Are Parents People?

by Alice Duer Miller

"Sables for a child of ten!"

Aunt Minnie had suggested that Lita's mother wear them herself and had been well scolded for the suggestion. Lita was content that these should be confiscated. She preferred her own little ermine set.

Until she was sixteen, except for presents, she lived the life of a child with only one parent, and a very satisfactory life it was. Even when her father was in the United States he did not always take the trouble to see her. Perhaps it was not made too easy for him to do so. But within the last two years things had changed. His second wife had died and he had come back to New York to live. He was older, he was lonely, and a pretty daughter almost grown up was very different from a troublesome child who couldn't walk as fast as he did, who required meals at strange hours and could eat only innocuous food. In his own silent way Mr. Hazlitt began to bid for his daughter's affection.

Lita liked the process and she liked him, although she felt immediately that the feeling was a betrayal of her lovely, devoted mother. It wasn't right, she reflected, that her father, who had forgotten her existence for so many years, should come back, and just because he was nice looking and well off and knew the art of life should be able to capture her affection as much or more than if he had stayed at home and been a good parent. It wasn't right, but it was a fact.

For two years the struggle had been going on, steadily rising in intensity. Her father had begun by asking for very little—hardly more than an outlawed parent could ask—but Lita knew that she was becoming dearer and dearer to him, and that her parents were now contending for first place in her heart. Soon it would be for her exclusive love. The pain of the situation to her was that she was to them not only a battlefield but a weapon and the final trophy of the war. As they never met, and wrote only through their lawyers, she was their most vivid channel of communication. She loved her mother the best—much the best—but her mother was a presupposition of her life, part of the background, whereas her father was an excitement, a stranger, a totally new experience.

When she dined with her mother, that was the solid comfort of everyday life; but when she went out to a restaurant to dine with her father—that was a party.

When her mother told her she was looking well the compliment often meant only that Mrs. Hazlitt approved of her own taste in clothes; but if her father said so it was the reaction of an outsider, a critic, a man of the world; it raised the whole level of her self-esteem. She couldn't help valuing it more.

The sermon was nearing its end. Twice already the bishop had begun a sentence, "And now in conclusion—" The next time, Lita thought, it might take. If only Aurelia were about! Aurelia was an authority on the management of divorced parents, though usually with mercenary intent. Aurelia had studied the art of intimating to one parent that the other did you rather better. It brought Aurelia great affluence; but Lita did not quite approve. She thought it too easy to be sportsmanlike; the poor dears were so innocent. But Aurelia was stern. She said children ought to get something out of the situation. Unfortunately, this Sunday, of all Sundays, Aurelia was laid up in the infirmary with a strange and violent form of indigestion which Lita was afraid would turn out to be appendicitis. Miss Barton, the head of the school, believed it to be indigestion merely because she had discovered that Aurelia the night before had eaten peanuts, peanut butter, chocolate cake and tomato mayonnaise. What of course one could not tell Miss Barton was that Aurelia had been eating just such illicit Saturday-night suppers ever since she came to Elbridge.

Lita had only said very gently "I'm afraid it's more than indigestion," and Miss Barton had just glanced at her as if she were a silly ass.

If Aurelia had been about she would have been sent bounding up the gallery stairs to detain Mrs. Hazlitt, while Lita herself would have run out and explained the situation to Mr. Hazlitt. Well, as it was, she would have a minute or two. The gallery stairs were narrow and it took people a little while to come down.