Chapter 13
Molly went to bed under protest, insisting that a little fainting spell never did a body any harm, declaring that she felt fit as a fiddle. "Jim and I shouldn't ever have left Texas, that's the whole of it," she told Lena later.
Lena had washed up the dishes, tidied the kitchen, and was ready to leave. She sat on Molly's bed for a moment. "You aren't to worry about anything, Mom."
"We've spoiled things for you, honey. How can I help worrying about that?" She said: "When a daughter leaves the nest to make her own life, her folks should keep their fingers out of the pie. You'd found your man and you were happy. Then Jim and I showed up and spoiled things for you."
Where were the words to make Molly understand that what had happened this evening was culmination, not a cause? She could keep repeating until she was blue in the face that she and Dana would have come to the parting of the ways sooner or later. She could say that Dana was dominated by his sister, who would ultimately have found some way to break up their engagement. She could even say that she was glad things had been forced to a climax, because deep in her heart she had always known that Dana wasn't right for her. Molly wouldn't believe her. She would go right on blaming herself.
Smoothing back her mother's hair from her hot, damp forehead, Lena forced cheerfulness into her voice. "Look, Mom. I was just a small-town Texas gal who became madly infatuated with a handsome, sophisticated boss. Dana was different from the boys I knew back home, and it went to my head. I called it love. But it wasn't love, really. I know it now, and if you think my heart is broken you couldn't be more wrong."
Molly didn't believe her, and neither did Jim. Lena couldn't bear to leave them that night. They were two of the dearest, finest parents who ever lived. And nothing could keep them from believing they'd broken up her marriage and ruined everything for her. Nothing could stop them from worrying themselves sick about it.
The next day Dan O'Connor phoned. When he suggested a drive, perhaps dinner together later, Lena refused, then immediately changed her mind.
There was no use hanging around the apartment moping. Nor did she want to keep nagging Joan with the post-mortem of her blighted love life. Joan had her own urgent problems. She was busy writing letters. An urgent Special Delivery letter from her widower doctor insisted that Joan take a plane to New York and be married at once. The doctor wrote that he was tired of waiting for Joan to make up her mind. He wanted a wife, and he wanted her now.
"He's a grand guy, he loves you and you love him. So what are you waiting for?" Lena wanted to know. In a sense, she envied Joan for having had the good judgment to pick a real man, and the right one. She felt a little sick at the thought of her leaving, too. She would miss Joan terribly.
It was a heavenly afternoon for driving. When Dan asked where she'd like to go, Lena left it up to him. She smiled. The beach, the mountains, down to Brazil, where she understood there were still unexplored regions where primitive Indians ran wild-it was all one with her.
"Then we'll drive out and take another look at the yellow house," Dan said. "Okay?"
As they drove along in the warmth of the sun, Lena was silent for a long while. That was one of the good things about being with Dan. He seemed to know by instinct when to talk, when to let her alone until she came out of her inner absorption. He really was a wonderful pal.
She had never thought of Dana in terms of a pal, and the truth was he never had been one. Dana was more like an idol who demanded a form of worship. Everything had to revolve around him, his desires, his needs, his plans. Dana would have loved it, she imagined, had she burned incense before him.
Well, it was all over now. She could no longer patch things up with Dana, and she was not even certain that she wanted to. She was able to say to herself, Dana is over there in the city someplace, going about his affairs, maybe having a date with Irene Spillman, with never a thought for me, and I don't care. I can think about it being all over and it doesn't mean a thing.
Yet there would be a terrific emptiness in her life for a while. You couldn't build your life, your every plan for the future around a man, then have him vanish from your life, without feeling that something was gone.
Dan had brought along a picnic box with sandwiches, bottles of Coke, a box of cookies which he said his landlady had baked specially for him. For some reason this made Lena laugh, her first genuine, joyous laughter in days. "You're so exactly the type," she said. "I'll bet no matter where you go, nice motherly ladies start hunting up their cookie recipes. Right away you remind them of their own sons, of their grandsons, of the sons they wanted and never had. Am I right?"
"Don't you start getting motherly about me," Dan warned, his look ominous. A motherly feeling was definitely not what he wanted from her. But since what he did want he wasn't-likely to get, he'd settle for being her good friend.
"It's something to be the guy you can talk things out with," he told her. "We all need someone we can go to, someone we can trust and confide in when things get too rough to take alone. I'd like you to feel that way about me, Lena. It isn't all I'd like you to feel for me; it isn't half of it. But it would be something. I want to be your friend, Lena."
Eating slowly, Lena couldn't bring herself to say the words she wanted to say. More than anything, she wanted to put her arms around him and hold him close, telling him that she loved him and that certainly they could be more than friends.
But something held her back. Perhaps it was because her breakup with Dana had occurred so recently. She didn't know. She only wished that it would pass, and that soon she would be able to tell Dan just how she felt. But she wanted to be certain-both of her intentions and his-before she committed herself.
The next few days were hectic for Lena, but they turned out for the best. After it was all over with, she felt as if she had been cleansed. First of all, she quit attending all the self-improvement classes she had signed up for, understanding at last that she had been doing that for Dana and not for herself.
And then her parents decided they wanted to move back to Texas. They sold the house they had purchased, and even made a small profit on the deal because real estate prices were rising so fast.
Lena was sad to see them go, but she knew it was for the best. They had seen that city life was not for them. And Molly even admitted that just being out in California was doing harm to her heart, because of the fast-paced lifestyle and the threat of earthquakes. But before leaving, Jim and Molly gave their daughter a large sum of money. They told her she should quit her job and relax for a while, since it had been so long since Lena had had a vacation. She accepted the money gratefully and then wished her parents a good trip.
Then Dan called her up and suggested they go for a drive. He said he wanted to show her the yellow house. Once there, they sat in the car talking. "I have a thousand things to tell you," Lena began.
He cut her short with a grin. "I have a little news item of my own. I've bought this house."
"What!" she cried.
"Nell Morton definitely advised me to buy. She said she got the most wonderful vibrations which told her I must simply buy. Just to back up her vibrations, she told me I could name my own terms."
She stared at him, and her eyes were wide. "But what will you do with it, Dan?"
"Live in it with you, I hope." And he smiled as he slipped his arm around her. It was perfectly obvious, he said, that Lena had fallen in love with the house. Reasoning logically, step by step, he had decided that she might well agree to marry him in order to get the house. It would not be the first time a girl had taken on a man as the price she must pay to get the house of her dreams.
At first she did not take him seriously. "You're either making this up, or you have something else in mind." With a whimsical smile she threw his own words back at him. He had said they could be no more than friends; not for a long time, at any rate.
Dan swore he didn't recall saying any such thing. If he had, it was simply his mercurial Irish nature. "I'm in love with you," he said gently. "That I did tell you, and meant it. I love you, Lena. Will you marry me and live in this house with me and grow old with me?"
Her eyes grew wonderfully soft. "You're right, Dan. I did fall in love with this house, and now I know why. It represented a way of life, the kind of life I really want: a solid kind of life, filled with love, filled with the real enduring things, such as building a family and a home and happiness."
She looked up at him, her smile rueful. "I never wanted the life of a rising young executive's wife. Because I believed I was madly in love with Dana Hall, I worked like fury to make myself into the kind of woman he wanted. But," she sighed, "it was a little like trying to fit a size eighteen figure into a size ten dress. It was plain murder. When I discovered I wouldn't want Dana if he was the last man on this earth, I knew I never would have fitted into that kind of life. Oh, Dan, how foolish can a gal be?"
"Foolish enough to marry me, I hope.. . "