And as he quietly said the words, she sat there and beamed at him. He hadn't let her down, and he was willing to risk anything for her. He was exactly what she had always believed him to be, and the three other Thayers were shocked, most of all Ward, who stared at this unexciting-looking man and couldn't understand what his daughter saw in him. He wasn't beautiful or young, handsome or debonair. He was actually rather banal, and his looks were very plain. But he had offered something to their child that they had never been able to give her. And whether they wanted to see it or not, she was happy with him. She sat there now, blooming quietly in the sunlight of his love. They really didn't care what was done to them in the next year. Both were willing to wait, and after that it was clear what their plans were. And suddenly both Ward and Faye believed they would. One couldn't fight them at all, no matter how wrong it might be, or how great the age difference, or how big a fool they thought Anne was.
After he left, and they had lectured Anne, Ward and Faye talked quietly in their room. They didn't know what to make of him, and they had told her they didn't know if there would be charges or not. Bill had gone home to make a clean breast of it with Gail, and would be happy to speak to them at any time. He wasn't really apologetic with them. After two years of loving her, he felt he had relatively little to apologize for. He hadn't hurt her or abandoned her, used her, or done anything terribly wrong. By now she was almost eighteen, and it didn't seem shocking to the lovers anymore. He suspected Gail would be stunned at first, but she would get over it too. And they had their lives to lead, Anne and Bill. Both had made that perfectly clear to everyone.
“What do you think?” Faye sat in a chair and looked at Ward. He still couldn't see what she saw in the man, and she was only seventeen years old. It was mind boggling.
“I think she's a damn fool.”
Faye sighed. This was worse than some of the movies she'd done. “So do I, but that's our opinion, not hers.”
“Apparently.” He sat down across from his wife, and took her hand. “How do they get themselves into these things? Lionel with his damn inclinations to something I don't understand. Val with her crazy career, Vanessa living with that boy in New York, and thinking we don't know about it.” Faye smiled, they had talked about it before. She thought she was so exotic and unusual, and it was so transparent, they all knew what was going on, and they didn't really mind. She was twenty years old and he was a nice boy. “And now Anne with this man…. Good God, Faye, he's thirty-three years older than she is.” It still wouldn't sink in.
“I know. And he isn't even beautiful.” Faye smiled. “If it was someone who looked like you, I'd understand at least.” At fifty-two he was still as handsome as he had been twenty years before, though in a different way. But he was still long and lean and elegant, as was she. This man had none of that. It was difficult to see his appeal, except that he had kind eyes, and he seemed to care a great deal for her. She looked up at her husband then. “Do we have to agree to this, Ward?” She didn't mean legally, she meant practically for the next ten months.
“I don't see why we should.”
“Maybe we'd be smarter if we did. You can't fight City Hall.” They had learned that again and again, with Lionel, with Val … Vanessa … now Anne, They did what they wanted to … except poor Greg. And Ward looked at her now.
“You mean agree to her having an affair with him openly?” He looked shocked. “She's only seventeen years old.” But they both knew that she was far older than that, in her soul, she had been through a lot, and it had weathered her.
“She's been doing it for the last year or so anyway.”
Ward narrowed his eyes at his wife. “What makes you so liberal suddenly?”
She smiled tiredly at Ward. “Maybe I'm just getting old.”
“And wise.” He kissed her again. “I love you, babe.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.” They agreed to think about it for a few days, and that night they had dinner with Lionel. Anne stayed in her room and no one urged her to come down.
There was enough strain on them as it was, and in the end, they decided to give in. They urged her to be discreet, to not become the talk of the town. Bill Stein was moderately well known in the entertainment industry. He was a respected attorney and had several well-known clients, and they were sure he wasn't anxious for the publicity either. The whole idea was to keep it as quiet as possible, and then marry, as they planned to, after the first of the year. He gave her an enormous engagement ring, which she only wore when she went out with him. A pear-shaped solitaire that she called her Easter Egg. It was ten and a half carats, and she had been embarrassed when she showed it to Gail. And Gail had been very decent to them. It had been a shock to her too at first, but she loved them both a great deal. She wished them well, and they both decided to go to summer school, so that they could graduate before the Christmas holidays. That way Anne wouldn't have to go to school, once she married Bill. And Gail thought she should leave them alone, at least for a while. Besides, it would be embarrassing to live with them at first. And she wanted to go to the Parsons School of Design in New York.
Lionel was still angry at her when he left for Germany. He didn't approve of the man, no matter what anyone said.
“You got off easy, if you ask me,” he told her the day he left, and she'd looked coldly at him. She would never forgive him for turning her in, she said.
“You're a fine one to be making judgments about someone else.”
“Being gay doesn't impair my mind, Anne.”
“No. But maybe your heart.”
He almost wondered if she was right, as he left. He didn't feel the same way about anything anymore, ever since Vietnam. He had seen too many people die, lost too many people he cared about … and two he deeply loved … John and Greg. It was difficult to imagine loving anyone again. He had no desire to in fact, and wondered secretly if that was why he was so angry at her. He couldn't understand her happiness, because his was long gone, with John, and could never come again, and her life stretched ahead of her, with promise and excitement and as much sparkle as her enormous engagement ring.
CHAPTER 38
On January 18, 1970, Anne Thayer and Bill Stein stood at Temple Israel on Hollywood Boulevard, with their families and a handful of friends watching them. Anne hadn't even wanted to go that far, but Bill had urged her to anyway.
“It'll be easier for your parents, sweetheart, if you let them plan a little something.” But Anne had no interest in it. For almost two years she had felt like his wife, and she needed no fanfare now. Gail thought it was silly of her. She was so unlike girls her age. She wanted no wedding dress, no veil.
It looks so barren, Faye thought to herself, remembering the magnificence of her own wedding day. Anne wore a simple white wool dress with a high neck and long sleeves, simple pumps, her blond hair in a single braid with baby's breath in it, and she carried no bouquet. She came to him simple and stark, wearing no jewelry save the large diamond he had given her. And the wedding ring was a wide band of diamonds too. She looked so innocent and young that it looked almost incongruous on her hand. But she noticed none of that. She saw only Bill. It was all she had wanted since the day they met, and she came quietly to him now, on her father's arm, and then Ward stepped back, feeling again how little any of them had known her in the last eighteen years. It was as though she had slipped through their lives too quickly, too silently, living behind a locked door, always disappearing. Suddenly, it seemed as though his entire memory of her childhood was saying, “Where's Anne?”