CONTINUATION OF THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT...by b. Malin

She was born, Marcia Gayle Goldstein in Lying Inn hospital in New York City. She weighed in at seven pounds fifteen ounces, the second of two daughters, and the apple of her father's eye. Her older sister, by three years, Susan, really never seemed to mind. Probably because their mother favored her, and never really wanted to get pregnant again. Complicated... not really.

As children growing up in a prominent family, their father an attorney and partner in one of the biggest firms in New York City. Their mother, a socialite from the upper East side. The girls were given the best educations, and vacations, and told the world was theirs. It was not fashionable to rebel, and in their sheltered lives, with nanny's and later private schools, they were really quite supervised and innocent. Rebelling would come later, during their college years. Susan went to NYU to study law, got into drugs, got clean, and became an actress. Married twice, and had two daughters.

Marcia on the other hand, followed in her father's footsteps, thinking she wanted to be a lawyer. Because her father had told her that, as far back as she could remember. And so she went to Sarah Lawrence College, and majored in Political Science and tried to take some writing courses on the side. Writing had always been her secret love, much to her father's amusement and sometimes distress. At the end of her education, Marcia became a lawyer.

It was her father who had introduced her to George Jerome Gilmore, a young law student from Harvard, during Thanksgiving vacation, of her freshman year. She could tell as they sat around the dinner table that her father had big plans for George, and she had a sinking feeling that she was very much a part of it. Not that George wasn't handsome, or witty, or clever. But Marcia was just beginning to spread her own wings...She wanted to fly a little by herself.

Later that night she and her father had a long talk, with her father doing most of the talking..."Wasn't George a clever fellow, so bright, so much to offer, a very promising future...He stopped long enough to take a long puff on his expensive cigar. They always left Marcia feeling dizzy. "A good catch indeed" he was now saying as he nodded his chin up and down, while he leaned back in his brown leather chair.

Marcia saw her chance to get a few words across. "Dad, listen to me for just one moment please"...she rushed on before he had time to reply. "George is all that you say and probably more. Please believe me when I say, I can see why you bought him home for me...But dad, please try to understand that I want to do my own choosing. I love college life, and I am starting to date...nothing serious of course". She rushed on afraid if she stopped talking, she'd loose her chance to say all that she wanted to. But as she talked, she watched her father get up and start to turn off all the lights till only the small desk one remained lit. "Come on pumpkin. let's go to bed. You look tired and I know I'm beat." She slowly got up off the couch, as he held his hand out to her. "End of round one" she sighed softly to herself, as they walked arm and arm down the hallway to their bedrooms.

Later, lying in the darkness of her room, under her covers, she could feel her father smiling confidently in his bedroom. Yes, round one, was all his.

Marcia went back to school the next week, and heard from George every week by phone, and dated him every other. In spite of everything, she had to admit to herself that he was fun on a date...but still, in the back of her mind, she felt that something was missing in her life.

As for her father, who had taken up pipe smoking and thinking about George's future with his law firm...things couldn't be going better, he knew Marcia would come around, he just knew it.

To be continued.