Decision (13 page)

“Yes I will,” he replied emphatically: on this, at least, there was no disagreement. “You just
must
not do it, baby. It isn’t safe. I’m sure your father and mother have told you that too, Sarah.”

“Well!” Sarah said, recovering with a little flounce. “It’s safe enough in South Carolina.”

“I don’t believe you,” Mary said flatly. “Anyway, you are not to do it here, understand? If you do it again, you won’t be permitted to come over and play.”

“Oh,
Mother,”
Janie said. “We’re
fifteen.”

“Not quite,” Mary said.

“Well, three months.”

“Yes, and you act like five instead of fifteen,” her mother said. Her voice rose decisively, her lips got their tight line. “We are not discussing it further. Those are the terms. Abide by them or forget it.”

Janie looked at Sarah and shrugged.

“We can stay at
your
house after this.”

“Janie!” Tay said. “Stop this right now. Your mother and I are agreed—”

“For once,” Janie said, looking stubbornly down at her plate.

There was silence for a moment, after which Sarah began to giggle, starting from sheer nervousness and swiftly going out of control. This made Janie giggle too, and in a moment they were laughing hysterically. He came very close to joining them but he could see that Mary was actually white and trembling with anger.

“Janie,” he said, forcing his voice to remain grave and steady, “one more crack from you about anything and you’re going straight to bed without your supper, fifteen or no fifteen, and I’m driving Sarah home. Now, you just decide, young lady. We’ll wait for you.”

And putting down his knife and fork, he did so while Mary, looking a little mollified, followed suit. The giggles subsided at once, to be succeeded by a heavy silence during which Julia, taking in the situation with the practiced glance of a mother of four, served dinner with briskness and dispatch and retired rapidly to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Janie murmured finally. “I apologize, Mother.”

“I apologize, too, Mrs. Barbour,” Sarah echoed sweetly. “It
was
my fault, just like I said. We won’t do it again.”

“Very well,” Mary said. “I sincerely hope not. The world is bad, out there.” She shivered suddenly and stabbed at her food. Her husband quietly resumed eating and presently the girls, after giving one another a furtive sidelong glance, did the same. Silence ensued until Sarah gave a little sigh of repletion and looked up happily at Julia when she brought in dessert in response to Mary’s bell.

“Julia, you old lamb!” Sarah exclaimed. “You’re just the
best
cook. We don’t have any better down in South Carolina!”

Julia, who had planned to be stern because she too considered Sarah a rather flighty little thing, a bit mite big for her britches because of being a Pomeroy and a Mossiter and a Lacey all rolled into one, found herself dissolving into a pleased smile in spite of herself.

“Thank you, Miss Sarah,” she said. “It’s always a pleasure for me to cook for you. Even if”—she couldn’t resist with a glance at Mary that she knew would do her no harm—“we all
were
beginning to wonder where you were.”

“Now, Julia,” Sarah said, tone changing instantly. “Don’t you go getting sassy, now. We’ve been all over that and have
moved on to other things.
You behave yourself, now, you old scamp.”

“Miss Sarah,” Julia said, drawing herself up, voice trembling a little but holding her own. “I am not an old scamp, but I surely think you’re a young one. You can’t talk to me like that, miss. I’m not a slave of the Pomeroys! Or the Mossiters! Or the Laceys! Those days are gone forever!”

“That’s all right, Julia,” Tay said soothingly, thinking: my God, the Supreme Court will be a vacation after this. “Sarah didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

“No, I didn’t, Julia,” Sarah said with a sudden change of mood and her sweetest smile. “You
are
an old lamb, and I
do
apologize if I sounded uppity. Nobody cooks better than you.
Nobody!
I do apologize.”

“It seems to me as though everybody is apologizing to everybody these days,” Janie said in a clear, detached voice; but before one parent or the other could respond, Julia fortunately decided to let it drop.

“Why, I do thank you again, Miss Sarah,” she said grandly. “Anytime!” And sailed out with her armload of dishes.

Both girls broke promptly into giggles again, and Tay could not suppress a glint of amusement they both saw and took encouragement from. Not Mary: she was definitely not amused.

“Girls,” she said sharply, “stop this time-wasting and finish your meal. I’m sure your father has a lot to do to get ready for the Court, Janie. And I’m sure you both have plenty of studying to do. So hurry it up.”

“Actually, Mrs. Barbour,” Sarah said, “we
do
have a lot to do and we are certainly going to do it. We have to get ahead in our work so that we can go on that trip.”

“Oh?” Mary said, and Tay could see her instinctively digging in her heels, which of course tightened him up also. They were apparently about to do battle over the girls, even though Mary did not for the moment know why. Evidently Sarah had conveyed the invitation. “What trip is that?”

“I have been invited,” Jane announced with some grandeur, “to attend a dedication.”

“Of what?” her mother demanded.

“Our atomic energy plant,” Sarah replied. “Well, not exactly
ours,
but it’s on land we used to own, I think. A long time ago. like before the Revolution, maybe.”

“And when will this ceremony be held?” Mary inquired, her tone producing the start of dismay on Janie’s face.

“Next Friday,” Sarah said cheerfully, unaware of storm signals. “It’s going to be at a place called Pomeroy Station, down home in South Carolina. My daddy’s going to give the dedication speech, I guess. Or one of them. He was governor when they began it, and it’s named after us, so he’s got to be there. He said I could go, and I invited Janie.” She turned a comfortable smile upon Mary. “We’ll miss two days of school, so that’s why we have to study extra hard these next few days.”

“Jane,” her mother said coldly, “is not going to miss two days of school.”

“Oh,
Mother!”
Jane wailed, and Sarah echoed, “Oh, Mrs.
Barbour!”

“Now, Mary,” he said in a tone he tried to keep reasonable. “I’m sure if the girls get ahead in their work—”

“Jane is not ahead in her work.”

“Three straight A’s and two B’s last time,” Janie said bitterly. “That’s all!”

“Nonetheless, young lady, you’ve been slipping a bit in the last few weeks. They tell me things at the school. I keep track.”

“Yes,” Janie said. “I’ll bet you do.”

“Indeed I do,” Mary said, unmoved. “You are my daughter, my only child, and I have a right to inquire how you are getting along. Too many extracurricular activities for you, young lady. You can’t afford any time off.”

“I can’t help it if I’m
popular!”
Janie said and Sarah said earnestly,

“She really is
very
popular, Mrs. Barbour. I sometimes think that old school would just
collapse
without Janie.”

“I doubt it,” her mother said dryly. “If you’re going to be so
popular,
young lady, you have got to keep up your grades along with it. This is no time to go skipping off to South Carolina. What your parents permit you to do, Sarah, is their affair. It was nice of you to try to include Janie, but I’m afraid she simply won’t have the time to go.”

“But I’m
studying ahead,”
Janie protested, on the verge of tears.

“Mary,” he said, as Julia popped in the door and hastily popped back out again, “be reasonable about this. If the girls get their work done ahead, I really don’t see any reason why—”

“We are spending a lot of money to send her to that school. Two of the things it is supposed to teach are character and discipline. If one keeps up one’s grades, that is one thing. If one begins to slip, that is another. Some people may permit their children to get by with sloppy work. I will not.”

“
I
don’t do sloppy work!” Sarah said, face flushing.

“I did not say you do,” Mary said calmly. “I said
some people
may let their children do sloppy work. I don’t, and I presume your parents do not, either. I’m rather surprised, frankly, that your mother and father would encourage you to skip school and even permit you to encourage someone else to do the same. It is not what I would have expected from a Supreme Court Justice.”

“Well,” Tay said shortly, “I am a Supreme Court Justice—or about to be, anyway—and I can’t see any valid reason at all why Janie shouldn’t accompany Sarah if she studies ahead and gets things in order before she leaves.”

“Just say I am a terrible mother who wishes to protect her daughter’s integrity and character,” Mary said, “and leave it at that. I know it is terrible of me, but there it is. Janie,” she said flatly, “will not go on this harum-scarum adventure with you, Sarah, so you both had better stop talking about it. I will not permit it, and that is final.”

“It is not harum-scarum,” Sarah said indignantly, also close to tears. “It is a
real occasion.”

Mary sniffed.

“So I gather you have been told. I hope you enjoy it. Jane will not.”

“Daddy—”
Janie appealed, dissolving at last.
“Daddy—”

“And appealing to your father,” Mary said, showing her first signs of agitation, “will not do you any good. I see you girls have finished your dinner. Go along and study, please.
Now.”

“Oh—” Janie said. “
Oh
—”

“Come on, Janie,” Sarah said, managing a fair amount of dignity as she got up and started toward the stairs. “It’s no use talking to your
mother.”

“Or your father—” Mary began, but he suddenly cut her short.

“You girls go along,” he said harshly. “I’ll talk to your mother.”

But their wan looks back indicated that they did not put much faith in that, nor did he as Mary called firmly, “Julia!” and Julia scurried in and began removing the remnants of the meal. Mary walked straight into the den, turned and faced him.

“Taylor Barbour,” she said evenly, “I will not permit my daughter to go on this wild adventure with that—that—
little southern belle!”

“For heaven’s sake, Mary,” he said, feeling suddenly tired—it had, after all, been a rather long and emotion-filled day—“Sarah is a perfectly decent child. Quite a little lady, in fact.”

“She treats Julia like dirt,” Mary said, “and she is
not
a good influence for Jane.”

“She treats Julia southern sometimes,” he said, “but you notice Julia doesn’t stand for it. Julia can take care of herself. They all understand one another down there. And as for Janie, they’ve been friends since they were a year old. Why is she suddenly such a bad influence?”

“It isn’t ‘suddenly.’ It’s in the last year or so, when Sarah has begun to blossom out and turn into a little flirt. She’s giving Janie ideas about boys.”

“Well, I suppose Janie’s going to have them, isn’t she? That seems perfectly normal to me.”

“Jane is a slow developer,” her mother said. “She isn’t ready for it yet. I’m sure she and Sarah are up there right now talking about the subject. I don’t think Sarah thinks of anything else these days. It isn’t good for Janie. And as for persuading Janie to walk home through Georgetown at this time of night—”

“We don’t know who persuaded whom,” he said. “They did it, and it was very unwise and I supported you in your objections, didn’t I? I understand your feelings, both as a parent and as—as a victim.”

“You can’t understand,” she said with a shudder, eyes darkening with the thought of the always haunting incident that had occurred in the supermarket parking lot one evening soon after they had moved to Washington. “Nobody can understand that except another person it’s happened to. Mugged and robbed and almost raped—” She shuddered again.
“Nobody
can understand it. Certainly not a
husband.”

“I try,” he said, bleakly. “I’ve tried all these years. I suppose it’s part of why you dislike Washington so—”

“I
hate
Washington.”

“—and why you’re so overly protective of Janie—”

“I
can’t
be ‘overly protective’ of Janie,” she said fiercely.
“She’s all we have.
And
you
ought to show some concern for her too, if you were any kind of a father!”

“Oh, my God, Mary,” he said, almost literally bereft of words. “My
God,
how can you say such a thing… Anyway,” he resumed, reverting almost desperately to the previous subject, which at least made some sort of sense, “forbid the girls to see each other altogether, then. Don’t stop at just some—some occasion down in South Carolina. Put on a complete ban and see what good it does you. You’ll really have Janie intrigued if you do that.”

“And as for that dedication—”

“We were all invited, actually, but Moss said he assumed you wouldn’t want to go. I agreed. You wouldn’t.”

“Well, don’t put the burden on me,” she said, sitting down and folding her hands composedly in her lap. “I don’t think it would be fitting for you, either, would it, as a Justice who may have to pass on atomic energy matters?”

“You are right,” he conceded, exasperated by her ability, still unimpaired, to analyze things with considerable clarity. “That is quite correct. He told me Sarah might be going and
I
suggested that she invite Janie.”

“Are you pleased with the rumpus you stirred up?”

“I’ve stirred up?” he demanded, exasperation growing. “To me it was just a nice outing the girls could go on together—a fun thing, Mary. Not a desperate issue to get everybody upset about. I just thought it would be
fun.”

“You just didn’t think, if truth were known,” she said coolly. “
I
think it is time to phase out that friendship a bit. As Sarah gets older she gets more like her mother and father. I’m not going to have my daughter associating too much from now on with that little magnolias-and-swamp-adder character, sweet as honey to your face and hard as nails underneath. You can’t trust a one of them.”