"At least we'll be able to keep an eye on her most of the time that way," he reasoned. I joined him in his den without Mother present.
"What can she do, Daddy?"
"Put her to work filing, Olivia."
"Filing?"
"Find work, make work, keep her occupied. Please," he pleaded. 'Sending her off to another school is just going to be a waste of time and money. She's not a student."
"What do you expect from her then?" I asked.
"I expect . . . hope to find her a suitable husband as soon as possible," he replied.
Before me? I wanted to ask. You want to get her off and married in her own home before me?
"You mean pass off the responsibility to some poor, unsuspecting clod," I chimed.
"She has some qualities to recommend her, Olivia. She is an attractive young woman. Don't you think she might grow up a little now?"
"No," I said firmly. "Not as long as you insist on excusing her every act of misconduct."
He stared at me and then sighed.
"Please, please don't make this any more difficult for us than it is, Olivia," he pleaded.
Why was he like this? Where was the strong, firm man who ran a string of businesses with such authority and assurance? Maybe Mother was right, maybe Daddy was like all the other men, easy to manipulate after all. Maybe my mother was the smarter of the two.
"You're being had, Daddy," I said uncharitably. "You're a fool for believing her tears and her moans and her batting eyelashes."
He turned white before the blood rushed back into his face.
"That's not true, Olivia. It's what I've told you before, what I've tried to get you to understand above all . . . family, family is the most important thing. We've got to protect her because she is the weak link. I was hoping you would have grasped all that by now and be my true assistant in this," he said.
"All right, Daddy," I relented. "I'll try to find her something to do, try again to make her into someone respectable and responsible."
"That's more like it, Olivia. Now you're being a true Gordon," he said.
However, it took a lot more than my resigning myself to Daddy's logic to make any of this even come close to resulting in what he wanted. Belinda, of course, enthusiastically agreed to go to work at the office, but every morning, she refused to wake up in time. Every morning I had to be the one to wake her and prod her into dressing herself quickly. Most mornings Daddy had to leave without me and I had to drive myself and Belinda to the office. She was always half awake when she arrived, moaning and complaining about getting up so early.
"If we own the business, why do we have to keep such dumb hours?" she demanded.
"Precisely because we own the business, Belinda. If we don't look after it, who will? The other employees don't have our interest at heart. This is what it means to be responsible and successful," I lectured, but my lectures, just like the ones she had gotten all her life from her teachers, went in one ear, were twirled around until they were so mixed up they made no sense, and then were dumped out of the other ear.
She moped and moved through the office like a somnambulist, doing in hours what it would take any other person minutes to accomplish. Anything distracted her. She could spend an hour gazing out the window. She was on the telephone with her friends every chance she got, despite my repeated warnings and my constant chastising. Each time I reprimanded her, she would cry and go running to Daddy who would then ask me to go a little easier on her.
"Go easier?" I cried. "Even the little work she does has to be redone. She misplaces files, gets them out of alphabetical order, loses documents . . . she's doing it deliberately, Daddy. It's the same old game. She wants to be home and loose and allowed to indulge herself in entertainments and not do any work, so she does it badly and hopes you'll give up on her."
"I know," he said. "Please have a little more patience with her. Keep trying," he urged.
Once again, I wondered why. What was it about her that made Daddy so soft, so pliable and so forgiving? If I came close to asking such a question, he merely shook his head and begged me to keep hoping and believing and trying to make her a better person.
Daddy hadn't forgotten his intention to marry her off as soon as possible. The attempt he had made to arrange a relationship between me and Clayton was completely forgotten, however. I was put on the perennial ba
ck burner and Belinda was moved up to the front. It wasn't something he made obvious, however. It was just like fishing. He cast his bait and hoped the right fish would be caught on the right line.
The first big attempt came when the Childs were invited to a most elegant dinner at our home, far more involved than the dinner party that had been designed to snare Clayton for me. Colonel Childs was Daddy's attorney and his son Nelson was finishing his last year of law school. No better fish swam in our waters, and I was beginning to think no better shark than Belinda swam in them as well.
Four or five times a year, Daddy would host an elaborate dinner party, usually inviting ten to fifteen guests, hiring a service staff, and having a caterer prepare an elaborate, six-course dinner. Sometimes, there was even entertainment: a pianist or violinist for after dinner. Belinda always hated these parties. They were far too formal and far too restricting for her. She had to behave properly, follow proper etiquette and keep from doing or saying silly things. She never liked the music, never liked sitting quietly and being obedient. Usually, Mother or Daddy excused her before the evening was half over and she retreated to her room to gossip on the telephone.