Father of the Bride

Father of the Bride

The Great Decision

No matter what Kay might have done about marriage it would not have been looked upon with any great favor by Mr. Stanley Banks, merely because he happened to be fonder of his first-born than he realized.
 During her teens he had dismissed all aspirants with a contemptuous snort. From the time that Kay had first revealed herself to the social world, minus a mouthful of braces and plus a permanent, leggy adolescents with porcupine hair had begun to beat a path to 24 Maple Drive. Mr. Banks had regarded these inarticulate sufferers with a jaundiced eye.
 If they caused him any uneasiness it had been wasted. Not that Kay spurned male attention, but, during those exciting days, she preferred it to be universal rather than specific. Nature had endowed here with what amounted to a season pass to every dance, sporting event and week-end party that her strength permitted—and she had the stamina of a six-day bicycle rider.
 She was also restrained by and early infatuation for her English teacher, a brilliant young man with large front teeth and a tendency to stomach ulcers, who had once told her that she had an intellect. This otherwise unconfirmed diagnosis gave he secret ambitions. The result  was that the youths who fluttered around her with such uncoordinated eagerness seemed callow to her beautiful blue eyes. Lord Byron and Leonardo da Vinci being dead, the field had struck her as limited.
 And so the tender years had slipped by. With their passing Mr. Banks’ emotional pendulum had swung the other way. He found himself wondering what was wrong with the child. What was it that caused men to bob into her life for a few brief weeks or months—and then disappear forever? She couldn’t go on being a bridesmaid until she was an old lady!
 It worried him and unconsciously his attitude changed, even toward Kay’s most casual acquaintances. Unlike the old days, when he had been curt, suspicious and, on occasions, frankly hostile, he now began to receive them with an open-armed, cordiality that would have driven any alert young male out into a snowstorm.
 Then suddenly—without warning—it was obvious that something was happening to Kay. Some alchemy was at work within her. There was a light in her eyes that none of Dr. Barnes’ vitamins had ever kindled. The fashionable, dead-pan expression that she usually wore for home use was replaced with a radiance that mad here, at times, almost a stranger to Mr. Banks.
 “What’s gotten into Kay, Ellie? She acts queer to me.”
 “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Banks. “Maybe she’s in love.”
 Mr. Banks made noises of contempt. “In love! Who would she be in love with?”
 “I haven’t the wildest idea.”
 “Nonsense,” said Mr. Banks. “You must have some idea.”
 “Well, do you remember that about two weeks ago Kay said she’d met a boy named Buckley Something-or-other at a cocktail party?”
 “Never heard of him,” said Mr. Banks.

Copyright © 1948, 1949 by Edward Streeter and Gluyas Williams. Permission by Simon and Schuster, Inc.