Coming Out Read Online Free PDF Page B

Olympia said, smiling ruefully. “We don't want husbands for them, sweetheart. All we want are a couple of white dresses, and some boys to dance with them.”
    “I don't think Dad will go,” Max said, shaking his head, as his mother cut his meat. They were the only two at the table, and Olympia had no desire to eat. She knew the girls' father would have a fit if they didn't make their debut. Politically, he was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Harry. Her old life and her new, as typified by both husbands, had absolutely nothing in common. She was the bridge between the two.
    “I hope Daddy will go,” Olympia said quietly to her son. “It's a fun thing to do.”
    “It doesn't sound like fun to me,” Max said, shaking his head solemnly. “I don't think Ginny and Ver should come out,” he said, looking up at his mother with wide eyes. “I think they better stay in.” Given everyone's reactions that night, it was beginning to sound like it to her, too.

Chapter 2
    Olympia called her ex-husband from the office the next day, and explained the situation to him. She told him simply that Virginia wanted to come out, Veronica had objected to it, and she said somewhat unhappily that she thought there was a possibility that Veronica would not give in. There had been another explosion over it at breakfast that morning, before they left for school. Veronica was threatening to move in with her stepgrandmother if her mother didn't agree to let her off the hook, and Harry had seconded the idea. He added fuel to the fire by saying that he didn't think either girl should come out, and Ginny had left for school in tears, after saying she hated him. Overnight the family had erupted in civil war. Virginia had called her brother the night before, and although he sympathized with Veronica's objections to the event, he sided with Virginia and Olympia, and said he thought both girls should come out. All their cousins in Newport had, and he knew, as Olympia did, that their father would be upset if they didn't. Harry would be upset if they did. One way or the other, everyone was going to be unhappy about something. Olympia and Harry hadn't even been speaking to each other when they both left for work, which was a rare occurrence for them. They hardly ever fought. But this time, the battle lines had been drawn.
    Predictably, as always, Chauncey did not make things better, but worse.
    “What kind of rabble-rousing left-wing household are you running there, Olympia, if Veronica thinks that making her debut is a persecution of the Great Unwashed? You all sound like a bunch of Commies to me.” It was just the kind of thing Olympia expected him to say.
    “Oh for God's sake, Chauncey, they're kids. They get emotional. Veronica has always had extreme political ideas; she's the champion of the underdog. She thinks she's a combination of Mother Teresa and Che Guevara. She'll outgrow it. This is her way of expressing herself. Seven months from now, I think she'll calm down and do it, if we don't make too big a deal of it now. If we do, she'll dig her heels in. So let's be reasonable, please.” Someone had to be. And apparently Chauncey wasn't going to be either, which was no surprise to her.
    “Well, let me tell you where I stand on this, Olympia,” he said, sounding incredibly arrogant and haughty, which was typical of him. “I'm not going to tolerate having a revolutionary as a daughter, and I think that should be nipped in the bud right now. You should have done it years ago, if that's the direction she was heading in. I'm not going to tolerate this Communist crap from any of you, if you understand what I mean. If she decides that it is too politically right-wing to make her debut at The Arches, then I'm not going to pay her tuition at Brown next year. She can go and dig ditches in Nicaragua or El Salvador, or wherever she thinks she should be doing it, and see how she likes the life of a political radical. And if she's not careful,