A Time to Be Born, page 32
“But, darling, no dispatches from her in any paper, no more articles, no mention of her after that first flurry of Julian’s!” Vicky argued. “Things must have gone wrong with her! Maybe she did have to have Julian, after all! Maybe he’s got people to gang up against her.”
Ken meditated on this, lighting two cigarettes, and putting one in Vicky’s mouth.
“Well, one thing, if Julian’s stacking the cards against her, Andrew Callingham isn’t going to be anywhere around her, I can promise you that,” he said. “Callingham made his name saving his own nose and blowing his own horn, not looking after beautiful ladies on skids.”
They were both silent, Vicky thinking that she would have to do a lot of talking in their married life to cover up these silences when Ken might be remembering another love. She would begin right now.
“If we don’t get pulled into the war, won’t you be sorry you enlisted, Ken? Won’t you be sorry you didn’t stay on at Peabody’s or else freelance a while? I should think you’d get awfully embarrassed running around in your soldier suitie with no war.”
“We’ll be in all right,” Ken said. “And if I wasn’t in, think how proud of me you’d be, all the other boys fighting and me up at Peabody’s all rosy from golf and roast beef, telling the boys how to brighten up their tanks with a pretty piece of chintz?”
“I suppose I’ll feel the same way,” Vicky confessed. “Of course I wouldn’t dare knit, except for the enemy. I could drive a truck, though. I might even fly. You’d look up when you’d hear a whiz and there I’d be ferrying a bomber! You wait!”
“I’ll bet you would do it, at that,” Ken said, admiringly. “You wouldn’t talk about it, you’d just go do it. I can’t understand how an up-and-coming girl like you managed to wait this long for a lout like me. How’d you know I was your man?”
“A gypsy told me,” Vicky said. Then she sighed because she knew she was going to ask that question.
“Ken—” she began haltingly. “if Amanda should ever come back again—I mean—would you—I mean—”
Ken kissed her.
“You’re the one for me, darling. There couldn’t ever be any Amanda in my life, now that I know about you. Never, never, again.”
Vicky stroked his hair.
“Thank you for that, darling,” she said gratefully.
But she was not at all sure whether he was speaking the truth or what he hoped was the truth.
For that matter, neither was Ken.
Questions for Discussion
1. Discuss Amanda’s childhood and the fact that she alludes to trying to forget it altogether. Why do you think it was so painful? Do you think her reputation from Lakeville haunts her as an adult? Discuss how she manipulated her parents.
2. Early in the book, it is said of Amanda that “she was sure she neither loved nor admired” Ken Saunders, “but could not dismiss him.” What then attracts her to a man like Ken as opposed to a man as powerful as Julian? Do you think Ken is still “wrapped around Amanda’s finger” at the end of the story? What could Julian have done as a husband to make Amanda feel more special and satisfied with their relationship?
3. Miss Bemel and Mr. Castor play a somewhat significant role in the story. Do you find it ironic that Amanda and Julian chose assistants who are so different from one another, which causes them to disagree fairly often? In what ways is this fact a telling reflection of their relationship?
4. Amanda’s relationship with both Callingham and Saunders poses a serious risk to her relationship with Julian. She is clearly afraid that with one false move she could loose both her reputation and her relationship with Julian. What does she see in these other men that she does not get from Julian? Can her love for Julian be described as at all “true,” or is it just a ploy to gain power and notoriety?
5. Amanda does Vicky Haven a favor by bringing her to New York and getting her situated. What do you think are her motivations for doing this good turn?
6. Powell wrote in her famous diaries: “There is only one city for everyone just as there is one major love. New York is my city because I have an investment I can always draw on — a bottomless investment of twenty-one years (I count the day I was born) of building up an idea of New York — so no matter what happens here I have the rock of my dreams of it that nothing can destroy.” Since the time she was a girl Powell believed that New York was the one place she’d be able to fully realize herself and pursue her dreams. Though fame and fortune as a writer eluded her during her lifetime, she did have a stunningly productive career and never regretted her decision. What were Amanda’s and Vicky’s reasons for coming to New York? How did their experiences match up to Powell’s own?
7. Gender roles and politics play a significant part in Powell’s story. In some ways the roles Powell’s characters choose or are forced to play are products of the place and time — America in the early 1940s. In other ways Powell’s depiction of relations between the sexes transcend place and time. Discuss those elements of her plot that depend on outdated gender roles and those that reflect the truth of the old adage “the more things change the more they stay the same.”
Dawn Powell, A Time to Be Born
