In The Beauty of The Lilies - Part II

Part II

The remainder of Clarence's family moves to the small town of Basingstoke, Delaware to live with Clarence's sister Esther. This next section which covers the 1920s, focuses on Clarence's youngest son Ted. A quiet child, he grows up to be a diffident adult, much like his father. He gradually becomes involved with an equally shy young woman called Emily with a stunted and deformed foot whose family is socially looked down on, possibly because its rumored her mother is part black. On their first date they see the Greta Garbo feature Flesh and the Devil. (The film stars of the 1920s are frequently mentioned, but unlike his father, Ted takes little pleasure in movies, finding them exhausting and intrusive). His mother and Aunt Esther (Clarence's sister), disappointed with Ted's choice of Emily as a girlfriend and his general lack of ambition, sends him to stay with his older brother Jared in New York City. Jared has married the daughter of a bootlegger and is involved in shady schemes himself. Ted is uncomfortable with the job Jared finds for him as a rent collector in immigrant neighborhoods and feels out of place at the speakeasies Jared and his friends frequent. He decides to return home and marry Emily; his mother and aunt resign themselves to Ted's choice of a bride and find him a job as a postman which he works at contentedly for decades. His marriage to Emily proves emotionally and sexually fulfilling, and by the end of the second section they are the parents of a baby daughter named Esther.