Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

After a long while, Gillian sighed and said, “I think I’m going to leave Talmadge, Amanda.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Talmadge. I don’t think I’ll be back in the fall. I’m not getting enough here. I’m too far ahead of them.”

“It’s a wonderful school. You can’t mean—”

“It’s only a school, Amanda. It’s only make-believe. There’s too much to do in the real world.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m not sure I know what I mean myself. I just have a feeling that I’ve learned everything I can learn here, that this is no closer to the theater, the real theater, than... than... Siberia is, I guess. And I haven’t got much time. I really haven’t. I can’t afford to waste any of it here with a bunch of silly kids who are only doing make-believe stuff. Don’t you feel that way, Amanda?”

“No, I... I never thought of it that way.”

“Because there’s so much out there, Amanda, do you know what I mean? Don’t you ever get the feeling that there’s so much out there to do and to see and to know? Amanda, don’t you ever pass an apartment building and look at all the lighted windows and wonder who lives up there, and sometimes feel so sad that you don’t know them, that you’ll never know them? Amanda, I could cry when I think of all the people there are in this world that I’ll never get to know. In Talmadge alone, for God’s sake, in New York millions of people rushing along the streets, busy, busy, with their own worlds, and I’ll never even know them well enough to say hello, or even to smile as I pass them. And then I think of China, and I wonder how it is to be Chinese, and I wish I could speak Chinese and Italian and Russian, and I wish I could read all the books there are, and listen to all the music, and know all the people, walk down the street and say hello to everybody, just hug everybody as if they were part of my family and I’m very glad to see them, we haven’t seen each other in a very long time, and we have all sorts of things to tell to each other, and we’re not strangers the way everybody is — don’t you feel that, Amanda? Don’t you want to know people?”

“No. No, I’ve never—”

“Never, Amanda? Never?”

“But, Gillian, you can’t know everyone . You can’t expect to.”

“No, I know, I know. I can’t do that. But that’s why... don’t you see, Amanda? I just... I think of somebody out there who is like me and who I will never meet. And it makes me sad. He’s out there, and I don’t know who he is, and I’ll never get to know him, and I just feel that if we knew each other, if we got to know each other, we could be so rich, don’t you ever feel that way? I know it’s silly, but I know he’s there, maybe he’s a Frenchman or something, and maybe I’ll pass him on the street and we won’t even say hello or smile, we just won’t know each other, and he’ll be the person, he’ll be the one, Amanda, the one person I really should know. I get scared when I think of it. I get absolutely terrified. Suppose I should live out my life, and I die, and I never get to know this other person who is also living out his life, and he’ll die, too, and we’ll never have known each other, never.”

“But why do you have to leave school, Gillian?” Amanda said. “I don’t understand that. I don’t see how leaving—”

“I’ve just got to get out of this fake place and stop pretending to be an actress. Don’t you see how that can fool you, Amanda? Don’t you see how all those dopes on the college newspaper think they’re big-shot reporters or columnists when all they’re doing is writing drivel that’s fake and not anything that has any worth by the standards of the real world? Amanda, nobody cares what’s happening in college. It isn’t real. It just isn’t real.”

“What makes you think the world is?” Amanda asked.

“I know it is.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. Nobody’s kidding out there. Out there you work, and you eat, and you live. I want to live. Amanda, I think I... Amanda, don’t you feel very important?”

“What do you mean?”

“Important. Just important being alive and being a girl... a woman? I... Amanda, I think that’s very important, being a woman. I mean, I know you got offended when Matthew touched you tonight. Well, I don’t feel that way, I feel quite flattered, I feel so good when I’m desired. I like being the way I am, and I like to think that someone wants to touch me, that it’s exciting for a man to touch me because I’m a woman. I enjoy everything about being a woman, Amanda. And I think it’s important. That’s why I have to get away from this trivial little-girl stuff, to get out there and see what’s happening and know what’s happening and to... to live because that’s what being a woman is. Because... Amanda, I want to have babies. I want to have dozens of babies. I want to meet that person I don’t know yet, oh I wish I meet him, I wish he doesn’t pass me by and not know me, I want to have dozens of his babies. And when I meet him, I really want to be a woman, I want to have reached the point when I come to him where I really am a woman, where everything he ever thought of as womanly is me, and, Amanda, I’ll bring all this to him and we’ll be so rich because he’ll be bringing to me everything that’s a man.”

Gillian paused.

“I have to leave Talmadge,” she said very softly.

“I see.”

“There’s so much to do.”

“Yes.”

“This is May,” she said. “And then there’ll be June, and the semester will be over.” She paused. “I won’t be coming back.”

“Yes.”

“Amanda, don’t... don’t be so afraid. Don’t be so afraid of life.”

“Yes, Gillian.”

The room was silent.

“Good night, dear,” Gillian said. “I’m very sleepy.”

“Good night, Gillian.” Amanda paused. Almost inaudibly, she said, “I’ll miss you.”

The town of Talmadge, Connecticut, became a different sort of town during the summer months, and Julia Regan — who hated the town anyway — hated it more during that loathsome hiatus. The change never really occurred until after final examinations were over at the university and the students began leaving for their homes. It was then that the town settled into its colonial stupor and became a lazy sort of fly-buzzing town, with giant maples spreading dappled sunshine on the wide walks of the main street, the twin steeples of the First Congregational Church dominating the hill and the town, white against blue, and far in the distance the walled and dormant university. The townspeople were really quite proud of the university, and yet they sighed a deep sigh of relief whenever June rolled around and they could reclaim the town for themselves and watch the slow lethargic change that came over it. Actually, the change began with Memorial Day, or at least the beginnings of the change began then. For it was then that the town began reminding itself of its history and its rural character, then that it began tentatively shrugging off the label of “university town,” a label that, unfortunately, put the emphasis on the first word. And since Memorial Day each year became the unofficial day of the beginning of the metamorphosis, it was Memorial Day that Julia Regan came to loathe as a symbol of all that was decadent and stultifying in Talmadge.

On that Memorial Day in 1943, she stood in the school courtyard with her friends and neighbors and watched the preparations for the annual parade to the town hall. There were three fire engines lined up in the schoolyard, side by side. The hood of each complicated-looking machine carried the gold lettering TALMADGE, CONN., FIRE DEPARTMENT, and the brilliant engines only made the sun seem more intense. They had been polished especially for the parade, and all that gleaming brass and red-hot enamel glowed in the noonday sun, reflecting dizzying bursts of brilliance, which were giving Julia a headache.