Lenore said, “I won’t!”
Netta ate another pecan. The Applebys had sent them from Florida—too late for Thanksgiving but too early for Christmas. The Applebys had never before sent a gift to the Baileys. The Applebys lived on Crystal Lake and went to Miami every year. Word, Netta thought, must be seeping around, the way it always does, ahead of the fact. The pecans were therefore a delicious token of a bounteous Hood to come.
“I think you will,” Netta said, “simply because I know you haven’t lost your mind.”
“Nevertheless, I will not marry Kit.”
“Why?”
“How’d you like to?”
“I’ve had worse,” Netta said, and then catching herself, she added, “all my life.”
Lenore’s eyes were savage. “You’ve had worse all your life! Poor Dad!”
“It’s so plain it hurts,” Netta said. “You refuse Kit. Okay. Your father’s in jail-five to ten years. Kill him sure.”
“Maybe it would—what’s left of Dad!”
“The house goes. Both cars. All the furniture. Probably even our clothes, forced sales and repossession. Then we have nothing.”
“But self-respect.”
Netta said quietly, “You’ve never been poor. Flat. Stony. Broke. Without a friend or a dime—unless you hustle a friend and he gives you a dime. Maybe even a few dollars.”
Lenore thought that over. “I doubt it. People would tide you and me over—”
“Who?”
Lenore looked through a window. “The Conners.”
“The Conners—the Conners!—the Conners! I’ve heard it all my life. I’m sick to death of it. Who are the Conners? An accountant, that’s who! And a crazy young kid who thinks he’ll be an architect in maybe ten years when you’ve got bags under your eyes and a bridge.”
Lenore took a pecan. She looked at it, halved it, threw the paper-thin middle husk onto the hearth and shook her head. She felt frightened, cold, sick. She was trapped and she knew it as well as her mother. If it were just disgrace, as such, and poverty, that would be thinkable. But she couldn’t face the image of her father in prison, marching in a line to eat, going out on the roads in stripes, cold and miserable and rejected. She knew he was weak. But she knew, also, that he was kind. Kind and rather gentle and, in his way, loving. Which her mother was not, unless, in some twisted way, she too cared for Beau.
Lenore was intelligent. She was realistic. Her bent toward science had showed it and her studies of science had developed the quality. She had been brought up to like and enjoy “nice” things and to want and to know how to use far more of them than her father could ever supply.
At this moment, however, she realized how very little “nice things” meant in relation to the whole of human life. Her very realism had showed her, long ago, that life was closing in on her. The sweetheart of her childhood had not turned into the dream prince of maturity. He was far away now, doing some sort of menial chore for the Air Force. Desk work. He’d grow up at a desk, drawing buildings that probably would never be constructed, because Chuck didn’t seem to have even as much drive as his father. All Chuck’s drive was in his head, his imagination. It never came out, never produced.
Long ago she’d begun saying to herself, Wise up, Lenore. He isn’t for you. Find yourself another boy.
Well. Her mother had found one. If it wasn’t to be Chuck, did it matter so greatly who it was?
Lenore could anticipate the turnings of her mother’s mind. She anticipated now, as her mother began, “After all, Lenore, in time….”
“I know. Divorce. With alimony. Abundant alimony.”
Netta got ahead of her then. “Why not? People like the Sloans expect it.” Netta was aware that Minerva had no such idea in mind, but she went on confidently, ‘‘I’m sure his mother feels that even an unsuccessful marriage would be good for him. Start him on the way. And, Lenore, have you thought? Suppose you were married a few years? Suppose you came—out—well the way you would. Comfortably off? Even wealthy? Then you might be in a position to give Charles Conner financial aid till he got on his feet in architecture. You could get married and be happy, with a settlement from the Sloan family in your bank account! I mean, if it’s really love you feel for Charles, what could you do that would help more? Have you thought of that?”
Lenore ate another nut, tossed a hull, twisted her dark hair. “Thought of whoring for the man I love? No. I haven’t. I suppose it’s been done, though. By plenty of women.”
“Then you’ll…?”
“I haven’t said,” Lenore answered. “I painted myself into this corner with my own little hand. If Dad isn’t to go to the pen right off, I suppose I’ve got to get engaged, at least, or have an ‘understanding’ with the ape. You’ve got me in a spot where either I do that, or Dad’s jailed.”
“I always knew my daughter….” Netta began rapturously, and rapturously she rose from her chair to bestow an embrace.
Lenore sat perfectly still. “Sit down, Netta,” she said icily. “Let’s have no manure in this.”
“Minerva will want to know!” Mrs. Bailey breathed, discomfited only momentarily.
“You call her and the deal’s off. I’ll tell Kit in my own time and my own way, and the terms won’t be—practicing matrimony from the moment he slips on the diamond either! Sit still, Mother! I swear to God, if you put the needle in anywhere, one more time, I’ll take a job in New York and be damned to you and Dad both!”
Mrs. Bailey was slightly disappointed, but not very. She had always been a main-chance gambler.