TWO
* * *
Buffalo. The Colonel. Wilson.
Was it good for me?
A military life, regulated, controlled. You may be over eighteen, Mary, you may be an adult, but not here. Not my granddaughter. I gave you advice, direction. I told you what you had to do and you didn't listen. Do you know what happens to girls who don't listen, who don't obey?
Do you know what happens to bad girls?
I learned a lot about Dad while I stayed with the Colonel. Why my father is the way he is, why his heart gave out on him. To be the Colonel's son for all those years, to forever have him hanging over you, I know now how it destroyed my father a little at a time. Aunt Julie? Why not escape into a bottle, to hide from the Colonel's eternal disapproving stare?
You are never good enough. You can never be good enough.
Until you have led men in war, you are nothing.
You are a girl, Mary. You are to follow. You are to obey.
Always.
Dad became a Minister, rejected the Marines. They say in our family that this was not because he was rejecting the Colonel, but I know better.
Julie became an alcoholic.
I tried to burn the man's house down.
You really think that was an accident?
#
We're functional.
A functional family.
That's what they say about us. Surprisingly functional.
I remember coming home. Maybe being with the Colonel did help me, in a strange, perverse way, because living with the Colonel I got to see how bad it could really be. I got to see what the wrong man could do to me.
Like Wilson. Control your wife. That's what he was told. That's what he would have done, too. I came so close with him, so close to making that mistake. It was Ben, good old dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks Ben, who helped me out of that one.
Thank you, Ben, and I'm sorry. Sorry I led you on, but I had to, you see. It was my only way out, throwing myself at you so that Wilson would catch us.
Another accident, you say? Just Mary, being stupid again?
Stupid girl. Bad girl.
Say it. You know you want to.
* * *
Buffalo. The Colonel. Wilson.
Was it good for me?
A military life, regulated, controlled. You may be over eighteen, Mary, you may be an adult, but not here. Not my granddaughter. I gave you advice, direction. I told you what you had to do and you didn't listen. Do you know what happens to girls who don't listen, who don't obey?
Do you know what happens to bad girls?
I learned a lot about Dad while I stayed with the Colonel. Why my father is the way he is, why his heart gave out on him. To be the Colonel's son for all those years, to forever have him hanging over you, I know now how it destroyed my father a little at a time. Aunt Julie? Why not escape into a bottle, to hide from the Colonel's eternal disapproving stare?
You are never good enough. You can never be good enough.
Until you have led men in war, you are nothing.
You are a girl, Mary. You are to follow. You are to obey.
Always.
Dad became a Minister, rejected the Marines. They say in our family that this was not because he was rejecting the Colonel, but I know better.
Julie became an alcoholic.
I tried to burn the man's house down.
You really think that was an accident?
#
We're functional.
A functional family.
That's what they say about us. Surprisingly functional.
I remember coming home. Maybe being with the Colonel did help me, in a strange, perverse way, because living with the Colonel I got to see how bad it could really be. I got to see what the wrong man could do to me.
Like Wilson. Control your wife. That's what he was told. That's what he would have done, too. I came so close with him, so close to making that mistake. It was Ben, good old dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks Ben, who helped me out of that one.
Thank you, Ben, and I'm sorry. Sorry I led you on, but I had to, you see. It was my only way out, throwing myself at you so that Wilson would catch us.
Another accident, you say? Just Mary, being stupid again?
Stupid girl. Bad girl.
Say it. You know you want to.