To Sail Beyond the Sunset (5 page)

“Father, you are a horrid man and you will come to a bad end.”

“Not as long as I can keep dodging them. Quit stalling.”

“Yes, sir. First Commandment: Thou shalt pay public homage to the god favored by the majority without giggling or even smiling behind your hand.”

“Go on.”

“Thou shalt not make any graven image of a sort that could annoy the powers that be, especially Mrs. Grundy—and,
exempli gratia
, this is why your anatomy book doesn’t show the clitoris. Mrs. Grundy wouldn’t like it because she doesn’t have one.”

“Or possibly has one the size of a banana,” my father answered, “but doesn’t want anyone to find out. Censorship is never logical but, like cancer, it is dangerous to ignore it when it shows up. Darling daughter, the purpose of the second commandment is simply to reinforce the first. A ‘graven image’ is any idol that could rival the official god; it has nothing to do with sculpture or etchings. Go on.”

“Thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord God in vain…which means don’t swear, not even Jiminy or Golly or darn, or use any of those four-letter words, or anything that Mother might consider vulgar. Father, there is something here that doesn’t make sense. Why is ‘vagina’ a good word while ‘cunt’ is a bad word? Riddle me that.”

“Both are bad words out of your mouth, youngster, unless you are talking to me…in which case you will use the medical Latin out of respect for my vocation and my gray hair. You are permitted to say the Anglo-Saxon synonym under your breath if it pleasures you.”

“Somehow it does, and I haven’t been able to analyze why. Number four—”

“Just a moment. Add to number three: Thou shalt not split infinitives, or dangle participles. Thou shalt shun solecisms. Thou shalt honor the noble English language, speech of Shakespeare, Milton, and Poe, and it will serve thee all the days of thy life. In particular, Maureen, if I ever again hear you say ‘different than’—I will beat you about the head and shoulders with an unbated ablative absolute.”

“Father, that was an accident! I meant to—”

“Excuses. Let’s hear number four.”

“Commandment number four. Go to church on Sundays. Smile and be pleasant but don’t be too smarmily a hypocrite. Don’t let my children, if and when I have any, play out in front on Sunday or make too much noise in back. Support the church by deeds and money but not too conspicuously.”

“Maureen, that’s well put. You’ll be a preacher’s wife yet.”

“Oh, God, Father, I’d rather be a whore!”

“The two are not incompatible.
Continuez, ma chère enfant
.”

“
Mais oui, mon cher papa.
Honor thy father and thy mother where anyone can see you. But once you leave home, live your own life. Don’t let them lead you around by the nose.
Mon papa
, you phrased that one yourself…and I don’t like it much. I do honor you, because I want to. And I don’t have anything against Mother; we just don’t sing in the same key. But I’m grateful to her.”

“Avoid gratitude, my dear; it can sour your stomach. After you marry and I’m dead, are you going to invite Adele to move in with you?”

“Uh—” I stopped, unable to answer.

“Think about it. Think it through carefully, in advance…because any answer you make in a hurry while my grave is still fresh is certain to be a wrong answer. Next item.”

“Thou shalt not commit murder. ‘Murder’ means killing somebody wrongfully. Other sorts of killing come in several flavors and each sort must be analyzed. I’m still working on this one, Father.”

“So am I. Just bear in mind that a person who eats meat is on the same moral level as the butcher.”

“Yes, sir. Thou shalt not get caught committing adultery…and that means don’t get pregnant, don’t catch a social disease, don’t let Mrs. Grundy even suspect you, and above all don’t let your spouse find out; it would make him most unhappy…and he could divorce you. Father, I don’t think I would ever be tempted by adultery. If God had intended a woman to have more than one man he would have supplied more men…instead of just enough to go around.”

“Who intended? I didn’t catch the name.”

“I said ‘God’ but you know what I mean!”

“I do indeed. You are indulging in theology; I would rather see you take laudanum. Maureen, when anyone talks about ‘God’s’ will or God’s intentions or Nature’s intentions if he is afraid to say ‘God,’ I know at once that he is selling a gold brick. To himself, in some cases, as you were just doing. To read a moral law into the fact that about as many males are born as females is to make too much stew from one oyster; it’s as slippery as ‘
Post hoc, propter hoc.
’

“As for your belief that you will never be tempted, here you are, barely dry behind the ears and only a year past first onset of menses…and you think you know all there is to know about the perils of sex…just as every girl your age throughout history has thought. So go right ahead. Jump the fence with your eyes closed. Break your husband’s heart and ruin his pride. Shame your children. Be a scandal in the public square. Get your tubes filled with pus, then let some butcher cut them out in some dirty back room with no ether. Go right ahead, Maureen. Count the world well lost for love. For that’s what sloppy adultery can get you: The world lost all right and an early grave and children who will never speak your name.”

“But, Father, I was saying that I must shun adultery; it’s too dangerous. I think I can manage it.” I smiled at him and recited:

“‘There was a young lady named Wilde—’”

Father picked it up:

“‘Who kept herself quite undefiled

“‘By thinking of Jesus,

“‘Contagious diseases,

“‘And the dangers of having a child.’

“Yes, I know; I taught you that limerick. Maureen, you failed to mention the safest route to prudent adultery. Yet I know that you’ve heard of it; I mentioned it the day I tried to give you an estimate of the amount of fence jumping going on in this county.”

“I must have missed it, Father.”

“I know I mentioned it. If you’ve just gotta—and the day might come—tell your husband what is biting you, ask his permission, ask for his help, ask him to stand jigger for you.”

“Oh! Yes, you did tell me about two couples like that county…but I could never figure out who they are.”

“I didn’t intend you to. So I threw in a few false clues.”

“I discounted for that, sir, knowing you. But I still couldn’t guess. Father, that seems so undignified. And wouldn’t, uh, my husband be terribly angry?”

“He might give you a fat lip; he won’t divorce you for asking. Then he might help you anyhow, on the sound theory that you would get into worse trouble if he says No. And—” Father gave a most evil grin. “—he might discover he enjoys the role.”

“Father, I find that I’m shocked.”

“Then get over it. Complacent husbands are common throughout history; there is a lot of voyeur in everyone…especially in males but females weren’t left out. He might jump at the chance to help you…because you helped him just that way, six weeks earlier. Stood lookout for him and that young schoolteacher, then you lied like a diplomat to cover up for them. Next commandment.”

“Wait a minute, please! I want to talk about this one some more. Adultery.”

“And that is just what I’m not going to let you do. You think about it but not a word out of you on this subject for at least two weeks. Next.”

“Thou shalt not steal. I couldn’t improve that one, Father.”

“Would you steal to feed a baby?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Think about other exceptions; we’ll discuss it in a year or two. But it is a good general rule. But why won’t you steal? You’re smart; you can probably get away with stealing all your life. Why won’t you do it?”

“Uh—”

“Don’t grunt.”

“Father, you’re infuriating! I don’t steal because I’m too stinkin’ proud!”

“Exactly! Perfect. For the same reason you don’t cheat in school, or cheat in games. Pride. Your own concept of yourself. ‘To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day—’”

“‘—thou canst not then be false to any man.’ Yes, sir.”

“But you dropped the ‘g’ from the participle. Repeat it and this time pronounce it correctly: You don’t steal because—”

“I am too…
stinking
…proud!”

“Good. A proud self-image is the strongest incentive you can have toward correct behavior. Too proud to steal, too proud to cheat, too proud to take candy from babies or to push little ducks into water. Maureen, a moral code for the tribe must be based on survival for the tribe…but for the individual correct behavior in the tightest pinch is based on pride, not on personal survival. This is why a captain goes down with his ship; this is why ‘The Guard dies but does not surrender.’ A person who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for. Next commandment.”

“Simon Legree. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Until you corrupted me—”

“Who corrupted whom? I am the epitome of moral rectitude…because I know exactly why I behave as I do. When I started in on you, you had no morals of any sort and your behavior was as naïvely shameless as that of a kitten trying to cover up on a bare floor.”

“Yes, sir. As I was saying: Until you corrupted me, I thought the Ninth Commandment meant: Don’t tell lies. But all it says is, if you have to go into court and be a witness, then you have to tell the truth.”

“It says more than that.”

“Yes. You pointed out that it was a special case of a general theorem. I think the general case ought to read: Don’t tell lies that can hurt other people—”

“Close enough.”

“Father, you didn’t let me finish.”

“Oh. Maureen, I beg your pardon. Please go on.”

“I said, ‘Don’t tell lies that can hurt other people’ but I intended to add, ‘—but since you can’t guess ahead of time what harm your lies may do, the only safe rule is not to tell any lies at all.”

Father said nothing for quite a long time. At last he said, “Maureen, this one we will not dispose of in an afternoon. A liar is worse to have around than a thief…yet I would rather cope with a liar than with a person who takes self-righteous pride in telling the truth, all of the truth and all of the time, let the chips fall where they may—meaning ‘No matter who is hurt by it, no matter what innocent life is ruined.’ Maureen, a person who takes smug pride in telling the blunt truth is a sadist, not a saint. There are many sorts of lies, untruths, fibs, nonfactual statements, et cetera. As an exercise to stretch the muscles of your mind—”

“The mind has no muscles.”

“Smarty. Don’t teach Granmaw how to steal sheep. Your mind has no muscles and that’s what I’m trying to correct. Try to categorize logically the varieties of not-true statements. Having done so, try to decide when and where each sort may be used morally, if at all…and if not, why not. That should keep you out of mischief for the next fourteen, fifteen months.”

“Oh, Father, you’re so good to me!”

“Stop the sarcasm or I’ll paddle your pants. Bring me a preliminary report in a month or six weeks.”

“Thy will be done. Papa, I do have one special case. ‘Don’t tell fibs to Mother lest thy mouth be washed out with lye soap.’”

“Correction: ‘Don’t tell any fibs to your mother that she can catch you in.’ If you ever told her the ungarnished truth about our private talks, I would have to leave home. If you catch Audrey spooning with that unlikely young cub who’s been calling on her, what are you going to tell your mother?”

Father took me by surprise on that one. I had indeed caught Audrey spooning…and I had an uneasy suspicion that there had been something more than spooning—and it worried me. “I won’t tell Mother anything!”

“That’s a good answer. But what are you going to tell me? You know that I don’t have your mother’s moralistic and puritanical attitudes about sex, and you know—I hope you do—that I won’t use anything you tell me to punish Audrey but to help her. So what do you tell your father?”

I felt walls closing in on me, caught between loyalty to Father and my love for my oldest sister, who had always helped me and been good to me. “I—I will—I won’t tell you a durn thing!”

“Hooraw! You took the hurdle without even ticking the top rail. Dead right, dear one; we don’t tell tales out of school, we don’t confess on behalf of someone else. But don’t say ‘durn.’ If you need it, say ‘damn.’”

“Yes, sir. I won’t tell you a damn thing about Audrey and her young man.” (And, dear Lord if there is one, don’t let my sister get pregnant; Mother would have fits and pray over her and all would be terrible. Thy will be done…but not too much of it. Maureen Johnson. Amen.)

“Let’s deal with number ten quickly, then move on to the ones Moses neglected to bring down the mountain. Ten doesn’t seem to be a problem to you. Coveted anything lately?”

“I don’t think I have. Why is there is a rule against coveting your neighbor’s wife but not a word about not coveting your neighbor’s husband? Was it an oversight on Jehovah’s part? Or was it truly open season on husbands in those days?”

“I don’t know, Maureen. I suspect that it was simply conceit on the part of some ancient Hebrews who could not imagine their wives wanting to jump the fence when they had such virile heroes at home. The Old Testament doesn’t place women very high; it starts right out with Adam putting all the blame on Mother Eve…then it gets worse. But here in Lyle County, Missouri, we do have a rule against it…and if any wife catches you making eyes at her husband here, she is likely to scratch out your pretty green eyes.”

“I don’t intend to let her catch me. But suppose it’s the other way. Suppose he covets me, or seems to. Suppose he pinches my bottom?”

“Well, well! Who was he, Maureen? Who is he?”

“Hypothetical case,
mon cher père
.”

“Very well. If he hypothetically does it again, you may hypothetically respond in several hypothetical fashions. You may hypothetically ignore him, pretend to a hypothetical lack of sensation in your gluteus maximus sinister—or is he left-handed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or you can hypothetically whisper, ‘Don’t do that here. Meet me after church.’”

“Father!”

“You brought it up. Or, if it suits you, you may hypothetically warn him that one more hypothetical pinch will be reported to your hypothetical father who owns both a hypothetical horsewhip and a hypothetical shotgun. You may say this most privately or shout it loudly enough for the congregation and his hypothetical wife to hear it. Lady’s choice. Wait one moment. You did say ‘husband,’ did you not?”