The Progress of Love

myself shedding dreams and lies and vows and errors, unaccountable. I didn’t see that I was the same one, embracing, repudiating. I thought I could turn myself inside out, over and over again, and tumble through the world scot free.

E SKIMO
    Mary Jo can hear what Dr. Streeter would have to say.
    “Regular little United Nations back here.”
    Mary Jo, knowing how to handle him, would remark that there was always first class.
    He would say that he didn’t propose paying an arm and a leg for the privilege of swilling free champagne.
    “Anyway, you know what’s up in first class? Japs. Japanese businessmen on their way home from buying up some more of the country.”
    Mary Jo might say then that Japanese hardly seemed foreign to her anymore. She would say this thoughtfully, as if she was wondering about it, almost talking to herself.
    “I mean, they hardly seem like a foreign race.”
    “Well, you seem foreign to them, and you better not forget it.”
    When he had got these remarks off his chest, Dr. Streeter would not be displeased. He would settle down beside her, glad they had these front seats where there was room for his legs. A tall, bulky man, florid and white-haired, he would stand out here—a slightly clumsy but noble-headed giant—among the darker skins, the more compact and fine-boned races, in their flashy or picturesque clothes. He would settle down as if he had a right to be here, as if he had a right to be on this earth—which only other men of hisage and race, dressed and thinking like him, could really match. But he isn’t stretching his legs out beside her, grumbling and content. She is off to Tahiti by herself. His Christmas present to her, this holiday. She has an aisle seat, and the window seat is empty.
    “He has the mind of a dinosaur, that’s all,” said Dr. Streeter’s daughter, Rhea, not long ago, talking to Mary Jo about what seems to be her favorite subject—her father. She has a list of favorite subjects, favorite serious subjects—nuclear proliferation, acid rain, unemployment, as well as racial bigotry and the situation of women—but the road into them always appears to be through her father. Her father is not far from being the cause of all this, in Rhea’s mind. He is behind bombs and pollution and poverty and discrimination. And Mary Jo has to admit that there are things he says that would lead you to this conclusion.
    “That’s just his opinions,” Mary Jo said. She pictured a certain kind of dinosaur, the one with the frill of bony plates along its spine—a showy armor, almost like decoration. “Men have to have their opinions.”
    What a stupid thing to say, especially to Rhea. Rhea is twenty-five years old, unemployed, a fat, breezy, pretty girl who rides around on a motorcycle. When Mary Jo said that, Rhea just stared at her for a minute, smiling her fat leisurely smile. Then she said softly, “Why, Mary Jo? Why do men have to have their opinions? So women can sit around clicking their tongues while men wreck the world?”
    She had taken off her motorcycle helmet and set it down, wet from the rain, on Mary Jo’s desk. She was shaking out her long, dark, tangled hair.
    “No man is wrecking my world,” said Mary Jo spiritedly, picking up the helmet and setting it on the floor. She didn’t feel as equal to this conversation as she sounded. What was it Rhea wanted, really, when she came into her father’s office and started up on these rambling complaints? She surely didn’t expect Mary Jo to agree with her. No. She wanted and expected Mary Jo to defendher father, so that she could be amused and scornful (Oh, sure, Mary Jo, you think he’s God!), and at the same time reassured. Mary Jo was supposed to do the work this girl’s mother should have done—making her understand her father, and forgive and admire him. But Dr. Streeter’s wife is not one for forgiving or admiring anybody, least of all her husband. She is a drinker, and thinks herself a wit. Sometimes she will phone the office and ask if she may speak to the Great Healer. A big, loud, untidy woman, with wild white hair, who likes to spend her time with actors—she is on the board of the local theater—and so-called poet—English professors from the university, where she has been working on her Ph.D. for the last several years.
    “A man like your father, who saves lives every day,” said Mary Jo to Rhea—making a point she had often made before—“can hardly be said to be wrecking the