In Trouble

THAT morning when the alarm rang at six thirty, she went off to the bathroom to stick a finger down her throat before the other girls started coming in to brush their teeth. This made her feel herself again, provided she skipped breakfast afterward, and avoided the corridor back of the dining hall, and forced soda crackers down her throat from time to time during the morning. Then she could get through the day’s classes pretending that she was the same girl in the same body, and in the same way too — alone.

But what about last night? What about Roy saying he was willing to do his duty by her? The fainting spells had ended two weeks back, and the nausea she could starve to death every morning, but now that Roy’s body seemed to be inhabited by some new person — by a man, a responsible, upright, decent man, what she had been pleading with that coward to be for weeks! — the truth came in upon her as it never had before. A new person was inhabiting hers as well.

She was stunned. Her predicament was real. It was no plot she had invented to bring them all to their senses. It was no scheme to force them to treat her like flesh and blood, like a human being, like a girl! And it was not going to disappear either, just because somebody besides herself was at long last taking it seriously. It was real! Something was happening which she was helpless to stop! Something was growing inside her body, and without her permission!

And I don’t want to marry him! He only said yes because he’s afraid — of his family, of me, of everything! He’s a weak, frightened, hopeless, childish idiot who if he lives to be a hundred will never be a proper husband or a proper father or even half of a whole human being!

The sun wasn’t even above the trees as she ran across Pendleton Park to downtown Fort Kean.

She had to wait an hour in the station for the first bus to the north. Her books were in her lap; she had some idea that she could study on the way up and be back for her two thirty, but then she had not yet a clear idea of why she was suddenly rushing home to Liberty Center, or what would happen there. On the bench in the empty station she tried to calm herself by reading the English assignment she had planned to do in her free hour before lunch; and during lunch, which she didn’t eat anyway. “Here you will have a chance to examine, and then practice, several skills used in writing effective sentences. The skills presented are those — ”

She didn’t want to marry him! He was the last person in the world she would ever want to marry!

She began gagging only a little way beyond Fort Kean. When he heard her, the driver pulled to the side of the road. She dropped out the back door and threw her soiled handkerchief into a puddle. Aboard again, she sat in the rear corner praying that she would not be ill, or faint, or begin to sob. She must not think of food; she must not even think of the crackers she had forgotten in her flight from the dorm: she must not think of what she was going to say, or to whom.

What was she going to say?

“Here you will have a chance to examine, and then practice, several skills used in writing effective sentences. The skills presented are those used by writers of the models in the Description Section — ” Years ago there was a farm girl at L.C. High who took so large a dose of castor oil to try to make the baby come out that she blew a hole in her stomach. She contracted a terrible case of peritonitis, and lost the baby, but afterward, because she had come so close to dying, everyone forgave her, and kids who hadn’t even noticed her before—“Here you will have a chance to examine, and then practice, several skills used in writing —” Curt Bonham, the basketball star . . . He had been a year ahead of her. In March of his last term he and a friend had tried to walk home across the river one night while the ice was breaking up, and Curt had drowned. His whole class voted unanimously to dedicate the yearbook to him, and his graduation photograph appeared all by itself on the opening page of “The Liberty Bell.” And beneath the black-bordered picture was written:

WHAT is it?” her mother asked when she came through the front door. “Lucy, what are you doing here? What’s the matter?”

“I got here by bus, Mother. That’s how people get from Fort Kean to Liberty Center. Bus.”

“But what is it? Lucy, you’re so pale.”

“Is anyone else home?” she asked. “Where is everyone?”

“Daddy Will took Grandma over to the market in Winnisaw.”

“And he went to work? Your husband?”

“Lucy, what is it? Why aren’t you in school?”

“I’m getting married Christmas Day,” she said, moving into the parlor.

Sadly her mother spoke. “We heard. We know.”

“How did you hear?”

“Lucy, weren’t you going to tell us?”

“We only decided last night. How did you hear, Mother?”

“Roy’s father spoke to Daddy.”

“Daddy Will?”

“To your father.”

“Oh? And what came of that, may I ask?”

“Well, he took your side. Well, that’s what came of it. Lucy, I’m answering your question. He took your side, and without a moment’s hesitation. Despite our not having been properly told by our own daughter the day of her own wedding —”

“What did he say, Mother? Exactly.”

“He told Mr. Bassart he couldn’t speak for Roy, of course — He told Mr. Bassart we feel you are mature enough to know your own mind—”

“Well, maybe I’m not!”

“Lucy, you can’t think everything he does is wrong just because he does it! He believes in you.”

“Tell him not to then!”

“Dear — ”

“I’m going to have a baby, Mother. So please tell him not to!”

“Lucy—you are?”

“Yes! Ot course I am! Why else would I marry that idiot! I hate him, Mother! I can’t stand his guts!”

She ran off to the kitchen just in time to be sick in the sink.

She was put to bed in her room. “Here you will have a chance —” The book slid off the bed onto the floor. What was there to do now but wait?

The mail fell through the slot in the hallway and onto the welcome mat. The vacuum cleaner started up. The car pulled into the driveway. She heard her grandmother’s voice down on the front porch. She slept.

Her mother brought her tea and toast. “I told Grandma it was the grippe,” she whispered to her daughter. “Is that all right?”

Would her grandmother believe that she had come home because of the grippe? Where was Daddy Will? What had she told him?

“He didn’t even come inside, Lucy. He’ll be back this afternoon.”

“Does he know I’m home?”

“Not yet.”

Home. But why not? For years they had complained that she acted contemptuous of everything they said or did; for years they complained that she refused to let them give her a single word of advice; she lived among them like a stranger, like an enemy even, unfriendly, uncommunicative, nearly unapproachable. Well, could they say she was behaving like their enemy today? She had come home. So what were they going to do?

She drank some of the tea. She sank back into the pillow her mother had fluffed up for her and drew one finger lightly round and round her lips. Lemon. It smelled so nice. Forget everything else. Just wait. Time will pass. Eventually something will have to be done.

She fell asleep with her face on her fingers.

Her grandmother came up the stairs carrying a wet mustard plaster. The patient let her nightgown be unbuttoned. “That’ll loosen it up,” said Grandma Berta, pressing it down. “The two important things, rest and heat. Plenty of heat. Much as you can possibly stand,” and she piled two blankets more onto the patient.

Lucy closed her eyes. Why hadn’t she done this at the start instead of suffering all these weeks while Roy Bassart made up his mind whether or not to do his duty and be a man? Why hadn’t she just gotten into bed and left it all to them? Wasn’t that what they were always wanting to be, her family?

She was awakened by the piano. Her mother’s students had begun to arrive for their lessons. She thought, “But I don’t have the grippe.” But then she drove the thought, and the panic that accompanied it, right from her mind.

It must have begun snowing while she was asleep. She pulled a blanket off the bed, wrapped it around her, and at the window put her mouth on the cold glass and watched the cars sliding down the street. The window began to grow warm where her mouth was pressed against it. Breathing in and out, she could make the circle of steam on the glass expand and contract. What would happen when her grandmother found out what really was wrong with her? And her grandfather, when he got home? And her father!

She had forgotten to tell her mother not to tell him. Maybe she wouldn’t anyway. But then would anything happen?

She scuffed with her slippers across the old worn rug and got back into her bed. She thought to pick her English book up from the floor and work a little on those sentences; instead she got way down under the blankets, and with her faintly lemony fingers under her nose, slept for the sixth or seventh time.

BEYOND the window it was dark, though from where she sat propped up in bed the snow could be seen floating through the light of the streetlamp across the street. Her father knocked on her door and asked if he could come in.

“It’s not locked” was her response.

“Well,” he said, stepping into the room, “so this is how the rich spend their days. Not bad.”

She could tell that his words had been prepared. She did not look up from the blanket, but began to smooth it out with her hand. “I have the grippe.”

“Smells to me,” he said, “like you’ve been eating hot dogs.”

She did not smile or speak.

“I tell you what it smells like. Smells like Comiskey Park, down in Chicago.”

“Mustard plaster,” she finally said.

“Well,” he said, giving the door a push so that it closed, “that’s one of your grandmother’s real pleasures in life. That’s one,” he said, lowering his voice, “and the other is — no, I think that about covers it.”

She only shrugged, as though she had no opinions on people’s habits one way or the other. Was he clowning because he knew, or because he didn’t know? She saw from the corner of her eye that the pale hairs on the back of his hands were wet; he had washed up before coming into her room.

The smell of dinner cooking below caused her to begin to feel ill.

“Mind if I sit at the foot here?” he said.

“If you want to.”

She mustn’t be sick, not again. She mustn’t arouse in him a single suspicion. Oh, she did not want him to know, ever!

“Let’s see,” he was saying. “Do I want to or don’t I want to? I want to.”

She yawned; he sat.

“Well,” he said, “nice and cozy up here.”

She stared straight ahead into the snowy evening.

“Winter’s coming in with a rush this time,” he said.

He was so close to her, how could she not? She glanced quickly over at him. “I suppose.” She turned back to the window instantly and was able to collect herself in that way. She could not remember the last time she had looked directly into his eyes.

“Did I ever tell you,” he said, “about the time I sprained my ankle when I was working at McConnell’s? It swelled way up, and I came home, and your grandmother just lit up all over. Hot compresses, she said. So I sat down in the kitchen and rolled up my trouser leg. You should have seen her boiling up the water on the stove. Somehow it reminded me of all those cannibals over in Africa. She can’t see how it can be good for you, unless it hurts or smells bad.”

Suppose she just blurted out the truth to him?

“A lot of people like that,” he said. “So,” and gave her foot a squeeze where it stuck up at the end of the bed, “how’s school going, Goosie?”

“All right.”

“I hear you’re learning French. Parlez-vous?”

“French is one of my subjects, yes.”

“And let’s see — what else? You and me haven’t had a good conversation in a long time now, have we?”

She did not answer.

“Oh, and how’s Roy doing?”

Instantly she said, “Fine.”

Her father took his hand off her foot at last. “Well,” he said, “we heard, you know, about the wedding.”

“Where’s Daddy Will?”

“I’m talking to you right now, Lucy. What do you want him for while I’m talking to you?”

“I didn’t say I wanted him. I only asked where he was.”

“Out,” her father said. “Your grandfather is out!”

“ Isn’t he even going to have dinner?”

“He went out!” He rose from the bed. “I don’t ask where he goes, or when he eats. How do I know where he is? He’s out!” And he left the room.

In a matter of seconds, her mother appeared.

“What happened now?”

“I asked where Daddy Will is, that’s all,” Lucy answered. “What’s wrong with that?”

“But is Daddy Will your father or is your father your father?”

“But you told him,” she burst out.

“Lucy,” said her mother, shutting the door, “lower your voice.”

“But you did. You told him! And I didn’t say you should!”

“Lucy, you came home; dear, you said —”

“I don’t want him to know! It’s not his business!”

“Now you must stop, unless you want others to know too.”

“But I don’t care who knows! I’m not ashamed! And don’t start crying, Mother!”

“Then let him talk to you, please. He wants to.”

“Oh, does he?”

“Lucy, you have to listen to him. You have to give him a chance.”

She turned and hid her face in the pillow. “I didn’t want him to know, Mother.”

Her mother sat on the bed and put her hand on the girl’s hair.

“And,” said Lucy, moving back, “what was he going to say, anyway? Why didn’t he just say it out, if he had anything to say?”

“Because,” her mother pleaded, “you didn’t give him the chance.”

“Well, I’m giving you a chance, Mother.”

There was a silence.

“Tell me!”

“Lucy — dear, what would you think — what would you say — what would you think, I mean — of going for a visit — ”

“Oh, no.”

“Please let me finish. Of going to visit your father’s cousin Vera. In Florida.”

“And is that his idea of what to do with me?”

“Lucy, till this is over. For a little while.”

“Nine months is no little while, Mother—”

“But it would be warm there, and pleasant—”

“Oh,” she said, beginning to cry into the pillow, “very pleasant. Why doesn’t he ship me off to a home for wayward girls; wouldn’t that be even easier?”

“Don’t say that. He doesn’t want to send you anywhere, you know that.”

“He wishes I’d never been born, Mother. He thinks I’m why everything is so wrong with him.”

“That’s not so.”

“Then,” she said, sobbing, “he’d have one less responsibility to feel guilty about. If he even felt guilty to begin with.”

“But he does, terribly.”

“Well, he should!” she said. “He is!”

Some twenty minutes after her mother had run from the room, her grandfather knocked. Daddy Will was wearing his lumber jacket and held his cap in his hands. The brim was dark where the snow had dampened it.

“Hey, I hear somebody’s been asking for me.”

“Hullo.”

“You sound like death-warmed-over, my friend. You ought to be outside and feel that wind. Then you’d really appreciate being sick in bed.”

She did not answer.

“Stomach settle down?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. “How’s about another mustard plaster? Berta called me at the Erwins, and on the way home I stopped and bought a whole fresh packet. So just say when.”

She turned and looked at the wall.

“What is it, Lucy? Maybe you want Dr. Eglund. That’s what I told Myra —”

He pulled the chair right up close. “Lucy, I never saw anything like the change in your father this time,” he said softly. “Not a drop — not a single solitary drop, Lucy. He is taking this whole decision of yours right in his stride. You set a date, and it was just fine with him. Fine with all of us, Lucy — whatever you think is going to make you and Roy happy.”

“I want my mother.”

“Don’t you feel good again? Maybe the doctor — ”

“I want my mother! My mother, and not him!”

She was still looking at the wall when her door opened.

“Myra,” her father said, “sit over there. Sit, I said.”

“Yes.”

“All right, Lucy. Turn over.” He was standing by the side of the bed. “Roll over, I said.”

“Lucy,” her mother begged, “look at us, please.”

“I don’t have to see that his shoes are shined and his jaw is set and what a new man he is. I don’t have to see his necktie, or him either!”

“Lucy — ”

“Myra, be quiet. If she wants to act like a two-year-old at a time like this, let her.”

She whispered, “Look who’s talking about two-year-olds.”

“Listen, young lady. Your back talk doesn’t faze me one way or the other. There have always been smart-aleck teen-agers, and there always will be, especially this generation. You just listen to me, that’s all, and if you’re too ashamed to look me in the eye —”

“Ashamed !” she cried, but she did not move.

“Are you or are you not going to visit Cousin Vera?”

“I don’t even know Cousin Vera.”

“That isn’t what I’m asking.”

’I can’t go off alone to someone I don’t even know—and what? Make up filthy lies for the neighbors — ?”

“But they wouldn’t be lies,” said her mother.

“What would they be, Mother. The truth?”

“They would be stories,” her father said. “That you have a husband overseas — in the Army.”

“Oh, you know all about stories, I’m sure; but I tell the truth!”

“Then,” he said, “just what do you intend to do about getting into trouble with somebody you say you can’t even stand?”

She turned violently from the wall as though she intended to hurl herself at him. “Don’t you take such a tone with me! Don’t you dare!”

“I am not taking any tone!”

“Because I am not ashamed — not in front of you I’m not!”

“Now watch it, you, just watch it. Because I can still give you a licking, smart as you think you are.”

“Oh,” she said bitterly, “can you?”

“Yes!”

“Go ahead then.”

“Oh, wonderful,” he said, and walked to the window, where he stood as though looking outside. “Just wonderful.”

“Lucy,” said her mother, “if you don’t want to go to Cousin Vera’s, then what do you want to do? Just tell us.”

“You’re the parents. You were always dying to be the parents.”

“Now look,” said her father, turning to face her once again. “First, Myra, you sit down. And stay down. And you,” he said, waving a finger at his daughter, “you give me your attention, do you hear? Now there is a crisis here, you understand that? There is a crisis here involving my daughter, and I am going to deal with it, and it’s going to be dealt with.”

“Fine,” said Lucy. “Deal.”

“Then be still,” her mother pleaded, “and let him talk.” But when she made a move to the bed her husband looked at her and she retreated.

“Now either I’m going to do it,” he said, speaking between his teeth to his wife, “or I’m not. Now which is it?”

She lowered her eyes.

“Unless, of course, you want to call your daddy in,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Now,” said her father, “if you wanted to marry that Roy Bassart — such as we understood you did, Lucy — that would be one thing. But this is something else entirely. Who he is I sec pretty clear now, and the less said about him the better. I understand the whole picture, so there is just no need for raising voices. He was older, back from the service, and just thought to himself he could come back here last year and take advantage of a young seventeen-year-old high school girl. And that’s what he did. But he is his father’s business, Lucy, and we will have to leave it to his high and mighty father, the big schoolteacher, to teach something into that boy’s hide. Oh, his father thinks he is very superior and all in his ways, but I guess he is going to have another guess coming now. But my concern is with you, Lucy, and what is uppermost to you. Do you understand that? My concern is your going to college, which has always been your dream, right? Now, the question is this, do you still want your dream, or don’t you?”

She did not favor him with a reply.

“OK,” he said, “I am going to go ahead on my assumption that you do, just as you always did. Now, next;—to give you your dream I am going to do anything I can — Are you listening to me? Anything that is going to give it to you, do you follow me? Because what that so-called ex-G.I. has done to you, which I would like to put my hands around his throat for, well, that is not going to just take away your dream, lock, stock, and barrel . . . Now, anything,” he went on, “even something that isn’t usual and ordinary, and that might to some folks seem very — out of the question.” He came close to the bed so that he could speak without being heard outside the room. “Now, do you know what anything means, before I go to the next step?”

“Giving up whiskey?”

“I want you to go to college, it means! I have given up whiskey, for your information!”

“Really?” she asked. “Again?”

“Lucy, since Thanksgiving,” her mother began.

“Myra, you be still.”

“I was only telling her—”

“But I will tell her,” he said. “I will do the telling! ”

“Yes,” his wife said softly.

“Now,” he said, turning back to Lucy, “drink is neither here or there. Drink is not the issue.”

“Oh, no?”

“No! A baby is!”

And that made her look away.

“An illegitimate baby is,” he said again, “And if you don’t want that illegitimate baby,” his voice had fallen almost to a whisper now, “then maybe we will have to arrange that you don’t have it. If Cousin Vera’s is still something you are going to consider out of the question.”

“It absolutely is! I will not spend nine months lying! I will not get big and pregnant and lie!” “Shhh!”

“Well, I won’t,” she muttered.

“OK.” He wiped his mouth with his hand. “Then let’s do this in order. And without voice-raising, as there are other people who live in this house.”

“We’re the other people who live here.”

“Be still!” he said. “Everybody knows that without your back talk!”

“Then just what are you proposing to me? Say it!”

Her mother rushed to the bed at last. “Lucy,” she said, taking hold of her hand, “Lucy, it’s only to help you — ”

And then her father took hold of the other hand, and it was as though some current were about to pass through the three of them. She closed her eyes, waited — and her father spoke. And she let him. And she saw the future. She saw herself seated between her two parents as her father drove them across the bridge to Winnisaw. It would be early morning. The doctor would only just have finished with his breakfast. He would come to the door to greet them, and her father would shake his hand. In his office the doctor would seal himself behind a big dark desk, and she would sit in a chair, and her parents would be together on a sofa, while the doctor explained to them exactly what he was going to do. He would have all his medical degrees right up on the wall, in frames. When she went off with him into the little white operating room, her mother and father would smile at her from the sofa. And they would wait there until it was time to bundle her up and take her home.

When her father had finished, she said, “But it must cost a fortune.”

“The object isn’t the money, honey,” he said.

“The object is you,” said her mother.

How nice that sounded. Like a poem. She was just beginning to study poetry, too. Her last English composition had been an interpretation of “Ozymandias.” She had only received the paper back on Monday morning, a B plus for the very first interpretation she had ever written of a poem in college. Only on Monday she had thought it was going to be her last. Before Roy had finally returned to Fort Kean with his big brave decision made, her recurring thought had been to run away. And now she didn’t have to; and she didn’t have to marry him either. Now she could concentrate on one thing and one thing only, on school, on French, history, poetry . . .

The object isn’t money,

The object is you.

“But where,” she asked softly, “will you get it all?”

“Let me worry about that,” her father said. “OK?”

“Will you work?”

“Wow,” he said to Myra. “She sure don’t pull her punches, your daughter here.” The red that had risen into his cheeks remained, even as he tried to maintain a soft joking tone. “Come on, Goosie, what do you say? Give me a break, huh? Where do you think I’ve been all day today, anyway? Taking a stroll on the boulevard? Playing a tennis game? What do you think I’ve been doing all my life since I was eighteen years old, and part-time before that? Work, Lucy, just plain old work, day in and day out.”

“Not at one job,” she said.

“Well, so I moved around — that’s true — ”

She was going to cry; they were talking!

“Look,” he said, “why don’t you think of it this way. You have a daddy who is a jack of all trades. You should be proud. Come on, Goosie-pie, how about a smile like I used to get back in prehistoric times?”

She felt her mother squeeze her hand.

“Look,” he said, “why do you think people always hire Duane Nelson no matter what? Because he sits around twiddling his thumbs, or because he knows every kind of machine there is, inside out? Now which? That’s not a hard question, is it, for a smart college girl?”

Afterward she would read in bed. She would have her assignments mailed up to her while she recuperated in her bed. Yes, a college girl. And without Roy. He wasn’t so bad, he just wasn’t for her, that was all. He would just disappear, and she could begin to make friends at school, friends to bring home with her when she came to visit on the weekend. For things would have changed.

Could that be? At long last those terrible days of hatred and solitude, over? To think — she could begin again to talk to her family, to tell them about all the things she was studying, to show them her papers. Stuck into her English book right there on the floor was the essay she had written on “Ozymandias.” B plus, and across the front the professor had written, “Excellent paragraph development; good understanding of meaning; good use of quotation; but please don’t stuff your sentences so.” And maybe she had overdone the main topic sentence somewhat, but her intention had been to state at the outset all those ideas that she would later take up in the body of the essay. “Even a great king,” her paper began, “such as Ozymandias apparently had been, could not predict or control what the future, or Fate, held in store for him and his kingdom; that, I think, is the message that Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet, means for us to come away with from his romantic poem ‘Ozymandias,’ which not only reveals the theme of the vanity of human wishes — even a king’s—but deals also with the concept of the immensity of ‘boundless and bare’ life and the inevitability of the ‘colossal wreck’ of everything, as compared to the ‘sneer of cold command,’which is all many mere mortals have at their command, unfortunately.”

“But is he clean?” she asked.

“A hundred percent,” her father said. “Spotless, Lucy. Like a hospital.”

“And how old is he?” she asked.

“Oh,” her father said, “middle-aged, I’d say.”

A moment passed. Then: “That’s the catch, isn’t it?”

“What kind of catch?”

“He’s too old.”

“Now what do you mean ‘too old’? If anything, he’s real experienced.”

“But is this all he does?”

“Lucy, he’s a regular doctor who does this as a special favor, that’s all.”

“But he charges, you said.”

“Well, sure, he charges.”

“Then it’s not a special favor. He does it for money.”

“Well, everybody has got bills to meet. Everybody has got to be paid for what they do.”

But she saw herself dead. The doctor would be no good, and she would die.

“How do you know about him?”

“Because,” and here he stood and hitched up his trousers. “Through a friend,” he finally said.

“Who?”

“Lucy, I’m afraid maybe that’s got to be a secret.”

“But where did you hear about him?” Where would he hear about such a doctor? “At Earl’s famous Dugout of Buddies? At a saloon?”

“Lucy, that’s not necessary,” said her mother.

Her father walked to the window again. He cleared a pane with the palm of his hand. “Well,” he said, “it’s stopped snowing. It’s stopped snowing, if anybody cares.”

“All I meant — ” Lucy began.

“Is what?” He had turned back to her.

“Is— do you know anybody who he’s ever done it to, that’s all?”

“Yes, I happen to, for your information!”

“And they’re alive?”

“For your information, yes!”

“Well, it’s my life. I have a right to know.”

“Why don’t you just trust me! I’m not going to kill you!”

“Oh, Duane,” her mother said, “she does!”

“Don’t speak for me, Mother!”

“Hear that?” he cried to his wife.

“Well, he might just be some quack drinking friend, who says he’s a doctor or something. Well, how do I know, Mother? Maybe it’s even Earl himself in his red suspenders!”

“Yeah, that’s who it is,” her father shouted. “Earl Duval! Sure! What’s the matter with you? You think I don’t mean it when I say I want you to finish college?”

“Dear, he does. You’re his daughter.”

“That doesn’t mean he knows whether a doctor is good or not, Mother. Suppose I die!”

“But I just told you,” he cried, shaking a fist at her, “you won’t!”

“But how do you know?”

“Because she didn’t, did she!”

“Who?”

No one had to speak for her to understand.

“Oh, no.” She dropped slowly back against the headboard.

Her mother covered her face with her hands.

“When?” said Lucy.

“But she’s alive, isn’t she?” He was pulling at his shirt with his hands. “Answer the point I’m making! I am speaking! She did not die! She did not get hurt in any way at all!”

“Mother,” she said, turning to her, “when?”

But her mother only shook her head. Lucy got up out of the bed. “Mother, when did he make you do that?”

“He didn’t make me.”

“Oh, Mother,” she said, standing before her. “You’re my mother.”

“Lucy, you were a little girl. It was in the Depression times. It was long ago. Oh, it’s all forgotten. Daddy Will, Grandma, they don’t know,” she whispered, “don’t have to —”

“But the Depression was over when I was three, when I was four.”

“What?” her father cried. “Are you kidding?” To his wife he said, “Is she kidding?”

“Lucy,” her mother said, “we did it for you.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, moving backward onto her bed, “for me, everything was for me.”

“Lucy, we couldn’t have another baby. Not when we were so far behind and trying so to fight back —”

“But if only he did his job! If he only stopped being a coward!”

“Look,” he said, coming angrily at her, “you don’t even know when the Depression was, or what it was, either — so watch what you say!”

“I do too know!”

“The whole country was behind the eight ball, not just me! If you want to call names, you call the whole United States of America names!”

“Oh, sure, the whole world.”

“Don’t you know history?” he cried. “Don’t you know anything?” he demanded.

“I know what you made her do, you!”

“But,” her mother cried, “I wanted to.”

“Did you hear that?” he shouted. “Did you hear what your mother just said to you?”

“But you’re the man!”

“I am also a human being!”

“That’s no excuse!”

“Oh, what am I arguing with you for? You don’t know a from z as far as life is concerned, and you never will! You wouldn’t know a man’s job if I did it!”

Silence.

“Hear, Mother? Hear your husband?” said Lucy. “Did you hear what he just said, right out in the open?”

“Hear what I mean” he cried.

“But what you said—”

“I don’t care! Stop trapping me! I came in here to solve a crisis, but how can I do it when nobody lets me even begin? Or end! You’d rather trap me — throw me in jail like you did already! That’s what you’d rather do! You’d rather humiliate me in this whole town, and make me looked down on as the town joke!”

“Town drunk!”

“Drunk?” he said. “Town drunk? You ought to see the town drunk. You think I’m the town drunk? Well, you ought to just see a town drunk, and then think what you’re saying twice before you say it. You don’t know what a town drunk is. You don’t know what anything is! You — you just want me behind bars — that’s your big wish in life, and always has been!”

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

“But that’s over,” cried Myra.

“Sure it’s over,” said her father. “Sure, people just forget how a daughter threw her own father in jail. Called up the police at the age of fifteen because her own father had one lousy beer too many! Sure, people don’t talk about that behind your back. People don’t like to tell stories on a person, oh, no. People are always giving other people a chance to change and get their strength back. Sure, that’s what this little scene is all about too. You bet it is. Oh, she’s got me fixed, boy— and that’s the way it’s going to be. That’s how brilliant she is, your so-called college girl scholarship daughter. Well, go ahead, so-called daughter who knows all the answers, solve your own life. Because I’m not good enough for a person like you, and never have been. What am I anyway? The town drunk to you.”

He pulled open the door and went loudly down the stairs. They could hear him in the parlor, bellowing at Daddy Will. “Go ahead, Mr. Carroll. You’re the only one can solve things around here. Go ahead, it’s Daddy Will everyone wants around here anyway. I’m just extra anyway. I’m just along for the ride, we all know that.”

“Shouting won’t help anything, Duane —”

“Right, right you are, Berta. Nothing will help anything around here.”

“Willard,” said Berta, “tell this person —”

“What’s the trouble, Duane? What’s the fuss?”

“Oh, nothing you can’t fix, Willard. Because you’re the big daddy, and me, I’m just along for the ride.”

“Willard, where is he going? Dinner is all ready.”

“Duane, where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go down and see old Tom Whipper.”

“Who’s he?”

“The town drunk, Willard! That’s who the town drunk is, damn it — Tom Whipper!”

The door slammed, and then the house was silent except for the whispering that began downstairs.

Lucy lay without moving on the bed.

Her mother was crying.

“Mother, why, why did you let him make you do that?”

“I did what I had to,” said her mother mournfully.

“You didn’t! You let him trample on your dignity, Mother! You were his doormat! His slave!”

“Lucy, I did what was necessary,” she said, sobbing.

“That’s not always right, though ! You have to do what’s right!”

“It was.” She spoke as in a trance. “It was. It was.”

“It wasn’t! Not for you! He degrades you, Mother, and you let him! Always! All our lives!”

“Oh, Lucy, whatever we say, our suggestions, you refuse.”

“I refuse — I refuse to live your life again, Mother, that’s what I refuse!” And so she was married to Roy Bassart on Christmas Day.