Coming Out (4 page)

“May I ask what's going on? What are The Arches, for God's sake, and what got into the girls?” Two of their children appeared to have gone insane. Max dug into his baked potato, and calmly shook his head.

“Mom wants them to find husbands,” Max said simply, “and I don't think they want to. Maybe Ginny does, because she likes boys more than Ver does. It sounds to me like Ver doesn't want to get married. Right, Mom?”

“No…yes… no, of course not.” Olympia looked flustered as she sat down and looked at both of them.

“It used to be about finding husbands; it isn't anymore,” she explained to Max again, and then looked at Harry, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. The kitchen suddenly seemed far too warm. The evening had gotten far more heated than she expected. She was visibly upset about both girls. She turned to Harry, and tried to appear calmer than she felt. “The girls have been invited to come out at The Arches. The invitation came on Friday. I thought it would be fun for them. I came out at The Arches, and honestly, Harry, it's no big deal.”

“I'm sorry. I'm in the dark here. The only arches I know about are the ones at McDonald's. Why are we arguing about them coming out of McDonald's? Something tells me I'm missing some major piece of information here.”

“The Arches is a debutante cotillion. It's the oldest and most respected one in the city. In serious social circles, it's a big deal. It was a much bigger deal when I was their age. My mother came out there, and both my grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers. Nowadays, it's just a nice party, and something of an archaic tradition. It's harmless. They wear pretty dresses and waltz with their fathers. Veronica is trying to turn this into a political event. It isn't. It's just a party, for God's sake, and apparently Ginny wants to do it.”

“Can anyone sign up for this event?” Harry inquired with a cautious look.

“No, you have to be invited. The girls were, because they're a legacy,” she said simply.

“Does it exclude people of other races and religions?” Harry then asked her pointedly. This time Olympia hesitated slightly before she answered, as Max managed to eat his baked potato and watch them with interest at the same time. He was dripping butter all over his shirt with total unconcern.

“Probably. It used to. I don't know what their policies are these days.”

“Judging by Veronica's reaction, she seems to know more than you do. If what she says is true, and black, Asian, and Hispanic girls can't do it, then I agree with her. And I assume Jewish girls would be on their hit list, too.”

“Oh for God's sake, Harry. Yes, it's a fancy social thing. People have been doing it for years. It's old-fashioned, it's traditional, it's Waspy, so is the Social Register, so are clubs, for heaven's sake. What about clubs that don't admit women?”

“I don't belong to a single one of them,” he said succinctly. “I'm a judge on the court of appeals, I can't afford to ally myself with any discriminatory organization, and apparently this one is. You know how I feel about things like that. Do you think they would invite our daughter, if we had one, if they knew you are now Jewish?” It was an interesting question, but the girls were not Jewish, and they were descended from two powerful, well-known, aristocratic WASP families. And she and Harry didn't have a daughter. The question was moot for them. She knew without a doubt that Chauncey expected his daughters to come out. He would have been horrified if they didn't. And even though she was far more liberal than her ex-husband or his wife, she still felt it was a harmless tradition. She thought Harry was overreacting, and so were the girls.

“I understand about the discriminatory aspect. This isn't intended to hurt people, just to give some girls a night of fun. It's like being Cinderella. They wear a pretty white dress, and at midnight it's over. Is that so terrible, so wrong? Why is that such a big deal?”

“Because it excludes people. Nazi Germany was founded on principles just like these. This is an Aryan elitist party, the girls being presented, if that's what you call it, are Aryans presumably. Maybe they have a token Jew or two, but the whole concept is wrong, the principles are wrong. Jews have been discriminated against for thousands of years. I don't support upholding that tradition. In order to be politically correct in today's world, everyone should be able to sign up if they want to do it.”

“If that were true, clubs wouldn't exist. Private schools wouldn't exist. Okay, call it a club for WASPs, where their daughters make their debut. I just don't see why this has to be a political issue. Why can't this just be a fun night for the girls and let it go at that?”

“My mother is a Holocaust survivor,” he said ominously. “You know that. And so was my father. Their entire families were wiped out by people who hated Jews. The people who run this party are racists, from what I can gather. That runs counter to everything I stand for and believe in. I want nothing to do with an event like this.” He spoke to her as though she had just painted a swastika on their kitchen wall. He almost recoiled as he spoke to her, and their son watched, looking suddenly upset.

“Harry, please, don't make a big deal out of this. It's a coming-out party, that's all it is.”

“Veronica is right,” he said quietly, and then stood up. He hadn't touched a mouthful of his dinner. Olympia hadn't cut Max's meat, so he was working on his second baked potato. He was hungry. And the grown-ups were confusing. “I don't think the girls should participate in this party,” Harry said firmly, “whether you did it or not. I'm casting my vote with Veronica. And whatever you decide to do about it, don't for a single second expect me to attend.” With that, he threw his napkin on the table and walked out of the room, while Max stared after his father, and then looked at his mother with worried eyes.

“Sounds like the party is a bad idea,” Max said sadly. “Everybody got really mad.”

“Yes, they did,” Olympia said with a sigh, sitting back in her chair and looking at him. “It's just a party, Max, that's all it is.” He was the only one left to explain it to, and he was only five years old.

“Are they going to do bad things to Jews there?” he asked, looking worried. He knew from his grandmother that people called Nazis had done terrible things, although he did not know the details. He knew they had done them to Jews, and he knew that he and his parents were Jewish, as were his grandmother and many of his friends at school.

“Of course they're not going to do bad things to Jews there,” Olympia said, looking horrified. “Daddy was just upset. No one is going to do anything to Jews.”

“That's good,” Max said, looking slightly reassured. “I guess they're not going to go to the party, though, huh? I think Ginny wanted a new dress.”

“Yes, she did. I don't know if they'll do it or not, but I think they should.”

“Even if you can't get husbands for them?” Max asked with interest.

“Even if we can't get husbands for them,” Olympia said, smiling ruefully. “We don't want husbands for them, sweetheart. All we want are a couple of white dresses, and some boys to dance with them.”

“I don't think Dad will go,” Max said, shaking his head, as his mother cut his meat. They were the only two at the table, and Olympia had no desire to eat. She knew the girls' father would have a fit if they didn't make their debut. Politically, he was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Harry. Her old life and her new, as typified by both husbands, had absolutely nothing in common. She was the bridge between the two.

“I hope Daddy will go,” Olympia said quietly to her son. “It's a fun thing to do.”

“It doesn't sound like fun to me,” Max said, shaking his head solemnly. “I don't think Ginny and Ver should come out,” he said, looking up at his mother with wide eyes. “I think they better stay in.” Given everyone's reactions that night, it was beginning to sound like it to her, too.

Chapter 2

Olympia called her
ex-husband from the office the next day, and explained the situation to him. She told him simply that Virginia wanted to come out, Veronica had objected to it, and she said somewhat unhappily that she thought there was a possibility that Veronica would not give in. There had been another explosion over it at breakfast that morning, before they left for school. Veronica was threatening to move in with her stepgrandmother if her mother didn't agree to let her off the hook, and Harry had seconded the idea. He added fuel to the fire by saying that he didn't think either girl should come out, and Ginny had left for school in tears, after saying she hated him. Overnight the family had erupted in civil war. Virginia had called her brother the night before, and although he sympathized with Veronica's objections to the event, he sided with Virginia and Olympia, and said he thought both girls should come out. All their cousins in Newport had, and he knew, as Olympia did, that their father would be upset if they didn't. Harry would be upset if they did. One way or the other, everyone was going to be unhappy about something. Olympia and Harry hadn't even been speaking to each other when they both left for work, which was a rare occurrence for them. They hardly ever fought. But this time, the battle lines had been drawn.

Predictably, as always, Chauncey did not make things better, but worse.

“What kind of rabble-rousing left-wing household are you running there, Olympia, if Veronica thinks that making her debut is a persecution of the Great Unwashed? You all sound like a bunch of Commies to me.” It was just the kind of thing Olympia expected him to say.

“Oh for God's sake, Chauncey, they're kids. They get emotional. Veronica has always had extreme political ideas; she's the champion of the underdog. She thinks she's a combination of Mother Teresa and Che Guevara. She'll outgrow it. This is her way of expressing herself. Seven months from now, I think she'll calm down and do it, if we don't make too big a deal of it now. If we do, she'll dig her heels in. So let's be reasonable, please.” Someone had to be. And apparently Chauncey wasn't going to be either, which was no surprise to her.

“Well, let me tell you where I stand on this, Olympia,” he said, sounding incredibly arrogant and haughty, which was typical of him. “I'm not going to tolerate having a revolutionary as a daughter, and I think that should be nipped in the bud right now. You should have done it years ago, if that's the direction she was heading in. I'm not going to tolerate this Communist crap from any of you, if you understand what I mean. If she decides that it is too politically right-wing to make her debut at The Arches, then I'm not going to pay her tuition at Brown next year. She can go and dig ditches in Nicaragua or El Salvador, or wherever she thinks she should be doing it, and see how she likes the life of a political radical. And if she's not careful, she'll wind up in jail.”

“She's not going to jail, Chauncey,” Olympia said, sounding exasperated. He was the other end of the spectrum, and possibly why Veronica was so extreme in reaction to him. There was no one on the planet more snobbish than Chauncey and his wife. They thought the entire world had polo ponies, or should, and that no one existed on earth except people listed in the Social Register. She didn't like his point of view, either. If she had to choose one ideology, she liked Harry's better, but he was being silly too. “She has a strong social conscience. We just have to let her calm down, and hopefully when she does, she'll see that no one is being hurt by this. It's just a fun evening, and something nice for them to do. Don't get in an argument with her, and if you threaten her about tuition, she's liable to do something ridiculous and decide not to go to school.”

“This is what you get for marrying a radical Jew.” His words rang out like shots, as she sat immobilized in her seat. She couldn't believe he had the nerve to say something like that. She wanted to strangle him.

“What did you just say?” she said in an icy tone.

“You heard what I said,” he fired back at her in clipped, aristocratic tones. He sounded so snobby sometimes that he sounded like a 1930s movie. No one spoke that way anymore, at any level of society, only Chauncey and Felicia did, and a handful of snobs like them.

“Don't you
ever
say something like that to me again. You're not fit to wipe his feet. It's no wonder Veronica is off the deep end over this, with an example like you. My God, have you ever bothered to notice that there's a whole world of people out there, not just idiots like you, with polo ponies?” He hadn't had a real job in twenty years. First he had lived off his grandmother, then his inheritance, and she suspected they lived off Felicia's trust funds, too. They were a worthless lot who had never done anything for the human race and never would. Maybe Veronica was trying to atone for their sins of indifference to the rest of the human race.

“You lost your mind when you converted, Olympia. I've never understood how you could do that. You're a Crawford, for chrissake.”

“No, I'm a Rubinstein,” she said clearly. “I love my husband. My converting was important to him. And it's none of your business. My religion is my business, not yours.” She was furious with him. He was precisely the kind of racist that Harry was objecting to when he said he wouldn't go.

“You betrayed your entire heritage just to please a man who's left of Lenin.” Chauncey stood his ground.

“You don't know what you're talking about. What we're discussing here is a party we want our daughters to attend, not your politics or mine. Leave Lenin to me. The problem is Veronica, not Harry.”

“They sound like one and the same to me.” In fact, at the moment they were, but she wasn't about to admit that to him. First she had to get Veronica calmed down, then she could work on Harry. He was a reasonable man, and she knew that eventually he'd come around. Chauncey was another story, and if there was an opportunity to be irritating, ignorant, and inflammatory, he would seize it every time. And Felicia was even dumber than he. Olympia could no longer even remotely imagine how she had ever married him, even at twenty-two. At forty-four, she would rather have cut her head off than be married to him for ten minutes. Just talking to him drove her insane.