So now you come home and find Dwyer up hereWhy,...
So now you come home and find Dwyer up hereWhy, Seymour?" The Swede could not say to him, "The girl in South Carolina was beautiful, but not half as beautiful as Dawn He could not say to him, "The authority of beauty is a very irrational thing He was twenty-three years old and could only say, "I'm in love with her
"'In love,' what does that mean? What is 'in love' going to do for you when you have a child? How are you going to raise a child? As $ a Catholic? As a Jew? No, you are going to raise a child who won't f, be one thing or the other--all because you are 'in love' {? His father was rightThat was what happenedThey raised a child who was neither Catholic nor Jew, who instead was first a stutterer, then a killer, then a JainHe had tried all his life never to do the wrong thing, and that was what he had doneAll the wrongness that he had locked away in himself, that he had buried as deep as a man omega watch orange could bury it, had come out anyway, because a girl was beautifulThe most serious thing in his life, seemingly from the time he was born, was to prevent the suffering of those he loved, to be kind to people, a kind person through and throughThat was why he had brought Dawn to meet secretly with his father at the factory office--to try to resolve the religious impasse and avoid making either of them unhappyThe meeting had been suggested by his father: face to face, between "the girl," as Lou Levov charitably referred to her around the Swede, and "the ogre," as the girl called himDawn hadn't been afraid; to the Swede's astonishment she agreed"I walked out on that runway in a bathing suit, didn't I? It wasn't easy, in case you didn't knowTwenty-five thousand peopleIt's not a very dignified feeling, in a bright white bathing suit and bright white high heels, being looked at by twenty-five thousand peopleI chanel bags pink appeared in a parade in a bathing suitMy father almost diedI taped the back of that damn bathing suit to my skin, Seymour, so it wouldn't ride up on me--masking tape on my own behindBut I took the job of Miss New Jersey and so I did the workEvery town in the stateFifty dollars an appearanceBut if you work hard, the money adds up, so I did itWorking hard at something totally different that scared me to death--but I did itThe Christmas I broke the news to my parents about Miss Union County--you think that was fun? But I did itAnd if I could do all that, I can do this, because this isn't being a silly girl on a float, this is my life, my entire futureThis is for keeps! But you'll be there, won't you? I cannot go there by myselfYou have to be there!"
She was so incredibly gutsy there was no choice but to say, "Where else would I be?" On the way down to the factory, he warned her not to mention rosary beads or omega seamaster for sale the cross or heaven and to stay away from Jesus as much as possible"If he asks if there are any crosses hanging in the house, say no
"But that's a lie
"Dawnie, it won't help anything if you say threeOne is just the same as threeIt gets your point over
"And you don't have to mention the other stuff
"What other stuff?"
"The Virgin Mary
"That is not stuffIf he asks, 'Do you have any statues?' just tell him no, just tell him, 'We don't have statues, we don't have pictures, the one cross and that's it'" Religious ornaments, he explained, statues like those in her dining room and her mother's bedroom, pictures like those her mother had on the walls were sore subjects with his fatherHe wasn't defending his father's positionHe was just explaining that the man had been brought up a certain way, and that's the way he was, and there was nothing anybody could do about it, so why stir him up?
Opposing saddle christian dior the father is no picnic and not opposing the father is no picnic--that's what he was discovering
Anti-Semitism was another sore subjectWatch out what you say about JewsBest to say nothing about JewsAnd stay away from priests, don't talk about priests"Don't tell him that story about your father and the priests when he was a caddie at the country club as a kid
"Why would I ever tell him that?"
"I don't know, but don't go near it
"Why?"
"I don't know--just don'tBecause if she told him that the first time her father realized priests had genitals was in the locker room when he used to caddie on weekends, that up until then he didn't even think they were anatomically sexual, his own father might very well be tempted to ask her, "You know what they do with the foreskins of the little Jewish boys after the circumcision?" And she would have to say, "I don't know, MrWhat do they do with the foreskins?" and borse gucci M