The Snare

6. SURVIVING

6. SURVIVING Julia had found a fairly nice place for herself after the Parhams had eased her out. It was a little too far over toward the Negro district for her to care to reach it much after dark, at least not without catching a cab. But she had her livingroom-dinette, she had her kitchen, her bedroom, even her little balcony, which was great for sitting on bare-legged, in something cool. She never had enough money. A better job was indicated, marriage was practically a necessity, yet she did nothing at all about either. She must, however, have said yes—more or less inadvertently —to a widower with one child who used to take her out to dinner, for she was announced as engaged and Aunt Isabel and Uncle Maurice gave a party for her. The man's name was Joe Delaney and he was in insurance like Bucky Squiremeister used to be, only it was a new company trying to edge in, and they'd sent him here from outside. The Squiremeisters were at the party and so, to her surprise, were Edie and Paul Fowler. Edie was pregnant for the third time and wanted Julia to know that her career was not defunct, she was progressing a course at a time toward her Ph.D. which she probably wouldn't reach till 1990, but at least she hadn't let go. She had to keep going to be able to converse with Paul, that was one motive. "And then the children have to talk to him, too," said Julia, "all about physics, biochemistry, and space capsules." 255 2 5 6 T H E S N A R E "Why certainly," said Edie, over her great basket of a stomach, content to be teased. Paul had scarcely dressed for the occasion. He had come in a dark brown suit and dark brown shirt, wearing loafers and red socks. On purpose, or in scorn? He scarcely spoke to anyone and seemed to be nosing about the house as though it were a museum which all the guests had paid to enter. Tulane had made him a full professor recently, so Julia could reassure Aunt Isabel that he acted that way out of brilliance of mind. Maurice observed Julia and Edie in deep conversation at the turn of the veranda. The pleasure of the sight struck and held him, for Julia had on a flounced-out dress in off-white net printed with great fronds or wings, while the little pregnant thing in flowered cotton looked like a comment on what marriage ought to bring. The insurance man had already brought Maurice some business—and there was the Parham business, too, which had been quietly handed over to him some little while back. (Who could sound as full of authority and mystery as Maurice Devigny when hinting at the perils of the Napoleonic Code to those whose tradition for generations had been nurtured in the English common law?) The young women were smiling at one another while they talked, and, moving past with empty glasses, he heard Edie say she had never expected a regular marriage to interest Julia, but it just went to show you never could tell, the most way-out people turned around and plunged into housekeeping and the baby business, it happened all the time. "Oh, it hasn't happened yet" said Julia, and Maurice had a freezing moment before he decided she was just in a mood and walked on. It was a mild party as those things went. One of Julia's former professors climbed to the landing above the big entrance hall—the stairs broadened and the banister went into a curl at the bottom where a bronze goddess with flimsy garments fluttering about her charms held up a candelabra—and began reciting verse which Elizabeth Spencer 257 started with Shakespeare but grew off-color as more was requested from the crowd below. It was not wise to do this only from the point of view of scaring off Joe Delaney, who perhaps was fearful of New Orleans ways, being from somewhere up in Alabama—Birmingham, wasn't it? Julia moved around enough to hear people talking. She heard it murmured once, as a question, how much the young man knew about her, and she wondered what was meant: the Springland affair, lost and done with? Or the old rumor...