Still, I said, “But who will accompany Mrs. Burns?”
“Mrs. Burns? She doesn’t need anyone. It’s her country club. She knows everybody there. She’ll be busy all night with her club friends. In fact, she’ll have a better time without you.”
“But she’s asked me to come.”
“I know,” she said, quite serious. “But I’m asking you not to come.”
Her tone wasn’t petulant, or fretful, for she was possessed of a remarkable equanimity, more the way one thinks distinguished, older people to be than young teenage girls. The way Mary Burns would no doubt conduct herself were she living now. But then Sunny displayed a ferocity as well, a flinty, coal-like hardness that should have been beyond the ken of her years.
I then asked her: “Are you afraid you’ll be embarrassed by me?”
“Of course not,” she replied. She was idly binding her wrist with a roll of sterile gauze. Whenever she came to the store, she played with some item or another. “Why should I be embarrassed? You know very well how much everyone likes you. Even my friends. In fact, they like you better than they like me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is true. And it’s the same with everyone I meet. But I don’t care about that. I would like to be there by myself, on my own. I know Mary has to be there at this point, and I wish she weren’t going to be, but if you come, too, I’ll be the only one with my whole family there. I think that’s a little strange, don’t you, to be with your family at a dance just for kids?”
I nodded, for what she was saying seemed reasonable enough. I could understand the potential awkwardness of having the two of us present. Mary Burns and I went out together in public quite regularly, but rarely was it the three of us, the “whole family,” as Sunny had put it, a phrase which stuck out, unfortunately, because it seemed amazing that she should say such a thing. Certainly, I wanted us to be as much of a unit as any, a “whole family” in whatever sense was possible. But I knew Sunny had no feelings of the kind. I had done as Mary Burns had requested, never bringing up to Sunny her ill use and her selfishness and her cold spirit; and my silence, I will say now, was hurtful to me, for I did have a genuine feeling for Mary Burns, as genuine a feeling as I’d had for a long time, and to stand by and witness their relations caused me severe distress. I was simply angry at Sunny, and so, finally, I think, was Mary Burns, deeply angry and hurt, and though she never said a word to the girl, it seemed to happen that she was addressing me at the end, looking to me for the reasons why my daughter, after nearly four years, could still be so profoundly unmoved.
That night of the dance, Mary Burns quietly watched me swim. She waited to speak until I was done and had pulled on my robe. I sat down with her at the outdoor table. The automatic lights on the stone paths had gone on, and there was a coppery glow rising against the early evening sky.
“I wish we could have talked before you decided on your own not to come tonight.”
“I called this afternoon,” I said to her. “But you were out.”
“You know I was at the club, helping with the decorations.” She looked upset, though her voice was steady and low. “Though I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered, whether we talked or not.”
“Sunny isn’t feeling so comfortable at the moment. You must understand that I wish to support her.”
“Of course you do,” she said, exasperated. She brushed her hair with her hand. She had recently changed the color, from its silvery tones to a very pale golden color, and though it was handsome, I wasn’t certain it best suited her. She appeared much younger, and then not, and sometimes I was unsure how to think of her. “Listen to me, Franklin. She’s your daughter, and so you ought to do everything you can for her. If you have eyes, you’ve seen that I’ve tried to do my part.”
“I know you have, and I thank you.”
“That’s not why I bring it up,” she said sharply. She paused and took a breath. “I didn’t spend time with Sunny so you’d be grateful to me. I didn’t do it because of you, or even so much to help you. She seemed to need guidance, the kind of company a mother or aunt or grandmother can give, and I wanted to try to offer that. I guess I was terribly wrong. I was naive. But I’m also not sorry. I would do it again, without hesitation.
“The reason I’m angry tonight is that I think you treat her wrongly. Perhaps you don’t know it, but you do. I’ve thought it from time to time, and I’m sorry I’m such a coward that I can only say this to you now.”
I cleared my throat and said, surprising myself, “I understand that I’ve not dealt with Sunny’s jealousy of you very effectively.”
This seemed to irritate her. “That’s not what I’m talking about. That’s not it at all.”
“I try my best to treat her with respect,” I said.
“Yes,” Mary Burns answered earnestly. “Yes, you do. You treat her like a grown woman, which I guess is understandable because she’s very mature for her age.”
“You know how much I want her to be independent.”
“Yes, she is,” she replied. “But it’s as if she’s a woman to whom you’re beholden, which I can’t understand. I don’t see the reason. You’re the one who wanted her. You adopted her. But you act almost guilty, as if she’s someone you hurt once, or betrayed, and now you’re obliged to do whatever she wishes, which is never good for anyone, much less a child.”
“This is quite unusual, Mary, to hear, but I’ll think about what you say.”
“For goodness sake, Franklin, you don’t always have to assent!” she said, her voice suddenly rising. I thought she would speak most sharply to me then. But she seemed to hear herself, and I could see the control she was exercising over her face. She took a sip of her iced tea. “I might be completely wrong, Franklin. I hope I am.”
“I have always trusted your judgment, Mary.”
“Yes. I know you have.”
We sat in silence after that, the night fast approaching, the crickets just beginning to arise in song. Mary Burns glanced at the house, to Sunny’s bedroom window, which was still lighted. Shadows moved along a wall. They were already late for the dance, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was one of those moments that appear to take forever, though somehow everything was the better for it. I didn’t wish to go further in the conversation, nor did she, and if there was one true thing that we shared during our relations, it was that neither of us, for better or worse, had much stomach for these engagements, for taking certain issues to the necessary lengths. We rather floated the deep waters, just barely treading, although now I see how my friend Mary Burns held onto things more gravely than I, certain notions staying with her longer, more tightly clasped, so that in the end we were much farther apart in our feelings than I had ever imagined.
Sunny finally came out the patio doors, dressed in a resplendent swath of white. She and Mary Burns had decided on the outfit together the weekend before, on a shopping junket down to the city. It was a very handsome choice. The dress came just up to her darkly suntanned shoulders, the delicate material clinging to her torso but not so tightly as to be indecent, the handsome drape conveying only the suggestion of the young woman beneath. But the young woman was certainly there, too, the near adultness of her, and the sight of that shape made me realize why she had asked me to remain at home. It wasn’t at all what Sunny had said in the store, about people liking me too much, or (as I had imagined it) her jealousy of Mary Burns, or even what was ventured of how I treated her, which was probably true enough. It was her bodily presence, the sheer, becoming whiteness of her limbs and skin and face and eyes. She was beautiful, yes. Exceptionally so. But it was also the other character of her beauty, its dark and willful visage, and with it, the growing measure of independence she would exercise over her world and over me, that she had hoped to keep hidden a little longer.