Danielle Steel - Full circle

“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.