Lion House,The Read Online Free PDF Page B

following weekend and I knew immediately and without the slightest question that that would be it."
    "How did you do?"
    "Not at all like they write it in the novels," she answered. "It's such a complicated, delicately-put-together thing, that first time. Why do writers always have to go and wreathe it with a ton of God damned orchids? Why not daisies or dandelions —you know what I mean?"
    I remembered my first: in the back seat of a car. And I remembered my description of it to the girls in the sorority. I told it the way Frannie had just said the writers did: full of hot purple orchids; no daisies or dandelions at all... I looked over at her, sitting in the armchair, her legs curled up under her; and she looked back at me, putting me on the spot. "I know what you mean," I said; but then, unwilling to give up my stand for hers, I added, "On the other hand, it would depend on the individual. After all, we aren't all ─"
    "The honesty of the individual," she cut in. "Look, Jo —it's a big thing to become a woman, isn't it? A whole woman, that is. It doesn't just simply happen one day because you go to bed with a guy. Sex does, yes. But not true sexuality. That takes growing; and you can spend your whole life growing. You make such a thing of it, Jo. It's as if you keep trying to prove something all the time..."
    It was one of those moments when I wanted to drag her up and shake her like a rag doll. But then Brad walked in. He looked especially well that day and his mood was high as a bird's. "Knew you were here, Franni-o!" he said with a happy breathlessness. "Saw your car outside!" Passing the couch he bent to kiss me a brief but sweet hello. "You too," he said to Frannie, crossing the room. "Mmmmmm," he murmured as she lifted her face shyly. "Now let's have a drink!"
    "Just used the last of the soda," I said. "Drive over and get a case, will you?"
    "Sure. Who’ll come with me?"
    "Frannie will," I said. "She's been sermonizing for two hours. She needs a breath of fresh air."
    "You go, Jo," she said. "I have to get home."
    "Oh, no!" Brad groaned. "The party's just beginning! Stay for dinner. Call Marc and tell him to come here from the office."
    "You forget: I'm the mother of three hungry children. Though come to think of it, Connie cleaned today. Maybe she'd feed them and sit tonight."
    So she called, and Connie agreed. Then she got Marc and he was game too; a few minor finish-ups and he'd be up in an hour.
    "Get that soda," I told Brad. "If they aren't closed now they will be any minute."
    He held out his hand to Frannie. "Come on, Mrs. Browne darling."
    Pausing with one arm in the sleeve of her coat she turned to look back at me. "Let's all three of us go," she suggested.
    "Can't," I said. "I'm the cook."
    I got a chicken out and filled it with an easy apple stuffing. Then I began tossing us a big raw vegetable salad. But all the while I had this funny feeling about being alone. It wasn't resentment, exactly; I didn't need any help with dinner and Frannie was zero in a kitchen anyway. But somehow I wished she hadn't gone. Realizing then that I had been the one to send her I felt even odder. After all, it was kind of silly to give Brad the chance to go off with anyone considering the messes he'd got into in the past; and another thing: that little talk with Frannie had ended on a slightly irksome note. What had she been trying to say? That I was lacking in some way that she wasn't?"
    I nicked my finger on the paring knife and yelped. When I heard the car brake outside I thought it must be they. But it was Marc. I was pleased. In all the months we'd known them I'd never been alone with him; never had the opportunity, really, to talk to him. Of the four of us he seemed the most remote. I don't mean that he wasn't friendly; he was. It was just that Frannie, Brad, and I had built an intensity into the relationship to which Marc seemed immune. I wondered about it. Did he display this hands-off quality with all people, or was