really, for a girl to get married just for the sex of it?
“No, but really, Charles,” she said on the phone a day or two later, “isn’t it funny how we’re letting them go ahead with the very thing you and I decided would be so—so ill-advised?”
“Well, it’s hardly a question of ‘letting’ them, is it,” Charles said, sounding tired. “They’re both old enough to do as they please, aren’t they.”
And she told him she knew that was true; still, for a long time after hanging up the phone, she could only sit on the sofa and try, unsuccessfully, to think.
She wished Phil were home, so the two of them could find a way to talk this whole thing over. Phil might still be only a boy, but there were times when the clarity in what he had to say could cut through a lot of confusion. And she wished he were home anyway, even if they weren’t able to talk—even if all he wanted to do was fool around with the cat or examine his face in the mirror, even if he lapsed into thekind of willfully exasperating childishness that suggested he would always be younger than his age.
She missed him. His letters from the Irving School were long and sometimes funny enough to be read aloud, but they never concealed his unhappiness there. He probably wasn’t sturdy enough for prep-school life. He was too sensitive; he had too much imagination for his own good; and in those ways he was like his mother.
Rachel was different. For all the softness and the crying over ice-cream cones, Rachel was the most stable member of the family: she took after her father.
Softness and stability—it might seem an odd combination, but Gloria knew how substantial a combination it could be. She understood too that a girl getting married just for the sex of it must be a common-enough mistake–girls had probably gotten married for that reason since the beginning of the world—but it was one mistake she’d never made.
She had been thirty years old, a veteran of several affairs and extremely anxious about her future, before agreeing to marry Curtis Drake. And she’d known all along that anxiety wasn’t a very good reason for marriage; still, it had now begun to seem a better reason than this ignorant, virginal susceptibility of her daughter’s.
Or was it possible that nobody’s reasons could be all that clearly defined? Maybe men and women came together in ways as random and mindless as the mating of birds or pigs or insects, so that any talk of “reasons” would always be vain, always be self-deceiving and beside the point. Well, that would be one way of looking at it. Another way, even if it did require more piercing and poignant kinds of memory than she could bear to summon most of the time, would be to acknowledge that Curtis Drake had once won her heart.
“Oh, you say the nicest things,” she could remember telling him, many times, and she had always meant it,though it wasn’t easy now to sift out even the nicest of the things he’d said.
She had liked the trim shape of his head and the way he held it, and the set of his shoulders. She’d liked the depth and resonance of his speaking voice, too, in times of tenderness, even though she’d always known it could take on a harsh rasp in their quarrels, and that it could rise and thin out into an almost feminine whine on a line like “Gloria, can’t you ever be reasonable?”
In the years since her divorce she had often remarked to other people that she couldn’t imagine what had ever possessed her to marry Curtis Drake, but when she was alone she knew better: she could imagine what had possessed her. Certain old songs on the radio late at night, and especially one, could still make her cry for him:
We could make believe
I love you,
Only make believe
That you love me …
But she would have to put all that out of her mind now, for better or worse, because there were wedding preparations to attend to.
She had always fancied the Episcopal Church—everybody knew it was the
“No, but really, Charles,” she said on the phone a day or two later, “isn’t it funny how we’re letting them go ahead with the very thing you and I decided would be so—so ill-advised?”
“Well, it’s hardly a question of ‘letting’ them, is it,” Charles said, sounding tired. “They’re both old enough to do as they please, aren’t they.”
And she told him she knew that was true; still, for a long time after hanging up the phone, she could only sit on the sofa and try, unsuccessfully, to think.
She wished Phil were home, so the two of them could find a way to talk this whole thing over. Phil might still be only a boy, but there were times when the clarity in what he had to say could cut through a lot of confusion. And she wished he were home anyway, even if they weren’t able to talk—even if all he wanted to do was fool around with the cat or examine his face in the mirror, even if he lapsed into thekind of willfully exasperating childishness that suggested he would always be younger than his age.
She missed him. His letters from the Irving School were long and sometimes funny enough to be read aloud, but they never concealed his unhappiness there. He probably wasn’t sturdy enough for prep-school life. He was too sensitive; he had too much imagination for his own good; and in those ways he was like his mother.
Rachel was different. For all the softness and the crying over ice-cream cones, Rachel was the most stable member of the family: she took after her father.
Softness and stability—it might seem an odd combination, but Gloria knew how substantial a combination it could be. She understood too that a girl getting married just for the sex of it must be a common-enough mistake–girls had probably gotten married for that reason since the beginning of the world—but it was one mistake she’d never made.
She had been thirty years old, a veteran of several affairs and extremely anxious about her future, before agreeing to marry Curtis Drake. And she’d known all along that anxiety wasn’t a very good reason for marriage; still, it had now begun to seem a better reason than this ignorant, virginal susceptibility of her daughter’s.
Or was it possible that nobody’s reasons could be all that clearly defined? Maybe men and women came together in ways as random and mindless as the mating of birds or pigs or insects, so that any talk of “reasons” would always be vain, always be self-deceiving and beside the point. Well, that would be one way of looking at it. Another way, even if it did require more piercing and poignant kinds of memory than she could bear to summon most of the time, would be to acknowledge that Curtis Drake had once won her heart.
“Oh, you say the nicest things,” she could remember telling him, many times, and she had always meant it,though it wasn’t easy now to sift out even the nicest of the things he’d said.
She had liked the trim shape of his head and the way he held it, and the set of his shoulders. She’d liked the depth and resonance of his speaking voice, too, in times of tenderness, even though she’d always known it could take on a harsh rasp in their quarrels, and that it could rise and thin out into an almost feminine whine on a line like “Gloria, can’t you ever be reasonable?”
In the years since her divorce she had often remarked to other people that she couldn’t imagine what had ever possessed her to marry Curtis Drake, but when she was alone she knew better: she could imagine what had possessed her. Certain old songs on the radio late at night, and especially one, could still make her cry for him:
We could make believe
I love you,
Only make believe
That you love me …
But she would have to put all that out of her mind now, for better or worse, because there were wedding preparations to attend to.
She had always fancied the Episcopal Church—everybody knew it was the
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