Full circle

“My father died before I was born, in the war.”

“That was considerate of him. It's less of a wrench that way, than if they stick around for a few years.” It made Tana wonder why his mother had committed suicide, but she would never have dared to ask. “Did your mother remarry?”

“No,” Tana shook her head hesitantly, and then, “She has a friend.” He was the sort of person you told things like that to. There was something about his eyes. Something that made you trust him and like him all at once.

He raised the mischievous eyebrow again. “Is her friend married?” He was receptive too.

She blushed beet red but he couldn't see. “What made you say that?”

“Just smart, I guess.” He was so impossible, one would have wanted to slap his face if he weren't so boyish and so appealing all at once. And he was so openly impudent that it somehow made it all right. “Was I right?”

Normally, she wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, but she did now. “Yes, or at least he was for a long time. He's been a widower now for four years, and he still hasn't married her. He's a real selfish son of a bitch.” It was the strongest thing she had ever said about him publicly, even to Sharon at school.

But Harry didn't look perturbed. “Most men are. You should meet my old man. He leaves them bleeding by the side of the road at least four times a week, just to keep his hand in.”

“Sounds nice.”

“He's not.” Harry's eyes were hard. “He's only interested in one thing. Himself. It's no wonder she killed herself.” He had never forgiven his father for that, and Tana's heart suddenly ached for him, as the cab pulled up in front of “21,” and Harry paid and they stepped out. And a moment later, they were swept up in the excitement of the exclusive restaurant. Tana had only been there once or twice, like on graduation night, and she loved the toys hanging over the bar, the well-dressed peo- pie crowded in, there were even two movie stars she recognized at once, and the headwaiter pounced on Harry with glee, obviously ecstatic to see him again. It was clearly his favorite haunt and he went there all the time. They stayed at the bar for a while, and then went to their table, where Harry ordered steak tartare for himself, and Tana ordered eggs Benedict, but as they sipped the Louis Roederer champagne he had ordered for them, Harry saw her face go taut. She was looking across the room at a table of people who seemed to be having a good time and there was an older man with his arm around a fairly young girl. Harry watched her face, and then her eyes and a moment later he patted her hand. “Let me guess … an old love?” He was surprised to see that she went for older men. She didn't look the type.

“Not mine, anyway.” And then he instantly knew.

“Your mother's friend?”

“He told her he had a business dinner tonight.”

“Maybe it is.”

“It doesn't look like it to me.” Her eyes were hard as she turned to Harry again. “What irritates me more than anything is that he can do no wrong in her eyes. She always makes excuses for him. She sits and she waits and she's so goddamn grateful to him.”

“How long have they been together?”

“Twelve years.”

He winced. “Jesus, that's a long time.”

“Yeah.” Tana glanced malevolently in Arthur's direction again. “And it doesn't seem to be cramping his style.” Seeing him made her think of Billy again, and she turned her head as though to avoid the thought, but Harry saw the sudden look of pain in her eyes.

“Don't take it so hard, princess.” His voice was gentle in her ears and she turned to look at him.

“It's her life, not mine.”

“That's right. Don't forget that. You can make your own choices with your life.” He smiled, “and that reminds me, you never answered all my rude questions before. What are you going to do after Green Hill?”

“God knows. Maybe Columbia. I'm not sure. I want to go on.”

“Not get married and have four little kids?” They both laughed.

“Not for a while, thanks, although it's my mother's fondest dream.” And then she turned to him with a curious look. “And what about you, where do you go to school?”

He sighed as he put down his champagne. “Harvard, actually. Sounds obnoxious, doesn't it?” It was why he hadn't told her at first.

“Is it true?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” He grinned. “But there's hope. I may flunk out before the end of the year. I'm working on it.”

“You can't be that bad or you wouldn't have gotten in.”

“A Winslow not get in? Don't be absurd, my dear. We always get in. We practically built the place.”

“Oh…” She looked impressed. “I see. And you didn't want to go?”

“Not especially. I wanted to go out West somewhere. I thought Stanford or UC, but Father had a fit, and it wasn't worth arguing about it … so there I am, being a pain in the ass, and making them sorry they let me in.”

“You must be a real treat for them.” Tana laughed, and she noticed that Arthur Durning and his group had just left. He hadn't noticed her, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or not.

“You'll have to come up and see me sometime, maybe during spring break.”

She laughed at that and shook her head. “I doubt that.”

“Don't you trust me?” He looked amused and very debonair for a boy of eighteen.

“As a matter of fact, no.” She took another sip of champagne and they both laughed. She was feeling giggly now and she was having a good time with him. He was the first boy she had liked in a long time, and she liked him as a friend. He was fun to laugh with and she could say things to him that she hadn't been able to say to anyone else recently, except Shar. And then she had an idea. “I might come up if I could bring a friend.”

“What kind of friend?” He asked suspiciously.

“My roommate at Green Hill.” She told him about Sharon Blake then and he looked intrigued.

“The daughter of Freeman Blake? That's something else. Is she as wonderful as you say?”

“Wonderfuler.” She told him then about their being unable to get served at the coffee shop in Yolan, and the lecture given by Martin Luther King and he seemed interested in all of it.

“I'd like to meet her sometime. Do you really think you'd come up to Cambridge at spring break?”

“Maybe, I'll have to ask her.”

“What are you two, joined at the hip?” He looked Tana over appraisingly. She was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen, and it would be worth putting up with someone else, just to see her.

“More or less. I visited them at Thanksgiving, and I want to go back.”

“Why don't you have her here?”

There was a long pause and then Tana looked at him. “My mother would have a fit if she knew Sharon was black. I've told her everything except that.”

“Great.” Harry smiled. “I did tell you that my maternal grandmother was black, didn't I?” For an instant he looked so honest that she almost believed what he said and then he started to laugh and she made a face.

“Pain in the ass … why don't I just tell my mother about you?”

“Be my guest.”

And she did the next day when he called to take her to lunch in two days. They had Christmas to endure in between.

“Isn't that the boy you met last night?” It was Saturday morning and Jean was relaxing with a book. She hadn't heard from Arthur since the day before and she was dying to tell him about the ball, but she didn't want to bother him. She usually waited for him to call. It was a habit she had picked up when he was still married to Marie. And it was Christmas after all. He'd be busy with Billy and Ann.

“Yes, it is.” Tana explained to her mother about Harry's call.

“He seems nice.”

“He is.” But not in any way Jean would approve of, as Tana knew only too well. He was irreverent and outrageous and he drank too much, and he was obviously spoiled, but he had behaved decently when he had brought her home. He had said goodnight and there was no wrestling match. She had been nervous about that, but she hadn't needed to be. And when he came to pick her up for lunch two days later he wore a blazer and a tie and gray slacks, but as soon as they got downstairs, he put on roller skates and a crazy hat, and proceeded to behave like a complete madman as they walked downtown and Tana laughed at him. “Harry Winslow, you are completely nuts, do you know that?!”

“Yes, ma'm.” He smiled and crossed his eyes, and insisted on wearing his roller skates into the Oak Room for lunch. The maitre d'didn't look pleased but he knew who he was and he didn't dare throw him out. He ordered a bottle of Roederer champagne, and guzzled a glass as soon as it was uncorked, and then set down the empty glass and smiled at Tana. “I think I'm addicted to that stuff.”

“You mean you're a drunk.”

“Yup.” He said it with pride, ordered lunch for them both, and after lunch they walked through Central Park and stopped at Wollman Rink where they watched the ice skaters for more than an hour and talked about life, and he sensed that there was a strange reticence about her. She didn't offer herself, in a romantic sense, she was careful and closed, and yet at the same time she was intelligent and warm. She cared about people and causes and things. But there was no hand held out. He knew that he had made a new friend, and no more, and she saw to it that he understood, in so many words, and it aroused his curiosity. “Axe you involved with someone near Green Hill?”

She shook her head, and her eyes met his. “No, nothing like that. I don't want to get involved with anyone right now.” He was surprised at her honesty. And it was a challenge, too, of course, one he couldn't completely resist.

“Why not? Afraid to get hurt the way your mother has been?” She had never thought of it that way. It was why he had told her he didn't want kids. He didn't want to hurt anyone as badly as he himself had been hurt. And she had just told him how Arthur had stood her mother up for Christmas again that year.

“I don't know. Maybe. That, and other things.”

“What kind of ‘other thing’?”

“Nothing I want to talk about.” She looked away, and he tried to imagine what had marked her that way. She kept a safe distance between them, and even when they laughed and played, she sent out messages that said “don't get too close to me.” He hoped that there was nothing strange about the girl, about her sexual propensities, but he didn't think it was that. It was more that she seemed to be hiding in a protective shell, and he wasn't sure why. Someone had driven her into it and he wondered who it was.

“Was there someone important in your life before?”

“No.” She looked him square in the eye. “I don't want to talk about that.” The look on her face made him back off at once. It was anger and hurt and something he couldn't even define, but it was so powerful it took his breath away, and he didn't scare easily. But this time he got the point. A blind man would have.

“I'm sorry.” They changed the subject then and went back to talking about easier things. He liked her a lot, and he saw her several times during that Christmas holiday. They went to dinner and lunch, went ice skating in the park, to a movie one night, and she even invited him to dinner one night with Jean. But that was a mistake, she recognized at once. Jean was grilling him as though he were a hot marriage candidate, asking about his future plans, his parents, his career goals, his grades. She could hardly wait for him to leave, and when he did, she screamed at Jean.

“Why did you do that to him? He just came here to eat, not to ask me to marry him.”

“You're eighteen years old, you have to start thinking about things like that now.”

“Why?” Tana was enraged. “All he is is a friend, for chrissake. Don't act like I have to get married by next week.”

“Well, when do you want to get married, Tana?”

“Never, dammit! Why the hell do I have to get married at all?”

“What are you going to do for the rest of your life?” Her mother's eyes were hunting her, shoving her into corners and pushing her hard and she hated it.

“I don't know what I'm going to do. Do I have to figure that out now? Right now? Tonight? This week? Shit!”

“Don't talk to me like that!” Now her mother was angry too.

“Why not? What are you trying to do to me?”

“I want to see you have some security, Tana. Not to be in the same boat I'm in when you're forty years old. You deserve more than that!”

“So do you. Did you ever think of that? I hate seeing you like this, waiting around for Arthur all the time, like his slave. That's all you've been for all these years, Mother. Arthur Durning's concubine.” She was tempted to tell her about seeing him with another girl at “21,” but she couldn't do that to her mother. She didn't want to cause her that much pain and it would have for sure. Tana restrained herself but Jean was irate anyway.

“That's not fair and it's not true.”

“Then why don't you want me to be like you?” Jean turned her back on her, so that she wouldn't see her tears, and then suddenly she turned on Tana, and twelve years of sorrow showed in her eyes, and a lifetime before that.

“I want you to have all the things I didn't have. Is that too much to ask?”

Tana's heart suddenly went out to her and she backed down. Her voice was gentler as she spoke again. “But maybe I don't want the same things you did.”

“What is there not to want? A husband, security, a home, children—what's wrong with all that?” She looked shocked.

“Nothing. But I'm too young to think about all that. What if I want a career?”

Jean Roberts looked shocked. “What kind of career?”

“I don't know. I just meant theoretically.”

“That's a lonely life, Tana.” She looked worried about her. “You'd be better ofiFif you just settled down.” But to Tana that felt like giving up, and she thought about it as she rode south on the train and she and Sharon talked about it their first night back in Jasmine House, once the lights were off.

“Jesus, Tan, she sounds just like mine … in a different way, of course. But they all want for us what they wanted for themselves, no matter who we are, or how different we are from them, or what we think and feel and want. My dad understands, but my mom … all I hear about is law school, and sit-ins, and being ‘responsible’ about being black. I'm so goddamn tired of being 'responsible,‘ I could scream. That's why I came here in the first place, to Green Hill. I wanted to go somewhere where there would be other blacks. Hell, here I can't even date, and she tells me that there's plenty of time for that. When? I want to go out now, I want to have a good time, I want to go to restaurants and movies and football games.” She reminded Tana then, and the pretty blonde smiled in the dark.

“Want to go to Harvard with me at spring break?”

“How come?” Sharon propped herself up on one elbow in the dark with an excited look. And Tana told her about Harry Winslow then. “He sounds neat. Did you fall for him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

There was a silence which they both understood. “You know why.”

“You can't let that screw you up for the rest of your life, Tan.”

“You sound like my mother now. She wants me engaged to anyone by next week, as long as he's willing to marry me, buy me a house, and give me kids.”

“It beats the hell out of going to sit-ins and getting raw eggs in your hair. Doesn't that sound like fun?”

Tana smiled. “Not much.”

“Your Harvard friend sounds nice.”

“He is.” Tana smiled to herself. “I like him a lot, as a friend. He's the most honest, straightforward person I've ever met.” The call he made to her later that week underlined why she so enjoyed him. He called pretending to be the owner of a laboratory in Yolan, and they needed young ladies to perform experiments on, he explained.

“We're trying to find out if young ladies are as intelligent as young men,” he said, disguising his voice. “We realize of course that they are not, however…” and just before she flew into a rage, she recognized his voice.

“You shit!”

“Hi, kiddo. How's life in the Deep South?”

“Not bad.” She let him speak to Sharon eventually, and the two girls stood beside the phone, passing it back and forth, and eventually Sharon went upstairs and Tana talked to him for hours. There were no romantic overtones at all, he was more like a brother to her, and after two months of phone calls, aside from Sharon he was her closest friend. He was hoping to see her at spring break, and she tried to get Sharon to come along, but to no avail. She decided to brave her mother, and invite Sharon to stay with them, but Miriam Blake had been on the phone to Sharon almost every night. There was an enormous black rally scheduled in Washington with a candlelight vigil for Civil Rights over Easter weekend and she wanted Sharon to be there. She felt that it was an important part of their life, and this was no time for a vacation trip. Sharon was depressed about it when they both left Green Hill.

“All you had to do was say no, Shar.” Tana looked at her and shook her head and for a moment something angry flashed in the pretty black girl's eyes.

“Just like you did about the coming out party, huh, Tan?”

There was a silence, and then slowly Tana nodded her head. Her friend wasn't far wrong. It was difficult to fight with them all the time. She shrugged, with a sheepish grin. “Okay, you win. I'm sorry. We'll miss you in New York.”

“I'll miss you too.” She flashed her the dazzling smile, and they chatted and played cards on the train. Sharon got off in Washington, and Tana went on to New York. It was balmy and warm when she walked out of the station and hailed a cab, and the apartment looked the same as it always had, and somehow, for no reason she could explain, it was depressing to be back. There was a sameness to it all. Nothing grew, nothing changed. There were never fresh drapes, new plants, wonderful flowers, something exciting going on. There was the same thing, the same life, the same worn-out couch, the same dreary looking plants year after year. It hadn't seemed quite so bad when she was living there every day, but now that she came and went, it looked different to her. Everything was shabbier, and the whole apartment seemed to have shrunk. Her mother was at work, and she threw her bags down in her room, just as the phone rang. She went back to the living room to pick it up, glancing around again.

“Hello?”

“Winslow here. How's it going, kid?”

She grinned. It was like a burst of fresh air in the stale, musty room. “Hello.”

“When'd you get in?”

“About four seconds ago. How about you?”

“I drove down last night with a couple of the guys. And,” he looked lazily around the apartment his father owned at the Pierre, “here I am. Same old dump, same old town.” But he looked boyish when he smiled at his end of the phone, and Tana was excited at the prospect of seeing him again. They had learned so much about each other in the last four months on the phone, it was as though they were old friends now. “Want to come up for a drink?”

“Sure. Where are you?”

“At the Pierre.” He sounded unimpressed by his own whereabouts and Tana grinned.

“That's nice.”

“Not very. My father had the apartment redone by some decorator last year. It looks like a fag hangout now, but at least it's free when I'm in New York.”

“Is your father there?” She was intrigued and Harry laughed derisively.

“Don't be ridiculous. I think he's in Munich this week. He likes spending Easter there. The Germans are so emotional about Christian events. That and the Oktoberfest.” He was slightly over her head. “Never mind. Come on over, and we'll drive room service nuts. What do you want? I'll order something now, and it'll take two hours to show up.”

She was impressed. “I don't know … a hamburger and a Coke? Does that sound all right?” There was something very impressive about all this, but Harry was nonchalant about it all and when she arrived, he was lying on the couch in jeans and bare feet watching a soccer match on TV. He swept her off her feet, and gave her a huge bear hug, and it was obvious that he was genuinely pleased to see her, much more than she realized. His whole body tingled as he gave her a friendly peck on the cheek. And there was a moment of awkwardness, translating the intimacy they had developed on the phone into real life, but by the end of the afternoon, they were like old friends, and Tana hated to leave to go home.

“Then stay. I'll put some shoes on and we'll go to ‘21.’“

“Like this?” She looked down at her plaid skirt and loafers and wool socks, but she shook her head. “I have to go home anyway. I haven't seen my mother in four months.”

“I keep forgetting rituals like that.” His voice was flat, and he looked even handsomer than he had before, but nothing stirred in Tana's heart for him, only the friendship that had continued to grow since they first met, nothing more than that, and she was sure that he had nothing other than platonic feelings for her as well.

She turned to look at him now, as she picked her raincoat up off the chair. “Don't you ever see your father at all, Harry?” Her voice was soft and her eyes were sad for him. She knew how alone he was. He had spent the holidays alone, he said he always did, or with friends, or in empty houses or hotels, and he only mentioned his father in the context of bad jokes about his women and his friends and his gallivanting here and there.

“I see him once in a while. We run into each other about once or twice a year. Usually here, or in the South of France.” It sounded very grand, but Tana easily sensed how lonely Harry was. It was why he had opened up so much to her. There was something inside him which was dying to reach out and be loved. And there was something like that in her too. A part of her which had only had Jean and had wanted more, a father, sisters and brothers, a family … something more than just a lonely woman who spent her life waiting for a man who didn't appreciate her. And Harry didn't even have that. Tana hated his father, just thinking about him.

“What's he like?”

Harry shrugged again. “Good-looking, I guess. At least that's what the women say … smart … cold.…” He looked Tana square in the eye. “He killed my mother, what do you think he's like?” Something shrivelled up in her as she watched her friend's eyes, and she didn't know what to say. She was sorry that she had asked, but Harry put an arm around her shoulders as he walked her to the door. “Don't let it upset you, Tan. It happened a long time ago.” But she was sad for him. There was something so lonely about him, and he was so funny and decent and nice, it wasn't fair … and he was also spoiled and self-indulgent and mischievous. He had put on a British accent for the first room service waiter who'd come up, and pretended to the second one that he was French, and afterwards he and Tana were convulsed. She wondered if he always behaved like that and suspected that he did. And as she took the bus back uptown, she suddenly didn't mind the depressing little apartment she shared with Jean. Better that than the lavish, chilly decor of the Winslow suite at the Hotel Pierre. The rooms were large, and everything was chrome and glass and white, predictably expensive, there were two huge fabulous white fur rugs on the floor and there were priceless paintings and objects everywhere, but that's all there was. There was no one there when he arrived from school, and there wouldn't be that night or the next. There was only Harry, with an icebox filled with booze and Cokes, a wardrobe of expensive clothes, and a TV.

“Hi … I'm home … !” She called out as she got in and Jean came running to her, and held her tight with a look of delight.

“Oh baby, you look so good!” It made her think of Harry again, and all that he didn't have, in spite of his trusts, and his houses, and his fancy name … he didn't have this. And somehow Tana wanted to make it up to him. Jean was looking at her now and there was such obvious pleasure in her eyes that it actually felt good to be home. “I saw your bags. Where did you go?”

“I went to see a friend downtown. I didn't think you'd be home for a while.”

“I left work early, in case you'd come in.”

“I'm sorry, Mom.”

“Who did you go to see?” Jean always liked to know what she did, who she saw. But Tana wasn't as used to the questions anymore, and she hesitated for just a moment before she smiled.

“I went to see Harry Winslow at the Pierre. I don't know if you remember him.”

“Of course I do.” Jean's eyes lit up. “Is he in town?”

“He has an apartment here.” Tana's voice was quiet, and there were mixed reviews in Jean's eyes. It was good that he was mature enough, and solvent enough, to have his own place, but also dangerous at the same time.

“Were you alone with him?” Jean looked concerned.

This time Tana laughed. “Sure. We shared a hamburger and watched TV. All perfectly harmless, Mom.”

“Still … I don't think you should.” She watched Tana's eyes, as the pretty blonde's face began to tense.

“He's my friend, Mom.”

“He's still a young man, and you never know what could happen in a situation like that.”

“Yes, I do.” Her eyes were instantly hard. She knew only too well. Only it had happened at precious Billy Durning's house, in his own father's bedroom, with a hundred kids right downstairs. “I know who I can trust.”

“You're too young to be able to judge things like that, Tan.”

“No, I'm not.” Tan's face was like a rock. Billy Durning's raping her had changed her whole life. She knew everything about things like that, and if she sensed any threat from Harry at all, she would never have gone to his hotel, or stayed. But she knew instinctively that he was her friend and she would come to no harm at his hands, unlike her mother's lover's son. “Harry and I are just friends.”

“You're being naive. There's no such thing between boys and girls, Tan. Men and women can't be friends.”

Tana's eyes opened wide. She couldn't believe her mother was saying those words. “How can you say a thing like that, Mom?”

“Because it's true. And if he's inviting you to his hotel, he has something else in mind, whether you recognize it or not. Maybe he's just biding his time.” And then she smiled. “Do you think he could be serious about you, Tan?”

“Serious?” Tana looked as though she were about to explode. “Serious? I just told you, all we are is friends.”

“And I told you I didn't believe that.” There was something almost insinuating about her smile. “You know, Tan, he would be quite a catch.”

But it was too much for Tana to stand. She jumped to her feet, and looked down at her mother with scorn. “You make him sound like a fish, for chrissake. I don't want a ‘catch.’ I don't want to get married. I don't want to get laid. All I want is to have some friends and go to school. Can you understand that?” There were tears in her eyes, mirrored by those in Jean's.

“Why do you have to get so violent about everything? You never used to be like that, Tan.” Jean's voice sounded so sad that it tore at Tana's heart, but she couldn't help how she felt or what she said anymore.

“You never used to push me all the time.”

“When do I push?” She looked shocked. “I don't even see you anymore. I've seen you twice in six months. That's pushing?”

“That coming out party was pushing, and what you just said about Harry is pushing, and talking about catches, and settling down, and getting married is pushing. For chrissake, Mom, I'm eighteen years old!”

“And you're almost nineteen. And then what? When are you going to think about it, Tan?”

“I don't know, Mom. Maybe never, how's that? Maybe I'll never get married. So what? If I'm happy, who cares?”

“I care. I want to see you married to a nice man with nice children in a nice house.…” Jean was crying openly now, it was what she had always wanted for herself … yet, she was alone … with a couple of nights a week with a man she loved, and a daughter who was almost gone … She bent her head and sobbed, as Tana came to her and hugged her close.

“Come on, Mom, stop … I know you want the best for me … but just let me work things out for myself.”

Her mother looked at her with big, sad, dark eyes. “Do you realize who Harry Winslow is?”

Tana's voice was soft. “Yes. He's my friend.”

“His father is one of the richest men in the United States. He even makes Arthur Durning look poor.” Arthur Durning. The measuring stick for everything in Jean's life.

“So what?”

“Do you realize what kind of life you could have with him?”

Tana looked sad for her, and she suddenly felt sad for herself. Her mother was missing the point, and probably had all her life. But by the same token, Jean had given her so much. And Tana felt as though she owed her a lot now. But in spite of that, she hardly saw Jean during the entire two weeks she was in New York. She ran around with Harry almost every day, although she didn't admit it to Jean. She was still furious at what her mother had said. Do you realize who he is? As though that made a difference to her. She wondered how many people felt that way about him. It seemed a hideous thought, to be evaluated because of his last name.

Cautiously, she even asked Harry about it one day, when they were having a picnic in Central Park. “Doesn't that bug you, Harry? I mean people wanting to get to know you because of who you are?” The thought still horrified her, but he only shrugged and munched his apple as he lay on the grass.

“That's just the way people are, I guess. It gives them some kind of a thrill. I used to see people do that to my father all the time.”

“Doesn't it get to him?”

“I don't really think he cares.” Harry smiled at her. “He's so insensitive, I don't think he actually feels anything at all.” Tana watched Harry's eyes.

“Is he really that bad?”

“Worse.”

“Then how come you're so nice?”

He laughed. “Just lucky, I guess. Or maybe it's my mother's genes.”

“Do you still remember her?” It was the first time she had asked him that, and he looked away from her.

“Sometimes … a little bit … I don't know, Tan.” He looked back at her again. “Sometimes, when I was a kid, I'd pretend to my friends that she was alive, that she was out shopping or whatever when they came over to play. I didn't want to be different from the rest of them. But they always found out. Their mothers would tell them or something when they went home, and then they'd think I was weird, but I didn't give a damn. It felt nice to be normal just for a few hours. I'd just talk about her like she was out … or upstairs…” Tan saw tears stand out in his eyes, and then he looked at her almost viciously. “Pretty dumb, huh, to be hung up on a mother you never even knew?”

Tana reached out to him with her heart and her words, and the gentleness of her voice. “I'd have done the same thing in your shoes.”

He shrugged and looked away, and a while later they went for a walk and talked about other things, Freeman Blake, Sharon, Tana's classes at Green Hill, and then suddenly out of the blue, Harry took her hand. “Thanks for what you said before.” She knew instantly what he meant. They had that kind of rapport, had from the moment they first met.

“It's okay.” She squeezed his hand, and they walked on, and she was amazed at how comfortable she was with him. He didn't push her at all, didn't ask her anymore why she didn't go out with anyone. He seemed to accept her as she was, and she was grateful to him for that. She was grateful to him for a lot of things, for the way he saw life, for the fun they had, the sense of humor that always made her laugh. It felt wonderful to have someone to share her thoughts with.

He was almost like a sounding board for everything she had in her head, and she was particularly grateful for that when she went back to Green Hill. When she saw Sharon again, it was as though her family had sent someone else instead, and all of her moderate political ideas had disappeared. She had attended a series of rallies and sit-ins with her mother and her friends, and suddenly she was as rabid as Miriam Blake was. Tana couldn't believe the change that had taken place, and finally, after listening to her for two days, Tana turned to her and screamed.

“For chrissake, Shar, what's happened to you? This room has been like a political rally ever since we got back. Get off your soapbox, girl. What the hell has happened to you?” Sharon just sat there and stared and suddenly the tears flooded her eyes and she bowed her head, the sobs choked her and her shoulders shook and it was almost half an hour before she could speak, as Tana watched her in astonishment. Something terrible had happened to the girl, but it was impossible to say what it was. She held her and rocked her, and at last Sharon spoke, as Tana's heart went out to her.

“They killed Dick on Easter Eve, Tan … they killed him … he was fifteen years old … and he was hanged.…” Tana felt instantly sick. That couldn't be. That didn't happen to people one knew … to blacks … to anyone … but she could see on Sharon's face that it was true, and when she called Harry that night, she cried when she told him the news.

“Oh my God … I heard something about it in school, that the son of an important black had been killed, but it didn't click … shit.…” He had been Sharon's brother, and barely more than a child.

“Yeah.” Tana's heart felt like lead. And when her mother called her later that week, she still sounded depressed.

“What's the matter, sweetheart? Did you and Harry have a fight?” She was trying a new tack, she was going to pretend to herself and Tana that it was a romance and maybe the idea would take, but Tana didn't have any patience with her and she was instantly blunt.

“My roommate's brother died.”

“Oh, how terrible…” Jean sounded horrified. “In an accident?”

There was a long pause as Tana weighed her words … No, Mom, he was hanged, you see he's black.… “Sort of.” Wasn't death always an accident? Who expected it?

“Tell her how sorry I am. Those are the people you spent Thanksgiving with, aren't they?”

“Yes.” Tana's voice sounded flat and dead.

“That's just terrible.”

Tana couldn't stand talking to her anymore. “I've got to go, Mom.”

“Call me in a few days—”

“I'll try.” She cut her off and hung up. She didn't want to talk to anyone, but she and Sharon were talking again late into the night. Suddenly everything in Sharon's life had changed. She had even contacted the local black church, and she was helping to organize sit-ins on weekends for the remainder of the spring. “Do you think you should, Shar?”

Sharon looked angrily at her. “Is there a choice anymore? I don't think there is.” There was anger in her soul now, an anger that nothing would help, a fire that no love could quench. They had killed the little boy she had grown up with. “… and he was always such a pain in the ass.…” She laughed through her tears one night as they talked in the dark. “… He was so much like Mom, and now … and now…” She gulped her sobs down, and Tana went to sit on her bed. It went on like that every night, either talking about marches elsewhere in the South, or sit-ins in town, or Dr. Martin Luther King, it was as though she wasn't really there anymore, and by midterms she was panicking. She hadn't done any studying at all. She was a bright girl, but she was desperately afraid now that she was going to flunk. Tana helped her as much as she could, sharing notes, underlining her books for her, but she didn't have much hope, and Sharon's mind was on the sit-in she had organized in Yolan for the following week. The townspeople had already complained about her twice to the Dean of Green Hill, but because of who her father was, they had only called her in and talked to her. They understood what a strain she was under, after her brother's, er … unfortunate “accident,” but she had to behave herself nonetheless, and they didn't want her causing trouble in town anymore.

“You better lay off, Shar. They're going to kick you out of school if you don't stop.” Tana had warned her more than once, but it was something she couldn't change now. She had no choice. It was something she had to do, and the night before the big sit-in in Yolan she turned to Tana just before they turned off the lights and there was something so intense in her eyes that it almost frightened Tana as she looked at her. “Is something wrong?”

“I want to ask you a favor, and I won't be mad if you say no. I promise, so do whatever you want. Is that a deal?”

“Okay. What's up?” Tana just prayed that she didn't want her to cheat on a test.

“Reverend Clarke and I were talking today, at the church, and I think it would make a big difference if there were whites involved in the sit-in tomorrow in town. We're going to walk into the white church.”

“Holy shit.” Tana looked shocked, and Sharon grinned.

“That's about right.” The two girls exchanged a smile. “Dr. Clarke is going to see who he can get, and I … I don't know … maybe it's wrong, but I wanted to ask you. But if you don't want to, Tan, don't.”

“Why would they get upset if I walk into their church? I'm white.”

“Not if you walk in with us, you're not. That makes you white trash, or worse. If you walk in holding my hand, standing between me and Reverend Clarke or another black … that's different, Tan.”

“Yeah,” she felt a twinge of fear in her gut, but she also wanted to help her friend, “I guess I can see that.”

“What do you think?” Sharon looked her square in the eye and Tana did the same.

“Honestly? I'm scared.”

“So am I. I always am.” And then very gently, “So was Dick. But he went. And I'm going too. I'm going to go every time I can for the rest of my life now, until things change. But it's my fight, Tana, not yours. If you come, you come as my friend. And if you don't come, I love you anyway.”

“Thanks. Can I think about it tonight?” She knew that it could have repercussions if it got back to the school, and she didn't want to jeopardize her scholarship for the following year. She called Harry late that night, but he was out, and she woke up the next morning at dawn, thinking about going to church when she was a little girl, and things her mother had said about all people being the same in God's eyes, the rich, the poor, the white, the black, everyone, and then she thought about Sharon's brother Dick, a fifteen-year-old child, hanged until he died, and when Sharon turned over in bed as the sun came up, Tana was waiting for her.

“Sleep okay?”

“More or less.” She sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched.

“You getting up?” There was a question in Sharon's eyes, and Tana smiled.

“Yeah. We're going to church today, aren't we?” And with that Sharon grinned broadly at her friend. She hopped out of bed, and gave her a hug and a kiss and a victorious smile.

“I'm so glad, Tan.”

“I don't know if I am, but I think it's the right thing to do.”

“I know it is.” It was going to be a long, bloody fight, but Sharon would be there, and Tana, just this once. She put on a simple blue cotton shirtdress, the color of the sky, brushed her long blond hair into a sleek ponytail, put her loafers on, and they walked into town side by side.

“Going to church, girls?” the housemother had smilingly asked and both had answered yes. They both knew that she had meant different ones, but Tana went to the black church with Sharon where they met Dr. Clarke and a small crowd of ninety-five blacks and eleven whites. They were told to stay calm, to smile if it seemed appropriate, but not if it would provoke anyone, and to remain silent no matter what anyone said to them. They were to hold hands and to enter the church solemnly and respectfully, in groups of five. Sharon and Tana were to remain together. There was another white girl with them, and two black men, both burly and tall, and they told Tana on the way to the other church that they worked at the mill. They were hardly older than the girls, but both were married, one had three children, the other four, and they didn't seem to question her being there. They called her Sister, and just before they walked into the church, the five companions exchanged a nervous smile. And then quietly, they stepped inside. It was a small Presbyterian church on the residential side of town, heavily attended every Sunday, with a Sunday school that was well filled, and as the black faces began to file in, every man and woman in the church turned around. There was a look of complete shock on everyone, the organ stopped, one woman fainted, another began to scream, and within a matter of moments all hell broke loose, the minister began to shout, someone ran to call the police, and only Dr. Clarke's volunteers remained calm, standing solidly along the back wall, causing no trouble at all, as people turned and jeered, hurled insults at them, even though they were in church. Within moments the town's tiny squad of riot police had arrived. They had been recently trained for the sit-ins that had begun to occur and were mostly composed of highway patrolmen, but they began to push and shove and drag the uncooperating black bodies out, as they made themselves limp, and allowed themselves to be dragged away, and suddenly Tana realized what was happening to them. She was next, this was not happening to a remote “them,” it was happening to “us” and to her, and suddenly two enormous policemen hovered over her, and grabbed her roughly by both arms waving their sticks in her face.

“You should be ashamed of yourself … white trash!” Her eyes were huge as they dragged her off, and with every ounce of her being she wanted to hit and bite and kick, thinking of Richard Blake and how he had been killed, but she didn't dare. They threw her into the back of the truck, with much of Dr. Clarke's group, and half an hour later, she was being fingerprinted and she was in jail. She sat in a jail cell for the rest of the day, with fifteen other girls, all of them black, and she could see Sharon across the way. They had each been allowed one phone call, the whites at least, the blacks were still being “processed” according to the cops, and Sharon shouted to her to call her Mom, which Tana did. She arrived in Yolan at midnight, and released Sharon and Tana simultaneously, congratulating them both. Tana could see that she looked harder and more drawn than she had six months before, but she seemed pleased with what the girls had done. She wasn't even upset when Sharon told her the news the next day. She was being kicked out of Green Hill, effective immediately. Her things had already been packed by the housemother of Jasmine House, and she was being asked to leave the campus before noon. Tana was in shock when she heard, and she knew what she could expect for herself when she was ushered into the Dean's office. It was just as she had thought. She was being asked to leave. There would be no scholarship the following year. In fact, there would be no following year at all. Like Sharon, it was all over for her. The only difference was that if she was willing to stay on in a probationary state, she could stay on until the end of the year, which would at least mean that she could take her final exams and apply to another school. But where? She sat in her room in shock after Sharon had left. Sharon was going back to Washington with her mother, and there had already been talk of her spending a little time as a volunteer for Dr. King.

“I know Daddy'll be mad because he wants me to go to school, but you know, truthfully, Tan, I've had it up to here with school.” She looked sorrowfully at Tana then. “But what about you?” She was devastated about the price of the sit-in for her friend. She had never gotten arrested before, although they had been warned before the church sit-in that it was a real possibility, yet she really hadn't expected it.

“Maybe it's all for the best.” Tana tried to cheer her up, and she was still in shock when Sharon left, and she sat alone in her room until dark. Her probation meant that she had to eat alone at Jasmine House, keep to her room at night, and avoid all social activities including the freshman prom. She was a pariah of sorts, but she also knew that school would be over in three weeks.

The worst of it was that, as they had warned Tana they would, they informed Jean. She called, hysterical, that night, sobbing into the phone. “Why didn't you tell me that little bitch was black?”

“What difference does it make what color she is? She's my best friend.” But tears filled Tana's eyes and the emotions of the past few days overwhelmed her suddenly. Everyone at school was looking at her as though she had killed someone, and Sharon was gone. She didn't know where she would go to school next year, and her mother was screaming at her … it was like being five years old and being told you had been very, very bad, but not being sure why.

“You call that a friend?” Her mother laughed through her tears. “She cost you your scholarship, and got you kicked out of school. And do you think you'll get accepted anywhere else after this?”

“Of course you will, you jerk.” Harry reassured her through her sobs the next day. “Shit, there are zillions of radicals at BU.”

“I'm not a radical.” She cried some more.

“I know that. All you did was go to a sit-in, for chrissake. It's your own goddamn fault for going to that prissy redneck school. I mean shit, you aren't even in the civilized world down there. Why the hell don't you come up here to school?”

“You really think I might be able to get in?”

“With your grades, are you kidding? They'd let you run the place.”

“You're just trying to make me feel better.” She started to cry again.

“You're giving me a mammoth pain in the ass, Tan. Why don't you just let me get you an application and see what happens?” And what happened was that she got in, much to her own astonishment and her mother's chagrin.

“Boston University? What kind of school is that?”

“One of the best in the country, and they even gave me a scholarship.” Harry had taken the application over himself, put in a good word for her, which seemed like a crazy thing to do and touched her to the core, and by July first, it was settled. She was going to Boston University in the fall.

She was still numb from the events of two months before, and her mother still wanted to wrestle about it with her.

“I think you should get a job for a while, Tan. You can't hang around in school for the rest of your life.”

Tana looked horrified. “How about for another three years, like until I get a degree?”

“And then what? What are you going to do then, Tana, that you couldn't do now?”

“Get a decent job.”

“You could go to work for Durning International right now. I spoke to Arthur last week.…”

Tana seemed to be screaming at her all the time now, but she never understood. “For chrissake, don't condemn me to that for the rest of my life.”

“Condemn you! Condemn you! How dare you say such a thing? You get arrested, kicked out of school, and you think you have a right to the world. You're lucky a man like Arthur Durning would even consider hiring you.”

“He's lucky I didn't bring charges against his son last year!” The words flew out of Tana's mouth before she could stop them and Jean Roberts stared at her.

“How dare you say a thing like that?”

Her voice was quiet and sad, “It's true, Mom.”

She turned her back to Tana, as though shielding herself from the look on Tana's face, not wanting to hear. “I don't want to hear you tell lies like that.” Tana walked quietly out of the room, and a few days later she was gone.

She went to stay with Harry at his father's place in Cape Cod, and they played tennis and sailed, swam, and visited his friends, and she never felt threatened by him at all. The relationship was entirely platonic as far as she was concerned and therefore comfortable for her. Harry's feelings were something else but he kept them carefully veiled. She wrote to Sharon several times, but the answers she got back were brief, scrambled, and obviously written in haste. She'd never been so busy, or so happy, in her life. Her mother had been right, and she had a wonderful job working as a volunteer for Dr. Martin Luther King. It was amazing how their lives had changed in one short year.

And when Tana started school at Boston University, she was astonished at how different it was from Green Hill, how open, how interesting, how avant garde. She liked being in class with boys as well. Interesting issues were constantly raised and she did well in every class she took.

And secretly Jean was proud of her, although her rapport with Tana was no longer as good as it had once been. She told herself it was a passing phase. She had other things on her mind anyway. By the end of Tana's first year at Boston University, Ann Durning was getting married again. There was going to be an enormous wedding at Christ Episcopal Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a reception, organized by Jean, at the house. At the office, her desk was littered with lists, photographs, caterer' lists and Ann called her at least fourteen times a day. It was almost as though her own daughter was getting married, and after fourteen years as Arthur Durning's mistress and right arm, she felt possessive about the children anyway. And she was especially pleased at how well Ann had chosen this time. He was a lovely man of thirty-two, also previously married, and he was a partner at Sherman and Sterling, the law firm in New York, and from everything that Jean Roberts had heard, he was a very promising attorney, and he had plenty of money of his own. Arthur was also pleased about the match, and he gave Jean a beautiful gold bracelet from Cartier to thank her for all the work she did to make Ann's wedding a success.

“You're really a wonderful woman, you know.” He sat in her living room, drinking a scotch, looking at her, wondering why he had never married her. Once in a while he felt like that, although most of the time now he was comfortable by himself. He was used to it.

“Thank you, Arthur.” She handed him a small plate of the hors d'oeuvres he liked best, Nova Scotia salmon on little thin slices of Norwegian pumpernickel, little balls of steak tartare on white toast, the macadamia nuts she always kept in the house, in case he came by, along with his favorite scotch, favorite cookies … soap … eau de cologne … everything he liked. It was easier to be always ready for him now, with Tana gone. In some ways, that had helped their relationship, and in others, it had not. She was freer now, more available, always ready for him to come by at the drop of a hat, but at the same time, she was much lonelier with Tana gone, more anxious for his company. It made her hungrier, and lonelier, and less understanding when two weeks slid by without his spending a night in her bed. She realized that she should be grateful to him that he came to her at all, and he made so many things in her life easier, but she wanted so much more of him, she always had, ever since they first met.

“Tana's coming to the wedding, isn't she?” He ate another mouthful of steak tartare, and she tried to look vague. She had called Tana about it only a few days before. She hadn't responded to the invitation Ann had sent, and Jean had chided her for it, telling her it wasn't polite, and her Boston University manners didn't apply here, which of course had done nothing to warm Tana's heart.

“I'll answer as soon as I get around to it, Mom. I have exams right now. It only came last week.”

“It only takes a minute to respond.”

Her tone annoyed Tana as it always did now, and she was curt when she replied. “Fine. Then tell her no.”

“I'll do nothing of the sort. You answer that invitation yourself. And I think you should go.”

“Well, that comes as no surprise. Another command performance from the Durning clan. When do we get to say no to them?” She still cringed every time she imagined Billy's face. “I think I'm busy anyway.”

“You could make the effort for my sake at least.”

“Tell them that you have no control over me. That I'm impossible, that I'm climbing Mount Everest. Tell them whatever the hell you want!”

“You're really not going, then?” Jean sounded shocked, as though that weren't possible.

“I hadn't thought about it till now, but now that you mention it, I guess I'm not.”

“You knew it all along.”

“Oh, for chrissake … look, I don't like Ann or Billy. Scratch that. I don't like Ann, and I hate Billy's guts. Arthur is your affair, if you'll pardon the pun. Why do you have to drag me into this? I'm grown up now, so are they, we've never been friends.”

“It's her wedding, and she wants you there.”

“Bullshit. She's probably inviting everyone she knows, and she's inviting me as a favor to you.”

“That's not true.” But they both knew it was. And Tana was getting stronger and stronger as time went on.

In some ways, it was Harry's influence over her. He had definite ideas about almost everything, and it brought something similar out in her in order to respond to him. He made her think about how she felt and what she thought about everything, and they were as close as they had ever been. And he'd been right about BU too. Moving to Boston had been good for her, much more so than going to Green Hill. And in an odd way, she had grown up more in the last year than ever before. She was almost twenty years old.

“Tana, I just can't understand why you behave this way.” It was back to the wedding again, and her mother was driving her nuts.

“Mom, can we talk about something else? How are you?”

“I'm fine, but I'd like to think that you'll at least think about this.…”

“All right!” She screamed into the phone at her end. “I'll think about it. Can I bring a date?” Maybe it would be more bearable if Harry came along.

“I was expecting that. Why don't you and the Wins-low boy take a lesson from Ann and John and get engaged?”

“Because we're not in love. That's the best reason why not.”

“I find that hard to believe after all this time.”

“Fact is stranger than fiction, Mom.” Talking to her mother always drove her nuts, and she tried to explain it to Harry the next day. “It's as though she spends the whole day planning what to say to me so that it will irritate me the most possible, and she never fails. She hits the nail right on the head every time.”

“My father has the same knack. It's a prerequisite.”

“For what?”

“For parenthood. You have to pass a test. If you're not irritating enough, they make you try again until you get it right. Then after the kid is born, they have to renew it every few years, so that after fifteen or twenty years, they've really got it down.” Tana laughed at the idea as she looked at him. He was even more handsome than he had been when they first met, and the girls went crazy for him. There were always about half a dozen he was juggling at once, but he always made time for her. She came first, she was his friend, in fact she was much more than that to him, but Tana had never understood that. “You're going to be around for a long time, Tan. They'll be gone by next week.” He never took any of them seriously, no matter how desperately they wanted him. He didn't fool anyone, he was careful that no one got hurt, he was sensible about birth control. “No casualties, thanks to me, Tan. Life is too short for that, and there's enough hurt out there without making more for your friends.” But there was no pretense offered either. Harry Winslow wanted to have fun, and nothing more than that. No I love you's, no wedding rings, no starry eyes, just some laughs, a lot of beer, and a good time, if possible in bed. His heart was otherwise engaged, albeit secretly, but other interesting parts of him were not.

“Don't they want more than that?”

“Sure they do. They've got mothers just like you. Only most of them listen to their mothers more than you do. They all want to get married and drop out of school as soon as possible. But I tell them not to count on me to help them out. And if they don't believe me, they figure it out soon enough.” He grinned boyishly and Tana laughed at him. She knew that the girls dropped like flies everytime he looked at them. She and Harry had been inseparable for the past year and she was the envy of all her friends. They found it impossible to believe that nothing was going on between them, they were as puzzled as her own mother was, but the relationship stayed chaste. Harry had come to understand her by now, and he wouldn't have dared to scale the walls she had put up around her sexuality. Once or twice he tried to fix her up with one of his friends, just as a friendly double date, but she wanted nothing to do with it. His roommate had even asked him if she was a lesbian, but he was sure that it wasn't that. He had a strong feeling that something bad traumatized her, but she never wanted to talk about it, even with him, and he let it be. She went out with Harry, or her friends from BU, or by herself, but there were no men in her life, not in a romantic sense. Never. He was sure of it.

“It's a hell of a waste, you know, kid.” He tried to talk to her about it teasingly, but she brushed him off, as she always did.

“You do enough of that for both of us.”

“That doesn't do you much good.”

She laughed. “I'm saving it for my wedding night.”

“A noble cause.” He swept her a low bow and they both laughed. People at Harvard and BU were used to seeing them, raising hell, cavorting, playing pranks on each other and their friends. Harry bought a bicycle for two at a garage sale one weekend, and they rode around Cambridge on it, with Harry in a huge raccoon hat in the winter months, and a straw boater when the weather got warm.

“Want to go to Ann Durning's wedding with me?” They were wandering across the Harvard Quad, the day after her mother had harassed her about it on the phone.

“Not particularly. Is it liable to be fun?”

“Not a chance.” Tana smiled angelically. “My mother thinks I should go.”

“I'm sure you expected that.”

“She also thinks we should get engaged.”

“I'll second that.”

“Good. Then let's make it a double ceremony. Seriously, do you want to go?”

“Why?” There was something nervous in her eyes and he was trying to figure out what it was. He knew her well, but every now and then she hid from him, albeit not too successfully.

“I don't want to go alone. I don't like any of them. Ann's a real spoiled brat, and she's already been married once, but her daddy seems to be making a big fuss about this. I guess she did it right this time.”

“What does that mean?”

“What do you think? It means the guy she's marrying has bucks.”

“How sensitive.” Harry smiled angelically and Tana laughed.

“It's nice to know where people's values are, isn't it? Anyway, the wedding's right after we get out of school, in Connecticut.”

“I was going to the South of France that week, Tan, but I could put it off for a few days, if it'll help you out.”

“That wouldn't be too big a pain in the ass for you?”

“It would.” He smiled at her honestly. “But for you, anything.” He bowed low, and she laughed, and he slapped her behind and they got back on the bicycle built for two, and he dropped her off at her dorm at BU. He had a big date that night. He had already invested four dinners in the girl, and he expected her to come through for him tonight.

“How can you talk like that!” Tana laughed and scolded him as they stood outside her dorm.

“I can't feed her forever, for chrissake, without getting something for it. Besides, she eats those huge steaks with the lobster tails. My income is suffering from this broad, but…” he smiled, thinking of her mammaries, “… I'll let you know how it works out.”

“I don't think I want to know.”

“That's right … virgin ears … oh, well.…” He waved as he rode off on their bicycle.

That night, she wrote a letter to Sharon, washed her hair, and had brunch with Harry the next day. He had gotten nowhere with the girl, “The Eater” as he called her now. She had devoured not only her own steak, but most of his as well, her lobster as well as his once more, and then told him that she didn't feel well and had to go home and study for exams. He got nothing whatsoever for his pains except a large check at the restaurant and a night of good, restful sleep, alone in his bed. “That's the end of her. Christ, the trouble you have to go to, to get laid these days.” But she knew from all she heard that he did fine most of the time, and she teased him about it all the way to New York in June. He dropped her off at her apartment and went on to the Pierre. When he picked her up the next day to go to the wedding, she had to admit that he looked spectacular. He was wearing white flannel slacks, a blue cashmere blazer, a creamy silk shirt his father had made for him in London the year before, and a navy and red Hermes tie.

“Christ, Harry, if the bride had any sense, she'd ditch this guy and run off with you.”

“That headache I don't need. And you don't look bad yourself, Tan.” She was wearing a green silk dress almost the exact same color as her eyes, her hair hung long and straight down her back, and she had brushed it until it shone, just like her eyes, which sparkled as she looked at him.

“Thanks for coming with me. I know it's going to be a bore, but I appreciate it.”

“Don't be silly. I didn't have anything else to do anyway. I'm not leaving for Nice until tomorrow night.” And from there he was driving to Monaco, where his father was picking him up on a friend's yacht. Harry was going to spend two weeks with him, and then his father was dropping him off and going on with friends, leaving Harry alone in the house on Cap Ferrat. “I can think of worse fates, Tan.” He was hinting at the hell he would raise, chasing girls in the South of France, and living in the house alone, but it sounded lonely to her. He would have no one to talk to most of the time, no one who really cared about him. On the other hand, she was going to spend the summer being smothered by Jean. In a moment of weakness, feeling guilty for the independence that had been so hard won, she had agreed to take a summer job, working for Durning International. And her mother was thrilled.

“I could kill myself every time I think about it.” She groaned to Harry every time the subject came up. “I was nuts. But I feel so sorry for her sometimes. She's so alone now that I'm gone. And I thought it would be a nice thing to do for her, but Christ, Harry … what have I done?”

“It won't be that bad, Tan.”

“Want to make a bet?” Her scholarship had come through for the following year, and she wanted to make some pocket money to spend. At least this would help. But it depressed her beyond words to think of spending the whole summer in New York, living with Jean, and watching her kiss Arthur's feet at work every day. The very thought made her sick.

“We'll go to the Cape for a week when I come back.”

“Thank God for that.” They exchanged a smile as he drove her to Connecticut, and a little while later, they were standing in Christ Episcopal Church with the rest of the guests, painfully hot in the stifling June air, and then mercifully they were released and they drove to the Durning house, passing through the enormous gates, as Harry watched her face. It was the first time she had been back since the nightmare night two years before. Exactly two years in fact. And there was a thin veil of sweat on her upper lip as she thought of it.

“You really don't like it here, do you, Tan?”

“Not much.” She glanced out the window and looked vague as he watched the back of her head. But he could sense something inside her go tense, and it was worse once they parked the car and got out. They wandered down the receiving line saying the appropriate things. Tana introduced Harry to Arthur and the bride and groom, and then as she ordered a drink, she saw Billy staring at her. He was watching her intently, and Harry was watching him, as he wandered away, and Tana seemed to be in a stupor after that. She danced with Harry several times, with several people she didn't know, chatted with her mother once or twice, and then suddenly in a lull, she found herself face to face with Billy.

“Hello there. I wondered if you'd come.” She had an overwhelming urge to slap his face, but instead she turned away. She couldn't breathe just looking at him. She hadn't seen him since that night, and he looked as malevolent as he had then, as weak and evil and spoiled. She could remember his hitting her, and then …

“Get away from me.” She spoke in a barely audible voice.

“Don't be so uptight. Hell, this is my sister's wedding day. It's a romantic event.” She could see that he was more than slightly drunk. She knew that he had graduated from Princeton a few days before and he had probably been drinking nonstop since then. He was going into the family firm, so he could screw around and chase secretaries. She wanted to ask him who he'd raped recently, but instead she just started to walk away and he grabbed her arm. “That was a pretty rude thing to do.”

She turned back to him, her teeth clenched, her eyes wild. “Get your hand off of me or I'm going to throw this drink in your face.” She hissed like a snake, and suddenly Harry materialized at her side, watching her, seeing something he had never seen before, and also noting the look in Billy Durning's eyes.

Billy Durning whispered one word, “whore,” with a vicious look in his eyes, and with a single gesture, Harry grabbed his arm and twisted it back painfully until Billy groaned and tried to fight back but he didn't want to make a scene and Harry whispered in his ear, as he gripped his tie with his free hand, nearly choking him.

“Got the picture, pal? Good, then why don't you just take yourself off right now?” Billy wrenched his arm free, and without saying a word, he walked away as Harry looked at Tana. She was shaking from head to foot. “You all right?” She nodded, but he wasn't convinced. She was deathly pale, and her teeth were chattering despite the heat. “What was that all about? An old friend?”

“Mr. Durning's adorable son.”

“I take it you two have met before.”

She nodded. “Not very pleasantly.” They stayed for a little while after that, and it was obvious that Tana was anxious to leave so Harry suggested it first. He didn't say anything for a while as they drove back to town, and he could see her visibly unwind as they put some distance between them and the Durning house. He had to ask her then. Something so powerful had been in the air, it frightened him for her.

“What was that all about, Tan?”

“Nothing much. An old hatred, that's all.”

“Based on what?”

“He's a complete prick, that's what.” They were strong words for her and Harry was surprised, and there was no humor in her voice. “A rotten little son of a bitch.” Tears burned her eyes and her hands shook as she lit a cigarette, which she almost never did.

“I figured you two weren't the best of friends.” Harry smiled but she didn't respond. “What did he do to you, to make you hate him so much, Tan?” Somehow, he had to know. For her sake and his own.

“It's not important now.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it's not!” She was shouting at him, and there were suddenly tears rolling down her cheeks. None of it had healed in the past two years, because she hadn't allowed the air to get to it. She hadn't told anyone except Sharon, hadn't fallen in love, hadn't gone on any dates. “It doesn't matter anymore.”

He waited for her words to die down. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” He handed her his pocket handkerchief and she blew her nose, as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I'm sorry, Harry.”

“Don't be. Remember me? I'm your friend.” She smiled through her tears and patted his cheek, but something terrible had come back to haunt her again.

“You're the best friend I've got.”

“I want you to tell me what happened with him.”

“Why?”

He smiled. “So I can go back and kill him if you want.”

“Okay. Go ahead.” She laughed for the first time in hours.

“Seriously, I think you need to get it off your chest.”

“No, I don't.” That frightened her more than living with it. She didn't even want to talk about it now.

“He made a pass at you, didn't he?”

“More or less.” She was looking out the window again.

“Tana … talk to me.…”

She turned to him with a wintry smile. “Why?”

“Because I give a damn.” He pulled the car off the road, turned off the ignition, and looked at her. He knew suddenly that he was about to open a door that had been sealed tight, but he knew that for her sake he had to open it. “Tell me what he did to you.”

She stared into Harry's eyes and spoke expression-lessly. She tried to shake her head, but Harry wouldn't let her off the hook, and he gently took her hand as she finally said the words. “He raped me two years ago. Two years ago tomorrow night, in fact. Happy Anniversary.” Harry felt sick.

“What do you mean he raped you? Did you go out with him?”

She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was a whisper at first. “My mother insisted that I go to a party here in Greenwich, at the house. His party. I went with one of his friends, who got drunk and disappeared, and Billy found me wandering around the house. He asked me if I wanted to see the room where my mother worked. And like a complete fool, I said yes, and the next thing I knew he dragged me into his father's bedroom, threw me down on the floor, and beat me up. He raped me and beat me for hours, and then he took me home and cracked up the car.” She slowly began to sob, choking on her own words, feeling them rush out, almost physically, “I had hysterics at the hospital … after the police came … my mother came out … and she wouldn't believe me, she thought I was drunk … and little Billy could do no wrong in her eyes … I tried to tell her another time…” She buried her face in her hands, and Harry pulled her into his arms, and cooed to her the way no one had ever done to him, but listening to her almost broke his heart. It was why she had never gone out with anyone since they'd met, nor with him, why she was so locked up and frightened inside.

“Poor baby … poor Tan.…” He drove her back to the city then, took her to dinner at a quiet place, and then they went back and talked for hours at the Pierre. She knew her mother would be staying in Greenwich again that night. She had been staying there all week, to make sure that everything went all right. And after Harry dropped her off at her house, he wondered if things would change for Tana now, or even if possibly things might change between them. She was the most remarkable girl he had ever met, and if he had let himself, he would have fallen head over heels in love with her. But he had known better for the past two years, and he reminded himself of that now. He didn't want to spoil what they had, for what? A piece of ass? He had plenty of that, and she meant more than that to him. It was still going to take her a long time to heal, if she ever did, and he could help her more as her friend, than trying to meet his own needs by jumping into bed and playing therapist with her.

He called her the next day before he left for the South of France, and he had flowers sent to her the day after that, with a note that read, “Screw the past. You're okay now. Love, H.” And he called her from Europe whenever he thought of it and had the time. His summer was a lot more interesting than hers, and they compared notes when he came back a week before Labor Day, and she finished her job and drove to Cape Cod with him. She was relieved to be out of Durning International at last. It had been a mistake, but she had lived up to her end.

“Any big romances while I was gone?”

“Nope. Remember me? I'm saving it for my wedding night.” But they both knew why now. She was still traumatized by the rape, and they both also knew that she had to get over that. And after talking to him before he left, it seemed a little less painful now. It was finally beginning to heal.

“There won't be a wedding night if you never go out, you jerk.”

“You sound like my mother again.” She smiled. It was so good to see him again.

“How is your mother, by the way?”

“The same. Arthur Durning's devoted slave. It makes me sick. I never want to be like that with anyone.”

He snapped his fingers with a look of despair. “Shit … and I was hoping that…” They both laughed, and the week sped by as it always did when they had a good time, and there was something magical about being together on Cape Cod. But in spite of Harry's hidden feelings for her, they kept the relationship as it had been. And they both went back to their respective schools for their junior year, which seemed to fly by. The following summer Tana stayed in Boston to work, and Harry went to Europe again, and when he came back they went back to Cape Cod, and the easy days were almost over with. They had only one year left before real life set in. And each in his own way, they were trying to keep reality at bay.

“What are you going to do?” she asked him somberly one night. She had finally agreed to date one of his friends, but things were going very slowly and Tana wasn't really interested in him. Secretly, Harry was glad. But he thought that a few superficial dates would do her good.

“He's just not my type.”

“How the hell do you know? You haven't gone out with anyone in three years.”

“From what I can see, that's no loss.”

“Bitch.” He grinned.

“I'm serious. What the hell are we going to do next year? Have you thought about graduate school?”

“God, no! That's all I need. I've had enough of this place to last me the rest of my life. I'm getting the hell out.”

“And doing what?” She had been tormenting herself for the past two months.

“I don't know. I guess I'll stay in the house in London for a while. My father seems to be in South Africa all the time these days so it wouldn't bother him. Maybe Paris … Rome, then I'll come back here. I just want to play, Tan.” And he was running away from something he wanted and knew he couldn't have. Not yet.

“Don't you want to work?” She looked shocked and he roared.

“Why?”

“That's disgusting!”

“What's disgusting about it? The men in my family haven't worked in years. How can I spoil a tradition like that? It would be sacrilege.”

“How can you admit that?”

“Because it's true. They're a bunch of rich, lazy bums. Just like my old man.” But there was more to them than that, especially, him. Much, much more.

“Is that what you want your children to say about you?” She looked horrified.

“Sure, if I'm dumb enough to have any, which I doubt.”

“You sound like me now.”

“God forbid.” They both smiled.

“Seriously, aren't you at least going to pretend to work?”

“Why?”

“Stop saying that.”

“Who cares if I work, Tan? You? Me? My old man? The columnists?”

“Then why did you go to school?”

“I had nothing else to do with myself, and Harvard was fun.”

“Bullshit. You studied your ass off for exams.” She tossed the gold mane over her shoulder with an earnest look. “You've been a good student. What for?”

“Myself. What about you? What are you doing it for?”

“Same thing. But now I don't know what the hell to do.” But two weeks before Christmas, the choice was made for her. Sharon Blake called, and asked her if she would be willing to go on a march with Dr. King. Tana thought about it for a night, and called Sharon back the next day, with a tired smile. “You got me again, kid.”

“Hurray! I knew you would!” She filled Tana in on the details. It was to take place three days before Christmas in Alabama, and it was relatively low risk. It all sounded fine to her, and the two girls chatted like old times. Sharon had never gone back to school, much to her father's chagrin, and she was in love with a young black attorney now. They were talking about getting married in the spring. And Tana was excited for her when she hung up, and she told Harry about the march the following afternoon.

“Your mother's going to have a fit.”

“I don't have to tell her about it for chrissake. She doesn't have to know everything I do.”

“She will when you get arrested again.”

“I'll call you and you can come bail me out.” She was serious and he shook his head.

“I can't. I'll be in Gstaad.”

“Shit.”

“I don't think you should go.”

“I didn't ask you.”

But when the time came, she was in bed with a fever of 102 degrees and a virulent flu. She tried to get up and pack the night before, but she was just too sick, and she called Sharon at the Blake' home in Washington, and Freeman Blake answered the phone.

“You've heard the news, then.…” His voice sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well, and it was filled with gloom.

“What news?”

He couldn't even say the words. He just sat there and cried, and without knowing why, Tana began to cry too. “She's dead … they killed her last night … they shot her … my baby … my little girl.…” He was totally unglued and Tana was sobbing along with him, feeling frightened and hysterical, until Miriam Blake came to the phone. She sounded distraught but she was calmer than her husband had been. She told Tana when the funeral was. And Tana flew to Washington, fever and all, on the morning of Christmas Eve. It had taken that long to get the body home, and Martin Luther King had made arrangements to come and speak about her.

There was national news coverage, press pushing their way into the church, flashbulbs going off in everyone's face, and Freeman Blake was completely undone. He had lost both of his children now, to the same cause, and afterwards, Tana spent a little quiet time with them, with close friends, at their home.

“Do something useful with your life, child.” Freeman Blake looked bleakly at her. “Get married, have kids. Don't do what Sharon did.” He began to cry again, and eventually Dr. King and another friend led him upstairs and it was Miriam who came to sit beside Tana then. Everyone had been crying all day, and for days before, and Tana felt wrung out both from the emotions and the flu.

“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Blake.”

“So am I.…” Her eyes looked like rivers of pain. She had seen it all, but she was still on her feet and always would be. She was that kind of woman, and in some ways Tana admired her. “What are you going to do now, Tana?”

She wasn't sure what Miriam meant. “Go home, I guess.” She was going to catch a late flight that night to spend Christmas with Jean. As usual, Arthur had gone away with friends, and Jean was going to be alone.

“I mean when you finish school.”

“I don't know.”

“Have you ever thought about going into government? That's what this country needs.” Tana smiled, she could almost hear Sharon speaking to her. Here, her daughter had just died, and she was already back at her crusades. It was frightening in some ways, and yet admirable too. “You could go into law. You could change things, Tana. You're that kind of girl.”

“I'm not sure I am.”

“You are. You've got guts. Sharon did too, but she didn't have your kind of mind. In some ways, you're like me.” It was a frightening thought because Tana had always found her cold, and she didn't want to be like that.

“I am?” She looked a little stunned.

“You know what you want, and you go for it.”

Tana smiled. “Sometimes.”

“You didn't even skip a beat when you got kicked out of Green Hill.”

“That was just lucky a friend suggested BU.”

“If he hadn't, you'd have landed on your feet anyway.” She stood up with a small sigh. “Anyway, think about it. There aren't enough lawyers like you, Tan. You're what this country needs.” It was a heady thing to say to a twenty-one-year-old girl, and on the plane home the words echoed in her head, but more than that, she kept seeing Freeman's face, hearing him cry … hearing things Sharon had said to her at Green Hill … the times they had walked into Yolan … the memories flooded her, and she dried her eyes again and again to no avail, and she found herself thinking constantly of the baby Sharon had given up four years before, wondering where he was, what had happened to him. And she wondered if Freeman had been thinking of him too. They had no one left now.

And at the same time, she kept thinking of Miriam's words. This country needs you … she tried the thought on her mother before she went back to school, and Jean Roberts looked horrified.

“Law school? Haven't you been in school for long enough? Are you going to stay there for the rest of your life?”

“Only if it does me some good.”

“Why don't you get a job? You might meet someone that way.”

“Oh for chrissake, never mind.…” It was all she thought about … meet someone … settle down … get married … have kids.… But Harry wasn't much warmer to the idea when she tried it out on him the following week.

“Jesus Christ, why?”

“Why not? It might be interesting, and I might be good at it.” She was getting more excited about it every day, and suddenly it seemed like the right thing to do. It made some sense, gave some purpose to her life. “I'm going to apply to Boalt, at UC Berkeley.” She had already made up her mind. There were two other schools she was going to apply to also, but Boalt was her first choice.

Harry stared at her. “You're serious?”

“Yes.”

“I think you're nuts.”

“Want to come?”

“Hell, no!” He grinned. “I told you. I'm going to play … just kick up my heels.”

“That's a waste of time.”

“I can hardly wait.”

And neither could she. In May she got the word. She'd been accepted at Boalt. They would give her a partial scholarship, and she had already saved the rest.

“I'm on my way.” She grinned at Harry as they sat on the lawn outside her dorm.

“Tan, are you sure?”

“Never more so in my whole life.” The two exchanged a long smile. The road would part for them soon. She went to his graduation at Harvard in June, and cried copiously for him, for herself, for Sharon Blake who was no more, for John F. Kennedy who had been killed seven months before, for the people they had met, and those they never would. An era had come to an end, for them both. And she cried at her own graduation too. As Jean Roberts did, and Arthur Durning had come along. And Harry sat in the back row, pretending to make conquests among the freshman girls.

But it was Tana his eyes were rivetted to, his heart leapt with pride for her and then sank as he thought of their going separate ways. He knew that inevitably their paths would cross again. He would see to that. But for her, it was still too soon. And with all his heart, he wished her godspeed and, that she would be safe and well in California. It made him nervous to think of her so far from him. But he had to let her go for now … for now … tears filled his eyes as he watched her come down the steps with her diploma in hand. She looked so fresh and young, the big green eyes, the bright shining hair … and the lips he so desperately longed to kiss and had for almost four years … the same lips brushed his cheek as he congratulated her again, and for an instant, just an instant, he felt her hold him close, and it almost took his breath away.

“Thanks, Harry.” There were tears in her eyes.

“What for?” He had to fight back tears of his own.

“For everything.” And then the others pressed in on them and the moment was gone. Their separate lives had begun and Harry almost felt her physically torn from him.

The ride to the airport seemed endless this time. Tana took a cab, and Jean insisted on coming with her. There were endless silences, pauses, staccato bursts of words, like machine gun fire at the enemy as it disappeared into the brush, and then finally they were there. Jean insisted on paying for the cab, as though it were her last chance to do something for her little girl, the only chance she'd ever have, and it was easy to see she was fighting back tears as they checked Tana's bags in.

“That's all you had, dear?” She turned to Tana nervously, as Tana nodded and smiled. It had been a difficult morning for her too. There was no pretending anymore. She wouldn't be coming home again, not for a long, long time. For a few days, a week, a brief trip. But if she managed to hang in at Boalt, she would probably never live at home again. She hadn't had to face that before when she went to Green Hill, or BU, and she was ready to go now. But it was easy to see the panic on Jean's face. It was the same expression she had worn twenty-three years before when Andy Roberts had gone to war. That look that comes of knowing that nothing will ever be the same again. “You won't forget to call me tonight, will you, dear?”

“No, Mother, I won't. But I can't promise after this.” Tana smiled. “If everything I hear is true, I won't come up for air for the next six months.” And she had already warned her that she wouldn't be coming home for Christmas that year. The trip was too expensive anyway. And Jean had resigned herself to that. She was hoping that Arthur might give her a ticket out, but then there would be no hope of spending Christmas with him. Life wasn't easy sometimes. For some, it never was.

They both had a cup of tea, and watched the planes take off as Tana waited for her plane to be called, and she saw her mother staring at her more than once. Twenty-two years of caring for her were officially coming to an end, and it was difficult for both of them. And then suddenly Jean took her hand and looked into her eyes. “Is this what you really want, Tan?”

Tana answered her quietly. “Yes, Mom, it is.”

“You're sure?”

Tana smiled. “I am. I know it seems strange to you, but it really is what I want. I've never been so sure of anything, no matter how hard it is.”

Jean frowned and slowly shook her head before looking at Tana again. It was a strange time to be talking about it, just before she took off, and a strange place, with thousands of people all around, but this was where they were and what was in Jean's heart as she looked into her daughter's eyes again. “It seems more like a career for a man. I just never thought.…”

“I know.” Tana looked sad. “You wanted me to be like Ann.” She was living in Greenwich, near her Dad, and had just had her first child. Her husband was a full partner of Sherman and Sterling now. He drove a Porsche, and she a Mercedes sedan. It was every mother's dream. “That just isn't me. It never was, Mom.”

“But why not?” She didn't understand. Maybe she had gone wrong somewhere. Maybe it was her fault. But Tana was shaking her head quietly.

“Maybe I need more than that. Maybe I need it to be my accomplishment, instead of my husband's. I don't know, but I don't think I could be happy like that.”

“I think Harry Winslow is in love with you, Tan.” Her voice was gentle, but Tana didn't want to hear the words.

“You're wrong, Mom.” It was back to that again. “We love each other dearly, as friends, but he's not in love with me, and I'm not in love with him.” That wasn't what she wanted. She wanted him as her brother, her friend. Jean nodded and said nothing as they called Tana's plane. It was as though she were making a last attempt to change Tana's mind, but there was nothing to change it with, no lifestyle, no man, no overwhelming gift, and nothing would have changed it anyway. She looked into her mother's eyes, and then held her close in a long hug as she whispered in her ear. “Mom, this is what I want. I'm sure. I swear it to you.” It was like leaving for Africa as she said goodbye. As though she were leaving for a different world, a different life, and in a way she was. Her mother looked so grief-stricken that it broke her heart, and Jean's tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks as she waved goodbye and Tana boarded the plane, shouting back, “I'll call you tonight!”

“But it'll never be the same again,” Jean whispered to herself, as she watched the doors close, the gangway pull back, and the giant bird head down the runway at last, and finally take off. And then at long, long last, it was only a speck in the sky, and feeling very small and very alone, she went outside, hailed a cab, and went back to the office where Arthur Durning needed her. At least someone still did, but she dreaded going home that night. And for the next years.

Tana had taken a plane which landed at Oakland airport, and it seemed a small and friendly place when she arrived. Smaller than both Boston and New York, and much, much larger than Yolan, which didn't have an airport at all. She took a cab to the Berkeley campus with her conglomeration of things, checked into the room that had been rented for her as part of her scholarship, unpacked her bags, and looked around. Everything felt different and strange and new. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and people looked relaxed in everything from blue jeans to cords to flowing robes. There was more than one caftan in sight, lots of shorts and T-shirts, sandals, sneakers, loafers, bare feet. Unlike Boston University, the Jewish princesses from New York were not in evidence here, wearing expensive wools and cashmeres from Bergdorf's. This was strictly “come as you are,” and it was anything but neat. But there was an excitement about it, too, and she felt exhilarated as she looked around. It was an exhilaration which stayed with her once classes began, and into the next month, as she ran from one class to the other every day, and then dashed home to study all afternoon and all night. The only other place she ever saw was the library, and whenever possible she ate in her room or on the run. She had lost six pounds which she didn't need to lose by the end of the first month. And the only good thing about the schedule she kept was that she didn't miss Harry quite as much as she had feared she would. For three years, they had been almost joined at the hip, even though they attended different schools, and now suddenly he wasn't there, although he would call her at off-hours. And on October fifth, she was in her room, when someone knocked on her door and told her that there was a call on the pay phone for her. She figured it was her mother again, and she really didn't want to go downstairs. She had a quiz the next day on contract law, and she had a paper due in another course.

“Find out who it is. Can I call back?”

“Okay, just a sec.” And then she came back again. “It's from New York.”

Her mother again. “I'll call back.”

“He says you can't.” He? Harry? Tana smiled. For him, she would even interrupt her work.

“I'll be right out.” She grabbed a pair of rumpled jeans off the back of a chair, and pulled them on as she ran to the phone. “Hello?”

“What the hell are you doing? Making it with some guy on the fourteenth floor? I've been sitting here for an hour, Tan.” He sounded annoyed and he also sounded drunk, to her practiced ear. She knew him well.

“I'm sorry, I was in my room, studying, and I thought it was my Mom.”

“No such luck.” He sounded strangely serious.

“Are you in New York?” She was smiling, happy to hear from him again.

“Yeah.”

“I thought you weren't coming back till next month.”

“I wasn't. I came back to see my uncle. Apparently, he thinks he needs my help.”

“What uncle?” Tana looked confused. Harry had never mentioned an uncle before.

“My Uncle Sam. Remember him, the guy on the posters in the ridiculous red and blue suit with the long white beard?” He was definitely drunk and she started to laugh, but the laughter faded on her lips. He was serious. Oh, my God.…

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I got drafted, Tan.”

“Oh, shit.” She closed her eyes. That was all they heard about. Vietnam … Vietnam … Vietnam … everyone had something to say about it… kick the shit out of them … stay out of it… remember what happened to the French … go to it … stay home … police action … war … it was impossible to know what was going on, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. “Why the hell did you come back? Why didn't you stay over there?”

“I didn't want to do that. My father even offered to buy me out if he could, which I doubt. There are some things which even his Winslow money won't buy. But that's not my style, Tan. I don't know, maybe secretly I've wanted to go over there and make myself useful for a while.”

“You're nuts. My God.… You're worse than that. You could be killed. Don't you realize that? Harry, go back to France.” She was shouting at him now, standing in an open corridor, shouting at Harry in New York. “Why the hell don't you go to Canada, or shoot yourself in the foot … do something, resist the draft. This is 1964, not 1941. Don't be so noble, there's nothing to be noble about, asshole. Go back.” There were suddenly tears in her eyes and she was afraid to ask what she wanted to know. But she had to. She had to know. “Where are they sending you?”

“San Francisco.” Her heart soared. “First. For about five hours. Want to meet me at the airport, Tan? We could have lunch or something. I have to go to some place called Fort Ord by ten o'clock that night, and I arrive at three. And somebody told me it was about a two-hour drive from San Francisco.…” His voice trailed off, they were both thinking the same thing.

“And then what?” Her voice was suddenly hoarse.

“Vietnam, I guess. Cute, huh?”

She suddenly sounded pissed. “No, not cute, you dumb son of a bitch. You should have come to law school with me. Instead, you wanted to play and get yourself laid in every whorehouse in France, and now look at you, you're going to Vietnam to get your balls shot off.…” There were tears rolling down her face, and no one dared walk past her in the hall.

“You make it sound intriguing, anyway.”

“You're a jerk.”

“So what else is new? You fallen in love yet?”

“Who has time, all I do is read. What time does your plane come in?”

“Three o'clock tomorrow.”

“I'll be there.”

“Thanks.” He sounded so young again, on the last word, and when she saw him the next day, she thought he looked pale and tired. He didn't look as well as when she had seen him in June, and their brief visit was nervous and strained. She didn't know what to do with him. Five hours wasn't very long. She took him to her Berkeley room, and then they drove into town for lunch in Chinatown, wandered around, and Harry kept looking at his watch. He had a bus to catch. He had decided not to rent a car to get to Fort Ord after all, but that shortened the time he had with her. They didn't laugh as much as usual, and they were both upset all afternoon.

“Harry, why are you doing this? You could have bought your way out.”

“That's not my style, Tan. You must know that by now. And maybe, secretly, I think I'm doing the right thing. There's a patriotic part of me I didn't know I had.”

Tana felt her heart sink. “That's not patriotism for chrissake. It isn't our war.” It horrified her that he had an out he wouldn't use. It was a side of him she had never seen. Easygoing Harry had grown up, and she saw a man in him she had never known before. He was stubborn and strong, and although what he was doing frightened him, it was clearly what he wanted to do.

“I think it will be our war soon, Tan.”

“But why you?” They sat silently for a long time and the day went too fast. She held him tight when they said goodbye, and she made him promise to call whenever he could. But that wasn't for another six weeks, and by then basic training was over. He had been planning to come back to San Francisco to see her, but instead of going north, he was being sent south. “I leave for San Diego tonight.” It was Saturday. “And Honolulu, the beginning of the week.” And she had midterm exams, so she couldn't just run down to San Diego for a day or two.

“Damn. Will you stay in Honolulu for a while?”

“Apparently not.” She sensed instantly that he wasn't telling her what she wanted to know.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I'm being sent to Saigon by the end of next week.” His voice sounded cold and hard, almost like steel, and it didn't sound like Harry at all. She wondered how this had happened to him, and it was something he had wondered himself every day for six weeks. “Just lucky, I guess,” he had said jokingly to his friends, but there was nothing to joke about, and you could have cut the air with a knife when they handed the assignments out. No one dared say anything to anyone, least of all those who had fared well, for fear that others had not. And Harry was one of the unlucky ones. “It's a bitch, Tan, but there it is.”

“Does your father know?”

“I called last night. No one knows where he is. In Paris, they think he's in Rome. In Rome, they think he's in New York. I tried South Africa, and then I figured fuck the son of a bitch. He'll find out sooner or later where I am.” Why the hell didn't he have a father one could reach? Tana would even have called for him, but he had always sounded like the kind of man she didn't want to know anyway. “I wrote to him at the London address, and I left a message at the Pierre in New York. That's the best I can do.”

“It's probably more than he deserves anyway. Harry, is there anything I can do?”

“Say a prayer.” He sounded as though he were serious, and she was shocked. This wasn't possible. Harry was her best friend, her brother, practically her twin, and they were sending him to Vietnam. She had a sense of panic she had never known before and there was absolutely nothing she could do.

“Will you call me again before you leave? … and from Honolulu … ?” There were tears in her eyes … what if something happened to him? But nothing would, she gritted her teeth, she wouldn't even let herself think like that. Harry Winslow was invincible, and he belonged to her. He owned a piece of her heart. But she felt lost for the next few days, waiting constantly for his calls. There were two from San Diego before he left, “Sorry I took so long, I was busy getting laid, probably got the clap, but what the hell.” He was drunk most of the time, and even more so in Hawaii, and he called her twice from there too, and after that he was gone, into the silence, the jungles and the abyss of Vietnam. She constantly imagined him in danger, and then began to get outrageous letters describing life in Saigon, the hookers, the drugs, the once lovely hotels, the exquisite girls, the constant use he had for his French, and she began to relax. Good old Harry, nothing ever changed, from Cambridge to Saigon, he was the same. She managed to get through her exams, Thanksgiving, and the first two days of the Christmas holiday, which she was spending in her room with a two-foot-tall stack of books, when someone came and pounded on her door at seven o'clock one night.

“Call for you.” Her mother had been calling her a lot, but Tana knew why, although neither of them ever admitted it. The holidays were difficult for Jean. Arthur never spent much time with her, and somehow she always hoped that he would. There were excuses and reasons and parties where he just couldn't take her along, and Tana suspected that there were probably other women too, and now there was Ann and her husband and her baby, and maybe Billy was there too, and Jean just wasn't family, no matter how many years she'd been around.

“I'll be right there,” Tana called out, pulled on her bathrobe, and went to the phone. The hall was cold, and she knew it was foggy outside. It was rare for the fog to come this far east, but sometimes it did on particularly bad nights. “Hello?” She expected her mother's voice and was shocked when she heard Harry's instead. He sounded hoarse and very tired, as though he'd been up all night, which was understandable, if he was in town. His voice sounded exquisitely close. “Harry?…” Tears instantly filled her eyes, “Harry! Is that you?”

“Hell, yes, Tan.” He almost growled at her, and she could almost feel the beard stubble on his face.

“Where are you?”

There was only a fraction of a pause. “Here. San Francisco.”

“When did you arrive? Christ, I'd have picked you up if I'd known.” What a Christmas gift, having Harry back!

“I just got in.” It was a lie, but it was easier to say that than to explain why it had taken so long to call.

“You sure didn't stay long, thank God.” She was so grateful to hear his voice that she couldn't stop the tears. She was smiling and crying all at once, and at his end, so was he. He had never thought he would hear her voice again, and he loved her more than he ever had before. He wasn't even sure that he could hide it now. But he would have to, for her sake, and his own. “Why'd they let you come back so soon?”

“I guess I gave them a bad time. The food stank, the girls had lice. Shit, I caught crabs twice, and the worst case of the clap I ever had.…” He tried to laugh but it hurt too much.

“You creep. Don't you ever behave yourself?”

“Not if I have a choice.”

“So where are you now?”

There was that pause again. “They're cleaning me up at Letterman.”

“Hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“For the clap?” She said it so loud that two girls turned halfway down the hall and she started to laugh. “You know, you're impossible. You're the worst person I know, Harry Winslow the Fourth, or whoever the hell you are. Can I come and visit you or will I get it too?” She was still laughing, and he still sounded tired and hoarse.

“Just don't use my toilet seat.”

“Don't worry, I won't. I may not shake your hand either unless I see it boiled. God only knows where it's been.” He smiled. It was so goddamn good to hear her voice. She looked at her watch. “Can I come over now?”

“Don't you have anything better to do on a Saturday night?”

“I was planning to make love to a stack of law books.”

“You're about as amusing as you used to be, I see.”

“Yeah, but I'm a lot smarter than you are, asshole, and nobody sent me to Vietnam.” There was a strange silent pause, and Harry wasn't smiling when he answered her.

“Thank God, Tan.” She felt strange as she heard his voice, and an odd feeling crept over her, that sent chills up her spine. “Do you really want to come over tonight?”

“Hell, yes, do you think I wouldn't come? I just don't want to catch the clap, that's all.”

He smiled. “I'll behave myself.” But he had to say something to her … before she came … it wasn't fair. “Tan…” His voice caught on the words. He hadn't said anything to anyone yet. He hadn't even talked to his father yet. They hadn't been able to locate him anywhere although Harry knew he'd be in Gstaad by the end of the week. He always spent Christmas there, whether Harry was there or not. Switzerland meant Christmas to him. “Tan … I've got a little more than the clap.…” An odd chill raced up her spine and she closed her eyes.

“Yeah, asshole? Like what?” She wanted to fight back the words, to make him laugh, to make him all right in case he was not, but it was too late … to stop either the truth or the words.…

“I got a little bit shot up.…” She heard his voice crack, and felt a sudden pain in her chest as she fought back a sob.

“Oh yeah? Why'd you go do a thing like that?” She was fighting back tears and so was he.

“Nothing better to do, I guess. The girls were really all dogs.…” His voice grew sad and soft, “… compared to you, Tan.”

“Jesus, they must have shot you in the brain.” They both laughed a little bit, and she stood in her bare feet feeling as though her whole body had turned to ice. “Let-terman. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll be there in half an hour.”

“Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.” And he wouldn't be for quite a while. But Tana didn't know any of that as she pulled on her jeans, shoved her feet into shoes, she didn't even know which ones, pulled a black turtleneck over her head, dragged a comb through her hair, and yanked her pea jacket off the foot of her bed. She had to get to him now, had to see what had happened to him.… I got a little bit shot up.… It was all she could hear again and again in her head as she took the bus into town, and then found a cab to take her to Letter-man Hospital in the Presidio. It was twice as long as she had said it would be, but she had run like hell, and fifty-five minutes after she hung up, she walked into the hospital and asked for Harry's room. The woman at the reception desk asked Tana what department he was in, and she had a strong urge to say “the department for the clap,” but she wasn't feeling funny now, and she felt even less so as she ran down the halls labelled Neurosurgery, praying that he was all right. Her face was so pale it was almost gray, but so was his when she walked into the room. There was a respirator standing by, and he was lying flat on a bed with a mirror overhead. There were racks and tubes, and a nurse watching over him. She thought he was paralyzed at first. Absolutely nothing moved, and then she saw him move a hand and tears filled her eyes, but she had been half right anyway. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He had been shot in the spine as he explained to her that night, as tears filled his eyes. He could finally talk to her, cry with her, tell her how he felt. He felt like shit. He wanted to die. He had wanted to die ever since they brought him back.

“So this is it.…” He could hardly speak, and the tears ran down the sides of his face, down his neck, onto the sheets. “I'll be in a wheelchair from now on.…” He was sobbing openly. He had thought he would never see her again, and suddenly there she was, so beautiful and so good and so blond … just as she had always been. Everything was the same as it always had been here. No one knew about Vietnam here. About Saigon or Da Nang or the Viet Cong, whom you never even saw. They just shot you in the ass from their hiding place in a tree, and maybe they were only nine years old, or just looked that way. But no one gave a damn about that here.

Tana was watching him, trying not to cry. She was grateful he was alive. From the story he had told, of lying face down in the mud, in the driving rains, in the jungle for five days, it was obviously a miracle that he was alive at all. So what if he could never walk again? He was alive, wasn't he? And the thing Miriam Blake had seen in her so long before began to surface now. “That's what you get for screwing cheap whores, ya jerk. Now, you can lie there if you want to, for a while, but I want you to know right now that I'm not going to put up with much of this. Got that?” She stood up, and they were both unable to stop their tears, but she took his hand and she held it fast. “You're going to get off your ass and do something with yourself. Is that clear?” He stared at her in disbelief, and the crazy thing was that she was serious. “Is that clear?” Her voice was shaking as her heart swelled.

“You know you're a crazy girl. Do you know that, Tan?”

“And you're a lazy son of a bitch, so don't get too excited about this lie-on-your-ass life of yours, because it's not going to last long. Got that, asshole?”

“Yes, ma'm.” He saluted her, and a few minutes later, a nurse came in and gave him a shot for the pain, and Tana watched him drift off to sleep, holding his hand, as the tears coursed down her face and she cried silently whispering her prayers and her thanks. She watched him for hours, just holding his hand, and at last she kissed his cheek, and his eyes, and she left the hospital. It was after midnight by then, and all she could think of as she took a bus back to Berkeley that night was “Thank God.” Thank God he was alive. Thank God he hadn't died in that godforsaken jungle, wherever the hell it was. Vietnam had a new meaning to her now. It was a place where people went to be killed. It wasn't just someplace one read about, something to talk about between classes, with professors or friends. It was real to her now. She knew exactly what it meant. It meant Harry Wins-low would never walk again. And as she stepped off the bus in Berkeley that night, the tears still running down her cheeks, she jammed her hands in her pockets, and walked back to her rented room, knowing that neither of them would ever be the same again.

Tana sat at his side for the next two days, and never moved, except to go home and get a few hour' sleep, bathe, change her clothes and come back again, to hold his hand, talk to him when he was awake, about the years when he was at Harvard and she was at BU, the tandem bicycle they had, the vacations on Cape Cod. They kept him pretty doped up most of the time, but there were times when he was so lucid it hurt to look at him, and to realize the thoughts going through his mind. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life paralyzed. He wanted to die, he told Tana again and again. And she screamed at him and called him a son of a bitch. But she was also afraid to leave him at night, for fear he would do something about it himself. She warned the nurses about how he felt, but they were used to it and it didn't impress them much. They kept a close eye on him, and there were others who were worse off, like the boy down the hall who had lost both arms and his entire face when a six-year-old boy had handed a hand grenade to him.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, her mother called just before she left for the hospital. It was ten o'clock in New York, and she had gone into the office for a few hours, and she thought she'd call Tana to see how she was. She had hoped right up until the last minute that Tana would change her mind and come home to spend Christmas with her, but Tana had insisted for months that there was no chance of that. She had stacks and stacks of work to do. And she said there wasn't even any point in Jean coming out. But it seemed a depressing way to spend the Christmas holidays, almost as depressing as the way she was spending them herself. Arthur was having a family Christmas in Palm Beach with Ann and Billy and his son-in-law, and the baby, and he hadn't included Jean. She understood of course that it would have been awkward for him.

“So what are you up to, sweetheart?” Jean hadn't called her in two weeks. She was too depressed to call, and she didn't want Tana to hear it on the phone. At least when Arthur was in New York over the holidays, there was some hope that he might stop by for a few hours, but this year she didn't even have that hope held out to her, and Tana was gone.… “Studying as hard as you thought?”

“Yes … I … no…” She was still half asleep. She had stayed with Harry until four o'clock. His fever had suddenly shot up the night before and she was afraid to leave him again, but at four in the morning, the nurses had insisted she go home and get some sleep. It was going to be a long, hard climb for him, and if she burned herself out now, she wouldn't do him any good later on, when he needed her most. “I haven't been. At least not for the past three days.” She almost groaned with fatigue, as she sat down in the straight-backed chair they left near the phone. “Harry got back from Vietnam.” Her eyes glazed as she thought of it. This would be the first time she had told anyone, and the thought of what there was to say made her sick.

“You've been seeing him?” Jean sounded instantly annoyed. “I thought you had studying to do. If I'd thought you could take time off to play, Tana, I wouldn't be sitting here spending the Christmas holidays by myself … if you have time to play around with him, the least you could have—”

“Stop it!” Tana suddenly shrieked in the empty hall. “Stop it! He's in Letterman. No one's playing around, for God's sake.” There was silence at Jean's end. She had never heard Tana sound like that. There was a kind of hysterical desperation in her voice, and a frightening despair.

“What's Letterman?” She imagined it was a hotel, but something instantly told her she was wrong.

“The military hospital here. He was shot in the spine.…” She began to take in great gulps of air so she wouldn't cry, but it didn't work. Nothing worked. She cried all the time when she wasn't with him. She couldn't believe what had happened to him. And she nearly collapsed now on the chair, like a little child. “He's a paraplegic now, Mom … he may not even live … he got this terrible fever last night…” She just sat there, crying, shaking from head to foot and unable to stop, but she had to let it out, as Jean stared at her office wall in shock, thinking about the boy she had seen so many times. He was so confident, almost debonair, if one could say that about a boy his age, he laughed all the time, he was funny and bright and irreverent and he had annoyed her most of the time, and now she thanked God Tana hadn't married him … imagine the life that would have been for her.

“Oh sweetheart … I'm so sorry.…”

“So am I.” She sounded exactly as she had as a child when her puppy died, and it broke Jean's heart to listen to her. “And there's nothing I can do, except sit there and watch.”

“You shouldn't be there. It puts too much strain on you.”

“I have to be there. Don't you understand?” Her voice was harsh. “I'm all he has.”

“What about his family?”

“His father hasn't shown up yet, and he probably never will, the son of a bitch, and Harry's just lying there, barely hanging on.”

“Well, there's nothing you can do. And I don't think you should see something like that, Tan.”

“Oh, no?” She was belligerent now. “What should I see, Mom? Dinner parties on the East Side, evenings in Greenwich with the Durning clan? That's the worst crock of crap I've ever heard. My best friend has just had his ass shot off in Vietnam, and you don't think I should do something like that. Just what do you think should happen to him, Mom? Should I cross him off my list because he can't dance anymore?”

“Don't be so cynical, Tana.” Jean Roberts sounded firm.

“Why the hell not? What kind of world do we live in anyway? What's wrong with everyone? Why don't they see what we're getting into in Vietnam?” Not to mention Sharon and Richard Blake and John Kennedy and everything else that was wrong with the world.

“That's not in your hands or mine.”

“Why doesn't anyone care what we think … ? what I think … what Harry thinks.… Why didn't anybody ask him before he went?” She was sobbing again and she couldn't go on.

“Get hold of yourself.” Jean waited for a moment, and then said, “I think you should come home for the holidays, Tan, especially if you're going to spend them around the hospital with that boy.”

“I can't come home now.” Her voice was sharp and suddenly there were tears in Jean's eyes.

“Why not?” Now she sounded like the child.

“I don't want to leave Harry now.”

“How can he mean that much to you … ?” more than I do.…

“He just does. Aren't you spending Christmas with Arthur anyway, or at least part of it?” Tana blew her nose and wiped her eyes, but Jean shook her head at her end.

“Not this year, Tan. He's going to Palm Beach with the kids.”

“And he didn't invite you?” Tana sounded shocked. He was really the consummate selfish son of a bitch, second only to Harry's dad, perhaps.

“It would be awkward for him.”

“Why? His wife's been dead for eight years, and you're no secret anymore. Why couldn't he invite you?”

“It doesn't matter. I have work to do here anyway.”

“Yeah,” it drove her nuts thinking about her mother's subservience and devotion to him, “work for him. Why don't you just tell him to jump in the lake one of these days, Mom? You're forty-five years old, you could still find someone else, and no one could treat you worse than Arthur does.”

“Tana, that's not true!” She was instantly outraged.

“No? Then how come you're spending Christmas alone?”

Jean's tongue was quick and sharp. “Because my daughter won't come home.”

Tana wanted to hang up in her face. “Don't lay that trip on me, Mom.”

“Don't talk to me like that. And it's true, isn't it? You want him around so there isn't any responsibility on you. Well, it doesn't always work like that. You may not choose to come home, but you can't pretend it's the right thing to do.”

“I'm in law school, Mom. I'm twenty-two years old. I'm grown up. I can't be there for you all the time anymore.”

“Well, neither can he. And his responsibilities are far more important than yours.” She was crying softly now and Tana shook her head. Her voice was calm when she spoke again.

“He's the one you should be mad at, Mom, not me. I'm sorry I can't be there for you, but I just can't.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don't. And I'm sorry about that, too.”

Jean sighed into the phone. “I guess there's nothing we can do about it now. And I suppose you are doing the right thing.” She sniffed, “But please, sweetheart, don't spend all your time at the hospital. It's too depressing, and you can't do the boy any good. He'll pull out of it on his own.” Her attitude made Tana sick, but she didn't say anything to her.

“Sure, Mom.” They each had their own ideas, and neither of them was going to change anymore. It was hopeless now. They had gone their own ways, and Jean knew it too. She thought of how lucky Arthur was to still have his children around so much of the time. Ann always wanted his help, financially and otherwise, and her husband practically kissed Arthur's feet, and even Billy was living at home. It was wonderful for him, she thought as she hung up. It meant he never really had enough time for her. Between his business obligations, his old friends who had been too close to Marie to accept Jean, according to him anyway, and Billy and Ann, there was scarcely ever any time for her. And yet, there was still something so special between them, and she knew there always would be.

It was worth all the hours she spent alone, waiting for him. At least that was what she told herself, as she straightened her desk and went home to her apartment to stare into Tana's empty room. It looked so painfully neat, so empty and deserted now. So unlike the room she was living in, in Berkeley, where her things were spread all over the floor, as she rapidly gathered her things, desperate to get back to Harry again. She had called the hospital after she and her mother hung up, and they said his fever was up again. He was asleep, and he had just had a shot, but she wanted to get back to him before he woke up again. And as she pulled a comb through her hair, and climbed into her jeans, she thought of the things her mother had said. It was unfair of Jean to blame her loneliness on her. What right did she have to expect Tana to always be there for her? It was her mother's way of absolving Arthur of his responsibilities. For sixteen years she had made excuses for him, to Tana, to herself, to her friends, to the girls at work. How many excuses could one make for the man?

Tana grabbed her jacket off a hook and ran downstairs. It took her half an hour to cross the Bay Bridge on the bus, and another twenty minutes to get to Letterman, peacefully nestled in the Presidio. The traffic was worse than it had been in the past few days, but it was the morning of Christmas Eve, and she had expected it. She tried not to think of her mother as she got off the bus. She could take care of herself at least, better than Harry could right now. That was all she could think about as she went up to his room on the third floor and walked softly inside. He was still asleep, and the curtains were drawn. It was a brilliantly sunny winter day outside, but none of the bright light and cheer entered here. Everything was darkness and silence and gloom. She slipped quietly into a chair next to the bed, and watched his face. He was deep in a heavy, drugged sleep, and he didn't stir for the next two hours, and finally just to move around a little bit, she walked out into the hall, and wandered up and down, trying not to look into rooms, or see the hideous machinery everywhere, the stricken faces of parents coming to see their sons, or what was left of them, the bandages, the half faces, severed limbs. It was almost more than she could stand, and she reached the end of the hall, and took a deep breath, as suddenly she saw a man who literally took her breath away. He was the tallest, most handsome man she had ever seen. Tall, dark-haired, with brilliant blue eyes, a deep tan, broad shoulders, long, almost endless legs, an impeccably cut dark blue suit, and a camel's hair coat tossed over his arm. His shirt was so perfect and creamy white that it looked like something in an ad. Everything about him was beautiful and immaculate and magnificently groomed. He wore a crest ring on his left hand, and a troubled look in his eyes, and he stood watching her for a fraction of an instant, just as she stood watching him.

“Do you know where the neurosurgical area is?” She nodded, feeling childlike and stupid at first, and then shyly smiled at him.

“Yes, it's down this hall.” She pointed in the direction she had come, and he smiled, but only with his mouth, not with his eyes. There was something desperately sad about the man, as though he had just lost the one thing he cared about, and he had, or almost.

But Tana found herself wondering why he was there. He looked about fifty years old, although he seemed youthful for his age and he was certainly the most striking man she had ever seen. The dark hair peppered with gray made him look even more handsome as he walked swiftly past her and down the hall, and she followed slowly back the way she had come, and saw him turn left in the direction of the nurse' station that they were all so dependent on. Her thoughts turned back to Harry then, and she realized that she had better get back. She hadn't been gone long, but he might have woken up, and there were a lot of things she wanted to say to him, things she had thought about all night, ideas that she had about what they could do now. She had meant what she'd said, she wasn't going to just let him lie on his ass. He had his whole life ahead of him. Two of the nurses smiled at her as she walked past where they stood, and she walked on tiptoe into Harry's room. The room was still dim, and the sun was going down outside anyway, and she instantly saw that Harry was awake. He looked groggy, but he recognized her, and he didn't smile. Their eyes met and held, and she felt suddenly strange as she entered the room, as though something was wrong, something more than had been wrong before, as though that could even be. Her eyes swept the room as though searching for a clue, and she found him standing there, in a corner, looking grim, the handsome man with the gray hair, in the dark blue suit, and she almost jumped. It had never occurred to her … and now suddenly she knew … Harrison Winslow III … Harry's father … he had finally come.

“Hi, Tan.” Harry looked unhappy and uncomfortable. It was easier before his father had come. Now he had to deal with him, and his grief too. Tana was so much easier to have around, she always understood how he felt. His father never had.

“How do you feel?” For an instant, they both ignored the older man, as though deriving strength from each other first. Tana didn't even know what to say to him.

“I'm okay.” But he looked a lot less than that, and then he looked from her to the well-dressed man. “Father, this is Tana Roberts, my friend.” The elder Wins-low said very little, but he held out his hand. He almost looked at her as though she were an intrusion. He wanted the details of how Harry had gotten there. He had reached London from South Africa the day before, had gotten the telegrams that were waiting for him, and had flown to San Francisco at once, but he hadn't realized until he arrived what the full implications were. He was still reeling from the shock. Harry had just told him that he would be confined to a wheelchair for life, before Tana walked into the room. He hadn't wasted much time in telling him, and he hadn't been gentle or kind. But he didn't have to be, as far as he was concerned. They were his legs, and if they weren't going to work anymore, that was his problem, no one else's, and he could talk about it any way he wanted to. And he wasn't mincing words just then. “Tan, this is my father, Harrison Winslow,” a sarcastic tone came into his voice, “the Third.” Nothing between them had changed. Not even now. And his father looked chagrined.

“Would you like to be alone?” Tana's eyes went back and forth between the two men and it was easy to read that Harry would not, and his father would prefer that they were. “I'll go get a cup of tea.” She glanced at his father with a cautious glance. “Would you like some, too?”

He hesitated, and then nodded his head. “Yes, thanks. Very much.” He smiled, and it was impossible not to notice how devastatingly handsome he was, even here, in a hospital, in his son's room, listening to bad news. There was an incredible depth to the blue eyes, a strength about the chiselled jaw line, something both gentle and decisive about his hands. It was difficult to see him as the villain Harry had described, but she had to take Harry's word for it. Yet sudden doubts began to come to mind, as she took her time going to the cafeteria to get their tea. She returned in slightly less than half an hour, wondering if she should leave and come back the following day, or later that night. She had all that studying to do anyway, but there was a dogged look in Harry's eyes when she returned, as though he wanted to be rescued from his father, and the nurse saw it too when she came in, and not knowing what was causing Harry's distress, or who, in a little while she asked them both to leave. Tana bent to kiss Harry goodbye and he whispered in her ear.

“Come back tonight … if you can.…”

“Okay.” She kissed his cheek, and made a mental note to call the nurses first. But it was Christmas Eve, after all, and she thought maybe he didn't want to be alone. She wondered too if he and his father had just had an argument. His father glanced back over his shoulder at him, sighed unhappily as they left the room, and walked down the hall. His head was bowed, as he stared at his highly polished shoes, and Tana was afraid to say anything. And she felt like a total slob in her scuffed loafers and jeans, but she hadn't expected to meet anyone there, least of all the legendary Harrison Winslow III. She was even more startled when he suddenly turned to her.

“How does he seem to you?”

Tana took a sharp breath. “I don't know yet … it's too soon … I think he's still in shock.” Harrison Winslow nodded. So was he. He had spoken to the doctor before coming upstairs, and there was absolutely nothing they could do. Harry's spinal cord had been so badly damaged, the neurosurgeon had explained, that he would never walk again. They had made some repairs, and there would be more surgery in the next six months, and there were some things about which he was very pleased. They had told Harry as much, but it was too soon for it all to have set in. The best news of all was that he would be able to make love, with some instruction, but that part of his nervous system still functioned, to a degree, and although he wouldn't have complete feeling or total control, he still had a considerable amount of sensation there. “He could even have a family,” the doctor told his father as he stared, but there were other things that he would never do, like walk or dance, or run or ski … tears filled the father's eyes as he thought of it, and then he remembered the girl walking along at his side. She was pretty, he had noticed her when he first saw her walking down the hall, and had been struck by the lovely face, the big green eyes, the graceful way she moved, and had been surprised to see her walk into Harry's room.

“I take it you and Harry are close friends?” It was odd, Harry had never mentioned the girl to him, but Harry never mentioned anything to him anyway.

“We are. We've been friends for four years.”

He decided not to beat around the bush as they stood in the lobby of Letterman hospital. But he wanted to know what he was up against, and maybe this was the time to find out. Just how involved was Harry with this girl, another casual affair, a hidden love, maybe even hidden wife? He had Harry's financial affairs to think of, too, even if the boy wasn't sophisticated enough yet to protect himself. “Axe you in love with him?” His eyes bore into hers and she was momentarily stunned.

“I … no … I … that is,” she wasn't sure why he had asked, “I love him very much … but we … I'm not ‘involved with him’ physically, if that's what you mean.” She flushed to the roots of her hair to be explaining that to him and he smiled apologetically.

“I'm sorry to even ask you a thing like that, but if you know Harry well, you know how he Is. I never know what the hell is going on and I assume that one of these days I'll arrive and find out that he has a wife and three kids.” Tana laughed. It was unlikely but not impossible. More likely three mistresses. And she suddenly realized that she was finding it difficult to dislike him as much as Harry would want her to, in fact, she wasn't sure she disliked him at all.

He was obviously powerful, and not afraid to ask what he wanted to know. He looked her over now, glanced at his watch, and at the limousine waiting at the curb outside for him. “Would you come to have a cup of coffee with me somewhere? At my hotel perhaps? I'm staying at the Stanford Court, but I could have the driver take you back to wherever you like afterwards. Does that sound all right?” Actually, it sounded faintly traitorous to her, but she didn't know what to say to him. The poor man had been through a lot, too, and he had come an awfully long way.

“I … I really should get back … I have an awful lot of studying to do.…” She blushed and he looked hurt, and suddenly she was sorry for him. As elegant and dashing as he was, there was at the same time something vulnerable about him. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude. It's just…”

“I know.” He looked at her with a rueful smile that melted her heart. “He's told you what a bastard I am. But it's Christmas Eve, you know. It might do us both good to go and talk for a while. I've had a hell of a shock, and you must have too.” She nodded sadly and followed him to the car. The driver opened the door and she got in, and Harrison Winslow sat next to her on the gray velvet seat. He looked pensive as the city slid by and it seemed moments later when they reached Nob Hill, and drove down the east face of it, turning sharply into the courtyard of the Stanford Court. “Harry and I have had a rough time of it over the years. Somehow we never managed to hit it off.…” He almost seemed to be talking to himself as she watched his face. He didn't look as ruthless as Harry had described. In fact, he didn't look ruthless at all. He looked lonely and sad, and he seemed very much alone. Harrison looked pointedly at Tana then. “You're a beautiful girl … inside as well, I suspect. Harry is lucky to have you as a friend.”

And the oddest thing about her was something Harry couldn't really have known. She looked so much like his mother at the same age. It was uncanny as Harrison watched her step lightly out of the car, and he followed her into the hotel. They went to the Potpourri restaurant and slid into a booth. He seemed to be constantly watching her, as though trying to understand who she was, and what she meant to his son. He found it difficult to believe that she was only his “friend,” as she claimed, and yet she was insistent about that as they talked and she had no reason to lie to him.

Tana smiled as she watched his eyes. “My mother feels the same way about it that you do, Mr. Winslow. She keeps telling me that ‘boys and girls can't be friends,’ and I tell her she's wrong. That's exactly what Harry and I are … he's my best friend in the whole world … he's like a brother to me.…” Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away thinking of what had happened to him. “… I'll do anything I can to help make him all right again.” She looked at Harrison Winslow defiantly, not angry at him, but at the fate which had crippled his son. “I will, you'll see … I won't just let him lie there on his ass,” she blushed at the word, but went on, “I'm going to get him up and moving and giving a damn again.” She looked at him strangely then. “I have an idea, but I have to talk to Harry about it first.” He was intrigued. Maybe she had designs on the boy after all, but he didn't think that would be so bad now. Aside from being pretty, she was obviously bright and the girl had a hell of a lot of spunk. When she spoke, her eyes lit up like green fire, and he knew that she meant everything she said.

“What kind of idea?” He was intrigued by her, and if he hadn't been so worried about his son, he would have been amused.

She hesitated. He'd probably think she was crazy, particularly if he was as unambitious as Harry said. “I don't know … it probably sounds crazy to you, but I thought … I don't know.…” It was embarrassing, admitting it to him. “I thought that maybe I could get him to go to law school with me. Even if he never uses it, it would be good for him, especially now.”

“Are you serious?” There were laugh lines coming to light beside Harrison Winslow's eyes. “Law school? My son?” He patted her hand with a grin, she was an amazing child, a little ball of fire, but he wouldn't put anything past this girl, including that. “If you can talk him into that, especially now,” his face sobered rapidly, “you really would be even more remarkable than I think you are.”

“I'm going to give it a try when he's well enough to listen to me.”

“That'll be a while, I'm afraid.” They both nodded silently, and in the silence heard someone singing carols outside, and then suddenly Tana looked at him.

“Why do you see so little of him?” She had to ask, she had nothing to lose, and if he got angry with her, she could always leave. He couldn't do anything to her, but he didn't actually look upset as he gazed into her eyes.

“Honestly? Because Harry and I have been a lost cause until now. I tried for a long, long time, but I never got anywhere. He's hated me ever since he was a small boy, and it's only gotten worse over the years. There was no point inflicting new wounds after a while. It's a big world, I have a lot to do, he has his own life to lead,” tears flooded his eyes and he looked away, “… or at least he did, until now.…”

She reached across the table and touched his hand. “He will again. I promise you … if he lives … oh, God … if he lives … please God, don't let him die.” Tears flooded her eyes, too, and she brushed them from her cheeks. “He's so wonderful, Mr. Winslow, he's the best friend I've ever had.”

“I wish I could say the same.” He looked sad. “We're almost strangers by now. I felt like an intruder in his room today.”

“Maybe that's because I was there. I should have left you two alone.”

“It wouldn't make any difference anymore. It's gone too far, for too long. We're strangers now.”

“You don't have to be.” She was talking to him as though she knew the man, and somehow he didn't seem so impressive any more, no matter how worldly or debonair or handsome or sophisticated he was. He was only another human being, with a devastating problem on his hands, a very sick son. “You could make friends with him now.”

Harrison Winslow shook his head, and after a moment he smiled at her. He thought Tana a remarkably beautiful girl, and he suddenly wondered again exactly what the story was between Harry and this girl. His son was too much of a libertine, in his own way, to let an opportunity like this pass him by, unless he cared about her even more than she knew … maybe that was it … maybe Harry was in love with her … he had to be. It couldn't be what she said it was between them. It seemed impossible to him.

“It's too late, my friend. Much, much too late. And in his eyes, my sins are unforgivable.” He sighed. “I suppose I'd feel the same way in his shoes.” He looked unwaveringly at her now. “He thinks I killed his mother, you know. She committed suicide when he was four.”

She almost choked on her words. “I know.” And the look in his eyes was devastating, raw pain that still lived in his soul. His love for her had never died, nor had his love for their son. “She was dying of cancer and she didn't want anyone to know. In the end, it would have disfigured her, and she couldn't have tolerated that. She'd already had two operations before she died … and…” he almost stopped, but went on, “… it was terrible for her … for all of us … Harry knew she was sick then, but he doesn't remember it now. It doesn't matter anyway. She couldn't live with the operations, the pain, and I couldn't bear to watch her suffer. What she did was a terrible thing, but I always understood. She was so young, so beautiful. She was very much like you, in fact, and almost a child herself.…” He wasn't ashamed of the tears in his eyes, and Tana looked at him, horrified.

“Why doesn't Harry know?”

“She made me promise I'd never tell.” He sat back against the banquette as though he'd been punched. The feeling of despair over her death never really went away. He had tried to run away from it for years, with Harry at first, with women, with girls, with anyone, and finally by himself. He was fifty-two years old and he had discovered that there was only so far he could run, and he couldn't run that far anymore. The memories were there, the sorrow, the loss … and now Harry might go too … he couldn't bear the thought as he looked at this lovely young girl, so full of life, so filled with hope. It was almost impossible to explain it all to her, it was all so long ago. “People felt differently about cancer then … it was almost as though one had to be ashamed of it. I didn't agree with her at the time, but she was adamant that Harry not know. She left me a very long letter at the time. She took an overdose of pills when I went to Boston overnight to see my great aunt. She wanted Harry to think her flighty and beautiful, and romantic, but not riddled with disease, and so she went … she's a heroine to him.” He smiled sadly at Tana. “And she was to me. It was a sad way to die, but the other way would have been so much worse. I never blamed her for what she did.”

“And you let him think it was your fault.” She was horrified, and her green eyes were huge in her face.

“I never realized he would, and by the time I understood, it was already too late. I ran around a great deal when he was a child, as though I could flee from the pain of losing her. But it doesn't really work that way. It follows you, like a mangy dog, always waiting outside your room when you wake up, pawing at the door, whining at your feet, no matter how dressed up and charming and busy you are, how many friends you surround yourself with, it's always there, nipping at your heels, gnawing at your cuffs … and so it was … but by the time Harry was eight or nine, he had come to his own conclusions about me, and he got so hateful for a while that I put him into boarding school, and he decided to stay, and then I had nothing at all, so I ran even harder than before … and,” he shrugged philosophically, “she died almost twenty years ago, and here we are … she died in January.…” His eyes looked vague for a moment and then focused on Tana again, but that didn't help. She looked too much like her anyway, it was like looking into the past, just seeing her. “And now Harry is in this awful mess … life is so rotten and so strange, isn't it?” She nodded, there wasn't much she could say. He had given her a great deal to think about.

“I think you should say something to him.”

“About what?”

“About how his mother died.”

“I couldn't do that. I made a promise to her … to myself … it would be self-serving to tell him now.

“Then why tell me?” She was shocked at herself, at the anger in her voice, at what she felt, at the waste people allowed in their lives, lost moments in which they could have loved each other, like this man and his son.

They had wasted so many years they could have shared. And Harry needed him now. He needed everyone.

Harrison looked apologetically at her. “I suppose I shouldn't have told you all that. But I needed to talk to someone … and you're … so close to him.” He looked at her point blank. “I wanted you to know that I love my son.” There was a lump in her throat the size of a fist and she wasn't sure if she wanted to slap him or kiss him, or perhaps both. She had never felt that way about any man before.

“Why the hell don't you tell him yourself?”

“It wouldn't do any good.”

“It might. Maybe this is the time.”

He looked at her pensively, and then down at his hands, and then finally into her green eyes again. “Perhaps it is. I don't know him, though … I wouldn't know where to begin.…”

“Just like that, Mr. Winslow. Just the way you said it to me.”

He smiled at her, and he suddenly looked very tired. “What makes you so wise, little girl?”

She smiled at him, and she felt an incredible warmth emanating from him. He was a lot like Harry in some ways, and yet he was more, and she realized with a pang of embarrassment that she was attracted to him. It was as though all the senses that had been deadened for years, ever since the rape, had suddenly come alive again.

“What were you thinking just then?”

She flushed pink and shook her head. “Something that had nothing to do with all this … I'm sorry … I'm tired … I haven't slept for a few days.…”

“I'll get you home, so you can get some rest.” He signalled for the check, and when it came he looked at her with a gentle smile, and she felt a longing for the father she had never had, or even known. This was the kind of man she would have wanted Andy Roberts to have been, not Arthur Durning who breezed in and out of her mother's life when it suited him. This man was a great deal less selfish than Harry had wanted her to believe, or insisted on believing himself. He had put a lot of energy into hating this man over the years and Tana knew instinctively now that he had been wrong, very wrong, and she wondered if Harrison was right, if it was too late. “Thank you for talking to me, Tana. Harry is lucky to have you as his friend.”

“I've been lucky to have him.”

He put a twenty dollar bill under the check and looked at her again. “Are you an only child?” He suspected that about her, and she nodded with a smile.

“Yes. And I never knew my father, he died before I was born, in the war.” It was something she had said ten thousand times in her life, but it seemed to have new meaning now. Everything did, and she didn't understand what that meant or why. Something strange was happening to her as she sat with this man, and she wondered if it was just because she was so tired. She let him walk her back to his car, and he surprised her by getting in with her, rather than letting the driver take her home.

“I'll ride with you.”

“You really don't need to do that.”

“I have nothing else to do. I'm here to see Harry, and I think he's better off resting for the next few hours.” She agreed with him and they chatted on the drive across the bridge. He mentioned that he had never been to San Francisco before. He found it an attractive place, but he seemed distracted as they drove along. She assumed he was thinking about his son, but he was actually thinking about her, and he shook her hand when they arrived. “I'll see you at the hospital again. If you need a ride, just call the hotel and I'll send the car for you.” She had mentioned that she'd been taking the bus back and forth and that worried him. She was young, after all, and pretty and anything could have happened to her.

“Thank you for everything, Mr. Winslow.”

“Harrison.” He smiled at her, and he looked exactly like Harry when he smiled, not quite as mischievous, but there was a sparkle there too. “I'll see you soon. Get some rest now!” He waved, and the limousine drove off, as she slowly climbed the stairs, thinking of all he had said. How unfair life was at times. She fell asleep thinking of Harrison … and Harry … and Vietnam … and the woman who had killed herself, and in Tana's dream she had no face, and when she awoke it was dark, and she sat up with a start and couldn't catch her breath in the tiny room. She glanced at the clock and it was nine o'clock, and she wondered how Harry was. She went to the pay phone and called and discovered that the fever was down, he had been awake for a while, and now he was dozing again, but he hadn't gone to bed for the night. They hadn't given him his sleeping medicine yet, and they probably wouldn't for a while, and suddenly, as Tana heard caroling outside, she realized that it was Christmas Eve, and Harry needed her. She showered quickly and decided to dress for him. She wore a pretty white knit dress, high heeled shoes, and put on a red coat and a scarf that she hadn't worn since the winter before in New York, and thought she would never wear here. But somehow it all looked and felt Christmasy, and she thought that might be important to him. She put on some perfume, brushed her hair, and rode back into town on the bus, thinking of his father again. It was ten thirty at night when she arrived at Letterman, and there was a sleepy holiday air about it all. Little trees with blinking lights, plastic Santa Clauses here and there. But no one seemed to be in a particularly holiday mood, there were too many desperately serious things going on, and when she reached his room, she knocked softly and tiptoed in, expecting him to be asleep, and instead, he was lying there, staring at the wall, with tears in his eyes. He started when he saw her, and he didn't even smile.

“I'm dying, aren't I?” She was shocked at his words, at his tone, at the lifeless look in his eyes, and she suddenly frowned and approached the bed.

“Not unless you want to die.” She knew she had to be blunt with him. “It's pretty much up to you.” She stood very close to him, looking into his eyes, and he did not reach for her hand.

“That's a dumb thing to say. It wasn't my idea to get shot in the ass.”

“Sure it was.” She sounded nonchalant and for a moment he looked pissed.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That you could have gone to school. And you decided to play instead. So you got the short end of the stick. You gambled and you lost.”

“Yeah. Only I didn't lose ten bucks, I lost my legs. Not exactly small stakes.”

“Looks like they're still there to me.” She glanced down at the useless limbs and he almost snarled at her.

“Don't be an ass. What good are they now?”

“You've got them, and you're alive, and there's plenty you can still do. And according to the nurses, you can still get it up,” she had never been so blunt with him and it was a hell of a speech for Christmas Eve, but she knew it was time to start pushing him, especially if he thought he was going to die. “Hell, look at the bright side, you might even get the clap again.”

“You make me sick.” He turned away, and without thinking she grabbed at his arm, and he turned to look at her again.

“Look, dammit, you make me sick. Half the boys in your platoon were killed, and you're alive, so don't lie there whining at what you don't have. Think of what you do. Your life isn't over, unless you want it to be, and I don't want it to be,” tears stung her eyes, “I want you to get off that dead ass of yours, if I have to drag you by the hair for the next ten years to make you get up and live again. Is that clear?” The tears were pouring down her cheeks. “I'm not going to let go of you. Ever! Do you understand that?” And slowly, slowly … she saw a smile dawn in his eyes.

“You're a crazy broad, do you know that, Tan?”

“Yeah, well maybe I am, but you'll find out just how crazy I am until you start making life easier for both of us by doing something with yourself.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and he grinned at her, and for the first time in days, he looked like the Harry she knew.

“You know what it is?”

“What?” She looked confused. It was the most emotional few days of her life and she had never felt so overwrought as she did now.

“It's all that sexual energy you've got pent up, that's what gives you all this oomph to put into everything else. It makes you a real pain in the neck sometimes.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.” He grinned, and closed his eyes for a minute and then he opened them again. “What are you all dressed up for? Going someplace?”

“Yes. Here. To see you. It's Christmas Eve.” Her eyes softened and she smiled at him. “Welcome back to the human race.”

“I liked what you said before.” He was still smiling and Tana could see that the tides had turned. If he hung on to the will to live, he'd be all right, relatively. That was what the neurosurgeon had said.

“What did I say … ? you mean about booting you in the ass and making something of yourself … it's about time.” She looked pleased.

“No, about getting it up, and getting the clap again.”

“Shit.” She looked at him with total contempt and one of the nurses walked in and they started to laugh, and suddenly, for just a minute it was just like old times, and then Harry's father walked into the room, and they both looked like nervous kids, and the laughter stopped, and Harrison Winslow smiled. He wanted so desperately to make friends with his son, and he already knew how much he liked the girl.

“Don't let me spoil your fun. What was that all about?”

Tana blushed. It was difficult talking to someone as cosmopolitan as he was, but she had talked to him all afternoon, after all.

“Your son was being as rude as he usually is.”

“That's nothing new.” Harrison sat down in one of the room's two chairs, and glanced at them both. “Although you'd think on Christmas Eve, he could make an effort to be a little more polite.”

“Actually, he was talking about the nurses and.…” Harry blushed and began to object, Tana laughed, and suddenly Harry's father was laughing too. There was something very tenuous in the room, and none of them looked totally at ease, but they chatted for half an hour and then Harry began to look tired, and Tana stood up. “I just came to give you a Christmas kiss, I didn't even think you'd be awake.”

“Neither did I.” Harrison Winslow stood up too. “We'll come back tomorrow, Son.” He was watching Harry look at her, and he thought he understood. She was innocent of what Harry felt for her, and for some reason he was keeping it a secret from her, and Harrison couldn't understand why. There was a mystery here which made no sense to him. He looked at his son again. “Do you need anything before we leave?”

Harry looked sad for a long moment and then shook his head. He needed something, but it was nothing they had to give. The gift of his legs. And his father understood and gently touched his arm.

“See you tomorrow, Son.”

“Good night.” Harry's greeting to his father wasn't warm, but his eyes lit up when he looked at the beautiful blonde. “Behave yourself, Tan.”

“Why should I? You don't.” She grinned and blew him a kiss, as she whispered, “Merry Christmas, asshole.” He laughed and she followed his father out into the hall.

“I thought he looked better, didn't you?” They were becoming friends over the disaster that had befallen his son.

“I did. I think he's over the worst. Now it's just going to be a long, slow climb back uphill.” Harrison nodded, and they took the elevator downstairs again. There was a familiarity to it now, as if they had done this dozens of times before, when actually it had only been once. But their talk that afternoon had brought them much closer, and Harrison held the door open for her now, as she saw that the same silver limousine was there.

“Would you like something to eat?”

She started to say no and then realized that she hadn't had dinner yet. She had been thinking about going to midnight mass, but she didn't really want to go alone. She looked at him, wondering if it would mean something to him, too, particularly now.

“I might. Could I interest you in midnight mass afterwards?”

He looked very serious as he nodded his head, and Tana was struck once again by how handsome he was. They went out for a quick hamburger, and chatted about Harry, and their Cambridge days. She told Harrison some of the more outrageous things they'd done and he laughed with her, still puzzled by the odd relationship they shared. Like Jean, he couldn't quite figure them out. And then they went off to midnight mass, and tears streamed down Tana's cheeks as they sang Silent Night, she was thinking of Sharon, her beloved friend, and Harry and how lucky he was to be alive, and when she glanced over at his father, standing tall and proud at her side, she saw that he was crying too. He discreetly blew his nose when they sat down, and as he took her back to Berkeley afterwards, she noticed how comfortable it was just being with him. She was almost dozing as they rode along. She was desperately tired.

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Seeing Harry, I guess. And one of these days I've got a lot of studying to do.” She had all but forgotten it in the past few days.

“Could I take you to lunch before you go to the hospital?” She was touched that he would ask, and she accepted, worrying instantly what she should wear as soon as she stepped out of the car, but she didn't even have time to think of it when she got back to her room. She was so exhausted that she peeled off her clothes, dropped them on the floor, climbed into bed, and was instantly dead to the world. Unlike her mother in New York, who had been awake, sitting lonely in a chair and crying all night. Tana had not called, nor had Arthur in Palm Beach, and she had spent the entire night wrestling with the darker side of her soul, contemplating something she would never have thought she would do.

She had gone to midnight mass, as she and Tana used to do, and at one thirty she came home, and watched a little late night TV.

By two o'clock the most desperate loneliness she had ever felt in her life had set in. She was riveted to her seat, unable to move, almost unable to breathe. And for the first time in her life, she began to think of committing suicide, and by three o'clock it was an almost impossible urge to resist. Half an hour later, she went into her bathroom and got out a bottle of sleeping pills she never used, and trembling, she forced herself to put them down. She wanted to take them more than she had ever wanted to do anything in her life, and at the same time she did not. She wanted someone to stop her, to tell her everything would be all right. But who could tell her that now? Tana was gone, and would probably never live at home again, and Arthur had his own life, he only included her when it suited him, and never when she needed him. Tana was right about that, but it hurt her too much to admit it to her. Instead she defended everything he did, and his miserable selfish kids, that bitch Ann, who was always so rude to her, and Billy, he had been so sweet as a boy, but now … he seemed to be drunk all the time, and Jean wondered if Tana was right, if he wasn't the kind of young man she had always thought he was, but if that was true … the memory of what Tana had said four years before came crashing down on her now. What if it were true … ? if he had … if she hadn't believed … it was almost more than she could bear … it was as if her whole life were crashing in on her tonight and she couldn't bear it, as she sat staring longingly at the pills she held in her hand. It seemed the only thing left to do, and she wondered what Tana would think when they called her in California to tell her the news. She wondered who would find her body … the superintendent maybe … one of her co-workers … if they waited for Arthur to find her it could take weeks. It was even more depressing to realize that there wasn't even anyone left who would discover her soon. She thought of writing Tana a note, but that seemed so melodramatic and there was nothing left to say, except how much she had loved her child, how hard she had tried. She cried as she thought of Tana growing up, the tiny apartment they had shared, meeting Arthur, hoping that he would marry her … her whole life seemed to be flashing before her eyes as she clutched the vial of sleeping pills, and the night ground agonizingly by. She didn't even know what time it was when the phone finally rang. It was five A.M., and Jean was shocked when she saw the clock. She wondered if it was Tana, maybe her friend had died … with a shaking hand, she lifted the phone, and at first she didn't recognize the voice that identified itself as John.

“John?”

“John York. Ann's husband. We're in Palm Beach.”

“Oh. Of course.” But she was still stunned, and the emotions of the night had left her drained. She quietly set down the bottle of pills, she could attend to them afterwards. She couldn't understand why they would be calling her, but John York was quick to explain.

“It's Arthur. Ann thought I should call. He's had a heart attack.”

“Oh, my God.” She could feel her heart pound in her breast, and she was suddenly crying into the phone. “Is he all right? Is he … did…”

“He's all right now. But it was pretty bad for a while. It happened a few hours ago, and it's still touch and go, which is why Ann thought I should call.”

“Oh, my God … oh, my God…” Here she had been thinking of taking her own life, and Arthur had almost died. What if she had … she almost shuddered at the thought. “Where is he now?”

“At Mercy Hospital. Ann thought you might want to come down.”

“Of course.” She jumped to her feet, still holding the phone, grabbed a pencil, a pad, knocking over the vial of pills, and as they fell to the floor, she stood looking at them. She was herself again. It was incredible to think what she might have done, and he needed her now. Thank God she hadn't done it after all. “Give me the details, John. I'll catch the next plane.” She scribbled the name and address of the hospital, jotted his room number down, asked if there was anything they would need, and a moment later set down the phone, closed her eyes, thinking of him, and when she opened them there were tears on her cheeks, thinking of Arthur, and what might have been.

Harrison Winslow sent the car to Berkeley to pick Tana up at noon the next day, and they went to Trader Vic's for lunch. The atmosphere was festive and the food was good; he had been told at the hotel that it would be an appropriate place to go. And he enjoyed her company almost too much as they chatted again, about Harry, but other things as well. He was impressed by how bright she was, and she told him about Freeman Blake, and her friend who had died, and Miriam who had influenced her to go to law school. “I just hope I survive. It's even harder than I thought it would be.” She smiled.

“And you really think Harry could do something like that?”

“He can do anything he wants to do. The trouble is he'd rather fool around.” She blushed and he laughed.

“I agree with you. He does like to fool around. He thinks it's congenital. But actually, I was a lot more serious than he in my youth, and my father was a very scholarly man. He even wrote two books on philosophy.” They chatted on for a while, and it was the most pleasant interlude Tana had spent in a long, long time. She looked guiltily at her watch eventually, and they hurried off to the hospital, bringing Harry a bag of fortune cookies. Tana had insisted on bringing him a drink. They brought him a huge Scorpion with a gardenia floating in it, and he took a long sip and grinned.

“Merry Christmas to you too.” But she could see that he didn't look pleased that she and his father had made friends, and finally when his father left the room and went downstairs to make a call, he glared at her.

“What are you looking so pleasant about?” It was good for him to be mad, she didn't mind. It would help bring him back to life.

“You know how I feel about him, Tan. Don't let him do a snow job on you.”

“He's not. He wouldn't be here if he didn't care about you. Don't be so goddamn stubborn and give him a chance.”

“Oh, for chrissake.” He'd have walked out of the room and slammed the door if he could. “What a crock of shit that is. Is that what he's been telling you?” She couldn't tell him all that Harrison had been telling her because she knew he wouldn't want her to, but she also knew by now how he felt about his son, and she was convinced of his sincerity. She was growing fonder of him by the hour, and she wished Harry would try to be more open to him.

“He's a decent man. Give him a chance.”

“He's a son of a bitch and I hate his guts.” And with that, Harrison Winslow walked into the room, just in time to hear Harry's words, and Tana went pale. The three looked at each other, and Harrison was quick to reassure her.

“That's not the first time I've heard that. And I'm sure it won't be the last.”

Harry turned in his bed to snarl at him. “Why the hell didn't you knock?”

“Does it bother you that I heard? So what? You've said it to me before, usually to my face. Are you getting more discreet now? Or less courageous?” There was an edge to the older man's voice and a fire in Harry's eyes.

“You know what I think of you. You were never there when I needed you. You were always somewhere goddamn else, with some girl, in some spa, or on some mountaintop, with your friends…” He turned away. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Yes, you do.” He pulled up a chair and sat down. “And so do I. You're right, I wasn't there, and neither were you. You were in the boarding schools you chose to be in, and you were a goddamn impossible little snot every time I laid eyes on you.”

“Why shouldn't I have been?”

“That was a decision you made. And you never gave me a chance from the time your mother died. I knew by the time you were six that you hated me. I could accept it at the time. But you know, at your age, Harry, I would have thought that you would have gotten a little smarter by now, or at least more compassionate. I'm not really as bad as you like to think, you know.” Tana tried to fade into the wall, it was embarrassing being there, but neither of them seemed to mind. And as she listened, she realized that she had forgotten to call her mother again. She made a mental note to do it as soon as she left the hospital, maybe even from one of the phones downstairs, but she couldn't leave the room now, with World War III going on.

Harry stared angrily at his father now. “Why the hell did you come here anyway?”

“Because you're my son. The only one I've got. Do you want me to leave?” Harrison Winslow quietly stood up and his voice was low when he spoke. “I'll leave anytime you like. I will not inflict myself on you, but I will also not allow you to continue to delude yourself that I don't give a damn about you. That's a very nice fairy tale, poor little rich boy and all that, but in the words of your friend here, it's a crock. I happen to love you very much,” his voice cracked but he went on anyway, struggling with the emotions and the words and Tana's heart went out to him. “I love you very, very much, Harry. I always have and I always will.” He walked over to him then, bent and kissed him gently on the top of his head, and then strode out of the room, as Harry looked away and closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he saw Tana standing there with tears running down her cheeks at what she had just heard.

“Get the hell out of here.” She nodded, and quietly left, and as she closed the door softly behind her, she heard the sobs from the direction of Harry's bed. But he needed to be alone now. She respected that, and the tears were good for him.

Harrison was waiting outside for her, he looked more composed now, and relieved as he smiled at her. “Is he all right?”

“He will be now. He needed to hear the things you said to him.”

“I needed to say them to him. I feel better now too.”

And with that, he took her arm, and they walked downstairs arm in arm. It felt as though they had always been friends. And he looked at her with a broad smile. “Where are you going now, young lady?”

“Home, I guess. I still have all that work to do.”

“That's a crock.” He imitated her, and they both laughed. “How about playing hooky and going to the movies with an old man? My son has just thrown me out of his room, and I don't know a soul in this town, and it's Christmas, for God's sake. How about it, Tan?” He had picked the name up from his son and she smiled, wanting to tell him that she had to go home, but she couldn't do it somehow; she wanted to be with him.

“I really should go home.” But she didn't convince either of them, and he was in a festive mood as they climbed into the limousine.

“Good. Now that you've gotten that out of the way, where shall we go?” She giggled like a little girl, and he told the limousine driver to drive them around. Eventually, they bought a newspaper, picked out a movie they both liked, ate as much popcorn as they could stand, and went to L'Etoile afterwards, for a small supper and drinks at the bar. She was getting spoiled just being with him. And she was trying to remind herself of what a cad Harry said he was, but she didn't believe that anymore, and she had never been as happy in her life, as when he drove her home to Berkeley again, and took her in his arms, and kissed her as naturally as if they had both been waiting for that all their lives. He looked at her afterwards, touching her lips with his fingertips, wondering if he should regret what he'd done, but he felt younger and happier than he had in years. “Tana, I've never met any- one like you before, my love.” He held her tight and she felt a warmth and safety she had never even dreamed of before, and then he kissed her again. He wanted to make her his for the rest of time, but he also wondered if he was half mad. This was Harry's friend … his girl … but they both insisted that they were just friends, and yet he sensed something different than that, on Harry's part anyway. He looked deep into her eyes. “Tell me the truth about something, Tan. Are you in love with my son?”

Slowly, she shook her head. The driver of the limousine seemed to have disappeared. Actually, he had gone outside for a discreet walk. They were parked outside Tana's house. “No. I've never been in love with anyone … until now.…” They were brave words for her, and she decided to tell him the truth all at once. He had been honest with her since they'd met. “I was raped four and a half years ago. It kind of stopped everything for me. As though my emotional clock no longer ran, and it hasn't run since. I didn't go out at all for the first couple of years I was in college, and then finally Harry forced me into double dating with him a few times. But it was no big deal, and I don't go out with anyone here. All I do is work.” She smiled tenderly at him. She was falling head over heels in love with the father of her best friend.

“Does Harry know?”

“That I was raped?” He nodded. “Yes. I told him eventually. He thought I was weird, and eventually I told him why. Actually, we saw the guy at a party we went to, and he guessed.”

“Was it someone you knew?” Harrison looked shocked.

“The son of my mother's boss. Lover and boss, actually. It was awful … no,” she shook her head, “it was much, much worse than that.” He pulled her into his arms again, and he understood things better now. He wondered if that was why Harry had never allowed himself to be more than friends with her. He instinctively sensed that the desire was there, even if she was innocent of what was in his mind. And he also knew what he felt for the girl. He hadn't been so taken with anyone since he met his wife twenty-six years before, and then he began to think of the age difference between them, wondering if it would bother her. He was exactly thirty years older than Tana, and there were those who would be shocked. But more importantly, would she? “So what?” She answered him when he voiced his fears. “Who cares about them?” She kissed him this time and she felt something come alive in herself that she had never felt before, a passion and desire which only he could fulfill, and she tossed and turned all night thinking about him, just as he did about her. She called him at seven o'clock the next day, and he was already awake, and surprised by her call. But he would have been even more surprised had he known what she felt for him.

“What are you doing up at this hour, little one?” “Thinking about you.” He was flattered and touched and enchanted and infatuated and a thousand other things. But there was much more to it than that. Tana trusted this man as she had trusted no other man before, not even his son, and he represented a great many things to her, even the father she had never known. He was all men in one, and had Harrison known, he might have been frightened that she expected too much of him. They visited Harry, they met for lunch, they had dinner to- gether that night, and he had an overwhelming urge to take her to bed, but something told him that he could not, that it was dangerous, that he would form a lasting bond and that was wrong. For the next two weeks, they met and they walked and they kissed and they touched and the feelings and needs they had for each other grew. They visited Harry separately, for fear that he would find out, and finally Harrison sat down beside his son one day. The matter had to be broached, it was getting serious for both of them, and he didn't want to hurt the girl. But more than that, he wanted to offer her something he hadn't offered anyone in years, his heart, and his life. He wanted to marry her, and he had to know how Harry felt, now, before it was too late, before everyone got hurt, especially the one person he cared about most, his son. He would have sacrificed anything for Harry, especially now, even the girl he loved, and he had to know now.

“I want to ask you something. Honestly. And I want you to answer me.” There had been a tenuous peace between the two men in the past two weeks, thanks to efforts on Tana's part, and Harrison had been enjoying the fruits of it.

“What's this all about?” Harry looked suspiciously at him.

“What's between you and that enchanting child?” He fought hard to keep his face blank, his eyes calm, and prayed that his son wouldn't see anything there, particularly not how much he loved the girl, though he couldn't imagine how Harry could not see. He felt as though he was wearing a neon sign.

“Tana?” Harry shrugged.

“I told you, I want you to answer me.” His whole life depended on it now, as did hers.

“Why? What's it to you?” Harry was restless and his neck had hurt all day. “I told you, she's my friend.”

“I know you better than that, whether you like it or not.”

“So what? That's all it is. I've never slept with her.” But he already knew that, though he didn't tell Harry that.

“That doesn't mean a damn thing. That could have to do with her and not you.” There was no joking in his eyes or words. This was no joking matter to him, but Harry laughed and conceded the point.

“That's true, it could.” And then suddenly, he lay back against his pillows and looked up at the ceiling, feeling an odd closeness to his father he had never felt before. “I don't know, Dad.… I was crazy about her when we first met, but she was as locked up as a stone … she still is.” He told him about the rape then, and Harrison pretended to hear it for the first time. “I've never known anyone like her before. I guess I've always known that I'm in love with her, but I've been afraid to fuck it up by telling her that. This way, she won't run away. The other way, she might.” His eyes filled with sudden tears. “I couldn't stand losing her. I need her too much.” Harrison felt his heart sink like a rock, but he had to think for his son now. That was all he really cared about, all he would let himself care about now. He had finally found him and he wasn't willing to lose him again. Not even for Tana, whom he loved so desperately. But Harry's words burned through him like fire. “I need her so much.…” The funny thing was the elder Winslow needed her too, but not as Harry did, and he couldn't take her from him, not now.…

“One of these days, maybe you should be brave enough to tell her some of this. Maybe she needs you too.” Harrison knew now how lonely and isolated Tana had been, but even Harry hadn'tfully realized those depths.

“And what if I lose?”

“You can't live like that, son. Afraid to lose, afraid to live, afraid to die. You'll never win like that. She knows that better than anyone. It's the one lesson you can learn from her.” And there were so many others he had learned from her too. Lessons he would have to abandon now.

“She's got more guts than anyone I know … except about men.” Harry shook his head. “She scares me to death as far as that goes.”

“Give her time. Lots of time.” He fought to keep his voice strong. He couldn't let Harry know. “And lots of love.”

Harry was silent for a long time, searching his father's eyes. In the past two and a half weeks they had begun to discover each other as they never had before. “Do you think she could ever be in love with me?”

“Possibly.” Harrison felt his heart tear again. “You have plenty of other things to think about right now. But once you're up again,” he avoided saying “on your feet,” “and out of here, you can think about things like that.” They both knew that he wasn't totally impaired sexually, and the doctor had told them both that with a little “creativity” Harry would have a near-normal sex life again one day, he could even impregnate his wife, if he chose, which didn't turn Harry on much, at least not for now, but Harrison knew it could mean a great deal to him one day. He would have loved to have Tana's child. The very thought brought him near to tears.

They chatted on for a little while, and eventually Harrison left. He was supposed to have dinner with Tana that night, and instead he called it off. He explained over the phone that he had a stack of cables that had arrived, and he had to compose answers to all of them. They met for lunch the next day instead, and Harrison was honest with her. It was the worst day in his life since his wife had died. His eyes looked sad and his face was grim, and she knew the moment she met him at the restaurant that he didn't have good news, and she felt her heart stop for an instant as he began to speak once they sat down. She knew instantly that he was going to say something she didn't want to hear.

“I spoke to Harry yesterday.” He fought the emotions that were rising up in him. “I had to, for both our sakes.”

“About us?” She looked stunned. It was so soon. Nothing had even happened yet. It was an innocent romance … but Harrison shook his head.

“About him, and what he feels for you. I had to know, before we went any further with this.” He took her hand in his and looked into her eyes, and she felt her heart melt again. “Tana, I want you to know right now, that I'm in love with you. I've only loved one woman in my life as I think I love you, and that was my wife. But I also love my son, and I wouldn't hurt him for anything in this world, no matter what kind of son of a bitch he thinks I am, and I've been one at times. I would have married you … but not until I knew where Harry stood.” He didn't pull any punches with her. “He's in love with you, Tan.”

“What?” She was shocked. “He is not!”

“He is. He's just scared to death to scare you off. He told me about the rape, about how you felt about going out with men. He's been biding his time for years, but I don't have any doubt. He has been in love with you for all those years. He admitted it himself.” Harrison's eyes looked sad.

“Oh, my God.” She looked shocked. “But I'm not … I don't … I don't think I ever could.…”

“I suspected that too. But that's between you and him. If he ever does get up the guts to declare himself, you'll have to deal with that yourself. What I wanted to know was how he felt. I know how you feel now. I knew it before I talked to him.” There were tears spilling in her eyes, and suddenly in his, too, as he held her hand even tighter than before. “Darling, I love you more than life itself, but if I walked off with you now, if you'd even be willing to do that with me, it would kill my son. It would break his heart, and maybe destroy something he needs very much right now. I can't do that to him. Nor can you. I really don't think you could.” She was crying openly, and he pulled her into his arms as tears filled his eyes. They had nothing to hide here, or anywhere, only in front of his son. But it was the crudest trick life had played on her so far, the first man she had loved couldn't love her because of his son … who was her best friend, whom she loved, but not like that. She didn't want to do anything that would hurt Harry either, but she was so much in love with Harrison … it was a ghastly evening filled with tears and regrets. She wanted to sleep with him anyway, but he wouldn't let her do that to herself. “The first time that happens to you, after that awful experience you had, should be with the right man.” He was gentle, and loving, and he held her while she cried, and once he almost cried himself. And the next week was the most painful in her life, and at last he left for London again, and Tana felt as though she had been left on the beach. She was alone, with her studies, with Harry again. She went to the hospital every day, took her books with her, and she looked tired and pale and grim. “Boy, you're a pleasure to see. What the hell's wrong with you? Are you sick?” She almost was, over Harrison, but she knew he had been right, no matter how painful it was. They had both done the right thing for someone they loved. And now she was merciless with him, forcing Harry to do what the nurses asked, urging him on, insulting him, cajoling him, encouraging him when he needed it. She was tireless, and devoted beyond anything imaginable, and when Harrison called from halfway around the world, sometimes she would talk to him and she would feel her heart leap again, but he hadn't gone back on his resolve. It was a sacrifice he had made for his son, and Tana had to go along with it. He had given her no choice. Or himself, although he knew that he would never recover from what he felt for her. He only hoped she would. She had a lifetime ahead of her, and hopefully, the right man.

The sun streamed into the room as Harry lay on his bed, trying to read a book. He had already had an hour in the pool and two hours of therapy, and he was sick to death of his schedule. There was a sameness about it all, a tediousness he couldn't stand anymore. He glanced at his watch, knowing Tana would be there soon. He had been at Letterman for more than four months, and she came to see him every day, bringing her stacks of papers and notes, and mountains of books. And almost as soon as he thought of her, the door opened and she walked in. She had lost weight in the past months. She was working too hard at school, and running herself ragged going back and forth between Berkeley and the hospital. His father had offered to buy her a car, but she had absolutely refused to even consider it.

“Hi kid, what's up, or is that rude?” She grinned at him and he laughed.

“You're disgusting, Tan.” But at least he wasn't as sensitive about that anymore. Five weeks before, he had actually made love to a student nurse, a little “creatively” as he had said to his therapist, but with a little imagination here and there, things had gone fairly well for both of them, and he didn't give a damn that she was engaged. True love hadn't been on his mind, and he had no intention of trying beginner's luck on Tan. She meant much, much too much to him, as he had told his dad, and she had enough problems of her own. “What'd you do today?”

She sighed and sat down with a rueful smile. “What do I ever do? Study all night, turn in papers, take exams. Christ, I may not live through another two years of this.”

“Sure you will.” He smiled. She was the light of his life, and he would have been lost without her visits every day.

“What makes you so sure?” Sometimes she doubted it herself, but somehow she always went on. Always. She wouldn't let herself stop. She couldn't let Harry down and she couldn't flunk out of school.

“You've got more guts than anyone I know. You'll make it, Tan.” It was something they gave each other now—courage, faith. When he'd get depressed, she'd stand there and shout at him until he wanted to cry, but she made him try all the things he was supposed to do, and when she thought she couldn't make it through another day of Boalt, he quizzed her for exams, woke her up after she got a little sleep, underlined some of the textbooks for her. And now suddenly he grinned at her. “Besides, law school's not that hard. I've been reading some of that stuff you left here.”

She smiled. That was what she had had in mind. But she looked nonchalant as she turned to him. “Oh yeah, then why don't you give it a try?”

“Why should I bust my hump?”

“What else have you got to do? Except sit on your can, and pinch nurse' aides. And how long will that last? They're going to kick you out of here in June.”

“That's not sure yet.” He looked nervous at the thought. He wasn't sure he was ready to go home. And home where? His father moved around so much, and he couldn't keep up with him now, even if he wanted to. He could go to a hotel, of course, there was the apartment at the Pierre in New York, but that sounded terribly lonely to him.

“You sure don't look excited about going home.” Tana was watching him. She had talked to Harrison in Geneva several days before, and they had discussed the same thing. He called her at least once a week to see how Harry was, and she knew that he still felt the same about her as he had before, and she did for him as well, but they had taken their resolve and there was no turning back anymore. Harrison Winslow would not betray his son. And Tana understood.

“I don't have a home to go to, Tan.” She had thought of it before, but not with any great seriousness, yet she had an idea. Maybe it was time to broach it to him.

“What about moving in with me?”

“In that dismal room of yours?” He laughed and looked horrified at the same time. “Being confined to a wheelchair is bad enough. But living in that dump, I might kill myself. Besides, where would I sleep? On the floor?”

“No, you ass.” She was laughing at him as he made a hideous face. “We could get a place of our own, as long as it's reasonable so I could pay my share too.”

“Like where?” The idea hadn't quite sunk in yet, but it had a certain appeal.

“I don't know … the Haight-Ashbury maybe?” The hippie boom was just taking hold, and she had driven through the Haight only recently. But she was teasing him. Unless one wore flowing robes and were permanently stoned on LSD, it would have been impossible to tolerate living there. “Seriously, we could find something if we looked.”

“It would have to be on the ground floor.” He looked pensively at the wheelchair parked at the end of the bed.

“I know that. And I have another idea too.” She decided to hit him with it all at once.

“Now what?” He lay back against his pillows and looked happily at her. As difficult as these months had been, it had given them something very special to share, and they were closer than either of them had ever thought two human beings could be. “You know, you never give me a moment's peace. You've always got some damn plot or plan. You exhaust me, Tan.” But it wasn't a complaint and they both knew that.

“It's good for you. You know that.” He did, but wouldn't give her the satisfaction of admitting it.

“So, what's your thought?”

“How about applying to Boalt?” She held her breath and he looked shocked.

“Me? Are you nuts? What the hell would I do there?”

“Probably cheat, but failing that, you could study your ass off like I do every night. It would give you something to do other than pick your nose.”

“What a charming image you have of me, my dear.” He swept her a bow from the bed and she laughed. “Why in God's name would I torture myself with law school? I don't have to do a dumb thing like that.”

“You'd be good at it.” She looked at him earnestly and he wanted to argue with her, but the worst of it was that he liked the idea.

“You're trying to ruin my life.”

“Yes.” She grinned. “Will you apply?”

“I probably won't get in. My grades were never as good as yours.”

“I already asked, you can apply as a veteran. They might even make an exception for you…” She was cautious about the way she said it, but he looked annoyed anyway.

“Never mind that. If you got in, so can I.” And the damnedest thing was that suddenly he wanted to. He almost wondered if he had wanted to for a long time. Maybe he felt left out with all that studying she did, while he had nothing at all to do except lie around and watch the nursing shifts change.

She brought him the application forms the next afternoon, and they mulled them over endlessly, and finally sent them in, and by then Tana was looking at flats for them. It had to be exactly right, and something that would work for him.

She had just seen two she liked when her mother called on an afternoon in late May. It was unusual for her to be home, but she had some things to take care of at home, and she knew Harry was all right. One of the girls from down the hall came and knocked on her door. She assumed it was Harry, wanting to know how the apartments were. One of them was in Piedmont, and snob that he was, she knew he would like that one best, but she wanted to be sure she could afford it too. She didn't have the income he had, even though she had lined up a good job for herself that summer. Maybe after that.…

“Hello?” There was a long-distance whir and her heart stopped, wondering if it was Harrison calling her again. Harry had never realized what had passed between them, or more importantly what could have and what sacrifice they had made. “Hello?”

“Tana?” It was Jean.

“Oh. Hi, Mom.”

“Is something wrong?” She had sounded strange at first.

“No. I thought it was someone else. Is something wrong?” It was an unusual hour for her to call. Maybe Arthur had had another heart attack. He had stayed in Palm Beach for three months, and Jean had stayed there with him. Ann and John and Billy had gone back to New York, and Jean had stayed to nurse him back to health even after he left the hospital. They had only been back in New York for two months, and she must have had her hands full, because Tana almost never heard from her now.

“I wasn't sure you'd be home at this hour.” She sounded nervous, as though she wasn't sure what to say.

“Usually I'm at the hospital, but I had something to do here.”

“How's your friend?”

“Better. He's getting out in about a month. I was just looking at some apartments for him.” She hadn't told her yet that they were thinking of living together. It made perfect sense to her, but she knew that it wouldn't to Jean.

“Can he live alone?” She sounded surprised.

“Probably if he had to, but I don't think he will.”

“That's wise.” She had no idea what that meant, but she had other things on her mind. “I wanted to tell you something, sweetheart.”

“What's that?”

She wasn't at all sure how Tana would react, but there was no way to beat around the bush any longer. “Arthur and I are getting married.” She held her breath and at her end, Tana stared.

“You're what?”

“Getting married … I … he feels that we've gotten older … we've been foolish for long enough.…” She stumbled over some of the words he had said to her only days before, blushing furiously and at the same time terrified of what Tana would say. She knew that she hadn't liked Arthur for years, but maybe now.…

“You weren't the fool in all that, Mom. He was. He should have married you fifteen years ago, at least.” She frowned for a moment, mulling over what Jean had said. “Is that what you really want to do, Mom? He's not young anymore, and he's sick … he's kind of saved the worst for you.” It was blunt, but true, but until his heart attack he hadn't even wanted to marry her. He hadn't thought of it in years, not since his wife had come home from the hospital sixteen years before, in fact. But suddenly, everything had changed, and he realized his own mortality. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, Tana, I am.” Her mother sounded strangely calm suddenly. It was what she had waited almost twenty years for, and she wouldn't have given it up for anything, not even for her only child. Tana had her own life now, and she had nothing at all, without Arthur. She was grateful to him for finally marrying her. They would have a comfortable, easy life, and she could finally relax. All those years of loneliness and worrying; would he show up, would he come by, should she wash her hair, and then just in case … and he didn't come for two weeks, until the night when Tana had the flu, or she herself had a bad cold … it was all over now, and real life was about to begin. At last. She had earned every minute of it, and she was going to enjoy every minute of it now. “I'm very sure.”