374
JONATHAN STRONG
Arthur. I used to do most of it myself.
It
seems wrong for Matty to
devote her life to keeping someone else's house and making someone
else's food. Everyone should be doing his best to keep
his
own house.
It's hard enough keeping your own things straight. Keeping a house
should be private, not like a business. You should live only within
the limits of your own powers to make yourselves comfortable. But
no one tells us these things, and we go on thinking we should have
a maid. A woman has to spend her waking hours making the house
comfortable, but that's the way it's meant to be. A woman's supposed
to be the servant of the house. And the mother of the children.
That is what she wants. The balance is slipping. There aren't the
lines between husbands and wives anymore. These career women!
My grandmother may have said Swinburne was not for little girls,
but she knew what a little girl was, God knows, and I don't anymore.
Louis, you're smart. You're at college. Do people know the difference
anymore? I don't think there is one now. These children on the hill,
they're roaming around all evening. They don't know the difference.
S. I don't mean to interrupt the sociological discussion, but
there is something I want to show Patrick upstairs. Louis . . . Ruth
... you'll excuse us?
That came as a relief, though it seemed a little cold of him,
just when Mrs. Supperburger was getting nervous again.
As
we
leave she starts to talk about family things with Louie, aunts and
uncles and people on her side, and Matty is clearing off the table.
I stopped on the second floor because Supperburger told me to
run in and get the Swinburnes. I am a little uneasy about being
alone upstairs with him again. But maybe it is just the secret
fifth reason for the champagne he wants to talk to me about. I
am also beginning to worry about my father again. Supperburger
is already on the third floor, in the front bedroom.
It is a comfortable room and looks like a man's room. All of
Mrs. Supperburger's things are in the back bedroom, and I think
she sleeps in there sometimes too. He is in the big leather chair
under the painting of a boat. I give
him
the Swinburnes and sit
down on the edge of the bed. I think someday I may end up looking
like Supperburger, except for his gray eyes. Of course he is taller
and
his
teeth are all perfectly straight, but
his
coloring
is
like mine
