Dolores in her turn tried hard not to stare at the girl’s backpack, which was resting on the floor near the door. She tried to look interested, tried to smile, wondering how many women had sat like her trying to look properly motherly and concerned. Who had decided on that proper, anyway.
He was asking about her job now, and she talked more easily, giggled less. He turned frequently to Dolores, trying to bring her into the conversation.
“Vickie’s a microbiologist,” he said.
“Yes. That’s really impressive.”
“Oh, I’m really just a lab assistant,” she said to her father.
The job was fine, interesting, but after a year of it, she felt she’d learned all she could. She was thinking of going on for a Ph.D. “I could learn more there they’d promote me, assign me to some of the zingier special projects. But I don’t think they will. They don’t take me seriously, I’m too young….”
“Too pretty,” Victor put in.
“Female,” Dolores added.
Thinking: and you giggle a lot. But so what? Was that any worse than the mute shyness of young men? It was simply another form of shyness.
The girl’s head swung around to Dolores. “Yes, that’s it! There are a few women there in their forties, they’re
still
lab assistants! The only way a woman can force them to look at her seriously is if she has a Ph.D. And even then there’s no assurance. Unless you were ten times more brilliant than any of the guys. And I’m not. I’m as good as any of them, better than some, but not out-and-out superior. Yet three of the five guys I started with have been requested by the VIPs to work on special projects with them. The only special project I’ve been invited to participate in is midnight supper at the pad of the administrative assistant.”
Dolores smiled. “Did you go?”
“No.”
“Good!” Victor said emphatically.
“Oh, Daddy.” She turned back to Dolores. “I didn’t go because I knew we’d end shacking up—he’s really cute. And I know that would hurt me at the lab. There’s one older woman there, she has a degree but not a doctorate. She’s been there for years, she’s never gotten anywhere, she makes less money than the new guys, even. She smokes a lot, and she drawls, and says: ‘Don’t follow my example, my dear. I slept my way to the bottom.’
“But he is cute, Maury, so it’s hard.” She turned back to her father: “I hope I’m not shocking you, Daddy.” And turned back to Dolores: “My parents are so … old-fashioned. Moral, you know.” Then realized what she’d said as Dolores and Victor both gave her the kind of smirks that are really attempts to control laughter, and she looked from one to the other and giggled and all three of them were able to laugh then, a long hard laugh of relief.
There were no problems after that. Vickie claimed to be in need of advice from her father. “I want to get an advanced degree, partly because I’m ambitious, but partly because I really want to get into DNA research and I don’t know enough. There are still fellowships available in the sciences. What do you think?”
The two played family-style ring-around-the-rosy:
But of course I want you to do whatever you want to do.
I want to do it but I’m scared. Maybe I’m not good enough.
Of course you’re good enough. You got straight A’s in …
And I’d have to quit my job. I haven’t saved much money. None, really. Suppose I don’t get a fellowship?
Don’t quit your job until you know for sure.
Then I wouldn’t be making a real commitment. I’d be letting everything depend on some stupid fellowship.
Well, if you’re sure you want to do it, I’ll help you.
But I’m not sure I want to do it
Of course you do.
They chattered on, Vickie describing at length the oddities of the brave new (to her!) world she was inhabiting. Finally, Victor asked: “How’s Mother?”
She stopped dead, looked at Dolores, looked at him. “Fine,” she said uneasily.
He shouldn’t have done that. She feels she’s betraying her mother. Should have waited until I was out of the room.
“Really?”
“Yes.” An edge of irritation in her voice: “She’s the same, Dad. You know.” Her eyes crept around her father and his lover sitting there, his arm around her. And something happened in her eyes, something fell into place, a decision was made.
“And the kids.”
“Fine. Leslie’s home for Christmas. She can’t wait to finish school, she hates it. She’s bored. Says she wants to be a pipe fitter, and Mother laughs, high and gay as if it’s a joke, but she’s a little nervous. Actually, she’s right to be nervous, but she doesn’t know it….” Her voice trailed off.
“Why?” Victor barked at her.
Dolores looked at him. “She’s trying to be honest with you, not to challenge you,” she said. Victor looked at her, and tried to soften his face. “The trouble with parents,” Dolores said to Vickie, “is that they think they always have to be parents.” Vickie watched them with wonder.
“What’s wrong,” Victor asked gently.
“Well.” She looked at her hands. “Now I feel guilty, as if I’m, like, betraying her. But I’m a little upset….” She looked up at Victor. “She’s heavy into drugs. Pot and coke. Well, everybody’s into pot, but coke …”
Victor glowered. “How did this happen?” Parental. Authoritarian.
Vickie shriveled. Shrugged. “At school, I guess.”
Dolores was nasty. “
She
doesn’t know and right now she wishes she hadn’t brought it up at all.”
“Oh, Vick, I’m sorry. Listen, is she in trouble?”
“Well, her grades are bad. But I think they’d be bad anyway, you know? She doesn’t care about school.”
“Well, what in hell does she care about?”
“Oh, she likes to go to bars with Reg and drink and then snort a little coke. I think, well, I think all she really wants to do is get married!” Disgust.
Victor sat back. “What’s so terrible about that?”
“Get married? And end up like Mom?”
Victor looked as if she had struck him across the face. Her hand darted to her mouth, her eyes filled. “Dad …”
Dolores wished she could vanish. This was a private drama, she was an intruder. She could go get ice, pee, something. But she couldn’t leave Victor looking the way he did. So she pulled herself back, drew her energy within. She became absent.
“I just meant,” Vickie was babbling, near tears, “that being a wife isn’t the greatest thing to do, you know.”
“Maybe it could be different for Leslie,” he said, looking at the floor, twisting his hands between his knees. “The young men today, I’m told, are more liberated.”
“Oh, they’re as piggish as ever,” she exclaimed in disgust, then put her hand over her mouth again. “Oh, I’m impossible tonight!” she cried, in real dismay, and Victor and Dolores laughed.
Because for the first time in her life she feels she can tell her father the truth, she’s really slamming it into him, Dolores thought. So the all-American healthy family isn’t as ideal as it sounded. But he didn’t know that. I wonder if Edith does.
The crisis passed with their laughter and other family news, less heavy, proceeded. Mark was driving Mom crazy because he was out in the car all the time. Jonathan was fine, on the junior-high basketball team, said it was only his height, not his skill, that got him there, didn’t believe he ever did anything right, and Mom said he was just like her.
“I could kill him!” Victor smiled, grating his teeth at Dolores. “The one thing I can’t stand is lack of confidence, and that kid has it to a fare-thee-well.”
“He’s also getting into girls,” Vickie added, giggling.
“I hope you don’t mean that literally,” Victor grinned.
Vickie began to feel fully at ease.
“Say, how did you two meet?”
They both smiled broadly. “On a train,” Victor said.
“A train. Yeah. I’ve met people on trains. Not at home, at home I hardly ever take trains. But in Italy last summer, me and my girlfriend were on this train together. We were going to go all over, you know, we had a Eurail pass. But the guys in Italy are something else! At the end, we bought umbrellas and carried them with us as weapons. Can you picture it? Umbrellas in Italy?” she giggled.
“Well, it must rain there sometimes too,” Dolores smiled.
“Yeah. But I’ll bet you didn’t need an umbrella for my father!” And doubled over giggling wildly at the notion of her father as a sexual threat.
“Now, listen, Vickie,” he whined in protest, but broke into laughter too.
“Well,” Vickie sat back and wiped her eyes, “listen, you two. I gotta find a place to crash.”
Pause.
“Don’t be polite. I’m not going to intrude on you.”
“I’ll find you a place,” Victor said, rising. “What’s more, I’ll even pay for it. It’s only fair.” He left the room.
“Great,” Vickie glinted venally at Dolores. “Especially since I came over with my fare and my last hundred bucks. Spent all my savings on Christmas presents.” Giggle. Then her face became serious, she turned to Dolores and Dolores knew it would be different now, woman to woman, the conversation entering areas not usually entered when men were around.
“How long have you known my father?”
“Since September.”
“Do you live with him?”
“No, I live in Oxford. I came to London to spend the holidays with him.”
“And I have to come bopping in.”
Dolores smiled. “Well, to tell the truth, I wasn’t too happy when I heard you were coming. But now I’m glad you did, and I can see he is. It’s good for us that you came.”
Vickie chose to believe Dolores, and flushed with pleasure.
“I guess he’s in love with you,” she said, rubbing the fallen cigarette ash into her jeans’ leg. “I haven’t seen him look so good in years.”
It was Dolores’s turn to try to hide her delight.
“But isn’t it hard for you? I mean, he’s alone here, so I guess … It’s not that I have any of those ideas … oh, you know … that getting involved with a married man is
wrong
, particularly … I mean, I think that the arrangements made between married people are one thing and the arrangements you make with them are another … that, you know, it’s up to them to decide how they’re going to live, that
you’re
not responsible for their moralities … you know.” She leaned forward in Victor’s gesture, her hands dangling between her legs, her face probing Dolores’s. “But, if you’re in love with my father, and I guess you are, you look as if you are, well, isn’t it hard, knowing he’s married and all?”
“You found it hard, I take it,” Dolores said gently.
Vickie jumped back and looked warily at Dolores. “How do you know? Does my father know? How?”
Dolores smiled. “Vickie, you just told me.”
“Oh.” She settled down, but continued to look at Dolores a bit warily. “Yeah. He was my physics prof in grad school. When I was getting my M.A. He was married and he was bald and he had a yellow tooth, right in the front of his mouth,” she pointed to her own white one. “But … I don’t know, he was so … you know, I’d go to his office with a problem and he … it was as if he knew the answers to everything. Not just physics problems, but everything. As if he knew what I was feeling better than I did. Knew what I should do, better than I did. Like you, just now….”
Tell me, Dolores, tell me: How can I live without pain?
“Yes,” she said. “But I can tell what you’re feeling only because you told me, or showed me, what it was. I don’t know what you should do. I don’t even know what I should do.”
“Mmmm.” Vickie was doubtful. “But you’d know better than I do. And he did too. And I really came to feel …” she leaned forward, and her face turned yearning, “almost as if he was God, you know?” She sat back. “It’s bad, you know. I call myself a feminist—ever since I had this really great teacher in high school, I’ve thought I was a feminist. But,” she lowered her voice, although they could both hear Victor’s rumbling on the telephone, “the thing is,” she was nearly whispering, “I
loved
doing what he said, I
loved
seeing him as God. It was just the way they say, the way you read—I found my greatest fulfillment in obedience to him. Is that sick? Surrendering to him in everything was the most happiness I ever had.” She looked away, she lighted another cigarette, her mouth was quivering. “Do you think I’m some kind of masochist?”
Dolores smiled. “Listen, if I met somebody I was sure was God, I’d enjoy surrendering too. After all, what
else
can you do with God? But
only
with God, of course,” she added, sarcastically. “I don’t know if it’s masochistic, Vickie. I do know it’s not female. I’ve had young male lovers who acted like that with me. Those things never lasted very long, because I’m not comfortable in the role of God … but they were happy with it.”
Vickie looked at her dubiously, “You think it’s all right? I mean, not sick?”
“I don’t know what’s sick or well. I do think it’s a
young
thing to do. And I think it wouldn’t last forever.”
Vickie sighed. She crossed the room to the little bar and made herself another drink, talking almost wildly all the while. She had her father’s excesses. “I hope so. Because I really worshiped him. I had dinner at his house a lot, we all did, his research assistants, he had several because he got all kinds of grants and stuff all the time. And his wife—well, she was this tall woman, big-boned and skinny, and blond, and she wore her hair in a bun. And she was always good-humored, always nice to me, she didn’t seem to mind cooking dinner all the time for two or three extra people. And she never deferred to him at all. And that freaked me out sometimes. I mean, how can you
not
defer to God? She sort of treated him like one of the kids. She ignored him completely when he sat at the dinner table giving … well, lectures, really. I’d be hanging on every word, and she’d be passing the mashed potatoes,” Vickie giggled. “It seems funny now, but at the time it seemed
terrible.
I felt so
sorry
for him! Married to such a philistine, who didn’t listen to his brilliant words! His pearls! Now, I figure she’d heard them all a thousand times before. And probably once upon a time, she’d listened the way I did. She was his second wife, and she’d been his research assistant too. Years ago. Now she takes care of their three kids, and on weekends the two from his first marriage as well. Quite a handful, I guess. There was a time when I would have given anything to supplant her, to oust her the way she’d ousted the first wife….” Vickie’s voice drooped again. “Terrible, I know.”