DO you mean to do anyway? Depend on us all your life? be a leech?"

Beverly slipped her thumb under her belt across the front half-circle, wondering, as she did, how the conversation always managed to slip to this topic. "How many times I've got to tell you? It's Dad's money. He sends it to me. You know I've been using it for my drama coaching. And I'm going to go on using it till I'm through."

Through! Through with what? Through with being yourself? Drama coaching!" her mother scoffed, "a pretty way of saying you're throwing your money away on learning how to be somebody else; do somebody else's crying, somebody else's laughing."

"Ha!" Walt's expletive was like a nod. Beverly turned to him. "MY kind of laughing," she said. "You do your kind and I'll do mine!" "Well now

Walt leaned forward, put his beer glass down carefully. "Let me finish, Walt," she said. "You're not my father and you don't live here. Not much you don't anyway. When Dad gave me the money for my coaching it was because he BELIEVED in me."

"You don't know your father," Beverly's mother said, letting the words. slide out low.

"Well, I'm going to make use of it," Beverly said heedlessly. "And if there ever was a parasite She completed her statement with a look that made Walt fumble with the newspaper. "Oh, what's the use. You play your part and I'll play mine!" Turning to her mother, she said, "I've something. important to tell you, mom, Laird has asked me.

"Why do I tell you?" Her mother stalked out of the room, throwing her voice behind her. "ALWAYS turn the light off when you're not using it! Electricity costs MONEY!"

Beverly watched her mother re-enter the room from the dark hallway after she had snapped the light-switch off. It came to her that she could not remember her mother any other way, but enclosed by the dim light in her own immediate little area.

The next night was warm. Laird came early. They sipped iced tea on the front porch. "Well," he said, "when do we get married?"

Beverly looked squarely into his grey eyes. She said, "Laird, have you ever thought of morals? given them serious consideration, I mean?"

"Certainly," he said, "that's why I think what you said last night was all bosh. You're too fine a person to go wrong. You're honest; upstanding."

"I'll be presumptuous enough to go with your description," she said, "but as for going wrong . . . I'd be neither honest nor upstanding if I married you. If I go according to my nature I won't be wrong."

What exactly do you mean?"

"I mean I can't marry you, Laird. In all decency and fairness to you AND to me. I've had years to think of it," she said. "It isn't as if I've decided over night. My integrity's at stake. My responsibility to others."

He laughed a sound of relief enveloping his mirth. "THERE, you've said it! your responsibility to others."

"You don't understand," she said, "our individual responsibilities are our own and they are principally to ourselves. We must first be honest to be whole and we must be whole if we are to contribute an iota of anything to others. No, Laird," she said, "I can't marry you. I wouldn't be true." He looked at her: eyes turning sharply toward her. "Oh, not untrue that way. I mean true to what I am. I'd be like Walt holding a can of beer and trying to hide it from the Parkers. Walt's scared to death of running into one of the church clique with a beer in his hand. His potential buyers, you know. Not hypocrisy, he says, diplomacy."

"I'm not proposing to a salesman," Laird said. "Other women want husbands, want a home to prepare for him. Are you comparing your situation to a can of beer? and a Walt who doesn't amount to a can of beans?"

"I'm comparing my situation to them only as an example," she said. "There are better ones."

"Well, it's ridiculous," he said. "If ever there would be need of subterfuge it would be in living the life of a lesbian."