Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [128]
“In what way? The restrictions, you mean? I haven't found—”
“Not just that. The whole thing. I haven't . . . Donny and I haven't . . . you know—done it. We've come pretty close, but even when I've been pie-eyed I think about how he'd look at me, after. It wouldn't be the same, would it?”
That rather answered the question of whether or not they were sharing a room. I cleared my throat. “Er.”
“Oh, I don't want the birds-and-bees stuff; I know all that. It's just, I can't decide if I should wait.”
“What stands in the way of your getting married?”
“Just . . . everything!” she cried, her glowing cigarette-end making a great sweep through the air.
“Picket fences and nappies?”
“Exactly!”
“Have you talked it over with Donny?”
“He says he's glad to wait, that he wants what I want. If I knew what I wanted.”
“But you're afraid he'll change his mind and become a tyrant once you're married?”
“Men do, don't they? Once you're pinned down they go off and there you are, raising the babies and getting fat and bored to tears.”
“Flo, look—sure, some men do that. But from what I've seen of Donny, he honestly loves you, and if something bothered you, and he knew it, he wouldn't force it down your throat.” I hesitated, then said, “Just because your father was irresponsible, doesn't mean Donny will be.”
“Dad wasn't irresponsible,” she retorted instantly. “Just a little . . . childish. He was great fun—I always loved it when he visited; it was like having another play-mate. But Mummy got so absolutely grim whenever he came around, it made me wild to see, and I would look at her face and think, I never want to feel that way, never want to be forced to, I don't know, grow up I guess, if that's how it makes me look.”
I began to see why my own mother wanted nothing to do with Flo's father, although I couldn't see why she would have banned him outright.
“So you think he wouldn't, look at me differently, I mean?” she asked hopefully.
But I was not about to take that degree of responsibility. “He probably would, Flo. How could he not? And you would look at him differently. The question is more, would it lessen how he looks at you, and I can't answer that one.”
She gave a little sigh, and the glowing ember sagged to the ground. “No, I suppose not.”
“Flo?” I said, hesitant about offering advice. “You know, one thing I have found, that it helps a lot to have some kind of interests outside of the marriage itself.”
“Easy for you to say. I had to have help getting through high school.”
“You did a magnificent job converting your house.”
“I did, didn't I?” she said proudly.
“What about that?”
“What, decorating? You mean as a job?”
“As a profession you love. You have the skills, and you have the social contacts necessary. Think about it.”
“Hm,” she said. “I will.”
The sound of splashing reached us, but before he got close enough to hear our voices, I hurried to ask, “But tell me, Flo, what happened to your father? If he didn't die in France, where is he?”
“Oh, I think he did die in France, just not the way Mummy says. You see, he wrote to tell her that he was going to join the French army, which by that time was taking pretty much anyone, even broken-down men in their late forties. He'd been living in Paris—he had a half-sister there, about fifteen years younger than him. His father had left his first wife and remarried—divorces seem to run in Daddy's family. Anyway, that was the last we heard from him. Rosa, his half-sister, wrote at Christmas, 1918, to say that he had gone missing in action in September, three months before. So I suppose in the end, he became a little more responsible after all.”
“It sounds like it.”
“Anyway, I'm sorry he's gone. He wasn't around a whole lot, but he was fun.”
We sat in silence for a moment of eulogy, then Flo jumped to her feet and picked her way down to the water. In a minute, the swimmer got close enough that she could speak with him, and the two joked and carried on like . . . well,