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Back The Fall of Valor Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

“Cliff?” She gave the name a high-­pitched inflection that seemed to say it was nothing to have known Cliff long, millions of people had known him a long time, and who was he to know anyway? “Dear yes. Why I guess I’ve known Cliff, why, at least eight years.”

“You’ve gone together all that time?”

“Oh my no. I didn’t run around with Cliff in high school. I knew who he was but I didn’t go with him. I couldn’t. Lots of girls did but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well you see, Cliff was always kind of a—well, not a tough, but he isn’t very well bred, you know. Nice girls didn’t go with him. I remember once I gave him a date in junior year and all my girl friends just lit into me. They said I simply couldn’t go out with a boy like that and I guess they were right—then.”

“Perhaps they were jealous.” With difficulty, Ethel Grandin made the appropriate remarks, though her mind was not on this conversation at all.

“Of Cliff? No no. Not at all. Any one of them could have had Cliff any time they liked—he was dying to go with nice girls like us—but we’d have been talked about.” She opened wide the fingers of one hand, laid them on her hair, and drew them slowly together again to preserve her wave. “But I will say this for him. The first time he took me out he behaved like a perfect gentleman. He didn’t even try to kiss me. I told the girls and they all thought I was lying.”

“Then I should think,” Ethel said, “that would have made it all right for you to ‘go’ with him.”

“Well no, because you see there was always his— Well, it isn’t very nice of me, but I know you won’t repeat it: there was his family. They live in the wrong part of town, he and his father. His father’s a carpenter or plumber or something—an immigrant, of course. The Haumans aren’t very much, you know. I suppose you’ve noticed.”

“Your mother didn’t approve?”

“Mother didn’t know he existed. I didn’t approve.” She gazed into the mirror with a dreamy expression. “Funny how those things change . . .”

Automatically Ethel replied: “They must have or you wouldn’t have married him.”

“Sometimes I’m so crazy about him I can’t stand it. All last month I was; all last year. And other times I could just— But I suppose that’s life.”