a logical thought which, as usual, I trust you to disentangle from my sorry syntax.”
They were again in Reed’s study, where Kate had found him on her return from the university. She fully extended his lounge chair and lay in it quietly for some minutes. Reed, behind his desk where he had been working, watched her. One of his most prized qualities, in Kate’s view, was that he could look at her and wait to hear her response, not, as with so many of the males she encountered, waiting to speak themselves, or retreating into their own private musings.
“I can’t decide if I want to know more about him or not,” she eventually said, having tried to sort out her thoughts. “I want to go on seeing him from time to time, to stay in touch. I’ll certainly be interested, not to say engrossed, in anything I learn about him. But whether or not I think we, you, ought to dig into his past is a different question. We both realize, I hope, that those missing years will turn out to have been a series of jobs so repetitive and dull that he saw no point in reporting them; probably he couldn’t even remember them all.”
“Probably,” Reed said.
“But if I agree, you’d still like to dig a little?”
“I think so.”
“Well,” Kate said, pulling herself and the lounge chair into an upright position, “I can’t imagine how you’d even begin, but if begin you must, you have my agreement, if not quite my blessing. I’ve never investigated the past, exactly. I’ll learn a lot watching how you do it.”
“You’re already beginning to discourage me,” Reed said. “But not definitively.”
The next day, a Friday, Kate went in the afternoon to talk with her friend Leslie Stewart, who was a painter and could be found in her studio, happy—if her guest was both expected and welcome—to put down her brush and relax. Between her and Kate there was likely to be brisk and enjoyable conversation. They went into the kitchen where, as was their habit, they drank tea, which Kate never did anywhere else, and nibbled on ginger cookies.
“I take it that acquiring a father this late in life is having disruptive effects?” Leslie said. “I don’t wonder. Finding out in one’s later middle years, as I did, that one is in love with a woman is certainly an astonishing experience, but this is even more noteworthy. And to think that without DNA he could have claimed fatherhood till the cows came home, and you would hardly have believed him. At least, you would never have known for sure and could have sent him packing.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Kate said. “He was clever enough to prove he was my father before suggesting that we meet. One shudders to think what the world will be like in future years with all our genes mapped and if necessary altered, to say nothing of giving away the secrets of the marriage bed.”
“Or the hurly-burly of the chaise longue, as Shaw or someone put it. Did you want to discuss genes or your father?” Leslie asked. “I’m ready for either, though at the moment I find the latter more challenging.”
“That’s just it,” Kate said. “I can’t decide whether I think his turning up is challenging or, after the first shock, simply another fact to be calmly accepted. It’s a romantic story, all right, and certainly casts my mother in a new light; but all that’s the past. Does the fact of this man have any bearing on my future, or my peace of mind?”
“Maybe it depends what you think about fathers generally. They, after all, particularly for our generation and the women before us, are the carriers of the patriarchy, the male world, the sense of men as human beings and women as an interesting, if usually annoying, appendage. Does it matter who carries the disease?”
“It may matter whether the carrier—to continue your metaphor—is infecting one purposely, accidentally, or not at all.”
“Good point, Kate. But surely whatever effect either father might have had, or
They were again in Reed’s study, where Kate had found him on her return from the university. She fully extended his lounge chair and lay in it quietly for some minutes. Reed, behind his desk where he had been working, watched her. One of his most prized qualities, in Kate’s view, was that he could look at her and wait to hear her response, not, as with so many of the males she encountered, waiting to speak themselves, or retreating into their own private musings.
“I can’t decide if I want to know more about him or not,” she eventually said, having tried to sort out her thoughts. “I want to go on seeing him from time to time, to stay in touch. I’ll certainly be interested, not to say engrossed, in anything I learn about him. But whether or not I think we, you, ought to dig into his past is a different question. We both realize, I hope, that those missing years will turn out to have been a series of jobs so repetitive and dull that he saw no point in reporting them; probably he couldn’t even remember them all.”
“Probably,” Reed said.
“But if I agree, you’d still like to dig a little?”
“I think so.”
“Well,” Kate said, pulling herself and the lounge chair into an upright position, “I can’t imagine how you’d even begin, but if begin you must, you have my agreement, if not quite my blessing. I’ve never investigated the past, exactly. I’ll learn a lot watching how you do it.”
“You’re already beginning to discourage me,” Reed said. “But not definitively.”
The next day, a Friday, Kate went in the afternoon to talk with her friend Leslie Stewart, who was a painter and could be found in her studio, happy—if her guest was both expected and welcome—to put down her brush and relax. Between her and Kate there was likely to be brisk and enjoyable conversation. They went into the kitchen where, as was their habit, they drank tea, which Kate never did anywhere else, and nibbled on ginger cookies.
“I take it that acquiring a father this late in life is having disruptive effects?” Leslie said. “I don’t wonder. Finding out in one’s later middle years, as I did, that one is in love with a woman is certainly an astonishing experience, but this is even more noteworthy. And to think that without DNA he could have claimed fatherhood till the cows came home, and you would hardly have believed him. At least, you would never have known for sure and could have sent him packing.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Kate said. “He was clever enough to prove he was my father before suggesting that we meet. One shudders to think what the world will be like in future years with all our genes mapped and if necessary altered, to say nothing of giving away the secrets of the marriage bed.”
“Or the hurly-burly of the chaise longue, as Shaw or someone put it. Did you want to discuss genes or your father?” Leslie asked. “I’m ready for either, though at the moment I find the latter more challenging.”
“That’s just it,” Kate said. “I can’t decide whether I think his turning up is challenging or, after the first shock, simply another fact to be calmly accepted. It’s a romantic story, all right, and certainly casts my mother in a new light; but all that’s the past. Does the fact of this man have any bearing on my future, or my peace of mind?”
“Maybe it depends what you think about fathers generally. They, after all, particularly for our generation and the women before us, are the carriers of the patriarchy, the male world, the sense of men as human beings and women as an interesting, if usually annoying, appendage. Does it matter who carries the disease?”
“It may matter whether the carrier—to continue your metaphor—is infecting one purposely, accidentally, or not at all.”
“Good point, Kate. But surely whatever effect either father might have had, or
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