48
PARTISAN REVIEW
calling, first at midnight and again at 8 A.M. It had been a dread–
ful moment, almost the worst in her life, when she had waited, with
the receiver in her hand, knowing that she would have to lie to
Mother and pretend that she had spent the night with Polly Andrews
in Polly's cousin's apartment. What was harrowing was not the fear
of being found out-Mother trusted her completely and would never
dream of checking up. Rather, it was the sense of separation, of the
forking of the ways. Mrs. Renfrew's bright, curious voice on the
telephone, eager for details about the wedding, had cut Dottie's
heart: she felt she was depriving her parent of one of her sources
of life. The hardest thing was to have to recognize that Mother would
worry if she knew. It was like acknowledging a fault in Mother, a
failure in understanding, due to the difference in age. This would
hurt Mother more than anything else, if she ever were to find out.
And the very fact of lying now would make it more difficult to tell
her later on, when the occasion was more propitious, for the first
thing Mother would ask was "When did this happen, Dottie?" The
consciousness of withholding something had made Dottie more alert,
during the past two days, to the small items of passing interest that
she could bring back to Gloucester, in compensation for what Mrs.
Renfrew was not being told. Mother, for instance, would be vastly
amused to hear about Kay and John's housekeeping arrangements;
as a Vassar woman herself, she felt a lively concern for girls like
Kay who had broken with convention and were trying to live their
own lives; she still kept in touch with the Lucy Stoners and woman's
rights fighters of her own class at college, most of whom had settled
down to humdrum married bliss. It was really because of Mother
that Dottie had taken her courage in her hands and gone to see the
people at the birth-control headquarters. In the back of Dottie's mind
was a plan, not yet fully matured, of coming to New York and work–
ing as a volunteer for the birth-control people. In that way, she
could see Dick regularly, and she could also talk openly to her
mother about a certain segment of her widened horizon. The big
stumbling-block, of course, was Daddy, who would have to be
reasoned with a good deal, before he could see birth-control as an
important part of welfare-work. He would have to be convinced that
no notoriety would attach to an unmarried woman who worked in
such a movement; the fact that the Catholics were against it would
