Jill Emerson

A Week as Andrea Benstock

FOR

JOSEPH ROSENBERG AND IN MEMORY

OF PEGGY ROTH

Sunday

May 12, 1963

On the second Sunday in May, 1963, Andrea Beth Kleinman awoke to the sound of rain on her bedroom window. It was a comforting sound, and after she had looked around long enough to establish that it was light outside, she closed her eyes again and settled.her head on her pillow. Soon enough it would be time to get out of bed and shower and dress for what was supposed to be the most important day of her life. But first she would steal a few moments of that day for herself, lying snug in her own warmth and listening to the rain.

It occurred to her, after a few moments, that this would be a day of doing things for the last time. The process had already begun; this was the last morning she would wake up alone. Tomorrow she would be in Puerto Rico, a married woman, and Mark would be beside her. She would not be Andrea Kleinman but Andrea Benstock, and that seemed as vast a difference as between Buffalo and Puerto Rico.

Of course they would return to Buffalo. But she would not sleep again in this bed, in this house.

The house was a square brick structure on Admiral Road four doors from Starin Avenue. It was on the north side of Buffalo Just a few blocks from the Kenmore line. The house had been built shortly after the conclusion of the First World War, and had been occupied by the Kleinman family since midway through the Second World War. Her father had purchased it in 1942 for eighty-seven hundred dollars. A year later the real estate market went crazy and realtors offered David Kleinman as much as fifteen thousand. He had not considered selling then, nor did he consider it in the late fifties, when the exodus of Jewish families from that neighborhood to smaller houses in the suburbs began in earnest.

It was the only home Andrea remembered. She had been four years old when they moved in, and had previously lived in an apartment on Amherst near Elmwood and the upper half of a two-family house on Norwalk. She had the usual complement of amorphous memories of those first four years, but there was no sense of place to them. Home to her had always been this house on Admiral Road, and, within that house, this bedroom of hers.

For thirteen years she had lived here with no interruption beyond family vacations and a few summers at Canadian camps. During the years at Bryn Mawr, even during the years in New York, this had remained her home if only because she had had no other. Whenever she came home on a visit her room was waiting for her, her own room in the house in which she had grown up, and it was only in retrospect that she realized how much this pleased her.

Now she recalled a telephone conversation which had taken place on another Sunday a few years ago. She was in New York at the time, newly settled in her apartment on Jane Street. Her parents called for the traditional Sunday morning conversation, her father on the sun-room extension, her mother at the wall phone in the kitchen. They had looked at a house the day before, her mother said, and it was perfect in every way. A ranch house, small and easy to care for, all built-ins in the kitchen, and on a very good street in Snyder.

“Much closer to the club for his golf. Fifteen minutes shorter each way. And no stairs to climb. I thought if I could finally get him to look at a house, and this was just perfect for our needs.”

“It was a nice little house,” her father agreed.

“So it’s nice, and it’ll go on being nice, and somebody else will buy it and live in it. He won’t move.”

“It suits me here, Andrea. It’s closer to my office, which I still go to more often than I play golf, but even if it wasn’t. Maybe I’m crazy but I’m comfortable here. I don’t want to go get used to someplace else.”

At the time she had sympathized more with her mother’s position. The neighborhood was declining, in property value if not in physical appearance. They were alone, the two of them. They didn’t need all that space, nor did they need a staircase to go up and down a dozen times a day.

Then eight months ago she had returned to this house, to this room. And how glad she had been for her father’s stubbornness. Of course there would have been a room for her in whatever house they might have bought, but it would not have been her room, nor would any new house have been her house.

This was her neighborhood, each house on the block well remembered, its familiarity precious however many of the old neighbors were gone. School 66 was still around the corner, and its presence was no less reassuring for all that her teachers were retired or dead. In the fall, before she began seeing Mark, she had spent some time almost every day walking slowly through these streets. She would not have walked like that in Snyder.

Now she listened to the rain on her window and put off getting out of her own bed for the final time. Suddenly the thought touched her in a way she had not anticipated, and she began to cry. She felt unutterably foolish but still the tears flowed. She put her face in her pillow and wept.

After her shower she put on a blouse and a pair of jeans and went downstairs. Her mother was at the breakfast table with a cup of black coffee and a cigarette. She said, “You certainly picked a fine day for a wedding. It’s supposed to be like this all day.”

“It’s good we didn’t decide on an outdoor ceremony.”

“You weren’t thinking of it, were you? You never said anything about it.”

“I was just joking.”

“Because I never liked the whole idea of outdoor weddings. I suppose I’m old-fashioned. I went to one two years ago that you wouldn’t believe. Did I tell you about it? Sylvia Friedkin’s daughter Margie. I don’t know if you knew her. She’s a few years younger than you.”

“Everybody’s a few years younger than I am.”

“It was one for the books. The groom was a non-Jewish boy, so the service was nondenominational. Fine. But they held it in Delaware Park.”

“It’s beautiful in the park.”

“It’s lovely, but this was the middle of August and the temperature was over ninety for a week solid. And the lake there has no drainage, and you haven’t been around much in the past few years, but you no longer have to be right in the middle of the lake to realize that there’s no drainage. And the particular place they picked, for some nondenominational reason I’m sure, was close enough to Delaware Avenue so that you had a spectacular view of Forest Lawn with tombstones rising in the distance.”

“Oh.”

“Someone said this would be very convenient if the father of the bride had a stroke. You remember Joe Friedkin. He always looks as though he’s about to have a stroke, with that red face of his, and between the heat and his new son-in-law no one was too sure that he could last the day. The groom had grown a beard, which I suppose is all right, except in this particular case he wasn’t that good at growing beards, nebbish, and there were great hairless areas on his face as if he’d been struck by some form of blight. Your father thought possibly ringworm. You’re laughing, but you didn’t have to stand there in the heat and put up with all of this. You didn’t, have to listen to the nondenominational clergyman talk about living in harmony with Nature. God knows where they found him. He was barefoot, incidentally, like the bride and groom. I somehow forgot to mention that. They wanted to be able to absorb the essence of the planet through their toes. There used to be a bridle path there, bridle as in horses, not weddings, and your father said they stood a fairly good chance of absorbing the essence of hookworm between their toes. Ringworm and hookworm, that was the sort of thing that came to mind. Sit down and I’ll get your breakfast. What do you want?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“Well, you’ve got a big day. Just the family at the wedding, but the reception and running for the plane. You ought to have something.”

“I’ll get it.”

“Sit. In a few hours you’ll be a married woman and you can get your own breakfast for the rest of your life. And Mark’s, and before long you won’t remember what it is to sit down. Could you eat some French toast?”

“I’ll force myself. Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s in the sun-room reading the Times. The Courier’s right in front of you if you want to read something. Three pieces of French toast?”

“Two’s plenty.”

She was drinking her second cup of coffee and smoking her first cigarette when the telephone rang. Her mother answered it. After a moment she said, “Well, I don’t know. It’s bad luck for you to see her before the ceremony. Do you suppose you’re allowed to talk to her? They didn’t have telephones when they invented the superstition so I’m not sure how it works. Well, I’ll see if she’ll take a chance on you.” She covered the mouthpiece with the palm of her hand. “It’s Mark,” she said.

“No kidding.”

She took the phone. He said, “How are you holding up?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Oh, it’s business as usual here. The old man’s running around shouting because his tie had a spot on it, my mother’s crying a lot, and Jeff and Linda aren’t speaking.”

“To anyone?”

“To each other. How are things at your end?”

“Very calm. Daddy’s in the sun-room reading the paper and Mother’s screening all my calls.”

“Very funny,” her mother said.

“The reason I called. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t come to your senses and decided to call the whole thing off.”

“‘You say either and I say eye-ther.’ Why? Getting cold feet?”

“Warmest feet in town. I thought you might be having second thoughts, though, and I figured I’d talk you out of them.”

“I’m having nothing but first thoughts.”

“Happy ones?”

“Very happy ones.”

“Still love me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Some other time, okay?”

“Because your mother’s there? She knows you love me, honey. That’s why you’re marrying me.”

“I’ll see you in, oh, just a couple hours, isn’t it? I’d better think about getting dressed.”

“You won’t say it, huh?”

“You idiot. I love you. And I’ll see you in a little while.”

Her father was in his chair in the sun-room. The room had been an open porch when the house was originally constructed, but well before the Kleinmans bought it the porch had been completely enclosed so that it functioned as a second living room. It was a good place for reading, light and airy with large casement windows in front and on both sides.

David Kleinman was doing the crossword puzzle when Andrea entered the room. He finished penciling in a word, then lowered the paper and smiled gently at her over its top. “Going to get dressed now?”

“I thought I’d sit with you for a minute.”

“Well, in that case,” he said. He put down the paper as she seated herself on the love seat opposite him.

“You’re beautiful today,” he said. “All brides are beautiful, but you’re something special.”

He was a handsome man, she thought. He was not tall, although she always thought of him as taller than his actual height and was invariably surprised when he stood at her side. He was fifty-seven years old and she thought that he had aged well. She had seen pictures of him as a young man. It seemed to her that he was a more attractive man now than he had been in his youth. His strong features, the prominent nose and deep-set eyes, were more at home in a more mature face. He still had all his hair, and it was a fine iron-gray color which suited him and contrasted strikingly with the still-black eyebrows.

And he was still slender. Her mother, too, had kept her figure, and that really made all the difference in the world. Mark’s parents were both quite a bit overweight, and as a result the Benstocks looked considerably older than the Kleinmans, although they were in fact all about the same age.

She would not permit herself to gain weight, she decided. And she would make sure Mark did not grow fat.

“Today’s the day,” her father said. “Now there’s an original thought, but it’s hard to know what else to say. I’m very happy for you, baby.”

“Oh, Daddy.”

“I’ll tell you something. I think you’re getting a hell of a guy. I was fully prepared to detest Mark, but he turned out to be as impossible to dislike as any man I ever met. He’s solid and dependable. He’s got a good future, he’s with a good firm and they think a lot of him.”

“I’m glad you like him.”

“Why should you care about that? To be frank about it, why should it matter how I feel? Or how your mother feels? Oh, I grant that it makes for a lot less friction this way, but it’s not the most important thing in the world. Your grandmother Levine is still not too sure about me. Well, God bless her, she’s not too sure about anything these days. If my mind ever gets like that, do me a favor and shoot me, okay?”

“Oh, don’t talk like that.”

“Anyway, I like him. Why in the hell shouldn’t I? He’s got a nice small family. His sister lives out in Arizona so there’s just his mother and his father and his brother in college, and his mother already has a set of false teeth so how much trouble can she be? You could have picked somebody with a roomful of cousins all of them needing root canal work. I’m getting off cheap.”

“I’m a considerate daughter.”

“Yes, you are. I wonder if you’re too considerate. Tell me something now that it’s too late to change. Didn’t you really want a big wedding?”

“Absolutely not. Mark and I agreed completely on that point. Just the family, the immediate family. In fact—”

“In fact you could live without us too? Don’t apologize. I see no reason why a wedding should be a family occasion. Not that wild horses could keep me from yours, but as far as the point of view of the bridal couple. I thought you honestly wanted to keep it small myself, but your mother had the idea that you might have wanted to take it easy on my bank account. Well. May I ask another foolish question? Do you have any hesitation whatsoever about going through with this today?”

“None.”

“Because it is a good deal easier to get out of a marriage before the wedding than after it. Sometimes people find themselves trapped into going through with something because they think it’s expected of them.”

“It’s not that, Daddy.”

“You’re absolutely sure in your mind.”

“Yes.”

“You love Mark?”

“Yes, of course.”

He looked at her for a moment. “Mark loves you very much.”

“Yes, I know.”

“In every marriage there is one partner who loves more intensely, more thoroughly, than the other. There’s nothing noble about loving more. It’s in the way people are and the way they operate with one another. I don’t honestly know which it’s better to be, the one who loves the most or the one who is loved the most.”

He seemed about to say more, so she waited, but that was all he said. Finally she said, “I love Mark very much, Daddy. Very much.”

“He’ll be a good husband for you. I’m happy for both of you. You know, I was never worried about you, Andrea.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Your mother used to worry. From time to time. But I always somehow knew that you would be all right. I’ve always found it easy to understand you. Probably because I feel that you and I are similar. Also different, very different, but in some ways quite similar.” He looked up at her and broke the mood with a quick smile. “You have to get dressed. So do I, come to think of it.”

She gave him a kiss, then went up to her room. She thought on the way of what he had just told her. That her mother loved him more intensely than he loved her.

Well, she had always known that. As she had always known that Mark’s love for her was somehow deeper and stronger than hers for him.

At eleven o’clock she went downstairs again. Her father looked quite elegant in a black mohair suit. “I thought brides took forever to dress,” he said. “We don’t have to leave for an hour yet. Your mother is busy making every minute count.”

“I have to go out for a minute.”

“What for? It’s still pouring.”

“I thought I’d run over to Van Slyke’s. I want to get something new. These shoes are old and I borrowed Mom’s diamond chip earrings and the dress is blue—”

“The dress is also new.”

“It seems cheating to use one thing for both. I’ll just get something.”

“You’ll also get out of the house. Fair enough. Take my car, it’s out front.”

She was able to park right in front of the drug store. It was raining lightly and she hurried inside and went directly to the telephone booth. She dropped the dime in the slot, then realized that she could not remember his number. It had been at least a year since she called him last, but there had been a time when his number seemed permanently filed in her mind. She dialed New York Information and asked for the number of John Riordan, on Perry Street.

The operator supplied the number. Then she started to place the call before deciding that it wouldn’t do to call collect. She got a couple of dollars’ worth of change and returned to the booth, only to find that she had already forgotten the number. She got it from Information again and dialed it, and he answered on the third ring.

She said, “Jack? It’s Andrea Kleinman.”

“It is? Well, I’m damned. Hang on a minute, I want to get a cigarette.” He was gone for a few moments, and she pictured him rubbing sleep out of his eyes and puffing desperately at the day’s first cigarette. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes and drank unblended Scotch, and the two vices combined to produce a voice that could scratch glass. It had been the first thing about him that attracted her.

Now he said, “Andrea. Christ, I thought the earth swallowed you. Where in hell are you?”

“I’m in Buffalo.”

“Buffalo. Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“I’ve been here since August.”

“So that’s where you went to. I haven’t seen you in what, almost a year. But why Buffalo?”

“It’s where I’m from. I was born here.”

“I know a woman who was born in Buchenwald. She’s never felt the slightest compulsion to return. When are you coming back to the city, kid?”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, that’s what they all say.”

“I’m getting married, Jack.”

There was just the slightest pause, as though the information had to take its time crossing the state.

Then he said, “No kidding. I think that’s terrific, Andrea.”

“You do?”

“I really do. Christ, it’s good to hear from you. I didn’t know what happened to you, nobody seemed to know anything except that you weren’t around any more.”

“Well, that’s what happened. I wasn’t around any more.”

“Must be a year since I saw you.”

“Something like that. I was in New York for a while after I saw you last, and then one morning I packed my suitcase.”

“Problems?”

“No, not really.” She drew closer to the phone, as if afraid of what she might see out of the corners of her eyes. She began remembering the last weeks in New York, the hectic pace, the ragged breathlessness, the bits and pieces chopped out of memory and lost. “It stopped being fun,” she said.

“And you were trying so hard to have fun.”

“I don’t know if I like the way that sounds. Anyway, I came back home because I didn’t know where else to go, and it turned out to be right for me.”

“I’m glad for you. Who’s the guy? Childhood sweetheart?”

“Not really. He was four years ahead of me in school so I never knew him. I knew his sister vaguely.”

“What’s he like?”

“Oh, he’s a sweet guy, Jack. Really. He’s a lawyer, he’s doing pretty well at it and he’s really involved in it.”

“That’s great. When’s the wedding? I’ll send you a present.”

“It’s in about an hour, as a matter of fact.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. And don’t send a present. You’re sweet, but don’t.”

“The past is past, that means.”

“That is just what it means.”

“Fair enough. Andrea?”

“What?”

“Why the phone call?”

“I don’t know. I had this urge.”

“That certainly explains it.”

“No, let me finish, because I’ve been asking myself the same question. I wanted to tell someone from New York. I wanted, I just wanted someone to know. I don’t know why.”

“Well, I think I’m flattered.”

“Well,” she said.

“The last time I saw you, you weren’t that good at being friendly.”

“I was probably pretty drunk.”

“You probably were. You told me to fuck off, as a matter of fact.”

Well, why don’t you? she thought. This call had been a mistake, and she was no closer than before to guessing why she had made it.

“How have you been, Jack? What have you been working on?”

“The usual. Something for the Voice now and then. And we’ve got a primary coming up soon, as you probably know. Or as you probably don’t know, come to think of it. Way up there in Eskimo country.”

“We get the Times every Sunday. The dog team brings it right to the igloo.” The operator cut in to say that her three minutes were up. She said, “I’ve got to go now, Jack.”

“Well, I’m damned glad you called. Happy Wedding.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll see you.”

No, she thought. You won’t.

She was at the car before she remembered she hadn’t bought anything. She went back inside and picked out a stainless steel identification bracelet. They had been very much in demand when she was in high school. You had your name engraved on it, and when you were going steady you traded bracelets with the boy. She paid for the bracelet and drove home.

The marriage ceremony was performed by Rabbi Morton Farber in his study in Temple Beth Sholom. The temple was an imposing building downtown on Delaware Avenue. For much of her youth it had been if the focal point of her social life. Her Girl Scout troop met there on Wednesday afternoons. Her dancing classes were held there Saturday nights. For seven years she attended classes at the temple every Sunday morning, and for the last two of those years she was frequently present at services on Saturday mornings if a boy she knew was having his Bar Mitzvah. It was not until she had gone away to college that she was able to appreciate just how thoroughly Jews in Buffalo isolated themselves from their neighbors. The student body of her high school had been almost exactly half Jewish, and the social segregation had been virtually complete. There was no friction between the two groups; rather, it was as if neither was much aware of the other’s existence. Of course she never dated a non-Jewish boy in high school. Outside of the classroom, she scarcely knew any.

At the time, it had never occurred to her to question this social structure. And afterward it was incomprehensible to her that things had been as they were, and that she had regarded them as normal and natural.

While Rabbi Farber’s study was not a large room, it accommodated the wedding party with ease. Besides the bridal couple and their parents, there were only Andrea’s grandmother, Mark’s brother Phil, his sister Linda, and Linda’s husband Jeff. Phil served as best man, Linda as maid of honor.

This last had been a happy inspiration. Andrea had been unable to think of anyone to stand up with her, and had begun to consider the propriety of asking her mother to act in that capacity. The one logical choice for the role, the inevitable selection a year or two ago, would have been Andrea’s closest friend at college, a girl named Winifred Welles. She had been close to Winkie as she had been close to no one before or since.

But after graduation they had let go of one another. They’d both gone to New York and it would have been easy to keep in touch, but somehow it was easier to lose contact, to let the past slip into the past. It was still hard to imagine going through a wedding without Winkie, but when she tried to picture Winkie beside her in the rabbi’s study or at the country club she could not manage it.

And there was no one in Buffalo to whom she felt similarly close. Then she learned that Linda and Jeff were timing their annual trip east to coincide with the wedding. She had known Linda in high school, and had been friendly if not intimate with her. And, although she had no secondary purpose in choosing Linda, the effect was not lost on Mrs. Benstock. “You picked up a lot of points with her,” Mark said. “Not that it makes any difference what she thinks.”

But it did make a difference, and she knew it. She would not be in the happy position of Jeff Gould, who had cleverly put three thousand miles between himself and his in-laws. And Mark, whether or not he took his parents seriously, was nevertheless close to them. Thus it seemed to her that being a good daughter-in-law was part of being a good wife.

The ceremony itself went off as smoothly as it had in rehearsal. They sipped wine from a goblet, which was then wrapped in a napkin and placed on the floor before them. Mark, grinning, stomped on it with authority, and the wedding party greeted this act with the spontaneous applause which had characterized every Jewish wedding she had ever attended.

The glass-breaking ritual was on a par with heaving glasses into a fireplace after drinking a significant toast. But Andrea had always regarded it as a metaphor for the rupture of the maidenhead. He stepped on the glass, she thought, and found it had already been broken.

They exchanged plain yellow gold bands, and despite the traditional jokes beforehand, neither ring was lost or dropped and both fit perfectly. It had surprised her at first that he had wanted to wear a wedding ring. The double ring ceremony had been his idea, and one that would never have occurred to her. But now she liked it, and as she placed the ring on his finger she came closer to crying than at any other stage in the ceremony.

Of course Rabbi Farber had a few words to say. No one paid much attention to what he said, and yet if he had omitted this obligatory rabbinical material the omission would have been noted and commented upon. “You would think Rabbi Mort might have said a few words. Everybody does it, it’s the custom.” So Rabbi Mort did indeed say a few words, touching upon the joy of exchanging nuptial vows in the presence of one’s family, and the importance in the modern world of affirming one’s heritage through a truly Jewish marriage ritual, and the role of religion as a third partner in a successful marriage. A cynic might have reflected that these remarks were perhaps more a commercial than a benediction. But no cynic was present.

“I now pronounce you man and wife.” “You may kiss the bride.” “Aren’t they an attractive couple?” “How I waited for this day, David.” “Andrea, you look beautiful, I love your dress.” “Well, you went and you did it, kid.”

Married.

The wedding reception was held at the Northlawn Country Club. The club was situated a dozen miles north and east of the city of Buffalo, and when it was founded in 1947 there was not a Jew residing within eight miles of the club grounds. There were, in fact, precious few people of any persuasion in the area; during the war years, sheep had grazed on what was to become the Northlawn golf course. The course, first laid out in 1948 and enlarged to eighteen holes three years later, had been designed by Daniel Johns Gregory. It was acknowledged to be one of the three best courses in western New York.

David Kleinman had not been a founding member of Northlawn. He had joined late in 1948, having waited a year to make sure that the club would get off the ground. There had been an attempt before the war to get a Jewish country club organized. It had failed for lack of support, and several of the sponsors had lost money. After a little over a year he judged the club to be a sound operation which filled a genuine community need. And the public golf courses were getting impossibly overcrowded. He’d played at Delaware and Grover Cleveland during the war, but now there were constant waiting lines at both courses, and the maintenance was not what it had been. So he had joined, thinking of the club as an organization worthy of his support and a place to play golf on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That it would turn out to be a focal point of his social life had surely never occurred to him. Twice the nominating committee had sounded him out for the club presidency and on both occasions he pleaded the pressure of work. “I don’t need the aggravation,” he told his wife. “Let the operators have it. They want me because I’m not an operator, and that’s just why I don’t want it.”

Harry Benstock was not a member of the Northlawn, and because of this Bea Kleinman had suggested that it might be diplomatic to hold the reception elsewhere. “Now I can’t see that at all,” her husband said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“I was thinking that they might resent it.”

“I don’t agree, but suppose they did? We do our entertaining at the club. We’re going to have to entertain Harry and Ruth a certain amount of the time.”

“Not too often, I hope.”

“Not too often, no, but from time to time. So we might as well get everything out in the open at the beginning. Besides, what makes you think Harry doesn’t like to go to the club? Since she started going with Mark I made a point of noticing, and Harry’s out there whenever somebody invites him.”

“But he doesn’t belong.”

“He doesn’t and he won’t. His name was put up in, I don’t know, say 1950. And he was voted down.”

“You never told me why.”

“I didn’t vote against him, so I suppose I don’t know why. Except that I do know why. Harry made his money during the war, which is no crime, but he made it because Harry was the one guy who could get you a car when nobody else could. He had a Pontiac agency like a dozen other people, but if you wanted a ’42 Pontiac when nobody had them, you could get it through Harry. You paid him cash and you didn’t pick up the car at his lot. It was delivered to you at your home. And you paid a lot more than list price, and it was all tax free, and that was how Harry made his money. And in 1950 it was enough to keep him out of Northlawn.”

“I heard something about that but I never paid close attention.”

“Well, other people did. There were enough founding members who bought cars from Harry, paying him under the table, and it’s my guess that they were the ones who voted against him. The funny thing is if Harry applied now he would get in with no trouble whatsoever. There was one man who said Harry Benstock would get in over his dead body, but he died two and a half years ago, so it would be over his dead body after all. I won’t mention a name.”

“I know who you mean.”

“Of course you do. Anyway, Harry could get in. But his name was put up the once and he never had it submitted a second time. He says he doesn’t play golf so what does he need with it, but how many members do you know who don’t play golf? Harry would want to be a member except for getting rejected once. Not to mince words, he’s a climber. He was a member of B’nai Zion for how many years, and then he switched to Beth Sholom just so his kids could be confirmed there. Not that he was the only one to do that little thing.”

“I think that was Adele more than it was Harry.”

“You could be right. But the point is that Harry would love to belong to Northlawn, and he could get in now and knows he could get in, but he was blackballed once and he won’t apply again. And that’s pride, and for that I have to give the man credit. I wouldn’t want him in the club, I wouldn’t care to play golf with him or have drinks with him, but I give him credit.”

“That’s funny.”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t want him in the club but your daughter is marrying his son and you approve.”

“And that’s funny? I don’t think it is. For one thing, she’s not marrying Harry. She’s marrying Mark, and Mark will be a member. I happen to know he plans to join, and there won’t be a vote against him.”

“He’d join a club that wouldn’t have his father?”

“Oh, please. My own father couldn’t have joined Northlawn. Not that it was around at the time, or that he would have been interested, but he couldn’t have joined it. Did that keep me out? And is there any reason it should have?”

Andrea and Mark spent a little over two hours at the reception. She was kissed by a great number of men. Some of them she knew, some she recognized, and some she could not recall ever having seen in her life. She danced with Mark, with her father, with her father-in-law, with Phil Benstock, and with Jeff Gould. She cut the first piece of wedding cake, with Mark’s large hand over hers to guide the knife. She was complimented on her dress, her hair, her figure, and her general radiance. She was treated to an endless barrage of marriage jokes, none of which amused her and most of which struck her as in appalling taste. She ate two bites of wedding cake, drank a whiskey sour and two scotch-and-waters, and sipped a cup of very bitter coffee. There was a generous cold buffet but she did not have anything from it. She had no appetite at all, and thought that it had been good her mother had coaxed her into eating breakfast.

When Linda signaled her she excused herself from a conversation with an unidentified aunt of Mark’s and slipped away to a room upstairs. She changed her clothes while Linda smoked cigarettes and told her how good it was to be married. “Jeff and I have our bad times, sure. It’s not easy, and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy. Of course we have the advantage that we’re away from the family. We have to work things out for ourselves. Oh, I’m so happy for you, Andrea. I wish we had known each other better years ago, but Arizona isn’t that far, you know, and the planes fly in both directions. Mark’s a wonderful guy and he’s getting a wonderful girl and I’m so happy.”

“Oh, Linda.”

“And you were so sweet to ask me to stand up for you. I’ll never forget it, I swear I won’t.”

She went down a back staircase and outside to the parking lot. Mark was waiting for her. Their bags were already loaded in his brother’s car. Phil drove them to the airport and waited with them until their New York flight was called. “Well,” he said. “Don’t do anything I haven’t done, huh?” He shook hands with Phil, and Andrea threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Wow,” he said.

“That’s because I always wanted a little brother.”

“Well, I’ve already got a big sister, but she never kissed me like that. Jesus, get a move on, you’ll miss your flight.”

They boarded their plane. An hour and a quarter later they were on the ground at Idlewild. They checked in at the Pan Am counter and went to a lounge for coffee.

He said, “Mrs. Benstock.”

“The blushing bride herself. Do you mind if I don’t blush?”

“Not a bit. It went well, I’d say.”

“I think it did. I was in a daze.”

“So was I. Hey.”

“What?”

“Any regrets?”

“God, no,” she said.

She had flown from New York to Buffalo in the middle of August. It was early October when Mark first called her. Until then her life had been closely confined. She spent most of her time in and around the house on Admiral Road. Once or twice a week her parents went out to dinner, usually at Northlawn, occasionally at a restaurant. About half the time she would join them. Now and then she drove one of the two family cars downtown and saw a movie, but most evenings passed in front of the television set or in her room with a book.

Then one Wednesday afternoon the telephone rang and her mother told her it was for her.

She took the phone assuming it was someone from out of town. It did not occur to her that anyone in Buffalo would be likely to call her.

A voice said, “Hello, Andrea? This is Mark Benstock, and I’m sure that means nothing at all to you.”

“Well...”

“This is pretty complicated. My aunt Rhoda seems to be a good friend of your Aunt Claire, and it seems that — you do have an Aunt Claire, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Well, it seems that my aunt and your aunt were having a hot game of mah jongg or canasta or something, and the word eventually reached me that the most beautiful girl in Buffalo is only a phone call away from me. Uh. So I thought, uh, that perhaps we could have dinner some night.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a lawyer, I’m not married, and I’m kind to animals. Small children generally like me. What else? I’ve never been arrested. I did get a parking ticket last week, but that’s about the only blot on my escutcheon. And I’m sure this is the first time I’ve ever spoken the word escutcheon aloud.”

“I used to know a Linda Benstock.”

“My sister. I’m sure she’d supply a character reference if you’d like.”

She laughed.

“Friday night? Or Saturday better?”

“Saturday would be better, actually.”

“Around seven o’clock? I’ll pick you up.”

“Let me give you my address. Do you have a pencil?”

“I have the address, as a matter of fact.”

He was tall. He had wiry dark brown hair and a broad forehead creased with three deep horizontal folds. His cheeks and chin were lightly pitted with old acne scars. His eyes were a warm brown. His mouth was generous and his teeth were good and immaculately white. She was apt to take rather more notice of teeth than the average person, and supposed it was the inevitable consequence of being a dentist’s daughter. For many years she had thought it would be impossible for her to be strongly attracted to anyone with bad teeth. In New York she had learned that this was not entirely the case, but even then she had found herself more than a little put off by teeth that were out of line or badly cared for.

That Saturday he took her to a restaurant in Williamsville. The building that housed it had been an inn around the time the Erie Canal was dug, and so the waiters now wore Revolutionary costumes and the menu used f’s for s’s. They established that they had both gone to Bennett High School, that their families belonged to the same temple, and that they had a certain number of acquaintances in common.

He was twenty-eight. He had graduated from Cornell where he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi. He’d been accepted at Cornell Law, his second choice after Yale, but decided that four years in Ithaca were enough. And, since he intended to practice law in his home town, there were certain advantages in U. B. Law School. He’d naturally lived at home; his parents’ house in Eggertsville was as close to the University of Buffalo campus as any apartment he was likely to find.

After he’d earned his law degree he went into the Army for six months of active duty. He spent two months in basic training at Fort Dix and the rest of the time as a clerk-typist at Fort Polk in Louisiana. He had to go to reserve meetings every Monday night, but that would be over and done with in a couple of more years. And every summer he went to a camp in Watertown for two weeks. It was an idiotic waste of time, but it was better than giving up two years of your life in one chunk.

He still lived at home. He had taken the bar exam as soon as his active duty ended, and surprised himself by passing it the first time. Ever since then he had been with Gordon, Weissbart, and Gordon. The firm’s offices were downtown in the Liberty Bank Building, and on several occasions he had looked around for an apartment closer to his office, but he did get on well with his parents and hated the idea of having to cook for himself. He supposed he would move out sooner or later.

He loved being a lawyer. At Cornell he had considered several other careers. Medicine appealed, but the endless ordeal you had to go through had discouraged him; he knew he was not sufficiently dedicated to cope with it. And he had liked history enough to contemplate making it his life’s work, but being a historian meant being a teacher, and he couldn’t see himself doing fundamentally dull work for low pay for the rest of his life.

Law absorbed him. He had the right sort of mind for it. His firm had a broad general practice, and there was enough change in his work from day to day so that it could never become boring. He wasn’t setting the world on fire, but then he had not had the desire to set the world on fire. He was gradually building up a reputation and getting ahead, and he was doing what he wanted to do, and that was the most important thing.

He collected original cast albums of Broadway shows. Now and then he went to a concert at Kleinhans Music Hall but he wasn’t really crazy about it. He didn’t have the time to play golf as often as he would have liked. He had bowled in a Sunday morning league when he was in high school and had been fairly good, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone bowling. It was pretty dull, when all was said and done, because you just did the same thing over and over again.

They spent a long time at the restaurant. They both had several cups of coffee, then nursed small snifters of brandy. He was easy to be with, and he evidently found her easy to talk to. She did little talking herself but enjoyed listening to him. He was a man who knew just what he wanted to do; moreover, he was doing it. He had a sense of self, a sense of his place in his community, which was a quality quite outside of her experience in men. It was a quality she was now prepared to find extremely attractive.

He returned her to her house well before midnight. She wondered if she had done something wrong, but decided that she hadn’t; she was certain he had had a good time. And he said as much as he walked her to her door.

“I can’t remember enjoying myself this much, Andrea. I must have talked your ear off.”

“I enjoyed myself.”

“I hope you did. I know I did. Can I see you Friday? Maybe we’ll catch a movie or something, and I’ll give your ears a rest.”

“I’d like that. Seeing you, I mean. Not—”

“I know. Friday, then. I’ll call you.”

In the weeks before her wedding there were times when she looked back at that first date and thought that she had known then that she would ultimately marry Mark Benstock. But this was not strictly true. It was remarkable enough that, as she lay in her bed that night, she found herself speculating as to what her life would be like if she did marry Mark, or someone quite like him. She sensed even then that it would be a very comfortable life, and by this she meant emotional rather than financial security.

He was a sound person, a stable person, and she found his stability far more attractive than would have been the case a year or two earlier. It was the disquieting lack of stability in her own life and the lives of everyone she knew that was at the root of her return to Buffalo. Of course there were other more specific factors, but they seemed to be metaphors for the insecurity and isolation of her life in New York.

Yes, she could be married to someone like Mark Benstock. In fact it seemed unlikely that she could be successfully married to anyone who was not similar to him in most respects. But she did not seriously think that she might marry him, not then.

By Thanksgiving she knew they would one day be married.

She had not gone out with anyone in Buffalo before Mark called her, and she did not date anyone but him in the weeks that followed. There were a couple of phone calls from other men. A boy she had dated in high school called her one evening; he was recently divorced, had heard she was back in town, and wondered if she would like to get together for a drink. She would probably have gone, but the night he suggested was one on which she had a date with Mark, and he never called her a second time. Another man asked her out early in November; he too was divorced, and like Mark had heard of her through the aunt’s grapevine. By that time she was seeing Mark twice a week and had no desire to see anyone else. Besides, this man had a nasal voice and sounded like a creep. She told him she was seeing someone on a regular basis, and he sounded disappointed, but not terribly disappointed.

Their dates were always enjoyable for her. While they didn’t go anywhere spectacular, he frequently found something interesting for them to do. They had dinner at a few good restaurants, several mediocre ones, and one remarkably poor Chinese place. They saw half a dozen movies and one play, a reasonably good amateur production of Juno and the Paycock. The imperfect Irish brogues made her think of some of the men she had known who did their drinking at the White Horse and the Lion’s Head, but she did not think of them very intently, or for very long.

One night they drove to Niagara Falls and had dinner on the Canadian side. They had a window table with a good view of the Falls. She quoted Oscar Wilde’s line, expressing his assurance that Niagara Falls was the American bride’s second greatest disappointment. He had never heard the line before and he loved it.

On the long drive home he said, “I couldn’t even guess how long it’s been since I’ve seen the Falls. We had this tradition in my high school fraternity. God, high school fraternities and sororities! They were stupid enough in college, but in high school!”

“What was the tradition?”

“After our closing affair in the spring we would all drop off our dates and drive to Niagara Falls, and then we would all solemnly pee over the Falls. Well, into the river, and then it would go over the Falls.”

“At least you dropped your dates off first. Although I guess it might have been fun to watch. What fraternity?”

“Pal. Pi Alpha Lambda. And you were Phi Ep?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t think I ever dated a Pal boy. Yes, I did, come to think of it. Gerry Leibow.”

“Familiar name, but I don’t remember him.”

She sang:

I loved a Pal boy, I always will,

Because a Pal boy gave me my first thrill.

When I was younger, and but a child,

A sexy Pal boy drove me wi-i-ild.

But now I’m older, and more mature,

And now I am an Ulps boy’s girl.

“I remember that song. But the last word wasn’t girl. It was whore.”

“Hoor, you mean. To rhyme with mature, but we could only sing it that way when no one was around. And when we were in a particularly daring mood. ‘And now I am an Ulps boy’s hoor.’”

“Upsilon Lambda Phi. ‘If you laugh too hard, ULP.’ My father wanted me to pledge Ulps. He claimed it had more status. Fortunately I wasn’t sophisticated enough to know what he was talking about, so I joined the fraternity all my friends were joining. What nonsense it all was.”

He took her to a basketball doubleheader at Memorial Auditorium. He showed her his office. One Saturday afternoon he took her for a drive in the country. There was an orchard where you could pick your own apples for a dollar a bushel.

Beyond kissing her good night, he never made a pass at her. At the very beginning she interpreted this as strategy on his part; he would keep things very platonic, then move in swiftly for the kill. But as time passed she realized that he was not going to attempt to take her to bed, and on reflection she found that this did not really surprise her at all. In New York she had taken it for granted that any man she went out with would try to get her to bed at the earliest opportunity. But she was not in New York now. She was in Buffalo, going with a steady stable man who thought in long-range terms.

He gave her a diamond solitaire for Christmas. “We always exchanged gifts at Chanukah,” he said, “but I think kids should get something for Christmas, too. I’d even be inclined to have a tree for the kids’ sake. Of course I’d have to take it down whenever my parents came over.”

“Or hang a picture in front of it.”

“Even better. I hope I’m not presuming too much. I gather it’s considered proper to let the girl pick out the ring, but I wanted to surprise you. You can exchange it if it’s not what you want.”

“It’s just exactly what I want.”

“What I want is for us to be married. I’ve never proposed to a girl before. There was never anyone I wanted to marry. There were two or three I thought about marrying but it wasn’t what I wanted and it never went that far. I was beginning to think I would never meet anyone. And then your Aunt Claire and my Aunt Rhoda sat down over a card table, and here I am with the only girl in the world. I’m not dreaming, am I?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

“I love you, Andrea.”

They were invited to a New Year’s party at the home of a Polish couple in Orchard Park. “I suppose we ought to go,” he said. “I knew Cass in law school and we’ve been doing some business with his firm lately. They don’t touch negligence and they’ve been giving us some referrals. I don’t suppose it’ll be much fun, so if you can’t stand the idea just say so.”

“I don’t mind. I always hate New Year’s Eve anyway, so if we go someplace where we don’t expect much, at least we won’t be disappointed.”

The party was about what she’d expected. She didn’t know anyone there and Mark knew only the host. Everybody was married and half the women were pregnant. The men gathered in one room and discussed cars and told Kennedy jokes. The women sat around in another room and talked about toilet training. There was a pile of funny hats on the table next to the bottles of Schenley’s, and she told him she was damned if she was going to put one on.

“You won’t have to,” he said. “Wait right here.” She waited, drink in hand, and after a few minutes he returned with their coats. “I told Casimir we’d absolutely promised to be at a family party by the stroke of twelve. Not that he’ll remember anything. It’s a quarter after eleven, and at the rate he’s going he’ll be under the sofa by midnight.”

Outside, a light snow was falling. “We won’t ever be like that,” she said. “Tell me we won’t.”

“Like Cass and Ellie?”

“Like all those people. The women were worse than the men. I want to have babies, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about their diapers. Let’s try not to be boring, Mark.”

“It’s a deal.” They reached his car and he held the door for her, then walked around and got behind the wheel. “Well, we put in an appearance,” he said. “But I couldn’t see starting 1963 with a dose of terminal boredom. Anyway, I’ve got a wonderful idea. I’ll show you my office.”

“I’ve seen your office, silly.”

“Humor me.”

On the big table in the conference room was an ice hamper with two bottles of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge. They sat on the long leather couch and drank one of the bottles and necked. She had not had champagne in ages and it was delicious. She had not necked in ages, either, and his mouth and hands turned out to be an ideal accompaniment for champagne. He made gentle, leisurely love to her, and she felt so very much at ease that she began to grow passionate without exactly realizing what was happening to her.

After a long time he sat up and looked at his watch. It was twelve-thirty. “Well, what do you know about that,” he said, marveling. “Here I was hoping to steal a kiss at the stroke of midnight, and now I’ll have to wait a full year for the privilege. Privilege.”

“I think you’re a little bit drunk.”

“Well, maybe a bit.”

“And you don’t have to steal anything, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

He undressed her slowly, his large hands very gentle and capable. Someone had told her once that the size of a man’s hands was a good indication of the size of his penis. She had dismissed this as absurd folk wisdom at the time, but lately she had noticed his hands and remembered the old myth and wondered if there was anything to it. She was delighted now to find that, in his case at least, it was quite true. He was large, and she liked that. For all that she had heard and read to the effect that penis size was not important, she felt it was important to her.

It had been such a long time. There had been, since her return to Buffalo, no sexual frustration, no nights of longing, until she began to wonder if that final week in New York had permanently affected her capacity for sexual desire. Sex had become so slight a factor in her life that this thought itself was less a cause for worry than dispassionate speculation.

Her head was wonderfully light from the champagne, her body deliriously in tune after their love play. Now she inhaled the intermingled scents of his cologne and the leather couch, and she felt his weight upon her and his bulk within her, and oh my, oh yes, what a lovely way to start the year.

“Oh, Mark.”

“My girl, my baby girl.”

“Oh my God.”

She had had a diaphram in New York. For all she knew it was still there, zipped in its pink plastic carrying case and tucked away in the second drawer of the bird’s-eye maple dresser on Jane Street. Two days after he first made love to her she went to a gynecologist at Linwood and Utica and asked to be fitted. He asked her if there was any particular reason why she didn’t want to take contraceptive pills. She decided there wasn’t. He took her blood pressure and listened to her heart and gave her a prescription for Enovid, with instructions to begin taking them five days after the start of her next period.

She left his office praying she would get a next period to begin with. Neither she nor Mark had taken any precautions, and he insisted he would be just as pleased if she were pregnant; it would give him an excuse to move up the wedding date. But her period came on schedule, and after that she took her pills faithfully. Invariably their nights together concluded at his office, with her bare bottom sticking to the brown leather of the conference room couch.

They had first-class seats on the flight from New York to Puerto Rico. The seats were more comfortable than in the tourist section, and the drinks were free. She told him she had never flown first class before.

“You don’t want to get used to it,” he said. “It’s a ridiculous extravagance.”

“Then why are we doing it?”

“Because I feel ridiculously extravagant.”

“You nut.”

“Hell, this is my wedding day. I can’t go and sit among the peasants on a day like this. And I certainly can’t expect my wife to sit among the peasants on a day like this. Do you want to know something?”

“I would love to know something.”

“It’s a good thing, because I would have told you anyway. I like being married.”

“How can you tell so soon?”

“I don’t know, but I can. Can’t you?”

“I suppose so. I just like being here with you, and I guess married makes it even nicer.”

“Give me a kiss.”

“Ah, that’s much nicer than kissing all those people at the club. Much nicer. But it wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“The wedding or the reception?”

“Both. I’m glad we kept the wedding small. I would have loved to pass up the reception, but I suppose that was out of the question.”

“No, they had a right to that much.”

“Our parents? Or the guests?”

“I meant the parents, but in a way the guests too. By the way, do you know what your father did?”

“What?”

“I thought he might have told you. You know, I think he’s as fine a man as I’ve ever met. I thinka lot of your mother, as far as that goes, but your dad’s really remarkable. He’s the kind of man I’d like to be when I grow up.”

“I like that, when you grow up.”

“Well, I mean it. In a funny way he reminds me of a professor I had at Cornell. A good many years older than your father, and very much the academic type, but there was something similar about them. I had a course in Contemporary European History with him, Europe since 1815, and it was the best course I ever took in my life. I think it was his influence that made me consider teaching. In fact I know it was. Hiram Carruthers, the first and only person I ever met named Hiram. You’d expect a hayseed with a name like that, but he was very much the Ivy League cosmopolitan.”

“You still didn’t say what my father did.”

“I didn’t, did I? Hiram Carruthers led me off the track. Well, your father slipped me an envelope at the reception, and did it with a lot more grace than I slipped the envelope to Rabbi Farber.”

“And there was more in this envelope, I take it.”

“There was a check for five thousand dollars in this envelope. I was sure he would have mentioned it to you. I looked at it and thought at first it was five hundred, which would have been damned generous, but it was five thousand.”

“That’s too much.”

“That was precisely my reaction, and it was just what I said to him. He told me he’d figured on spending that much on your wedding, and that he thought it was sensible of us to keep the wedding small, but that there was no reason why our decision should let him off the hook cheap. He put it better than I am, but that was the gist of it. It’s far too much. I wanted to return it—”

“No, I don’t think you can do that.”

“Neither do I. Five thousand dollars. If we were younger, just out of school, that would make the difference between scraping by and living decently for the first few years. But I make enough money for us to live on, and I like the idea of us living on what I make.”

“So do I. Very definitely.”

“I’ve been trying to think what to do with the money. If we were going to buy a house we could use it for the down payment, but I wouldn’t want a house now, not for just the two of us, and by the time we’re ready for a house I’ll be able to afford the down payment myself. I think I know what I’m going to do with the money.”

“I bet I know, but I want you to tell me.”

“I’m going to put it away for our kids’ education. That’s if you approve, of course.”

“I win my bet. I just knew you were going to say that. And of course I approve.”

“Five thousand dollars will just about see a kid through a decent college. Well, it’ll cover tuition, anyway. Of course college costs are going to go up, but by the time we have children ready for college that five thousand will have grown a great deal. I’ll have to talk to somebody when we get back to Buffalo. I don’t know what’s the best way to invest it, stocks or mutual funds or some sort of insurance plan. I do know I’m not going to let it sit in a savings bank, but I’m not going to gamble it away, either. I’ll talk to Hal Ginzburg at Bache, and I’ll also talk to a fellow I met for the first time this afternoon. A friend of your dad’s, very tall and thin with a droopy moustache. Arthur something, but I don’t remember his last name.”

“Vogel. Uncle Art Vogel.”

“Oh, he’s your uncle?”

“No, it’s an honorary title. Did you have to call all your parents’ friends Aunt and Uncle? There must be a point where it’s time to stop, but I still feel uncomfortable calling them by their first names.”

“No, we didn’t have that. But I knew a fellow at Cornell who grew up thinking that an honorary aunt and uncle from another city were his real aunt and uncle. He didn’t know just how they were related, but it never occurred to him that they weren’t, and it caused a problem.”

“How would it cause a problem?”

“Well, he thought their daughter was really his cousin. And one summer they were all at the same resort together, and his little cousin seemed to be very available, but he knew it would be incestuous so he never even considered it. He was sorely tempted, as they say, but he kept his hands to himself. Then a few months later he found out Aunt Whozit and Uncle Whatsit were just his parents’ very good friends, but by that time Cousin Hepzibah was miles and miles away.”

“I hope her name wasn’t really Hepzibah. Does the story have a happy ending?”

“If it does, I never heard it. He tried to salve his wounds by screwing his way through Sigma Delta Tau. A heroic ambition, and better than drinking yourself to death. I don’t seem to want this cigarette after all. Want to finish it for me?”

“Sure. It’s good we smoke the same brand.”

“It’s one of the reasons I married you.”

“Tell me the other reasons.”

“Because I hate my mother’s cooking.”

“Not because I’m sensational in bed?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I know you’re sensational on a couch.”

“I’ll miss that old brown couch.”

“Well, it’ll miss you. It’s permanently imprinted with the impression of your very nice little ass.”

“Ha! I married a crude man.”

“That can’t be a surprise to you.” He yawned. “Would it be terribly unromantic if I took a little nap?”

“I wish you would. You’ve looked tired all afternoon.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Then close your eyes and put your seat back. Go ahead.”

“It does seem unromantic, though.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Nonsense,” she said. “It sounds like a very married thing to do. I like the idea of us doing married things. I like that very much.”

He fell asleep almost immediately. She sat for a few minutes watching him sleep. When the stewardess came by she asked for a magazine and a cup of coffee, but she abandoned the magazine after leafing through it very briefly. It was more pleasant to sit sipping coffee and watch her husband sleep. He looked very vulnerable now, his honest face open in repose. She could see no weakness in his face, not when he was awake and not now while he slept, but she felt stronger herself now. This was her man, sleeping beside her, and she realized that this was a sight she would be seeing for the rest of her life. This was the man who would share that life with her.

There were so many things she did not know about him. She would be sleeping next to him for the rest of her life, yet now she did not know whether he slept nude or in pajamas, whether he shaved at night or in the morning. In a week’s time she would be making his breakfast, but at the moment she did not know what he liked for breakfast, or if he was talkative in the morning.

She realized with some surprise that she knew less about him, knew him less thoroughly, than she had known several other men in her lifetime. She and Mark had never spent more than a couple of hours at a time in lovemaking. They had never spent a night together or been in a real bed together. There were men she had slept with, men she had spent weekends with.

He knew, certainly, that there had been men before him. But he did not know — and would not know — the number of men who had been to bed with her, or the depth of certain relationships she had experienced. Indeed, there was at least as much about her that he did not know, and she suspected that his ignorance of her was somewhat greater than her ignorance of him. He was, unless she was greatly mistaken, a much simpler person than she was. No, simple was a bad word, it had negative connotations which she did not mean at all. He was a less complicated person than she, he had led a less complicated life, and she recognized this without feeling in any way superior to him for the recognition. The relative simplicity of his life was unquestionably one of the things about him that had attracted her.

One had to simplify, to draw back, to be careful.

She picked up her magazine again and tried to get interested in an article about Jackie Kennedy’s redecoration of the White House. She looked at the pictures but couldn’t keep her mind on the text. She could not make up her mind about Jackie Kennedy, now respecting the woman, now finding in her aspects of several girls at Bryn Mawr whom she had found intolerable.

But we’ve got something in common now, she told Jackie’s photograph. We’re both a couple of housewives with places to furnish. Of course yours is a little more elaborate, and you’ll probably be doing more entertaining...

Well, Mark Benstock would never be President, and thank God for that. And they would not live in a white mausoleum on Pennsylvania Avenue but in a two-bedroom apartment on Kenmore Avenue, with leaded glass windows and a woodburning fireplace. The smaller bedroom would be Mark’s den. They would eat their breakfasts at a table in the kitchen. (Her prior experience with apartments was limited to New York, and the idea of having an apartment kitchen large enough to eat in delighted her.) And when Mark came home from the office she would meet him at the door with a cocktail, and they would dine in the dining area of the L-shaped living room. On winter nights she would have a fire laid in the fireplace, and after he had his cocktail he would fight it.

She closed the magazine and went on imagining their life together. They would spend a great deal of time alone together, certainly, but it would also be important for them to have friends. During their courtship they had kept pretty much to themselves. Now they were married, and before long people would be inviting them over and they would invite people to their apartment in return.

It was not hard to guess who their friends would be. Many of the couples they would see socially had been at the reception earlier. There would be old friends of his and old friends of hers. Pal boys and their wives, Phi Ep girls and their husbands.

She thought suddenly of that New Year’s party. But it would not be like that. She and Mark would have as friends people very much like themselves, and the women would not talk of toilet training while the men talked of cars and football. It would not be like that.

The landing at San Juan Airport was smooth, and it was not until the plane had taxied the length of the runway and come to a complete stop that she realized she had been afraid of this flight. She had never been conscious of fear, but now she felt as if she had been relieved of a burden, and she figured out what it had consisted of. She was too happy, too safe and secure, and evidently she had read too many sad stories and seen too many bad movies not to expect tragedy.

The air was warm and heavy, with an almost musky scent on it. She experienced an odd sense of deja vu as they walked from the plane, and it was a moment before she knew what it was. The air had had just this quality in Florida. She had been there twice, once during high school when her parents took her to Miami Beach during Christmas vacation, and once when she and several college classmates took a reluctant part in the Easter pilgrimage to Fort Lauderdale.

She went with Mark as he collected their bags. On the way to the hotel’s courtesy car he said, “I think you’ll like the Flamboyan. It was brand new when I stayed there and the staff was a little rusty, but even so it was a pretty decent place to stay. I figured I’d play it safe and pick a place I knew was all right.”

“That was two years ago?”

“Well, a year and a half. The week before Christmas.”

“I hope they don’t give us your old room.”

“That’s not too likely, since I booked a suite. But why did you say that?”

“Because I’m jealous enough of the girl you took along as it stands.”

“I went all by myself and you know it.”

“Poor baby. All alone in romantic Puerto Rico.”

“It was about as romantic as old tennis shoes.”

“Oh, come on. You must have picked up a senorita or two.”

“All I picked up was a very light case of sun poisoning. Oh, I bought a couple of drinks for a girl. A secretary from Brooklyn who’d been saving all year for a glamorous week in the sun.”

“I hope you made her dreams come true.”

“Not unless she had very masochistic dreams. I bought her two Apricot Brandy Sours, and don’t ask me how I remember what she drank. I bought her two Apricot Brandy Sours and excused myself to go to the men’s room, but instead I went to my own room and read the newspaper and went to bed. I can’t believe that was the end she had in mind for the evening. It wasn’t what I had in mind, either, but it turned out to be what I wanted.”

“She must have been flat chested.”

“How well you know my fetishes. No, as a matter of fact she was built like the proverbial brick outhouse, or otherwise—”

“You would never have bought her a drink in the first place.”

“I’m afraid you’re right. Actually she was good-looking enough. But her voice was like chalk on a blackboard. I can stand some Brooklyn accents, but on top of that her voice was shrill and nasal at the same time, and—”

“I know the voice.”

At the hotel desk she looked over his shoulder as he signed them in. Mr. and Mrs. Mark Benstock, 803 Kenmore Avenue, Buffalo, New York. A bellhop took their bags and led them to the elevator and then to their suite. He started to check the bathroom but Mark told him everything was fine and gave him a dollar. When the door closed he took her in his arms and kissed her. She clung tightly to him and the kiss lasted a long time.

“Mrs. Benstock,” he said.

“You know, I don’t think it’s going to be hard to get used to the name. I think I’m used to it already.”

“Just don’t get tired of hearing it.”

“Not for a minimum of a hundred years. Oh, isn’t that nice, there’s a bowl of fruit.I hope it’s not wax. No, it’s real fruit, and there’s a card. ‘Congratulations and best wishes from the staff and management of Hotel Flamboyan.’ Congratulations and best wishes, so they know this is a honeymoon.”

“Unless they congratulate people who are having affairs. Somehow I doubt it.”

“Somehow so do I.”

“Does it bother you? That they know?”

“Should it? I’m in love and I’m happy and I’m married and I don’t care who knows it. My God, the bedroom’s even bigger than the living room. And what a big bed. Did I tell you my mother said we should get twin beds? ‘You’ll get a better night’s sleep, dear, and that’s important even if it’s not so romantic.’ Fat chance, mother dear. Do you suppose we’ll ever want twin beds?”

“Not for a minimum of a hundred years, as someone said recently. There’s an icebox in the living room, incidentally, and unless they fouled up it’s not empty. Let’s just see. Ah, they followed instructions to the letter. They even got the brand right.”

“Mumm’s Cordon Rouge. What a wonderful man I married.”

“I’d glad you realize it.”

“Now all we need is a leather couch.”

“And a terrible party to go to first. Should I call the desk and order up a dozen Polacks and a couple of bottles of Schenley’s?”

“I’m sure they’re fresh out. Of Polacks, anyway. But calling the desk reminds me.”

“You must be starving.”

“That’s what it reminded me. Do you mind waiting? Am I blushing? I think I am.”

“You are.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“I kind of like it. The blushing bride. No, I don’t mind waiting. In fact there’s something nice about the idea of not having to rush. We’re old married folks. We can go downstairs and eat a civilized dinner. Maybe take a turn at the casino, catch a show at the nightclub—”

“That’s a little too civilized, but the dinner sounds good.”

“I’ll tell you what. I need a shave, so why don’t you unpack and freshen up and then we’ll go downstairs before they close the kitchen.”

In the dining room he ordered a Rum Collins for himself and a Daiquiri for her. “No, let me change that,” she told the waiter. “I’ll have an Apricot Brandy Sour.”

“You lunatic.”

“I was going to use my Brooklyn accent but I chickened out.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Now I couldn’t. I’m too self-conscious. In New York everyone made fun of my Buffalo accent. ‘Aaandrea.’ I got the same thing at Bryn Mawr, but there I was naive enough to think it was something to be ashamed of, and I carefully cultivated a Main Line accent. Or what I thought was one. Then I would have to lose it very deliberately when I came home for vacations. In New York I decided I would rather sound like myself than go native.”

“New York. I don’t know how you could stand it.”

“Well, I couldn’t. That’s why I came home.”

“It’s nice for a visit. I like to drive down and see a couple of shows every now and then. Oh, you married a man with an original mind, didn’t you, Mrs. Benstock? ‘A nice place to visit but I’d hate to live there.’ Well, like most clichés, it happens to be the truth.”

“Well, that’s really all I did. Visit there, I mean. I never really lived there. I visited for a couple of years.” The waiter brought their drinks and they ordered dinner, sirloin for him, lobster Newburg for her. “So this is an Apricot Brandy Sour,” she said. “You would have to taste it to believe it, but don’t bother. I don’t feel sorry for that girl now. Anyone who drinks these regularly must be used to having men abandon her.”

“I’ll order you something else.”

“No, let me finish this. It’s not going to be a habit with me, but let me stay with my Apricot Brandy Sour. That sounds like a name for one of James Bond’s girlfriends. ‘Her name was Apricot Brandy Sour. She drove an E-type Jaguar and wore a diamond tiara and nothing else. Her auburn hair cascaded over her lush ruby-tipped breasts.’”

“‘Bond cast an admiring glance at her breasts. He took out a packet of Player’s and slit the wrapper with his thumbnail.’ I’ll be damned if I know how he does that, incidentally. He must have the sharpest goddamned thumbnails ever.”

After dinner they had a brandy at their table, then strolled through the lobby. They were both postponing their return to their suite, in unspoken agreement to delay their pleasure as long as possible. In the casino he told her that it was a good idea to stay away from the roulette wheel. They had the usual zero and double zero, and they also had a triple zero, which gave the house an added edge.

“I keep learning new things about you,” she told him. “Now I discover you’re an expert on gambling.”

“Not an expert and not even a gambler. I played when I was here the last time because there was nothing else to do. I think I won about forty dollars. It bored the hell out of me.”

“What did you play?”

“Blackjack some of the time. I lost a little at blackjack and won at craps. I think I’ll try my luck at the crap table.”

“All right. Oh, they have slot machines.”

“You’d get a better break playing parking meters, but here’s ten dollars. Have fun.”

She drifted over to a bank of slots while he headed for the crap table. When he rejoined her she had doubled her ten-dollar stake, and he told her that was exactly half of what he had lost at craps. She poured quarters into her bag and took his arm. “Let’s go,” she said. “I have a sudden craving for champagne.”

“So do I.”

In their suite she said, “I wanted the wedding small and I could have lived without the reception, but I’m glad we weren’t too blasé for a honeymoon. This is just the way every marriage should start. Flying first class, and then this suite. You’re going to give me an appetite for luxury. I won’t even ask what this is costing us.”

“I won’t even tell you.”

“Do you want to open the champagne? I think the second bottle will have to wait for another night, but I’ve got room for a glass or two. You pop the cork and I’ll slip into something more comfortable.”

When she came out of the bedroom he was already in bed with the sheet covering him from the waist down. He held two glasses of champagne. She slid under the covers beside him and took a glass. “To our honeymoon,” he said. “May it last a minimum of one hundred years.”

“Oh, it will.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you look terrific in black lace? I certainly hope not, but you do.”

“I’ve never owned anything like this.”

“You won’t own that long. I’m about to rip it off you.”

“You won’t have to. There. Am I what you always wanted? You’d better say yes.”

“Just what I always wanted. All I ever wanted, and you’re mine and I love you.”

“Oh, this is so perfect. A bed is nicer than a couch, isn’t it? And married is nicer than not married. Let me look at you. My husband. Oh, what a big cock you have. Do you mind if I talk like that?”

“I like it.”

“What a big beautiful cock my husband has.”

“And what lovely tits my little wife has. I think I will kiss them.”

“Oh, please do. Oh, yes.”

“And what a nice cunt. What a nice wet cunt, all warm and wet.”

“Oh, put your cock in my cunt. Oh, fuck me.”

He positioned himself on her and rubbed the head of his penis back and forth over her clitoris. The sensation was almost painfully exquisite.

“Don’t tease.”

“It says in the books that you’re supposed to like this.”

“God, I love it but I want you inside me. Now. Oh, yes, that’s so good. Your cock is in my cunt and I love it, I love you, oh God.”

Afterward he lit a cigarette and they passed it back and forth. She said, “That’s good to know, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“That it’s better when you’re married.”

“Didn’t you think it would be?”

“I didn’t think it could be. Was it my imagination or did you make it last longer than usual?”

“I wanted to make it last forever. I never wanted to finish. I want all of this to last forever.”

“It will, my darling.”

“And we can do it whenever we want to. We have a license, like a hunting or a fishing license. We have a fucking license and we can do it all we want.”

“Every night on Kenmore Avenue.”

“Every night. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Benstock of 803 Kenmore Avenue regret they must reject your kind invitation as they will be at home that evening fucking.’ I hope we remember to draw the drapes.”

“Let’s never open them. Just in case the mood comes on us suddenly.”

“As it very well might. And we don’t have to get up and go home, and I think that’s the best part. No more going home to Admiral Road and trying not to walk bowlegged.”

“What a nice picture that makes.”

“And trying at the same time to keep the smile off my face. I wonder if they knew. I suppose they must have.”

“Do you care?”

“Not a bit.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Are you sorry we didn’t wait?”

“Why should I be?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might be.”

“I’m not. You’re not, are you?”

“God, no. I couldn’t have waited, I don’t think. I could never sleep after a date with you.”

“And I thought you weren’t interested. All those months and you never tried anything.”

“I was afraid of spoiling things. I knew I was going to marry you and I didn’t want to rush you.”

“When did you know?”

“As a matter of fact, cliché or not, I knew from the first time I saw you. That’s something nice and romantic for us to tell our children. It happens to be the truth. I took one look at you and I said to myself that this was the girl I was going to marry. And then I told myself not to be ridiculous, but I never did change my mind.”

“What a wonderful man you are.”

“Just keep on thinking so.”

“You could have had me any time, you know. That’s probably not something I should be telling you. But I am glad you waited as long as you did. And I’m glad you didn’t wait any longer. You weren’t the only one who had trouble sleeping.”

“Think you’ll be able to sleep tonight?”

“Like a lamb.”

“Well, you go to sleep. I’ll just touch you a little.”

“Sneak. Oh, that’s nice. But you can’t be ready again so soon. Oh, but you are. How lovely.”

They made love again. It was briefer this time than before, but equally satisfying, and afterward he lay in her arms for just a few minutes before rolling off of her and going to sleep. He lay on his side facing her and she watched him sleep and remembered how she had watched him on the plane.

She smoked a cigarette, then put out the bedside light and stretched out beside him. But she was not ready to sleep, and after a few minutes she knew it.

She slipped out of bed and got the champagne bottle and a glass from her night table. She went into the living room and poured herself a glass of champagne.

Shortly after they had begun having sex they had confessed their prior experience to one another. She had admitted to one affair at Bryn Mawr and two in New York. He told her he had had one genuine affair at Cornell, another brief affair in law school, and perhaps a dozen one-night stands with girls he had picked up. She was certain his summary was the literal truth, and just as certain that it was a good thing hers wasn’t.

Years ago she had taken it for granted that it would be impossible to marry a man who did not have considerably more sexual experience than she did. She had since come to see that neither sexual experience nor sexual sophistication was terribly important. Of course she was glad that Mark was not entirely without experience, but she was also glad that his experience had been no more extensive than it had.

Nevertheless, it still seemed to her that it was important for the man to think he was more experienced than his bride. And however much experience he had had, there was no question that his lovemaking satisfied and fulfilled her. She had slept with men whose store of sexual expertise was greater than Mark’s, but she had never slept with a man who moved her more deeply or pleased her more thoroughly. If he lacked something in the way of innovation and sophistication, he more than made up for it in other ways.

And she had learned to distrust sexual cleverness, anyway. New York had been full to overflowing with men who could screw you in every position the Kama Sutra ever thought of, and they all forgot your name before they were through doing it.

But how she longed to take his penis into her mouth! Ever since a boy from Haverford had taught her to enjoy fellatio, it had always seemed to her the ultimate expression of love, an act ideally to be reserved for what she had around the same time learned to refer to as meaningful relationships. It bothered her that she had done this with other men and not with Mark. There ought not to be anything she had done with others but not with him. She did not in the main regret her experience before she met Mark. It was the past, and nothing to do with the present. But she did wish to do with him everything she had ever done with anyone else.

She wanted to know his taste. On two or three occasions she had surreptitiously touched herself after intercourse and conveyed her hand to her mouth, seeking in that way to have the flavor of him. And so many times she had been on the verge of putting her mouth on him.

But it would be a mistake, surely, to take the initiative. And he had never hinted that she might do this for him, nor had he attempted to go down on her. He was marvelously oral and used his mouth with great enthusiasm and effect on her breasts, so much so that she was sure he would eat her magnificently if he only got around to it.

Oh, it would come with time. He had waited longer than necessary to make love to her at all, and perhaps this was a similar sort of reticence. Sooner or later he would add this element to their repertoire; if he did not take the initiative himself, she would find some subtle way to teach him to teach her. And what an eager pupil she would be.

She drank another glass of champagne and smoked another cigarette. It was late and she was tired, and she knew now that she would be able to sleep. She was a married woman on her honeymoon and it was a perfect honeymoon and she knew she would remember it all her life. And she knew too that she was slightly anxious for it to be over and done with even as she looked forward eagerly to its remaining days. She was a little impatient to begin this business of being a wife.

She padded silently back to the bedroom. He was positioned as she had left him, lying on his side facing her side of the bed. She got into bed and moved close to him, first feeling his body warmth on her skin, then moving closer so that their bodies touched. He did not awaken, but his arm reached out and fell across her body. She felt a deep sense of security unlike anything she had known since childhood. This man would take care of her. This man, this good man, loved her.

And she loved him. She did.

This had been the best day of her life. It was the most important day of her life, as she had known it would be, and now it had turned out to be the best day of her life, better than she had dared hope it would be.

Drifting off to sleep, her last thought was of her high school’s motto. Optima Futura. The best is yet to be.

Monday

September 21, 1964

“More coffee, Eileen?”

“Oh, do I have time? It’s two-thirty. I guess I have time for one more cup. But let me get it.”

“Don’t be silly.”

But Eileen Fradin was on her feet, headed for the kitchen. “Don’t you be silly,” she said. “Listen, you’re supposed to be in a delicate condition, remember? You might as well milk it for all it’s worth.”

“I feel about as delicate as a rhinoceros.”

“Well, I can get my own cup of coffee. More for you? Give me your cup. I wish my coffee tasted like this. Will you listen to me? I sound like somebody in a commercial. But it’s the truth, my coffee’s lousy. What brand do you buy, Andrea?”

It was the pot, not the coffee. She and Mark had received four electric coffee-makers as wedding presents, and three of them had been promptly returned for refunds. The fourth, with a twenty-four cup capacity, had been retained; it might be useful for large parties. Andrea made coffee in an old-fashioned drip pot like the one her mother used.

Hadn’t she told Eileen this? Hadn’t they had this conversation before?

“About four months to go, Andrea?”

“Three months and three weeks. According to Dr. Lerner.”

“Getting excited?”

“I don’t know. Not exactly.” She sat back, folded her hands over her rounded abdomen. She remembered the first time she’d felt life, that extraordinary sensation of alien movement within herself. “I suppose I’m excited,” she said. “It’s hard to be excited from day to day.”

“I know what you mean. With Jason I was nauseous the whole nine months, did I tell you?”

“I think so.”

“So I didn’t have time to be excited.”

Andrea lit a cigarette. She had tried to stop as soon as she had learned that she was pregnant, apprehensive that smoking might have a bad effect on her unborn child. So many things seemed to be bad for the unborn. Her own morning sickness had lasted less than three months, but during its duration Lerner had refused to prescribe anything for it.

“Not since Thalidomide,” he’d said. “You wake up nauseous, you have a glass of orange juice, you throw up, and then you’ll be set for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t even take aspirin for headaches if I were you.”

But it had been impossible to stop smoking. It made her terribly nervous, and mightn’t the nervousness be as bad for the baby as the smoking? Mark had suggested the possibility and it made a certain amount of sense to her.

“I’ll just finish this coffee and then I’ll get Jason,” Eileen was saying. “Nursery school makes such a difference in my life. It’s not even two months yet, I’m not used to it, but it makes a real difference. You feel as though you’ve got space to breathe again, you know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“But I shouldn’t be saying this to you. You haven’t even had the kid yet and I’m telling you what a pleasure it is to be able to dump him on the nursery school. Well, I’ll enjoy my freedom while I’ve got it. It won’t be long before people tell me to sit down while they bring the coffee.”

“You’re not—”

“No, not yet, but didn’t I tell you we’re going to try in a month or so? Because I’d rather have the baby in the spring or early summer so I don’t have to carry in the hot weather. And if I’m like I was with Jason I won’t have to try for very long. All Roger has to do is look at me and I’m pregnant.”

Andrea drew on her cigarette. It was a strange relationship that she had with Eileen Fradin. She felt at once both more and less mature than Eileen. She was almost three years older, had gone out of town to college, had lived and worked in New York. Eileen had never lived other than in her parents’ house until the day she married Roger Fradin. She had read almost nothing, had done no traveling to speak of, and had spent all her life in a world bounded by her family and the friends of her childhood.

On the other hand, Eileen had been married for four years and had a three-year-old son. She lived not in an apartment like Andrea but in a tract house in Tonawanda. She knew whom to call when something went wrong with the washing machine. She was more experienced at the business of being a wife and mother and, Andrea sometimes thought, more efficiently designed from the beginning to play those roles.

“I got pregnant so easy the first time, Andrea.” She leaned forward and her eyes narrowed. “If you want to know something, I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure I wanted to. And then it was too late to change my mind.”

“How did you feel then? After you found out you were pregnant?”

“Oh, well, you have to feel excited, right? I mean maybe I was going through some doubts, but then it was too late so I put it out of my mind. We wanted children, and there was no question about it. I just got to thinking maybe we should have a little more time to ourselves. Not so much for Roger’s sake because he was older.” Roger was a few years older than Mark. “But for my own sake, I was like still in college and so young. Of course I was looking for an excuse to quit college anyway but I thought, you know, if we had another year or two to ourselves who would it hurt? You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“So now I think things worked out for the best. Jason’s three and I’m not even twenty-three yet. If I get pregnant right away and have the second one in, say, July, they’ll both be in college and I’ll be how old? Twenty-three and eighteen, I’ll be like forty-one. That’s still young.” She thought for a moment. “I think we’ll probably stop at two. Especially if the second one’s a girl. To have one of each. Or is it better to have two the same? What do you figure?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know Roger wanted a son to begin with, but I wonder does it matter to him if he has two sons or a son and a daughter? What he said the first time is all he wanted was a healthy baby.”

“That’s what Mark says.”

“I think that must be what everybody says, but I knew Roger wanted a boy, and afterward he admitted he was glad it was a boy. Does Mark want a son do you suppose?”

“I don’t honestly know. I suppose most men do, don’t they? But I don’t honestly know in Mark’s case.”

“I’ll tell you who was happiest Jason was a boy and that was my father. Having three daughters of his own and then my sister Marsha had a girl and I guess he never thought he’d see a grandson. Sometimes I think I’d like a little girl and other times I just don’t know. You didn’t have any brothers or sisters, did you, Andrea?”

“No.”

“I had Marsha three years older than me and Rochelle two years younger. Just a couple of weeks ago I was reading a magazine article about the middle child and it suddenly hit me. That’s what I was, a middle child! It gives you a lot to think about.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, I don’t know. To put it into words. But I was thinking, how many children are you supposed to have? If you got one it’s an only child and that can be a problem, and if it’s two they’ll be competitive, and if it’s three you’ve got the middle-child situation, and if it’s four — but a person could go crazy trying to bring up four children. Listen, don’t laugh.”

“You don’t want to be late picking up Jason.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth.” She set her cup on the end table, got to her feet. “Listen, give me a call or I’ll call you, huh, Andrea? Don’t bother, I’ll find my own way out. I think I can remember where the door is.”

“I’ll walk down with you. I want to see if the mail’s here yet.”

“I could bring it up, save you a few steps.”

“Oh, come off it, Eileen.”

“Listen, I’m telling you. Take advantage of it while you can. Once they’re born you never stop running.”

She carried the mail upstairs and sorted through it. All of it was addressed to Mark except for her Alumnae Bulletin from Bryn Mawr. She put Mark’s letters on the sideboard and sat down with the bulletin, but before she could open its envelope the telephone rang.

It was her mother. “I know I talked to you this morning,” she said, “but I just had a phone call. Sadie Robbins passed away. That’s Essie Davis’s mother.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

“In this case it’s a blessing. I won’t say what she had, but she was wasting away to nothing and they couldn’t even stop the pain toward the end.” The word cancer, of course, could not be spoken aloud, Andrea thought. “The funeral will be tomorrow. Your father and I will go, of course.”

“Do you think Mark and I should go?”

“I don’t see why you have to. Your condition is always a good excuse, but even if you weren’t. You could make a call tonight, or even that you could skip. I would say skip it. What you can do, you can send a contribution. Mrs. Joseph Robbins, and put that acknowledgment should be sent to Mrs. Harold Davis, and I’ll give you the address, or you could get it from the phone book. It’s on Chatham but I don’t remember the number.”

“I’ll find it.”

“I wanted to tell you in case you missed it in the paper. Send a couple of dollars to the prayer-book fund or for research on the disease, whatever you want. Well, I don’t want to keep you. You’re probably busy.”

“No, not really. Eileen Fradin was here but she left a few minutes ago.”

“It’s nice the two of you are getting friendly. How does her husband get on with Mark?”

“Well enough, I guess. They don’t have too much to say to each other. Mother?”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We were talking about how many children to have.”

“One at a time is usually a good policy.”

“God, imagine having twins!”

“Well, people do it and survive, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Eileen’s having another?”

“In ten or eleven months.”

“Well, that’s very nice, but I think they can wait awhile before booking the hospital room.”

“That’s not what — oh, I was just thinking about something she asked me, and wondering, and — oh, wondering what it would have been like if I’d had any brothers or sisters.”

There was a pause, and when her mother spoke her voice was pitched lower. She said, “Well, you know I lost a baby when you were three.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well.”

“That’s what I was thinking about. Was it that you couldn’t have any more after that or did you decide not to or what?”

“Well, Andrea—”

“It’s just that I’ve wondered about this, you know, for years, and I thought I would ask.”

“It’s funny talking about it on the phone.”

“I’m sorry, it’s stupid of me. Some other time.”

“No. Just a second, let me get a cigarette.” She waited, and then her mother said, “It’s not that there’s any reason not to talk about it. And there was nothing physical to stop me from having another baby. But it was very upsetting, losing the baby. To your father also, but especially to me, because whatever they say it’s always different for a woman. You carry it, it’s physically a part of you. And then to lose it, and after such a long time.”

“Did you carry it almost to term?”

“I carried it to term. Andrea, I did not want to go through that again. And we already had one healthy child that we loved, and I did not want to go through that again. I didn’t want to take the chance. Even if there was no chance involved I didn’t want the anxiety. Do you understand?”

“Of course I understand. Mother, I—”

“It was a normal baby, Andrea. If you were worried.”

“I never even thought about that, Mother. I just—”

“What happened was a freak. Purely a freak. What happened, the baby, the cord got wrapped around the baby’s throat—”

“Mother, stop. Please.”

“I’m all right, Andrea.”

“Of course you are.”

“I’m perfectly all right. It’s funny how things can take you back so completely in time. You suddenly get a total recollection of a moment from years past and you feel emotions you thought were gone forever. It was, it would have been, it was a boy—”

Her mother’s voice broke, and when Andrea tried to speak her own throat wouldn’t unlock. For a long moment both women were silent.

Then briskly: “Well, I wanted to tell you about Mrs. Robbins.”

“Yes, I’m glad you called.”

“My love to Mark.”

“I’ll tell him. And we’ll see you Friday night for dinner as usual.”

“I look forward to it.”

“So do I.”

“Maybe I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

She wrote out a small check for the American Cancer Society and enclosed an appropriate note. There was a mailbox on the corner and she walked to it and dropped the letter in the slot. It was a good clear September day, the sun high in a cloudless sky, the heat softened by a steady breeze. When it was good, Buffalo’s weather was very good indeed.

Well, that was done, she thought, heading back to the apartment. She felt an immediate sense of satisfaction at having attended to a duty so promptly and efficiently. Then, climbing the single flight of stairs to the apartment, she wondered why she had been so quick to send the contribution in Mrs. Robbins’s memory. To get it done with? To act on something on her own...?

She let herself into the apartment. She walked through the rooms in turn, the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining area. She picked up objects at random, reading them with her hands like a blind person, feeling their weight and substance, returning them carefully to their places. This ashtray. This picture in its silver frame. This candy dish. This table lighter.

You are being silly, she told herself.

Eileen Fradin wouldn’t have these thoughts. Eileen Fradin had wondered if perhaps it might not be wiser to wait longer before getting pregnant, and then she had found out that she was indeed pregnant, and so she had stopped thinking along those lines. Simply stopped. Told the brain to point itself in another direction entirely.

How nice to be able to do that.

Or was it?

She paused for a moment in front of the portable television set and flicked it on. But even as the picture was coming into focus she shook her head firmly and pushed the button to extinguish it.

No, not daytime television. Too much of a symbol, thank you all the same. Sit and stare at the walls if you must but do not sit and stare at that brainless box.

Back to the kitchen to pour more coffee into her cup. Back to the living room to shake a cigarette out of the pack and light it with the heavy Ronson table lighter (a wedding gift, everything was a wedding gift). A drag on the cigarette, a sip of coffee. She thought of Prufrock complaining (or was it precisely a complaint?) that he had measured out his life with coffee spoons.

And she? How did Andrea Benstock measure out her life?

With phone calls from her mother. With little checks in memory of old people she had known only by name. With breakfast in the morning and lovemaking at night. With Friday dinners at the club with her parents and Sunday dinners with his parents. With Eileen Fradin dropping in for coffee or Sondra Margolis calling to ask her if she wanted to go shopping.

Weren’t you supposed to do something? Could you just walk through it like this?

But this was ridiculous. She was happy.

She had everything she could want. Her family. Her friends. A husband who loved her. A baby quick with life inside her. Enough money — she didn’t know what Mark earned but knew that it seemed to be enough. She’d never asked him, he’d never volunteered. It was something, by tradition, one didn’t talk about... besides, she liked it this way. It was part of her safe refuge not to know about certain things. The apartment was attractive and comfortable and would do at least until the baby was born, and perhaps for a year beyond that.

Of course a house would be more work than an apartment, and a baby would make more demands on her after its birth than before. Perhaps that was what she needed. Perhaps she had too much time to think, and that was the problem.

Or, more likely, there was no problem in the first place. She was pregnant, and she had heard and read enough about pregnancy to know that it tricked the mind. It put odd thoughts into a head that would otherwise not entertain them.

She was very lucky. She had to remember that. Because right now she was feeling almost as she had felt at times in New York, experiencing a similar vulnerability.

Those black holes, black holes circling at the perimeters of thought. You had to be very careful not to sail near them. If you fell into them you would fall forever in emptiness. You had to keep a very tight hold on your own mind, and whenever your thoughts approached the edge you had to tug them back and keep them where they belonged...

The baby kicked. She stubbed out her cigarette, placed the palm of her hand over her stomach. She felt a smile forming automatically on her lips, on her whole face. Mark told her often that she glowed with pregnancy and she liked that particular verb, with its connotations of warm radiance enveloping her in an aura. There were times when she could feel herself seeming to glow. This was one of them.

Another kick. She thought of the conversation with her mother, of the brother she had never had. But that memory steered her toward the black holes and she pushed it resolutely aside.

“Jeremy,” she said aloud. “Or Robin. I honestly don’t care which you are, you know. You’re going to make all the difference in the world. You really are.”

She was still sitting on the sofa when she heard Mark’s car in the driveway. She got quickly to her feet and went into the kitchen to make drinks. When she met him at the door he kissed her and held her close for a moment, then released her and accepted his drink.

“I think I need this,” he said.

“Rough day?”

“Oh, I don’t suppose you could call it rough. Let’s just say it was a long day.”

“Poor baby.” She heard herself saying the words, was shocked by them, and then relieved he didn’t question them, however condescending they seemed to her.

“There’s something the matter with the air-conditioner in my office. The guy was supposed to come around to look at it today but he didn’t show up.” He tugged at his tie, removed it, arranged it over the back of the chair. “So I was hoping to get away early, but then I had that schmuck Siegel at four o’clock and I couldn’t get rid of him. It’s bad enough that he’s stupid but on top of that he gets offended easily.”

“Do I know who he is?”

“I don’t think so. He’s in Lester Kalisher’s office. Nobody ever accomplishes anything with Siegel. That’s not what he’s for. Lester always sends him around for the opening rounds. It’s his method of softening up the opposition. After a few hours with Siegel you’re prepared to give ground when Lester comes over and pretends to be the reasonable one.”

She took a sip of her own drink and asked him about the case.

“Oh, it’s all boring as hell,” he said. “You don’t really want to hear about it, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Really? Well, a client of ours is buying a restaurant from a client of theirs. It’s a German place way over in South Buffalo on Cazenovia, and the whole deal shouldn’t be complicated but it is. Our guy wants a clause to prevent the seller from opening a restaurant under his own name or within a two-mile radius for the next ten years, which is fairly standard, and the seller is supposedly going to Florida to spend the rest of his life in a trailer court in St Pete, but Kalisher wants to stick on this point to prove he’s a lawyer, and I’m just as determined to prove I’m a lawyer, and — you can’t really be interested in all this crap.”

“I am vitally interested in everything my darling husband does.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.” He dropped an arm around her, squeezed her bottom, brushed her forehead with his lips. He had taken his jacket off and she could see the sweat circles under his arms. She liked his smells — the fresh one after a shower, the sweet-sour smell of his perspiration, the darkly pungent man-smell of him when they made love.

The sense of smell, she sometimes thought, was rather more important than people realized. It was somehow so much more evocative than the other senses. A suddenly familiar aroma brought back the past much more sharply than a comparable sight or sound or taste or touch.

Just a few weeks ago there had been a hot, sultry night, and the air had had a particular flavor to it, and she and Mark had turned to each other simultaneously to reminisce over their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. It had convinced him that they were telepathic, but she was sure it was merely an identical response to the scent and taste of the air, which that night had been distinctly tropical.

“Why don’t you sit down, baby?”

“I’ve been sitting all day. Don’t give me that delicate business, huh? I was getting enough of that from Eileen.”

“Oh, did you see her today?”

“She came over for coffee and insisted on racing me to the kitchen. She says I should milk this pregnancy for everything it’s worth.”

“Well, she’s right.” He scooped the letters from the sideboard and leafed through them. “Bills and junk mail,” he said. “Just what I always wanted. Is this all we got?”

“It’s all you got.”

“Emphasis noted, counselor. What did you get, a mash note from an old flame?”

“Nothing that exciting. Just the Alumnae Bulletin from Bryn Mawr.”

“Oh, thrills and chills! Can we read it together in bed?” They’d done that once, taking turns reading social notes from the Bulletin in a mock Main Line accent.

“Oh, come on,” she said.

“But I’m looking forward to it! I can’t wait to find out what’s new with Woofer and Tweeter and all those other sweet little preppy Protestants.”

“Woofer and Tweeter!”

“Well, that’s what they all sound like. I don’t know who gives them those nicknames—”

“That’s perfect, Mark. Woofer and Tweeter.” She picked up the Bulletin and began to flip through it. Already, in the few years since she’d graduated from Bryn Mawr, she had noticed the beginning of change in the Class Notes. At first virtually all of the items about her class members had been marriage announcements. Now there were fewer marriages and more birth announcements, and lately divorces had been making their appearance in the listings.

When she held the Bulletin in her hands it was always 1959 again. But whenever she read the notes of her classmates it quickly became present time again.

“I’ll be sending in an announcement soon,” she said.

“For the baby. Good ol’ Jeremy-Robin. How’s J-R been behaving today?”

“All right. Kicking a lot.”

“I don’t see what he’s got to kick about. He’s got a pretty soft life if you stop to think about it. Meals served on time, perfect weather, not too many responsibilities.”

“You sound as though you’d like to trade places with him.”

“Well, I do what I can. Come on, read me about Woofer and Tweeter and Poopie and Guppy and — honey?”

She felt the blood drain from her face. Her chest was constricted and her stomach felt as though she had been kicked. She opened her mouth and tried to breathe through it. But she couldn’t breathe.

“Andrea, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”

She looked up at him. He was standing but he was so very far away and there was a fog between them that blurred his features. She opened her mouth again and made herself breathe, in and out, in and out. He was talking but the words wouldn’t cut their way through the fog.

“Andrea—”

Her own voice, now, returned to her as from a distance. She seemed to understand her own words only by hearing them.

She said, “Winkie is dead. Winkie.”

He was moving toward her. She tried to extend the Alumnae Bulletin to him. Her arm stretched far out from her body but her fingers couldn’t maintain their grip on the paper and it fell, fell so slowly toward the floor.

Then the fog got thicker and covered everything.

In her first year at Bryn Mawr Andrea had shared a room in the freshman dormitory with a girl named Pauline Spooner. Pauline’s father was a Unitarian minister in Three Rivers, Delaware, and Pauline was assistant freshman coordinator of a campus organization called Liberal Religious Youth. She was tall and stoop-shouldered and had bad skin and went out on infrequent dates with a young man from Haverford who looked enough like her to have been her brother. At first Pauline had found Andrea very interesting on account of her being Jewish. “I’ve always hoped for an opportunity to talk with Jewish people,” she’d said. “I hope it’s not a sensitive subject with you?”

Andrea hadn’t thought it was.

“Then tell me this. Do you often feel aware of an enormous inner void in your soul resulting from your denial of Christ?”

They were not destined to become close, and Pauline did not return to Bryn Mawr the following year. In the course of her first year Andrea met and became friendly with the two girls with whom she was to share rooms for her remaining three years. They were Dana Giddings and Winifred Welles.

Dana was from a suburb of Boston. She was of old Massachusetts stock on both sides and her father was a partner in a Boston advertising agency. Dana was a very slender girl with deeply set dark eyes and a manner of quiet assurance. She had entered as a political science major but changed her major to history midway through her second year. An attractive girl, there was nothing striking about her beauty, perhaps because her shy manner did nothing to call attention to it. She had a dry acerbic wit which was commonly expressed in an undertone audible only to those in close proximity to her.

For three years Dana had never dated the same boy more than twice. She was not unpopular, and it was hard to know whether she actively discouraged boys from developing relationships with her or whether her aloofness somehow put them off. She seemed content enough. Then, in the fall of their senior year, Dana met a graduate assistant in the history department at the University of Pennsylvania. She met him on a Friday and was not seen again until the following Monday.

Andrea was alone in their apartment when Dana returned. “Thank God,” she said. “We were trying to decide whether to call the police. Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious.”

“How often do you two stay away for a weekend?”

“But that’s us. You never stayed away like that. You had us worried. I’m not kidding.”

“We’re going to be married in June,” Dana said quietly, matter-of-factly. “He’s from New Mexico. He says I’ll like it out there.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I suspect he’s right,” she said.

Andrea thought of any number of remarks and didn’t make any of them, and in June Dana was married and went to live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That was Dana Giddings. And Winifred Welles was Winkie.

Remembering Winkie:

“Hey, Kleinman? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Alive.”

“Seriously. Here we are with all these roads stretching out in front of us and I get to wondering if maybe they all lead to Rome.”

“You lost me.”

“Well, what if whatever we do we wind up in exactly the same place? Or to put it another way. How would you like to wake up one fine morning and discover you have turned out to be a road company version of your mother?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. Anyway, my mother’s all right.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t. I’d like nothing better than to trade mothers with you. I’ll throw in the good ten of diamonds and my pearl ring. That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“Well, you don’t want to grow up to be your mother, do you? Oh, I’m not coming across, am I?” Head cocked to one side, eyes (blue now, but sometimes they verged on green) glinting under uneven never-plucked brows. “I don’t mean you’ll marry a dentist, and don’t interrupt, I’m not criticizing dentists, but I don’t mean you might marry one, or that you’ll wind up in a house on Admirable Road—”

“Admiral Road.”

“Whatever. Oh, shit, Andrea Beth. You know what it is? My awful secret?”

“If it’s something you did after lights out at Foxcroft—”

“Shithead!”

“Tell me your awful secret, Winkie.”

“Damn straight!” And then, in a little-girl voice, “I wanna be somebody. That’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

“You mean famous?”

“No, I don’t mean famous.”

“Well, you can’t mean rich. You’re already rich.”

“Yeah, and big hairy deal to being rich. And I know it’s easy for me to say, and that’s why I get to say it. I will tell you, Andrea Beth. I want to be somebody. But I don’t know who. And I want to do something.”

“But you don’t know what.”

“Yeah. I can’t even talk like this to Dana. She’d give me that number with the eyes and I’d begin to wonder if maybe I forgot how to speak my mother tongue. You think I’m crazy too but at least I can talk to you. But you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Sort of.”

“I don’t mean a meaningful career. Shit, the last thing I want is a meaningful career. Doesn’t this get to you, Kleinman? Where you could spend hours staring at the wall and looking at your future and it’s all these roads leading to Rome?”

“I don’t know.” Pause. “I guess not.”

“You know what I’ll do? I’ll trade selves with you, and I’ll throw in the ten of diamonds and the deuce of spades and my pearl ring and all my cashmere sweaters and two Princeton boys and that schmuck from Villanova, who incidentally called again.”

“I told you he would.”

“Uh-huh. God, I wish I was Jewish. Can I be Jewish, Andrea Beth? Please?”

“Oh, come on.”

“I’m serious.”

“Well, I guess a person can convert. People do when they get married.”

“I don’t want to get married. If I get married maybe I’ll marry a Jew but who cares because I’m not going to get married. And I don’t mean converting. I don’t want any religion, for Christ’s sake. Hey, did you catch that one? ‘For Christ’s sake.’ I like that.”

“If you were Jewish you couldn’t say that.”

“I could live without it. I wanna be Jewish. Please?”

“But how can you be Jewish without the religion?”

“You’re Jewish, right? And you’re about as religious as I’m Episcopalian, right?”

“That’s different.”

“That’s the whole point, you dumb Jewess. That’s the whole point!”

“Wink, I’m beginning to think maybe you’re crazy.”

“Well, I know that, silly. But what I want is to be a Jew the way you are and screw the religious part.” She sighed theatrically. “But it’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“I couldn’t go out and get circumcised or something like that, could I?”

“Idiot.”

“Well, you ought to be able to, dammit. I don’t want to wake up one morning and there I am being my goddamn stupid shithead mother, and I don’t want to be Bette Davis, and what other choices have I got?”

“Where did Bette Davis come from?”

“Oh, you know. In all those movies with the bitchy career girl who makes it in a man’s world but her blood dries up along the way. You remember all those movies, don’t you, daahling?”

“Of course I do, daahling.”

“So that’s the point and — hey, I know what I’ll do.”

“Okay.”

“Well, ask me, huh?”

“What’ll you do?”

“I’ll be Pope. Hah! Got you that time, Kleinman. We got to keep laughing, right? Right?”

Things swam back into focus. Mark was saying her name. She was on the sofa, her arms folded over her breasts, and he was at her side, half seated, half crouching, his hand on her shoulder.

“I’m all right,” she said.

“Are you sure? You scared hell out of me.”

“Did I pass out?”

“I don’t think so. You just seemed to go blank for a minute there. There wasn’t very much time involved. Baby, are you sure you’re all right?”

She nodded. “My mouth’s all dry.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“I can get it myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She sat there, still hugging herself, while he went to the kitchen and returned with a tall glass of cool water. She drank it all down in little birdlike sips, pausing to glance up at his broad face. When the glass was empty he asked if she felt better and she assured him that she did.

“I’m going to call Lerner,” he said.

“Oh, don’t do that. I feel fine, honest I do.” She cupped a hand over her abdomen. “Everything’s fine here, Mark. You don’t lose a baby by emotional shock. It only happens that way in the movies. If I fell down or something, but I was sitting right here the whole time, wasn’t I?”

“Just let me call him.”

She waited while he made the call from the kitchen. When he had confirmed what she had said herself, it was her turn to make some telephone calls. She didn’t know where to start, who to call first. The Alumnae Bulletin didn’t tell you anything, really, “It is with deep sadness that we report the death in New York City on July 17th of Winifred Crispin Welles. At the time of her death, Winkie was employed as an assistant features editor for Holiday Magazine. Previous positions included a stint as researcher at Time-Life, Inc.”

That was all you had to know, really. That Winkie had lived and was gone. But you felt you had to know more.

She was on the phone for an hour, spending most of that hour trying to reach people, and when she put the phone down finally she had learned what she now felt she had somehow known all along. Not a hit-and-run driver, not an unspeakable disease, not a mugger in Central Park. Winkie had killed Winkie.

When she put the phone down for the last time she turned to tell Mark what she had learned. But he’d overheard enough of the conversation. “You’d better sit down,” he told her. She said she was all right but she sat down anyway. He made her a drink and told her it was just what the doctor ordered. “Literally. ‘Give her a big drink and tell her to take things a little easier.’ Here’s your big drink. And please take things easier.”

“I couldn’t take things much easier.” She extended one hand, fingers separated. “God, look at me,” she said. “I’m shaking again.”

“I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been like this.”

“Well, it’s a shock.”

“I never knew anyone who killed themselves. I hardly ever knew anyone who died. Winkie was the first in my class. No, wait a minute, there was a girl who died of a brain tumor about six months after graduation and one a couple of years ago in an automobile accident. But I never really knew either of them. I never really experienced a death before.”

“What about November?”

“November? Oh, Kennedy. But I didn’t know him. You know something? That was so immediate, having a front-row seat, and now this. It happened two months ago and I never knew it until now.”

He had picked up the Bulletin again and was scanning the notice. “It doesn’t mention a husband,” he said.

“She wasn’t married.”

“Winifred Crispin Welles?”

“Crispin was her middle name. Her mother’s maiden name.”

“There’s a custom I’ve never understood. I suppose it’s all right with a guy but with a girl it’s confusing. It makes an unmarried girl sound married.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Also, what’s the point of it? With a man it’s a way of carrying on the name from the mother’s side of the family, but with a girl she’s going to drop her middle name when she gets married.”

“I suppose so.”

“‘Jeremy Kleinman Benstock.’ Nothing against your name, but I’m not wildly crazy about the sound of that.”

“I don’t think it works with Jewish names.”

“No, I’ve got to admit it works better with something like Crispin. The goyim have a distinct advantage over us. Are you feeling any better, baby?”

“Much better. But also worse, because it’s soaking in now. Winkie’s really dead. It’s funny, I haven’t thought of her middle name in years. Crispin. She said once that they tried to give her ‘Crispy’ as a nickname at Foxcroft but it didn’t stick. I can understand why, although I don’t think I could explain it. ‘Winkie’ seemed to suit her.”

“Was she a very good friend?”

“Well, she was the best friend I had at Bryn Mawr. There were really only two girls I was close to. Winkie and a girl named Dana Giddings. The three of us roomed together and of the two I was much closer to Winkie.”

“You’d think they’d have been closer to each other.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

“Well, they were both gentile, weren’t they?”

“Oh.”

“Or maybe it didn’t matter.”

“It didn’t.”

“I wonder why she killed herself. Unless it was accidental.”

“She took pills. Can you do that by accident?”

The question had been rhetorical but he nodded in response. “You sure can,” he said. “It happens frequently, from what I understand. You take a couple of pills and you don’t fall asleep and then you’re so groggy you forget you’ve taken them so you take some more. Before you know it you’ve knocked off the whole bottle. And alcohol, they can combine with alcohol and it magnifies the effect. Did she drink?”

“Everybody drank.”

“So you can’t be sure. Unless there was a note.”

“I don’t know if there was a note or not.”

“Well, in that case—”

“Look, what in the fucking hell is the difference? She wasn’t some Catholic, she’s not going to have to be buried in sacred ground. She wouldn’t have had an accident. She didn’t do things by accident.”

“Honey—”

“She killed herself, for God’s sake.” He looked at her and after a moment she averted her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sure.”

“Let me get dinner on the table.”

Remembering Winkie:

“Tell me something, Andrea Beth. Do I look positively terror-stricken?”

Winkie at the wheel of her crippled Plymouth coupe, her long hair bound up in a scarf, eyes hidden behind large round-lensed sunglasses, one hand draped casually over the steering wheel, the other coiled in her lap.

“No. Not at all.”

“Are you absolutely certain of that?”

“You know what you look like, Winks? First World War flying ace. Veteran of countless missions.”

“Nerves of stainless steel?”

“Absolutely.”

“An old hand at crash landings?”

“Now you’ve got it.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it, all right. And we’re on our way to get rid of it, and I’m not flying around in my Sopwith Camel after all. I’m scared, can you believe it?”

“Look, everything’s going to be all right.”

“Oh, everything’s going to be sensational, Kleinman. No question about it. He’s a living legend and everybody’s favorite father figure and it would be a sin against God to go to college in Pennsylvania and not pay a single visit to the kindly old Reading rabbit-snatcher.”

“Huh?”

“A cunning colloquialism I read somewhere. I never actually heard anybody say it aloud. Rabbit-snatcher for abortionist. Picturesque, don’t you think? Picture a man drawing a rabbit not from a hat precisely but from a—”

“Ugh.”

“Quite. How much further to Reading? There was a sign back there but I didn’t see it.”

“Neither did I. Maybe twenty miles? I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. Light me a cigarette? Thanks. Tell me it’s going to be all right. No, fuck that, you already told me that. Tell me he’s going to be the compassionate dedicated abortionist in the legend.”

“That’s what everybody says. His daughter had an illegal abortion and died and now he performs them so other people won’t have to go through it.”

“It’s so perfect I keep gagging on it. If he winds up looking like Jean Hersholt I’m going to shit. But he’ll be terrific, right? Not your everyday dirty old man with whiskey on his breath and filth encrusted under his fingernails.” Her voice went suddenly serious. “Andrea, I’m scared shitless.”

“Turn the car around.”

“No.”

“There’s no law says you have to go, Winkie. In fact the law says just the opposite. Turn the car around.”

“I’m going through with this.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“But I do. Listen, it’s ridiculous, I’m twenty years old and haven’t had a single abortion yet. I mean, it’s like a secondary virginity, if you follow me. So what if I’m nervous? I was nervous when I lost the primary.”

“I think we should go back to campus.”

“And break our appointment? Suppose we got charged anyway? Doesn’t your father charge when patients don’t show up?”

“I’m serious, Winkie.”

“I’m serious, too. I’m very fucking glib but I’m also serious. I’m going through with this. Look, what choice do I have? Stop and think about it for a minute. Have the baby and put it up for adoption? Come on. If I actually had the baby I’d keep it. You know something? If I were five years older I’d do that little thing. ‘How do you do, world? I’m Miss Winifred Crispin Welles and this is my illegitimate daughter, and isn’t she the sweetest thing?”

“What if it were a boy?”

“Then I’d strangle the little bastard. Men are evil, Andrea Beth. I thought you knew that.”

“You could get married.”

A theatrical reaction, the steering wheel abandoned, then gripped quickly when the car begins to swerve. “Married? I’ll be an angel and pretend you never said that.”

“Wouldn’t he marry you?”

“Do you want to know something? I’m almost sure he would, the pig. I’ll tell you this much. He’d marry me a lot faster than I’d marry him. Hell would freeze a lot faster than I’d marry him. I don’t want to marry anybody, and I don’t want to marry anybody for a dumb reason like being pregnant, and I wouldn’t marry him under any circumstances. And having the baby and keeping it would be terrific if I were a much stronger person than I am—”

“You’re a strong person.”

“Oh, like hell I am. I don’t have a tenth of your strength, and would you keep an illegitimate baby?”

“No.”

“What would you do, as far as that goes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you must have thought about it.”

“Of course, loads of times. And especially now. Just now.”

“And?”

“I guess I’d do what you’re doing. Have an abortion.”

“Because there’s nothing else to do, right?”

“I guess.”

And, a little later, “Listen, not to worry, Kleinman. I’ve got my luck working for me. Nothing can possibly go wrong because I’ve got a Jew along for luck. Jews have always been lucky for me.”

“You told me that the first day I met you.”

“What did you think?”

“That you were probably crazy. But in an interesting way.”

“That’s something. Were you offended?”

“Offended? I don’t know. Probably a little.”

“You didn’t let it show.”

“Oh, of course not.”

“You’re not offended now, are you?”

“No. But I still think you’re probably crazy, Winks.”

“What a revelation. ‘Reading — 18 Miles.’ But it’s on the other side of Reading, isn’t it? You’ve got the directions?”

“That’s the tenth time you’ve asked me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. The first boy I ever fucked was Jewish. I must have told you that.”

“About seventy-three times.”

“I didn’t know you were counting. Do you suppose that’s why I’m keen on circumcision?”

“Maybe.”

“Because I just think it’s so much cleaner and more aesthetic. It doesn’t much matter for screwing, but when you get a little more intimate it does. Don’t you think so? Or don’t you?”

“I think the weather’s going to be great if the rain holds off.”

“And I think you’re a fucking prude, Andrea Beth. That’s what I think. Why am I manic and depressive at the same time, will you tell me? Isn’t it supposed to alternate? Oh, the hell with it anyway. Can I tell you something terrible?”

“Could I stop you?”

“I don’t see how. No, this is a monumental confession. I’m enjoying this a little. I’m terrified, that was no bullshit, but part of me is sitting in the back seat observing this, this fucking film entitled Winkie Gets Aborted. It’s sort of a sequel to Gidget Goes Bananas. Do you know what I mean? I mean all of this stupidity appeals somehow to my sense of theater. Now isn’t that disgusting?”

“A little. I’m nervous, too, and I’m enjoying it in a way, and it’s not even me it’s happening to. Maybe that’s more disgusting.”

“It’s the notorious Jewish empathy. Hey, maybe the doctor’ll be a Jew. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“He hasn’t got a very Jewish name.”

“Maybe he changed it. Or maybe he doesn’t use his real name for abortions. In fact I’m sure he doesn’t, so maybe he’s a Jew.” Then, with a swift shake of her head, “No, not with my luck. With my luck he’ll be a Catholic. He’ll save the fetus and let me die, the bastard.”

“You never talk much about Bryn Mawr.”

“Don’t I?”

“Not really. Not about Bryn Mawr, not about your life in New York.” The Huntley-Brinkley Report had just ended and he had turned off the set. He straightened up. “I’m not suggesting you’ve got some deep dark secret—”

“Hardly that.”

“Just wondered if there was anything you wanted to share.”

“Well, you don’t talk much about college, either. You’ll talk about law school if it’s a story involving a legal point or if it includes someone we’re friendly with now, but how many times do you tell Stover-at-Yale anecdotes about the time you spent far above Cayuga’s waters.”

“I guess that’s true.” He sat down beside her, picked up her hand in his. “Maybe it’s because we can’t really share those parts of our lives. They’re areas of our separate pasts. When I think of Cornell. To a great extent those were the years when I grew up. Being away from home — oh, we’ve talked about this, how easy it is to tell if someone went away to school or not. It was enough of an influence on me, those years at Cornell, that I didn’t have to go away to law school. I’d been away once and I could come back.”

“Yes, we’ve talked about that.”

“But if I were to try to think of anything from that very important time in my life that I wanted to talk about, or anyone I would even be inclined to mention... Now my two closest friends were both from Buffalo and both in Phi Ep with me.”

“Dan and who else?”

“A fellow named Mickey Ginsberg. I don’t know if you would have known him. He married a Baltimore girl and hasn’t been seen since. Those were my two best friends at college, but there were also several other guys I was very close to, extremely close to, and you know how it is at that stage of your life. I was sure I would never lose touch with them.”

“Yes.”

“I never invited them to the wedding. Never even sent them an announcement. Just a couple of years, but it makes that much difference. I never would have thought so at the time. I think you mentioned Winkie at one time or another.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“But you lost touch, and it’s been fewer years for you.”

She nodded.

“Were you very close?”

“She was the closest friend I’ve ever had.”

“Any idea why she would kill herself?”

“Not really.”

“Did she ever—”

“No.”

“Any history of emotional instability? Anything in the family, anything like that?”

She glanced at him, then broke her gaze when she realized she was staring. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose she was a little crazy. We were all crazy, all the good guys were crazy.”

“How do you mean that?”

“I don’t know. She had a very original mind. She had as good a mind as anyone I’ve ever known. And she was terribly sophisticated — mercurial, I guess you could say.”

“Ups and downs?”

“Huh? Yes.” She paused to light a cigarette. “Intensity. That’s the best way to describe her. Everything was so desperately important and intense.”

“You mean she took things too seriously?”

“No, no, no. I don’t mean that at all.”

“Well, don’t bite my head off.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. Come here.” She moved over and drew his head down into her lap and stroked his forehead with the tips of her fingers. “I didn’t mean she was serious. God, she had the most antic wit I ever came across. But she was — ‘intense’ is the only word I can come up with. Every moment was so very urgent and important.”

“Isn’t part of that the age she was when you knew her? College kids are always more intense.”

“And then you grow out of it.”

There must have been something in her voice because his eyes widened for a moment. “I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. Not a matter of outgrowing it necessarily. But it’s rare for that kind of intensity to last throughout a lifetime.”

“Unless the lifetime doesn’t last very long.”

He didn’t say anything. She went on stroking his forehead. She liked these times, this silent closeness, but tonight she felt both closer and more remote than usual.

“Eileen Fradin,” she said suddenly.

“What about her?”

“She never could have had that intensity that Winkie had.”

“You didn’t know her until recently.”

“No, but I know her well enough to know that about her. And in the same way I know Winkie didn’t stop living intensely, feeling things deeply. Maybe that’s what killed her.”

“You’re reaching, don’t you think?”

“Am I? Maybe she burned herself out.”

“Maybe.”

“Which isn’t likely to happen with Eileen.”

“Where does Eileen come into it? You sound as though she doesn’t measure up.”

“No, I don’t mean that.”

“She’s a good friend to you, isn’t she?”

“Yes, I guess she is,” she said slowly. “I don’t really know her. I spend a lot of time with her but we don’t really talk about anything. I’m not close with her the way I was with Winkie. I don’t think I ever could be.”

“You might be surprised. How long did you know Winkie? A couple of years at college and a couple of years in New York?”

“I hardly ever saw her in New York.”

“Well, we might be friendly with Eileen and Roger for the next forty or fifty years.”

“God.”

“Does it sound that unpleasant?”

“No. I just never thought in those terms. But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“And you and Eileen have things in common that you and Winkie didn’t.”

“You’ve got that backwards, don’t you?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. No, not at all. You and Eileen grew up together, whether you really knew each other at the time or not. Their son’s older, but their second baby’ll be about the same as our first. Roger’ll join Northlawn in a year or so. He and I get along reasonably well. After the baby comes we’ll want a house, and if we don’t buy in Amherst we’ll probably buy near the Fradins, and if we do buy in Amherst their next house will probably be in Amherst. Add up all the different variations on those themes over thirty or forty or fifty years and compare them to what you had in common with what’s-her-name, Winkie. And all that really amounted to was that you happened to go to the same girls’ school at the same time.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Not really.”

“It sounds as though you resent Winkie. Do you? I can’t imagine why you would.”

“I don’t. Sometimes, oh, I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I think you take people like Eileen for granted.”

“But that’s not fair!”

“Hey, I’m sorry. Baby? Don’t be upset. Listen, let me put on some records. Is there anything special you’d like to hear?”

“Anything at all,” she said.

Was there anyone she should call? Anything she should do?

July 17th, the Alumnae Bulletin had said. That was more than two months ago. And no one had called her.

But who would have called? Dana? Dana would probably have learned the same way that she learned — if Dana even bothered to keep up with alumnae news. And Dana wouldn’t call her any more than she would now call Dana. There was no one who might have called her with the news, and there was no one for her to inform in her turn.

She had never met either of Winkie’s parents. They had been long divorced and Winkie had never been enormously fond of either of them. Andrea’s parents had met Winkie twice. No, three times. They had seemed to like each other well enough.

That was one person she could tell. “Mother? You remember Winkie Welles, don’t you? Well, she killed herself two months ago. It’s too late to go to the funeral, not that there would have been any reason for you to go in the first place. I won’t say what she died of but she took a lot of sleeping pills, so as far as where to send the contribution—”

Where? Was there an American Suicide League to accept contributions? An institution that collected funds and sponsored research that mapped those black holes on the edge of thought?

Oh, but there was always the prayer-book fund. And that would be quite perfect. For every three dollars you sent they purchased yet another prayer book for the temple, and a bookplate inside the front cover memorialized the deceased. “Presented in Loving Memory of Winifred Crispin Welles.”

Excellent. She would write a check herself, payable to the prayer-book fund of Temple Beth Sholom. And no acknowledgment need be sent, thank you.

Winkie, wherever you are, you’ll get a laugh out of that, won’t you? Won’t you?

“College must have been very different for you.”

“Than high school?”

“Than it was for me, is what I meant. I mean from a social standpoint primarily.” He put a cup of coffee on the table for her, then straightened up. “In terms of being Jewish.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Well, we’ve talked about college being just an extension of high school for the kids who went to U.B. and went on living at home. In terms of being Jewish, Cornell was just an extension of high school for me. All my friends were Jewish. I just went out with Jewish girls. I was in a Jewish fraternity.” He walked halfway across the room, turned, put his hands on his hips. “What’s interesting is that I never questioned any of that. I don’t think I felt any real prejudice against gentiles or that they were prejudiced against me. Of course overhearing my parents and their friends, but that was something that applied to older people. I didn’t feel personally affected by it. But I took it for granted, that while I would be friendly with non-Jews in the sense of being on good terms—”

“That it would never go further than that.”

“Exactly. I wonder when it started.”

“In the womb?”

“No, a little later than that.” His voice was serious.

“For me it was when I finished grade school and entered high school. There were certain activities that were separate before then. Boy Scouts and dancing class, because those were activities that were centered around the temple.”

“And Sunday school and Hebrew school.”

“Well, obviously those were centered in the temple. Oh, I see what you mean. They were still activities that set us apart. That’s true enough. But the big thing was high school. Before then you didn’t pay any real attention to who was Jewish and who wasn’t in terms of who your friends were. Then one morning I got up and went to Bennett High, and there were fraternities for us and fraternities for them, and there was no cross-dating to speak of and if a Jewish girl went out with a gentile boy she got a reputation—”

“And if a Jewish boy went out with a gentile girl it meant she put out, or why else would he bother with her. That was really the way we thought, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “And because of the way we thought, it wound up being true. Self-fulfilling prophecy. You knew what you were getting into, so when you went ahead and did it anyway—”

“Uh-huh.”

“We’re missing the eleven o’clock news.”

“I don’t really care, do you?”

“Well, there were a couple of baseball games tonight, but I don’t really need to know who won them. No, I’m enjoying this conversation. You know what’s funny? That we’ve gone this long without having it. I wonder how it all started?”

“The conversation?”

He shook his head. “The separation, the way it begins for real at the high school level. Oh, I know the answer, come to think of it. It’s how society prevents intermarriage. Let them be close until they’re old enough to take an interest in each other. Then keep ’ em apart.”

“Like in the South?”

“Oh?”

“Negroes and whites in the South. White and colored kids play together in their cradles, they’re the best of friends and nobody thinks anything of it. I never even saw a colored person who wasn’t somebody’s maid until I went to high school, and how many Negroes were there at Bennett when I was there? I think three.”

“Well, there has been some changes made since then, Sapphire. You wouldn’t recognize the place these days.”

“So I understand, but don’t let me miss my point. I grew up in the North and never had any colored friends, but in the South they play together from infancy as a matter of course, and then there’s complete and total segregation the minute they go to school. Not high school, of course. Kindergarten or first grade, whatever it is. They have the segregated schools and as soon as they go to them they stop speaking to each other; It’s not that extreme here in Buffalo between Jews and gentiles—”

“Hardly.”

“But it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I wonder.”

“What’s the difference, Mark? It’s just one of degree.”

“Maybe.” He refilled their coffee cups and brought in a plate of cookies. “Tell me about Bryn Mawr,” he said.

“About Bryn Mawr. Okay. Perched on the Main Line just north of the teeming metropolis of Philadelphia, the esteemed college of Bryn Mawr—”

“Come on. Were there many Jewish kids there?”

“There were enough. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t understand the question. I never counted, for God’s sake.”

“But you weren’t friendly with any of them.”

“I was friendly with a few. I wasn’t close with any. There weren’t many girls I was close to, Jewish or otherwise. Look, some of the Jewish girls tended to hang out together. They did terrific ethnic things like joining the Hillel Society at Haverford and having a seder every year with an actual rabbi to preside over it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I didn’t say there was.”

“No, you didn’t, did you? Did your friends have the same attitude you did? That maintaining your Jewish identity that way was a dull Mickey Mouse thing to do?”

Her mouth snapped open and she almost spoke. But the words stayed bottled up. She put one hand over her stomach. For a moment her brain filled with the sudden unbidden image of a baby with its umbilicus wrapped around its throat but the image flashed away as abruptly as it had come.

She was not sitting over coffee with Winkie and Dana, not now. She was not at the Greek’s or the Dive. Nor was she at the bar of the Kettle or San Remo or the Riviera. She was in her apartment on Kenmore Avenue, with her built-in kitchen and her Danish furniture and her casement windows, and words could no longer be spoken without having been weighed first. The automatic responses were safe, whether they’d been learned or were inborn, but before fresh conversational ground could be broken one had to consider. One heard the words first and then one spoke them.

“I’m sorry, Andrea.”

“What for?”

“It was just the tone you used, it got my back up.”

“It’s nothing.”

“What are you looking for, a cigarette? Here?”

“Thanks.”

Let it drop now? He would probably follow her lead if she wanted.

But she said, “I felt more Jewish there.”

“Sure, because of the contrast. I never felt whiter than when we went to that jazz club on William Street. I wouldn’t say I was uncomfortable exactly. Maybe I was uncomfortable but on top of that I was aware of being Caucasian in a way I’m usually not.”

“That’s just part of what I meant. There was more.”

“Oh?”

“I felt more aware that I was Jewish but at the same time I felt less Jewish.”

“You lost me.”

“Because being Jewish was something that made me unique in my particular group of friends, so I was aware of it, but once you get past the fact it stops mattering because I was the same as they were and felt the same way—”

She went on a bit, talking as much to herself as to him, talking perhaps to Winkie more than to either of them. And when she stopped talking he assured her that he understood what she meant. She wondered.

There was clean linen on the bed. She lay under the top sheet letting her eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. He drew back the sheet, slipped into bed beside her. She turned toward him, suddenly breathless, and when his arm went around her she felt herself rocked by a great wave of relief, relief from a tension she had not consciously felt.

“Oh, my darling!”

“Hello there.” He kissed her forehead, traced his lips through her hair. He put a hand on her shoulder, ran it down along her side to her waist.

“Getting fat,” she said.

“Just a little.”

“Well, I’m just a little pregnant. Pretty soon I’ll look like a pigeon.”

“I like pigeons.” His hand moved to her stomach. “Tell him to kick, will you? I never get to feel it.”

“You’ve felt it.”

“Not in any very dramatic way. C’mon, J-R. Right through the goal posts.”

“Wait a minute. There! Didn’t you feel it?”

“No.”

“God, that was a good one, too.”

“I can’t believe you’re not making this up.”

“Maybe it’s just easier to feel on the inside.”

“Well, there’s not much I can do about that, is there?” He rubbed her belly, rhythmically. “I love you very much, Andrea.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “Your mother swears you started kicking in the third month.”

“Is that possible?”

“I don’t think so, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. She also told me when you said your first word and took your first step.”

“I didn’t realize you spoke to her that often.”

“I think she likes me more now that I’m pregnant.”

“She’s always liked you. Did she mention what my first word was?”

“No, and I was careful not to ask.”

“Probably a good move.” His hands moved on her body. “If there’s such a thing as prenatal influence, I have a fair idea what Jeremy Robin’s first word is going to be. Unless I start stuffing towels in your mouth every night.”

“Was I terribly loud last night?”

“Let’s say you were audible.”

“Oh, dear. Must I hide my face from the neighbors, do you think?”

“Let’s say a delicate blush might not be out of place.”

She drew back and squinted, trying to make out his features in the darkness. “You don’t really think anyone could hear me, do you?”

“Are you embarrassed? Yes, I guess you are. I suppose it’s remotely possible that the Gilchrists could hear you. I assume they can hear us because of the ease with which we hear them, but they’re downstairs and doesn’t sound travel up? Like heat?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anyway, they’re not all that hard to hear.”

“She isn’t, you mean. I never hear him at all. Mark, for all we know she could be alone in there.”

“Well, she wants someone to bite her breasts, and I’m taking the giant leap of assuming it’s him.”

She started giggling. “Aren’t we terrible? To talk like this? I guess she does want her breasts bitten, though. It seems to be an essential part of their lovemaking.”

“That it does. And it seems he has difficulty remembering, because she has to tell the poor bastard over and over again.” He moved on the bed, pressed his face to her breasts. “Shall I nibble?”

“Don’t you dare. They’re so damned tender.”

“Also large. Not that they weren’t always, but this is a nice bonus.”

“One of the little fringe benefits of pregnancy.”

“Fringe is a nice word.”

“Oh, that’s lovely, darling—”

Their lovemaking proceeded gradually in the pattern that had slowly evolved between them — sporadic conversation accompanied by caresses that built up excitement in gentle tentative stages. The banter between them functioned almost in the manner of a stage magician’s misdirection, focusing the attention of the brain while the body was stimulated in spite of itself. She adored this tender and friendly way they had of making love; it was so much more intimate than anything she had ever known.

Until at last he lay atop her, between her legs, her breasts crushed just the least sweet bit painfully beneath his chest, and he was inside her and it all became wordless between them. And all the words went out of her mind as well.

It was so good, so very good, and at one point it came to her that perhaps this was all there really was. When you passed a certain age you could not be as open and honest and certain and true as you might have been in earlier years. Those options ceased to exist for you. So God gave you lovemaking to take their place, and in the dark cave of the marriage bed you and the one you loved could be all those things again, to and for each other, justifying in the minutes preceding sleep all the small deaths and failures of the day.

His lovemaking was long and thorough and gentle, his climax powerful and seemingly whole.

She didn’t come. She didn’t always, especially lately during her pregnancy, and it truly was not necessary for her to come. At those times when she wanted to she nearly always did, and at other times, like this night, she felt no need for orgasm, no emptiness for lack of it.

He didn’t ask if she had come. He said nothing beyond stating his love before turning to his side and slipping into his sleep rhythms. She was grateful for this.

Ten, fifteen minutes later, when she was on the very edge of sleep, her body twisted suddenly as if she were swerving to keep from falling. Her heart was beating violently and her temples pulsed with some unknowable fear.

She lay where she was until she had her bearings. She must have slipped into some dream, and in the dream she must have fallen. Or else she had simply shifted position in her half-sleep and had incorporated the act into a spontaneous dream. All that was disturbing was the anxiety which had accompanied the incident, that and the realization that she was not going to be able to fall asleep again, not for a little while yet.

Mark lay sleeping in his usual position, lying on his side facing the windows, one arm gripping his pillow — to assert possession or to express insecurity? She sometimes wondered. His chest rose and fell with his deep regular breathing. She laid a hand lightly on his upper arm, just wanting to touch him for a moment. He did not stir. She got quietly out of bed and tiptoed from the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

She moved through the apartment, turning on some lights, finding her cigarettes, lighting one, walking toward the window before remembering that she was naked. She got her robe from the bathroom and put it on and then walked to the window and smoked her cigarette all the way down, counting the infrequent cars on Kenmore Avenue. In the time it took her to finish the cigarette, not a single person passed by on foot.

She wanted something but couldn’t decide what. Not coffee — it didn’t keep her awake, but seemed a ridiculous beverage to drink when one could not sleep in the first place. A glass of milk? Good for the baby, certainly. A glass of warm milk, carefully heated on the stove in a saucepan? Everything appealed about it but the thought of actually drinking it.

Whiskey, of course. It was a night on which one ought to be sitting up into the small hours, drinking whiskey with old friends, telling old lies and older truths, knowing they’d all be safely forgotten when dawn came with sermons and soda water. Whiskey by the glass in a snug Village bar around two in the morning in the middle of the week, with the tourists all back at their hotels and the day-trippers back in Queens and Brooklyn and nobody around but the handful of regulars committed to serious drinking.

Not that she often had all that much to drink. But it wasn’t a matter of quantity. It was more a question of attitude.

She found the scotch, carried it into the kitchen, took a large rocks glass from the cupboard. Just as she was starting to tilt the bottle she changed her mind, put the glass away, selected an orange juice glass instead and filled it almost to the brim. Then she capped the bottle and put it away and carried her drink into the living room. She sat down in the wing chair and held the glass to the light, approving the mellow color of the whiskey.

Cheers, Winkie. Requiescat in pace. Olev hasholem.

She drank about an ounce of whiskey and felt it burn its way down her throat. Warmth spread in her stomach and she fancied she could feel the warmth slipping into her blood, moving through her body, bringing life and quickness to her toes and fingers. For a moment there was a sensation of heaviness in the center of her chest and then that passed and there was nothing but the warmth and a feeling of comfort.

She thought of Winkie and tried to think of other deaths. Grandparents, the parents of some of her friends. A classmate at Bennett, barely known to her, existing in memory as no more than an occasional bloodless smile in the hallways, tossed during their third year through the windshield of her father’s car. A boy a class ahead of her in Sunday school who had died of a blood disease of some sort, presumably leukemia but that, too, had been a word one never heard spoken aloud. How old had she been when he died? Eleven, maybe. Eleven, perhaps twelve.

What was his name?

She drank more whiskey. She thought of a poem of Dylan Thomas, who had himself died before she’d ever been to the White Horse, damn him for being so inconsiderate. He’d written that there was no death after the first one. Well, neither was there any death before the first one.

Oh, Winkie. For Christ’s sake, Winkie, why?

Eileen would never swallow pills and wish the dawn away. Eileen understood enough not to seek to understand too much. She knew intuitively when to avert her eyes, and when to blink. She could survive, bending but not breaking, like that fable about the tree and the reeds.

And Andrea?

She had been a friend to Winkie, finding the role a perfectly natural one, and now without any strain she was a friend to Eileen. They were so very different, those two friends of hers, different in such a variety of ways that neither could gladly have suffered the other’s company. Winkie’d find Eileen boring and mindless and predictable. Eileen would see Winkie as snobbish, weird, undependable.

So what did it mean, that she herself was capable of friendship with both of them? She frowned inwardly, chasing the thought, trying to catch its tail. Did the two of them represent disparate aspects of herself? Or different stages of her life? Or did they combine to prove that she herself was undefined, an empty slate, a mirror that served only to reflect whoever posed before her?

Whiskey clarified and distorted at one and the same time. Like the shop in Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice could see what was on the shelf above and the shelf below, but not on the shelf she was looking at. Alcohol’s insights came obliquely, and when you reached for them you were grabbing empty air.

Her glass was empty. Odd, because she didn’t recall finishing her drink. And she had put the bottle away because she had decided to have one drink and no more. She walked very steadily, got the bottle, poured her glass half-full, replaced the bottle and went back to her chair. She lit a cigarette and found one already burning in the ashtray. She stubbed it out very carefully, very very carefully.

Two months ago. What had she been doing the night Winkie had died? What day of the week had it been? She closed her eyes and tried to calculate but gave it up as impossible. And it didn’t seem worth the trouble of checking the calendar.

Some conversations, solitary dialogues, while sipping scotch from a juice glass:

“Winkie, why?”

“Oh, put a cork in it, Kleinman. Didn’t you always know I would do it? Face it, I wasn’t put on earth to be somebody’s grandmother. Nobody wants a madcap grandmother.”

“You had plenty to live for.”

“I had plenty to live up to and plenty to live down. I would have had to grow up, kid. And if you grow up you can’t fly, Wendy. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“You’re making me laugh, damn it.”

“Well, I could always make you laugh, Andrea Beth. That’s what each of us loved about the other. And what’s so bad about laughing, huh? Tell me that.”

“Who’s gonna make me laugh now, Winks? You tell me that.”

And:

“The thing is, Winkie, you keep dying. You died a little bit when we moved to New York, and then you died again when I came home to Buffalo.”

“Home to Buffalo. Remember that phrasing, Andrea Beth.”

“Stop it, you’ll make me miss the point of this. Then you died really two months ago, and then you died again when I found out about it this afternoon. And here we are having this conversation.”

“Spooky, huh?”

“Why weren’t we friends in New York?”

“Because we reminded each other of college.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“Oh, I wound up in Yorkville and you wound up in the Village. I got involved with the Time-Life crew and you were hopping Village saloons.”

“I didn’t ask what happened. I asked why.”

“Being dead doesn’t mean knowing all the answers. It means you don’t get called on quite so often, that’s all.”

“Winkie, I keep losing more and more pieces of you.”

“But I’m not completely dead, right? Right? I mean am I right or am I right, Kleinman?”

“You’re crazy.”

“I always was. ‘The part of me they could not kill/ Lives on to orrrrrrganize.’ Remember when we sat up until dawn singing Wobbly songs? Remember how that idiot Giddings wanted us all to join the IWW when I told her they still existed? Then she heard they were on the Attorney-General’s list and how would she explain it to her mother? Do you remember all that?”

“Oh, God. I remember everything.”

“Course you do, Kleinman.”

“It’s Benstock, now.”

“That’s right. I keep forgetting.”

And again:

“Winkie? I just realized something.”

“What?”

“I’m going to have a son.”

“How can you tell?”

“You just know these things, that’s all. And—”

“Remember when we went to that kindly old abortionist in Reading?”

“How could I forget? And—”

“Let me finish, please. Death has its privileges. You were busy being a tower of strength afterward, and I told you how I asked the doctor whether it would have been a boy or a girl, and you got these huge saucer eyes and were all prepared to nurse me through a complete emotional catastrophe, and I told you he said it was neither, it was a dachshund? Remember?”

“I thought I was going to die laughing.”

“Well, if you gotta go—”

“But this is important, Winkie. I’m going to have a boy, I know it, and that’s what I want. I thought it didn’t matter but I was wrong. It matters. I want a son.”

“Okay.”

“Because a son is better off.”

“Okay.”

“Because girls keep killing themselves. Sometimes all at once and sometimes a little at a time but either way they just, they just keep on killing themselves—”

“Don’t cry, Andrea Beth. Please don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it!”

Until it was time, finally, to go to sleep. She knew this without literally knowing what time it was, because she had rather deliberately avoided looking at the clock once since getting out of bed. It couldn’t have been too late. It was still as dark outside as when they had gone to bed.

She was drunk, of course, but not too drunk. She was sober enough to wash and dry her glass and put it away, sober enough to empty the overflowing ashtray, sober enough to return her robe to the hook in the bathroom, sober enough to swallow a couple of aspirin against the morning.

Sober enough to get into bed without waking her husband, and to press her mouth briefly against his sleep-warm flesh, and then roll over onto her back and close her eyes.

Drunk enough to sleep.

Tuesday

April 5, 1966

She stirred when the telephone rang. When it sounded a second time she fumbled for it, but there was no phone on the table on her side of the bed. For a moment she was disoriented. Then she heard Mark saying, “Yes, thank you.” She lay still, getting her bearings, while he hung up the phone and swung out of the bed and padded across the carpet to the bathroom. A moment later she heard the shower running.

In their house on Aspen Drive the bathroom was at the opposite end of a long hallway from their bedroom, past Robin’s room and Mark’s study. In their house an alarm clock woke Mark five mornings a week, not a telephone, and more often than not she was awake before him, the baby changed and fed and breakfast on the table by the time he had finished his shower.

But she was in New York now. The baby was four hundred miles away. Mark had left a call at the desk for eight o’clock, so by now Andrea’s mother was probably parked in front of the television set giving Robin her bottle. And she, Andrea, was a lady of leisure, and it would be time to get up soon enough, but this bed was comfortable. Not as comfortable as her own bed, not as familiar, but comfortable enough.

She must have fallen back asleep, because suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder, a voice near her ear. “Better get up, honey. The kid’s crying and I can’t do a thing with her.”

“Just hold a pillow over her face. She’ll stop.”

“Jesus!” The hand left her shoulder, and she rolled over, grinning.

“I think you lose,” she said.

“What a thing to say.”

“Well, what a horrible way to wake me, I heard the phone and I tried to answer it but it was on the wrong side of the bed. So I managed to figure out where I was. It’s pretty strange not knowing where you are.”

“Listen, I heard garbage trucks a few hours ago and tried to remember if I took the cans to the curb before we turned in last night. It took me a minute. Want to get some breakfast? I’ve got time, but just barely.”

“I don’t know.” She blinked at him. “You’re all dressed already. What time is it?”

“Almost eight-thirty. I’m supposed to meet Kramer and Lieberman at nine-thirty at their offices. It’s too far to walk but it’s just a short cab ride. I figured I’d just grab a cup of coffee around the corner but if you feel like breakfast—”

“Let me think,” she said, and yawned. “I think you’re in a hurry,” she said, “and I think I am feeling very lazy. Why don’t you just grab your cup of coffee? But have a roll or an English muffin or something with it.”

“Maybe.”

“A toasted bagel, a piece of Danish. Something in your stomach.”

“Well, I probably shouldn’t face those sharks on an empty stomach. You’ve got a point there.”

“You’ll run rings around them. They won’t be able to take their eyes off your tie.”

“Is it too loud? I wasn’t sure.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I could change it.”

“No, don’t. As a matter of fact it’s perfect with that suit. I was just teasing you a little.” She sat up in bed. The sheet dropped away from her and she saw that his eyes were drawn to her breasts. Her body still thrilled him, and not merely in intimate moments. Frequently she would turn while performing some routine chore, loading the dishwasher or putting away groceries, to catch him studying the curves of her flesh.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said.

“You could always skip breakfast.”

“You’re tempting me.”

“Of course you would probably want to take another shower. And Kramer and — I forget the other one.”

“Joel Lieberman.”

“They might wonder why you kept smiling all the time. But if you’re willing to chance it—”

“Maybe I better take a rain check.”

She nodded. “It’s important today, huh?”

“It could be. It’s hard to say.” He picked up his briefcase. “Well,” he said.

“You’ll be fine.”

“Hope so. Will you find enough things to do today? I guess you can kill a whole day shopping without much trouble.”

“And I might go to some of the museums.”

“Want to get back here about five, five-thirty? If I’m late I’ll call, but I don’t think I should be late. We’ve got Fiddler tonight, and think about some place for dinner.”

“Right now I can’t even think about breakfast. But you can. You’d better get going.”

He bent over to kiss her, and his hand found her breast and cupped it. Her body responded automatically, the nipple stiffening against his palm. “If you don’t go now,” she said, “I won’t let you go at all.”

“Threat or promise?”

“Go on. And good luck, darling.”

When the door closed behind him she settled her head on her pillow and closed her eyes. Almost at once she realized that she would not be able to get back to sleep. At first she resented this; it was one of her rare chances to sleep late and she was unable to take advantage of it. But at the same time it was an even rarer opportunity; she was in New York and she had a whole day to spend however she saw fit. It seemed almost sinful to spend such a day, or even a part of it, lying in bed.

Robin was fifteen months old, and this was only the second time Andrea had been away from her overnight. The first time had been in June; they had driven up to Stratford with Barb and Jerry Singer for the Shakespeare festival, seeing a play Friday night, staying overnight at a motel, then attending a matinee before driving on back to Buffalo.

That had been a delight — it bothered her a little how readily she had put her daughter out of mind as soon as she was out of sight — but it had been categorically different. On that trip she had been with Mark throughout, with no time at all to herself. Now she had a whole day, and she was in New York, and she wondered how she would go about spending it.

She sat up in bed and smoked a cigarette. That sensation, waking up in a strange bed and not at first knowing where she was. For some reason or other it was bothering her after the fact and she wondered why. Had she become that thoroughly settled, so much a creature whose life revolved around her physical home? They had been living in the house on Aspen Drive for almost a year now, and she’d slept in the same bed for longer than that, ever since they returned from their honeymoon and set up housekeeping on Kenmore Avenue. In Stratford she’d known at once where she was, perhaps because of the way she had awakened. That morning she had been conscious of Mark’s body beside her before she was conscious of anything else, and she had pressed against his warmth and found him with her hands, stroking and exciting him while he slept, so that they had drifted into gentle languorous lovemaking before either of them was genuinely awake.

When had she last lost her bearings this way? She couldn’t remember.

After her shower she had a difficult time deciding what to wear. She had brought only a small suitcase, so her choice was limited, which should have made the selection process a simple one. But everything seemed too dressy or too dowdy. She had not yet defined how she would spend her day, yet she was able to sense that none of the clothes she had brought were quite right. She settled finally on a green plaid skirt and a gold Shetland sweater. She had bought both in Stratford and had not had a chance to wear them.

She ate breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, signed the check, left the room key at the desk in case Mark returned before she did. Outside, she walked over to Fifth Avenue. It was cool out, and although she knew the air was polluted it tasted crisp and clean to her. She stood for a few moments on the corner in front of the Plaza Hotel and looked at the row of horse-drawn carriages. There had been a time in her life when she had wanted nothing more than to be taken for a moonlight ride through the park in one of those carriages. She had had quite a few dates in New York while at Bryn Mawr, and one or two boys had suggested that a hansom ride was something they ought to try sooner or later, but somehow they had never gotten around to it. Later, when she lived in New York, it wasn’t the sort of thing she and her friends did. It was a tourist thing, like visiting the Statue of Liberty or taking the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. When you lived in New York you didn’t do tourist things.

After a moment she approached one of the drivers. He was a pug-faced man around forty, wearing a black top hat and an ancient cutaway morning coat. His horse was also wearing a hat, a straw with holes cut for its ears, and with a nosegay of flowers tucked into the hatband.

“Pardon me,” she said. “Could you tell me how much a ride costs?”

He smiled. One of his lower front teeth was missing and she tried not to stare at it. “Give you a nice long ride around the park for twenty dollars, ma’am.”

“Do you just go through the park?”

“Anywhere you like. Just like a regular cab except there’s no meter ticking away at you. And we don’t pollute the air. Horses smell a whole lot better than cars, don’t they?” He smiled again, and she returned the smile. “We’re licensed to operate throughout the five boroughs, just like any other taxi. ‘Course in practical terms we don’t go outside of Manhattan. Imagine old Gypsy here clip-cloppin’ through the tunnel! But we got the right, according to the law. Where do you want to go?”

She considered it, but only briefly. “Maybe later,” she said. “If my husband’s interested.”

“You bring him around. Little ride through the park turns a man romantic all over again.” And he winked broadly at her, like a low character from Elizabethan comedy.

She walked down Fifth Avenue toward Bergdorf’s. Twenty dollars — had it always been that expensive? No wonder none of her dates had made good on that particular promise.

Would Mark take her? Certainly the expense wouldn’t bother him. Twenty dollars now was a far less significant amount to her than it had been when she had lived alone in the city. Their room at the Essex House cost almost twice that per night, and dinner last night must have run around thirty dollars with the tip. Of course the bulk of their expenses would be charged to Mark’s firm and ultimately paid by the client on whose behalf he was making the trip. But he was prepared for her to spend a few hundred dollars of real money on clothes today, and he certainly wouldn’t balk at indulging a twenty-dollar whim if she wanted to ride around for half an hour in a carriage.

Maybe that night. Maybe after dinner and after the show. They could afford the twenty dollars, and they could afford to do tourist things. Because she did not live in this city now. She was a tourist. She could go to the Statue of Liberty, she could look down at the city from the top of the Empire State Building. These were not necessarily things she wanted to do, but she could do them if she wished.

It was strange, the realization that she was indeed a tourist. She didn’t know whether she liked it or not.

There was nothing at Bergdorf’s. She kept trying things on and couldn’t find anything she liked at all. She didn’t really need anything, but for some reason or other she felt determined to buy something, if only she could find something to buy. As if she needed something tangible in hand to justify how she was spending this particular day.

She gave up finally and was almost out of the store when she thought to pick up something for Mark’s mother. She selected a box of monogrammed handkerchiefs. She wasn’t sure that it was necessary to bring a gift home for her mother-in-law but she guessed that it would be good family politics. Although they got along well enough, she was fairly certain that Adele Benstock did not like her very much. That was fine with Andrea, who did not like Mrs. Benstock at all. There was no need for them to like one another, but there was every reason why they ought to get along well together, and she found it effortless to get on with her mother-in-law. Mrs. Benstock might never like her, but she would nonetheless feel that Andrea was an excellent wife for Mark, a superb mother for Robin, and, all in all, an eminently satisfactory daughter-in-law.

Why didn’t she like Mark’s mother? Not because the woman was narrow-minded and stupid and uncultured. She was all of these things, but that didn’t explain Andrea’s feeling toward her. Harry Benstock was at least as objectionable in all those areas; if he was not precisely stupid, the lout animal cunning he possessed was no more endearing than his wife’s stupidity. Harry Benstock was, in almost every respect, a genuinely despicable man. And yet, although Andrea did despise him to an extent, she could not help somehow liking him in spite of himself. There was a toughness, a feisty quality to him, and she responded to it, even admired it.

Of course now that she had bought the handkerchiefs for her mother-in-law she was locked; she would have to buy presents for her own parents, and for her father in-law. Perhaps it would be simpler all around to throw the handkerchiefs away. For that matter, she could keep them herself; there was that to be said for having the same initial as one’s mother-in-law.

She wandered on down Fifth as far as Saks, taking her time along the way, examining store windows and passersby. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, and she realized that she herself was walking quite slowly.

How long had it been since she had done any real walking? She drove almost everywhere these days. She occasionally took Robin for walks in the neighborhood, but walking as a means of getting from one place to another was no longer a part of her life. No one walked in the suburbs. Everything was too far away, with nothing to look at en route but other people’s houses. It was much easier to pop the baby into his car seat and drive wherever she was going. She hardly ever went downtown, and all the stores in her area were either situated on shopping plazas or had their own parking lots.

People in the suburbs only walked behind things, she thought. She walked behind a carriage or stroller, or behind a shopping cart. Mark walked behind a lawnmower during the warm months and a snow thrower in the winter.

She tried on three dresses at Saks and found one that would do. It was a navy sheath, cut low in front but not too low. She could have found the same dress in Buffalo but decided to buy it anyway. She told the salesgirl she would take it with her, then changed her mind. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just something extra to carry. Would you mind sending it? And—” handing her the hankies — “could you possibly tuck this into the package? Thanks.”

She stopped for lunch at a delicatessen on Forty-ninth between Fifth and Sixth. She ate a corned-beef sandwich and drank a bottle of celery tonic. The corned beef was no better than what she bought regularly at Mastman’s, but the celery tonic was a beverage she had had only in New York. Was it available in Buffalo? She didn’t know, had never looked for it, had never heard of anybody buying it.

After lunch she signed a petition. She had returned to Fifth Avenue and was heading uptown toward the Museum of Modern Art. At the corner of Fifty-first street a boy with an embryonic beard was exhorting people to help stop the war. She had passed him before without a second thought. Now, for some reason, she stopped.

“LBJ’s sending fifty thousand more,” the boy was chanting. “Help us tell him how we feel. LBJ’s sending fifty thousand more. Help us tell him—”

Two girls about the same age as the boy sat on folding chairs behind a card table cluttered with clipboards and leaflets. Both had long straight hair and both wore jeans and loose sweaters. They looked impossibly young. She wanted to talk to them but could think of nothing whatsoever to say.

“I don’t have a pen,” she said.

One of the girls handed her a pen and passed a clipboard to her. The piece of paper on the clipboard had spaces for a couple of dozen signatures with nothing at its top to indicate precisely what she was signing. She decided it didn’t much matter.

“Andrea Beth Kleinman,” she wrote. “47 Jane Street, N.Y.C.”

“I wonder what she really looked like.”

The voice startled her. She turned, and a man smiled at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Were you talking to me?”

“Thinking aloud, actually. But don’t you wonder what she looked like? Modigliani obviously distorted faces. He couldn’t have encountered an endless parade of long-necked women, could he?”

“I suppose not.”

“I often think it would be interesting to have photographs of the subjects of portraits. So that one could know to what extent the artist pays homage to reality. And what he finds with a brush that the camera couldn’t capture.”

“I never thought of that.”

She turned toward the picture, imagining what Modigliani’s model might have looked like, trying to recall the Modigliani at the Albright-Knox in Buffalo. The man moved alongside of her and they looked at the picture together.

“I’d love to know what Rembrandt’s models looked like. Or Hals’s. Of course they didn’t have cameras at the time, did they? But do you know Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein? I’ve seen photographs of the woman taken at about the same time, and Picasso’s portrait is surprisingly authentic. And yet he invests the woman with so much more character than the camera lens picks up.”

They moved on together to the next picture. She generally preferred to be alone in museums and art galleries, but now she found this man’s company engaging. He was about thirty-five, she judged, with a not unattractive wedge-shaped face. His hair was dark brown and shaggy, his moustache a fighter brown with red highlights. He wore a tan corduroy jacket over a dark blue shirt open at the neck.

In front of a cubist Picasso he said, “You know, I never understood cubism until quite recently. I knew intellectually what it was about but I didn’t really comprehend it on a gut level. Do you ever smoke marijuana? I swear by all that’s holy I’m not an undercover policeman.”

She laughed. “I have smoked,” she said. “Not in years.”

“I don’t often, but once in a while. Usually when I’m alone listening to some music that I really want to absorb. But the point is that a couple of months ago I got high, you see, and I came here, and for the first time I looked at cubist things, at this particular painting as a matter of fact, and I was able to dig it. To understand just what was going on. It’s as if I learned a new way of seeing things, and I can still do it now without being high.”

“That’s interesting.”

“On the other hand, I still don’t like cubism much. But now I have a better idea why I don’t like it.”

She laughed. “You almost had me ready to try it. But if I’m not going to enjoy the paintings any more I guess I’ll pass it up.”

“Oh, I think it’s worth knowing why one doesn’t like something, don’t you? You really ought to try it some time. Do you get a chance to come here often?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m from out of town.”

“Oh? Whereabouts?”

“Upstate. Buffalo.”

“I’ve never been there. Do you like it?”

“It’s not a bad city. Do I like it? Well, it’s home, you see. I was born there.”

“I would have thought you were a New Yorker. You’ve lived here, haven’t you?”

She nodded. “For a few years. After college.”

“Radcliffe? Smith?”

“Bryn Mawr.”

“That would have been my third guess.” He smiled. He had a very easy smile. He looked at his watch, then at her. “I have twenty after two. Are you planning to go to the movie?”

“I hadn’t even thought about it.”

“It’s Citizen Kane again.”

Did she want to sit through a movie? It seemed silly to squander part of a free day in New York at the movies, even to see Citizen Kane, even in the Modern. She told him she didn’t think she would go.

“I’m not going either,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have time for a cup of coffee? Or a drink, if you’d prefer.”

“Oh, I don’t—”

“You don’t want to spend too much time on your feet, you know. It’s very easy to do that in New York. We could have coffee downstairs, or there’s a decent sort of pub just around the corner.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Which shall it be? Coffee or cocktails?”

He was trying to pick her up. He was very obviously trying to pick her up, and how had she managed to be quite so stupid about it? The Modern during the afternoon was a standard meeting place, as established as Bloomingdale’s on Saturdays. And he had been trying to pick her up all along, and doing a rather good job of it, and it was only now dawning on her what had been going on.

She felt herself blushing and couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

“I have to go,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have to meet my husband. I’m late, I have to meet him—”

“Oh, really.”

“I—”

“You don’t have to meet him for a few hours, do you? Or you wouldn’t have weighed the prospect of seeing Citizen Kane. Is that your way of telling me you’re married? I’d already noticed the ring, you know.”

Involuntarily her eyes went to his hand. He was not wearing a wedding ring. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Not all men wore them.

“Divorced,” he said. “Almost three years now.”

“I’m not divorced,” she said. “I’m very happily married. I have a fifteen-month-old child.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Why? A girl.”

“I have two girls. Eight and five.”

“I’m sorry, but I—”

“Rachel and Melissa.”

“Pardon me?”

“My daughters. Their names are Rachel and Melissa. What’s your girl’s name?”

“I don’t see that it concerns you.”

“It doesn’t. How long have you been married?”

“That’s none of your business either.”

He raised his eyebrows. “The hell of it is,” he said, “that we were having a perfectly enjoyable conversation. At least I was enjoying it, and I had the feeling you were enjoying it, too. Was I wrong?”

She didn’t say anything.

“I don’t think I was wrong. Then you suddenly decided that having a cup of coffee with me was tantamount to violating your marriage vows. I don’t recall making an immoral proposition. Or even a moral one. I didn’t expose myself or use bad language or anything of the sort. Did I?”

“Please,” she said.

“Is your husband wildly jealous? Would he object to my buying you a drink?”

“I would object.”

“Would you happen to have any idea why?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. It was a hell of a thing, she thought, when a woman couldn’t go to a museum alone without some idiot making a pest of himself. But he was not an idiot. And it was her fault as much as his; she had stupidly played a particular role in a particular scene without knowing what was going on.

Speaking very deliberately, she said, “Look, it’s my fault. I’m just a dumb little housewife from the sticks. I thought you were being friendly.”

“I was being friendly.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, but do you know what I mean? You’re all uptight because you’ve suddenly discovered that I’m attracted to you sexually. I won’t deny it. You’re a very attractive woman.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Let me finish. Because I find you interesting and attractive you assume I want to have sex with you. Well, there’s no time for that even if we were both so inclined. I’m not terribly casual about sex. It’s not something I have with strangers. I’m not good at that sort of thing. I asked you to have coffee or a drink on the chance that we might get to know each other and might discover that we liked each other. I think I might have liked getting to know you. I think we both might have liked it.”

“Please leave me alone.”

“I’m making you uncomfortable. I don’t mean to, but I want to say this.” He looked, she realized suddenly, as if on the verge of tears. “I don’t want to have coffee with you now. It’s a shame but we would both just make each other increasingly uncomfortable. But I want to ask you something. You used to live in New York. Were you always like this?”

“I never let strangers pick me up, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not. Were you always this opaque? This closed off.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Really?” He smiled suddenly. “Then we’ll both have something to think about, won’t we?” He glanced at his watch. “You’ll excuse me, won’t you? I think I’ll see that movie after all.”

There was a bar around the corner. A few tables were occupied toward the rear, and at one end of the bar two men in suits were involved in a conversation that evidently required a lot of manual gestures. She took a seat at the opposite end of the bar from them and ordered a dry bourbon Manhattan.

Was this the decent sort of pub he had alluded to? Would he have brought her here if she’d permitted him to?

She swallowed half her drink, lit a cigarette. She thought of the man and the conversation they had had and could not imagine a way she could have handled things more ineptly. She held her hand out and looked at it. Her fingers were trembling perceptibly.

There were so many better ways open to her. Would it have been so terrible to have had a drink with him? Hardly. She had enjoyed his conversation, and as long as he knew in advance that a drink was not prelude to anything, she might legitimately have accepted his offer. “A drink? I’d like that, but it would have to be a quick one. I’m meeting my husband in an hour.” That would have done the job neatly enough, and it would have been fair and aboveboard. If he was honestly willing to settle for her company he could have it; if he was looking for a bed partner he would know to look elsewhere.

I’m sorry, she thought. But I really am just a dumb Jewish housewife from Buffalo.

How would her friends have handled the matter? It was instantly tempting to say that they never would have walked into the Modern in the first place, but that was not really altogether fair. Barbara Singer would have moved mountains to get to the museum if only someone had told her it was a cultural must. And Eileen Fradin would have gone if a good friend — Andrea, for instance — told her she was likely to enjoy it. And some of her other friends—

But concentrate on those two, Barb and Eileen. How would they have handled the Post-Impressionist Romeo?

Barb would have flirted, she decided. She would have kept it entirely in hand, but she would have taken unbridled delight in it, perhaps accepting the drink, or else refusing it in such a manner as to convince the man that it broke her heart to leave him. Yes, she would have flirted, and she would have been damned good at it, and yet there would have been something curiously innocent about the entire performance, perhaps because its resolution was predestined from the onset; Barb would go home to her husband virtue intact, and Jerry Singer would reap the benefit that night of passion inspired by another man.

And Eileen? Andrea narrowed her eyes in concentration. She knew Eileen better than she knew anyone else, certainly better than she knew Barb Singer, yet it was more difficult for her to predict Eileen’s reaction. The girl was a curious mix of naiveté and intuitive shrewdness. There were, she decided, any number of ways Eileen might have handled the man. She might have chopped off the conversation at the beginning, never giving him the opportunity to make the overtures to a pass. She might have mentioned her husband and children eight times in the first two minutes, so stressing her marital status as to put the man utterly off stride. Or she might have managed, with perhaps unconscious subtlety, to drain the entire incident of its sexual implications.

And could either of the two have followed through? Could Barb or Eileen, in some fantasy whirl, have accepted the drink and then taken a further drink at the man’s apartment?

A hard image for Andrea to entertain, even in fantasy. Barb had evidently had some experience before she married Jerry Singer, and she was so flirtatious as to become occasionally aggravating, but it was quite inconceivable that she might spend an afternoon in amorous dalliance with a stranger. And Eileen had slept with no one before she met Roger Fradin, and surely no one but him since, and was quite likely to go through life never knowing the touch of any man but her husband.

Yet if she had to pick one of the two for a casual encounter, it would be Eileen. Why, for heaven’s sake? Simply because she knew her better?

“Another of those?”

She looked up, startled. Had she suddenly become herself a magnet for lecherous males? But it was only the bartender, doing his job. She shook her head and asked him for the check.

She rode the bus all the way down Fifth Avenue and got off at Washington Square. She stood at the arch for a moment, smoking a cigarette. Then she walked diagonally through the park, still pretending with at least a portion of her mind that she was bound for no specific destination. It was, certainly, a pleasant day for a walk, with Millay’s April babbling and strewing flowers.

The Village, certainly, was as good a place to walk as any.

The park had a different air to it, and she wondered if it had actually changed or if she was simply viewing it through altered eyes, older eyes. She was undeniably older than when she had been here last, but even allowing for the few years which had passed, it still seemed to her that the people sitting on benches or lying loose-limbed on the ground were impossibly young.

They were certainly shabbier, and the boys had longer hair. And the girls — was it just her impression, or were they all nothing but echoes of the same girl, identical impressions stamped out interminably with a cookie cutter? They all had the same absolutely straight long hair. They all wore granny glasses over utterly empty eyes. They all beamed with vacant smiles of inner peace, a peace no doubt chemically induced. They were also all quite beautiful, but it hardly seemed to matter.

And there were far more blacks in the park. More in number, and more willing to make their presence felt. Or was that, too, a change in her own vision? Was she more aware of blacks now that she lived in a clean white suburb?

She quickened her step, walked past the old men playing chess and checkers. She crossed the street and headed west. She knew where she was going and it really was not possible to pretend otherwise.

It was hard to determine at what point the Lion’s Head had become her bar. There was a period first when it had been one of several bars she might or might not go to in the course of an evening, depending upon whom she was with or what sort of mood she was in. She had not been much of a drinker at that stage, but the fact remained that she had spent a considerable proportion of her time in places where liquor was sold. The White Horse on Hudson, the Remo and sometimes the Kettle on Macdougal, the Riviera, Julius’s (before it turned gay), the Back Door (before it closed down). And the Lion’s Head.

And then at some point the Lion’s Head became her particular place. She would tend to end her evenings there. Friends might call her there, and would leave a message if she was not there at the moment. And one evening Don smiled over the bar at her and said, “Missed you last night. I was gettin’ worried about you.”

“Well, it’s not as though I’m here every damn night,” she had said. And he smiled and shrugged and moved down the bar, and she realized that it was as though she was in there every night. Every damned night.

Now she hesitated at the entrance. It looked the same, unobtrusive enough. You almost had to know it was there in order to find it. She descended the half flight of steps, opened the door.

It seemed to be the same. It was unremarkable enough in appearance, a dark old New York saloon, one long room with a bar running the length of it, another room around the back with tables. But it was the same, the same as she remembered it, and she took a considerable degree of satisfaction in discovering this.

The bar was not crowded. Three men were at its far end, another man alone with a beer in the middle of the bar. The bartender had high Slavic cheekbones and a ragged Zapata moustache. His hair was as black as shoe polish. She had never seen him before.

But she did recognize one of the other drinkers. A man about forty, jowly, wearing a bulky sweater and corduroy trousers. She did not know his name or anything about him but she did know that she had seen him before, that he had spent time at this bar when it was her bar.

It surprised her that this pleased her quite so much, this recognition.

She took a stool at the near end of the bar and got her cigarettes out of her bag. She lit one and sat for a while, smoking, watching the smoke rise to the stamped tin ceiling. After a moment or two she became aware that the bartender was standing in front of her, waiting for her order.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was lost in thought.”

“Sure. It’s that kind of day. Get you something?”

“A light beer, I think.”

“Sure.”

The beer tasted good. The bartender took her dollar, brought back her change, and left her alone. In the next twenty minutes the outside door opened three times, and each time she turned her head at the sound. But the people who walked in were all strangers to her.

When she had finished her beer she caught the bartender’s eye. He brought her another beer. She had learned his name from another conversation, and she used it now.

She said, “Frank, does John Riordan still come here?”

“Sure. Haven’t seen him yet today. You a friend of his?”

“Old-time friend.”

“Usually he’ll come in around this time. Little sooner or a little later. You couldn’t set your watch by him”

“You never could,” she said.

“How’s that?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“His book over there on the wall. The cover.”

“Oh?” Over beside the jukebox the wall was a montage of book jackets and photographs.

“The jacket, what they call it. You read it?”

“No.”

“Me neither. I don’t know how it’s doing. Selling, I mean.”

She hadn’t even known he’d had a book published. One had come out about a year after she was married and she’d read a review of it. It had been a collection of magazine and newspaper pieces. She’d stopped at Ulbrich’s to see if they had it in stock but they hadn’t. She could have had them order it, but hadn’t bothered.

She looked down at the beer glass. There was an expression her mother used frequently. Perhaps the phrase was not peculiar to her mother. It seemed to her that many of her mother’s friends used it. “He was beside himself.” It indicated that the subject of the sentence was enraged, taken aback, disconcerted, or any of a number of superlatives. It was a very useful expression, covering one’s reaction to all manner of outrages.

I am beside myself, she thought. And saw that the expression was a literal one, and that she’d had indeed been beside herself all day. One Andrea Kleinman was sitting there on that bar stool gazing down into that glass of beer and planning God knows what while another Andrea Kleinman, quite another Andrea Kleinman, was hovering somewhere in the middle distance, beside herself, watching and wondering, perhaps taking notes.

Andrea Benstock, idiot. You’re married, you have a house and a baby and two cars. Don’t you remember?

One or both of the Andreas saw a signature on an unread petition. “Andrea Beth Kleinman. 47 Jane Street. N.Y.C.”

She still had a third of a glass of beer in front of her when he came into the bar. She turned her head at the sound of the door, as she had been doing all along, but this time she really did know it would be him. She just knew it. She had been playing little doltish games with herself, giving herself two or three more door openings before she left, setting up little fail-safe devices either to permit their meeting or to foil it. But this time she knew it would be him, and she turned her head, and it was.

He looked very much as she remembered him. A tall man with a lumbering gait, broad in the shoulders, thick at the waist. Thicker indeed at the waist than when she’d seen him last.

His rust-brown hair was about the same length as it had been then. Before he’d worn it a little longer than was fashionable, and now it was a little shorter than fashion called for. And his beard, a little lighter than his hair, was a small and neatly trimmed affair confined to his chin and upper lip. It had been just like that when she’d first met him — at a party? at the White Horse? — and then shortly thereafter he’d let it grow in full. But now it was as it had been at that first meeting.

He had not noticed her. Someone had greeted him, and he was at the bar now, talking to someone she did not know. She was glad for a moment or two to observe him without being herself observed.

She recognized his jacket, a bulky tweed of no particular color. Had the elbows always been patched? And had he always worn glasses? He wore a little wire-rimmed pair now and they did not really suit him at all. They sat on his broad nose and looked like a pair of spectacles placed upon a statue in an attempt at humor.

She watched him, and sipped her beer, and then Frank went over to take a drink order, and leaned forward and evidently mentioned her, because a moment later John Riordan turned to glance very casually her way. His eyes brushed over her, stopped to take her measure, then widened.

“Well, I’m damned.”

“You always were, Jack.”

“It’s Andrea,” he said. He thumped his companion. “Do you know this lady?” he demanded. “No, you wouldn’t. Before your time. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here, should I?” Frank poured his drink, whiskey and soda, no ice, and John Riordan wrapped a large hand around the glass and carried it over to where Andrea was sitting. “Shouldn’t be surprised. Everything operates in cycles. Things go in and out of fashion and all things come to him who waits. Charlie Marx knew the whole story. Thesis and antithesis. His only mistake was hoping things would get better.” His eyes fixed thoughtfully upon her face. “You look well,” he said. He put meaning into the automatic phrase, and the words warmed her.

“Thank you. So do you.”

“You’re kind, but the hell I do. I’m getting just like my old man. The one thing on earth I fucking swore would never happen, and here I’m getting the same red nose and the same pot belly.” He slapped rhythmically at his abdomen. “He used to call it an alderman,” he said. “Did you ever hear that expression?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Wait a minute, I’m a goddamned liar. The old man never called it an alderman. Why should he? They don’t have aldermen in New York, for Jesus’ sake. I got that out of a book. Studs Lonigan, James Farrell. Old Studs was getting himself a pot belly and called it an alderman.” He drained his glass in a swallow and tapped it on the bar top. “Hell of a note when you steal things from old books and slip ’em into your own life. Another of the same, Frank, and bring the lady what she’s drinking. I knew you’d be back, Andrea. It’s always a question of time. This jacket is back in style again. I knew it would be sooner or later. Just keep things long enough and they’re all the rage again.”

“I’m just here on a visit.”

“You’re not moving back?”

She shook her head. “I’m an old married lady now.”

“That time you phoned me—”

“I got married that afternoon. It’ll be three years next month.”

“Kids?”

“A little girl. She was a year old in January.”

“God in heaven. You’re making me feel older than time. What else have you got? House in the suburbs? White picket fence?”

“Yes to the house, but there’s no fence around it.”

“And a car, of course.”

“Two cars.”

“Of course, God forgive me, two cars, his and hers. And any number of labor-saving devices, and a great deal of heavy furniture, and a recreation room in the basement paneled in knotty pine.”

“Knotty cedar. Pine is tacky.”

“God save us all.” He had been smiling throughout, his blue eyes glinting, so that she knew to take his words in good humor. “A suburban matron. The word sticks in my throat. It conjures up visions of a stout woman with bulldog jaw being summoned to search female prisoners. Scarcely an image that fits you.”

“Scarcely one I aspire to.”

“Let me look at you. You do look well, dammit. The life evidently agrees with you.”

“It does.” Their eyes met, and she gave a quick nod. “It really does,” she said.

“And your husband’s good to you.”

“He is.”

“Never takes a whip to you.”

“Not unless I deserve it.”

“Oh, I suspect you deserve it now and again, but he keeps you on a loose leash. I don’t believe I know your married name. You may have told me but I was in a bit of a fog that morning.”

“It’s Benstock.”

“And your husband is—”

“Mark.”

“Mark Benstock. A professional man?”

“A lawyer.”

“A lawyer.” He was not mocking, and he was not exactly judging, and there was really nothing in his words or tone to which she could object.

“You like it there, Andrea? Up in Buffalo?”

“It’s my home, Jack.”

“That’s a damned good answer. It says more than yes or no, doesn’t it? A damned good answer. I’ll tell you a secret. I fucking well envy you.”

“You envy me?”

“That surprises you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it does.”

He started to say something, then changed his mind. He took a pack of Camels from the breast pocket of the tweed jacket and offered her one. She reached for her own, then left her pack on the bar and accepted one of his Camels. The taste was much stronger than what she was used to, but not in an unpleasant way. He waved to the bartender for another round. She still had most of her beer left, and covered her glass with her hand, and the bartender replenished Riordan’s drink.

She said, “Straight whiskey and unfiltered cigarettes. You haven’t changed.”

“At this hour I’ll take soda in the whiskey, I’m afraid. I don’t know if I’ve changed or not. I’m fatter, we established that much. I used to wear these—” he touched his glasses — “just for reading. Now I only need them for seeing.”

“Shure an’ it’s ould age creepin’ up on you.”

“Didn’t I ever tell you not to do a brogue if you can’t do it convincingly? And as a matter of fact it’s middle age creeping up on me, and it’s doing just that, and it scares the crap out of me.”

“Does it really?”

“Sometimes.” He picked up his glass and looked into it as if reading tea leaves. “I said I envied you. I’m surprised that you’re surprised, Andrea. Seems to me you’re fairly enviable.”

“Well, I’m happy, Jack.”

“You’ve found yourself. You’ve got a stable life, you’ve got a good situation.”

“I know it.”

“Ever miss it?”

“What?”

He made a circle with his hand. “This.”

“I think of it sometimes.”

“And?”

“It’s hard believing it was me here. It wasn’t so long ago but it seems forever. Did you know a friend of mine? Winifred Welles, we called her Winkie?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“No, I guess she didn’t come downtown much. I don’t think you ever met her.”

“What about her.”

“Oh, nothing.” She took a small careful sip of beer. “How’ve you been, Jack? I don’t suppose you got married or did anything silly like that.”

“No, not yet.”

“Do you have anybody special?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “I did for a while. It fell in the shit a month or so ago. No, it was longer than that. Around Christmas. That’s the best time to pack it in, you don’t have to buy presents. Otherwise I’d have been stuck with presents for her and her whole goddamned family, so I got off cheap. Luck of the Irish and all that.”

She looked at him and didn’t say anything.

“She was too young or I was too old, something like that. We got a couple of good months out of it. You can’t ask for a hell of a lot more than that.”

“I suppose not.”

“Unless you sign on for the whole trip. The kid and the two cars and the house in the country. I mean the suburbs. Does your suburb have a name?”

“Tonawanda.”

“Jesus, that’s beautiful. Tonawanda.”

“It was the name of an Indian tribe.”

“I’m sure it was. You wouldn’t make up something like that. Jesus God, I know someone who lives in something called Tonawanda.” He put his hand on her wrist. “I’m not making fun of you, Andrea. I swear to God I’m not.”

“Damn you, anyway.”

“Hey, easy, easy.”

“What I want to know is why can you do this to me? Tell me that.”

“Easy,” he said. His hand was on her shoulder, squeezing hard but not too hard. She felt tears welling up and couldn’t understand what had prompted them.

“Easy,” he said, gentling her as a man in a Marlboro commercial might gentle a skittish mare.

“I’m all right now.”

“Certainly you are. Finish that beer and let me buy you another. Or something else with more authority to it.”

“No, I don’t want another drink.”

“Whatever you say.”

She took one of his cigarettes without waiting for an invitation. He gave her a light and she gripped his wrist as she accepted the flame. Perhaps her fingers pressed his skin more than was necessary. Their eyes met for an instant and then she drew hers away.

“I’ve got a new book out,” he said.

“The bartender told me. The cover’s on the wall, he said.”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose you read the last one.”

“I saw ads for it. I tried to get it at the library but they didn’t have it.” She hadn’t, really. “It was a collection of essays?”

“Well, pieces for the Voice, mostly. And a few odds and ends.”

“Did it sell well?”

“Not too. What’s called a decent enough sale for a first book, which means it didn’t earn out the advance.”

“And the new book is—”

“A novel.”

“What’s it about?”

“People.”

“Always a good subject.”

“So they tell me.”

But they weren’t talking about his book any more. They hadn’t really ever begun talking about it. They were just taking turns uttering words like a pair of boxers shifting their weight from foot to foot in an early round, sizing each other up, feeling each other out.

“I’d give you a copy, you know, if I had one with me.”

“I’d like that. I’d buy a copy but it would be nice to have an autographed one.”

“Just lowers the value. The unautographed ones are the rare ones.”

“I don’t — oh, I get it.”

“If you wanted to walk over to my place I’ve probably got a copy lying around I could spare.”

“I don’t have very much time. I have to meet Mark fairly soon.”

“Whatever you say.”

She glanced elaborately at her watch, took a last drag on her unfiltered cigarette, leaned forward to stub it out in the ashtray. “You still live in the same place?”

“Same as ever.”

“Well, I guess I have time.”

One day that past August she had wheeled Robin two blocks in her carriage to Eileen’s house. Eileen had been extravagantly pregnant then, six weeks from her due date, carrying high and proud. The two of them sat in the yard on lounge chairs while Robin slept in her carriage and Eileen’s Jason dug with a trowel in the garden, either for worms or to get to China.

They sipped iced tea and talked about the heat and the Vietnam war and then about breast-feeding. Andrea had nursed Robin for the first three months.

“So she went straight to whole milk and you didn’t have to fuss with formula,” Eileen said. “I guess that’s simpler on top of being healthier and more natural. It’s supposed to be healthier, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know if it really makes a difference. It depends who you listen to.”

“But you wanted to do it.”

“Well, Mark wanted me to. He wouldn’t have been terribly disappointed but he preferred it that way and it didn’t bother me. If anything I think it’s more convenient.”

“I suppose his mother nursed him so he wanted the same for his daughter.”

“No, as a matter of fact, she didn’t.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, Andrea. Just that it seems interesting. I’d like to nurse the new baby but the only thing is I don’t know if it’s fair.”

“To whom?”

“Well, I didn’t nurse Jason. I mean it never occurred to me to nurse him. Nobody was nursing babies that year. Oh, this will kill you. I told Rita next door I was thinking about nursing the new baby and you know what she said? She said, ‘Oh, that’s so unnatural!’”

“You’re kidding.”

“I swear to God. She’s the ultimate Polish joke, Andrea. She really is.” Then, leaning forward, “The thing is, would it be fair to nurse the new baby if I didn’t nurse Jason?”

“Well, how would he know the difference?”

“Listen, there’s plenty that they know. Or he could find out years from now and have a complex about it. What do you think?”

“I think you should do whatever you feel like doing.”

“I suppose so... I know.”

“What?”

“If it’s a girl I’ll nurse her but not if it’s a boy. Is that crazy?”

“It sounds it.”

“Well, I don’t want Jason to have a complex. That’s all.”

A dingy narrow building on Perry west of Seventh, five floors, two apartments to the floor, the stairwell full of cooking smells. His apartment was three flights up. They climbed the old stairs without speaking, he leading the way, and he opened the door with his key and stood aside to let her enter.

There was a police lock, a heavy steel bar that fitted into a steel plate on the floor and braced against the door. “That’s new,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“Got it a couple of years ago. I got sick of having junkies coming around and kicking the door in. They never found anything much to take but I resented the intrusion. A man likes his privacy, don’t you know.”

“You always did like your privacy.”

“Saloons exist to serve the needs of private people. There’s an eternal truth for you, Andrea. Hurry and write it down.”

“Won’t you use it in a book sometime?”

“If I remember, and if it still sounds good to me when the time comes. Drink?”

“No thanks.”

While he poured Glenfiddich scotch into a glass she took the measure of the apartment. It seemed to be more or less as she remembered it. She had not been to his place that many times. Half a dozen? And how many times had he come to her place on Jane Street? Eight, ten times?

Hardly a grand passion.

She lit a cigarette. The apartment did seem the same, and yet she was conscious now as she had not been previously that it was small — a single long narrow room with a tiny stove and refrigerator in one corner, a long wall of jerrybuilt bookshelves, a fireplace the flue of which was permanently stopped up, a threadbare maroon rug, third- and fourth- and fifth-hand upholstered chairs, a convertible sofa, its arms scarred by neglected cigarettes, which he opened into a bed if he had overnight company but slept on unopened if he was alone.

She was aware of the smallness now, and of the shabbiness, as she had been aware of the sour odors of the building while they climbed the stairs.

And yet—

“Here it is.”

She took the book from him, held it in both hands, turned it over to regard his photograph on the back cover. “It’s a good picture, Jack.”

“Considering what they had to work with.”

“Where was it taken? The Head?”

He nodded. “Leaning on the bar with a glass in my hand. The consensus was that my friends wouldn’t recognize me in any other surroundings. You sure I can’t get you a drink? There’s beer in the icebox.”

“I’m positive. ‘In Love with Crazy Jane.’ Where’d you get the title?”

“It’s a reference to Yeats.”

“Oh, the Crazy Jane poems. Right.”

“It’s the usual kind of crap. It asks the age-old question — can a Mick from Bay Ridge possibly contend with the human condition if some bastard makes the mistake of teaching him to read and write? And it comes back with the usual answer.”

“Which is?”

“You have to read the book to find out.”

She sat down on the couch, the book in her hands. She read the cover blurb without really paying attention to what she was reading, letting her eyes scan the column without their registering what they saw. After a moment or two he sat down beside her, reading over her shoulder.

“Autobiographical, Jack?”

“A little. Be better if it was. More honest. But you know me, I can’t tell a story without trying to improve it, so I turned the truth around and put in things that happened to friends of mine, or things I heard about, or things I made up altogether. There’s a lot of Catholic bullshit and a lot of Village bullshit and a certain amount of political bullshit, but not too much of the last because I got sick of it.”

“Aren’t you active in politics these days?”

“I go through the motions now and then but it takes a lot of effort. Dallas took all the fun out of it.” He emptied his glass and set it down heavily on the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. Other glasses had bleached white rings on the lid of the trunk, and cigarettes had left scars. “The hell of it is that I never really thought that much of the son of a bitch. But you have to give him one thing. The deader he is, he better he looks. And the war goes on.”

“I signed a petition today.”

“Well, that should end the war in a hurry. It’s good to see the suburban middle class putting its ass on the line for the cause of peace and freedom.”

“I signed my maiden name.”

“Andrea Kleinman.”

“Andrea Beth Kleinman. And for my address I put my old apartment on Jane Street.”

He took her chin in his hand and studied her face as if to decipher a secret message. “Is that the truth? Really?”

“Yes. What’s so remarkable about it?”

“Christ, kid. You can’t go home again. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that?”

“Which home can’t you go to, Jack? That’s the part they didn’t tell me.”

Before Dallas, Harry Benstock had hated John Kennedy. It was a sly hatred, not like the open enmity the rich had shown for Roosevelt a generation earlier. It exemplified itself by little jokes and slurs. Andrea’s father-in-law had owned The First Family, Vaughan Meader’s comedy album. And he had delighted in a rather mindless record on which the singer took the part of the President’s daughter Caroline.

My daddy’s the president

What does your daddy do?

We live in a big white house

On Pennsylvania Avenue...

Now there was an unutterably tasteless portrait of JFK, with Jackie at his side, hanging in Harry Benstock’s den. And Harry Benstock was voluble on the subject of the martyred president, and how the best hope of the generation had died with him.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” Andrea had heard him say often. “There’s no way Little Brother is ever gonna measure up to him. He’ll never fill those shoes.”

He had taken the book from her. He uncapped a pen, opened the book to the flyleaf.

“Hell,” he said. “You’re going to have tell me again. I keep thinking Beanstalk and that’s not it.”

“Just Andrea is fine.”

“C’mon, what’s your last name? Just so I’ll know.”

She told him, and spelled it for him. He wrote rapidly for a moment, then closed the book and capped the pen and put them both on the trunk top.

“You can’t read it now.”

“The whole book? I didn’t intend to.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Uh-huh.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes. She was waiting, and she did not have to wait long before he insinuated his arm between her shoulders and the back of the couch. She did not move. Her eyes remained closed and she waited.

She felt his breath on her cheek, breathed it in, registered the aromas of whiskey and tobacco. After a moment his lips just touched her cheek. Then she felt him draw away from her.

She did not say anything. She heard him strike a match and draw on a cigarette.

“It’s good seeing you, Andrea.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning what I just said. It’s good to see you. People lose touch.”

“Why is that, do you suppose?”

“They swim in different rivers. Something like that.”

“We’re in the same river now. Don’t you feel like spawning?”

“Well, that’s pretty direct.”

“I’ve always been pretty direct, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, I guess you have.”

“Well?”

He only hesitated for a moment. Then he kissed her and she surrendered immediately to the kiss, welcoming his arms around her, his mouth on hers. She did not hold anything back, but neither did she feel anything except an unfamiliar tightness in her chest.

This afternoon belonged to her. It existed independent of all other aspects of her life, past and present and future. It might or might not turn out to have meaning, but if it did the meaning was one she would probably not know for a long time. For the time being she was in a special limbo, answerable to no one, not even to herself.

All of this came to her in the middle of a kiss. When the kiss ended he released her and took up his cigarette from the ashtray. He took a drag on it and offered it to her. She drew on it. He said, “You don’t have to do this, Andrea.”

“Don’t you think I want to?”

“I’m not sure you know what you want. I’m just telling you there’s nothing you have to finish just because you started it. We’re both of us too old for that number.”

“I know.”

He leaned forward to put out the cigarette. “You were saying you’d have to meet your husband—”

“Not for a while.”

“That was a while ago.”

“There’s time.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Just don’t say anything,” she said. “Just, just let me do this. Just be still.”

She changed position on the couch, curling fetally with her head in his lap. She put one hand high on his thigh and cupped his groin with the other, holding him snugly. He expelled breath in a quiet sigh. She held him and rubbed her cheek against the back of her hand, then moved to blow warm breath between her fingers.

From that point on it had its own existence. She opened his zipper, extricated his penis. He sat quite still, altogether passive. She drew his pants a little ways down over his hips. Then, without any teasing, she took him into her mouth. And closed her eyes.

Yes. Oh, yes. How very nice this was, how pleasant, how tender, how warm. Men did taste different, one from another, and why shouldn’t they? So many other things served to distinguish one man from his fellow. Why should their taste be identical? Not that she could have specifically recalled the taste of this particular man. That was a nice conceit but scarcely true.

Ah, how exciting to serve as the vehicle of his excitement! To feel him grow in her mouth. How nice.

After a time he could not sit still. After a time his hips gave thrilling little twitches. He put a hand on her cheek, tangled the fingers of his other hand in her hair. It seemed to her that this last was an impossibly tender and thoughtful gesture, to tangle his fingers in her hair.

He spoke her name then and started to lean forward. But with one hand on his chest she made him sit back again, and her hand remained there, telling him that she wanted things this way, that this was her scene to be played out as she willed it.

And he sighed heavily and relaxed.

Of course. Because this was what men wanted. To be passive. Not to do but to lean back with their eyes closed and be done to. Oh, they would always want to make the gesture. They were willing, even anxious, to throw you a gentlemanly fuck. And they wouldn’t want you to think that this was what they really craved. That they were such passive individuals, receivers rather than givers. That what they wanted could be done as well, if not better, by another male. No, they would not want you to think that, and they would not want to think it themselves, but it was true nevertheless. This was what they wanted — to be very still and very silent, to be passive, to tangle their fingers in your hair while you sucked them.

His orgasm was abrupt and unanticipated, rather like a sudden cough.

By the time Mark returned to their hotel room, she had showered and dressed for the evening. He was in an excellent mood. His meeting had gone well and he was pleased with himself.

“Well, you’re certainly in good spirits,” she said.

“The best spirits. And it’s been a beautiful day, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be a beautiful night, and I’ll have a beautiful girl on my arm. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

“And Joel Lieberman recommended a French restaurant around the corner from the theater and insisted I make reservations, which I did. And which we can cancel if you don’t feel like French.”

“It sounds fine.”

“So if you’d like to call your mother and find out how our pride and joy is behaving, and then we can get the show on the road.”

She placed the call and established that Robin was doing fine. They walked to the restaurant, a small and intimate room on West Fifty-first Street called Trompe l’Oeil. He talked at length about how he had spent his day and she tried her best to pay attention. It was difficult, because she could not really follow what he was saying. But she had long since learned to keep an alert attentive expression on her face, to nod at the right time, to show interest. And it was not really hypocritical, was it? Because she was interested in anything that concerned him. She simply had trouble paying attention.

The dinner was good enough. Mark’s menu French was quite competent and he had developed an enviable facility with a wine list. They skipped dessert and had ponies of cognac with their espresso.

“We’ve got to come here more often,” he said.

“This restaurant?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but I’d hate to drive this far just for dinner. No, I meant we have to come to New York more often. It’s what, seven hours on the Thruway? We should make it a point to get here twice a year. Hit some restaurants, see a couple of shows.”

“Well, it’s fine with me.”

They lit cigarettes and he asked her how her day had gone. She covered most of it. Shopping, the museum, the Village. She avoided mentioning the man in the museum, and of course she did not mention John Riordan. She was prepared to elaborate on some Village art galleries she could claim to have visited, but it wasn’t necessary; he looked at his watch and announced it was time they headed over toward the theater. He signaled for the check and caught the waiter’s eye almost instantly. He was very good at that sort of thing.

The show, Fiddler on the Roof, was the hardest ticket on Broadway. The New York lawyers with whom Mark had had business had managed to obtain a good pair of seats in the center section of the orchestra. There were other shows Andrea would have, preferred to see had she been consulted, but by the time the house lights dimmed and the orchestra was playing the familiar music of the overture, she decided she was just as glad they were seeing Fiddler.

Because it would demand nothing of her. Mark had owned the album for months and she couldn’t begin to estimate how many times he had played it. The action on stage, while colorful enough, did not require that much attention to be paid to it. She could sit in the theater as if in a concert hall, letting the music wash over her, sending her thoughts wherever they wanted to go...

After the act in John Riordan’s apartment they had both reached out at once, she for a cigarette — one of her own this time — and he for the wedge-shaped Glenfiddich bottle. He filled his glass while she scratched a match and lit her cigarette. He took a long drink, put the glass down, and smothered a burp with the back of his hand.

She said, “I’d better be on my way, Jack.”

“Just like that.”

“Pardon me?”

“It’s the fucking American dream, isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The disposable girl. As convenient as a TV dinner and about as nourishing.” He rearranged his clothing, worked his zipper. “You fall out of my life for a few years, then fall back in for an hour. No muss, no fuss, no bother. A man doesn’t even have to take off his clothes. Just put his head back and close his eyes and get his tubes cleaned, then put the whole tab on his Diner’s Club card.”

“I thought you enjoyed what we just did.”

“What we did? I don’t remember doing anything myself. What you did, you mean.”

She looked at him.

“Of course I enjoyed it. You’ve got a definite talent there, kid. If you ever want a testimonial in writing you can have it. I could even write you up in the Voice.”

She was on her feet now, looking down at him. “I don’t understand you at all,” she said.

“No?”

“You’re acting as though I took advantage of you. You’re like a girl who just lost her virginity. I swear that’s what you’re acting like.”

He drank whiskey and looked at her over the brim of the glass. “We keep losing our virginities,” he said. “We shed our virginities like peeling onions until we find they’re all we ever had.”

“The Celtic Poet number’s wearing a little thin, don’t you think?”

“The hell of it is I’m going to get drunk tonight and I hadn’t planned to. I don’t every night, you know.”

“How would I know that?”

“How indeed.”

“Jack?” She paused until he raised his eyes to meet hers. “Jack, do we have to be cruel to each other?”

His face softened and for a moment she thought he was on the verge of tears. “No, of course we don’t,” he said, his rasp of a voice thickened now.

“I’m glad.”

“Quite the reverse. We have to be very gentle with each other.” He stood up and reached to take her hand. “I wish you the very best, Andrea. You know that.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“I’ve always wished you the best, the very best. And I’m sorry for, well, for all the things I’m sorry for.”

“Don’t be sorry for anything. And neither will I.”

“That’s fair enough.” He walked her to the door. “By God, Andrea. It has been good seeing you, you know.”

“For me, too.”

“Drop in next time you’re in the neighborhood.”

“Oh, we’ll see.”

“Or don’t, but we’ll keep on running into each other down through the years. I’m afraid we’re in the same karass.” When she looked puzzled he said, “Cat’s Cradle. Don’t you people read Vonnegut up in Buffalo?”

“I only read the Book-of-the-Month. And of course the Reader’s Digest condensed books, we never miss those.”

“Now it’s you who’s putting me on. You might enjoy Vonnegut, though. He’s got an interesting head. Have you got my book?”

“Yes, right here.”

“It’s a failure. That’s not modesty talking, just a realistic appraisal. I found out it was harder to write a novel than I thought. But I did a lot of the things I set out to do in the sense of getting things out of my guts and onto the page. And found things out about myself in the course of writing it.” He shrugged elaborately. “Maybe you’ll find it an interesting read, anyway.”

On the way back to her hotel she had stopped to read the inscription on the flyleaf.

To Andrea/With every good wish/from an old-timey friend/John Riordan

What he had written seemed to her to be almost deliberately remote and innocent, as if written to be read by someone else and passed over as the scrawl of a casual acquaintance. The signature — not Jack but his full name.

Had he written it that way out of consideration for her? Or was there something snide about the words he’d chosen?

Or was she overanalyzing things, as she had always done in her relationship with John Riordan?

The book would pose no real problems. It could be shown to Mark easily enough. But did she really want to have that conversation? For that matter, did she really want to read his novel? How awkward if it turned out to be a staggeringly bad book. And how disconcerting if it had things to say to her that she did not want to hear.

She could always borrow a copy from the library.

If they didn’t have it at her branch they could order it from downtown.

She tore out the flyleaf and shredded it, then dropped the scraps of it and the rest of the book into a litter basket.

After the final curtain they walked a few blocks to get clear of the crowd, then took a cab to a bar on Central Park South just down the block from their hotel. The room was done in dark wood and red leather. A pianist did a competently unobtrusive job with show tunes and standards. They talked easily about the show and about people they knew.

“I suppose you got to the theater all the time when you lived here,” he said.

“Hardly at all.”

“Really?”

“I couldn’t afford it, in the first place. I was a working girl. And the crowd I ran with, we didn’t go to plays much.”

“Funny to think of you running with a crowd.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“Uh-huh.” He signaled for another drink. She still had most of hers left. He said, “I think we probably take more advantage of cultural events in Buffalo than your average New Yorker does. There’s less to do but we grab everything that comes along. Gordon Kramer was telling me today that he hasn’t taken his wife to a Broadway show in almost a year. Of course they’re out on Long Island and with a baby-sitter and dinner and all it costs him a hundred dollars to spend a night on the town, but he could afford it if he wanted to. And Joel Lieberman, they live right in Manhattan and hardly ever get to a show. He says there’s no urgency, you know if you don’t go one night you can always go the next night, and so as a result you don’t go at all.”

The waiter brought his drink. He raised his glass to her, took a sip. “I might get just the least bit high tonight,” he announced.

“You might even be on your way already.”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“You had a good day today, didn’t you, darling?”

“I had a wonderful day. And I’m having a wonderful evening. Something I haven’t told you yet. They offered me a job. Kramer and Lieberman.”

“Oh?”

“Very offhand, but it was a real offer. ‘If you ever get sick of it up there in Alaska, you’re the kind of person we’d like to have with us.’ Hell, it wasn’t a job they were offering me. It was an invitation to come in with them.”

“Are you considering it?”

“Not for a minute. And I’m sure they knew I wouldn’t.”

“Then—”

“God, I wouldn’t want to move to New York! Kramer lives in a house like ours except that he paid about twice as much for it and it takes him over an hour to get to the office in the morning. And Joel pays a good deal more each month to rent a four-room apartment than I pay to own a four-bedroom house. Not to mention that he’s living in a jungle and he has to send his kid to a private school. Would you want to bring up Robin in New York City?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Neither would I, and even without kids I wouldn’t want to live here. It’s just like everyone says, a great place to visit, and that’s as far as it goes.”

“That’s how I feel.”

“But the thing is—” he was signaling the waiter again—” the thing is that I never seriously considered the job and I don’t think they expected me to. But what they’re really saying, without saying it, is that they like me and they like the way I operate.”

“Well, I don’t blame them.”

“No, there’s a point to this, honey. They like me as a person and as a lawyer and they’ll be anxious to steer their upstate business my way. And they’re well connected, you know. They’re a couple of guys not much older than me who went out on their own and are doing damned well for themselves. Their upstate business comes to a few dollars, and if you get their business you’ll get bits and pieces from other people too.”

“I don’t understand. Don’t you already get their business?”

“Ah,” he said. He winked elaborately. “Does Gordon, Weissbart & Gordon get their business? Yes. But do I, Mark Alan Benstock, get their business? No.”

“Oh.”

“Oh is right.”

“You mean if you decide to go off on your own—”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Have you been thinking about that again?”

“Uh-huh.” Her hand lay on the table, and he extended his index finger and traced designs on the back of her hand. “Thinking a lot about it.”

“For a while, it sounds like.”

“For a few months.”

“You’re doing well where you are. And they like you.”

“Oh, they love me. And I’m doing quite well. And there are too goddamned many little Gordons and Weissbarts in the wings.”

“You’d go on your own?”

“I’d go in with a partner.”

“Jeff Kaiser?”

“Why Jeff? No, nobody from the office. That wouldn’t make much sense. I’d want someone who would bring in business I wouldn’t get otherwise, somebody who would give the partnership an extra dimension. Not from my office, and not even Jewish, as far as that goes.”

“You have someone in mind.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do I know him?”

“You’ve met him a couple of times.” He sipped his drink. “As a matter of fact, he was the one who broached the idea. He wants to be on his own because he’s not getting anywhere in his present connection, and he came up with the suggestion. And it’s funny, because I was not only thinking in the same terms but I was thinking he was the man I’d ask first.”

“You’re not saying who he is.”

“Oh, I’ll say sooner or later.”

“Cass Drozdowski.”

“You must be psychic. How in the hell—”

“It just came to me. You think it would work? You know, it just might. The two of you would complement each other in a lot of ways.”

“With his roots in the Polish community—”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean in terms of personality. You’re the brilliant Jew and he’s the solid Pole. And at the same time you’re very thorough and painstaking and he’s, what’s the word I want? Mercurial.”

“You can see it, can’t you?”

“Yes, I think I can. If you decide you really want to have your own office.”

“And I think I’m very close to that decision. Closer now than I was ten minutes ago.”

“I think you probably are. Would I have to become bosom buddies with Ellie Drozdowski? Not that I could possibly compete with her in the bosom department. I don’t mind Cass but she’s a little hard to take.”

“You two wouldn’t have to see all that much of each other.”

“I remember that New Year’s party at their place “

“I was just thinking that.” He lifted his glass to his lips but it was empty. “I think I’ll have one more. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Why should I mind?”

“And will you have one with me? To drink to the future?”

“I can hardly refuse that.”

They had another round of drinks. He paid the check and left a large tip, and when they were outside he turned east instead of west. “No, our hotel’s the other way, darling,” she said.

“I know.”

“But—”

He took her arm and led her down the block to where the carriages were parked. “Always wanted to do this,” he said. “Once around the block, James. Pip pip, old top. Pop, pop, old tip. I’m not a nasty drunk, anyway. You’ll have to grant me that.”

“You’re a sweet man, drunk or sober or in between.

I’ve always wanted to do this. How could you possibly have known? And it’s every bit as much fun as I hoped it would be.”

“It’s been a good day, baby.”

“It’s been a very special day,” she said.

Wednesday

October 16, 1968

She was in the back yard with Robin when the phone rang again. It had been ringing all morning. She said, “Shit,” and went inside to answer it. The conversation which she had was a brief one, and certainly undemanding; she had been having essentially the same conversation over and over. Throughout the city her mother’s friends and Mark’s mother’s friends were checking their calendars, discovering the notation, “Andrea Benstock 30th B’day,” and reaching for the telephone. It was certainly very nice of them but it was beginning to be boring.

When the conversation ended she broke the connection, then placed the receiver on the table next to the phone. She was halfway to the door before she decided it just wasn’t cricket to leave it off the hook. If people were taking the trouble to call her to wish her well, she could at least take the trouble to answer their calls. And they’d get through sooner or later anyway. They wouldn’t let a busy signal stop them.

She replaced the receiver and stood there for a moment, glaring at the phone, daring it to ring. It remained silent. She went outside again. Robin looked up from her sandbox and sang out, “Happy Birthday!”

“You keep saying that.”

“Happy Birthday!”

“Oh, Happy Birthday yourself, elf.”

“I’m not a elf.”

“An elf. Sure you are.”

“An’ it’s not my birthday. On my birthday I’ll be four.”

“That’s right.”

“Four years old.”

“That’s terrific.”

“It’s better than thirty.”

“Go play in your sandbox, kid.”

“Go play in traffic. That’s what you always say.”

Well, she’d always wondered what happened when you were thirty years old. And now she knew. You got to play straight man to a three-year-old.

She drew a breath, put her hands on her hips, let out a sigh. She wanted a cigarette but they were in the house and it seemed inefficient to make a special trip. She could pick them up the next time the phone rang. She crossed the lawn to examine the tree they had planted their first spring in the house. It was a white oak, a sturdy and well-formed young tree, and it had reached the stage where one was able to take it seriously.

It hadn’t been that long since they’d planted it. A little over three years, and she’d always thought of the growth of trees as being a terribly slow matter. Three years ago the tree had been small enough to fit in the back of their station wagon. Mark had picked it out at the nursery and brought it home, and she remembered how he had dug a huge hole to accommodate the sizable root ball, cursing when the spade glanced off stones in the soil, panting with exertion when the hole was finally dug. Then the job of wrestling the tree over to the hole and propping it in place, and filling in the hole, and soaking the earth, and then they’d stood together with his arm around her waist and admired his handiwork.

“Some day,” he’d said, “we’ll sit in the shade. Try to make yourself believe it.”

“It does take some imagination.”

“Hell of a thing, isn’t it? I came within a few inches of a hernia lifting the son of a bitch, and now that it’s in the ground it looks like a splinter. Maybe I should have sprung for a few more bucks and bought an older tree. And let them plant it.”

“It’s more exciting this way.”

“Exciting?”

“Well, I don’t know. Fulfilling, gratifying, you know what I mean.”

“Uh-huh. You know, there really is something about planting a tree. There was a song that was popular when I was in high school, something to the effect that a man has to accomplish three things in the course of his life.”

“Plant a tree and what else?”

“Take a wife and father a child.”

“Well, you’re three for three, tiger.”

“It’s a funny feeling,” he said, “when you think of it that way.”

And it was a funny feeling now, looking at the tree and wondering how it had grown so without her really having noticed the growth. She looked from the tree to her daughter and that, too, gave her a funny feeling.

The tree had been in bud when they’d planted it. Tight buds that showed green only on close examination. “It’s quite an act of faith planting it,” she’d said at the time. “For all we know we’re digging a hole and planting a dead stick in it.”

But the buds had opened into yellow-green leaves within weeks of planting. And now the leaves were beginning to turn, going shades of rust and bronze.

And today she was thirty years old.

Perhaps a week ago she had found herself standing mesmerized at the bathroom sink, drowning in her reflection in the mirror. She came abruptly out of the state as if from a dream, unable to say how long she had been standing there or what if anything had been going through her mind. And then she’d blinked rapidly at herself, and then leaned forward to stare searchingly into her own eyes.

Looking for what?

On the night when she lost her virginity she had returned to her dormitory to gaze into the mirror. To see if she looked any different. To see if the brief intrusion of a boy’s flesh into her own flesh had left her marked like Cain. It wasn’t until months later that she happened to learn that such post-defloration scrutiny was a positive cliché.

“Christ,” she’d said. “I did that.”

“Well, of course. Everybody does.”

“But I thought I invented it, for God’s sake. And it turns out to be a cliché.”

“That’s how things get to be clichés, Andrea Beth. By everybody doing them.”

“Still.”

And what had she been looking for now?

Signs of age? She supposed they were beginning to appear. Life gradually got around to drawing lines on your face and there wasn’t a hell of a lot you could do about it. Some people seemed to accelerate the process. Eileen Fradin, living on diet pills since the birth of her second child, had managed to lose her baby face along with her baby fat, and without makeup the dark hemispheres beneath her eyes were ghastly. Andrea had never seen any similarly dramatic evidence of aging in her own face.

Oh, there were lines. The horizontal folds in her forehead that came when she raised her eyebrows no longer vanished when she lowered them. Evidently she had raised her brows once too often. “Your face should freeze like that,” her mother had used to say when Andrea would make a funny face of some sort. And in a sense people’s faces did freeze as, over the years, lines appeared to mark off one’s characteristic expressions.

A man is ultimately responsible for his own face.

She had heard that recently, but where? She leaned against the sink and remembered. Of course, sitting in front of a television set in Cheektowaga, she and Mark and Ellie and Cass Drozdowski, watching the Democrats in Chicago. There was a shot of Humphrey in his hotel room and Cass roared and slammed his drink down on the table beside him.

“Look at that face! Four years playing pratboy to the big Texas sheriff and it all shows. I swear to God it’s the truth. After the age of forty a man’s face is his own responsibility.”

She had not understood the remark when he’d made it, but now, studying her own face, she began to understand why it was true. The face you began life with was largely a matter of genetics. You could be fortunate or unfortunate by being given a face that would stop either traffic or a clock, but it was almost entirely a matter of fortune. Your face, when you were young, might be a good reflection of the person you happened to be. Or it might be quite the reverse.

But with the passage of time the expressions you fastened upon your face and the emotions you locked behind it became fixed in place. People who always drew their faces together wound up with pinched little faces. People never disturbed by thought wound up with faces like blank sheets of paper. It took a while, but ultimately you wound up looking like the person you had learned to be.

She couldn’t read much in her own reflection. The evident changes — the lines on her forehead, the touch of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes — said little to her beyond reporting her age. And she didn’t mind looking her age, not really, any more than she minded being her age. At least she didn’t think she did.

And yet her mirror image seemed to be trying to tell her something, and sometimes it seemed as though it should be important to know what it was. Like right now.

When the telephone rang again she went into the kitchen and answered it. She chatted briefly and automatically with an aunt of Mark’s. Then she got her cigarettes, lit one, and called Mark at his office.

“Nothing special,” she told him. “Just that my phone’s been ringing all day so I decided to turn the tables.”

“Have a lot of people called?”

“Oh, all the usuals. Liz and Dick Burton, Grace and the Prince, Jackie and the Greek. All our crowd.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Fat chance a girl’d have to lie about her age in this town. These clowns mark their calendars years in advance. Somewhere here in Buffalo there’s a woman who wrote down ‘January 6, 1995 — Robin Benstock’s 30th Birthday.’ I mean they really plan ahead around here.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Well, that’s nothing new.”

“It certainly isn’t. Listen, being thirty’s not so bad. There are worse things.”

“Sure. Like being thirty-one, and thirty-two, and—”

“Idiot. I spoke to your dad. We’re meeting them at the Club for dinner.”

“Yes, I spoke to my mother.”

“I moved it from seven-thirty to eight so that we could stop and see my folks first. They wanted us to come by for a drink, and of course they’ve got something for you.”

“I can’t wait.”

“What’s that? You were mumbling.”

“Nothing, just thinking out loud.”

They went on talking, sketching in the details of the evening, establishing that the baby-sitter had been booked. Then he said, “Just a minute, somebody wants to talk to you,” and he put Casimir Drozdowski on the line.

He said, “Well, hello there. Rumor has it that it’s your birthday.”

“How did you ever hear that?”

“Listen, I read the papers. I listen to Rona Barrett. I keep on top of things.”

“I’ll just bet you do.”

“Have a sensational birthday, huh, Andrea? And don’t get too drunk tonight.”

“Fair enough.”

“Drunk, but not too drunk.”

“Okay. Cass?”

“Hmmmm?”

“Something you said a few weeks ago. A few months, actually. About a man being ultimately responsible for his own face?”

He laughed. “That’s after forty, honey.”

“I know,—”

“You got ten years before you have to worry.”

“No, what I wondered is was that your line or did you get it from somewhere?”

“It was my line.”

“Oh.”

“Except Shaw wrote it down before I had the chance, the son of a bitch.”

“George Bernard Shaw?”

“Uh-huh, but don’t ask me where he wrote it or the exact wording because I couldn’t tell you. But have a wonderful birthday, and here’s another UN member who wants to talk to you, the honorable ambassador from Sicily.”

“Andrea? Happy birthday, kid.”

“Thanks, Eddie.”

“The whole family wishes you a happy birthday,” Eddie Santora said. “The Godfather, the consigliere, everybody. They said to tell you that if-a you don’t-a have a Happy Birthday, they’s-a gonna slappa you face.”

“What I want to know is how you three lunatics ever get any work done.”

“We can’t miss. The UN always beats everybody.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“A Jew to be sneaky, a wop to be crooked, and a polack for brute force. Who’s gonna stand in our way?” His voice dropped. “Listen, Andrea, I figure you’re thirty now, that means you’re old enough to play with the big kids, right?”

“If you say so, Eddie.”

“So what I mean is you’re old enough to mess around a little, right? You and me, kid, we’re a natural combination.”

“Well, I know that, Eddie, but would Terri see it that way?”

“Listen, kid, I won’t tell if you don’t. Hang on, your old man wants to talk to you.”

Mark came back on the line. “All three of you are crazy,” she told him. “It’s good you found each other. I’ll see you around six, six-thirty?”

“Around six. I’m glad you called, honey.”

“Me, too.”

She lit another cigarette, poured herself a cup of coffee and took it outside with her. Robin was still giving the sandbox her full attention, but she turned from it at Andrea’s approach and got to her feet. She stood with her feet well apart and placed her hands very deliberately on her hips.

“Happy birthday,” she said. “Another goddam telephone call.”

Andrea tried to object to the “goddam” but couldn’t bring it off. “You’re impossible,” she said.

Robin beamed.

Andrea went to her and picked her up. “Impossible,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter. Other people get to have children. But what I get stuck with is—”

“A forty-year-old midget smartass!” Robin sang out.

“Smartie,” Andrea said. “A forty-year-old midget smartie.”

“Smartass.”

“I give up,” she said. She brought the child’s face very close to her own, and for an instant it was as if she was staring into her mirror again. Then she said, “I’ll tell you what.”

“Goddam smartass.”

“Yeah, that’s you, all right. Goddam smartass. I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you a deal.” Was it proper to make deals with a child? “Here’s the deal. You can say things like goddam and smartass when it’s just me.”

“And Daddy?”

“And Daddy, yes, but not—”

“And Poppa David?”

“And Poppa David.”

“And Nana Sylvy?”

“And Nana Sylvia, yes, but—”

“Not Poppa Harry,” Robin said emphatically. “Not Nana Dele.”

“Jesus.”

“Christ,” Robin echoed.

Andrea put her down and stared at her. “You know everything, don’t you? Not Poppa Harry and Nana Adele, that’s right. And not any other people. And Jesus Christ is another of those words.”

“Oh, I know that,” Robin said.

It wasn’t that children grew up so quickly. It wasn’t merely that. She’d heard that line all her life, it was what the old always said of the young, and she was beginning to see what they meant. Time passed subjectively faster the older you got, as each year in turn became a smaller proportion of your overall experience of life. Thus the years of your child’s childhood rushed by more rapidly than your own childhood had ever done.

But there was something else, too. It was that the changes in your child were so abrupt, so spontaneous, so impossible to anticipate. Someone who has for months existed as The Kid one otherwise unremarkable morning emerges as a completely defined individual. There is suddenly a personality present in what had heretofore been not much more than a warm and entertaining animal.

And all at once the attendant awe of parenthood is immeasurably extended, from My God, I made a living being! to My God, I made a person, I made this person!

Two summers ago, when Robin was a year and a half old, they had attempted to conceive another child. It was hard now to remember the degree of urgency that had accompanied that decision. It had become somehow imperative that they have another baby, and that they do so immediately so that the two children would not be too far apart in age.

But it hadn’t worked. For four months in a row they had made love faithfully on all of the appropriate nights, and each time she had remained for a minute or two with her legs high in the air, so that gravity might give the sperm a little extra assistance. And each month she was certain she was pregnant, and each time her period was almost a full week late.

Eileen had suggested that it might be breakthrough bleeding but that was impossible. She wasn’t just spotting. She was having a full period, and if anything it was a heavier flow than usual.

After four months like that she went to her doctor. When she came home she took a couple of aspirin and lay down on the couch but couldn’t sleep.

Later that night she told Mark, “I saw Lerner today. He put me back on the pill.”

“That’s going to help you get pregnant?”

“He thinks it’ll regulate my cycle.”

“Oh. How long does he want you on it?”

“He doesn’t know. He has a theory.”

“About the pill?”

“No.” She took her time forming phrases in her mind. She said, “He thinks I’ve been getting pregnant each month for the past four months. He thinks possibly I’ve aborted each time.”

“Could you do that and not know it?”

“Evidently. At that stage it would just seem like a heavier flow than usual. Which is what I’ve been having. And it’s late each time.”

“Have you ever—”

“Had anything like this before? No, I haven’t. He said it’s just an idea he has and that it doesn’t necessarily matter whether it’s the case or not.”

“What does necessarily mean?”

“Oh, don’t be worried, darling. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me physically.”

“Now tell me what physically means.”

“You really have to watch yourself around lawyers, don’t you?” She forced a grin, then took a few seconds to light a cigarette. She said, “According to kindly old Dr. Lerner, this can happen when a woman thinks she wants to be pregnant, but deep down inside she doesn’t want to be pregnant. So she gets herself knocked up in the first place, you should please pardon the expression, and then her body takes over and, uh—”

“I thought Lerner was a gynecologist. Obstetrics and gynecology.”

“So?”

“I never knew he was a psychiatrist.”

“He said it wasn’t exactly common but that it happens more than people realize it. Having what’s technically a miscarriage and not even knowing it.”

“For that reason that you just mentioned.”

“God damn it.”

“Look, honey—”

“I want to have another baby,” she said. She was on her feet now, pacing. “At least I think I do. How is a person supposed to know what she thinks unconsciously? Mark? I don’t know what to do.”

But it was easy enough to decide, because when you didn’t know what to do you did nothing, and it was very easy to do nothing. Lerner had put her on the pill and so she remained on the pill and they both knew that eventually she would stop taking the pill and they would have another child.

Then finally she did stop taking the pill, and they talked about it, and they went to bed and he was unable to manage an erection. She tried everything she could to help him and nothing worked, and this had never happened before.

“It’s supposed to happen to everybody,” they told each other. “Too much to drink,” they told each other. “A lot of pressure at the office,” they told each other.

But the incident kept repeating itself and the explanations kept sounding hollower until both of them were careful not to voice them at all. There were nights when they tried and failed, and nights when they assiduously avoided trying, and one night, finally, when he achieved an erection but lost it seconds after entering her. He threw himself off of her and rushed out of the room.

For a few moments she lay still, waiting for tears to come. But no tears came. She got up and put on a robe and went into the living room. He was sitting in his chair with a drink in his hand and a bottle on the table beside him. He had not put any clothes on.

The sight of the drink in his hand was enormously upsetting to her. This was not like him. His drinking was purely social — the ritual cocktail before dinner, drinks with friends to augment the pleasure of their company. She would sometimes take drinks at night when he was asleep and she was not. She had always done a certain amount of that kind of drinking. But he had never done it and it frightened her.

He looked up at her. For an instant his expression was somehow defiant, but then his eyes went dull. He lowered them to his glass and drained it. He coughed harshly, caught his breath, and reached for the bottle to fill his glass.

“Well, fuck it,” she said. “Don’t hog all of it yourself.” And she took the bottle from him, raised it to her lips, put her head back and poured a few ounces of whiskey down her throat.

He said, “Jesus.”

“I want to say something.”

“Anything you want.”

“I want to say something. We are driving ourselves crazy and we are driving each other crazy and it is ridiculous. We’re making nervous wrecks out of ourselves and our sex life is going down the drain and it’s crazy, and maybe I’m getting short-tempered with the kid and God knows what effect that’ll have on her and it’s crazy, it’s a hundred percent crazy.”

He looked at her but said nothing.

“I’m going back on the pill tomorrow.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“You know what’s happening? We’re getting so we can’t even talk about it.” She seized the bottle again and drank straight from it again. His eyes widened but he didn’t comment. “I don’t want to have a baby. I had four fucking miscarriages in a row to prove I don’t want to have another baby. And you don’t want to have a baby, and that’s why we’re having this trouble now, and we won’t even face up to it, we won’t even say it out loud, as though there’s something goddam immoral about not wanting to have another baby. For God’s sake, we’re lucky, we’ve got a wonderful child, and why do we have to kill ourselves and ruin everything trying to have another one? What makes us think we’re letting the world down if we don’t have any more?”

“Not so loud.”

“It’s my own house, for God’s sake. I’ll shout if I want.”

“Robin’ll hear you.”

“She sleeps through everything.” But she did lower her voice. “It’s as if we can’t say it because it would mean something else. As if not wanting another baby means we don’t love each other any more. As if we have to keep having kids in order to prove that our marriage is all right. Who are we proving it to, for God’s sake?”

“We love each other.”

“Of course we do. And we love Robin. Not wanting a second one doesn’t mean we’re not happy with the first.”

“Don’t even say—”

“No! That’s the whole point, you have to be able to say things, to say any kind of thing. It doesn’t mean we don’t love her. It means we love her so much that we don’t need another kid, that’s what it means!”

“You’re right,” he said.

“I am, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Are you going to drink any more? Then let’s go to bed, darling. I just want to be held. Okay? I just want you to hold me.”

The next day she went back on the pill. They made love that night and it was good again. Attempting to conceive a child may or may not have caused his problems, but abandoning the attempt certainly solved them. They clung to each other afterward and told each other that this proved they were right not to have another baby. And they could always change their minds sometime in the future. If they ever decided that they definitely wanted a second child, they could always do something about it when the time came. It was not as though she were getting her tubes tied, or he a vasectomy.

This past spring, just after her father’s heart attack, she had begun to think of getting pregnant again. She had never given voice to the thought, recognizing it even then as being largely a response to her father’s attack. The idea stayed with her but she remained on the pill, and before much time had passed she was glad she had not acted on that impulse. Because Robin had emerged as an individual to such an extent that she could only imagine another baby as being an intruder into the family circle which the three of them constituted. There had been a time when a second baby would have been acceptable, but the time had passed.

By then, too, there was another more practical reason for her to be on the pill. Because by then she had begun sleeping with Cass Drozdowski.

It seems to her afterward that she should have been able to recognize her restlessness, to identify it for what it was. There were symptoms, certainly, though how was one to know what they were symptoms of? Nights when sleep wouldn’t come, nights when it wouldn’t stay until dawn. Days when she felt her mind going hundreds of yards up in the air, looking down at the suburb in which she lived and seeing a checkerboard, a patchwork quilt, a close-knit network of unrelated lives. She would feel a black heat spreading in her brain. Everything was too close and too busy and there was too much of it.

To walk in the woods. To be alone in an infinity of sand, to kneel down and rear back on your haunches and scream. To just scream and scream and scream—

Silent screaming, while she drove to the market with Robin in her car seat. Shrill screams that stayed echoing in the brain and never passed the lips, screams unuttered while she cooked a meal or visited her parents or sat across the room from her husband.

Not that often. Not constant, not even frequent. But enough so that, had she thought about it, she might have seen it for what it was. Might have recognized that she was ready.

As he had recognized.

She had never thought of Cass in those terms. When she had fantasies (and she had them often enough, alone or in company, peeling potatoes or making love) they never involved someone she knew. Her partners were always strangers and they generally remained wholly faceless in her fantasies. Perhaps the anonymity of her phantom partners made fantasy more acceptable, especially as a muted accompaniment of marital coupling. When you lay in your husband’s arms and thought of another man, surely it was less a matter of emotional adultery if the other man was only vaguely defined, only hazily imagined.

There were men whom she had recognized as attractive, either in the abstract or specifically attractive to her. Colleagues of Mark’s, husbands of friends, But she had recognized their attractiveness in a purely hypothetical way, with no intention of embracing them in fact or in fantasy. And even so Cass had not entered into that picture. She had never bothered to think of him as attractive.

She had thought of him — how? As someone with far more of a role to play in Mark’s life than in hers, certainly. Mark’s partner, Mark’s friend. Tall, rangy, with streaky light brown hair that he slicked straight back, hair beginning to recede now, hair allowed to pile up in curls on the nape of his longish neck. High cheekbones, deep-set gray eyes, a long narrow nose. A political anomaly, proclaiming that he couldn’t make up his mind whether to vote for George Wallace or Dick Gregory. A pole. A Catholic too lazy for out-and-out apostasy. A man with a wife, with three sons and a daughter, with two brothers and three sisters (all older than himself), with a tract house in Cheektowaga, with an ear for Chopin (“That Jewboy Rubinstein plays him better than anybody”) and country music. (“If I had anything else on the car radio it’d take me fifteen minutes longer to get where I’m going.”)

There was a particular Saturday night. It was in early May, with Martin Luther King a month in his grave and Bobby Kennedy a month away from his. David Kleinman, ten weeks after a slight coronary occlusion, was well enough to resume his dental practice on a limited scale. And that night the Benstocks had had some guests for dinner and drinks. Lawyers and their wives. Cass and Ellie Drozdowski. Jeff and Pauline Kaiser. Alan and Debbie Gersten. Not the Santoras — they were out of town.

An ordinary evening. She had spent so many evenings like this one, with these people, with other people similar to them, at her own house, at their houses. The conversation that had taken place one night at one house could have taken place as easily another night at another house with a different collection of people. It was as easy to differentiate the menus, to remember what had been served and who had had what to drink, easier to recall what clothes she had worn.

She remembered what she wore. She wore pants and a sweater. The sweater was a wedgwood blue and underneath it she wore a no-bra bra, and the pants were gray flannel and would probably not be fit to wear in company another season because they were beginning to wear slightly at the knees and beginning to pill at the crotch.

And around midnight she’d been in the kitchen, assembling a speed-the-parting-guests platter of cheese and crackers, when she sensed another’s presence and half-turned to see Cass approaching. And he looked at her, and she supposed she looked back at him because she recalled he put his left arm around her waist, his hand settled confidently on her hip, and his right hand went between her legs and fastened upon the crotch of her pants where the flannel material was starting to pill.

Just like that.

And for how long had he touched her? She with her eyes closed, blocking off one sense to enlarge another, one hand holding onto the formica countertop for balance, the other still clutching a round of Dutch cheese coated with red wax. His hand holding on her hip, holding her, and his hand between her legs, playing with her. Either he knew just where to touch her or it didn’t really matter where he touched her, just that he touched her.

For how long?

It couldn’t have been very long. It didn’t have to be very long. Her body responded without consulting her brain at all as if she were being stroked while asleep. There was not even any pleasure in it, really. It was too mechanical for pleasure to be a part of it. She responded, urgently and automatically, and his fingers worked, and she shuddered and sighed.

If he had not been holding her she would have fallen.

He continued to hold her for another few seconds until she had her balance. Then his hands disengaged themselves and he returned to the living room. He was out of the kitchen before she had her eyes open.

A little while later, while the eight of them sat with cheese and crackers and cups of coffee and final drinks, it was hard for her not to believe that she had imagined all of this. They sat, all of them, just as they would have sat if the incident in the kitchen had never taken place. The same conversation went on in quite the same way. And if she had imagined the incident, imagined it so vividly as to believe it to be true, it was a likely indication that she was losing her grip on things.

But was she any less likely to be losing her grip if it had really happened?

Then Cass’s eye caught hers, just for a second. And then, while he knew she was looking at him, he put a cheese-covered Triscuit in his mouth. And chewed and swallowed. And deliberately put the first two fingers of his right hand into his mouth and sucked appreciatively on them.

And caught her eye again. And did not quite smile.

She knew he would call, and was surprised when Monday came and went without word from him. By the time he did call, the following afternoon, she had rehearsed the conversation endlessly. In some of the versions he apologized and they agreed that nothing like that would happen again. In others he swore that he had always loved her and begged her to leave Mark. But in the little imaginary conversations that she thought of as realistic, he called and tried to coax her into an affair without success.

But the conversation did not go like that at all.

“Andrea, I’d like to see you.”

“All right.”

“Can you get free for an hour or two Thursday or Friday? Say in the early afternoon?”

“Thursday would be better. I can leave Robin with the cleaning woman.”

“I’ll be at the University Manor motel. That’s at Main and Bailey. Park your car at the shopping plaza around the corner.”

“Isn’t there parking at the motel? Oh, I get the point.”

“You don’t want the car to be seen.”

“Of course not. You’ll have to bear with me. I’m not used to having to think this way.”

“Can you get there around noon?”

“I suppose so.”

“Just call me at the motel when you have the car parked and I’ll tell you the room number.”

“All right.”

“I’ll see you then. That’s Thursday, that’s the day after tomorrow.”

“Yes, the day after tomorrow.”

She kept the date that Thursday, leaving the car in front of the bookstore on University Plaza, then taking the trouble to buy a book at the store to justify her presence. (A book she saw but did not buy was the paperback edition of John Riordan’s novel. The thought of purchasing that particular book on this particular occasion appealed to her, but she had already taken the book out of the library.)

She called him from a booth and he told her what room he was in. She walked around the corner, hoping no one saw her turn in to the motel. That was the dangerous moment and there was not much she could do about it, but she went on and turned and if anyone saw her she never knew about it. She found his room and knocked on the door and he opened it and closed it quickly as soon as she was inside.

While she was lighting a cigarette he asked her if she wanted a drink. She nodded and he put ice cubes into a glass and added Canadian Club. “All the comforts of home,” she said.

He didn’t say anything. She looked at him for a moment and thought that there ought to be something to say. But she couldn’t think what it might be. She took a small ladylike sip of her drink, put the glass down on the dresser, took a puff of her cigarette, stubbed it out in an ashtray, and began removing her clothes.

Since then they had been together perhaps a dozen times, maybe a little more than that. Their meetings usually took place on Thursday, when a sullen thick-bodied black woman named Lucinda arrived by bus to clean Andrea’s house. She would drive to the shopping plaza, park her car, walk briskly and nonchalantly around the corner to the motel. She would knock, a door would open, and within five minutes she would be out of her clothes and in bed with him,

The ease with which she did this surprised her, and went on surprising her. Not the ease with which the deception was accomplished, because of course it was simple enough to steal an hour or two in the course of a week. She was mobile and her schedule was flexible, She had her own car and did not have to account closely for her time. On those weeks when Thursday turned out to be inconvenient for one or the other of them, it was usually possible to arrange something on another mutually convenient day. Robin could be dropped at her mother’s house, at Mark’s mother’s house, at Eileen Fradin’s.

In the novels she read, women caught up in adultery found themselves doing a lot of limit testing, becoming increasingly flagrant in their behavior, either because they wanted their husbands to catch them or because they wished to establish for themselves the extent of their husbands’ gullibility. From the beginning she watched herself for signs of this pattern, and she was reassured when they failed to appear. She and Cass did not attempt to see each other more frequently, or for longer periods of time, or in more public and hence dangerous situations. On the contrary, their relationship adhered quite rigidly to the pattern originally established. In all their time together, they never skated on thinner ice than they had that first night, when he had touched her in her kitchen with Mark a matter of yards away from them.

On an emotional level, too, they were both automatically cautious and conservative. One time, after they had made love, he poured himself a drink and said, “You know, this whole business is almost too secure for an affair.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re so accomplished at this and so cool about it. One thing I knew at the beginning was that this was going to be safe for us. Neither of us was going to fall in love with the other. Neither of us was going to think we were in love.”

“No, hardly that.”

“In books and movies the cheating people go into these mad passionate clinches whenever they’re alone together. And there’s this whole if-only number. If only we could spend a week on a white sand beach in the Caribbean. If only your husband and my wife could get swallowed by a runaway brontosaurus. If you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy. That whole romantic routine.”

“That’s funny.”

“What?”

“You’re putting it down, the romance routine, but you sound almost wistful about it.”

“Well, of course. It’s crap, and I know it’s crap, but some of the time you have to wish you were capable of believing in that kind of crap. Listen, my mother went to Mass every morning until the day she died. I never stopped thinking that was total nonsense. I couldn’t have been much more than ten years old when I figured out that religion was baloney. The only hard part was making myself realize that other people really took it all seriously. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t occasionally envy my mother for being able to believe in it all. Not that I would want it for myself. Not that I would willingly be the kind of simpleminded person who could swallow all of that. Religion, romance, it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“How?”

“Easy answers. Jesus, especially with the if-only number. ‘Life would be terrific if only we could be together forever, but it wouldn’t be fair to everybody else.’ So you get to feel that things could have worked out if only, and you get to feel very noble for denying yourself, and you never have to face the fact that there’s nothing that’s gonna make everything work out well because people’s lives just don’t work out very well.”

“Not ever?”

“They don’t add up to happily-ever-after, do they?”

“No,” she said. “I guess they don’t.”

“I stopped believing in happily-ever-after around the same time as Heaven and Hell and the Immaculate Conception. It’s all the same kind of bullshit.”

“And you’re a tower of strength who can survive without all that.”

He looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. “No,” he said. “No, I’m just a cynical son of a bitch. That’s all.”

Why did they go on seeing each other?

One Thursday afternoon she asked the question aloud. They had made love and were still naked in bed. He had made himself a drink. She had lit a cigarette. It was late July and their affair, if that was the name for it, had been in progress for about two months. She sat for a moment watching the smoke rise from the tip of her cigarette, listening to the rain lashing at the window of their room.

She said, “We haven’t had this room before.”

“Huh? Haven’t we?”

“No.”

“Not the kind of thing I would remember. The rooms in this motel don’t have all that much in the way of individuality. If you’ve seen one you’ve seen ’em all.”

“I was wondering something,” she said. He waited, and she said, “I was wondering why we bother with this. You and I.”

“Because it feels good.”

“Is that all?”

He swung his legs up onto the bed, balanced his glass on his stomach. “The sex is good,” he said.

“It’s not bad for me. But it’s not really the thrill of a lifetime for you, is it?”

“I always have a good time.” He sounded just the least bit defensive.

She closed her eyes for a moment, considering this. The sex was always good for her. He always knew how to hold and touch her, and her response was always powerful, almost too intense. And yet this power and intensity did not always add up to pleasure. It was a physical reaction, a response on the part of her body which did not seem to involve more than her body, so that she was paradoxically capable of having positively electric orgasms without feeling herself to be a participant in them.

“There’s something beyond the sex.”

“Well, we enjoy each other’s company. That’s hardly a revelation.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “What makes us come to this room is the people who aren’t in it.”

“That’s a little too cryptic for me.”

“Your wife and my husband.”

He looked at her.

“It’s the relationship,” she went on. “If you and Mark weren’t partners, if Ellie and I weren’t friends—”

“You’re not.”

“What?”

“You can’t stand Ellie,” he said. “You think she’s a stupid cow with brains in her tits.”

“That’s an awful thing to say.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But why? If Mark and I didn’t happen to be partners you and Ellie would never have known each other. The two of you are cordial to each other and that’s really all that’s necessary. There’s no reason why you should pretend to have something in common.” He reached for his glass. “I don’t think Ellie particularly exists for you. You represent something to her, as it happens. I think she sees you as the sort of woman she ought to be in order to be the ideal wife for me.”

“In what way? I mean what is it about me she finds admirable?”

“Oh, you’re educated, you’re polished, you’re sophisticated.”

“I am like hell.”

“In her lights you are. And you’re witty and verbally agile and she thinks these are things that are important to me.”

“Aren’t they?”

“No, not really, but she doesn’t know that. As it happens she’s very much the kind of wife I want and need. You look surprised.”

“A little.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it was the way you said that, so matter of fact and all. I don’t know. I suppose I’ve always wondered why you married her.”

He seemed about to respond to her last remark. Instead he said, “You know, what you said a minute ago is probably fairly accurate. It is other people that keep us coming back here. And more than anything else it’s your husband.”

“Yes.”

“I think we got here the first time under our own steam. That business in the kitchen, there was a strong attraction between us, physical and otherwise. And we were both of us ready for an adventure.”

“You’ve had adventures before, haven’t you?”

“That didn’t keep me from being ready. And you were ready, it showed all over you.”

“I didn’t recognize it myself, though.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So that was enough to get us into bed once.”

“But not enough to keep us coming back for more.” He darted a glance at her. “You know, this is probably the best way to kill the whole thing. By talking it to death.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s forget it, huh?”

“But I’m enjoying the talk.”

“Anyway it’s getting late.” He was out of bed, getting his undershorts from the chair.

“You really don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s right.”

“Maybe it’s already talked to death. Maybe we can just forget about seeing each other any more.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Hey!”

“Oh, hell,” she said. “Why is everything always so fucking complicated? Why does everything get messed up? I screw up everything I touch.”

“Easy, now.”

“Don’t call me any more, all right? Oh, shit, do I mean that? I don’t even know. I’m using you to get even with Mark and I don’t know why I’m mad at him. He never did anything to me. Nobody ever did anything to me. I’m the one who does everything, I fuck up other people and I fuck myself up. I love Mark. He’s my husband and I love him.”

He didn’t say anything.

“So what am I doing here? That’s a good question, isn’t it? If I love him so damn much what am I doing here?” She had been striding around the room while he went on dressing, not looking directly at her. Now he turned slowly toward her and she felt suddenly vulnerable in her nakedness.

“Cass? What should I do?”

“Better put some clothes on for openers.”

“I’m serious. What should I do?”

But he had no answer for her. That evening she decided that she would definitely not see him again. Whatever roles they were playing for each other, whatever itches they scratched in that motel, she was certain they were doing each other more harm than good. He probably realized as much himself, she told herself, and it was more than possible that he would not call her again. But if he did call she would not see him.

That night Mark made love to her. It always bothered her when they made love on the same day that she had been with Cass, and yet it seemed to happen that way more often than not. This particular time their lovemaking was intense and exciting, inordinately exciting, and it left her with a feeling of profound fulfillment that still blanketed her when she awakened the following morning.

So it was over. She had had a fairly stupid and pointless affair for reasons which she might or might not sometime examine, and it was over.

A few days later she decided she would see Cass one more time. Not to go to bed with him — she would definitely not go to bed with him — but because there was a conversation they had not quite gotten around to having and she felt it was one that ought to take place.

And then he did call. They had their usual quick conversation, agreeing to meet at the usual time and place. And she met him as agreed, and they went to bed, and they did not talk about any of the things she had decided needed to be discussed.

In the middle of the afternoon of her thirtieth birthday, Andrea sat at the kitchen table. There was a cup of coffee on the table in front of her, and a cigarette burned in the ashtray alongside the cup. The ash on the cigarette was almost two inches long now. She was letting the cigarette burn up, and she was letting the coffee grow cold, and it seemed to her suddenly that she was letting everything burn up or cool off, that things went on without her, that all the parts of her life were running away from her.

No, not running. Walking, and walking slowly, stepping off in slow motion. And all she could do was sit and watch.

She was alone in the house now. Robin was at the zoo, her little hand firmly gripped in her grandfather’s hand. About half an hour ago David Kleinman had pulled his car into the driveway, first to give her his birthday wishes in person, then to attend to the more important matter of taking Robin for a ride.

He had been an enthusiastic grandfather from the day she was born, always anxious to spend time with her, but since his heart attack he had devoted a much larger portion of his time to Robin and seemed to take more delight than ever in her company.

“Warnings change your outlook,” he had told Andrea. “I heard this all my life but you have to experience it to recognize the truth of it. You always start out convinced you’re going to live forever and over the years different things come along to give you little clues of the truth. Little hints of your own mortality. And each time you think, well, now I know what there is to know about it, now I have a realistic perception of it all. And each time you find out that there’s more to it than you quite appreciated. I wake up in the morning and see the sun and I experience this sense of wonder. It’s hard for me to describe it. A sense of great joy at being alive. A sense of the magnificence of life and of how fragile it all is at the same time. A little blood clot breaks off, a little muscle in the chest doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work, and all at once everything stops. It’s a riddle, isn’t it? And the years go by and you find out that the answer is that there’s no answer.”

“The philosopher.”

“The philosopher,” he echoed. “Kindly old Doc Kleinman with his cracker barrel philosophy. All I know is I find myself with a great urge to spend my time in a way that gives me satisfaction. To be with your mother, not doing anything in particular, not even talking. To go for a ride, just to look at all the streets I’ve known so well for so many years. I think Robin’s beginning to know Buffalo better than you do. We drive all over, you know. And I always tell her the name of the street and point things out to her, and do you know something? She remembers from one time to the next.”

Sometimes, watching the two of them together, Andrea felt something that verged on jealousy. Oh, she was not jealous of her daughter. She was surely not capable of that. But she did envy Robin the effortless closeness she had with her grandfather. She saw in this closeness echoes of her own childhood, when she’d gone to the zoo with her own little hand wrapped in her father’s large one. (You were never as secure again as when you were a little girl and your father held you.)

So in one sense she saw her own childhood in Robin, and wanted it back again. Robin had that little-girl security not only from her father but from both her grandfathers as well. (Harry Benstock did not come around as often as David Kleinman, but it did seem as though he spent more time with Robin than he had before Andrea’s father’s heart attack.) Robin had three older men who cherished her with that total and unquestioning kind of devotion, and how could Andrea help envying her a little for it?

Especially now, when she so much wanted to be close with her father. It would seem to her that there were things she had to tell him, questions she had to ask him. That he had answers for her if she could only give voice to her questions. That each of them had parts of self which had to be deliberately revealed.

For there was only so much time available. He knew that he was not going to live forever, and now she knew it, too. Oh, he could live for a great many years. It was by no means impossible. He had made a good recovery, and men with a similar medical history often, lived to be very old men. But she sensed that he knew this would not be true in his case, and she for her part was convinced it would not. The heart attack had made him an old man and a sick man, and however much the doctors talked about the good recovery he had made, age and sickness showed themselves to her in his face. He was in his middle sixties, and she could not say that he looked older or younger than his years. But she could say, though it hurt to do so, that he looked like a man who did not have very much time.

And of course there had to be things he knew that she ought to know. He was a wise man. She had always known that, had never in adolescence made the mistake of thinking her parents to be foolish people. She had thought frequently that they had made terrible compromises with life, that her father should have been able to be the doctor he’d wanted to be instead of settling for dentistry, that her mother should have had a chance to develop her own talents instead of settling, however willingly, into life as a housewife. But that, even when she had been most rebellious, had been as far as she ever went, and she had never begun to question her father’s essential wisdom.

Sometimes these days she held elaborate conversations with him in her own mind. At night when she I couldn’t sleep, or during the day when Robin was taking her nap, she might find herself in a corner of her mind telling her father things she had never told him in actuality. She might talk about her marriage, or about the numbness she felt sometimes, as if the fingers and toes of her soul were losing their ability to feel.

They were not really conversations, these fancied discussions she had with him. Because he never offered any response. She would talk and he would draw her out, but when it was time for him to comment the conversation would come to an end.

And when they were alone together, not in her mind but in actual fact, they never did talk about any of the things that had seemed so vitally important. Instead they talked about nothing at all. It was pleasant, simply being with him, relaxing in easy conversation, but it was also frustrating that they were not saying what she somehow felt had to be said.

At times she sensed that he too had things he wanted to tell her. At other times she thought she was merely projecting her own feelings onto him. But whatever that ultimate wise conversation might be, they had not yet had it. Would they ever? Should they?

She was losing him. Just as she seemed to be losing all the other parts of her life. They grew cold. They burned themselves out. And she sat and watched, and couldn’t quite reach out to them.

Her sister-in-law called a little after three. Happy birthday, and how’s everything in Buffalo, and everything’s fine out here, the kids are fine, Jeff’s fine, everything’s fine. And they would probably be coming back east between Christmas and New Year’s and how was Robin, and how was Mark, and how was her father, was he feeling better?

“It was nice of you to call,” Andrea said at one point, and after hanging up she thought that it was nice of Linda to have called, that she was glad to have heard from her. And to have been told that everything was fine, fine, fine.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. It was Linda again, but Andrea hardly recognized her voice at first because it was so different. Pitched a little lower, and thoroughly limp, flaccid.

“Well, hello again,” Andrea said.

“Hello.”

“It’s not often I get to talk to you twice in one day, Forget something?”

“Yes.”

“Hello?”

“I said yes. I forgot something.”

“Linda? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Well—”

“Fine fine fine. Everything’s so goddamned fine.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I was gonna talk about it with you and I called and I just did the whole usual number, I’m fine, he’s fine, they’re fine, the whole fucking world is fine, and I hung up and I just stood there saying Linda Gould, for God’s sake, what in the hell is the matter with you? Then I went to get a tranquilizer but I just took one. You play around with those things and before you know it it’s like eating peanuts. I just had to call you and tell you that everything isn’t fine.”

“Is someone ill, Linda?”

“Oh, God, no.” A laugh like a small dog barking. “No, nothing dramatic and real like that. Real things don’t happen out here. It doesn’t rain and it doesn’t snow and the air is clean and there are no slums and nothing happens. Nothing happens and I play tennis and work on my suntan and take the kids for swimming lessons and Jeff is, Jeff is—”

“Linda?”

There was a pause, and then when Linda spoke her voice was steady. “I shouldn’t be dropping all of this in your lap but I had to tell someone, Andrea. Jeff and I, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I really don’t. Almost ten years, three children, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Every couple has trouble, Linda.”

“Oh, Christ. I know that. We had trouble from the day we were married. No, this is more than that. He’s... not living here. At home. He has someone else.”

“Jeff’s living with someone else?”

“I don’t know if he’s actually living with her or not. He has a place of his own. An apartment.”

“When did this—”

“Over a month. Almost two months. I knew he was seeing someone but this has happened before, he’s very attractive and his work brings him into contact with a lot of available women and I guess I learned to handle it. Or maybe I didn’t, I don’t know, but things came to a head and blew up in my face and the next thing I knew he had moved out. So I’m here with the kids, and he makes deposits to my checking account, and the kids think he’s out of town on business a lot, and then he’ll come on Sundays and visit, and, oh, I don’t know what to do, Andrea.”

“I hadn’t heard a thing.”

“Oh, Christ. That’s the whole thing. Nobody knows.”

“You haven’t told your parents?”

“Not my parents, not Jeff’s parents. Nobody. Oh, people in town know, but nobody here knows anybody in Buffalo. And I don’t have a single goddamned friend out here. This place is full of plastic people. Nobody was actually born here. They all come here from somewhere else and after a couple of years of sitting in the sun their brains melt into goo.”

“Aren’t you friendly with anyone, Linda?”

“There are people I play tennis with, and there are people whose kids play with my kids, and I had a bridge game for a while but one girl moved and we never managed to get a regular fourth and it gradually broke up. And Jeff and I have been less social in the past couple of years. I don’t know why. It just happened little by little. And since he moved out, I don’t know, I’ve just become like a hermit. I sit in front of the television set and watch soap operas. I don’t even have the excuse that I’m caught up in them. I couldn’t care less about them but it’s something to do.”

“Is the separation—”

“Permanent? I don’t know. I don’t know what he wants. God, I don’t know what I want. That’s the God’s honest truth. This thing of his, this affair, it probably would have blown over. I could have closed my eyes again and waited it out. But for some reason I just couldn’t make myself play the game again, you know what I mean? I found myself saying all the things I hadn’t said before, and it just blew, the whole thing blew, and I think it’s better this way, it has to be, but, oh, I don’t know. That’s it, that’s everything right there. I don’t know anything.”

She was on the phone with Linda for almost half an hour, and when she finally got off she was shaking. Linda and Jeff. She had taken it for granted that they had a good marriage, a secure marriage. But evidently you couldn’t take anything for granted, ever.

She thought she had grown accustomed to seeing other people’s marriages fall apart. Her generation didn’t seem to be terribly good at staying married. The Alumnae Bulletin never failed to announce the failed marriages of a few more of her college classmates. Evidently they sent in announcements of divorce just as they proclaimed the other milestones in their lives.

She thought of Linda’s last words. “This is a hell of a trip to lay on you on your birthday, isn’t it? I’m sorry, Andrea. Don’t let it ruin the occasion for you, huh?”

Oh, certainly not. Perish the thought.

The conversation with her sister-in-law lingered throughout the evening. The busy ritual of dinner at the club kept her from thinking too intently about anything. It was almost a relief to have essentially the same conversation a couple of dozen times with a couple of dozen people.

They sat at a table for four in the club’s main dining room. Her mother sat across from her, with her father on her left and Mark on her right. From time to time Mark would take her hand or touch her leg with his.

It meant so much to spend this birthday in this room. At this table, with these people. She thought of how she had examined her thirty-year-old face in her mirror. Without these people — the three at her table, the others at the other tables — she would lack definition. She would be unframed canvas, the perimeters of her world uncharted and hazy.

Linda’s world was like that, and for the first time Andrea was able to appreciate the enormous difference between their two worlds. She and Linda both lived in cities about the same size, lived in new houses in the suburbs of their respective cities. They were both married to professional men who were doing well financially. They were both mothers. In short, they would occupy very much the same shelf in a sociologist’s cupboard, and yet their worlds were worlds apart, and the difference was very simple. She lived in the town she had been born in, while Linda lived thousands of miles away.

And that made all the difference. She belonged to an entire community in a way that neither she nor the community could change. All of these people around her, all of these people whose lives touched hers in the smallest way, were there to prop her up and be propped up by her. All of the people who had irritated her with birthday phone calls were people who made it easier for her to stay married, to stay sane, to stay alive.

Linda couldn’t expect to get that kind of support from her friends. Not when her friends were people I who had been a part of her life for a matter of months, people she knew next to nothing about, people who knew next to nothing about her. People who were her friends because friendship was convenient, but who would forget her readily and permanently when a whim — their own or an employer’s — led them away from that city, even as an earlier whim had led them there in the first place.

How very different this country club was from the place where Linda swam and played tennis. Linda’s social circle had all the permanence and commitment of those hippie communes scattered throughout the same desert. Either way you could snap your fingers and leave. Of course Linda’s friends couldn’t throw their belongings in a knapsack. They were devoutly middle-class, their lives defined by artifacts. For them a long-haul moving van took the place of a knapsack. But the difference was only a matter of degree. Emotionally it was not much more difficult for them to take leave of their friends, or of each other.

These thoughts came to her not all at once but in bits and pieces as she sat with her husband and her parents. They dropped into place like puzzle parts while she participated in conversations, ate her food, sipped her coffee.

When she had a moment to herself in the ladies’ room, she was annoyed to find herself again studying her reflection — and in such an unflattering mirror, with the fluorescent lights overhead making her look all grayish-green.

Thirty.

And graced with the perception and philosophy of the mature woman, she told herself. Well, youth for wisdom wasn’t all that bad an exchange, was it?

“You’re quiet.”

“Am I?”

“You’ve been quiet all night. Not withdrawn or anything, but a little subdued.”

“It’s the sort of occasion that subdues a girl.”

They were in the car, heading back toward their house. Her window was open and she liked the feel of the wind in her hair. The air was warm and heavy with moisture.

“Rain coming,” she said.

“Tomorrow, the paper said. It does feel like rain, doesn’t it?”

“Could we just drive around for a while?”

He glanced at her, then returned his eyes to the road. “I guess so. It’s fine with me if it’s all right with the sitter.”

“No problem.”

“Fine. Do you want to go someplace for a private drink or do you just want to drive around?”

“Let’s just drive.”

“Sure.”

She folded her hands over the buckle of her seat belt. Sometimes the belts annoyed her, though not enough to keep her from using them. Tonight, however, she felt secure, comfortably enclosed. And that seemed to be the evening’s motif, she thought — that she was comfortably enclosed, blanketed, cocooned. By this seat belt. By her husband and her parents, by her friends, by this city.

After a few minutes she took a cigarette from her purse and lit it with the dashboard lighter. She smoked half of it and said, “Your sister called this afternoon.”

“Your memory’s failing. I suppose it’s part of being thirty years old.”

“Pardon me?”

“The arteries harden. Inescapable, I guess.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You already told me she called, remember? When we were over at my folks’ place. She called and she’s fine and Jeff’s fine and the kids are fine and when are we coming out there for a visit. Don’t you remember? And my mother was saying—”

“She called a second time.”

“Oh?”

She leaned forward to deposit ash in the ashtray, then sat back again. “I promised I wouldn’t tell you this. I spent dinner deciding whether to keep something from you or violate a confidence. That’s a part of why I’ve been so quiet.”

“I see. What did you decide?”

“To violate a confidence, obviously. Or I wouldn’t have brought this up in the first place. Although there’s no real point in telling you except that if I know about it I think you ought to know about it, too.”

“Then go ahead and tell me.”

“Jeff moved out almost two months ago.” She looked at him as she spoke, watching his face for a reaction. He had his eyes on the road so she saw his face in profile, and if he changed expression she couldn’t tell. She went on talking, giving him an abbreviated but essentially accurate version of Linda Gould’s conversation.

When she stopped speaking he didn’t say anything for a few minutes and she thought he might be waiting for her to continue. Then he said, “Well, I’m glad you told me. I think you’re right, I think it’s the sort of thing either both of us should know or neither of us should know.”

“That’s what I decided. What do you think?”

“What is there to think, really? It’s their life; it’s their marriage. We’re not really close enough to know what’s going on and how much can you tell from one phone conversation with her? If he’s been fooling around for years maybe this is nothing serious or maybe it is. Maybe he’ll decide he’s had enough and want to come home and maybe she’ll want him to come home. Or maybe not. Evidently she doesn’t even know the answers to those questions, so it’s hardly possible for us to know.”

“I suppose so.”

“Don’t you agree? You sound doubtful.”

“Well, what I mean is how do you feel about it? I don’t mean what do you think will happen or what you want to happen, but how do you feel about the whole thing?”

“Oh. I see.”

She waited.

“Sorry for them, I guess. In that I have a fundamental bias in favor of marriage.”

“Do you really?”

“Isn’t that pretty obvious? In addition to adoring you, isn’t it fairly clear that I specifically like being married to you?”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t know you were pro-marriage as a general thing.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And antidivorce.”

He nodded emphatically. “Yes again. I’m basically pretty conservative, you know. Not in politics necessarily but in other respects. I like the idea of order. Not what the word means when Nixon or Wallace use it. They use law and order so that it means keep the kids and niggers in their place and bust heads if they get out of line. But I like the idea of an ordered universe and an ordered society. That’s one of the things that attracted me to law as a profession, you know.”

“I thought it was the logic of it.”

“Definitely that, but also the order element. That’s the first object of law, you know. Not justice. Most people believe that the object of law is justice, but it’s not. It’s order. People will tolerate injustice but disorder drives them out of their minds.”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, the point is—”

“That’s literally true, isn’t it? Order keeps people sane.”

She thought about that and fitted it into what she had been thinking earlier about how the community of people she belonged to made for stability and security and, yes, sanity. She followed her thoughts for a moment and lost track of what he was saying, and then she tuned in again to hear him say, “—effect on the children, though I don’t know the answer to that. Is it better to have the kids grow up in a broken home or in one where the parents can’t stand each other? Hell, we’ve heard this one before. Every time someone we know goes through it.”

“I don’t know the answer.”

“I’m not sure anybody does. What it comes down to is what the two of them want. God knows I wouldn’t blame her if she packed up the kids and jumped on a plane and left him in the middle of the fucking desert. I never did like that son of a bitch.”

“I thought you did.”

“Never.”

“You always get along with him.”

“Oh, I get along fine with him. Everybody gets along with him, it would be impossible not to get along with him, because he’s exactly the person he thinks you want him to be. But when you peel the layers away, just who in the hell is he? Not that I’ve spent tons of time with him because I haven’t, and that’s fine with me.”

“I never had any idea you felt that way about him.”

“Well, ninety-eight percent of the time I don’t feel any way about him, because I don’t have to. But when he’s forced on my attention, well, that’s how I feel about him.”

“Funny.”

“What is?”

“All the ways that you’re hard to know, and the fact that it keeps surprising me to remind myself of the fact. When I first met you I was struck by how straightforward you were.”

“Good old Mark, solid as the rock of Gibraltar. A little dull—”

“Now stop that!”

“A little simple, a little thick between the ears, but — ouch! Jesus, that hurt!”

“Well, you had it coming.”

“Not while I’m driving, huh?”

“I’m sorry.” Then, “Are you mad?”

“No, of course not.”

“Good. Mark? Is there anything we should do?”

“About what? Oh, my sister. No, not that I can think of. Like what?”

“I don’t know. We could go out there. They’ve been after us to come out often enough.”

“Be pretty obvious, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Let’s say you were in Linda’s place. Would you want to see the cavalry come riding over the hill? And from their point of view we might not even be the cavalry. We might just be the Indians.”

“You’re right. I just wish there was something we could do, that’s all.”

They drove for a while in silence, and then he said, almost to himself, “I never really got to know her. We were just far enough apart in age when we were kids, and then when we were old enough so that age didn’t matter, she was married and we were involved in different lives. If they’d lived here, but they didn’t. And then there’s Phil, he lives in Buffalo, and how close am I to him?”

“You see a lot of each other.”

“Sure, and if he needed something he’d come to me, I suppose, but I don’t really know him. Of course there’s the age difference.”

“He thinks you don’t approve of him.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Because he’s working for his father. You’re a lawyer and he’s a businessman and it’s not even his business and he thinks you don’t approve.”

“How do you know this? Something he said?”

“Just intuition.”

“Woman’s proverbial intuition.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well,” he said, and paused, and then something changed in his face, as if he decided that conversation had run long enough, as if it was opening doors he would prefer to keep closed, as if he had reached for the switch and changed the channel. He reached over and put a hand on her knee. “There’s one thing we can do,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“To uphold the institution of marriage. To express our solidarity with the concept of the sanctity of the family unit.”

“How?”

He squeezed her knee. “We can go home and screw our brains out,” he said.

“Well, now,” she said. “You don’t think I’m a little old for that sort of thing? A little long in the tooth?”

“I’ve always thought your teeth were just the right length. What the hell does that expression mean, anyway?”

“I don’t know. But thirty’s old, you know.”

“Ancient.”

“The bones get brittle.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll be gentle with you.”

“You do and I’ll kill you.”

When he returned from the bathroom she was already in bed. “I’m wearing my present,” she said. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t get me a fur coat?”

“Very. I hope you know I meant it when I said to exchange it if you don’t like it.”

“I hope you know I love it.” His gift was a dress watch with a gold mesh band and a delft blue face, and she thought it was exquisite. “And it’s such a perfect gift for a thirtieth birthday.”

“How so?”

“Oh, time flying by. Like giving a gold watch to someone when he retires, so he can listen to the rest of his life ticking away.”

“I hope you don’t—”

“Ha!” She sat up in bed. “Gotcha! No, silly, I didn’t take it that way at all. Anyway, it could be worse. It could be a calendar watch. Oh, come here, don’t pout Oh, come here, my darling. Ah, yes. That’s better. That’s so much better.”

It was a good night for them to make love. Lovemaking was a virtually automatic accompaniment to significant days — birthdays, anniversaries. But tonight was especially right because the lovemaking was in such perfect harmony with the feelings that had been with her all evening. She was aware throughout of the special familiarity of their bodies, the mutual knowledge acquired over the years, and she quivered in appreciation of the genuine comfort and pleasure that grew out of this knowledge.

For quite a long time they lay on their sides facing one another, kissing lazily, touching each other with their hands. This, she sometimes thought, was truly the ultimate intimacy, the special intimacy of hands. Her hands on him, his hands on her, touching one another not so much to excite as to examine, to seek, as a blind person would seek to read a face.

Knowing each other, knowing each other so well and so long, knowing each other as no one else on earth knew either of them. Oh, there were vastnesses of him she did not know. She kept finding new depths in him. And there were infinite stretches of herself that she very carefully kept to herself. But each day and month and year they opened a few more doors and windows to each other. Sometimes in conversation. Sometimes in the touch-language of the flesh.

“Mmmmm.”

“Hmm?”

“Come on top for a while.”

“Lazy man.”

“Ahhhh.”

Slipping easily from one posture to another, lazy, warm, unhurried, and finally he was on top of her again and she wrapped her arms and legs around him and held him very tight, and he began to move within her more deliberately, and he was breathing faster and so was she, matching her breathing to his unconsciously, automatically, and she said oh, baby, oh, baby and he said yes, yes, meaning yes I am almost there, meaning yes come with me, come with me, and the door opened and they went through it, together.

She said, “Carnal knowledge.”

He took the cigarette from her lips and drew on it. She watched the smoke hanging in the still air. Smoking was not supposed to be enjoyable if you couldn’t see the smoke. The room was just light enough so that the smoke was visible.

“Wha’d you say?”

“Carnal knowledge. Tree of knowledge. And Adam knew Eve. And on her thirtieth birthday, ladies and gentlemen, Andrea Benstock suddenly discovered the meaning of phrases she’d known all her life.”

“You’re a nut.”

“How do you like doing it with an older woman? I’m supposed to be exciting and mysterious.”

“What else is new? You’ve always been exciting and mysterious.”

“Am I improving with age? Like a vintage wine?”

“Like ripe cheese.”

“You’re almost too romantic for words. Hey, gimme a drag on that butt, buster.”

“What I love about you is you’re refined.”

“Yeah, I got all this couth shit down pat. I was well brought up.” And, in her own voice, “It’s been a big day.”

“I was afraid it would be a little on the dull side for you. The usual day around the house, then the enormous novelty of a family dinner at the club. I was trying to think of something exotic to do.”

“Like flying down to Acapulco for a midnight swim?”

“Like driving up to Toronto for dinner and spending the night. But we’d already made plans with your parents and I didn’t want to spoil it for them.”

“You’re a sweet man.”

“What brought that on?”

“I don’t know. Toronto’s always fun but I’d rather do it some other time. I wanted to spend tonight doing just what we did. Doing ordinary things.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It must be past midnight, don’t you think? Oh, I’m sure it is. So I’m past my birthday. I am thirty years old. I am entering my thirty-first year. I can’t play ingenue parts any more, baby. The dew-eyed number is a thing of the past.”

“Listen, I’m going to be thirty-five soon.”

“So?”

“Speaking of big birthdays.”

“That’s not for a while.”

“No, but it’s lurking around the corner there.”

“Thirty-five’s a great birthday for a man.”

“It is?”

“Are you kidding? Of course it is. When a man’s thirty-five it means you can start taking him seriously. Thirty-five’s a sensational age for a man to be.”

He was silent for a moment. Then, leaning away from her to extinguish the cigarette, he said, “I won’t be promising any more.”

“Huh?” She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Won’t be promising what?”

“The adjective, not the verb. Right now I’m still a promising young attorney.”

“Correction, you’re a successful young attorney.”

“Uh-uh. Promising. I’m too young to be a success or a failure. I can be leaning toward one or the other but unless I’m a millionaire or panhandling on Chippewa Street I’m still in the promising category. But that stops at thirty-five. By then you either keep the promise or you don’t.”

“Oh, wow.”

“So it’s a big birthday. Not to take away from the enormity of your being thirty, my dear, but I’d say thirty-five is a fairly significant moment for a man.”

She yawned luxuriously. “What fun,” she said.

“Growing old?”

“Getting to know you.”

“In the Biblical sense, that is.”

“In every sense. Getting to know you over and over again, in every sense there is.”

The dream yanked her out of sleep and very nearly out of bed. She found herself sitting up with her feet over the edge of the bed and her heart pounding. Her mouth was dry and her throat all knotted so that she couldn’t swallow.

In the dream, someone had been telling her that she was responsible for her own face. It might have been Winkie. And she was looking into a mirror, and then there was no frame to the mirror, and it began to grow and to curve in around her, until ultimately she was trapped inside of a mirrored sphere.

And she couldn’t see herself. She would begin to fasten upon her reflection and then the features would swim dizzily out of focus until finally the screen went blank and she saw that she had no self to be reflected.

And she was responsible.

She could remember the dream now. And she could remember her terror. But she could not reconcile the two. The dream did not seem a tenth as frightening as it had been.

She thought, I won’t see Cass any more.

And, I don’t have to see him any more.

And, I never had to see him in the first place.

Her watch was still strapped to her wrist. She took it off but checked the time before setting it on the bedside table. It was not quite one-thirty. It was hard to believe she had been asleep such a short period of time. The dream alone had seemed to last for hours and hours.

She went to the bathroom, used the toilet. After she was back in bed she remembered that she had wanted to look in the bathroom mirror, to assure herself that the dream was only a dream, that it was over now. But that was ridiculous, she didn’t have to do that she was done dreaming now. And the bed was comfortable, with her husband warm at her side, and it was late, and she was too tired to worry what the next dream might hold.

Thursday

April 16, 1970

In 1970 spring teased Buffalo with a string of false starts. There would be a handful of warm days. Then the temperature would drop abruptly and snow would fall.

But on this April morning Andrea felt reasonably certain that spring had come to stay. The sun was warm on her face, the air fresh and light. She walked around her back yard as she had done recently on mornings that felt like spring. She examined the new leaves on the shrubs and trees, the emerging shoots of the spring bulbs. It seemed as though something new came into view every day. Now perhaps winter was really over.

If winter comes can spring be far behind?

Winter had come, an early winter and a harsh one, and deep in the winter, early in January, her father had died. The following afternoon she had stood watching as his boxed body was lowered into an opening in the frozen earth. There was snow on the ground that afternoon, a couple of inches of it, and there was fresh snow falling. Everything looked terribly white and clean.

And now everything was turning green.

She took her time noting the garden’s progress, bending now and then to pull a weed. The soil was cold to the touch but soon it would be warmer. It seemed almost wrong to be pulling weeds. They were alive, they were green, and the season was still new enough so that anything green was welcome.

The phone rang at one point but she did not rush inside to answer it. Eventually it stopped ringing.

A few minutes later she went inside. She drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette. Then she picked up the telephone and began to dial a number. She had almost finished when she was suddenly overcome. There was a pressure behind her eyes, as if there were tears welled up there demanding to be shed. Her eyes remained dry, however. She felt quite dizzy and her hands and feet were very cold.

She managed to replace the receiver, managed to find a chair and sit in it. She made herself breathe deeply and slowly until she felt all right again, although the coldness in her hands and feet persisted. She thought that a straight shot of liquor would probably do her a great deal of good, but of course she never considered actually having a drink. It was morning and she did not drink in the morning. A woman down the block did drink in the morning, as Andrea had discovered not long ago. The discovery had unnerved her, even shocked her. The whole idea of a suburban housewife having a little nip as soon as her husband left the house, affected her so that for some time afterward she felt a little funny about drinking at all, at any hour of the day.

She smoked another cigarette — which was probably a particularly dumb idea when one had cold hands and feet, but the hell with it — then went to the phone and made her call. When her mother answered she said, “Hello, Mom. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m all right. And you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Robin’s at school and Mark’s at the office and I just thought I’d call.”

“I’m glad. I was just going to call you, as a matter of fact.”

“Did you call before? About fifteen minutes ago.”

“No. Why?”

“I was outside and the phone rang and I didn’t feel like running for it. I thought it might be you.”

“No, it wasn’t. You were outside? It’s a beautiful day today, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Maybe the winter’s finally over. Sometimes it seems to me as though winter and summer both get longer every year and spring and fall absolutely disappear. Your father would say I’m starting to sound like those cranks who blame the snow on the atomic bomb and the astronauts. Actually I’m sure it’s Nixon’s fault.” There was a pause. Then, softly and tentatively, “Andrea, today is—”

“Yes, I know, Mother.”

“I knew you would remember, of course.” Another pause. “Thirty-nine years, it would have made.”

“I know.”

“It was the funniest thing last night. I was in bed and just on the verge of falling asleep and of course I was thinking that today was our anniversary and I had an impossible time deciding if it was going to be thirty-nine years or forty years. I was doing all sorts of complicated arithmetic, trying to figure how many years we had been married when you were born, one bit of nonsense after the other. I suppose it was the pill I took before I went to bed.”

“I’m sure of it. I was just going to say that.”

“But isn’t that a funny thing to be confused about? Well, it would have been thirty-nine years today.”

“Mother—”

“I’m all right.”

“I was thinking maybe I would come over for a little while.”

“Well, what I was thinking. I want to go to the cemetery today.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“It’s something I want to do. How would it be a good or a bad idea? I certainly don’t want you to come if you don’t want to, but I—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’ll come.”

“Only if you want to.”

“Of course I want to. I want to wait until Lucinda gets here but she’s due any minute, and then I’ll come over, and we can go to the cemetery whenever you want.”

“Lucinda. Oh, your girl. I didn’t even think that it was Thursday, isn’t that funny? I was thinking of the date but not what day of the week.”

Thursday. So it was indeed Lucinda’s day, but it was not her day with Cass. That particular string of Thursdays had come to an end with her thirtieth birthday. A dividend of maturity — and when I became a woman I put away childish things.

If indeed that was what it had been. It had been hard at the time to know what they were to each other and it was not much easier now. But if she and Cass were still spending their Thursdays together, or if they had never done so in the first place, he might have been a help to her now. He knew her so well, and he knew Mark so well, and if they could have a certain conversation, she and Cass...

Or perhaps not. She kept doing that, creating roles for people in her personal mythology, secure in the knowledge that circumstances made it impossible for them to play the parts she assigned them. Winkie, her father, all the men who had ever touched fives with her.

Her mother was saying something.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t get that.”

“I just said you’ll come in an hour or so?”

“If not sooner.”

“Dress warm.”

“Yes, Mother dear.”

It was generally agreed, and had been said repeatedly at the funeral and during the week of formal mourning which followed it, that David Kleinman had had a good death. He had remained active right up to the end. His first heart attack had served him as a warning, encouraging him to slow the pace of his life and savor his remaining days. At the same time it helped condition his family so that his second heart attack, which killed him, did not come as a complete shock.

Certainly some of the comments on the quality of his death were inspired by the usual impulse to look and to speak on the bright side, but not a few of the men and women who said what a good death he had had did so with a touch of wistfulness in their speech. They were of an age to acknowledge the possibility of imminent death, some of them already suffering from the diseases which would ultimately kill them, and while it was never quite possible to envy the corpse at a funeral, life clearly being preferable to death, they would have welcomed assurance that their own deaths would be as easy.

On the day he died, Andrea’s father finished his last dental appointment shortly after noon. He went home for lunch, napped afterward for perhaps an hour, then drove to Andrea’s house where he had a cup of coffee. Then he took his granddaughter for a ride. They drove around for over an hour, stopped for ice cream, then returned to the Benstock house.

“I told Poppa David it’s my birthday next week and I’m gonna be five, and he says he won’t let me,” Robin announced. She was pretending anxiety but was clearly delighted with the notion of needing permission to be a year older.

“I merely said I have never had a five-year-old granddaughter and wasn’t sure about the whole thing.”

“He says I’ll have to be four for a whole nother year.”

“I said maybe.”

“Well, maybe you’re silly,” Robin said, and whooped with delight. “Silly, silly.”

He returned to his own house, ate dinner with his wife at the usual hour. He helped her load the dishwasher. While it ran they sat with newspapers in the front room. First he read the Times while she read the Buffalo News. Then they traded. She was reading Clive Barnes’s review of a new English play when he said, “Syl?”

She lowered the paper. His face looked drawn and his expression was one of puzzlement.

“I don’t feel well,” he said.

“What’s the matter? Stay right there, I’ll phone Irv Zucker.”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing,” he said, and then he sat back in his chair and died. Her eyes were on him as it happened and she knew instantly what had happened. He was there and then he was not, he was gone.

She had planned to leave the house when Lucinda arrived, but half an hour after the cleaning woman’s appearance she was still finding things to do in the house. At last she was in her car with the key in the ignition, and then she realized the one thing that she did have to do. She got out of the car and went back into the house and called her husband’s office.

She said, “I was just leaving the house. I’m going to Mother’s.”

“Yes, you said you probably would.”

“She wants to go to the cemetery.”

“Is that a good idea?”

She closed her eyes. She said, “I don’t see that it matters whether it’s a good idea or not.”

“I just—”

“It’s what she wants to do.”

“You’ll go with her?”

“Of course.”

“Well. How are you feeling?”

“I am fine,” she said levelly.

“Well.”

She made herself take a breath and release it slowly. “The reason I called,” she said, “is to find out if you’ll be home for dinner.”

“Of course I will.”

“That’s all I wanted to know.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Pardon me?”

“Are you doing some kind of a number? I always call you if I’m not going to be able to make it for dinner.”

“Well, I’m not going to be home for a while,” she said, “so it would be difficult for you to reach me, wouldn’t it? So I thought I would call and make sure, that’s all.”

“That’s all.”

“Certainly.”

She heard him breathing into the phone. The previous fall a telephone pervert had taken to calling her for a period of several weeks, breathing into the phone in a similar way. He’d stopped when she learned not to panic but simply to hang up as soon as she recognized who it was. Mark’s breathing reminded her of those calls, and then he said, “Well, I’ll be home at the usual time, Andrea. You can rest easy.”

I’m glad to hear that.”

“I’ll see you then. In the meantime give your mother my love.”

“I will.”

She replaced the receiver and put her hand to her forehead. Stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She had known better than to make that call. And she had gone ahead and made it, she had been unable to leave the house without making it.

Stupid.

It was hard to say precisely when she learned that he was having an affair. She came to know gradually sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so that when she did suddenly realize that he was seeing somebody she realized simultaneously that she had known as much for some time, had known it without facing it.

Her own reaction surprised her. She was far more upset than she could ever have imagined she might be. She was hurt, she was threatened, and more than anything else she was astonished. Perhaps the hardest thing for her to forgive him was his having turned out to be so different from her image of him. That was the true infidelity — he had been unfaithful all along by letting her perceive him incorrectly.

Had he had other affairs before this one? And how long had this one been going on?

And what happened now?

When she decided that she had to talk to someone, she chose Eileen Fradin. The conversation had a frustrating beginning because Eileen kept marshaling arguments to convince her that she was mistaken, that Mark was faithful to her, that his infidelity was a creation of her own imagination. Andrea found herself in the position of lining up evidence to prove her own conclusion, all of which only served to reinforce her convictions. Eileen seemed to have an answer, however farfetched, for every point Andrea made, and for one wild moment she actually found herself wondering if it might be Eileen with whom Mark was having his affair. But that was clearly absurd.

“Look, this is all beside the point,” she said finally. “I know what’s happening. He’s seeing somebody. I absolutely know this.”

“The thing is you don’t have to know it.”

“You mean close my eyes and it’ll go away? Maybe that works for ostriches but I don’t think it makes sense for people.”

“Well, you don’t have to be so certain, do you? Because what good does it do you?” She was puzzled, and Eileen went on, “Look, men are different. They’re like little boys.”

“Oh, come on. I’ve heard the song before.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Men can have sex and it won’t mean anything at all to them. For women it has to be emotional but not for them. Men do it for the good of their ego or because they just have this need to have different women. Variety. It all has a different meaning for them.”

“The old double standard.”

“Andrea, I’m not saying how things should be, just how they are. Can you imagine yourself going to bed with a man if you didn’t feel anything for him? Just because of a physical attraction? But for men this happens all the time, they think they’re not really men if they don’t do it.”

She found herself keeping her conversational guard up from then on. Because she had gone to bed with men without feeling anything for them, had made love merely on the basis of physical attraction, had made unemotional love even when little real-physical attraction existed either. But there was no way she could say this to Eileen Fradin, and she would not want to say anything that might even hint as much to her.

Once again she found herself feeling ambivalent toward Eileen, dismissing her as shallow and simple-minded while grudgingly admiring how well her mental processes were adapted to emotional survival. She entertained only those thoughts which were beneficial to her and swept all others resolutely aside.

Did Roger Fradin cheat on her? Did she think he did? Did she worry that he did? Evidently, whatever the actual circumstances, whatever Eileen’s perception of them, she managed to think of other things, just as she suggested Andrea do.

But of course Andrea could not do this.

And how well, after all, did all of this really work for Eileen? She was unquestionably a good wife and mother, a precise housekeeper, an adequate if unimaginative cook. She dressed well and kept her figure and was always cheerful. Nevertheless, there were unsettling times when Andrea sensed that her friend was running and could not catch her breath. Eileen still looked younger than her years, but when you looked at her from certain angles you could see that, in a year or two, she would abruptly begin to look older than her years. The skull was beginning to show beneath the skin.

And she was living on diet pills, joking openly enough about them, calling them her vitamins. But they were not vitamins. They were amphetamine, and Eileen took them daily as if on a permanent diet, her pill intake a constant whether or not she was watching what she ate. Her doctor prescribed the pills, and her druggist supplied them, and so it would never occur to Eileen to describe herself as a speed freak, if indeed she was familiar with the term in the first place.

It was not that long a time between Andrea’s discovery of her husband’s infidelity and her father’s death. It was only a matter of a few weeks. But they were very intense and concentrated weeks during which that one central fact dominated her thinking and, subtly or blatantly, colored her dreams.

There was no one with whom she could discuss it. After that first attempt she never raised the subject with Eileen, who for her part never referred to it again. Eileen was her closest friend, surely her most nearly intimate friend. Of the other women she knew reasonably well, the only one she might have discussed the matter with was Linda Gould, who had come back east and taken a flat in Amherst with her children. But Linda was Mark’s sister and that made the conversation impossible.

There were other people she could have talked to, except that for one reason or another she could not, Her mother. Her father. Cass Drozdowski. John Riordan. Winkie.

Mark.

She had conversations with these people within the privacy of her private mind. And now and then she would think of someone else — a casual friend from school or from her New York days, a friend of her parents’, an English teacher at Bennett High School of whom she had not consciously thought in fifteen years. People she did not really know, people she had never really known, but people whom she found herself wishing she could cast in the role of confidante.

Then the telephone rang early on a January evening and it suddenly ceased to matter who Mark was fucking, or how, or why, or for how long. Her father was dead. That was all that really mattered.

The death and the funeral and the official and unofficial periods of mourning changed everything so completely that she thought the change would be permanent. The moment she learned of her father’s death, Mark’s involvement with someone else ceased to matter to her, and in ceasing to matter it was as if it ceased to exist. It was Mark who answered the telephone that night, Mark who was the first to know the awful knowledge, and as he turned to her, giving her a part of the news with his eyes before he gave her all of it in a handful of phrases, as he did this, he was transformed entirely into a man playing one role and one role only, that of her husband.

And he had been very good. He was a strong man, such a strong man. She had recognized his strength the day she met him and had never since had cause to doubt it. That she kept finding evidence of his sensitivity and vulnerability never served to diminish his strength in her eyes.

Strength was constantly called for then. During the public part of each day Andrea would be very strong and Mark would weld his strength to hers, giving it backbone, reinforcing it. Together they helped Andrea’s mother endure the ordeal. Each friend or relative who approached to offer sympathy constituted a small emotional crisis, and Sylvia Kleinman sat with her daughter on one side and her son on the other, squeezing their hands in hers, sometimes breaking down, sometimes not, but drawing from them something that helped, something that made it easier.

She leaned on both of them, and together they kept her going. And then, when she was asleep with a sedative, Andrea’s aunt Estelle sleeping in Andrea’s old room to handle nocturnal emergencies, and when Mark and Andrea were in their own house with Robin asleep and no one else around, then it was Andrea’s turn to fall apart. She had been strong all day when her strength was required. Now she would buckle, and Mark would go on being a mensch, talking to her when she needed to hear words, listening to her when she had to babble on and on, pouring drinks into her because she needed something and wouldn’t take tranquilizers, and holding her when she needed to be held. She had a great need to be held.

They did not speak of his infidelity. She was reasonably certain of that. On a couple of nights she had quite a bit to drink, enough so that her memory was spotty, but she had no reason to worry that she had said or done anything to indicate that she knew. And of course there was no need to speak of it, no need now to think of it, because of course it was over and would not be resumed.

She did not like to permit herself to think of it in precisely those terms. That her father’s death might have brought her husband entirely back to her was as unsettling as it was a thoroughly persuasive hypothesis. She couldn’t think of it without seeing herself as having involuntarily sacrificed the one for the other, her father for her husband. She recognized the idea as nonsensical solipsism. She would not have done any such thing even if she could. Even so, her father’s death was a tragedy, and she did not like to think that any good could have issued from it.

Nor was it long before she had no need to fight off the thought. Before very long he had taken up where he had left off. He was seeing her again, whoever she was. And Andrea knew it, and he knew that she knew. So even her guilt was taken away from her.

At her mother’s house they sat in the front room with cups of strong black coffee. Her mother had been sitting in that room when Andrea drove up. As far as she knew, it was the first time her mother had purposely sat in that room since her father had died in it.

She didn’t say anything to that effect, but her mother raised the subject. “This is the first I’ve been in this room since that night,” she said. “With other people in the house, that is.”

“You’ve come in here alone?”

“Oh, yes. Frequently. I make myself do certain things, Andrea.” And, when Andrea refused to ask about these certain things, “Sitting in that chair, for example. Sleeping on your father’s side of the bed.”

“You’re torturing yourself.”

“No. I know the difference, and I’m not interested in torturing myself. When Mark volunteered to go through the drawers and closets and give the clothing to the Goodwill I didn’t give him an argument. That would have been, I would have had trouble doing it. But there are other things that a person has to do sooner or later, and rushing isn’t good but neither is putting it off. There’s a time when it’s better to get it over with, even if it hurts a little.” She considered this. “Even if it hurts more than a little,” she said.

“I just don’t think you should overdo.”

“No.”

“Or make yourself unhappy.”

“Not make. But I don’t see anything wrong with a person letting herself be unhappy. The sedatives Zucker gave me at the beginning served a purpose. They were necessary.”

“Of course they were.”

“And I still take a sleeping pill at night, a half a grain of Seconal, because there’s no point in lying awake nights. But the other things he gave me, the Librium and the antidepressants. You know, you can tranquilize yourself into a wide-awake coma with those things. Mildred Weingarten started on them when Harold had his operation. He had a prostate operation two years ago, it was completely successful, and he’s fine, and poor Mil has been stoned for the past two years. Of course she was at the funeral but you wouldn’t have noticed, but she always has this glassy look in her eyes and she’s so calm you want to take her pulse to make sure she’s still there. Do you remember that program, Jackie Kennedy showing off the White House? Mil has that same voice now. ‘And this is the Rose Room, and that was President Lincoln’s desk.’ That breathless little-girl voice.”

“You do voices so beautifully. Maybe that’s where Robin gets it from.”

“I could always get a smile out of your father.” Sylvia Kleinman hesitated, but only for a moment. “I don’t want to be a zombie,” she said.

“You couldn’t be a zombie if you tried.”

“I don’t want to swallow any scientific miracle designed to keep me from feeling what I have every reason in the world to feel. It’s not going to kill me to cry once in a while. It’s not going to kill me to feel depressed. Sometimes it’s a very good thing to feel depressed. When you lose someone you want to realize how much you’ve lost or else you don’t appreciate how much you had. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, depression. It can be a relief. Or a release, I don’t know which I mean. Maybe both. Like crying.”

She remembered the night she’d sat up with a bottle mourning Winkie. And other scattered nights when alcohol and solitude helped her sit among shapeless sorrows reaching out at wispy insights.

“Thirty-nine years. Do you know something, Andrea? We loved each other.”

“I know.”

“That’s not terribly common. As a matter of fact it’s unusual. I was with your father, why, since I was a girl, really. My whole adult life. Wouldn’t it be terrible not to be sad? Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing?”

“Oh, yes.”

“It would be awful. I would not want to be like that,” said Sylvia Kleinman.

They were in the house on Admiral Road for almost two hours before they left for the cemetery. They had lunch, they drank coffee, they talked, and the older woman worked on a sweater for her granddaughter. Andrea had tried knitting at various times before deciding she lacked the patience for it. Watching her mother, she thought that it didn’t even seem very interesting. Once you were accomplished enough to do it properly, your fingers worked automatically without any participation by your mind.

The telephone rang periodically. Each time her mother answered it, and each time it was one of her friends just calling to see how she was doing. The first few times the phone rang Andrea thought it might be Mark. Their conversation had disturbed her and she supposed it had disturbed him as well, and she thought he might try to reach her at her mother’s to make some effort at smoothing things out. But the phone kept ringing and it kept not being him.

And why, really, should he call? Nothing he could tell her over the telephone would make things any better, and any number of things could make the situation worse.

She reached for a cigarette and discovered she had one still burning in the ashtray. Every few months she tried to stop smoking, and each time she found some source of tension which excused her putting off the job of quitting. Most of the times she stopped she did so without missing a cigarette. She would put out the last cigarette of the night and resolve not to smoke the next day, and when morning came she usually had a cigarette going before the resolution even came to mind.

Now she sat smoking and listened to her mother having her standard conversation. Her voice had an artificial brittle tone to it, or so it seemed to Andrea.

“That was your mother-in-law, Andrea. I thought of telling her you were here but I didn’t bother.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“You’d have had to talk, and it was enough that I had to talk to her. I shouldn’t say that. It was nice of her to call. It’s nice of everybody to call. The phone calls have been tapering off a little the past few weeks, but today the volume’s up again. Because of it being the anniversary, but do you know that not one single person has mentioned the fact? As if they don’t want to call it to my attention in case it slipped my mind. Although I’m sure I’d behave exactly the same way. As a matter of fact I know I already have behaved the same way, making a point of calling on a birthday or a yahrzeit but not mentioning it unless the other person mentioned it first. Which is sensible, actually. I’d rather not have that particular conversation with the entire world, and by not mentioning it they leave it up to me.” She stopped talking suddenly and frowned. “Do you know something? I’m becoming a chatterbox.”

“Oh, Mother, you are not.”

“But I am, I know I am, I can tell the difference. I’m thinking out loud, using you being here as an excuse for talking to myself.” She stood up. “Are you done with that coffee? Because I’d like to go to the cemetery now.”

“You’re absolutely certain? Maybe the first visit since the funeral, maybe it shouldn’t be on a special day, that’s all.”

“Second visit.”

“What was that?”

“Second visit. I went by myself two or three weeks ago.”

“You never said anything.”

“Why should I say anything? I was sitting here one afternoon and I got the impulse to go and I went. Andrea, there is something you’ve got to understand. I am able to cope with things.”

“Oh, Mother, I know that.”

“I’m not sure that you do. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. I surprise myself every day. I have more strength than I ever knew I had. Except that I’m not sure it’s right to call it strength. Whatever it is, it’s the thing that enables a person to keep on. The fact that I’m very sad, that I have a deep sense of loss, that doesn’t seem to interfere with my ability to handle things. Now can we just go? Or I’ll go myself if you’d rather, but I want to go now.”

“Oh, Mother!”

“I’m sorry, Andrea, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean the way that sounded. You know I didn’t.” The phone began to ring. “Oh, don’t bother to answer it. Just let it ring or we’ll never get out of here.”

They could still hear the phone as they got into Andrea’s car. But it wouldn’t be Mark, she told herself. There was no reason to think it was Mark.

Mother and daughter kept up an effortless conversation on the drive to the cemetery. When the main gates came into view they fell silent. As Andrea turned the car into the cemetery she said, “You’ll have to tell me where to go. I’d be completely lost.”

“They gave me a map when I was here before. A little man offered to show me the route but I told him I would find it myself. I remember he had something wrong with one of his eyes. I have the map somewhere in my bag but I think I can remember. Keep bearing left until I tell you different.”

They drove slowly, and in silence. The spring weather had brought other visitors to the cemetery. They were mostly women, and most of them had come alone. Signs of spring, Andrea thought. The trees begin to leaf out, the spring bulbs push up out of the soil, the birds come north again. And the widows emerge from their dark houses and swim upstream to graveyards.

“The next fork to the right. And there it is, on the left just beyond those trees.”

The grave was situated in one of several Jewish sections of Forest Lawn Cemetery. The double plot of which he now occupied the southern portion had been purchased by David Kleinman in 1961. He had never mentioned this fact to his wife or daughter; they learned about the plot when they opened the strongbox in which he kept his insurance policies and a copy of his will. (The will was unremarkable — after token bequests to his office staff, everything was left outright to his widow.) Sylvia Kleinman was not surprised that a burial site had been purchased. Her husband had been meticulous about putting his affairs in order since that first heart attack. What did surprise her was that he had made this purchase so long ago. But it was not an enormous surprise, and certainly not out of character. It was very much the sort of thing David Kleinman might do on his own initiative, and, having done it, the sort of thing he would never dream of discussing. The grave was as yet unmarked. In some months a stone would be put in place. More orthodox Jews waited a specified number of months before raising the stone, and did so at an unveiling ceremony accompanied by a brief memorial service. But there would be no ceremonial unveiling for David Kleinman. When the stone was ready it would be installed without a fuss.

Andrea knew what the stone would look like. She had been consulted when the stonecutter had been commissioned to prepare it. It was to be a very plain rectangular block of granite. The name Kleinman would be engraved across the top; below it her father’s name would be on one side, along with the year of his birth and the year of his death. The other half of the stone’s face would be blank. For the time being.

Andrea parked the car a few dozen yards from the grave site. She walked around to open the door for her mother and took her mother’s arm when she emerged. She could read very little expression in her mother’s face. The features were masked, withdrawn, remote. They walked together across the asphalt roadway and over the grass.

She found herself walking very carefully, setting her feet down gently, as if she were walking not on the dead but on the living. At the last interment she’d attended before her father’s, it had struck her that there ought to be walkways between the graves. When hours later she’d mentioned the thought to Mark he’d called her inconsistent. “You were just saying what a waste of space cemeteries are. How everybody should be cremated and the ashes scattered. Now you want aisles between the graves.” And of course she had been inconsistent, and of course burial was stupid, and of course embalming was stupid, and the disgusting cosmetology of undertakers was stupid. But if you were going to bury someone, and then walk so matter-of-factly over their bones—

So now she walked lightly, as if the dead might groan beneath her weight.

She did not know how long they stood together, heads bowed, at the side of the grave. It seemed to her that she ought to order her thoughts somehow. There were prayers to be said at gravesides, but she did not know any and would not have said one if she had.

Was there anything that she could say to her father? If there were important things they should have told each other, it was past the time for that now. And so she just let her thoughts find their own paths. It was a beautiful spring day, certainly. Many of the graves were planted with flowers and flowering shrubs. They would do the same, but not until the stone was up.

She closed her eyes and heard birdsong not far off. When she was in high school a boy in one of her classes had been an enthusiastic bird watcher. He used to go to the cemetery early in the morning before dawn to look at birds through binoculars. He had told her this once, and she had shown polite interest while thinking privately that anybody who would get up in the middle of the night to chase sparrows had to be out of his tree himself. Then one day, painfully shy but resolute, he had invited her to accompany him on his next birding expedition. She couldn’t now remember what excuse she had offered. She’d stammered out something. What she did remember was the look on his face. She had evidently figured prominently in his fantasy life, while he had scarcely existed for her, and she had consequently managed to be unintentionally cruel.

Funny. She hadn’t thought of him in years. And, considered in retrospect, the prospect of walking through the still cemetery at dawn was attractive, even romantic. At the time she’d thought it creepy and ridiculous.

“Andrea, wait for me in the car, please. I want to be alone for a few minutes.”

She hesitated for just a moment, then turned and walked back to the car. A cloud had slipped across the sun and she felt a chill. She got into the car, sat behind the wheel with her arms folded over her breasts. Through the windshield she watched her mother, a still figure on a painted landscape.

Her mother stood beside the man at whose side she had spent two-thirds of her entire life. And she stood where she would someday lie. Andrea felt something very chilling in the idea of standing upon a spot and knowing you would one day be buried there. And when the tombstone was in place, with one side left blank for her mother’s name — oh, it was chilling, of course it was, and yet in a strange way there was something almost comforting about it.

In a month she and Mark would celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary. At any rate they would mark the occasion. A celebration might not be entirely in order.

In thirty-two years she and Mark would be married as long as her parents would have been married today. If they were alive.

If they were still married.

She shuddered, more at the second thought than the first, and fumbled in her purse for her cigarettes. Was it proper to smoke in the cemetery? But she was in her car, for God’s sake. It shouldn’t matter, should it?

She lit a cigarette, glanced at her mother, who did not seem to have changed position at all. The woman lived each day with grief for company, but for all that Andrea felt sorry for her, today she envied her. She had lost something infinitely precious, to be sure, but for thirty-nine years she had had something precious.

While Andrea, for the first time in seven years, was forced to consider the possibility that her marriage might fail.

And that of course was why she found Mark’s infidelity so impossible to cope with. She could not reasonably be upset at the fact that he might find someone else attractive. If she could only have believed Eileen’s argument — that men committed adultery in a casual and meaningless manner — then she could probably have accepted it readily enough, could have overlooked it as Eileen had advised her to do.

But Mark was not apt to be casual about such things, The sexual roles, as Eileen conceived them, were turned upside down in Andrea’s marriage. It was Mark who had had rather less premarital experience, Mark who was less able to divorce the physical and emotional components of sex.

She had been with two other men since her wedding day, and even now, when she found the whole idea of adultery hateful, she could not really find it in herself to waste time regretting those two affairs. That afternoon with John Riordan hardly seemed like adultery, and certainly could not be said to constitute an affair. It was a way of closing out the past, of recognizing the dimensions of the role she had chosen for herself, of saying good-bye permanently to the person she had been before marriage. She had not been touched, and this was consistent with the nature of the sex act she had chosen. She had remained clothed. Riordan had not touched her flesh. Her mouth had performed a mechanical service, making the sex act a metaphorical statement.

With Cass Drozdowski, the string of Thursdays had been any number of things, none of them threatening her marriage in any substantial way. There had been a real element of risk. If Mark had found out about their affair — and it had not been impossible that he should have found out — then her marriage might have been imperiled. That possibility aside, it had never been for a moment conceivable that either she or Cass would begin building sand castles of romantic love. Oh, Cass was a way for her to “prove to herself that she had a life outside of her role as wife and mother. It gave her a vehicle for harmless revenge on Mark for his having cast her in this role. But it had never meant anything to either of them, and they were both relieved when she ended it.

On her thirtieth birthday she had decided to terminate the affair, and indeed she had seen him only once after that. It was two weeks and a day after her birthday and they met as arranged at the motel where they always met. But they did not embrace and they did not go to bed. She explained to him what she had decided, finding as she did so that it was much easier to have this conversation than she had thought it would be. But then she had always found it easy to talk to Cass.

When she had finished speaking he said, “Well, I expected this. I thought another month or two, but probably not much more than that, and God knows we’ve already had the best of it. I’d say something about staying friends but of course we will and it goes without saying.”

“Friends. It’s all we ever were.”

“That’s exactly true, Andrea. Andrea. Did they ever call you Andy?”

“They never did and they better never start.”

“Far be it from me to be the first. Where were we? Friends and how that’s all we ever were. It’s true, and I’ll tell you something. That put us ahead of most people. You wouldn’t believe the number of people go to bed together without even liking each other.”

“Oh, I would believe it.”

“Yes, you might at that.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Just the dumb Polack making conversation. No, it’s not supposed to mean anything in particular. Why did you ever marry the guy in the first place, Andrea?”

“Now that’s a hell of a question.”

He nodded. “It’s one I’ve been wondering about ever since I met you. Well, not quite, because I met you before you were married.”

“New Year’s Eve.”

“New Year’s Eve, and I can’t say I paid much attention to you that night. Nothing personal. The way I was drinking I didn’t pay much attention to anything or anybody. But ever since I got to know you, yes, I’ve been wondering about it.”

“And what is wrong with the usual answers? Such as Mark and I happen to love each other.”

“I’m sure you do. But I don’t think that’s why you married him. It could be why he married you but not the other way around.”

“I suppose you have a theory.”

“Oh, maybe the bare bones of a theory. Not that you want to hear it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

He considered, then shrugged. “All right. I think you married him the same way you moved back to Buffalo and into your parents’ house. Both moves were ways of coming home, of playing it safe. It was a kind of retirement, wasn’t it?”

“That’s a really crummy way of putting it.”

“If it makes you angry I’m sorry.”

“I’m not angry.”

He looked at her, his eyes intent. “I have the feeling something happened in New York before you left, something that really scared the living shit out of you. And everything afterward was a reaction to it. What happened there, Andrea?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

She thought for a moment. “Nothing you don’t more or less know about,” she said. “I was doing too much drinking and too much screwing around. The two seemed to go together.”

“They still do, I’ve noticed. For most of the people in the world.”

“Maybe. Where was I?”

“Drinking and screwing around.”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes for a moment, taking time to examine the memories that filtered in behind her eyelids. “I’d been working uptown. A music publisher, it was secretarial work but there was supposedly an opportunity to learn the business. But I didn’t want to learn the business and I didn’t care about the work and I lost the job.”

“They fired you?”

“Not exactly. I was coming in late and calling in sick a lot and the boss talked to me, and the two of us more or less agreed I would leave. It was one of those things where I could have talked my way back in but I didn’t want to.”

“Uh-huh. Then what?”

“Then I went through a period of time, I don’t know how long, where I would wait tables here and there in the Village. There were plenty of jobs available and you could go from one to another and work when you needed the money. With the tips it paid better than office work. And it made it very easy to drift. You could adjust your hours at will. And I wasn’t getting anywhere and wasn’t even trying to get anywhere, and eventually it occurred to me that I didn’t want to get anywhere. I didn’t want to wait tables for the rest of my life but I didn’t want a more challenging job, either. And the life I was leading, sleeping with a lot of men and barely knowing their names, hanging out at the bars every night, it was no way to spend a life.”

“You must have enjoyed it.”

“Of course I did, for a while. But you can only spend so much time that way or you go off the edge. You said something must have scared the shit out of me.”

“I had the feeling.”

“There were lots of things that scared me. There was a woman who used to turn up at the Riviera. I don’t know how old she was. Probably the age I am now, but maybe older. She seemed very old to me at the time. She was an alcoholic but she didn’t get sloppy drunk and she was presentable, and just about everybody who hung out there had gone home with her at one time or another. I reached a point where I hated to be in the same bar with her because it was so easy to see myself turning into her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Vicki, her name was. I never knew her last name. Hundreds of people down there that I knew by their first names only. Those were funny days. There was one morning — Cass, I don’t know if I should tell you this.”

“Don’t if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, there’s really no reason not to. It was the first thing I thought of when you said something must have scared me. One morning I woke up in my own bed in my own apartment.”

“And there was a total stranger lying next to you.”

“No. That happened once but it wasn’t that bad, and there were times when I would wake up in some man’s apartment without remembering going there or what we did, but usually I would at least remember the guy, No, this time I woke up alone.”

“And that scared you?”

“Forget it.”

“I’m sorry, Andrea.”

“I woke up alone. And I tried to remember the previous night, and it had been a usual kind of night, this bar and that bar and then my memory began getting patchy, and the last thing I could remember was being by myself and on my way from one bar to another, I had this flash of throwing up on the street. I used to throw up occasionally. I never do that any more. But in those days I never had a hangover, I never knew what a hangover was, and nowadays, God...”

“Don’t remind me.”

“But that morning. No hangover, but this rush of guilt and fear because of the holes in my memory. And then I discovered that I had come home with somebody, I’d brought someone home with me.”

“I thought you said you were alone.”

“Yes, I was. But someone had been with me and had left. I didn’t remember any of it but I’d brought someone home and I had had sex with him and I didn’t know who it was.”

“How could you be sure?”

She stared at him. “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Let’s just say there was evidence. Oh, hell. I had dried come in my pubic hair, does that clear it up for you? If you laugh I swear I’ll throw an ashtray at you.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“It was the thought of some man walking around and he’d fucked me and I might have enjoyed it, who could say, and I didn’t even know who it was. I could meet him on the street and not recognize him and he’d have fucked me and he could give me a big hello and he might be a total stranger to me. Or maybe it was someone I knew, an old friend, and he’d say, hey, last night was terrific, and I’d have to pretend I knew what he was talking about. Or — oh, hell, it was terrible. I’m sure there was nothing I could have done that would have been as bad as not remembering what I did do, and I knew that at the time, but it seemed to sum up everything that was wrong with the life I was living.”

“So you came home.”

“Not that day and not that week, but I think that I was what decided me. If any single thing decided me.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “I wasn’t going to tell you because I was ashamed, you know, and it wasn’t anything to be all that ashamed about, was it?”

“Not really.”

“The shame was because I didn’t remember.”

“And that’s why you’re in Buffalo, and that’s why you’re married to Mark. One thing, though.”

“What?”

“Something I’ve been thinking. It wouldn’t be hard for you to start hating him for the same reasons you married him. Buffalo is safe but it’s also dull, and you might decide that Mark’s both of those things and that it’s dull being his wife. Now hold on. I’m not saying he’s a dull man. He’s not. But you can take him for I granted, or at least you think you can, and you might wind up resenting him for all of that. I don’t know if I’m putting this correctly.”

“And I don’t know that I care for what you’re saying.”

“Well, maybe we’ll just let it go at that.”

“Yes, maybe we will. Making such a big thing about how we’ll always be friends, but this conversation could end a beautiful friendship right off the bat.”

“Oh, I doubt it, but we’ll let it go.”

But she couldn’t let it go. “I wonder how much you project,” she said. “If you think about who you married.”

“Oh, there’s a little truth in that.”

“And maybe you only wanted to screw me so that you could get even with her.”

“No, that’s not how it works with me. I don’t like to look for complicated motives, you know.”

“Not when it comes to you, you mean.”

“You got it, kid. Why look for complicated answers for the simple Polack? Every boy needs a hobby and adultery’s more interesting than stamp collecting. I’m a runner-arounder, that’s all. I’d screw a snake if somebody would hold its head.”

“Well, I like that,” she said.

When her mother returned to the car neither of them said anything. Andrea started the engine and turned the car around, and she was able to find her way back out of the cemetery the way she had come.

Halfway home Andrea braked for a traffic light. Her mother said, “I wonder how often I’ll do that. Go to the cemetery.”

“How do you mean that?”

“Well, I went to my parents’ graves. They’re buried in Pine Hill, of course. I always went a couple of times a year, and I’m only beginning to realize it now, Andrea, but I went because I thought I had to. That it was something I was supposed to do, the duties of a daughter. Not that I thought anyone was looking down from heaven and watching me, because that’s nonsense, but as though I acted as if somebody was watching. Oh, it was a way of remaining close to them, or trying to feel close to them, but it was also a duty, it was something to do a certain number of times a year. I’m out of cigarettes. Do you have one?”

“In my bag.”

“Thank you. With your father, it’s different. Just now while I was standing there alone I was thinking that this was as close as I could get to him. But is that true? I don’t think that it is true. I think that I am always close to him, wherever I am, and at the same time I’m never close to him. He’s a part of me, and at the same time he’s gone, and both of those facts will always be true. And they are just as true whether I’m standing in a cemetery or saying kaddish in temple or sitting home watching television. Does it make sense to you, what I just said?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I wasn’t sure. I know what I meant but I wasn’t sure I made it clear. I suppose I’ll go to the cemetery as often as I feel like it but I don’t know how often that will be. One thing, I don’t think I’ll ever go because I think I’m supposed to go. All the things we do because we think we’re supposed to do them, and who on earth cares what we do? Nobody does.”

When she pulled the car into the driveway on Admiral Road her mother told her not to bother coming in. “You’ll want to get home. Robin must be home from nursery school now, isn’t she? I think I’ll just lie down for a rest before I fix myself some dinner.”

“Why don’t you come out and have dinner with us?”

“Oh, that’s nice of you, but not tonight. Tonight I think I’d rather be by myself.” She reached for the door handle, “Thanks for going out with me, darling. I appreciate it.”

“Mark’s having an affair.”

“What did you say?”

She looked straight ahead, focusing her eyes upon her hands as they rested on the steering wheel. She found that she was staring at her wedding ring and thought that it might dissolve symbolically before her eyes.

“I didn’t think I was going to say that.”

“Well, I didn’t hear anything,” Sylvia Kleinman said.

“He’s seeing someone.”

“You can talk to me, Andrea, but only if you’re sure you want to. Otherwise I never heard a word you said just now. If you’d rather.”

She turned, looked at her mother. “No, I have to talk about it,” she said. “Oh, God, it’s been going on for months. I have to talk about it.”

“Well, come inside,” her mother said, after a moment. “Come on in the house. I’ll put up a pot of coffee.”

She had thought it would be very hard to talk about it with her mother, yet once she started it turned out to be very easy. The words flowed. Then there were no more words to say and she sat waiting for her mother to say something.

“He knows that you know.”

“Yes.”

“But you haven’t had a confrontation. It hasn’t come out into the open.”

“No, not yet. It almost has. We talk about it without talking about it. I called him this morning to ask him if he would be coming home to dinner. It was childish, it was a way of telling him without telling him. I don’t really know why I did it.”

“Because you were hurt.”

“I suppose that must be why.”

“Of course.”

“It’ll be better when it all comes out in the open, when we can talk about it instead of talking around it.”

But her mother was shaking her head. “I don’t agree.”

“You don’t?”

“It would be better if he didn’t even know you knew, but I suppose it’s too late for that. But you can stop mentioning it, stop referring to it. You can act as though you’re forgetting about it, as though you’ve decided that it has all blown over. And that will make it easier for all concerned, and before you know it it will blow over, and that will be the end of it.”

“Just like that.”

“That’s the way it usually works, Andrea.”

“Unless it’s someone he’s serious about. And I think it probably is.”

“And you’re afraid.”

“Of course I’m afraid. Who wouldn’t be?”

“You’re afraid he’ll leave you and Robin.”

“Yes, I’m afraid of that. Or I may leave him — that’s a possibility too, you know.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why would I do that?” Her voice cracked, and she reined herself in, made herself calm down. Quietly she said, “Because I just might find out that I don’t love him any more, Mother. For a starter.”

Her mother got to her feet, crossed the room and stood for a moment at the window. It was very much a theatrical gesture, and Andrea wondered if it had been done with a theatrical purpose in mind. Whether it had or not, Sylvia Kleinman had certainly taken command of the scene. She stood at the window, her back to Andrea, and let the silence build.

Then she said, “A couple of years ago you were talking about one of your friends, I don’t remember which girl it was. You said she was acting as if she was the first woman ever to have a baby.”

“Oh, Barbara Singer.”

“That’s right.”

“The expression wasn’t original on my part, I’m afraid.”

“That doesn’t matter. It was a nice turn of phrase because a person instantly knew just what you meant. You’re acting as if you were the first woman whose husband ever saw another woman.”

“In other words, it happens all the time.”

“That’s right, Andrea.”

“In other words, men are just little boys, and they can have sex without being involved, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, and if we all stick our heads in the sand like a flock of ostriches everything will be all right. In other words.”

“Not that, exactly.”

“Oh? Because that’s what it sounds like. Exactly.”

“No.” Crossing the room toward her, sitting on the couch beside her. “With some men that’s true. They have other women to prove their manhood. Or because it’s a pleasure that they aren’t willing to deny themselves, and it means no more to them than eating a meal or swallowing a drink. Maybe more men are like that than not, I couldn’t say.”

“I don’t think Mark’s like that.”

“No, neither do I. Although any man might be like that from time to time, but something you told me makes me think it isn’t that way in this case.”

“That he picked me up again after... after daddy’s death.”

“That’s right. If it was just physical, and the two of you became very close right after your father’s death. Not that you haven’t always been close but I think you saw how much you needed him. Now that would have been a very good excuse for him to break it off with this woman and leave it broken off. You don’t have any idea who she is?”

“No idea at all. I try not to think about her. Of course I want to know who she is, but at the same time I don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I can understand that. Well, it was a time when he could have left it broken off if it was just a sex thing, just a seven-year itch — you have been married seven years next month, isn’t it?”

“Seven years next month, yes.”

“But the seven-year itch isn’t necessarily just sex. Or it can be just sex, but the man involved might have to convince himself it was more than pure sex or else he would feel it was cheapened. What’s the matter, what did I say?”

“That was perfect, what you said. That’s Mark, all right. That’s exactly what he would do.”

“You’d know better than I would, Andrea, but I think he might do that.”

“Oh, he would.” There was a delight in this insight into his character, a pleasure in recognition. “He’s such a romantic. I think he could do almost anything if he managed to convince himself that he was doing it for love.” She closed her eyes for a moment. Without opening them she said, “He could leave me, if he thought he loved someone else.”

“He won’t leave you.”

“He might.”

“Not if you make it easy for him to stay. Right now you’re going through two things at once. You’re afraid, concerned about the future of your marriage, and at the same time your pride is hurt. Your pride wants to confront him, to force the issue, but underneath you want your marriage to last and so that’s the last thing you should do.”

They went on talking, and they drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, and Andrea kept raising objections which her mother kept handling, calmly, patiently. But there was something that kept her mother’s words from soothing her and she did not know what it was. Then she was struck by the visual image of her mother at the graveside, and then she knew.

She said, “But don’t you see? No, you wouldn’t see, because you had something perfect yourself. But whether the marriage lasts or it doesn’t, it almost doesn’t matter. Because it will never be the same between us again.”

“That’s not true.”

“We’ve been married seven years. How will I feel about Mark in thirty-two years? Not the way you feel about daddy.”

“You may. I hope you will.”

“Because I’ll forgive and forget? I don’t think a person does that.”

“Really?”

“No, I really don’t. Forgive? Oh, of course I would be able to forgive him, but it would always be there, wouldn’t it? I don’t think I would ever get over it.”

“But you would. You will.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone would completely get over something like that, really.”

“People do, Andrea.”

“I don’t think—”

“I did, Andrea.”

She looked at her mother. Their eyes met. She felt as if she’d been struck in the chest, directly over her heart, and involuntarily she put her hand to the spot and fancied she could feel her heart pounding beneath it.

She was back in her own house in plenty of time to take Lucinda to the bus stop. Then she set about preparing dinner, with Robin keeping her company. Robin kept up a nonstop account of all the fascinating things Lucinda had told her. On this particular day Lucinda had been preoccupied by the various ways in which any number of relatives and acquaintances had died. This one had cancer, this one had the pleurisy, that one had fallen in the path of a New York subway train. She didn’t know whether or not to interrupt Robin’s grim recital, but decided it would probably be more traumatic if Robin were prevented from repeating what she had heard.

And at least Lucinda talked to the child. She commonly said more in an hour to Robin than Andrea heard from her in a year.

She kept busy in the kitchen, kept up her half of the conversation with Robin. Mark came home at the normal time, and the two of them met him at the door. Robin wrapped her arms around his legs and hugged him. He picked her up and held her in the air. “Spring is here,” he announced, “’cause I see a Robin.” He put the child down and took the drink that Andrea was holding, and she got up on her toes and kissed him.

He said, “Quite a welcome.”

“Well, I was a bitch on the phone. In fact I’ve been a pain lately, haven’t I?”

“Oh, not all that much of a pain.”

“The closest I can come to an excuse for this morning is I just talked to my mother before I called you, and on top of it being the anniversary she wanted to go to the cemetery. I don’t remember if I mentioned that or not.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, it rattled me a little.”

“I can understand that.” He put his arm around her waist and they walked to the kitchen where she had fixed herself a drink. She picked it up and they raised their glasses to each other and drank. In the living room he asked her how it had gone at the cemetery.

“It wasn’t really bad. I didn’t know it before, but this wasn’t her first visit. She went all by herself a few weeks ago and never told me.”

“She’s quite a gal, your mother.”

“Oh, more than you know.”

“I’m sure.”

“No, much more than you know, more than I ever knew. She told me the most extraordinary thing this afternoon.”

“Oh?”

“It’ll keep.” And, with a nod in Robin’s direction, “Little pitchers and all. Anyway, it’s a long story and I want to make sure I tell it right. Incidentally, if I seem a little odd, it’s probably because I’m still reacting to what she told me.”

“Now you’ve got me hooked.”

“Well, stay hooked. Right now I’ll get dinner on the table. No, stay where you are, you can read the paper if you want. It’ll be another few minutes.”

During dinner, and in the time between dinner and Robin’s bedtime, she kept going over what her mother had told her and trying to decide how she would recount it to Mark.

She was waiting in the living room when Mark finished tucking Robin in for the night. “That kid’s certainly morbid lately,” he said.

“Morbid? Oh, Lucinda.”

“And Lucinda’s friends and relations, all of whom seem to have come to a bad end. Maybe you could say something to Lucinda.”

“We don’t have a terribly verbal relationship. Robin’s the only one she talks to. And I was thinking, I’m not sure it’s Lucinda. What I mean is that Robin’s probably very eager for information on the subject of death and dying. Because of my father. She seems to be handling things well but kids are brilliant at reacting the way they think you want them to. And you know how close she was to Poppa David.”

“It’s a damn shame she has to learn about death at this age,” he said.

“Yes, but when’s a good time?”

“Well, that’s a point.” He was in his chair, an oversized Naugahyde recliner of the type Robin spoke of categorically as Daddy Chairs, and he leaned back in it and elevated his feet. “The goyim have it a lot easier. They can tell their kids that So-and-so went to heaven and leave it at that. They can even believe it themselves if they feel like it. I wonder if the whole concept of Heaven and Hell originated because some kid was making a pest of himself and some parent wanted to find an answer that would shut him up.”

“What a thought.”

“I wonder if many of them really believe it. Here I have two Catholic partners and I haven’t got the slightest idea what they really believe in. Kids in college talk about their beliefs but when you grow up you learn not to discuss them. What do Cass and Tony believe in? Now Tony doesn’t go to church and Cass does, but I’d be surprised if Cass even believes in God, while I would guess Tony does, at least on some level. But do they believe in heaven? Probably not, but they’ll tell their kids they do, whereas we can’t take that easy out with Robin.” He yawned. “Well, it’s supposed to be hard to be a Jew, isn’t it? Part of the game. You had something you wanted to tell me, or don’t you feel like talking about it?”

“No, I want to tell you. I thought it was so extraordinary, but maybe that’s just me.” She paused to light a cigarette. “I told you we went to the cemetery and that wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Not that it was a pleasure, but it could have been worse, and she’s really very good at keeping control of herself, and I think in a healthy way.

“But that’s not the point. I drove her back to her house — I almost said their house, I’m still doing that now and then. And I went inside for a minute, and we got to talking about Linda.”

“My sister Linda?”

“Yes. I don’t know how we got on the subject. Oh, I do, too. Your mother had called earlier and she mentioned that and got onto the subject of Linda from there. She wanted to know if there was any possibility of Linda and Jeff getting back together again.”

“About as much a possibility as there is that the sun will come up in the west tomorrow.”

“That’s more or less what I told her, but in a less colorful way. She thought this was terrible, and she had almost as much trouble using the word divorce as she has saying cancer, and she asked why didn’t Linda go out there so Jeff could see the children—”

“Oh, Christ. If that son of a bitch had the slightest interest in his kids.”

“That’s what I told her, and without saying so I tried to get across the idea that he is a son of a bitch. I explained what you’d gone through to get him to send child support on a regular basis, and I told her some of the stunts he’s pulled, and she still inclined toward the position that Linda ought to make an effort to keep the marriage together.”

It surprised her how easy it was to invent this part of the conversation. She felt that she could, if pressed, reconstruct the entire conversation about Linda, when indeed she and her mother had talked about Linda not at all. But she needed a suitable way of leading into what her mother had in fact told her, and this was better than anything else she could think of.

“So I told her she was just making a blanket defense of the institution of marriage because she had had an exceptionally fine marriage.”

“A point I would have made if you didn’t,” he said, nodding approval. “A very good point.”

“That’s what I thought, but wait. I told her how Jeff had been running around, and being very open about it, or at least that’s Linda’s story—”

“I don’t think there’s any question about it.”

“—and I asked her how she would have felt if Daddy had ever had an affair with another woman.”

“And?”

“Well, can’t you take it from there?”

“I think I know what you’re getting at but I’m not going to say it.”

“That’s it, all right, and now I’m having trouble saying it. But I’ll say it. By God, if that woman could say it I think I can. My father had an affair with another woman. No, there’s more. My father fell in love with another woman. And he wanted to get a divorce. He wanted to divorce my mother and marry another woman.”

He leaned forward, his expression thoughtful. “That’s hard to believe,” he said.

“Hard to believe? It’s impossible to believe, at least for me. But it’s the truth.”

“When did this happen, did she say?”

“Almost twenty years ago. Which means it happened after twenty years of marriage. I guess he was about forty-five at the time. I would have been, oh, I suppose I was a freshman in high school.”

“Thinking back, did you have any idea at the time?”

“Are you kidding? Of course not. God, all my life there’s been one thing I’ve always been absolutely certain of, and that’s that my parents’ marriage was made in heaven. That they had a perfect relationship and were completely devoted to each other.”

“I don’t suppose there’s such a thing as an absolutely perfect marriage.”

“No, of course not... but my parents — well, I’m certain that I’ve always viewed their relationship through rose-colored glasses. And my father has always been a hero to me. But the idea that he wanted to leave my mother, that they actually sat down together and talked in terms of divorce — I’ll tell you something, I think it rattled me more twenty years after the fact than it did her at the time it was happening. Not literally, but it shook the hell out of me. I questioned her as if she was on the witness stand and I was cross-examining her. You know, it’s shaking me up now to talk about it.”

“I can see that. Do you want a drink?”

“I think I do.”

He fixed drinks for both of them, brought her hers, sat down with his in his chair.

He said, “Your father was in his forties.”

“Yes. Around forty-five, I guess. I could figure it out more exactly if it mattered.”

“I was only thinking that it’s supposed to be pretty common at that age. A man gets to be forty-five or fifty and he starts to worry about, oh, the decline of his masculinity, say. Or general worries about growing old. And then some chick turns up, and she thinks he’s fascinating because he’s a mature and intelligent and successful man, and he goes crazy over her because she’s twenty years younger than his wife and it’s an amazing ego thing for him to realize that she’s interested in him. From what I’ve heard, it happens all the time.”

“I think this was different.”

“Oh?”

“I think so.” She leaned forward. “She wouldn’t tell me who the woman was, but—”

“Oh, she knew who it was? I didn’t know that.”

“She knew. This wasn’t what you just described, a middle-aged man and a young girl running around to motels. Did they have motels eighteen or twenty years ago?”

“Of course. Motels came in after the end of the war.”

“Well, it wasn’t that. It was pretty serious, or at least everybody involved thought it was serious at the time. He came right out and said he wanted a divorce, and it was all out in the open that he was seeing this woman. I’m pretty sure she was married, too. I don’t think my mother said so but there was something she said about children being involved, and I didn’t have any brothers and sisters, and she definitely said children, not a child. I think this woman was married with children, and I think she was probably about the same age as my mother.” She paused for a sip of her drink. “And I lived right in that house while all of this was going on and I never had the slightest idea.”

“Do you remember if they had fights? You could have heard loud arguments without knowing what they were about.”

“I don’t think I ever heard either of them raise their voice to the other. I suppose they were very good at keeping up a good front for me while all this was going on. Another thing, I was probably not very perceptive in that area because it never would have occurred to me to notice anything. I just so completely took it for granted that they were happy with each other.”

“How did it work out?”

“What? I was thinking of something, I didn’t hear you.”

“I just wondered how it worked out. Obviously they stayed together, but did she go into any detail?”

She nodded. “A certain amount of detail. She said her first reaction was to give him a divorce. She said it was a terrible shock to her pride, and here she was comparing herself to Linda. She said her pride was probably hurt less than Linda’s because Jeff’s affairs were conducted publicly. The whole state of Arizona knew he was fucking around. She didn’t phrase it that way.”

“No kidding.”

“Whereas my father was discreet. There was him and this woman, and then my mother knew, and presumably this woman’s husband also knew, although maybe he didn’t. Since she never mentioned that the woman had a husband I can’t know for sure that he knew what was going on. But the point is that nobody else knew.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I just wonder. There must have been other people who knew. I bet that woman had at least one friend that she told, and I wonder if my father may have had someone he confided in. And in the course of a couple of years I wonder how many other people heard a little gossip on the subject. You know how quickly gossip moves in this town.”

“Faster than a speeding bullet.”

“So I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the people in their little circle knew. But the point is that my mother didn’t know they knew. She didn’t have to face anything. So in that sense it didn’t matter so much whether they knew or not.”

“You were starting to say how everything resolved itself.”

“Yes. I wish I could remember exactly what she said and how she said it. There were a million questions I wanted to ask, you know, but I felt I had to restrain myself. Evidently what happened was that they decided to postpone any definite action for the time being. They wouldn’t take steps toward a divorce right away, and he wouldn’t move out of the house.”

“He never moved out of the house?”

“No. I don’t know if he slept in the same bed with her during all this. That was one of the questions I couldn’t bring myself to ask her.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“But they spent their nights under the same roof, whatever bed he slept in, and appearances were kept up. And I was kept neatly in the dark, which was one of her main arguments. Until everything was absolutely certain one way or the other she didn’t want me exposed to any trauma, and this made sense to him, too, so the appearances were kept up.”

“But he went on seeing the woman?”

“Evidently. You see, they didn’t talk about it. There was a sort of agreement to that effect, although I doubt they bothered spelling it out. He went on seeing the woman for a while and then it burned itself out. That’s her phrase, incidentally. It burned itself out. Meaning, I suppose, the passion he and the woman had for each other.”

“Do you suppose they were in love?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering about that. On the one hand I want to believe that my father couldn’t have been in love with anyone but my mother, and on the other hand I don’t want to think he’d be capable of wanting to end their marriage over a serious case of the hots.”

“Knowing your father, I’d say it might be a case of the hots, and where did you get that expression, by the way?”

“It’s fairly awful, isn’t it? I think I read it somewhere. I’m sure I never said it before.”

“Well, if you never say it again that’s all right, too. No, the point is that I would guess it might be a basically sexual thing with him, but that he would have to think it was love at the time. And that way it would blow over, or burn itself out I guess you said, because he or even both of them would reach a point where they saw that it was just passion, or the passion would begin to die down a little and they would realize that real love didn’t really enter into it. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes,” she said.

“That sounds more like your dad. From what I know of him, and I think I got to know him fairly well. God knows I thought a lot of him. And I don’t think any less of him on the basis of what you’ve told me tonight, Andrea.”

“Neither do I.”

“Are you sure? You shouldn’t, and I hope it’s true.”

“It is.”

He seemed relieved to hear that, and she guessed that on at least one level his relief had nothing whatever to do with her father.

“I think I’ll just freshen this,” she said. “How about you?”

“Well, make it light. Say, I’ll get them, Andrea.”

“Oh, you look much too comfortable,” she said.

She took her time fixing the drinks. She felt shaky and on edge, her mind trembling with an electric tension that reminded her of Eileen Fradin on diet pills. But in her own case the effect was not the result of pills. It was clearly the product of the conversation they were having. It was an enervating conversation, and in a way that was not entirely unpleasant. And she sensed that it was a very important conversation. She might have been an actress playing a scene at the close of the first act, and the whole structure of the third act would depend on how convincingly she played her part now. But she had a burden most actresses were spared. She had to make up her own lines as she went along.

Seated in the living room once again, with her drink in one hand and a fresh cigarette in the other, she said, “Where were we? I was saying that it just ended. Father’s big romance. I don’t know how long it took, a couple of weeks or a couple of months. I would guess no more than a month. It was never what you could call an arrangement, where the marriage is a marriage in name only and the affair is public knowledge, the way it is in English novels. I don’t know how long the affair went on before my mother knew about it, but I would guess it came out into the open fairly soon. And then I would guess it was over within a month.”

“Not much time in the course of a lifetime.”

She leaned forward, eyes bright. “That’s exactly it! They were together for almost thirty-nine years, and there were two or three bad months, and what does that mean over the whole course of their lives? I asked her how it had changed things afterward and she insisted it hadn’t changed them at all. That her feelings for my father never changed and that his feelings for her never changed, either. That it was something that just happened, and afterward maybe it made each of them appreciate the other a little bit more, but that was all. Now here was something that must have torn her completely apart, Mark, but remember she was telling me about it almost twenty years later, and even though she remembered it vividly she was able to talk about it as something that was ultimately no worse than a bad cold. What’s so funny?”

“‘No worse than a bad cold.’ That’s what they say about something else.”

“What? Oh, I’ve read the expression. It’s syphilis, isn’t it?”

“God, no. Gonorrhea.”

“Well, the same thing.”

“The hell it’s the same thing. Syphilis is a whole lot worse than a bad cold. So is gonorrhea, as I understand it. Another thing they say about gonorrhea is that you’re not a man until you’ve had it.”

“I hope you’re not a man according to that definition.”

“Nope, still a little boy.”

“Well, that’s good.” She fell silent for a moment. Then she said, “She told me they never talked about it after it was over. Except that one night he took her hand and said, ‘I want you to know that everything’s all right now, and there won’t ever be anything else to worry about.’ Or words to that effect.”

“And that was that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And they were set for the rest of their lives. You have to give them both a hell of a lot of credit. It’s obvious that she deserves credit, but so does he. Or don’t you agree?”

“That’s exactly how I feel, but I thought it might be the way I felt about my father. You used an expression before. Faster than a bullet?”

“Faster than a speeding bullet.”

“Yes. What’s that from?”

“Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a mighty locomotive, able to leap tall women in a single bound—”

“Tall buildings.”

“I like it better my way.”

“You would. It’s Superman, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. The old radio program.”

“I thought so. Well, I always thought my father was Superman. Not literally, obviously, but the same way that Robin thinks you’re something special.”

“When actually we both know I’m nothing much.”

“Oh, you’re something special, and don’t think I don’t know it. But you’ll never get the devotion from me you’ll get from Robin, because that’s a very special thing between fathers and daughters. The point is, you never outgrow it. Or at least I never did. I still think my father was Superman. I’ll tell you what I’d like to know.”

“What?”

“Did he still have sex with my mother while he was in love with the woman? I don’t know why I care. Just the kind of curiosity you have when your mind’s in the gutter. Naturally I didn’t ask her.”

“Of course not. Does it matter whether he did or not?”

“Not to me it doesn’t.”

“That doesn’t interest me as much as wondering what the woman was like. That’s what I’d find fascinating.”

“It’s probably someone we know.”

“Really?”

“Really. She was at the funeral. My mother happened to say that, and I wanted to try to find out more, but I decided not to. She came to his funeral. I wonder how she felt. I wonder — oh, there are a million things I wonder. What it felt like for mom to see her at the funeral. But then again she’s probably seen her hundreds of times since it all happened. Thousands of times, even. Maybe they’ve been invited to the same parties for all those years. Maybe they run into each other constantly at the club. And by now it doesn’t matter any more.”

“That rounds it all out,” he said. “Don’t you think it does? I kind of like the idea that she came to his funeral.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

“You made these drinks on the heavy side, didn’t you?”

“I may have. Why?”

“Because I’m feeling mine.”

“Well, so am I, but in an enjoyable way.”

“Oh, I never said I wasn’t enjoying it.”

“You know what would be nice? Except that you don’t like to drink too much when you’ve got work the next morning, but it would be nice if I made us one more round of drinks, and we could take them in the other room and sit on the couch and watch the news.”

“Oh, is it time already?”

“Just about. We could sit on the couch, and we could maybe get a little drunk, and we could possibly even do a little country-style necking.”

“You think we could do that, huh?”

“Except that you have an office to go to tomorrow, and we might wind up having still another round of drinks, and the necking might tend to get out of hand.”

“It just might. Old down-home country-style necking has a way of doing just that. But do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you should make the drinks.”

She took his glass from him and hurried into the kitchen. She swerved just the least bit en route — she really was feeling the drinks.

In her mind she heard a voice. Her father’s voice... Mark’s voice. “Everything’s going to be all right now. There won’t ever be anything else to worry about.”

Oh, it might not be all that easy for Mark and her. But you took things as they came and you found the right way to handle them, and sooner or later things worked out as they were supposed to.

She smiled, a very private and very self-satisfied smile, and then she finished making the drinks. Bringing them back to him, unsteady on her feet, she nonetheless felt calm, in control. It felt good, being in control again.

Friday

December 15, 1972

The morning started badly. She had wanted a shower and had planned on washing her hair before going to work. Toward that end she’d gotten up a half hour early to give her hair ample time to dry. But there was no hot water. While she stood sponging herself at the sink, a pale brown cockroach walked rather nonchalantly up the wall and scuttled into the medicine chest. A shudder went through her and she gritted her teeth, annoyed as much with her own reaction as with the insect itself. Roaches were a fact of life in New York. You couldn’t escape them, certainly not on her salary, and even the expensive new high-rises became infested sooner or later. She had been seeing more than usual lately, probably because a neighbor had had the exterminator come around with his chemicals and sprays. When she got around to it she would call the exterminator herself, and for a few days her apartment would smell of insect killer, and the little bastards would slip through the walls or tunnel through the plumbing and bother someone else. Just a fact of life, a drop of urban local color, like muggers and stalled subway cars and high rentals, and it was true that you could live in a suburb and ride in your own car and never see a mugger or a cockroach, but a couple of months ago she had decided finally and forever that she for one could not live that way, that sharing an apartment in Manhattan with transient insects was a better bargain than sharing a house in Tonawanda with a man she never should have married in the first place.

It was hard to say precisely when she had made the decision. But it had been October when she’d acted upon it, and now it was mid-December and she still couldn’t look at the little bastards without shivering. She could accept them well enough intellectually. Certainly there were enough things about them that could have been worse. They didn’t bite, for example, and they didn’t seem to eat much of anything, and she’d fallen in love with archy and mehitabel in high school, and none of this prepared her for the sight of the creature walking up her wall and into her medicine cabinet as if he owned the place.

Half of her English muffin got stuck in the toaster and she mutilated it getting it out. And she just missed one subway train and waited an unusually long time for the next one. When it came it was crowded. She had to stand all the way from Eighty-sixth Street to Times Square. Normally she would have taken the shuttle across town to Fifth Avenue but she was tired of being crowded, so she left the station and walked across Forty-second Street. After she had gone a block it began raining.

“Well, that just fucking figures,” she said aloud. “Shit!”

No one paid any attention to her.

This was her fifth week at the store. It was a foreign language bookshop at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, and Andrea had managed to get the job because she was more nearly fluent at French than the store manager. That her French was actually quite tentative turned out to be unimportant. The store carried a large stock of titles in French, German, Italian, and Spanish, plus scattered titles in a dozen other languages. No one could be expected to converse in all of those tongues, nor was it often necessary to speak anything but English. While the store’s customers might prefer to read in their native languages, virtually all of them spoke English quite competently.

“The odd merci or danke doesn’t hurt a bit,” Cal had told her, “but appearance and manner is the whole thing. That’s why old Hubbell hired you. It’s all image. You look slightly intellectual but not severe, you don’t talk through your nose, you don’t pop chewing gum, and you don’t dress like a hippie. Considering that you’re overworked and underpaid, how much more can they expect of you? He was lucky to get you.”

“Well, I’m lucky to have the job.”

“Oh, please. How could anyone be lucky to work here? Either the store’s empty or there are sixteen harpies yammering at you in as many languages, none of them one’s own. And when someone dishy does walk in, which happens once every third blue moon, he speaks either Swedish or Urdu and all the English he knows is I goink now and meet my wifes.” She laughed, Cal always made her laugh, and then he’d said, “I don’t know why I stay. I’ve been here almost two years now. I don’t know why I started in the first place. Yes I do. I’d had a little disagreement across the street with that pig at Doubleday. He’s not even there any more. And most of the stores in the neighborhood seemed to be full up, and I thought I’d get on the list and live on unemployment for a month or three, and then I was on that unemployment line once and I couldn’t believe what they put you through. It’s so incredibly tacky, the whole process, and when you think it’s not charity at all, they take it out of your check every week and when you come to get some of your own back they make you feel like you’re on a bread line. Well, my dear, I cashed my first check because I’d waited so long for it, and then I took this job just until something better came up.”

“And here you are.”

“And here I am, lucky me. The months go by and here am I, and I can’t quit now, not until Christmas comes and brings my merry little bonus check with it. Not that it’s going to be enough to retire, but why save them the cost? If my bonus covers my own Christmas tips to the doormen and super and all the other seasonally smiling faces, I’ll be glad to break even. But I don’t think I’ll stick it out much after that. My goodness, I’ve been in bookstores since I came to this town.

That’s — well, it doesn’t matter how many years that comes to. Enough years, let us say. I can walk in anywhere and get a job just like that. I don’t have to stay here with the Urdu speakers. You know, I started working in bookstores in the first place because I always loved to read and I welcomed the chance to associate with literate people. Well, presumably literate people, anyway. So here I find myself surrounded by books I can’t read and people who don’t talk too good the English.”

“You could get a manager’s job, couldn’t you? With your experience.”

“Oh, who would want the responsibility, Andrea? If I were to have anything so crass as ambition I’d want to be ambitious for something more worthwhile than managing a bookstore. No, I’m far happier being a flighty little faggot clerk, and there’s a great security in being paid less than your worth, you know. If makes the bastards quite reluctant to see the last of you. I suppose I could earn more money but all that would mean is I’d pay more taxes and take more cabs. The walking’s good for my waistline. I have simple tastes, you know. And my apartment’s rent-controlled, and I’ve never cultivated a palate for caviar or cocaine. Now what sort of palate would you want for cocaine, do you suppose? Cleft, I daresay. Oh, Andrea, don’t stare, but get a load of what just waltzed in. Isn’t he divine?”

“Not my type, I’m afraid.”

“Well, he’s certainly my type. But am I his? I just know it’s going to be another of I goink now and meet my wifes. Ah, once more into the breach, dear friends.”

At the beginning she had decided she could get along well enough with Calvin Burleigh, but she hadn’t expected that they would become at all close. She had never been friendly with a homosexual, not to her knowledge, and while Cal was not at all effeminate he was obviously gay and quite candid about it. Indeed, it was his openness more than his manner that made her uneasy at first. The homosexuals she’d dealt with in Buffalo — a hairdresser, a florist, a photographer who’d taken some unremarkable pictures of Robin — had been at least as patently homosexual as Cal, but would never have alluded to their homosexuality in front of Andrea.

Ultimately, of course, it was his openness that made it possible for them to be friends. And in the short time she’d known him she’d come to the conclusion that a male homosexual was an ideal sort of friend for her to have just then. She was at a very difficult and demanding stage in her life, and it was fortunate that she was able to realize as much. Her life was exciting for the first time in more years than she wanted to think about. She was constantly meeting new people, constantly going places and doing things, finding out over and over again the extraordinary extent of her new freedom. She could go anywhere, do anything, take any route she wished to become her own real self. That was wonderful, thrilling freedom, but it was also hazardous.

The people whose lives touched hers were among the hazards. Friends were essential because you needed them because living alone after almost ten years was very nearly impossible to begin with, and the city, cold and grim in the late fall, tended to magnify solitude immeasurably. That solitude constituted a kind of personal space which she very much needed, but at the same time it could become in itself a negative presence.

Friendships with heterosexual men did not seem to be genuinely attainable. Either they were founded upon sex or they withered away for lack of it. And friendships with women were also difficult. For women without men Andrea was competition; for women with men she was a threat.

So her friendship with Cal had arisen in response to this situation. At the onset she began to think of him as the closest thing she had to a friend. Now she dropped the qualification. He was a friend, and a good one.

This morning he was already in the shop when she arrived. She managed a smile in response to his greeting, then hurried into the back room and hung her coat on a hanger. In the rest room she did a quick job of drying her hair.

“Oh, poor thing,” Cal said. “You really got caught in that mess, didn’t you?”

“It started just after I left the subway.”

“Well, it seems to have ended now that you’re safely inside. All for your benefit, lucky you.”

At least her hair was short and would dry with no difficulty. She’d had it cropped close to her head on her third day in New York. She had been letting it grow for some time and the transformation had been startling. The symbolism of the gesture had not eluded her at the time. She had just cut off all her ties, and now she was cutting off her hair, and rendering herself just a shade butch in the course of this liberation. Well, she had decided, to hell with symbolism. Short hair was easier and made her look and feel younger. And the air was filthy in Manhattan. You had to wash your hair several times a week and with long hair that was just too much trouble.

She got a carton of books from in back and busied herself making room for them on the shelves. They had arrived the day before from Gallimard, and they were an assortment of suspense novels in French. All of the books were by American authors. They had been originally published in English and had subsequently been translated laboriously into French, printed in France, and now this carton had made the trip back across the ocean, its contents waiting to serve as bedtime reading for chefs and waiters and Senegalese diplomats.

The morning passed with little incident and less strain. She waited on a handful of customers, checking their credit cards and making out the sales slips, listing each title sold on the inventory-control sheet. An American woman — Midwestern, by her accent — wasted fifteen minutes of her time comparing French dictionaries without finding one she liked well enough to buy. The manager, Mr. Hubbell, arrived a little after eleven and went into the back room to go over the day’s mail. He was a plump, owlish little man, always polite but quite reserved, who lived somewhere on Long Island with his wife and mother-in-law. His name was J. R. Hubbell, and neither Andrea nor Cal had learned what the initials stood for.

It wasn’t a bad morning, all things considered, in light of the awful way it had begun. It was dull, but in a way that was not uncomfortable, and the hours passed quickly enough. The worst mornings were those which followed nights of heavy drinking, and it had been quite a while now since she’d had a morning like that. A month ago she had found herself slipping all too easily into a pattern of fairly constant drinking (and the old fear from last time started to creep back). It was so easy to do when you lived alone. Since then she’d kept an eye on herself. She would drink socially, she would have a glass of wine with her dinner, and on weekend nights she would sometimes let herself get drunk, alone or with company. But when she had work the following morning she had taught herself to go to bed sober. It would have been worth doing if only to avoid those breathless hungover mornings when the hours from nine to noon took days of subjective time to pass, when every customer was a challenge and every word that she had to speak an effort. But it was also a good discipline, and she needed to discipline herself and keep herself operating within some sort of orbit.

It was all too easy to lack discipline in this city. All too easy to spin haywire, to shake loose of one’s moorings. And then you looked beneath your feet one day and couldn’t see the ground, and that could be a very terrifying sensation indeed.

At noon Cal went off to lunch and Mr. Hubbell joined Andrea in the front of the store. As usual they worked efficiently enough together but without the special harmony she enjoyed with Cal. At one o’clock Cal returned and she went around the corner to the crowded little luncheonette where she usually had lunch. She sat at the counter and ordered a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee.

The counterman had curly black hair and prominent eyebrows. He smiled a lot, revealing badly aligned teeth, and he refilled her coffee cup without her having to ask.

He said, “How about some dessert, angel? We got some lemon chiffon pie’s really good today.”

“Sounds good, but I don’t think so.”

“Aw, you don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive, doll.”

“Got to watch my figure.”

“Aw, c’mon. Not while I’m around to watch it for you.”

“You’re a dirty old man, Louie.”

“Just what I am and proud of it, doll.”

The flirting was automatic for both of them, easy and meaningless. In all probability she and Louie could pass on the street without recognizing each other. But in the few weeks she’d been a customer of his he had grown familiar with her in a pleasant way, and it helped to have people who recognized you. It gave you a sense of identity in a city that could easily become overpoweringly impersonal.

Already she was beginning to know people, a handful in the blocks around the store, a larger number in the immediate neighborhood of her apartment. In most cases she did not know the names of these people, or if she did her knowledge was limited to a first name. She knew Louie’s name because she had heard other regulars at the lunch counter call him by it. She knew the names of a couple of the checkout girls at the Red Apple at Eighty-ninth and Broadway because their uniforms had their names embroidered just above the pocket. She didn’t know the name of the stoop-shouldered man at the liquor store, but he knew hers and would cash small checks for her. The pharmacist knew her name because her prescription for birth control pills was in his file. His clerk at the front counter did not know her name, but did know her brand of cigarettes. She was, in sum, already becoming a part of the neighborhood she lived in. When she walked the handful of blocks to the subway in the morning, or from the subway to her apartment at night, there was almost always someone who gave her a wave or a hello, and sometimes she’d exchange greetings with half a dozen people or more.

All of this had happened in two months. It pleased her that she could have put down roots to such an extent in so short a period of time.

Of course there was another side to it. If she were to move to Australia tomorrow, would any of them notice she was gone?

All spring and summer things had been bad between them. She would alternate, sometimes blaming him, sometimes putting the blame on herself. There were times when it seemed to her that he really had nothing to do with the way she felt, that no one had much to do with what was happening inside her. She felt so cut off from everyone and everything that bordered on her life.

She began having orgasms infrequently, then not at all. Before long she came to dread his approaches. She could bear intercourse but found herself loathing the preliminaries. Foreplay became repugnant to her, and the less specifically sexual it was, the more offensive it became. Kissing and touching were awful. Sometimes she thought it was him, and she tried to figure out why his touch should repel her. She thought it might be a reaction, long after the fact, to his affair — perhaps she felt his body had been soiled by contact with another woman. But she could not really believe this was the case, and eventually she decided that she was simply rejecting intimacy with anyone.

Gradually she established a pattern of sitting up late after he went to sleep. It was evident that this bothered him but he did not attempt to talk about it, as they both avoided discussing any aspects of what was going wrong between them. That winter she had begun reading a great deal. She had always been a reader, but now it became the chief thing that she did. She would go to the library on Brighton and take out half a dozen novels at a time. She read during the day, when he was at work and Robin at school, and she read for an hour or two after dinner, and then she would read far into the night while he slept. It didn’t seem to matter very much what she read, as long as it was fiction and not terribly demanding, as long as it gave her the opportunity to lose herself between its pages. Mystery stories were good, and the library seemed to have an infinite stock of them. She would latch onto a writer and read her way through his work, then move on to another. Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers, Ellery Queen — she never bothered to puzzle out who had committed the murder, just let herself float along on the crest of the narrative.

Sometimes, when she didn’t feel like reading, or when there was nothing around to read, she would sit in the living room with a bottle and a glass and spend an hour or two sipping straight whiskey.

At two or three in the morning she would put her book away and rinse out her glass, and then she would slip into their bedroom and undress quietly in the darkness. She would always be very careful not to wake him.

Some mornings he would desire her upon awakening. He might touch her briefly while she slept, and then would roll his body on top of hers and take her. At first it usually seemed to be happening in a dream, but then she would awaken to feel his weight on her and his hips pumping rhythmically into her.

It did not bother her. She didn’t mind being fucked. She would keep her eyes closed and her body relaxed, and although she might meet his thrusts with little pelvic movements of her own, she did not really participate very much, nor did he seem to desire her participation. He was using her, of course, masturbating himself with her body, and it seemed to her that he had the right. He was getting little else from her, after all.

She wondered occasionally if he had anyone else. She didn’t think he did, but realized that she didn’t seem to care much one way or the other. When he had been seeing someone — and she-never did learn the identity of the woman he’d had an affair with, they never discussed it at all, never came closer to discussing it than they had done on that night when she told him about her father’s infidelity — when he had been having his affair, it had mattered enormously to her. And when she had known for certain that it was over the relief she’d felt had been monumental.

But that was then. Now it was hard for her to imagine what she’d been so upset about. She just didn’t seem to care. She didn’t seem to care about anything. She went to parties with Mark, spent evenings with one or two other couples. She went shopping with her mother, took Robin to her music lesson, drove her to Sunday school and picked her up afterward. She did all the things she had always done and walked through all the scenes of her life as if in a dream, as if sleepwalking.

In July he took her to New York for five days, a long weekend. They’d gotten into the habit of coming to New York once a year, and they had last driven down over Christmas vacation, taking Robin with them for the first time. So another trip just six months later was atypical, and although they didn’t discuss it she knew the motivation for it. He was concerned, and thought he would treat her to a trip as a peace offering of some sort. And perhaps he thought that being alone together would give them a chance to recapture the intimacy that had lately drained from their lives.

It was in New York, really, that she knew she would have to leave him.

They stayed at the Sherry-Netherland, ate in expensive restaurants, saw several shows. He would suggest things and she would agree, or he would ask her for suggestions and she would offer something she knew he would enjoy. They were together a great deal of the time and she was careful always to be pleasant company, cheerful and alert and seemingly involved. She went to bed when he did, and most of the nights they made love. She gave every sign of participating with enthusiasm and enjoyment, but she did not enjoy the lovemaking, nor did she enjoy the meals or the shows or the city itself.

On the last night after they made love she got out of bed and went to the window. Their room faced the park and the view, by day or by night, was quite magnificent. For just a moment she visualized herself raising the window and climbing over the sill. But she did not seriously entertain the thought of suicide. Rather she stood looking out at the city, her city, and wanted to reach out and take hold of it. She belonged here, she had always belonged here, this time she would know how to handle it, and it was high time she did something about it before it was too late.

But she didn’t say anything, not for weeks. She went back to her life in Buffalo and it was like being in a black-and-white movie. There was no color. Everything and everyone bored her. Robin bored her, and it horrified her to realize this because she loved her child. And Robin was not and had not ever been a boring child.

She knew she was going to leave, although she did not know when, and she found herself walking through her days with a secret smile on her lips. Because she would be leaving all of this, she would lose all this monotony and go looking for herself again.

Her plan took shape gradually in her mind. At night she would sit up reading Perry Mason stories, but periodically she would set the book aside and look off into the middle distance, filling in some more of the plan’s details. She would go to New York. She would take an inexpensive apartment, probably on the Upper West Side. Something temporary, because she would need more space later on when Robin joined her. She would have enough cash to get settled, but as soon as possible she would find a job. The job, too, could be construed as temporary. It hardly mattered what the job was, just so it paid her enough to live on. She couldn’t expect anything terribly glamorous, wasn’t qualified for much, but she was bright and personable enough to get something.

Sometimes she thought of taking Robin. But she had to rule that out for several reasons. If she took Robin, Mark was sure to come after her. And it would probably mean pulling Robin out of school in the middle of the term, because school would start before she would be ready to leave. And she had to be settled before she could have Robin with her. It would be awful to be separated from Robin, but it would be worse to stay here, impossible to stay here.

She kept wanting to discuss it with them, to give them some clue. Her husband, her mother, her daughter. But there was never a right time, never a way to put the words together and utter them.

Her mother, she was certain, would think she was crazy. Literally crazy. Mark would want to talk things out, work things out, settle things in bed. And Robin — no, no matter how many times she tried to imagine herself telling Robin, she couldn’t make herself believe for one moment that the child would understand. It was not something a child could possibly understand, and not something she herself could properly explain.

It would be hard enough to leave. It would be impossible to stay, but still it would be hard enough to leave, and talking about it first would only make it harder.

One day in October she was ready. Robin was in school and Mark was at work. Andrea packed a large suitcase and a small suitcase. She drove to the bank and withdrew precisely half of the money from the joint savings account. She drove from there to a used car dealer on Delaware and Hertel and sold her car, accepting what he offered her. From the dealer’s office she called a taxi which drove her to the airport.

By two-thirty she was in a phone booth in La Guardia with a few dollars in change on the shelf in front of her. They could fail to understand her. They could hate her. Mark could make it difficult for her to get Robin.

But they couldn’t make her go back there. Nobody could make her go back. Nobody.

At four o’clock Cal gave the mail orders to the boy from the messenger service and sent him on his way to the Post Office. Then he looked at his watch and sighed. “Extraordinary,” he said.

“What is?”

“We’re all of a week away from the shortest day of the year. And today, paradoxically, is shaping up as one of the longest days of the year.”

“It hasn’t been so bad, has it?”

“Well, when they dwindle down to a precious few, as old Walter Huston used to sing. And Friday’s always a long day. Are you staying in town this weekend?”

“Where would I go?”

“Where indeed. I’m staying here and I wish I weren’t. I was hoping someone would invite me somewhere. On Friday I always get itchy feet. Speaking of which, Thank God it’s Friday, and let’s have a drink to that effect when we get out of here, what say?”

“I have a date for dinner.”

“Lucky you. I wish I did. Find out if he’s got a friend, why don’t you.”

“Oh, fun-nee.”

“But you’ve got time for a quick drink, don’t you? Of course you do.”

They went to a place on Forty-seventh and Madison. The bar was already mobbed with advertising types when they got there. Cal led her through the crowd to a small table in the back. They ordered drinks. She took out a cigarette and he had a match burning just as the cigarette reached her mouth.

When their drinks arrived he raised his glass. “To Friday,” he said, “and everything it represents. Namely the liberation of the human spirit from the shackles of voluntary servitude. To freedom, Andrea pet, even if only for a weekend.”

Her drink was a vodka martini, very cold and very dry and very large. “One of these is going to be plenty,” she said.

“Two will be magical.”

“Two would take the top of my head off and I might need it later tonight. Plus I don’t really have the time.”

“Heavy date?”

“Well, a date.”

“Somebody who promises to play an important role in the life of Our Girl Andrea?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I met him at a party a couple of weeks ago. No, wait a minute. It was just last weekend.”

“The photographer?”

“It was the photographer’s party. How did you remember that? I hardly remember.”

“I may take more of an interest in your life than you do, pet. Who’s this one? Not another camera pest.”

“No, he’s a school teacher. High school. I think he teaches history. Something like that, anyway.”

“What else is like history?”

“I don’t know. Social studies, civics, whatever.”

“He single?”

“Divorced. Well, separated.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s with the knowing uh-huh?”

“Just that the official definition of separated is that his wife wasn’t at the party.”

“Well, he said he was separated. I didn’t ask if he had a legal separation. I don’t, anyway. And I don’t care if he does, or if he’s cheating on his wifie-poo, or much of anything. The last thing I want right now is a relationship with a future, Cal.”

“Everybody says that. Constantly.”

“I happen to mean it. I’m serious.”

“Oh, I know. I’m just making maternal noises, that’s all. It’s a tendency of mine. You’ve remarked on it in the past, you know.”

“True. And I suppose I’m glad you care. I know I’m glad you care. But I’m a big girl now, baby.”

“Oh, I know you are.” His hand covered hers. “And I’m proud of you, if you care to know. The number I do on you, part of it is just teasing, you know.”

“I know.”

“And the part that isn’t, well, you do inspire concern, Andrea. You just seem so fucking vulnerable.”

“Well, that’s a hell of a thing.”

“Andrea, what’s the matter? Baby, sit down, please sit down. What’s wrong?”

“Just because I’m standing on my own two feet—”

“Well, don’t stand on them now. Sit on your charmingly boyish behind, won’t you? That’s better. Darling, are we being terribly touchy this evening or did I say something awful? Because I certainly didn’t mean to.”

She picked up her glass, took a long drink of the clear cold liquid. She felt a little steadier now. It was funny how his words had rocked her, how abruptly and dramatically she had reacted. Oh, she understood what had prompted her reaction, but it still was surprising.

“What did I say, Andrea?”

“Something just went down the wrong way, okay? Let’s just forget it.”

“All right.”

“If we could just change the subject.”

“Excellent. Let’s talk about shoplifting.”

“Oh?”

“Shoplifting,” he said. “I was thinking about it just this afternoon. It’s one thing I’ve been missing at the store. Now every bookstore I’ve ever worked for is positively plagued by boosters. That’s the underworld term for them, you know. Boosters. Some of them are devout lovers of literature who can’t afford to buy as many books as they’d care to own, while others are frankly in it for the money. I remember I was working at the Bookmasters store on Eighth Street and this one dude the size of the Flatiron Building came in with one of those canvas airlines bags, opened it up and began filling it with copies of the number-one bestseller, whichever it happened to be at the time. I think it was Death of a President. A big expensive book, anyway, and he took eight or ten copies easily, and do you know no one even considered stopping him? An intimidating presence. Junkies’ll steal the current books, you see, and then they can sell them to one of the used book stores as review copies for a fourth of the cover price. Now I would always tend to distinguish between the lovers of literature and the professional rip-off artists, you know, and I’d let the student types get away with murder. I didn’t own the store, after all, but I tended to come down a little hard on the junkies just to discourage their custom, because they were not at all the sort of people one cared to pal around with.

“But at our sweatshop I haven’t seen a book thief yet, and it’s the damnedest thing. The professionals won’t steal what they can’t sell, so that keeps them out, and I guess the various wogs who amble in looking for a good read just weren’t raised in a culture where books were made to be stolen. It makes me a little anxious, to tell you the truth. Maybe I’ve lost my old sharpness working here. Maybe I’ll find myself letting shoplifters walk all over me.”

How sweet he was, she thought. Breezing along with his monologue, not even pausing for her reactions to save her having to react. But it was all right now. She was all right now. What he’d said had echoed a conversation she’d had a week and a half ago, and it had caught her by surprise.

It had been a night in the middle of the week. She’d returned to her apartment late the night before to find the phone ringing as she entered. It had been Cass Drozdowski. He was coming to New York the following day on business and would be staying over. Would she have dinner with him?

“Just pick out a restaurant,” he told her. “Someplace decent. The client’s paying for it.”

She had named a restaurant and set a time, and the following night she was careful to arrive at the restaurant precisely ten minutes late. He was already at the table, a drink in front of him, and he got lazily to his feet when the headwaiter led her to the table. “You’re looking good,” he said, reaching out both hands to take hold of her hands. She leaned forward and accepted a kiss on the cheek.

The conversation through dinner was deliberately casual. It had undertones, of course, and now and then their eyes would meet accidentally, then shy away from each other.

Over coffee she said, “Does he know you’re seeing me?”

“He asked me to.”

“Oh?”

“I think Mark would have liked to come to New York himself but he felt it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“It would be a terrible idea.”

“Probably. He suggested in a very offhand way that maybe I could give you a call. He’s a little worried about you.”

“Nobody has to worry about me, Cass.”

He acted as though she had not spoken. “So I said I’d give you a call. I’d been planning on seeing you in any case, as a matter of fact.”

“I wondered what you had in mind.”

“Pardon me?”

“When you called. I still don’t know exactly what you’ve got in mind but I’ll say this to get it out of the way. I don’t want to go to bed with you, Cass.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well, it’s traditional, isn’t it? Right after a woman splits with her husband everybody wants to take a shot at her. Just because you’ve already been there doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not looking for a return engagement.” She glanced up at him and was sorry she’d spoken that bluntly. She said, “I shouldn’t have put it so strongly, Cass. I just wanted to clear the air.”

“We’ve always kept the air pretty clear between us, Andrea.”

“And sometimes there wasn’t much air between us in the first place. I don’t regret that little interlude, incidentally. In case you were wondering.”

“I’m glad.”

“And I hope you don’t regret it either.”

His face relaxed in a smile. “There aren’t all that many things I regret. You’re certainly not one of them. As a matter of fact, most of the things I regret are the things I didn’t do, not the things I did. Not that I haven’t done a few stupid things in my life, but somehow it doesn’t seem awfully productive to regret them. Want a brandy?”

“If you’re having one.”

“I think I’ll have a little scotch, myself.”

“I’ll have a brandy.”

He caught the waiter’s eye, ordered drinks. “You’ve got him in a bind, you know,” he said. “He doesn’t really know what to do.”

“Mark? I’ve been perfectly open with him.”

“He thinks you’ll change your mind.”

“Well, he’s wrong.”

“Maybe. It’s a kind of a double bind. He’s trying to decide whether you’re going to want to come back and at the same time he’s trying to figure out whether or not he wants you back. It’s a confusing situation for him.”

“I just told you—”

“I know what you told me. The kid’s a big element in all of this. Robin. He doesn’t want to use her as a weapon but he’s damned if he’s going to let you bring her up in New York City. He says he’ll fight you on that, Andrea.”

“Oh, the hell with that.” She had already thought of all of this, but she could nonetheless not help reacting. “He can’t keep me from taking her. I’m Robin’s mother.”

She went on, trying to keep herself from getting hysterical, and when she paused he said, “What I’ve been telling Mark is the same thing I’ll tell you. This is all premature speculation. You’ve already said you don’t want to pull her out of school in the middle of the term. That means she’s set until June. He hired a housekeeper, you know.”

“So I understand.”

“Robin gets along with her well enough. She misses you, though. She can’t really understand why you’re not home with her.”

“Watch it, Cass.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake, Andrea.”

“I mean the role of fucking moral authority and wise old family counselor doesn’t sit that well with me.

Does Mark know you were fucking his wife once upon a time?”

“Not unless he learned it from you.”

“From me! Why would I tell him?”

He shrugged. “It’s not exactly unheard of, you know. Husbands and wives can hurl a lot of shit at each other when they fight. In a good knock-down-drag-out battle they don’t care who it lands on, themselves included. I thought you might have said something to him.”

“Why? Has he acted differently?”

“No. But I don’t know that he would. He can be very open, but he’s also good at keeping things to himself.”

“Well, I still don’t know him.”

“Did you ever really try?”

“Oh, please,” she said.

They had two more rounds of drinks before he called for the check and signed it. Outside she said, “You can just put me in a cab, Cass. It’s silly for you to run all the way uptown when your hotel’s three blocks from here.”

“I’ll ride up with you. They tell me this town’s full of muggers and perverts.”

“No passes, though, huh?”

“Oh, hell.”

She clutched his arm. “I’m sorry. But I understand men think they can have any woman they’ve had in the past.”

“You understand that, do you?”

“It’s what I’ve read. Isn’t it true?”

“Probably. Aren’t women the same way?”

“I hadn’t even thought of it that way.”

“No passes, Andrea. Your virtue’s safe with me.”

“I know I’m being silly. I’m sorry.”

“Forget it.”

When the cab got to her apartment she felt she had to invite him in. He was hesitant but she repeated the invitation and he paid for the cab and followed her to her door, and into the small apartment. One drink and he could go track down another cab and be on his way, she thought. And what, really, had she ever seen in him? In Buffalo he’d had a certain kind of dash, an irreverence that had been refreshing, but in Manhattan he was just an upstate lawyer gawking at tall buildings. One drink and she’d yawn and talk about having to get up early for work, and he’d take the hint and get out of her apartment, and out of her life.

But when he had his one drink and rose to go without her having to yawn a hint at him, she said, “Oh, it’s early, Cass. You don’t want to go back to your hotel now, do you? Unless you’ve got something more exciting to look forward to than an empty room.”

“No, but don’t you have to get up early?”

“I’ve become a night person. Let me freshen that for you.” She made new drinks for both of them, put on the radio and found the FM jazz station. She sat on the couch with her shoes off and her legs crossed. “Aren’t you warm? The valves in the radiator don’t work and there’s no way to regulate the heat. Take your tie and jacket off if you want.”

“I’m comfortable,” he said.

It seemed to her that he finished his drink rather quickly. He stood up, yawning unconvincingly. “Maybe you’re a night person,” he said, “but I’ve got to be in court tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you stay here.”

“Where did you put my coat? Is this the closet?”

“I said why don’t you stay here.” She came up behind him, leaned her body against his. “Don’t leave me.”

“Andrea—”

“I don’t want to be alone.” Her hand moved to his groin. His fingers took hold of her wrist.

“No,” he said.

“Oh, shit.”

He drew away from her, turned to face her. “Come on, now. I guess that last round of drinks wasn’t a very good idea.”

“I want you to come to bed with me.”

“No you don’t. You’re a little tired and a little worn out emotionally, that’s all.”

“Cass.”

“Things are complicated enough, don’t you think?”

She had a little more control over herself now. She was just beginning to shake inside, just beginning to realize that she had done all of this involuntarily. It was an upsetting realization and she didn’t want to dwell on it just yet.

She said, “Cass, what happened to us?”

“What happened to you and me? Nothing tragic. We turned into one of the all-time great brother and sister acts. You always said that’s what would happen to us. Why be surprised that it did?”

“I really wanted you to go to bed with me. I didn’t plan this. I swear to God I didn’t.”

“I believe you.”

“I hope you do. I’m glad you had more sense than I did. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“You’re just so damned vulnerable, that’s all.”

“No! Don’t say that!”

“Andrea, don’t cry.”

“You mustn’t say that,” she said. “It’s not true. It isn’t, it isn’t true at all.”

The hot water was restored when she returned to her apartment, and she was back in plenty of time to shower and wash her hair. By six-thirty she was dressed and waiting for her date. Her history teacher, David Kolodny. He would come by for her at seven, so she had ample time to call Buffalo. She had sort of planned to call. It had been almost a week since she had spoken to Robin.

She never made the conscious decision not to call. Instead she kept finding things to do. She straightened the apartment, wiped out a couple of ashtrays. She started to fix herself a drink, then changed her mind and made a cup of instant coffee instead. By then it was ten minutes to seven and she couldn’t very well place the call because he might arrive while she was talking. She sat down and had a cigarette.

He was on time almost to the minute. She took his coat and showed him to a chair. “There’s scotch and vodka,” she said. “Orange juice and tomato juice to mix with the vodka.”

“Tomato juice, if it’s no trouble.”

How much trouble was tomato juice? She mixed a pair of Bloody Marys and sat down on the couch. She looked him over while he was saying something not terribly memorable about his day at school. He was not unattractive, a loose-limbed bearish man with an abundant moustache that drooped a little more than was absolutely necessary. He had large brown eyes that someone must have told him were soulful and dark brown hair going thin on top. His clothes were West Side casual — an old tweed jacket of no particular color, a plaid flannel shirt, loose-fitting brown slacks, ankle-length western-style boots. His clothing suited the rest of him, and all in all he went well with her apartment.

“Nice apartment,” he said. “You have just the one room?”

“What you see is what you get.”

“Well, that’s enough space, really. I must have about the same square footage but I’ve got two small rooms instead of one large one. At the time I took it I thought I’d want a separate bedroom but now I think I made a mistake. I’m on Ninety-eighth and West End.”

“How long have you been there?”

“Five, six months. You?”

“About two months. The furniture’s what the landlord had in the basement plus some choice pieces from the Salvation Army. I didn’t want to run up the costs because this is only temporary. I’ll need more room when I have my daughter with me.”

“When will that be?”

“After the school year ends. In June, I suppose.”

“You must have told me you had a daughter but it slipped my mind. How old is she?”

So they talked about her daughter and his two sons until they had finished the Bloody Marys. His boys were thirteen and eleven and lived with their mother in Park Slope. “So they’re just a subway ride away,” he said. “It makes things a lot easier.”

“It must.”

“I’d show you pictures of them but I decided to stop carrying them. I felt I was doing too good a job of living up to the divorced-father stereotype.” He put his glass on the coffee table. “Getting hungry? If you like Chinese, there’s a fairly decent Szechuan place a few blocks uptown.”

“That sounds fine.”

It wasn’t terribly hard to meet men. She had wondered about that, speculating on the chances that her age and her lack of contacts might make things difficult for her. Not that she had cared all that much originally. Her fantasies before she left Buffalo had been ones of liberation rather than ones of involvement with someone new and exciting. And even after she had come to New York, she found that she wanted men in her life primarily to avoid being upset over their absence. She wanted to meet men and talk with them and spend time with them and sleep with them not for the pleasure of their company but because such activity was part of a full life.

But God, she did not want to be involved. At the beginning she had even tended to resist Cal’s friendship because it might constitute a demand on her, a limitation of her freedom. That was silly and she quickly realized as much, but it showed her just how great a premium she was inclined to place upon her independence.

On Cal’s first visit to her apartment, she’d indicated the cast-off and mismatched furniture with a wave of her hand. “All garbage, but the price was right. And the place is temporary anyway until I get my kid back from her daddy.”

“But that’s months and months,” he said. “You could replace some of this, and a little paint would eliminate some of the clashing, tie the color scheme together. Just in the interest of making it more livable, you know.”

“I don’t want to bother.”

“It wouldn’t even be that much bother, and God knows the expense wouldn’t be much. You could just—”

“No, you don’t understand. I’d just as soon keep it as tacky and anonymous as a hotel room. Oh, Cal, I thought about getting a kitten. I’ve always liked cats. But I won’t get one and I won’t even get a fucking philodendron because I don’t want anything that has to be fed and watered. I don’t want to be some cat’s mommy.”

“What has that got to do with painting that table? I’m not sure I follow you.”

“I’m sure you don’t. Maybe there’s nothing to follow. Oh — I don’t want to define myself in terms of externals. I’ve always defined myself in terms of other people, her daughter and her mother and his wife. I don’t want that. Right now I’m overreacting and I know it but it suits me for the time being. I have a dull job. Well, that’s fine, because I don’t want to be labeled by what I do. Or by how I live or dress or who I’m with or — does this make any sense?”

He scratched his head, studied her for a moment before replying. “I don’t know if it makes sense,” he said. “I’m a poor judge of what’s sensible and what isn’t. But I think I know what you mean.”

“And?”

“Well, we’re all defined by these things, aren’t we? By ourselves and by the rest of the world, to a greater or lesser extent. You’re probably more inner-directed than I am—”

“I’m not sure of that.”

“—but even so you can hardly help trying to see yourself as others see you, and that all has something to do with how you live and what work you do and everything else.”

“Maybe I just want some time first. And some space.”

“Well, I can understand that.”

“Last time I scared myself to death and left out of fear. This time, whatever I do, I hope it will be because I’ve got a clearer idea who I am. Then maybe I’ll let the rest of the world know.”

“Please let me be one of the first.”

Over hot-sour soup and spicy chicken with peanuts and fried preserved pork with vegetables, over a great many small cups of rather insipid tea, she found out a bit more about David Kolodny than she cared to.

Not that she learned anything that put her off. He had seemed like a pleasant and basically decent guy on first meeting, and that impression was not contradicted but reinforced. He was in his early forties. He had been in the army in Korea and had married within a year or two after his discharge.

His marriage had broken up almost two years ago. He’d lived at the YMCA for a short time to get his bearings, then shared an apartment with a girl friend until six months ago, when that relationship had dissolved and he’d found his apartment on Ninety-eighth Street. Reading between the lines, she guessed that the relationship with the girl friend had failed because he was still hung up on his wife.

Or perhaps he was more hung up on their house. Several years earlier they had purchased a brownstone in Park Slope, which she knew was somewhere in Brooklyn, and they’d spent all their spare time reconditioning it. Evidently the wife had waited until the house was in fairly good shape before deciding she didn’t want David to live in it any more.

He told her quite a bit about the house. Their conversation was deliberately anecdotal, because they had already established that they didn’t have an enormous amount in common. She knew next to nothing about Brooklyn, where he had lived all his life, or Brooklyn College, where he had gone to school. He knew that Buffalo was near Niagara Falls and they got a hell of a lot of snow there, and he knew that Bryn Mawr was in the general vicinity of Philadelphia. So they got that out of the way and he talked about his house in Park Slope and his classes full of juvenile delinquents in Washington Heights and she talked about her customers at the bookstore and they both talked about shops and restaurants they had discovered in the neighborhood.

After dinner he suggested a movie. There was an Ingmar Bergman double bill at Loew’s 83rd, he said, or they could walk up Broadway and see what was playing at the Riviera, if she’d rather.

“What I’d rather is not go to a movie at all,” she told him. “I don’t think I could sit through one. What I’d like to do is go someplace and have a few drinks and unwind a little.”

“Any place in particular?”

“You know the neighborhood better than I do.”

“There’s a bar around the corner from my place that I drop into every now and then. It’s just a neighborhood ginmill but it’s quiet and comfortable.”

“That sounds fine.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a couple of beers myself.”

He paid the check, and she didn’t even make a token effort to split it with him. Well, he’d asked her out, hadn’t he? Maybe she’d buy a round at his bar, if they had more than one round.

She wondered if he’d had his heart set on a movie. Too bad about it if he did. There was no need to be self-sacrificing, no need to pretend to enthusiasms she didn’t feel. She might never see this man again, and if she didn’t they would both survive. Neither of them was anything to the other; they were together because being together would, with a little luck, be preferable to being alone.

She might sleep with him or she might not. She had not yet decided. He wanted her to, she could tell that much, but he wouldn’t be devastated if she decided otherwise, any more than she would have been crushed if he hadn’t wanted her.

A shame she hadn’t been this sensible ten years ago. But you had to learn things. You weren’t born knowing them.

The bar he took her to was dim and quiet. There was no waiter, so he got her scotch and his beer at the bar and brought them to the table.

The conversation moved at once to a more intimate level. They talked about their respective spouses. She said she’d wanted to have Robin fly down over Christmas, but that her husband had refused. “If I want to see her I can come there, that’s the position he’s taking. He says she’s too young to fly by herself but that’s bullshit. She’s old enough.”

“He just wants to make things tough for you.”

“That or he’s afraid I wouldn’t send her back.”

“Sounds pretty paranoid.”

The mutual sympathy was automatic in conversations of this sort, and she no longer found it surprising. Here she was, a woman who had left her husband on her own volition, and here he was, a man whose wife had pushed him out of his own house, and each of them was automatically assuming that the other’s absent spouse was in the wrong. In actual fact she probably had more in common with his wife than with him, as did he with Mark. Sex, she decided, and where you happened to be had an awful lot to do with the way you chose to look at things.

“You deserve a lot of credit,” he said. “It took a lot of guts to do what you did.”

“I suppose so.”

“Of course it did.”

“My mother thinks it would take more guts to stay. In a way it would have because I just couldn’t stand it.”

“There’s a difference between guts and beating your head against the wall, isn’t there?”

“That’s what I was doing. Beating my head against the wall.”

“It feels so good when you stop.”

“It certainly does. I can’t really talk to my mother any more. I call her once a week out of a sense of duty but it’s pointless. We were really extremely close, but then I went and left my husband and my child, and I might as well have fucked a zebra in Hengerer’s window. That’s a department store in Buffalo.”

“My parents both passed away. My father when I was in high school and my mother passed away five years ago. No, it’s six years.”

“It’ll be three years next month since my father died.” She hated euphemisms for death. “I think he would have understood, but maybe not.”

“It’s a generation gap thing. We were talking about this in my group just the other day.”

He was in therapy. He had established this early in the conversation, dropping it in the way some people would let you know they had gone to a good college. It seemed as though everybody in New York was in therapy in one form or another. None of the people she knew in Buffalo went to psychiatrists, and the prevailing sentiment echoed Samuel Goldwyn’s maxim that anyone who did go to one ought to have his head examined. At first she had wondered if she was simply running into a disproportionate number of mentally disturbed people, but they didn’t seem abnormal to her. Then she realized it was simply something that New Yorkers did.

Cal had been in individual therapy at various times, and for the past two years had been in group therapy. Once she asked him if he thought it helped.

“Well, you have to think it helps,” he’d said. “Don’t you? Or otherwise you stop going. But how can you tell, really? If you function better, or feel that you’re functioning better, it might be the effect of group or it might have happened anyway. And if things go badly they might have been worse without group, so you can’t tell. I usually feel better after I’ve been to a session.”

“That’s something, then.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Andrea. You can get rid of headaches by taking sugar pills if you think they’re aspirin. Maybe it’s just one big emotional placebo. One thing, though, is that you wind up dumping all your emotional garbage on a crowd of people you don’t really care spit for, and they don’t really care about you, and that way you avoid boring your friends with all that tripe. Instead you bore them with talk about your therapy and how deliciously healthy you’re getting.”

Sometimes she thought about going. Sometimes she would have a bad night and before falling asleep she would resolve to find out about a group for herself. But in the morning the whole idea would seem senseless. She was functioning well, she would tell herself, and even cut-rate group therapy was an expense she could not readily afford, and people who used therapy as a crutch wound up being unable to walk without it.

“I have booze and sex instead,” she told Cal one time. “They serve about the same purpose. They make me feel better afterward.”

David told her one insight he’d had in his group. “I’ve got to get out of the habit of looking for exclusive relationships. I went straight from a marriage into an apartment with the girl I told you about. Cheryl. I’m sure I got into that because I couldn’t face being alone. Now I know better. It’s going to be a lot of years before I want to be that seriously involved with another person.”

“I feel the same way.”

“I don’t want to live with anybody. I don’t want to feel obligated and I don’t want anyone obligated to me. I don’t want to worry about hurting someone.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Oh, hell, I don’t want to be hurt myself. I want to have a few good friends that I see occasionally and sleep with occasionally. That’s what I want.”

He delivered the last part of his speech with his eyes deliberately avoiding hers and his fingers busy twisting a paper napkin. His words, she decided, amounted to a rather artful proposition. And she had the feeling he’d delivered the line precisely that way before, complete with the bashfully diverted eyes and the gee-whiz number with the napkin. Well, she didn’t blame him. It was a good line and it was natural for him to get all the mileage out of it that he could.

She waited until his eyes came around to meet hers, and she put just a touch of a smile on her lips. “I think we both want pretty much the same thing,” she said, very levelly.

At the first party she’d gone to in New York she ran into a man who had known Winkie. She couldn’t remember how they got there conversationally, but somehow her name had come up.

“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Winkie Welles. What was her first name again?”

“Winifred.”

“That’s right, of course. Winkie Welles. She was at Time-Life for a while when I was there. Then I think she went over to Holiday in editorial.”

“She was with Holiday when she died.”

“That was all so long ago. She was a crazy kid, as I remember her. Beautiful and brilliant, but crazy. She took her own life, but I don’t remember how.”

“Pills.”

“If you say so. And she was your best friend at Bryn Mawr?”

She said, “Do you happen to know why she killed herself?”

“I don’t think I’d have heard, and I certainly don’t remember if I did. We were never terribly close. Just that we worked together, but I lost track of her when she switched jobs. I think she was having an affair with a married man. I could be wrong about that. But if all the researchers at Time-Life with married boyfriends killed themselves the company would have to close up shop.”

“I wonder why she did it.”

“I wouldn’t even know who to tell you to ask.”

“Oh, it’s not important. I’m sure there are people I could have written to years ago and I never bothered. What’s the point? I think I know why she did it.”

“Oh?”

“I think she was afraid she couldn’t help turning into her mother. A road company version of her mother.”

“If you say so.” The man no longer seemed vitally interested in the ghost of Winifred Welles. “Say, to change the subject—”

But she had not wanted to change the subject. “My situation was just the opposite,” she said. “I wanted to be my mother. I didn’t realize it but that was what I wanted. I thought it was what I was supposed to do.”

“Is that right.”

“But I finally found out I couldn’t do it. Or rather I could do it, because if you do something for almost ten years that proves you could do it. But then I couldn’t go on doing it, if you understand the distinction.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll be right back.”

He meant, of course, that he would not be back, but she had not cared, For the moment she was content to stand alone and apart, remembering Winkie, remembering too the several persons she herself had been in the years since she and Winkie had been close.

And she hadn’t liked that man much anyway. And there were plenty of other men at the party, and it was easy enough to go home with one if that was what you wanted.

And now she was going home with David Kolodny. His place was right around the corner, he told her, and would she like to see it? “I’d like that,” she said. Outside a stiff wind was blowing. She drew her coat together at the neck, took hold of his arm, let her body lean a little against his as they walked. Neither of them spoke. The silence was easy and comfortable, joining rather than dividing them.

His apartment was on the tenth floor of a twelve-story building. She stood at his window while he was in the bathroom. The view was unspectacular, but at least he had a view. Her single window faced a blank wall.

Not that she envied him his view. Her apartment suited her, for now, for the time being.

When he emerged from the bathroom she remained at the window. She heard him approaching but did not turn until he was at her side. There was just the briefest moment of awkwardness, that inevitable awkwardness, and then he took her in his arms and was kissing her.

And then everything was all right. It was anticipation that could rattle you, making you live in your head excessively. Liquor helped in that regard, closing off some of the doors in the brain, shutting down certain hallways and corridors. And now he was kissing her and she was learning the taste of his mouth and the feel of his body against hers and it was really quite all right.

They clung together by the window, kissing with some passion but no urgency. He put a hand on her waist, dropped it to fasten on her buttock. He drew her body hard against his and gave her a squeeze. She moaned softly and brushed the tips of her fingers over his face. They would be good together, she knew. He knew intuitively what she liked and his sense of touch was good. And she liked his smell, and the feel of his skin.

His bedroom was smaller than the living room. It contained a queen-size platform bed, a chest of drawers, and a bookshelf made up of bricks and unfinished pine boards. They kissed in the bedroom and he touched her breasts and ran a hand down over the front of her body. His fingers pressed her for a moment at the junction of her thighs, then drew away. His other hand dropped from her shoulder and she watched him unbutton his shirt. Then she began undressing.

There was no chair to put her clothes on, so she followed his example and made a little pile of her things in a corner of the floor. He finished undressing before she did and he leaned against the wall by the side of the bed and watched her. She was not at all self-conscious, enjoying the way he was looking at her and the effect it was having on him.

“Ah, you’re beautiful,” he said.

In bed he held her and kissed her and she was able to lose herself in his embrace. Then his kisses, moist and sensual, trailed down over her throat and onto her breasts. This was exciting but at the same time it detached her from the excitement, as if the imposition of passivity transformed her into a spectator. It was lovely to lie like this, loose-limbed and receptive, open to his hands and mouth, oh yes, it was lovely, but one needed a sort of mental jiu-jitsu to enable the brain to turn itself off while the body was being turned on.

“Beautiful. What a fine body.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“I want to be very nice to you.”

He crouched at the foot of the bed, coaxing her legs apart with his gentle hands. She felt the soft skin of his face against her thighs, and the tickle of his moustache. He teased her a little, blowing warm breath against her, and she liked the teasing and rolled her hips in response to it. Then he put his mouth on her and his tongue moved to taste her and she sighed.

“Darling,” he said.

“Oh, do that forever.”

He was very good at this, and perhaps not the least of her enjoyment came from his own pleasure in the act. Men differed most from one another in the way they ate you. There were those, of course, who didn’t do it at all, but their numbers seemed to have decreased dramatically in recent years. And there were those who managed to convey that they were doing you an enormous favor, and others who seemed to regard the ritual as a component of seduction, a necessary technique in the arousal of a woman. For others it was clearly a quid pro quo, something not terribly distasteful one did in order to get one’s cock sucked in return. Oh, it was much nicer when the man liked to do it.

She held parts of herself back, unwilling to commit herself entirely for fear that this might be a prelude for him, that he might want to switch the channel to fucking before she could get off. But he went on and she relaxed, knowing that he would bring her off this way, that he wanted to, and now her response was quicker, deeper, and she reached the point where she knew she was going to make it, and the knowledge drew away the final veil of inhibition and reserve.

“Oh, darling, yes, oh, oh, yes, oh—” it only took her a moment to recall his name — “oh, David, oh!”

In his bathroom she used the toilet, then washed her hands and face and swished some of his toothpaste around in her mouth. She wet a washcloth and cleaned up some of the traces of intercourse, then rinsed out the washcloth and replaced it on its hook. His bathroom was tiny, like her own, but she had to admit he kept it cleaner. It still surprised her to find that some men who lived alone were almost compulsively immaculate. Others were complete slobs. There seemed to be no middle ground.

Perhaps David had someone in once a week. She wondered if Mark had kept Lucinda. He had a full time housekeeper, but he might have retained Lucinda for the heavy cleaning. Lord, how many years had Lucinda been with them, anyway? And how many words had they exchanged in all that time, beyond hello and goodbye and here’s your money and I be in nex’ week, Miz Benstock?

Had she so much as thought of Lucinda since she left Buffalo, had her name even come to mind before this moment? She didn’t think so. And what did Lucinda think of her, assuming Lucinda bothered to think of her at all?

What did any of them think of her?

Not that it mattered, not that it mattered at all.

Other things mattered. It mattered that she had been eaten superbly and fucked quite competently. That she was reasonably sober now and had no particular desire for another drink. That she wanted a cigarette desperately. This last, her desire for a cigarette, mattered a good deal more to her than the opinions of people four hundred miles away.

She returned to the bedroom and looked for her purse in the pile of her clothes. “Don’t go,” he said.

“Just getting a cigarette.”

“Good. Get two.”

“I didn’t think you smoked.”

“Once in a while. If I smoke a pack in a month it’s a lot for me. On second thought just bring one cigarette. I’ll have a couple of puffs of yours.”

“Do you think we know each other well enough for that?”

He laughed, a good hearty laugh. She joined him in bed and lit a cigarette, then passed it to him. “A pack a month,” she said.

“If that.”

“I’ve tried cutting down and it just doesn’t work for me. I get terribly tense and can’t stop looking at my watch. I’ve managed to quit entirely for a month or so at a clip but I always go back to it. Maybe living alone it would be more possible to quit. Were you ever a heavy smoker?”

“Never. Just one every once in a while to be sociable.”

“That’s very unusual.”

“I guess so, but it seems perfectly natural to me.”

The cigarette passed between them until she found an ashtray beside the bed and stubbed it out. “I ought to be getting home soon,” she said.

“Stay the night.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“There’s a good place on Broadway for brunch. Great Bloody Marys, first-rate eggs benedict.”

“You’re tempting me.”

He turned on his side to face her and ran his hand over her body. She felt a wave of very lazy sensuality pass through her. She put her face against his cheek and took his penis in her hand.

“Would you like to put it in your mouth?”

“Hmmm,” she said, thoughtfully. She had both hands on him now, stroking him, feeling him grow in her hands. “That’s an idea,” she said.

“Would you like to?”

She moved lower so that her cheek touched his stomach. “Would you like it if I did?”

“Yes, very much.”

She put her tongue in his navel. His penis was very hard now.

“Would you like it a lot?”

“Andrea—”

“Say please.”

“You’re going to drive me out of my mind.”

“Well, you teased me a little before. Sauce for the goose and all that. You’ve got a positively beautiful cock. Does everybody tell you that? Now let me know if you like this, okay?”

“Oh, God.”

It would have been very easy to fall asleep. Lying there next to him, next to his warmth, muscles limp with sexual satiation, the secret taste of his semen in her mouth, it would have been the simplest thing to let herself drift off into sleep.

Except that she made it a point to sleep alone.

This surprised her. When she first moved back to New York she’d worried that sleeping alone, after so many years at Mark’s side, might be difficult. What she found was that sleeping alone was an important part of living alone. Her sex life was rich and enjoyable, but when an episode was concluded and it was time for sleep she wanted to be alone in her own narrow bed.

She got up quietly, put on her clothes in the darkness. When she was dressed except for her shoes he said, “Andrea? Going somewhere?”

“Home.”

“Oh.”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Sure. I’ll call you.”

“I’d like that,” She approached the bed, leaned over to give him a quick kiss on the forehead. “Tonight was nice.”

Back in her own apartment she poured a juice glass full of scotch and set it on the bedside table. She got undressed and sat on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette and taking birdlike sips from the glass of whiskey. She had sobered up completely at his place and this one glass of scotch would not get her drunk now. It would just help her get to sleep.

Tomorrow there was a party she would probably go to, and at parties she tended to drink a lot. But there was nothing wrong with getting drunk on a Saturday night. Half the world got drunk on Saturday night.

Then the next day was Sunday. She liked to spend her Sundays alone. A lazy afternoon with the Sunday Times, and then maybe a walk in the park if the weather was nice, and possibly a movie or a concert if there was something interesting and if she was in the mood.

And then that would be one more week off the calendar, and Monday morning she would be back at work. There was nothing to it, really. You just took it one day at a time and there was nothing to it. It was easy, really, this business of getting along.

David had been nice, reasonably interesting company, a good lover. They didn’t have all that much in common and they could never be anything much to one another, but so what? If she saw him more than once a week she would find dozens of things about him that irritated or bored her, and no doubt she would have a similar effect upon him. But they were not going to see each other more than once a week. They might not see each other again at all — although she was fairly certain he would call and almost as certain, she would want to see him again.

Oh, it had been a successful evening. For a day that started with no hot water and a brazen cockroach, it had certainly finished up well.

Another sip of scotch, and time for another cigarette. A deep drag on the cigarette and blow a cloud of smoke at the ceiling and then another sip of scotch. A sip of this and a puff of that and you got through the days, taking them one at a time, taking them as they came.

She went to the bathroom, and before she left it she opened the medicine cabinet. If any roaches were inhabiting it at the moment they kept out of sight, but she had not opened the cabinet to check for roaches. She took a small plastic vial from the second shelf and uncapped it, pouring its contents into her palm. She counted the twenty-four Seconal tablets. An even two dozen of them, precisely the number she had brought with her from Buffalo. So far she had always managed to get to sleep without taking one of them, and that was a good sign.

So she still had two dozen of them. And two dozen were enough, more than enough.

She replaced them in the plastic vial, capped it, put it back on its shelf. And closed the medicine cabinet and returned to her bed.

Oh, she had no intention of taking those pills. No intention at all.

But several times a week she would count them, and on those occasions when she miscounted she would check to make sure that they were all there. It was a comfort to know they were there, though she could not have said why.

Saturday

May 10, 1975

Although their twelfth wedding anniversary came on a Monday, the Benstocks decided to celebrate it on the preceding Saturday. Andrea began working on the guest list early in March, and before long it had grown to the point where the party could not be held at their home. The new house on Lebrun Boulevard was larger than the old house in Tonawanda but it was still too small to hold all the people on her list.

“So I guess it’s the club,” she had told Mark. “Either that or seat all these people on each other’s laps.”

“Might be fun. Who would I get on my lap?”

“I don’t know. Someone fat and ugly, I guess. Sheila Caplin? How’s that?”

“Oh, God.”

“I’d better see about booking the club. Do we have to give them dinner? I suppose we do, don’t we?”

“Maybe we could tell them to bring sandwiches. Anyway it’s not the food that’s a killer, it’s the booze. I wonder where that myth came from that Jews don’t drink. Our friends seem to drink like fish. How many people are we having, anyway?”

“I have ninety listed, but not everybody will come, I’m sure. I suppose—”

“Ninety people? I don’t know ninety people.”

“The hell you don’t.”

“I don’t know ninety people well enough to buy food and booze for them. Or do I?”

She handed him the list. “Tell me who to cross out,” she said. “Go ahead. Bearing in mind who you have to invite if you have someone else. Go ahead.”

He stood reading through the list for a few minutes, then went into the other room for a pencil. He returned with it and went over the list making checkmarks. “Take a look,” he said.

“Cass and Ellie, Roger and Eileen, Barb and Jerry, Eddie and Terri — are you crazy? These are the people we’re really close with.”

“I know.”

“So you want to drop them?”

“I want to drop the others. I checked seven couples. That’s fourteen, sixteen with us, and you can seat sixteen at the dining room table with the extra leaves in, can’t you?”

“I think so. Or make it buffet, it’s no real problem. I thought you wanted to have a big party.”

“I did, but not ninety, and you’re right that it’s impossible to pare your list down to size. But we can have seven couples and not worry about anyone else feeling left out because it won’t be such a big deal in the first place. You look doubtful.”

“Well, we owe a lot of people.”

“So we’ll owe ’em a little longer.”

“We never had a big housewarming, and—”

“You want to have a big housewarming party at the country club? I don’t follow the logic.”

“No, no, no. We’ll have the seven couples you checked and have a big party next year. No, next year’s our thirteenth, isn’t it? Hardly the time for a major celebration. Well, in three years we can celebrate our fifteenth. I feel old thinking about it. I guess I don’t have to call the club tomorrow.”

“Unless you want to book it for three years from now.”

“No, I suppose it’s a little premature.”

“And maybe we won’t be able to afford it then, either.”

She put her hand on his arm. “That’s the reason, huh?”

“What else?”

“Is it that bad?”

“Well, it’s not good. It’s not bad enough to worry about yet. We don’t have to start feeding the kid dog food and the bank’s not going to take the house away from us, but it’s bad enough to keep me from spending a thousand dollars on drinks and dinner for ninety people.”

“Would it cost that much? Yes, I guess it would.”

“Or damn close to it. The damnedest thing is that business isn’t all that bad. We get the work all right. What we don’t get is paid. Everybody owes us money, and I don’t mean just individuals. I mean all the companies we do work for. Everybody’s slow-paying everybody else, so that even a business that’s doing well winds up hurting for cash.”

“Everything will straighten out, won’t it?”

“You mean for us or for the whole country? I think we’ll come out of it all right. I don’t know about the country. If things don’t turn around soon there’s going to be a ton of personal bankruptcies in the next year and that could have a chain reaction effect. And I’m relatively optimistic. You should hear Cass on the subject.”

“I can imagine.”

“The Republicans only know one remedy for inflation, and it’s called depression. And I haven’t noticed that it’s having any effect on the inflation anyway.”

“And you don’t even have to do the grocery shopping. Well, to hell with feeding ninety people. We’ll have seven couples and us, and maybe I’ll give them all hamburger. Or better yet Hamburger Helper.”

“Oh, things aren’t quite that bad.”

“I certainly hope not.”

But the main course was neither hamburger nor Hamburger Helper. It was a roast tenderloin of beef, and Andrea and her mother stood admiring it Saturday afternoon before it went into the oven. “I won’t even ask what it cost,” Mrs. Kleinman said.

“That’s good, because I don’t want to think about it. It’ll feed sixteen with no trouble, anyway.”

“Easily.”

“It would feed seventeen just as easily, you know. I wish you would come.”

“I’d only be in the way.”

“That’s ridiculous. You know everybody, you like them all, they like you—”

“It’s all people your own age, Andrea. And tonight’s all my favorite programs.”

“I think Mark would like to change places with you. He’s got a thing for Mary Tyler Moore. You won’t change your mind?”

“Thank you, but I won’t. It’s enough satisfaction for me helping you get things ready.” She lowered her eyes. “A couple of years ago—”

“I know, Mother.”

“I felt terribly helpless, you know. I wanted to be able to comfort you in some way and I didn’t know how.”

“I had to work things out for myself.”

“Yes, I realize that. Andrea? You’re happy with how things worked out, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.”

“You’re very fortunate, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

The preparations for the party had not been difficult. With her mother’s help, Andrea was able to do most of the cooking in advance. That afternoon Robin went bowling with a girl friend at whose house she would have dinner and spend the night. Andrea was dressed and ready by the time Mark was peeling lemons and setting up the bar. The invitations had been for six-thirty, and at six-thirty Roger and Eileen Fradin were the first to arrive. “I know we’re early,” Eileen said, “but my sitter was early for a change and I hate hanging around the house once the sitter’s there. It makes them twitchy.”

The Fradins were followed within a few minutes by Jeff’s sister Linda and her husband Arnie Polakoff, and then the rest of the guests came in a steady stream, with the Drozdowskis completing the party at five minutes of seven. The group had drinks in the living room, then moved to the dining room at seven-thirty. They filled their own plates from serving dishes on the sideboard and sat around the dining table, which was just large enough with the extra leaves to accommodate all sixteen of them. The wine went around, and Cass got to his feet and tapped his fork against his wineglass.

“A toast,” he said. “To Andrea and Mark, who in the course of ten wonderful years—”

“Twelve,” his wife said.

“In the course of ten wonderful years—”

“Twelve!”

He turned and stared loftily down at her. He was really losing his hair rapidly, Andrea noted, and for the first time in his life he was putting on weight, but if anything these elements of aging added to his presence. “I said ten wonderful years,” he said. “Ten out of twelve is a damned good average, honey.”

There was just the slightest pause before everyone laughed. “To Andrea and Mark,” Cass went on, “who have served as an inspiration to us all. May you have many more and may we celebrate them with you. God bless.”

Everyone took a sip of wine.

At one point in the evening, after they had all returned to the living room, Andrea tried to imagine the room as it might look filled with the ninety people on her original list. Then she began glancing around the room, peopling it with other persons from her life who had not been invited. She seated John Riordan on the sofa next to Eileen Fradin. Calvin Burleigh she posed in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with one foot crossed in front of the other and talking earnestly to Jerry Singer. She brought Jeff Gould back east and let him stand near the fireplace glaring across the room at his ex-wife and her husband for six months. And Winkie, and other friends from Bryn Mawr, and the people she had known in New York. And her father.

And Mark’s parents, who lived year-round in Florida now.

For a moment she could almost sense those alien presences in her living room. Then she took a deep breath and willed them away and made a show of paying attention to what Terri Santora was saying to her.

Sometimes these days it was hard for her to believe that she had ever left. For almost four months she had lived in New York in an apartment that would have fitted quite comfortably into her living room in Tonawanda and would not have more than half-filled the living room of the Lebrun house. For almost four months she had worked from nine to five at the bookstore on Fifth Avenue, shuttling to and from work on airless subway trains. For all that time she had kept coming into contact with new people who darted furiously in and out of her life, until the day when she packed her suitcase and took her life onto a plane and away from all of them.

It was never difficult for her to remember those months. They were etched upon her memory in sharp relief, and she could recall them more clearly and in more precise detail than more recent stretches of time. The months she had spent in New York served as a boundary in her life, a line of demarcation, with everything else to be placed either before or after that line.

And yet, as vivid as they were in memory, they seemed at the same time quite unreal. As if they had happened to someone else, or as if they had happened to her in some parallel universe, some series of desperately real interlocking dreams, utterly involving and lifelike while you dreamed them but gone forever when the alarm clock woke you.

Occasionally she thought that she might like to discuss the months in New York with Mark, but more often she was grateful that he never brought up the subject. Nor did her mother, or her other Buffalo friends and relatives. There was evidently a tacit agreement that her deviation from normal behavior was to be carefully overlooked, and this approach spared her any number of unpleasant conversations while depriving her of the opportunity of using her friends as sounding boards to put what she had gone through into perspective for herself.

Just recently she had finally brought up the subject herself with Eileen Fradin. She had begun by trying to explain how her memory of that time was at once clear and unreal.

“I think I can understand that,” Eileen had said. “It stands out in your memory because it was so different from your life in Buffalo. You were working, you were meeting people, you were involved in something new every day. Around here, let’s face it, it’s hard to remember whether something happened last year or the year before because the years are pretty much alike, aren’t they? You have to try to tie the events to something, like did Jason chip his tooth before or after we got the new washing machine.”

“Then why does it seem as though it happened in a dream?”

“Because it did.”

“Huh?”

“Well, not in a dream, but like a dream, because it happened to somebody else. That wasn’t you in New York.”

“Who do you think it was, then? The winner of the Andrea Benstock look-alike contest?”

“Oh, I don’t know what I mean. Sometimes I say things that don’t mean anything.”

“Hey, come on, Eileen. Don’t play dumb with me. I want to know what you meant.”

“Oh, I don’t know. But if I moved to New York it wouldn’t really be me. Because the person I am lives in a certain house with certain other people and shops at this market and drives that car and has these friends, in other words lives a certain kind of life, and if you took me out of that life I wouldn’t be me, I’d be some other person entirely.”

“In other words I’m Mark’s wife and Robin’s mother and Sylvia Kleinman’s daughter.”

“And my friend, and a lot of people’s friend.”

“And that’s what a person is. The other people in her life and where she goes and what she does.”

“Did I say something wrong, Andrea?”

“No, of course not. No, I just — oh, it’s so strange. I met a lot of people in New York but I only had one friend.”

“A girl?”

“Well, that’s close.” Eileen looked puzzled, and she laughed and explained about Cal. “We became quite close,” she said. “Even after he quit his job we went on seeing each other and talking to each other on the phone. Well, he was the only person I would call a friend, but there were a lot of other people I saw and a great many I would nod hello to. People in the neighborhood, people at stores where I shopped. It amazed me how quickly I began putting down roots where I was living. Of course no one has a car and you do all your shopping right in the neighborhood, so it’s different there.

“Then when I decided to come home, and it was like a spontaneous thing, nothing really figured out, I packed without being sure whether I would leave or not, I was very upset, but when I was all packed and everything I just went outside and got in a cab and that was that. I never said good-bye to anyone. I never told my boss I was quitting, I never said anything to the landlord, I never so much as called Cal. I had built this whole little life for myself and I was able to move right out of it without even saying goodbye, without even so much as waving to anyone.

“And I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Then on the plane I started feeling guilty because I hadn’t said anything to Cal, and I decided I would call him some night, but I never did. And then one day I thought about the people in the neighborhood, seeing how well I remembered them, and I realized that they would never notice that I was gone, I knew that early on. They just wouldn’t see me, and after a while they would forget me. It had been very easy establishing myself in the neighborhood, getting to be a part of it, but the roots were all shallow ones and you could pull them up without a moment’s notice. And I guess that was when I knew for sure that it was right for me to come back. And this was after I had been back for some time already. I knew it was right in certain other ways, for Robin’s benefit for example, and also because I evidently couldn’t maintain any emotional stability in New York. I needed to be here in order to keep myself sane, or at least relatively sane. But I didn’t know it was right for me until much later.”

“This is where you belong, Andrea.”

“Yes, it is. It really is, and I still have trouble coming right out and saying that and making myself believe it. Why is that, do you suppose? Why do I have to keep learning the same damn thing over and over? God, I envy you.”

“You envy me? That’s crazy. The other way around, sure. I envy you in a lot of ways. Not in a sense of wanting to change places, but in other ways. Why in the world would you envy me?”

“Because you know who you are. You’ve always known who you are.”

“That’s just not having much imagination, that’s all. But I envy you. Going to New York, having the nerve to do it. Getting a job. Meeting people. I never could have done that.”

“Maybe you know better than to try.”

“Aren’t you glad you went, Andrea?”

“I’m sorry I hurt Mark the way I did—.” Up to a point they’d been even-up in at least that department... And Robin, she seems all right but how do you ever know with children?

“But aren’t you glad you did what you did?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you are. Don’t forget it,” said Eileen Fradin.

The last guests left shortly after midnight. Mark offered to help her clean up but she told him she wasn’t going to bother. “Everything can wait until morning.”

“Tired?”

“I guess I am. It wasn’t really that much work and I didn’t have much to drink tonight but I seem to be exhausted. Let’s go upstairs.”

But halfway upstairs, she changed direction and went to the kitchen for cigarettes. When she got to their bedroom he was standing in front of his dresser removing his cufflinks. She slipped an arm around his waist and settled her head against his shoulder, meeting his eyes in the mirror over the dresser.

“We don’t look so bad,” she said. “For a couple of old farts.”

“I think we look pretty good.”

“Love me?”

“No, I’m just crazy about your ass.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“And I love you. Twelve years.”

“Not until Monday.”

“Twelve years. Ten wonderful years. Cass, a funny man.”

“I think that line came out of some nightclub comic’s routine.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. It was funny, though, the way he said it. After everybody decided it would be all right to laugh.”

“Oh, I think you’re exaggerating, baby.”

“Probably.” She yawned daintily. “‘To Mark and Andrea, an inspiration to us all.’ What do you think he meant by that?”

“Just something to say.”

“Sure... Are you glad you picked me?”

“Of course I am.”

“Even if I’m a pain in the ass?”

“Everybody’s a pain in the ass sooner or later. Hey, don’t cry, baby.”

“I can’t help it. I don’t even know what I’m crying about. Hold me? That’s better. Oh, Mark.”

“It’s all right, baby.”

“I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass.”

“I know, most of us don’t.”

“Yeah, sensational. Hitler didn’t mean to be a pain in the ass either. Is it a good average?”

“Is what?”

“Ten out of twelve.”

“I think we’re closer to eleven out of twelve, and that’s a hell of a good average.”

“Can we go to bed, Mark?”

“I think that’s a great idea.”

“Can we screw a little?”

“Even better.”

And, after lovemaking, after a warm silence had settled over them, she said, “Mark? Are you awake?”

“A little.”

“I just figured out something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if it makes sense. I just figured out what I’m going to be when I grow up.”

“What?”

“Exactly the same.”

He didn’t say anything, and she thought that he had fallen back asleep. Then he said, “Yeah, it makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Uh-huh. It’s scary, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is. But it’s a relief too. Mark?”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, I guess. Just good night.”

“Good night, baby. See you in the morning.”

Content

Jill Emerson
A Week as Andrea Benstock

Sunday May 12, 1963

Monday September 21, 1964

Tuesday April 5, 1966

Wednesday October 16, 1968

Thursday April 16, 1970

Friday December 15, 1972

Saturday May 10, 1975