Full Circle (15 page)

“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.”