“So prove it to her. Return to school. At least put on a good show. Spend time with your friends again . . .”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“How can you not have friends?” With a skeptical smile, she asked, “You don’t have a boyfriend?”
“Not really. I’m spending some time with someone, but I haven’t—”
“Haven’t what?” she asked suspiciously.
“Haven’t even gone out on a date with him,” I said sharply. “I didn’t mean anything else.”
“So you’re a virgin?”
“Yes,” I said, maybe sounding a little too defensive. She laughed. “What?”
“I was just thinking of something funny Mrs. Brittany said. ‘Are you now or have you ever been a virgin?’ ”
“Who’s Mrs. Brittany?”
She stopped smiling. “Never mind. I thought your generation was even less hung up on all these sexual inhibitions than mine was.” She smiled, tilting her head a little as she remembered something. “That was always an interesting contradiction to me with them.”
“Who?”
“Papa and Mama. Mama had, what should I say, a more liberal attitude about it all, and Papa . . . well, Papa was Papa, I guess. Wasn’t he on your back, checking on everything you did, sniffing around like a bloodhound looking for something not so much sinful as irregular, breaking some code of behavior or something?”
“Yes, thanks to you,” I told her.
She wiped away her disdainful smile. “Yeah, I bet. In his mind, I was the poster child for all that was bad. Let’s get back to you. She’s going to be in the hospital a while, and then she’s going to start treatments, and she’s going to be in and out often.”
“I told you I can take care of myself. I can even pay our bills and balance our checkbook. Mama showed me how to do all that. Besides, the city is full of girls my age running homes, looking after younger brothers and sisters and even parents.”
She nodded. “However, there will be a time . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “But go back to school. I promise I’ll stop in to see her every day.”
“What if you get an assignment?”
“Don’t be a wise-ass. Here, taste this wine. It’s my favorite French white burgundy.”
“I know it,” I said. “It’s Mama’s favorite, too.”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly remembering. “I think that was how I got to know it.”
She looked down for a moment like someone who might start to cry. Was I seeing a crack in that armor she had welded around her heart? As if she realized it herself, she looked up quickly and snapped an order at the waitress. Then she looked at me sternly.
“Look, if you go to school tomorrow, I’ll pick you up at the end of the day, and we’ll visit her together, okay? Will you do it?”
“Yes,” I said reluctantly.
“Good. I guess I’ll call France,” she said.
“You will?”
“Do you want to do it? Maybe it is better that you do it.”
“No, it’s all right if you do it,” I said. “Whom should we call first?”