3
He had put the food away and prepared himself a cup of coffee, when heheard the clatter of the bus. That would be Betsy and Rita with thekids, he knew, back from the beach. By the noisy commotion, he gatheredthey had enjoyed themselves, with no more than the usual number of cutsand bruises and hurt feelings. Eleven kids, the oldest eight years,could not conceivably go to the beach for the afternoon without somecrises; but, at least, they seemed to have gotten back in a happycondition.
Tom smiled as he thought of them, picturing the throng, but he made nomove to join them. When Sue, aged four, stuck her head in the door andgrinned to see him there, he just said "Hi." This she took as aninvitation, and hopped on in to begin telling him in disconnectedfragments, all about the day. He let her ramble for a moment until thefirst flush of her enthusiasm was over. Then, with a kiss on theforehead and a poke in the stomach, he sent her out, suggesting that shetell him all about it later.
When she had gone, he sat there, thinking about the girl. Sue was verymuch like her mother, Polly. Dark-haired with light bones, she had thequick and easy movements of a born dancer. And her eyes sparkled withdancing lights. Sue, like Polly, was a born flirt, but a flirt out ofsheer interest in life. She was so much the image of her mother, both inface and build and also temperament, that he wondered who her fatherwas. Certainly there was not much of any of the men visible in her.
What would Marcia mean to the children? With a start he came back to hisproblem. There was nothing apparent of the maternal instinct in her. Butthen, neither was there in Joan, either; and Joan was a perfectly goodmember of the clan.
Oh, sometimes they laughed at Joan for being much too serious about herpart. She was the artist and the self-acknowledged arbiter of goodtaste, the monitor of the proper way. She was the gracious hostess whenvisitors were at hand. To her the clan had conceded the job of decidingthe arrangement of the rooms. To her the girls turned for advice in howto dress. And her advice was good. With some real though limited talentas an artist, she had the touch of instinct, the sense of rightness, andthe drive to be unsatisfied with anything but what was right. And she,conceding that children were necessary and even desirable in theirplaces, still deplored the havoc they could wreak. She was not a goodmanager of the children.
But then, he thought, why should she be? The clan had other purposesthan to raise children; that was one of the important needs the clanfulfilled, but it was only one. In fact, it was one of the strengths ofthe clan that the different members had separate talents they couldbring to it. Each with his own value, each unique. With the separatenessthat let them complement each other to form the whole. This was theirstrength.
No, Marcia was not greatly maternal, certainly--but this was notimportant. But he could not quite decide what was important.
He was still puzzling over it when Betsy bounced into the kitchen.
"Whew," she said, giving him a light kiss, "what a day!" She pulled outa mirror from her pocket and looked into it. "I think I'm going to havea red nose. That sun was bright and hot; I hope none of the kids got toomuch. But they _will_ keep dashing into the water, and it's hard tocatch them again to get them to put their shirts on. I think Timmy'sback is a little red, but I guess it won't be too much." She collapsedviolently into a chair.
Tom smiled at her. It was refreshing to see anyone who could be tired insuch a dynamic way. "You look as if you had a day," he said.
"We did," she said, looking happy. She heaved herself up to get a cupand saucer and to pour herself a cup of coffee. Then, sitting down, shelooked at him. "And what have you been doing?" she asked him.
"Oh, buzzing around town," he told her. "And brooding."
"Brooding?" she asked. He explained to her what the situation was,telling her that they must soon decide what to do about Marcia--whetherto accept her as a member of the clan or not. He told her that only byaccepting the girl could they get the job at Eltron Electronics thatthey wanted. And he told her Ricky's thinking that the thing must bedecided that night, and warned her of the coming caucus. The wordsboiled out of him; when he was through, he slumped down, suddenly tired.
Betsy cocked her head and studied him. There was a soft look in her eyesof the sort she usually saved for the children. "Why has it upset you?"she asked.
"Upset me?" Tom seemed surprised. "Well, yes, I suppose it has. Sue wasin here, and I got to thinking of the kids. What this'll mean to them."
"The kids?" She looked surprised. "Why should this mean anything to thekids? Anything special, that is?"
"Well, if we turn her down, we got to take the Universal job," heexplained. "And that means moving. Moving's always hard on kids. And ifwe accept her, then the kids'll have a lot to do with her."
"I assume she won't roast them live over the coals," Betsy said. "And Ithink the kids are tough enough to take almost anything else." Shesnickered. "You don't see them as much as I do. If you did you'd knowthey were a lot tougher than they look, the delicate little things!"
"Oh, I'm not talking about that," he said. "I don't expect her to batthem around or anything. But I just wonder how they'll take to _her_."
She shrugged. "If they don't like her, they can always come to me. OrRita. Or Polly or Esther or Sandy. Or even Joan, providing they don'tmess up the livingroom while they do it. The kids will get along, don'tworry.
"As a matter of fact," she went on, "that's a funny thing. One of thechief arguments against the clans is that it doesn't single out a manand a woman as the parents of a child. This is supposed to do somethingto the child--make him insecure, somehow. But as far as I can see, itmakes him more secure. In the first place, he's got that many moreparents to choose from, and he can usually find one at least in the moodand with the time to give him what he needs at the moment. Then, too,the clan can afford to have one or two of its people completelyconcentrated on the children at any given time. And that job can getsort of passed around so nobody gets fed up with it.
"Or, rather, if a person does get fed up with the kids, she doesn't haveto force herself to be halfway decent to them; she doesn't have to haveanything to do with them at all until she gets over her blues. So mostof the time, the kids get the kind of attention they ought to get, andthey get it from a person who's in the mood to give it. Personally, Ithink that they're a lot better off under this system, and you'd have ahard time telling me any different."
"They do look healthy and happy," he said.
"They sure do." She looked proud and satisfied. "I'd hate to be the oneto try to keep up with them if they were any healthier. Or any fuller ofideas."
"That's why I hate to risk it," he told her. "Everything's going so wellnow.... The kids are so obviously.... But I take it you don't thinkthere's much risk?"
"No." Her tone was incisive. "Any storms she can cook up, the kids canstand better than you and I can."
"Maybe you're right," Tom conceded. "But what about yourself? You thinkshe is apt to make 'storms'?"
Betsy shrugged. "There's always storms when you take in a new member.You have to adjust; and, even more, the new one has to adjust. Andadjustments aren't ever easy. I remember when I came in. I had some badtimes--and I was brought up in a clan, too; I knew what I was gettinginto. But still there were times when it hurt. When I felt lost. When Ididn't know what you people were like. When I felt like a stranger, notknowing your private jokes and unconscious language. When I felt out ofplace and alone.
"There were plenty of times when this happened, but I stuck it out. AndI learned. I learned what made you people tick, and why you did some ofthe things you did. I grew into being a part of you. Now I am one of theclan, legally, socially, and in my inmost self.
"That's _my_ story. Marcia will have a lot harder time; she doesn't evenknow what a clan is. She's not only never been a part of one, but thepeople she has been with have sneered at them, and made no effort tounderstand. She hasn't even been able to get along with one husband;she's going to have a hard time learning to get along with seven. Not tomentio
n six co-wives. Chances are she's been spoiled, made the center ofthings without due cause. She was an only child, wasn't she? She's goingto have it awfully tough."
"Do you think she can take it?" Tom asked.
"Not knowing the lady, that's guessing too hard," Betsy answered. "Ithink it's possible that she can learn. And maybe it's not entirelyagainst her that she doesn't know anything about the clans except what'swrong. She'll soon find out she doesn't know a thing, and then she canstart from scratch--learn like the kids do. Maybe that's easier than theunlearning of the 'almost-right' that people like me have to do. Atleast she's got no preconceived ideas that will stand more than a day ortwo of actual experience." She shrugged.
"The thing that I'm worried about," Tom said, "is that she may be ableto split us--divide us up into factions and set us against each other. Ihope she can't, but what happens if she does?"
"Then we split," Betsy answered. "But so what? I don't think she can doit; but even if she can, so what? I wouldn't want it to happen but itwouldn't be a disaster. We'd all land on our feet somewhere. I know I'dhead out for the nearest clan and I'd get into that clan just as soon asI could. When I got into it, and got accepted as a real part of it, thenI'd think of the rest of this as just an unhappy incident. A tragedy,but not the end of life. But as far as I'm concerned, this is too remotea possibility to worry about."
"You are quite unafraid, aren't you?" Tom said.
"Yes," she answered simply, her voice calm and cool. "I'm not afraid ofMarcia--not of what she can do to the kids or to myself. I think thekids are strong enough emotionally to stand anything. And I think I am,too."
There was a quiet confidence in her voice. She reached out and pattedhis hand. Then, getting up, she started to get out the food for theevening meal while Tom continued to sit there, thinking. And when Tomgot up and walked out, she still said nothing but looked after him witha look that had something warm and tender in it.
As he walked through the livingroom, he saw Rita stretched out on thecouch. He looked questioningly at her wondering if the day had been toohard for her, being, as she was, six months along towards the twelfthchild of the clan. But she smiled at him and shook her head. "Don't beworried," she said; "I'm just a little tired but not too much."
"Anything I can get you?" he asked.
"No, thanks," she said, her voice cheerful. "I just need to get off myfeet."
He started to say something about Marcia, but then stopped. What goodwould it do? he asked himself. Rita, with the instinct of birth closeupon her, was too absorbed in herself and the life she carried. Theproblem, to her, would exist only if it threatened herself or her child.And by all the signs, she felt no threat. Her calm acceptance of thedaily life, her quiet absorption in the now and here, measured aconfidence in the clan that was complete.
No, to talk of Marcia could do no good. If he succeeded in impressingher with the importance of the problem, it would be because he made herrealize that Marcia was a threat. It would be at the expense of herfeeling of security, the security that let her wait her time out in calmacceptance and assurance. And if he did not persuade her of theproblem's significance, she could not contribute to it. Under normalcircumstances, she was not one to deal with abstract questions. She hadan acute awareness of personalities that transcended logic. She had aninstinct, a sixth sense, almost, for responding to the needs of others.But she was not a philosopher, and neither could she handle abstractproblems.
And so he smiled at her and told her: "Call me if you do want anything.I'll be outside." And he passed on through and out the door.