Babe Has A Revelation And Then A Dilemma

It occurred to Babe at around this time that she needed to move away from Lloyd or she was going to marry him and move to the cul de sac. The way he was built, the way he operated in his life, and his estimation of her; all of these indicated that marriage was imminent. Her sisters wanted this. Lloyd wanted this. Her sisters’ husbands’ desires were unknown but they probably in a vague and obedient way wanted this also. She knew that if she expressed her desire for escape to her sisters, they would redouble their efforts to chain her to them. They would smell her fear and interpret it as weakness. If she expressed this to Lloyd, he would take it as a cry for help and immediately propose to her, feeling this was what was expected of him. Perhaps wanting her to cry and fold up and say it was what she’d always dreamed. What she really most wanted was to continue being Lloyd’s girlfriend forever and have sex with only him. She also wanted to continue to be pals with her two sisters and watch them lovingly from another part of the city. But she wanted to live at her own place and not have a joint checking account. She wanted to wear holey underpants and an Atari t-shirt around the house without some family member showing up on the doorstep because their kids want to watch her plasma TV. In short she wanted to enjoy the benefits of commitment while avoiding the inconvenience of constancy. She could not, in fact, move to the cul de sac. It could not happen. It would kill her in her soul. It would murder everything in her that was gorgeous to look upon. She had to get away, and yet moving to a new city without telling anyone where she was going was burning more bridges than she cared to, plus it was too much melodrama, and she was pragmatic about things. Like the way she picked a city to move to. New Orleans was sexy and old, and she knew no one there. So she would move there.

Finally she realized, she could tell her mother.