The Road Taken (12 page)

I could be a secretary, Peggy thought. Everybody’s a secretary. “What will I do this whole year?” she moaned.

He ran his hand lightly over her breast. “Maybe I’ll get an apartment
this
year,” he said.

Her parents and her sister Joan were waiting up when they got to the house. Peggy introduced them, showed them her engagement ring, and told them she and Ed had no secrets. Her parents looked a little shocked, but Joan was thrilled. She looked as if she had half a crush on Ed already. Her father offered him a drink. During the expected routine of Ed’s telling her parents what a stable and good catch he would be, and their trying not to pry rudely but asking things anyway, Peggy sat there demurely, thinking about the apartment he had said he would get, and what things the two of them would do there. With all those high school boys she’d had no inkling she was so sexual. But Ed’s hand on her breast had aroused her and she was still aroused.

I’d go all the way with him, she thought. I will. He’s a responsible person, he’ll get condoms. And if I get pregnant, so what? We’re engaged anyway. She smiled like the Cheshire cat. Everyone there took this to be the contented grin of a girl whose future has just been settled, who never has to worry again about getting a date or being an old maid or getting her heart broken. They had no idea that all Peggy was thinking about was Ed Glover between her legs.

Chapter Fourteen

It was rather a shock to Rose to realize Peggy’s future was about to be settled. Good, in a way, but also not so good. She was not sure how she felt about having a seventeen-year-old daughter who was already engaged to be married. She reminded herself that she had been that young when she got engaged to Tom Sainsbury, but that had been in a more innocent time, in a smaller place, and she had known him almost all her life. Peggy didn’t know this ex-soldier at all. Oh, she’d been writing to him for years, but was that enough? Ed Glover seemed like a nice young man, and he was certainly as handsome as anyone you would want your daughter to meet, his family had some money, and he had ambition. Being a CPA was a safe career. But it was a good thing they were planning a long engagement.

The other strange thing was, Rose realized, that the whole situation made her feel as if she had come to another place in her life where she hadn’t expected or wanted to be so quickly. Her oldest daughter would get married, and move away, and have children. She would be a grandmother. What a strange idea, she realized, herself as a grandmother; but if not now, when?

Celia, of course, was delighted. “She would marry them all off at twelve,” Ben said wryly. In some way he seemed to understand Celia better than the rest of them did. She amused him, but he kept a slight distance. Rose wondered what Ben would have thought of her real mother, if she had lived, and what her mother would have thought of him. It had been a long time since she had thought about her mother. She still did on Hugh’s birthday, of course, which was the day Adelaide had died; and she had thought about Adelaide when she had given birth to each of her own children; but her mother and her childhood were so far away. Yet when Peggy had a child that would make Rose a grandmother and Adelaide a great-grandmother—Adelaide, not Celia. The bloodline.

Rose wondered again what Adelaide had died of, and realized again that she would never know. That part of their family medical history was closed to her, and to the rest of them. She supposed it mattered now more than it used to, now that doctors routinely wanted medical information, to see if you had inherited anything. But luckily the doctors asked about grandparents, not great-grandparents. Peggy would have all the information she needed.

Ed went home to Iowa, and then he moved to New York, where he rented a studio apartment in the Village, near NYU, and Peggy helped him paint and furnish it. He and Peggy were inseparable. She hardly ever saw her friends anymore. Instead, she took her homework to his apartment and they studied together. Peggy seemed to be much more serious now, as if he were a good influence on her. She had changed in another way too; overnight she had turned into a woman, although Rose couldn’t put her finger on the exact reason she thought that, unless it was the almost embarrassing attraction between them. You wanted to turn your face away. When Ed came over to dinner, the sexual bond between him and her daughter was so powerful Rose could almost see it, like a warm, damp fog. Even Ben noticed, although he compartmentalized such things as feelings of the night.

“They’re so young and so full of sap, aren’t they?” he said, trying to make it safe, normal, healthy, natural, like spring.

“I’m worried,” Rose said to him.

“They’ll be married soon,” Ben said to reassure her. Perhaps he was worried too.

“Peggy,” Rose asked her finally, “are you . . . doing anything . . . with Ed that you shouldn’t?”

“Such as what?” Peggy asked coolly, to annoy her. Peggy knew what she meant.

“You are still a virgin, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” Peggy said. “What an offensive thing to ask your own daughter.”

Rose backed off. It
had
been offensive, but she wasn’t going to apologize. She still wanted to know, but she was afraid to know. “You haven’t got that wedding ring yet,” she said, trying to sound wise but only sounding stern. “Just don’t ruin your life like you know who.” Peggy smiled.

Harriette, honorably discharged from the WAVES, had decided to stay in Washington, she wrote Celia. Her life there made her feel free, she said, and she was going to work for the government. Celia, walking her little golden spaniel in Washington Square Park, had met a gentleman her age who also had a small dog, and now he sometimes took her out to dinner, or they played cards with his friends. Celia said she had no interest in marrying again, but she enjoyed having a date.

“A date!” Rose said to Hugh. “Would you have imagined Celia on a date?”

“There’s hope for me,” Hugh remarked wryly.

Rose wondered about Hugh. She knew he had friends; he was out very often, and sometimes mentioned a few names, and he went to the theater and movies and art galleries, the museum, restaurants, parties, with these friends whom she never met. Some were men, some were women. Some were even royalty, apparently, the lady this or that. But his life was a complete secret to her in many ways, and she supposed that was what it was like with a middle-aged bachelor in the house. Hugh was forty. She didn’t think he should be a bachelor forever, but time was going by. He seemed happy enough. When he was with the family he was wonderful: a good uncle, a good brother, a good brother-in-law, interested in everyone’s doings no matter how unimportant, pulling his weight. He took his own clothes to the cleaner, or to the laundry. He brought presents, cake and flowers, like a guest. He even made most of his phone calls from the antique store. He still insisted on paying rent. He was completely independent. And Rose couldn’t help feeling as though their house was merely a dock, and Hugh a ship.

She wanted to know him better, this man whom she had known since he was born, whom she had even bathed when he was little, and she didn’t know how to start.

Although she had never done it before because it was unacceptable, she went into his room, his special place, while he was away at work, and under the pretense of putting something away she began to snoop. Not that she hadn’t been in his bedroom before, but always when he was there and only to see him if there was a reason that couldn’t wait. In a crowded household with several adults in it, privacy and respect were particularly important to everyone. In fact, Hugh often kept his door locked, and no one but the somnambulist ever went in without knocking and asking permission. The other girls almost never went in. Rose knew what she was doing now was an invasion, but her curiosity, although she had no idea what, if anything, she would find, spurred her on.

Hugh’s room was always quite neat, and he had a lot of things around: pretty antique brocade cushions piled on the bed, strange fussy lamps, paperweights, rare books, a silver-backed comb and brush set he never used. He often brought things back to the shop and sold them, and replaced them with other things. This made him seem even more transient, somehow. The room smelled faintly of his cologne: vetiver, a nice fresh manly scent that women sometimes wore too. There was a big bottle of it in the bathroom.

The top bureau drawer, she noticed, had been locked with a key, but the key was still in the lock. After only an instant of guilt Rose opened the drawer. There was the usual man’s clutter, but there was also, she saw to her surprise, a half-open soft black case full of women’s makeup, and there were several lipsticks loose and rolling around in the drawer too. Her first thought was that without anyone in the family knowing it, Hugh had invited a woman to his room, and this was her makeup. After all, he lived alone on the street floor, with his own entrance. Was there a secret woman? She inspected further. There were several snapshots lying in the drawer, of an attractive, hard-looking woman with a great deal of blond hair, a bit too much makeup, and wearing a tight, dressy black dress slit up the side like a tramp. The blonde was also wearing, and flirtatiously playing with, a feather boa, looking seductively at the camera and smiling.

Hugh’s secret love? No wonder he had never brought her home.

It had never occurred to Rose that Hugh liked flashy women, and she realized how little she actually did know about him. The woman in the photograph looked familiar somehow, and she wondered if she were an actress. She tried to open the second drawer, but it was locked too. The same key opened it. Behind the usual piles of men’s underwear, arranged neatly as was Hugh’s nature, she noticed the edge of something red and frilly. It was a piece of woman’s underwear. She looked further and discovered there was more lingerie: white, pink, black. This was increasingly bizarre. It was as if he had an invisible roommate none of them had ever known about. Rose headed for Hugh’s closet and opened it.

There were Hugh’s fashionable suits, in a perfect row, and beside them were two quilted garment bags, with squared-off edges and long zippers. Rose opened the garment bags. Inside them were a number of evening gowns and cocktail dresses, one of which was the black dress from the photograph, and hanging on a hanger was the feather boa. It was purple. On the shelf above the clothing were some men’s natty hats, which she had seen him wear. Behind them was a large box, like a hatbox. She took it down. Inside it was a wig block, and set on the wig block, as if “the actress” had been decapitated, was a voluminous blond wig. The familiar-looking woman had been wearing a wig . . .

It wasn’t a woman, it was Hugh.

Of course, Rose thought. Hugh, the little actor. It was not beyond comprehension. But where and why would he wear those clothes, that disguise? She figured out the answer after a moment. It was very simple. He was in a show, or he had been, and he hadn’t mentioned it to them. She felt hurt, knowing they had become so estranged without her even realizing it that he had simply cut her out. She would have gone to the show, they all would have gone, like in the old days, and cheered him on. She put back the wig box and sat on his bed waiting impatiently for him to come home so she could straighten out the situation.

When Hugh walked into his bedroom and saw his sister sitting there waiting for him he looked surprised and not pleased. “Rose?” he said, as if he were waiting for an explanation of her presence, as if one were needed, and of course one was.

“Oh, Hugh,” she said, “it’s been so long since you and I had a talk.”

“Is it?” He didn’t seem angry; his tone was meek. But he was looking at her in an odd way.

“I apologize for snooping, but I saw your costumes,” she said.

“My costumes?”

“The dresses . . . the other things.”

“You went through my things?”

“I was curious,” she said. “I felt left out. You never share your life with me anymore.”

“Well,” he said. He lit a cigarette. “And what would you like me to share?”

“Tell me about the play you were in. Why didn’t you invite us?”

“The play? Ah, yes, the play.”

“Where was it?”

He paused for a while, as if the answer escaped him. “Webster Hall,” he said.

“And when?”

“Oh . . .” He shrugged. “Halloween.”

“You must have had a big part to wear all those costumes. Were you the lead?”

“Hardly,” he said.

“Don’t you want to tell me about it?”

He paused again. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know if you would understand.”

“What in the world is there for me to understand, Hugh?” Rose asked. “You and I were always so close, but now . . .”

“I was different then,” he said. “A long time ago. Or perhaps not so different.Just unaware. You shouldn’t have been in my room, Rose. You turned a key. That’s forbidden. People can’t live in the same house when keys are turned behind other people’s backs.”

“I’m sorry. Please don’t lock me out of your life. That would be worse than anything.”

“Than anything?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” he said. “It was more than just Halloween.”

“I was sure of it.”

He smiled, a strange little smile without mirth. “I’ve been waiting for this, in a way,” he said. “Let’s see what your love is made of.”

She looked at him, puzzled, letting her love shine out of her eyes so that he would believe in it. “What could be so wrong?”

“I’m queer, Rose. Didn’t you ever notice?”

Queer? A fairy? But of course everyone had said Hugh was a sissy, for years, forever, it seemed. Still, you could be a sissy and not be a queer, as far as she had seen it. She had believed what she had wanted to, and so had the others. Perhaps not Celia; Celia had always made those unkind remarks, but everyone else in the family had just let them pass. Celia had an ax to grind, they thought. Ignore her.

“But you were in the Army!” Rose said.

“There were a lot of queers in the Army,” Hugh said, amused at her. “They were patriotic, just as I was. There was a world war on, remember?”

“But you were masculine then!”

“Rose. I’m queer. I’ve always been queer. I am a particular kind of queer who likes to wear dresses. And paint. And the occasional wig. With my closest friends.” He was peering at her again. “What do you think about that? Are you horrified? Do you hate me? What are your feelings?”

“I don’t know,” she said. And she didn’t. She had no idea what she thought. It was all too big to grasp. She was not an ignorant woman, she lived in New York City, near Greenwich Village, she was out in the world. She knew about free love, Bohemians, bisexuals, lesbians, homosexual men; but none of that had anything to do with her and her life because she chose to ignore it. A few blocks away from Bohemia, Rose might as well have been back in Bristol, or in the heartland of America. In that innocent heartland no one ever wanted to admit anyone was queer, not even when they saw the movies with those fussy effeminate men in them—wasn’t it usually a prissy desk clerk in a comedy?—and people were just amused at those actors and thought nothing.

Most people probably
were
ignorant, she realized. But she supposed what she had been was in denial. She had never given the other side of life any thought at all. And in your own family was the last place on earth you would want to look for something aberrant. You ignored it. As you ignored Celia when she decided to be cruel.

“I don’t know what I think,” Rose said. “I have no idea.”