6

Jack and Laura were sitting with Mr. Winkler in the Manns’ living room after dinner, while Jack narrated the story. “Page made himself unhappy, it’s true,” Jack said. “The Pringles were ready for the peace pipe years before he was. But they had made the cardinal mistake that adults can make with kids. They made him feel, right or wrong, that they only loved their name. Not him. They loved the idea of a son and heir, not the son and heir himself.”

“Well, he and Sunny moved to New York, then,” Winkler said. “Were you and Laura married?”

“Yes. They looked us up right away. Even took an apartment near us on East Fifty-second. Sunny was upset about this thing when they first arrived, but everything went so well for them that she soon relaxed. Used to sit and gab with Laura. They hit it off right away.

“And Page was really happy. Always smiling. Loved his work, loved his wife. And he was making ‘Pringle’ his own name at last. Nobody there knew his family, so the name was more his own than it had ever been before.

“He kept on with the Trib and did very well. When I look back, those first months in New York seem like a sort of reprieve,” Jack said.

“Reprieve from what?” Winkler leaned forward on his elbows, hands hanging between his knees.

“You’re a good audience, Mr. Winkler,” Jack grinned.

Winkler shrugged, suddenly shy again. “You’re a good talker,” he said.

“Well, around Christmas everything was going beautifully for them,” Jack resumed. “We saw them then at a party we threw, and they were the happiest couple there.

“But it wasn’t long after that this whole crazy tragedy blew up in their faces. Hard to believe, but it sure as hell happened.”

Winkler’s cigarette burned forgotten in the ashtray beside him.

* * *

It was one of those red-and-green gatherings that stud the Christmas season. Most of Jack’s guests were straight. He didn’t like to mix many gay people into his parties. He had renounced the painful homosexual adventures that used to fill his life before he got married, and it made him feel socially clumsy and anxious when the old gay crowd turned up.

Besides, no one in his office crowd knew he was an invert, and he wanted to keep it that way.

There were plenty of drinks, carols, and conviviality. Laura turned out all but the Christmas lights and candles, and the rooms took on a multi-colored jukebox glow.

* * *

Sunny, full of laughter, was the center of the carol singing. Her voice was small but true, and pleasantly husky. She sat on the sofa, crowded in by admirers, and sang “Santa Baby” and “The Christmas Song” to warm applause. Page was enough of a bridegroom to get foolishly jealous.

She was too popular, too beautiful, with her radiant smile and the smooth skin of her breasts showing down to the line of a daringly cut dress.

“That thing is too damn low,” he growled, but she stuck her tongue out at him and he either had to laugh or be laughed at.

It was a night for costumes. One of the guests was a well-pillowed Santa Claus. One came dressed all in white bunny fur, just for the hell of it. And later in the evening somebody climbed into a grass skirt Jack had brought back from a trip to Hawaii, and favored them with a hula. He made a lei of a Christmas wreath and rigged up a pair of glass ornament breasts which generated a lot of hilarity.

Page, still grumping, muttered to Jack, “I hate that kind of stuff.”

“What stuff? Hulas?” Jack said. They were standing together by the wall watching the performance.

“Men doing hulas.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack said, laughing. “He’s not half bad. You’re just mad because everybody wants to lay Sunny.”

Page lit a cigarette. He knew he was high and not very cogent. He directed his anger at the dancer, who was enjoying his innocent transvestitism as much as his audience.

“I don’t know why people think that’s so damn funny,” Page said. “He probably gets a secret charge out of it.”

“Come on, old buddy, I’ll doctor your drink,” Jack said and led the way to the kitchen. Page followed him on an off-balance course through the swinging door.

“No more of that sweet junk,” he said, grimacing at the eggnog. “Gives you a rotten hangover.” He handed Jack his glass and Jack handed it back with a couple of inches of whiskey in it. Page tasted it critically and then turned to his host. “You look uncommonly sober for this hour of the night,” he said with disapproval.

“I am. I’m on the wagon.”

“What? Goddam. Are you sick?” Page said.

“Laura cured me,” Jack told him.

“Well, get that damn hula dancer on the wagon with you. Cure him and he won’t make such a horse’s ass of himself at the next party.”

“Still worried about Sunny’s dress?” Jack said.

“Oh, the hell with Sunny’s dress. It’s men in dresses I’m worried about.” Page hiccoughed.

“Page, I didn’t know. Shall we dance?” Jack said, and laughed at him.

“Oh, shut up.” Page finished half his drink in one gulp.

Jack knew perfectly well that Page was straight. He was also tight, and aggravated, and men in skirts were handy whipping boys. But it surprised Jack that his old roommate could be so harsh on the subject.

“I’m no fairy,” Page declared, “but that pansy in the grass skirt—”

“—is married and has four kids,” Jack informed him.

“Lots of fags get married to fool their friends,” Page said.

“How would you know?”

Page threw up his hands in a gesture of comical disgust. “I heard it somewhere,” he said. “You don’t think I know anything about a lousy queer first-hand, do you?”

It hurt Jack, but it was an old familiar pain; one he had long since learned to tuck under his heart to heal at leisure. It joined a battalion of old scars and his face showed no sign of it.

Jack understood better than he ever had how deep Page’s conformity went. Page wasn’t worried about his masculinity; that had never been a problem to him. He was worried about being different. He had been raised in a conservative home where old-fashioned morals and conformity were prime virtues. Then he suddenly found out the family he was supposed to honor wasn’t his at all. The morals he respected included lying. And his comfortable conformity had been painfully stripped from his back, like a suit of clothes. He stood exposed, without a name or identity. At that moment, conformity became very dear to him. He wanted to be like everybody else with a family all his own.

As for the odd balls in this world, he had little but contempt for them. And a small secret awe for the few who could be deliberately different and still respect themselves.

But nobody had ever asked Page if he wanted to be different. Instead he grew up a member of a minority group, in spite of himself. When he thought of orphans and adopted children, he thought of the huge neglect they suffered, the rare love, the vague pity of charitable ladies fussing over them. And he classed all adopted children among the orphans.

Jack watched him in silence a moment. “Next you’ll be telling me I’m queer,” he said wryly.

Page laughed and clapped Jack on the back. “Okay, boy, you win. It’s that eggnog I was drinking. I should know better.”

“I still say it was Sunny’s bosom that got you started,” Jack said. “If Laura had a bosom like that I’d never complain about anything again, so help me.”

* * *

Jack and Laura saw the Pringles often, especially after Jack learned he was being transferred back to Chicago. It was a promotion to his home office, and he felt he owed it to Laura and Betsy to go. But he hated to leave New York. They gave him three months to make the move.

Sunny, homesick for Hillsburg and Chicago, spent a lot of hours with Laura swapping information and feminine chatter.

“Go see Page’s family if you get a chance,” she pleaded. “They’d be so happy to hear about us first-hand.”

“We will. Why doesn’t Page ever talk about them, Sunny?” Laura asked. “I asked him about his father once and he said the strangest thing. He said, ‘I don’t have a father.’ I told him everybody has a father and he said, ‘Everybody but me.’ What does that mean?”

Sunny tried to explain it to her.

“I don’t get it. What does he want from them?” Laura said.

“He wants to turn back the clock thirty years and stay with the worms who had him in the first place.”

Laura laughed. “Were they worms?”

“Maybe not. But they’d have to go some to beat the Pringles. I’m hoping Page will get over this when he has a son of his own.”

Laura, stooped over a suitcase, straightened up and stared at Sunny. “Hey!” she said. “You’re not—?”

Sunny smiled. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody so soon,” she said. “I’m not really sure yet. I just know, like you do.”

Laura came over and took her hands. The warm firm grasp gave her a quiet shiver of delight—the kind Laura so often experienced in contact with lovely women. “Sunny, I’m so happy for you,” she said. Up until that moment Laura had both admired and feared Sunny a little. People so beautiful sometimes inspire a sort of timidity in others, and Laura was naturally shy. But now, with the sharing of this secret, Laura felt close to her. She had the courage to touch Sunny, even to hold her.

“Does Page know yet?” she asked.

“No. He’ll go into orbit when he finds out,” Sunny laughed. “He’s been after me since our wedding day to do this.”

“When will you tell him?”

“The minute I’m sure. I have to see a doctor first.”

“See Dr. Settick,” Laura said. “Richie Settick. He delivered Betsy and he’s the greatest. I’ll give you his address.”

“I was going to ask you,” Sunny said, pleased. “I don’t know any doctors here.”

Laura was thinking of Jack’s incredulous reaction to the news that Laura was carrying their child. But for him, older and with a sexual abnormality to fight, it had seemed like a real miracle. It gave him a soaring feeling that a normal man, sure of his virility, would never know.

Laura sat down on her bed next to Sunny and put her arms around her. “You should have seen Jack’s face when I told him he was going to be a father,” she said.

Sunny’s laugh brought her slim, smooth body even nearer Laura’s. What Sunny thought she was doing there in Laura’s arms she didn’t say. But it didn’t seem to alarm her. She submitted to a shy, sisterly kiss from Laura—a kiss that scarcely mussed her shining hair—and then pulled away with an easy motion and said, “Got any maternity clothes I can borrow?”

“Plenty,” Laura said, and the regret she felt at the lost contact did not show in her voice.

She never did discover what Sunny thought of that indiscreet caress. She was only grateful that it didn’t interrupt their friendship. Sunny was one of the good things in life that Laura would never possess, and Laura had the sense to see it early and keep the relationship platonic. Sunny’s love was given for the rest of her life ... and given to a man.