Only, . . . Belinda probably wouldn't have put up as much of a battle.
In the days that followed, Daddy never mentioned my date nor asked any questions. Whenever I saw Harrison Keiser, I noticed that he looked away. I imagined Clayton had told a different story, blaming me for the failure of the relationship.
Mother concluded it just wasn't meant to be. Sometimes she had a fatalistic attitude, especially when it came to romance. About five days following my disastrous date, my only date in a year, she stopped at my bedroom and knocked on the opened door.
"How are you doing, Olivia?" she asked and immediately grimaced in anticipation of an unpleasant response.
"I'm all right, Mother."
"I'm sorry your date with Clayton wasn't a success." "I'm not. I'd hate to imagine what life would be like married to such a creature."
She smiled and sat on my bed. My mother and I had never really had what other daughters called their mother-daughter talks. Most of what I knew about men and about sex I had taught myself. On a number of different occasions, Mother had tried to get into an intimate conversation with me, but neither of us was very successful at it.
"Sometimes," she began this early evening, "I feel to blame for your . . . present situation. I feel I should have done more to help you find someone, Olivia."
"That's silly, Mother."
"No, no, it's not," she insisted. "My mother did a great deal to help me. She was a very understanding, very sensitive woman, a great companion."
"I'll be just fine," I said.
"Of course you will, dear. You are too intelligent not to succeed in every way. I know you're far more intelligent than I am, even more intelligent than your father, although I would never dare tell him that."
I started to protest, but she put up her hand.
"Sometimes, however, it's better for a woman to seem less intelligent, Olivia."
"What?" I started to smile, but saw an expression on her face I hadn't seen before. She looked suddenly wiser, more perceptive.
"Sometimes, a woman can't be as headstrong or as direct as a man. Most of the time, in fact. Instead, she has to be more subtle, a bit of a conniver. You have to learn how to play a man like an instrument to get what you want or get him to do what you want."
I sat back, a bit shocked..
"What are you saying, Mother?"
"That there's a secret to forming and
maintaining a good relationship with a man and that secret is simply to let the man think he's always in charge. Whenever I want something, really want something, I manage to get your father to think he wanted it first, that it was his idea. That way, he doesn't feel he's being manipulated, you see."
She leaned toward me and smiled.
"Even though he is."
I snapped back as if a rubber band held me on the seat.
"That's not true, Mother. Daddy knows exactly what he is doing all the time and he never does anything without evaluating the consequences thoroughly."
"Of course, he doesn't," she agreed. "But how he evaluates it and how he reaches a conclusion is my little secret. I think you have to relax more when you're in the company of men, Olivia. You act as if . . ."
"As if what, Mother?"
"As if you have to compete, to win something, to show them up, and men just don't appreciate that in a woman. You have to work on being more subtle."
"Be more like Belinda, is that what you're saying?"
"I suppose, in a way," she admitted, nodding.
"And get pregnant and pop out babies in my room in the middle of the night?" I shot back. She stiffened. "Of course not, dear. You have to know when to say no, when to be firm."