OCR Text |
Show "Or he'll drop me, I guess. Men are always shouting ultimatums. He won't drop me but he can sure make things unpleasant." My heart beat picked up. Maybe she was wrong, maybe he would drop her. But after she had gone to bed to get her sleep so she could get up early to go to work the next morning, I sat up trying to read and thinking instead jtthat it was terribly hard on her, too hard. As much as I appreciated her loyalty and independence, I could see no future in me staying on. The arrangement itself, though I had all the time I wanted to read and enlarge upon my provincial past, and though she had no housework, seemed to have no future. I could not see any; I'd leave sooner or later anyhow. So I went down and put pressure on the manager of the coed co-op and he told me I would most likely get a place there when the spring quarter ended, in summer. When Amelia told Ben about her parents' plans for them, to her surprise he didn't explode, he sagged instead, as if the weight had finally gotten too heavy for him. He didn't even crack his knuckles. He got cold and sad instead, which really scared Amelia. He listened to the Miami Beach plan and then predicted that after the honeymoon they'd fuvc&a&fy be moving to Cleveland, living in the Rubins' house and he would be working in the lumber business with Mr. Rubin. Amelia said she would do anything he said; he sighed and said th^ings had already gone too far: to go ahead with the wedding. It was only once. But no Miami Beach, Amelia called her parents and said no to Miami Beach, absolutely, that if they insisted there would be no wedding at all. When she didn't cave intf on that, the Rubins apparently feared for the first time that they could go too far and they consented to find another "surprise." With that concession, and a few other minor ones, the wedding was on, the first Saturday in June, in Cleveland. |