, where and when? Whom had she kissed? These were things he would never know, because only she could tell him. Nevertheless he was content for her, in spite of her retreat from their previous tentative rapport. This much she was alive, engaged with the life of another human being. Superficially she bloomed, when she might instead have been wilting. She was, moreover, present instead of absent, and if she was questioning the degree of her commitment to love, her turmoil was observable and not taking place in some foreign surroundings. Whichever way her decision went, it would be made here, where her father would not have long to wait to see it, to hear it. She came down to breakfast one morning late in August, and on her plate, on top of some letters, was a small package, insured parcel post with the return address of a Boston jeweler-silversmith. "I hope your mail is more interesting than mine," said George Lockwood. "I think it will be," she said. She got a fruit scissors off the sideboard and opened the parcel. Out of a long, slender blue imitation-leather box she lifted a gold wristwatch and dangled it before him. I've never seen that before," he said. "I've only seen it once before myself," she said. "It was being engraved." "Am I to be allowed to examine it?" "Of course," she said. He laid it flat on the palm of his hand. The bracelet was of fine gold mesh, the face of the watch was surrounded by diamonds, the top of the stem was a small ruby. "Exquisite," he said. "You're dying of curiosity. Go ahead and read the inscription," she said. He looked on the back and read aloud: " 'Tina - time is awasting-P. H.' " He handed the watch back to her. "He could have sent you the same message on a penny postcard. But that's no penny postcard." "No," she said, looking at the watch. "I'm not going to ask you anything, Tina. I'll be damned if I will," said her father. "Do you have to?" she said. "Yes, I have to, but I'm not going to." "He wants me to marry him before school opens," she said. "Are you going to?" said her father. "I think I will," she said. He laughed. "You think you will. School probably opens in two or three weeks." "Three weeks from next Tuesday, to be exact," she said. "Where would you be married, if you decide to be?" "At a justice of the peace. Obviously we couldn't have a big wedding this year, and I never wanted one anyhow." "You could have a small wedding in Swedish Haven. Just the two families." 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 time 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 or 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." "Sometimes I don't hardly understand what you're saying, either, May," he said. "Miss Tina will be having her breakfast when she has it. When that will be I don't know." "Only a cup of coffee is no breakfast for a healthy young girl. And she didn't even drink all of that. People shouldn't fight at breakfast. It ruins the whole day." May let the door swing shut behind her to neutralize any reply he might be making. He was not about to make one. May was the kind of servant that could be easily forgotten when she was not actually present, the nearest human thing to a kitchen utensil. Upstairs Tina was in extreme misery, and he could not help her. The sense of his ineffectuality was worsened by his inability to plan her way out of her unhappiness. For the first and only time in his life he thought of taking her away with him to some strange land where he and she could get a new start. There was no such land; he knew it; but he recognized the thought as a symptom of his ineffectuality. He left the porch, taking the Boston and New York papers with him, and sat on the sofa in what the Elias Whites called the drawing room. The term invariably conjured up a picture of ladies and gentlemen in formal evening dress, on their very best behavior, while a string quartette played softly behind a bank of potted palms. The Elias Whites surely had never had so much as a single violinist to play in their cottage, but in all descriptions of the house, in letters and on the floor plans, this was designated the drawing-room. Very well; in the drawing-room George Lockwood would pretend to read the morning papers while suffering retrocessively with his daughter's contraction of a venereal disease. How had she discovered it? In all probability by being told she had passed it on to someone else. If that were the case, a man lived who despised her, and she would go through life knowing a man despised her. Sooner or later he had surely said, "I got a dose of clap from Tina Lockwood," and even if he whispered it Tina would know he was saying it and could always say it. For her, too, there would be the moment when a man asked her to marry him and she would have to say, "I can't have children." And being Tina, she would have to tell him why. And yet it apparently had made no difference to Preston Hibbard... George Lockwood tossed the papers aside and went upstairs to Tina's room. He knocked on the door. "It's me. Father," he said. "No," she said, and even in the tiny word her voice was weak and tragic. The door was not locked, and he entered the room. She was bent over in a rocking-chair. He closed the door behind him and went to her and put his hand on top of her head. "I've been thinking, Tina," he said. "Oh, don't think, Father. I've done all of that that's necessary. I'm going away." "I wouldn't if I were you," he said. " 'Time is a-wasting.' She looked up at him and then compulsively at the wristwatch that lay on her dressing-table. He nodded. "Yes, I mean him. I want you to go to him now. Today." "And what?" "And marry him." She straightened up. "You couldn't have been listening very carefully." "I heard every syllable, and more to the point, he did when you were telling him the same things. What I think doesn't matter, but that watch does. The watch, and what he says on it. Do you know where he is today?" "Today? Yes, he's at school," she said. "Go there. Don't tell him you're coming. Just go. Even if it only lasts a few years, Tina, it'll be good for both of you." "Why will it?" "Because it's what you both want to do, and that's reason enough. Do you want a high-minded reason? I can give you that, too." "I can't think of any," she said. "There is one, though. Actually there are two. He needs you, and you need him." "High-minded? That's selfish." "Think about it on your way to St. Bartholomew's," he said. "You know, I've been to a lot of weddings, but this is the first time I ever really felt that the father was giving the bride away." "I feel the same way," he said. "I'm not going to tell Geraldine." "Send us a telegram," he said. Then, as if uttering a black prayer, she said, "And he can't ever say he didn't know what he was getting, can