"She must have nerves of ice," said Winifred. "I certainly couldn't do it. I couldn'tbear it. Think of the squalor!"
Meanwhile, plans were afoot for Laura's d ©but. These plans had not yet been shared with Laura: I'd led Winifred to expect that the reaction from her would not be positive. In that case, said Winifred, the whole thing would have to be arranged, then presented as afait accompli; or, even better, the d ©but could be dispensed with altogether if its primary object had already been accomplished, the primary object being a strategic marriage.
We were having lunch at the Arcadian Court; Winifred had invited me there, just the two of us, to devise a stratagem for Laura, as she put it.
"Stratagem?" I said.
"You know what I mean," said Winifred. "Not disastrous." The best that could be hoped for Laura, all things considered-she continued-was that some nice rich man would bite the bullet and propose to her, and march her off to the altar. Better still, some nice, rich, stupid man, who wouldn't even see there was a bullet to be bitten until it was too late.
"What bullet did you have in mind?" I asked. I wondered if this was the scheme Winifred herself had been following when she'd bagged the elusive Mr. Prior. Had she concealed her bullet-like nature until the honeymoon and then sprung it on him too suddenly? Is that why he was never seen, except in photographs?
"You have to admit," said Winifred, "that Laura is more than a little odd." She paused to smile at someone over my shoulder, and to waggle her fingers in greeting. Her silver bangles clanked; she was wearing too many of them.
"What do you mean?" I asked mildly. Collecting Winifred's explanations of what she meant had become a reprehensible hobby of mine.
Winifred pursed her lips. Her lipstick was orange, her lips were beginning to pleat. Nowadays we would say it was too much sun, but people had not yet made that connection, and Winifred liked to be bronzed; she liked the metallic patina. "She's not to every man's taste. She comes out with some very odd things. She lacks-she lackscaution."
Winifred was wearing her green alligator shoes, but I no longer judged them elegant; instead I judged them garish. Much about Winifred that I'd once found mysterious and alluring I now found obvious, merely because I knew too much. Her high gloss was chipped enamel, her sheen was varnish. I'd looked behind the curtain, I'd seen the strings and pulleys, I'd seen the wires and corsets. I'd developed tastes of my own.
"Such as what?" I asked. "What odd things?"
"Yesterday she told me that marriage wasn't important, only love. She said Jesus agreed with her," said Winifred.
"Well, that's her attitude," I said. "She doesn't make any bones about it. But she doesn't mean sex, you know. She doesn't meanems"
When there was something Winifred didn't understand, she either laughed at it or ignored it. This she ignored. "They all mean sex, whether they know it or not," she said. "An attitude like that could get a girl like her in a lot of trouble."
"She'll grow out of it in time," I said, although I didn't think so.
"None too soon. Girls with their head in the clouds are the worst by far-men take advantage. All we need is some greasy little Romeo. That would cook her goose."
"What do you suggest, then?" I said, gazing at her blankly. I used this blank look of mine to conceal irritation or even anger, but it only encouraged Winifred.
"As I said, marry her off to some nice man who doesn't know which end is up. Then she can fool around with the love stuff later, if that's what she wants. As long as she does it on the Q. T., nobody will say boo."
I dabbled around in the remains of my chicken pot pie. Winifred had picked up a good many slangy expressions lately. I suppose she thought they were up-to-date: she'd reached the age at which being up-to-date would have begun to concern her.
Obviously she didn't know Laura. The idea of Laura doing anything like that on the Q. T. was difficult for me to grasp. Right out on the sidewalk in full daylight was more like it. She'd want to defy us, rub our noses in it. Elope, or something equally melodramatic. Show the rest of us what hypocrites we were.
"Laura will have money, when she's twenty-one," I said.
"Not enough," said Winifred.
"Maybe it will be enough for Laura. Maybe she just wants to lead her own life," I said.
"Her own life!" said Winifred. "Just think what she'd do with it!"
There was no point in trying to deflect Winifred. She was like a meat cleaver in mid-air. "Have you got any candidates?" I said.
"Nothing firm, but I'm working on it," said Winifred briskly. "There's a few people who wouldn't mind having Richard's connections."
"Don't go to too much trouble," I murmured.
"Oh, but if I don't," said Winifred brightly, "what then?"
"I hear you've been rubbing Winifred the wrong way," I said to Laura. "Getting her all stirred up. Teasing her about Free Love."
"I never said Free Love," said Laura. "I only said marriage was an outworn institution. I said it had nothing to do with love, that's all. Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract. Then I said there was no marriage in Heaven."
"This isn't Heaven," I said. "In case you haven't noticed. Anyway, you certainly put the wind up her."
"I was just telling the truth." She was pushing back her cuticles with my orange stick. "I guess now she'll start introducing me to people. She's always putting her oar in."
"She's just afraid you might ruin your life. If you go in for love, I mean."
"Did getting married keep your life from being ruined? Or is it too soon to tell?"
I ignored the tone. "What do you think, though?"
"You've got a new perfume. Did Richard give it to you?"
"Of the marriage idea, I mean."
"Nothing." Now she was brushing her long blonde hair, with my hairbrush, seated at my vanity table. She'd been taking more interest in her personal appearance lately; she'd begun to dress quite stylishly, both in her own clothes and in mine.
"You mean, you don't think much of it?" I asked.
"No. I don't think about it at all."
"Perhaps you should," I said. "Perhaps you should give at least a minute of thought to your future. You can't always just keep ambling along, doing…" I wanted to saydoing nothing, but this would have been a mistake.
"The future doesn't exist," said Laura. She'd acquired the habit of talking to me as if I was the younger sister and she was the elder one; as if she had to spell things out for me. Then she said one of her odd things. "If you were a blindfolded tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire, what would you pay more attention to-the crowds on the far shore, or your own feet?"
"My feet, I suppose. I wish you wouldn't use my hairbrush. It's unsanitary."
"But if you paid too much attention to your feet, you'd fall. Or too much attention to the crowds, you'd fall too."
"So what's the right answer?"
"If you were dead, would this hairbrush still be yours?" she said, looking at her profile out of the sides of her eyes. This gave her, in reflection, a sly expression, which was unusual for her. "Can the dead own things? And if not, what makes it ‘yours' now? Your initials on it? Or your germs?"
"Laura, stop teasing!"
"I'm not teasing," said Laura, setting the hairbrush down. "I'm thinking. You can never tell the difference. I don't know why you listen to anything Winifred has to say. It's like listening to a mousetrap. One without a mouse in it," she added.
She'd become different lately: she'd become brittle, insouciant, reckless in a new way. She was no longer open about her defiances. I suspected her of taking up smoking, behind my back: I'd smelled tobacco on her once or twice. Tobacco, and something else: something too old, too knowing. I ought to have been more alert to the changes taking place in her, but I had a good many other things on my mind. I waited until the end of October to tell Richard that I was pregnant. I said I'd wanted to be sure. He expressed conventional joy, and kissed my forehead. "Good girl," he said. I was only doing what was expected of me.