“Don’t cry, Mother. It isn’t as far as China.”
“Yes it is. For me it is. But at least it isn’t a war. Four years ago I’d have been terrified for you. But this isn’t a war. This is a wonderful new start for you. You think of it that way, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’ll meet a nice girl out there.”
“Well, that’s a long way off, Mother.”
“No. You’re older than you think. You had a good time, you had a lot of fun, with your tennis and your friends. But I think that’s over for you.”
“I do, too.”
“Sit down now, and I’ll tell you something about your father. I know you know about me. You treat me as though I were fragile, and that’s how I know. Your father has told you, hasn’t he? Oh, that’s not fair. Let me say it. My heart is bad. I may never go downstairs again. But you can’t stay here waiting for me to have a final attack. I may go on for years this way. Now, about your father.”
“Are you going to tell me that he’s not my father?”
She laughed. “Oh, he’s your father, there isn’t the slightest doubt about that. But think how times are changing when you can ask me such a question. If your Uncle Pen had ever asked your grandmother a question like that!”
“Times haven’t changed. You and I have.”
“Well, maybe. I guess there are things like that in Shakespeare. Anyway, to understand your father, Géorgie, I must tell you something about him. It’s nothing terrible, or scandalous, it’s just something in his character. He thinks too much.”
“He thinks too much?”
“Yes. You’re more like me. I’ve noticed that since you were a little boy. But your father is all wrapped up in himself, always thinking, thinking, thinking. Never does anything without thinking about it. And gets more pleasure out of planning a thing than doing it. By the time he’s ready to do a thing, he’s lost interest in it. He’ll even make a study of a thing, big or little. Notice him ordering a meal in a restaurant. He takes hours to order, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy eating. Ordering a new suit. He’ll have six fittings, and then the suit will hang in his closet for months before he wears it.”
“I know.”
“This is something that perhaps you know and perhaps you don’t. But you’re going out in the great wide world now, so I’ll tell you. It isn’t terrible, or it isn’t scandalous. But your father hasn’t always been faithful to me.”
“You mean he’s had affairs with other women?”
“Yes. Not many, but more than one. But they don’t last. The pursuit, the planning—he’ll spend a year on that part of it. But then he loses interest.”
“What kind of women?”
“Different kinds. I haven’t always known them, or who they are, but I can tell.”
“And you never let on?”
“The first one, yes. That was someone I knew. A friend. I thought my life was over, everything ended, especially because I was having Ernestine at the time.”
“What a terrible thing to do to you.”
She shook her head. “No. Not really, not when he explained it to me.”
“How could he explain a thing like that?”
“Well, he did, and after he did I realized that I’d married a man with so little feeling that it didn’t much matter.”
“I’ll say.”
“It didn’t matter, because—well, there were certain things you didn’t discuss. A man and woman could be married for years and years, and have children, but never discuss that side of their marriage. We didn’t, your father and I, until he had an affair with another woman. Then we did. He admitted the affair, and he explained it in a way that showed me how little feeling he had. I guess by feeling I mean love. Yes. You see, his explanation was that a man had to have relations with a woman, once he’d started. And he picked someone in our own circle of friends because she’d have as much to lose as he if she made a fuss.”
“Did he always have his affairs in your circle of friends?”
She smiled. “Oh, no. There weren’t that many unfaithful wives.”
“So he had some other explanation for the others?”
She shook her head. “No. I never asked him for one. He was so cold-blooded about the first one that I realized that he was telling the truth. The truth about himself, more than he realized. More than he realizes to this day. It was just as though he’d told me he had some sickness. I, for instance, have a bad heart.”
“And he has no heart at all.”
“In that sense, no, he hasn’t. But I want you to understand that in other ways he’s been a good husband. I wouldn’t change places with any woman I know. He’s been generous, considerate, gentle, and not only since I had my heart attack. Always. And I know what the other women have to find out for themselves—that he’s never loved anybody, because he can’t. When they find that out it must make them unhappy. I’m sure it must. But I found it out ever so many years ago.”
“But Mother, what’s the purpose in telling me?”
“I have a purpose. It isn’t just to gossip about your father. It’s to try to make you understand some people. You’re going away, a long distance. Strange people. Don’t be surprised if you can’t understand the actions of some people. And never be surprised at anything your father does. He lives entirely in his mind. A very sad man, to have missed so much in life.”
“I guess I’ll understand this later.”
“Don’t try now. Wait till you come across somebody you don’t understand, then remember what I’ve told you. There are some women who are that way, too. It isn’t confined to men.”
“Were you ever in love with anybody?”
“Your father. Six years. Then I found out what kind of man he was and I stopped loving him. By that time I had you and Ernestine to love, so I didn’t really miss loving your father. I want you to go to California full of hope, but prepared. People can disappoint you. Someone you love can disappoint you. If that happens, remember that I lived for fifteen years with a man that I’d stopped loving, and nobody ever knew I was unhappy. Most of the time I wasn’t unhappy. Only when I thought back on the six years that I was in love. You never thought of me as an unhappy person, did you?”
“No. But I did use to wonder how you could be happy with Father. I guess that’s as close as I ever came to thinking you were unhappy.”
“I’m glad you didn’t come any closer. Children should believe in their parents’ happiness. But now you’re older, about to go it alone, so I don’t mind disillusioning you a little bit.”
“I haven’t as many illusions as you might think. Especially now. I have none about myself. I thought I was honest, till last year. Then I discovered that I wasn’t.”
“You were, and you still are. But you may be weak, in some things. Most of us are. Haven’t you ever read about men who led quiet, respectable lives, and then one day they can’t resist temptation? They take all the money out of the cash drawer and run away? Well, you’re twenty-two instead of forty-five. And of course what you did has harmed no one but yourself. No real harm will come to anybody else because you were asked to leave Princeton. Your father talks about the disgrace, but he’s made such a practice of staying aloof from people that they don’t know much about us. He’s not going to say anything now, to the people in Swedish Haven, but he never has, so there’s nothing very different about that. If he’d been a more friendly, convivial man, his silence now would be noticeable. As it is, there won’t be anybody outside this family that knows why you left Princeton.”