“The Conners—the Conners!—the Conners! I’ve heard it all my life. I’m sick to death of it. Who are the Conners? An accountant, that’s who! And a crazy young kid who thinks he’ll be an architect in maybe ten years when you’ve got bags under your eyes and a bridge.”
Lenore took a pecan. She looked at it, halved it, threw the paper-thin middle husk onto the hearth and shook her head. She felt frightened, cold, sick. She was trapped and she knew it as well as her mother. If it were just disgrace, as such, and poverty, that would be thinkable. But she couldn’t face the image of her father in prison, marching in a line to eat, going out on the roads in stripes, cold and miserable and rejected. She knew he was weak. But she knew, also, that he was kind. Kind and rather gentle and, in his way, loving. Which her mother was not, unless, in some twisted way, she too cared for Beau.
Lenore was intelligent. She was realistic. Her bent toward science had showed it and her studies of science had developed the quality. She had been brought up to like and enjoy “nice” things and to want and to know how to use far more of them than her father could ever supply.
At this moment, however, she realized how very little “nice things” meant in relation to the whole of human life. Her very realism had showed her, long ago, that life was closing in on her. The sweetheart of her childhood had not turned into the dream prince of maturity. He was far away now, doing some sort of menial chore for the Air Force. Desk work. He’d grow up at a desk, drawing buildings that probably would never be constructed, because Chuck didn’t seem to have even as much drive as his father. All Chuck’s drive was in his head, his imagination. It never came out, never produced.
Long ago she’d begun saying to herself, Wise up, Lenore. He isn’t for you. Find yourself another boy.
Well. Her mother had found one. If it wasn’t to be Chuck, did it matter so greatly who it was?
Lenore could anticipate the turnings of her mother’s mind. She anticipated now, as her mother began, “After all, Lenore, in time….”
“I know. Divorce. With alimony. Abundant alimony.”
Netta got ahead of her then. “Why not? People like the Sloans expect it.” Netta was aware that Minerva had no such idea in mind, but she went on confidently, ‘‘I’m sure his mother feels that even an unsuccessful marriage would be good for him. Start him on the way. And, Lenore, have you thought? Suppose you were married a few years? Suppose you came—out—well the way you would. Comfortably off? Even wealthy? Then you might be in a position to give Charles Conner financial aid till he got on his feet in architecture. You could get married and be happy, with a settlement from the Sloan family in your bank account! I mean, if it’s really love you feel for Charles, what could you do that would help more? Have you thought of that?”
Lenore ate another nut, tossed a hull, twisted her dark hair. “Thought of whoring for the man I love? No. I haven’t. I suppose it’s been done, though. By plenty of women.”