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Show Woodworth/121 is excellent. Ruth sits back in her chair, smiles at their enjoyment. Explains how she flavored the potatoes, how a pinch of sugar in the pea water will swedten them. Marty forgets the cause for the celebration. Forgets that after dinner whe will be leaving home. Recommends good books for Ruth to read from the titles she has seen at the book store. Argues with Ned about whether girls under the age of eighteen should have to have their parents' permission to have an abortion. Ruth agrees with her. Maybe it just isn't any of the parents' business. They all have seconds, -on beef, on wine. Then they sit, silent, satiated. Marty watches the wax drip down the sides of the candles, pulls off the hardened drips, and feeds them back into the flame. "Do you suppose that our girls will ever stop playing with candles?" Ned asks. Ruth sighs. "I suppose there's no hope now. They will certainly never be ladies in the way that my mother would have defined the word. But things have changed now. I suppose that if they acted like ladies, they'd be considered queer." "Well, Marty is going out in the world now," Ned says. "If we have had any influence over her, I guess it's going to start to show. Or, I guess, it will stop showing, since now she can do what she wants." "I could pretty much do what I wanted in college," Marty says • "That's different. There you had a structure, an organization. Telling you where you had to be, how to act. From now on, you're on your own." "Come on. You guys sound like I'm never going to see you again. I'm only moving in town." |