Interstate

INTERSTATE 4

Happens during the drive back home. He’s with the kids on the main highway south, his wife’s with her folks for a couple of days in New York. He said goodbye to her about three hours earlier. Last saw her at the front door. They’d all gone to the city to visit her folks and do some things there. While she went with a friend to a matinee one day, for lunch and a long talk with another friend and then alone to some bookstores and an acupuncture session the next day, he took the kids to several museums: Natural History, the Modern, Met. He also wanted to take them to the Frick, which he hadn’t been to in years and the kids had never seen — he thought they’d like the courtyard pool with the lily pads in it, he thinks, and also the Limoges — they had at the Walters in Baltimore — and he wanted to sit on the couch with them across from the Rembrandt self-portrait in that long room and talk about how the face, expression and body bulk always reminded him of his father. He used to go there a lot just to look at it, no other painting, or maybe the two Vermeers in one of the front hallways, how could he just go past those? so something else to show the kids they might like, sit on the same couch and jot down whatever came to mind about him and some of the incidents between them and sketch and draw the painting, usually in different colored ballpoint, and sometimes the painting and the huge vase of flowers or leaves on the table between him and it, though he wasn’t an artist. What happened to those drawings and notes he doesn’t know. But they said too many museums in two days so choose any three of the four so long as one was the Natural History. They also wanted to go to the Central Park merry-go-round and zoo and F.A.O. Schwarz after all the museums, “have a day on the town just for kids, hamburger restaurant for lunch but not a fast-food — stuff like that,” Margo said. He said they went to Schwarz’s—“it sounds funny calling it that, but anyway, the last time, and the zoo and merry-go-round the two times before that. But if you want to go and we’re all not too pooped by then, okay — at least it isn’t Christmas or Easter seasons at F.A.O.’s with wall-to-wall shoppers but mostly sightseers like us.” Merry-go-round was closed with no sign on it saying why, on a day it was supposed to be open. They went to the zoo, had lunch at its cafeteria because it was convenient and the food looked pretty good, then F.A.O.’s where Julie cried almost the second they got inside when he wouldn’t give her money to buy anything. “I thought the understanding we’d agreed to at home was that we’d come only to look, not buy — window-shop, they call it, though in this case outside-in window-shopping — come on, sweetheart, don’t make a scene, you’re embarrassing me, people are going to think I really did something wrong like beat you and then the police will come and I’ll be arrested and you’ll have to save up all your next year’s allowance to bail me out,” but words weren’t working so he tried taking her aside but she pushed his hand off her waist and said “Get off me. And you are doing something wrong. You can’t take us here every time and expect us not to buy something; it’s unfair,” and Margo said “It is, Daddy.” “All I want is ten dollars for if I see something I like. That’s not much.” “Ten dollars? What do you think, I’m made df money? which is what my father used to say whenever I asked him for ten cents for a comic book, and he had much more dough than I. In comparison, he was practically rich, but he knew I shouldn’t ask for money when anyone was around, which doesn’t apply here since we don’t know any of these people, but especially when the agreement beforehand was not to ask for any money at all. But look, I’ll give you each, something my father never would have done, two bucks to spend as you please.” “Two dollars is nothing here,” Margo said. “That’s what I’m saying — this is a place just to get ideas for things to buy in cheaper toy stores.” “Ten,” Julie said. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow.” “With what?” People passing were looking, some smiling or raising their eyebrows as if they knew what he was going through with the kids and he said “Come on, both of you, over here where we can discuss this without the world bonking into us,” and they did. “Now, with what money you going to pay me back?” to Julie. “And I give you ten, I have to give Margo ten — that’s twenty dollars and we’re not even talking tax, and New York’s got something like eight percent now, maybe even nine.” “What about the money Grandma gave Margo and me for summer? That adds to thirty, which is way more than twenty.” “Oh, fifteen plus fifteen; this kid can count; very good. Mommy and I bought you things with that money, and I don’t want to argue anymore. I’ll give you each three dollars, buy what you want. If it’s not enough for whatever you pick out, put a down payment on it, what do I care? I’ll also give you enough for the tax, so up to three-fifty apiece, but that’s my last offer.” “Ten.” He said “Why do you have to be so stubborn?” and she said “You owe us thirty dollars: Grandma’s. You didn’t spend it on us. Mommy was holding it and I remember when you didn’t have enough and you asked her for it; you bought gas.” “You have five seconds to accept my offer, Julie,” looking at his watch, and she said “I want the money that’s mine, or just ten dollars of it.” “Okay, that’s it, agreement’s over, I’m sorry you have to lose out on this too, Margo, but she won’t compromise, so we’re going,” and when he took Julie’s hand and she pulled it away, he said, which he knew was a threat she wouldn’t take seriously, so why’d he make it? — it just came out, he’d done it several times before and she always reacted the same way and after the last time he told himself he’d never do it again—“You don’t want to go? Fine, stay, but we’re going,” and took Margo’s arm and they went through the revolving door. Looked back, she was staring angrily at him and then turned around and headed for the escalator. “That goddamn kid, I’m so goddamn sick of her,” to no one, and to Margo “Stay here,” and she said “Don’t hit her,” people going in and out bumped into him or skipped around him and he said “Excuse me, sorry,” and to Margo “What do you mean? When have I ever?” and went back in. Have I ever hit them? he thought. I don’t think so. She was at the escalator, her back to him — once, if any time, and not hard, but he forgets when and which one and just a slap on the back of her hand and probably for something important, like she was about to dart into the street or just after she did it or started to and he caught her — pressed a button on a panel beneath a large bear and it started talking, mouth moving, “Hi, I’m Teddy Ruxpin” or something, and gave directions to the Barbie shop. “Up the escalator, turn left, keep going straight till you pass the Talking Tree, then right till you come to the Barbie dolls, they’re real pretty and say hi from me, Teddy.” Another button; he said “Julie!” Same intro, then how to get to the stuffed animals, “and when you get there, check out my friends and me, Teddy Ruxpin.” “What do you think you’re doing?” Another button: board games. She said “I’m staying in the store till I find something I like. With my money Grandma gave me, which you should give back or it’s stealing.” “Stealing, hey? Wait till Christmas and I’ll go ho-ho-ho.” “You’re not funny.” “I’m not funny? And why do I answer every utterance of yours with a question? But then who’s funny, you?” “I’m serious, Daddy.” “And I’m not? Listen, you’re not getting any money. I have to be decisive. I shouldn’t tell you what I have to be, for you might think I haven’t made up my mind and that you can change it—” “I don’t know what your word ‘decisive’ means.” “So we’re leaving, right? My threatening to leave you here before was stupid, since I would never do that, but now I’m serious, so,” which he didn’t want to say, it’ll only make things worse, and he knew he’d never carry it out, “if you insist on embarrassing not just me but you too, by staying when I’m saying we have to go, then I’ll be forced to drag you out of here or lift you up, rather, and carry you out bodily, meaning with my body, on my shoulder if I have to, one way or the other or even something else, under my arm, I’m still strong enough to, so are you coming?” and she said no. “No?” and she said no. Another child pushed a panel button: puppets and magic tricks. A trick, he thought, and said “Who’s Teddy Ruxton or Ruxpin — this guy?” and she said “You can see: a bear.” “But from where: television, movies?” and she said “I don’t know; you don’t let us see them.” “When? I’d let you see a movie or some public TV if it was good.” She just looks at him. “Listen, my sweetheart, isn’t this a bad place to discuss all this? Let’s all go for a snack, cool off, maybe we’ll come back. We can if your attitude’s better.” “I don’t want to eat and you won’t come back even if I acted like an angel.” “How do you know? No, I almost swear I will, if we’re still close by and not tired, and same deal, three-fifty apiece to spend here, even four. But that’s my last offer and last time I’m offering it. And if you don’t leave with me now, and nicely, this will also be the last time you’ll ever be allowed in here again so long as I live,” which he knew, he knew, it was the kids’ favorite place in New York, which was the point, but a ridiculous dumb threat, one that’d absolutely have no impact, though maybe a combination of all those offers and threats and just that she might be hungry and tired of arguing with him would change her mind or mood. “I don’t want three or four; I want my ten dollars you owe me.” This time an adult: Legos. I know how, he thought, and said “My God, where’s Margo?” and looked to the front of the store, too many things blocked his view of the doors, said “Wait, I’m going to see,” ran around some people to the doors, Margo was right outside, facing the street, she was fine, nine, very self-sufficient, if anything went wrong she’d come in and stand by the door and look around for him and if she didn’t see him she’d stay there till he came, ran back, said “Come on, let’s go outside, I didn’t see her and I don’t want to leave her alone. This is New York.” “So?” “So people steal little children, your age and Margo’s, and prettier they are, quicker they go. I don’t mean to scare you, and not every day of course and it could happen anywhere and is probably the rare instance when it does, but you don’t want to leave your child alone here, smart as Margo and you are.” “You go; she could be inside already and I’ll tell her to wait for you here.” “Listen, this is important; no fooling around from you now. And tell you what. Next time we come here — not today, so another day; today’s just three-fifty to four dollars if you cooperate — I’ll give you each five bucks. And that’s not between you either, which is a fair compromise. Altogether, ten.” “You just say that,” and he said “Whatever I said, we got to get outside to find Margo, but I swear by anything that I’ll keep my word — ten. Weil tell Margo, so she’ll be a witness. But let’s get out there, I’m worried,” and took her hand, she jerked it back but followed him to the revolving door. He got in a section first and slowed the door, for other people were entering from the street, so she wouldn’t get caught getting inside or have to get out too fast. They stayed at his in-laws’ three nights. They couldn’t leave for New York till late Saturday afternoon because his kids had swimming lessons that morning and Julie a piano lesson at noon and Margo a painting class at two. They’d only miss one school day for Monday was a special teachers’ day off for an education conference, and he took two days off from his job so he could go to New York and his wife worked at her own stuff at home. Margo said “Where were you? I was looking all over” and he said “But you’re all right, right, everything okay?” and she said “Sure, why not?” “Well, I looked and didn’t see you before and got worried,” and she.said “I don’t see how. I was standing here all the time, watching the crowds passing. So many people. I even saw a fight between two men. A policeman broke it up. I think I got a good idea for an art project from it.” “What of?” he wanted to say but she said “You were so long, Daddy, I thought you were lost,” and he said “Me, in my old city? But what would you have done if I hadn’t come in another fifteen minutes?” and she said “Stay here and wait and then go in to look from around the bottom of the escalator and finally call Mommy.” “How do you know the number?” and she said “I’d ask for Grandpa’s name from Information and give the street.” “You know how to get Information?” and she said “Four-one-one, or I’d go to the store’s office for help. They’d give it, wouldn’t they, if I told them I was all alone?” “Sure. Probably happens all the time. I didn’t think of it. Besides, maybe they have a public address system for lost children. They have to, so why not use it for fathers? They probably even have a special pickup area for lost parents and kids. But what if a man came up to you before you went into the store, or a woman, and said — you know, nice voice and face and nicely dressed—‘Young lady, your father’s suddenly not well—’” “I’d ask what your name is, for this is a creepy person who’s doing something bad, right?” and he said “Okay, then he knows my name, for some reason, or he tricks it out of you — kidnappers can be clever — but he said, or she does, that I was suddenly stricken with something — he even knows my birth-date and what I do in life and was wearing today, so he’s convincing. And to be even more convincing, there could be a man and woman working together, pretending they’re a sweet married couple. But that I had a heart attack, or stroke, whatever story, and was taken to a hospital and that I asked them to take you there to me, what would you do?” and she said “But your story’s crazy. You were inside; how can you get out without me seeing you or some kind of crowd around you or the ambulance?” and he said “I cabbed to the hospital, felt I had to get there fast, and there’s a back entrance to the store on Madison,” and she said “Your story’s still all wrong. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Daddy, but you couldn’t have been heart-attacked and taken to a hospital or gone there alone by cab in so short a time.” “Not true. We’re talking of twenty minutes. I could be on my way to the hospital while this man’s talking to you. But before I went out that back entrance I told this man, and I wouldn’t have done any of that, of course. I’m also as healthy as a horse, so I’m not about to get any heart attacks or strokes. But if I was too sick to get you, in actual life, because of a sudden stomach flu, for instance, which knocked me cold and kept me on the ground groaning for half an hour or in your store office where some store people took me, then I’d in some way communicate to these people to send a guard outside to get you, and also to keep Julie safely beside me. But this is the man’s lying story to you I’m telling you, not mine, so what would you do?” “What you told me to lots of times in things like this, so why are you asking?” and he said “Let’s say for Julie’s sake. I haven’t really talked about it with her yet and when I was in the store and didn’t see her for a minute I started thinking of it for her.” “I know what to do,” Julie said. “I remember you told Margo once. I say to the man ‘Let me’—no, ‘Let a policeman take me to the hospital for my father.’ Then when I get one I say ‘Let me speak to my mother,’ but I wouldn’t know how to call her in New York.” “In the store’s office, dummy,” Margo said. “You can’t expect her to know that,” he said. “But close, Julie, very good — and why are you talking to her like that?” to Margo. “What’d she do to deserve it? — But you’d go to a guard, if you couldn’t find a real policeman — someone in a uniform in the store, or you’d just ask a salesperson to get you one. Salesperson: someone who sells the stuff behind the counter. And sometimes the guards have plain clothes, no uniforms, to catch, let’s say, the shoplifters better, but the salespeople would know who they are. But if they didn’t, for the plainclothes guards are probably also there to stop the salespeople from stealing, then they could make a call for one in uniform. And you’d tell this guard that you’re alone, your sister and daddy are suddenly gone and some man’s said your father’s been taken to the hospital and he asked this man to take you there and your parents have always warned you against strangers taking you anyplace, and you want to speak to your mommy. They’d find her eventually. They could do this from the office. Actually, you don’t want to go with the guard — a real policeman’s okay — but not a guard, plainclothes or not, to the office alone either. Sometimes these businesses aren’t careful about who they get as guards, so these guys can be crazies too. If it’s a woman guard, uniformed or not, I’m sure she’s all right. So when you go with a male guard you also want to go with, and you have to insist on this — not easy for a kid but you got to do it, you say your parents told you you have to — with a salesperson to the office and not alone, and that’s where you call Mommy. You’d only have to give there, as Margo said, in New York, your grandfather’s name — he’s the only Horace Cole in the Manhattan book. And — the phone book, I mean, the directory, and Manhattan being New York, of course — and my name, or Mommy’s with the Cole last name, in our phone book where we live, but you know that number.” “Eight-three-five…but do you want me to give the area code too?” Julie said. “No, where we are you don’t need the area code when you call home. Oh, this is so complicated. You just don’t go with strangers, that’s all, the one rule you have to remember in this. One comes and is pretty aggressive in wanting to take you someplace — forceful, won’t take no, you see? — yell for a cop. Really, yell, both of you, ‘police, police,’ but much louder — I only whispered so the people around us wouldn’t wonder — but that’s all you say, and also if you’re together and a stranger wants you to go with him or her somewhere. Or you see what seems like a nice person passing — certainly someone passing you know is even better. But if not, then a nice person while this awful stranger’s trying to convince you to go with him, tell that person — man or woman, just that the person looks nice — the problem with the stranger and have that person get a cop. But stay with that person, don’t leave yourself with the stranger. Though don’t go with that nice person either-alone, you know, into a house or car or cab or anyplace in a store except straight to its office where lots of people would probably be and you can call the police and us from. No, forget that, just stick with that nice person till a guard comes, if it’s a store, and then you go to the office with the guard and this nice person or a store clerk, but always two people unless the guard’s a woman. If it’s a lot smaller store than this one with probably not much of an office anywhere, then you have them call Mommy or me and the police from the selling part of it. Of course if it’s just that you’re lost or we’re separated, you don’t need the police if you can reach one of us. If it’s a street and you’re now with the nice person and the threatening stranger goes or even stays, call the police and then me from a phone booth or go into a store to call and tell the nice person or store owner or somebody that we’ll pay for whatever the phone costs and any other expenses, though I don’t know what those others might be. If there is no nice person but there is a store and you’re lost or being threatened, then you go into it and tell them what’s the matter, though if you can, make sure it’s a nice store. This rule about strangers goes for anyplace, you understand — street, in front of the house, walking home from school, playgrounds, malls, cars stopping and the driver or passenger talking to you; same thing. You just don’t go with them, get it? You in fact — look, we’re talking about it frankly now — open — and I’m going to go even further than I ever did with Margo. But if you’re being dragged or coaxed too hard by a stranger into a car or something like that — basement, house, backyard — and I don’t mean to scare you. Chances of anything like this happening are small, slight, small. But you yell — and when I say ‘coaxed too hard’ I mean ordered, bullied, or offered things to get in the car, for instance. Bribed — money, gifts, candy, you know — well you yell like hell, kick, put up a tremendous fuss, bite if you have to, the hand, the ear. Fight with your fists and nails. Scratch, punch, even your head — butt them. Believe me, kids can hurt. I know, from when you’ve hit me by accident. One good kick — a hard one, all your might — in a man’s groin — where the penis and testicles are — can knock a man flat on his behind.” The kids laughed. “No, it’s true, listen to me, I’m serious. It might sound funny but that’s where a man can hurt most. Or poke him right over here in the middle under the rib cage,” and took Julie’s finger to show where on him; “that’ll knock the air out a moment, but enough time for you to get away. Or punch him in what, well, to illustrate my example — make it more real and remembered — in the balls.” They seemed shocked, then looked at each other and laughed. “It’s not a dirty word when you use it that way, as a teaching aid, believe me. And same with a woman too, I think, in hitting them down there, kicking, you know. But we’ll have to ask Mommy what her most sensitive spots are that hurt. I heard the breasts. Certainly the eyes are one. Even just one eye, finger in it, deep and hard, but they’re the most sensitive for everyone and also probably the most difficult to stick your fingers in because of our own squeamish feelings about eyes. But you do it, you have to. And you don’t have to just use your fingers and hands and feet. You see a stick on the ground, a branch, brick, rock, some stones or even pebbles or sand, you throw it at their face or head or club them with it, the branch or maybe a bat or bottle that was lying around. If you’re carrying books, throw that at their faces too. Of course, if you can — meaning you’re not being held, you can run away — first thing you do is run, preferably home or to someone you know — a teacher or school parent if it’s near your school, the house of a friend of yours on our street. But if nobody or nothing like that’s around, then to that person I’ve mentioned who just looks protecting and nice if you see one. Which means that that person should look like a nice teacher or school parent or crossing guard. This also goes even if the coaxers or strangers who want to do these things to you are neighbors or say they are and they want to take you someplace, but we don’t really know them. Even if they live a few doors down and you’ve seen them but have never really talked to them and you know Mommy and I haven’t. Or you have talked to them, just as Mommy and I have. A hello, a hi, a wave or nice talk beyond just greeting talk between you and them and even between them and Mommy and me, which you’ve seen. And they’ve acted nice to you up till now but suddenly are acting peculiar or asking you to do peculiar things or just things you know you’re not supposed to, like going alone with them to places I’ve told you not to go, a basement, park, car, garage, someone’s home or their own. Now, if you hit these neighbors in defending yourself or trying to get away and it’s by chance a mistake, they’ll have to understand that it was done because I’d told you to protect yourself this way and that there was a misinterpretation — an error in understanding — just a problem in what they were giving off with their words or actions or looks and what you took in and that perhaps I also might’ve been too strong in my warnings to you and what to do. Still, you’ve got to do what I say. This is how things have become today, I’m afraid, I’m almost sure of it. In being extra cautious you might occasionally go too far, but better that way than not going far enough where you didn’t defend yourself when you could have and got hurt or didn’t do enough to get away. I’m sure Mommy will agree with me on this but we’ll ask her. If she doesn’t then that’s going to cause some conflict because I’m going to insist you do everything you can to protect and defend yourselves against people who might want to hurt you and in fact I’m going to spend a little time with you soon teaching you how. Just kicks and where to hit and stuff but more than I just did. Let’s hope, of course, this’ll never happen, and chances of it happening have got to be one in a few thousand, a hundred thousand — most people are good and wouldn’t touch you — so one in a million, or maybe less. But we also have to hope that a neighbor or anyone doesn’t get a heart attack or stroke or fall and break a limb as a result of a blow from one of you, that is if he or she didn’t mean anything awful toward you and it was a mistake, on their part or yours, in judgment or perception — how you see things — or whatever. If it wasn’t a mistake then truthfully I wouldn’t care if they tripped and fell in front of a passing car. I shouldn’t say that perhaps, but I think people who do things like that to kids are among the worst and deserve what they get. Okay, maybe that’s too harsh, so something also that shouldn’t have been said, but in a nutshell, you don’t go with anyone anyplace, child or adult, without our permission. And ‘nutshell’ meaning ‘in a few words,’ so as not to confuse things with more of them and also so you can remember what I’m saying better. Anyone, that is, except really close friends — our very best, like the Kaplitzes, though maybe not with Rick, their oldest boy. Kids that age can suddenly change in ways and act funny. I don’t want to go into it or maybe I will but another time, at least to Margo.” “Why not now?” Margo said and he looked at her and Julie said “Why not me?” and he said “Because you’re too young, quite truthfully. And of course relatives — but not any long-lost cousins or cousins of cousins you’ve only seen once — and our next-door neighbors, the Troys. They’re obviously very decent people and their boy’s much younger than both of you, so if they say we’re not home and we’ve asked them to pick you up at school or meet you in front of the house and that we can’t for some reason get to a phone to explain it all to you in the next hour or so and they’re to look after you till we get home, you believe them. They’d never lie like that or do anything to you that’s not in your best interest and which we wouldn’t approve of, I know it. We’re lucky to have them as neighbors; some people get nothing close to that. Or even if we haven’t told them anything or called and you come home and neither of us is there and the door’s locked, which it would be if we were both out, then you go straight to their place and ask them to check around to see where we might be. They know where I work — you do too, Margo, so you can do this as well as them. But they can also help you locate some of our good friends, whose names you know and maybe their addresses or just their streets and who might know where we are, or one of us. Actually, the Troys could let you into the house — they have our keys. That’s how much we trust them, you see, and they trust us, for we have theirs. But when you do get in, though it’d probably be best for you to stay with the Troys till we get home, especially if it’s getting late — let me double-check with Mommy on that. And certainly you stay with them if there’s only one of you,” and Margo said “Maybe her,” and he said “No, you both. But if the two of you do get in and nobody’s with you, like the Troys or Aunt Bea — I can’t think of anyone else; the Kaplitzes are too far away. But you lock the door and wait for our call or for one of us to get home, though all the time trying to find out by phone with the Troys or whoever where the heck we are. None of this will happen, you know. Chances of our not being home for you with no word or warning to anyone about it are maybe a little better than the others I mentioned, but still not great, but all this is just in case. So, everything clear? Or did I go into too many things and do what I didn’t want to, confusing things by overdosing you with possible situations and how to get out of them?” and Julie said “About what?” and he said “Strangers, wrongdoers, or just people who bug you, but a little to a lot worse than just kidding, and if we’re not home and so on,” and she said “I’d know what to do, I promise,” and Margo said “It was a bit overmuch but I think I’d know what to do too with all three of those people,” and he said “All right, then what would you do if…nah, let’s drop it. But, good girls, both of you. Wonderful, great, so smart. I realize it’s difficult to digest all of it — to take it in — but just that some of it got through and maybe even some of the most important parts, fine. Anyway, Margo, to get back to before, why I was so long in the store when you were out here was that I couldn’t find Julie for actually a lot more than a minute,” and winked at Julie; she shut her eyes and turned away. Okay, won’t play, he thought, but he’s sure she’s not still mad at him. That last long discussion or instruction got her off it. Then she brightened and opened her eyes and said “Daddy said next time he’ll give us ten dollars for us both in the store. Or we can go in now and he’ll give us each four.” He said “Is that what I said? I forget,” and she said yes and he said “Anyway, not now, let’s go for a snack first,” and Margo said to her “We can pool our money.” Julie asked what that was and Margo explained and they convinced him to give two more dollars between them, they promise they won’t ask him for more, they won’t even go for a snack if he doesn’t want, “that’ll save you money,” and they went in and he gave them a ten and told them to stay together even if they decide to split the ten and buy what they each want at separate departments and that they should come back to him right after they bought their purchase or purchases and with no more browsing around and the spot where he’d be waiting for them, “Right here outside the men’s room. Just say, if you forget where it is, ‘the men’s room in the doll section on the second floor,’ and anybody working in the store would know; it’s right by the ladies’. By the way, I’m only letting you go off alone together because in this store there are plenty of guards and the salespeople and customers seem safer or trustworthier and nobody’s going to run off with you. Other stores I might not feel so good about it in.” “That’s racist,” Margo said and he said “What do you know about the word?” and she said “I know it and it is,” and he said “It’s not. Whatever the people are here, race and other things, they all just seem more law-abiding. Not more, which would be racist, just law-abiding; virtuous, even. Simply not interested in crime — in committing it. I’m not a sociologist — how society works, what goes on between people and when they’re in certain places; you know, behavior. Maybe it’s that the store’s so expensive, so poorer people don’t even think to come here. Or they think it but feel uncomfortable here or something — the grandeur or showiness of it and the street, and it’s also out of their neighborhoods. Well, it’s out of ours too where we are. But you also have to associate poverty — being poor—” “I know what the word means,” Margo said. “She might not.” “Do too,” Julie said. “Well, poverty with higher crime and stuff, they often go together, not that somebody who’d steal a kid or do harm to one couldn’t be rich or middle-rich or above-poor. They probably are, in fact, the majority of them — not down-deep or average poor — something tells me that, though I don’t know from where. Probably the newspapers. And then maybe it’s only that there are more guards here, why there’d be less crime like that — snatching kids, walking out with unpaid-for dolls — real dolls — and also the surveillance cameras watching and recording everyone’s moves. They help, but anyway, go on, the two of you, go.” About twenty minutes later, while he was leaning against a wall reading a book he brought along in his pocket for this purpose, waiting or on the bus, they rushed up to him with that look and no package or bag and he said “Uh-oh, don’t tell me; well, it’s going to have to be no,” and Julie said “Please, just listen,” and Margo “It’s a board game but one for the mind and also creative and to have fun with and it’s on sale and only 11.99 plus tax and was 22.99 plus tax before, so you save more than ten dollars,” and he said “As my father used to say ‘So I guess I can put that money you saved me into the bank, right?’ And what do you mean ‘plus tax’? That with it, meaning including?” and she said “I don’t know about those things.” He gave her a five, calculated how much tax would be on twelve dollars and said he wanted at least two dollars in change back. “If it comes to a few pennies less than that, nickels, even, fine. Your mommy’s going to kill me for giving in to you like this. She’d probably do the same thing I’m doing if she was in my place, but my head, she’s gonna have my ox-dumb head.” “You’re the best daddy,” Julie said and kissed his hand and they went to buy it, played with it about two hours that night once he’d explained most of the rules and set up the board and shuffled the various stacks of cards. “Usually I have the toughest time reading board game directions, but I got this. My interpretational or figuring-out skills must be improving. Maybe it comes from owning a home and family and all the unreadymade things that come in that the paterfamilias in me — I’ve told you that word plenty of times but have never checked to pronounce it right — says I have to put together or they just won’t be set up, though your mom’s much better at unriddling and building things.” Played with it an hour this morning, said they liked the game so much “and we’re not just saying that,” Margo said, “because you bought it and we want you to feel we didn’t waste your money,” that they wanted to play with it in the car ride home. He said better not, pieces and board aren’t magnetized so they might lose some of them, “and in this game, lose one of the more important ones and the whole thing could be spoiled.” So, they were out of the way a good part of the previous night and an hour this morning, not that his wife wouldn’t have taken them for a walk to a store or done something with them alone or one of his in-laws if he’d asked them to, and he was able to get some work done he’d promised his boss he’d do during his two days off.

His wife had planned to go back with them but he’d convinced her to stay because he knew she wanted to do a little more shopping, possibly see a foreign movie with her mother that would never come to their area, be with her folks another two days, “and I can handle it and I love being with my girls,” putting his arms around them, kissing the top of their heads, “my little darlings, and I mean it; that you are; and that I love being with you alone. It gets me closer, though I love having you around too, of course,” to his wife, “all of us together, et cetera. That didn’t come out right but you know what I mean,” and she nodded. She was her parents’ oldest and closest child, hadn’t seen them in months, spoke to them on the phone almost every night and sometimes to her mother two or three times a day. When her folks called together, which they usually did, so one probably said to the other “I’m calling Lee,” and the other would pick up the phone in a different room, they invariably asked how her day went — not “invariably”; it was always what they said after they said hello and how was her family: “So how did your day go, darling?” If he answered the phone only one would say hello, other would stay silent, and “How are you?” and he’d say “Fine, everything’s good,” or something, “Just fine, everything’s grand, really,” “Fine, thank you, kids and Lee too,” “Fine, thanks, and you and Horace” or “Frieda?” and the one who called would say something like “We’re well, nice of you to ask” or “thank you,” and he’d say “Good, I’ll get you Lee,” and if he didn’t ask how they were he’d say something like “Fine, thanks, I’ll get you Lee,” and the one who called would say “Thank you.” After Lee told them how her day went and frequently things about the kids and him, she’d ask how their day went. If her father or mother called alone, the other, if she or he were home, would often get on in about a minute, though her father only would if he hadn’t talked to her that day, and listen to how her day went if she was still on that and then say something like “It’s me, Mommy” or “Daddy, I’m on the extension” or “other phone” or “line,” or “Hello, dearest, I’m listening, continue” or “don’t mind me,” and then answer how his or her day went. Quick-kissed his wife on the lips when he was leaving today with the kids and then said “Well, bye, my love.” “‘Bye, my love,’” she said. “You never call me things like that anymore, how come?” and he said “Wha, ‘love’?” and she said “Occasionally ‘dear’ or ‘my dear,’ but that’s not very personal or deep but about all there’s been the last few years except ‘sweetie.’” “‘Sweetheart. Sweetmeat. Pookyface. Dipsitz. Scrabble. Bedhogger.’” “Come on. And…no, nothing else that I can think of. Hearing it is nearly reason enough for me to stay here again next time and have you go. Anyhow, I like it, more, more. Do you think I’m fooling?” “Who knew it meant so much?” Looked around: was thinking of giving her a bigger deeper kiss. Not as a response to her “more, more,” or maybe a little or just encouraged by it, but mostly because he really wanted to: lips-lips, some tongue, eyes tight, moving the bottom of his body in but subtly so it wouldn’t be seen, kiss that left him a bit dizzy after it and her too she’s said, partly because of the length of it and just breathing through the nose and the nose bent against the other’s face in a way or just a single nostril closed by it, but one like their first kiss night of their first date in her little apartment’s little foyer as she leaned against the closet door: “God, I nearly thought I’d die,” she said, “everything knocked out of me. One more, okay? though I’m not insisting on exact replication and if you think I’m acting too managerially, so be it, for this is nice. But probably we should go inside, the doorknob’s killing me, or just sit on the floor here, it’s carpeted.” Kids were in the elevator, her mother with them, father in the hallway with his finger on the outside elevator button and other hand over the door and part it slides into, in case it started to close. Wouldn’t if he kept his finger on the button, though maybe he knew better; he lived there, but it didn’t in any other building when the button wasn’t the heat-sensor kind. One last one for the trip too. Some kind of reminder and also because of the way she looked. Reason she didn’t go down to the street with them. Just out of the shower. Face still flushed, body smelling of her mother’s perfumed soap and her own herbal shampoo, so that too; barefoot, in a bathrobe, no doubt nothing on underneath. Knew there wasn’t, so what’s he talking about? and robe tied in a loose half-knot. Saw her in the bathroom drying herself and putting on the robe. As she slid her arm through a sleeve he went “Ummm. Dopey, huh?” She smiled and said “If only conditions were different and there was time.” “Why, your period, suddenly?” and she said “No, I’m still good — in fact, perfect, just two or three days away.” “Where would we do it anyway?” and she said “On the toilet, standing up, there’s the mat, too wet perhaps, but we could put plenty of towels down, so also on the floor. But, wrong time,” and he said “Ah, if only, be a nice going-away presence,” but didn’t think she meant it, or maybe she did. Even so, so what? Parents there, kids and he leaving momentarily, so just a throwaway line with a bit of truth and mischievousness to it but no probability. Well, that’s what she meant about if conditions were different, or maybe she generally felt like it more after a shower and maybe also after a shampoo. The water, soap, soap smells, body rubbed and scrubbed, so skin stimulated, touching her genitals, breasts and thighs while she cleaned and dried, and asshole. And she has to know he always feels like kissing and licking her body more after it’s washed and soaked and smells so, the tiny hairs there curled into kinks and still damp if not too long after the shower or bath. Gets an erection. “Could you hand me my robe, please?” since he was at the sink having come in to wash something off his fingers and other bathroom was occupied: ink. Driving, erection stays. “I can still get dressed and come down,” she said at the front door, “do you want me to?” and he said “No, yes, nah, stay, it’ll take too much time and effort, and what the hell for? And so soon after the shower you’d be more prone to a cold or chill, since you’re still a little wet, isn’t that how they come? not that I believe in that if-then.” “Dada,” Julie called from the elevator, “we have to go.” “Nathan, please,” his father-in-law said, “we’re holding up the elevator. Other people want to use it; the inside panel says so. Want us to wait for you downstairs?” Good idea, he could give a little squeeze into her, quick feel of her ass or something and that longer deeper kiss. But she was shaking her head, indicating better go. “Coming — So, bye, my dear,” to his wife. “Have a nice day — oh, I hate that expression. Just I hope everything goes okay,” and she said “Like what?” and he said “You know, train trip back, movie’s good, all that. And call when — oh, that’s ridiculous, I’ll speak to you before; tonight, right after we get there. But find out before when your train gets in so I can pick you up. But you’ve time, since I’ll call tomorrow night too and also probably during the day.” “Departs three twenty-two, regular Amtrak, so should get in around six, but you don’t have to. I’ll take a cab.” “I’ll come, I’ll come, the kids love that station and I love picking you up. We can get another good kiss in.” “Daddy,” Margo said, “people living here will get mad.” “My car and train awaits me—await, await, we’re talking about two,” and kissed her quickly, said “See ya,” and went into the elevator, his father-in-law following him in and pressing “1,” his mother-in-law and Julie not there. “Oh my goodness, where’s Frieda and Julie?” and his father-in-law said “They couldn’t take it any longer and walked downstairs.”

In-laws were waving to them as the car drove off. Tooted the horn twice; if he didn’t, well, they might think he was snubbing them, didn’t appreciate all they did for him the last two days; probably not. Happy to have their daughter and grandkids and that he brought them, did all the driving and bringing up the luggage and stuff and now leaving Lee there and taking care of the kids the next two days, so would tolerate a number of slights, if they thought the no-tooting or non-waving one was one, though doubted they even understood what the horn signal meant. Kids waved lollipops back. “Where’d you get those — the lollies?” he said at the corner. “Grandpa,” Margo said. “I don’t know why he gives them without my permission. He knows how I feel about sweets and teeth and they’ll just stick up the car and I hate the fake-flavor smell. What are they, purple, for grape?” “Mine’s orange, Julie’s is lemon. Mommy said it was all right to have them and you always give them to us for long trips.” “Three and a half to four hours isn’t long.” “Four hours is so,” Julie said. “Oh, standing up for your lollipop, hey? And four hours for a kid, okay, maybe, but we’ll be stopping for snacks and pee-pee breaks, at least one. But all right, open them and suck and lick to your heart’s content but don’t bite — not with your teeth sealant on. Your dentist said — I can never get his name straight from the other, your eye doctor, both in the same complex, one’s Lanker, other’s Larkin…” “Dr. Larkin,” Margo said. “Larkin said for things like gummy bears and sour balls, not to bite, and a lollipop is as close to a sour ball as you can get. They crack the sealant and cost plenty to replace.” “You’re always concerned about money,” Julie said. “You never think about people or your children.” “Children aren’t people? Anyway, not true. You heard that someplace on TV or from one of your friends. But it cost mucho, kid…or maybe in a book your whole class read. This Good Citizenship Week or Be Tolerant and Generous to the Homeless Month or something?” “That isn’t funny, Daddy,” Margo said. “The homeless are as good as you.” “I know; I’m not saying. You’re both right; it was a bad joke.” “It was a remark, not a joke.” “Well, I wanted it to be a joke but it didn’t make anyone laugh so turned out to be a remark. But you’re so smart. Look how you took me up on that and you were right, and won.” “He’s just saying that,” Julie said, “to get on your good.” “I’m not. But it does cost a lot, the teeth thing, and is supposed to serve a purpose — no pain with your teeth because you won’t have cavities, or far fewer — so why go in for another application? You’d like that, strapped to the dentist’s chair having that cement or plastic swabbed on?” “What?” “I like it,” Margo said. “You get to see videos in the ceiling and switch it with these chair controls if you don’t like what they’ve on. They have three: cartoons, nature and old TV comedies.” “Fine. What argument I got against that? But I’m still maintaining control over your sweets intake. And also the garbage in the car. For instance, where are the lollipop wrappers? I bet on the floor.” “They’re in our hands. What do you want we should do with them?” “What do you think? Don’t play dumb. Roll them up, but sticky side in, and then keep them on the seat, or just hand them to me, because they’ll end up on the floor with everything else. I can’t stand the mess here sometimes,” and stuck his hand back and soon got two wrappers, which he crumpled up and put on the seat next to him. First rest stop, he thought, he’ll take them and whatever other pieces of crap he can find in the car and dump in the nearest trash can. Newspapers too, he saw on the floor in front of the passenger seat, from when they drove to New York and Lee just left them there, maybe two or three days’ worth. “Peace Talks Proposed,” upper right headline read; fitting, he supposed; he should talk peacefully, peaceably. Peacefully. Later he will, he will. He’s ruining their lives and way they’ll look at and respond to various future things by talking hard and rough with them. In fact, setting the example or groundwork, laying it, whatever, of how they’ll talk to men and maybe also what to expect from them, by acting grouchy, unnegotiable, overcritical, sometimes deranged, just saying the first hot things off his head. Years from now, what? They won’t be so small and eager to please and quick to forgive and resilient after one of his harsher remarks or lousy moods or tirades and they also won’t sit on his lap because they’d be too big to or hold his hand because you just don’t do that with your dad when you reach a certain age and they’ll mostly be with friends or their own interests and more schoolwork and they’ll have their own problems much deeper and longer-lasting than the ones now and his will seem like what to them? like the same they do now, nothing compared to theirs and he won’t be able to do much with or for them but produce money for lessons and schools and things like that, clothes, camps, drop them here, there, pick them up and pray they have good friends and don’t do wrong things, and he’ll regret the way he acted now just as he’s regretted the way he’s acted before and that he didn’t take advantage of these years. So, he’s got to change in the way he is to them. He’s not that bad, but be better. Said it to himself a lot but this time he means it or at least means he’ll give it an even bigger shot. Little while later when he heard them sucking their lollipops: “Hey, will ya don’t make so much noise with those things?” “What things?” Margo said. “The lollipops, what else?” Snapped it out; jeez, already forgot. “You have your radio music on, so our sounds shouldn’t sound so loud.” “Just each of you, please deal with it more quietly, that’s all I’m asking. No reason for any disagreement about it. In fact there is none. It’s just a lollipop, and I’m glad you’re enjoying them, but please, you know, eat it by licking and sucking more quietly. If you can’t, but you’ve tried, so be it.” “Okay.” “Fine, thanks, good. I thank you for your cooperation. My mud-duh thanks you, my foddah thanks you, my brudduh—” “Are you being insulting?” “Me? To my two dollcakes? No. I’m being serious though maybe throwing in that other stuff just for laughs, which again didn’t work, right? But I won’t if you don’t like.” “We don’t mind.” “Great.” Julie slept part of the way. Good, he thought after he looked back and saw her; she can use it. Got to sleep way too late last night, Lee said. He knew she’d make it up in the car and now he can tell Lee that on the phone tonight. New York classical music station till it began to fade. Stayed with it another ten minutes of increasing distortion and fading because he liked the piece and wasn’t listening before when the announcer said what it was and who wrote it — modern, for voice and chamber symphony he thought and the words sounded Russian or Polish but the music in parts Brazilian like that Bachianos whatever number it is, so maybe the language was Portuguese, and unbearably sad but uplifting in a way, he can’t explain it, and then it was gone. Tried the other two New York classical stations, both commercial; wouldn’t it be something if one of them had that same piece on, a musical miracle or just a one-in-a-million situation, but couldn’t find them or they were gone too. Dialed to the Philadelphia station, had the number for it in his head and the one in Delaware further on the way, but couldn’t bring it in yet. Tried the Delaware one; just maybe some fluke and it got through because there was no interference from there to here and its transmission was that strong; country-and-western music or something. “I like it, keep it on,” Margo said and he said “Oh really, sweetie, and it might wake Julie, so do you mind very much if we don’t?” and she said “It’s okay, you’re right.” Good, this is the attitude. Patience patience patience. Respect thy youngsters, and so on. “Daddy, could you help me with my numbers, then, if we do it softly? I’m good at them but I want to be better and we did miss a school day.” “That sounds like something, well, it’s amazing, but something what I was thinking just before, but I won’t go into it.” “What was it?” “No, I’m sorry — okay, why not, and you’re older so you won’t misinterpret it. That I should behave much better to you kids. That’s it. And that I suppose I’m okay sometimes but I definitely could be better, more patience, less stridence and anger — you know, hotheadedness, mad, sharp, knocking you down with words, even insulting you like you said, which I don’t think I did then — I didn’t — but every time I do do it I can kill myself for.” “You’re all right.” “As Julie said, and let’s speak just a teeny weeny lower, you’re just saying that, aren’t ya? — ever notice how many times I use the word ‘just’?” “No. And you do yell too much but when you don’t you’re mostly nice.” “And not just because I give you things, bribe you, because I don’t do that too much, do I? Mommy thinks I do.” “No, you’re nice, like now, except when you get too rough with us.” “When the heck do I do that may I ask?” and she said “Like today when you punched me.” “I punched you? You mean when I asked you to get dressed so you can have lunch and we could get going? I just grabbed your arms — didn’t grab but simply held them — I didn’t even clutch or hold hard — and I said we got to get moving and eat and our things together or we’ll never get out of here and if you do it, Julie will too, that’s all I did and said, don’t you remember?” and she said “You held me hard, you pressed my arms above till they hurt and left marks,” and he said “What marks?” and she said “They were there when I undressed but are gone now and I started crying and you let me go when you saw it, I’m sure, my eyes,” and he said “I didn’t see your eyes, sweetheart, were they crying?” and she said “Almost, because you don’t think one or two tears is crying,” and he said “I’m sorry, I swear I only held you — you know, that kind of holding to give the other person time to get some sense into his head, or hers, meaning just to think about things when she’s a little out of control — but I didn’t grab or clutch or squeeze. Or maybe I squeezed a little without knowing it, and your skin’s very fair and sensitive so I might’ve left some red marks, while on a darker skin I probably wouldn’t have, but I’m sorry. I’ll try not to be even as rough as that again, if that’s what I was, rough, okay?” “Okay.” “We’ve ironed it out — you know, worked it—” and she said “I know what that kind of ironing is. Yes, it’s worked out. It’s all better. Really, Daddy, thank you, now that we’ve talked. And I love it when we talk like this, personally. Want to do it some more?” and he said “Now? It’s difficult without seeing you, or constantly turning around to see you because, you know, some things ought to be said right to the face, and straining my neck, so maybe later. We’ll talk some more personally later.” “Without Julie.” “Sure. Though I’ll also talk personally alone with her, but sometime later. You want me to do your numbers now, something I can do with the back of my head. But quietly so she can sleep.” “She looks like a doll, doesn’t she, Daddy? She can be so sweet when she sleeps,” and he said “You’re the same.” “But look the way her arm’s around the top of her head and hand under her chin. I never do that,” and he said “How do you know? And I’m driving, so can’t look.” “Use the mirror. She might never be scrunched up like that again and you should see it.” “She probably formed that position in the womb sometime, like one does thumb-sucking, I think, and sleeping with your knees and whole body squashed into itself because eventually you get so jammed in there, and things. So I picture it; I’ve in fact seen it. And both of you dolls, believe me. F.A.O. Schwarz would say ‘priceless, out of sight, just for display.’ Really.” “No, I’m ugly, she’s pretty,” and he said “What a thing to say about yourself, and so untrue. Self-abuse. We’ll have to call the cops in on this to arrest you. You have your toothbrush and a complete change of clothes packed?” “Mommy put them in—” “No, I meant — ah, what about what you want with your numbers?” “I am ugly, and really tough multiplications that I can do in my head. The teacher’s quizzing us on this, minute each and no paper or pen, and I want to get a hundred on it.” “Two hundred sixty-two times sixteen.” “Okay. You take the zero from the ten in sixteen, add it to two hundred sixty-two, get two thousand six hundred twenty, and now six times two hundred sixty-two. Well, there you make it easy for yourself — Why’d you think up those times’ numbers?” “First in my head, I guess, though they could mean something more. Social Security for women, for instance — the sixty-two — when they can first collect it, I think, the full amount, which I wouldn’t mind after working straight almost thirty-five years. And two hundred — nice and even and not the hundred percent you mentioned wanting to get on the test, though maybe influenced by it. Sixteen? How old are you two altogether? Fifteen, so doesn’t count, but maybe deep in my subconscious I added up your ages to that. Bad in math down there, still doing it like an average five-year-old. Or good, better than up here,” knocking on his head without turning around. “Because with your added months, yours almost three, hers more than seven, it’s almost another year, which could be considered a year, since you don’t say when you’re nine years and ten months, let’s say, that you’re nine, do you, or even nine and three quarters? You’d say ‘almost ten.’” “That’s right. Or ‘about ten.’ That’s what I’d say.” “So there.” “Six times two hundred fifty, or six times two hundred and then six times fifty, and you get with either…fifteen hundred. This problem’s too easy. Now six times ten and six times two — what was the first number I had, two thousand six hundred twenty?” “I believe so.” “Three one nine two.” “What’s that?” “The answer to everything. Three thousand one hundred—” “Good, you got it, great,” he said, “you’re a whiz.” “Fooled you. It’s four one nine two. How can it be three one nine two if the first part of the answer was two thousand six hundred and twenty? Six is more than half of ten, and one thousand and three hundred is at least half of two thousand six—” “I don’t get you. But maybe we should check the first part of your answer.” “Why? Zero added to two six two is two six twenty.” “So? I still don’t get your point. Anyway, let’s say you’re right and I’m slow today. When I was a kid though—” “Give me some even tougher ones. A hundreds number times one in the thousands.” Did. “Another.” Did and several others. She got them all right or some she got before he did and he just assumed they were right, for while he was still doing one she’d ask for another and he’d give it. “Now some minuses in the thousands,” and he said “Those you need paper for. And even if you of all quiz-whizzers don’t, no no no, I just want to be quiet and think.” She started talking and he said “Pleez, sweetie.” Her lips poufed and he said “All right, but whisperingly, and last gab from you for a while, what?” and she said “I wanted to ask what you were thinking of or planning to,” and he said “I haven’t given a thought to it yet, okay? Now finished, and don’t tell me you’re bored. You’ve books, paper, pencils, markers, imagination, introspection, fanciful inventiveness, memories and so on and you’re also musical and can hum a sweet soft tune, besides those ole standbys, passing scenery, dreams and do-nothing sleep.” He drove and thought she’s not talking and what should he think about? Work, but hell with that, wants to be rapt or entertained. Turned the radio on, woman on the Philadelphia public station was gushing about a group called The Jazz Messengers and he thought he doesn’t know these guys but he hates jazz or most of what he’s heard for forty years, same thing and shallowness and no talk’s going to make it more interesting, and turned it off. If not deep music or just about anything by Vivaldi, Poulenc or Bach then why couldn’t it be, and in a car preferably, something to think about and maybe even stir him up, a good talk, debate or discussion about ideas and stimulating people and things, not crime, drugs, health, business, politics, finance or another international or cultural report — alligator hunting in the Everglades, icebound Aleuts going potty or getting juiced — but art, philosophy, ethics and if art not opera, films, musicals, crafts or dance and where it’d go on for an hour and had only now begun. Maybe once every three years he catches something like that on the road, and really almost any poet or playwright who talks about his life and work on the radio’s okay, novelists are always pushing their books or beating their chests or he can hardly understand. Should he get up to seventy? No other cars around, it’s legal on the Interstates in Maine and New Hampshire and places, so why not here? It’d be fifteen over the limit and if he’s stopped it wouldn’t so much be the cost, though that’d hurt, but getting delayed. What’s, he crazy? — it’d be about a day’s wage. Hadn’t seen, and then he saw one, between some trees in the median strip, car facing his way and trooper watching him as he passed, so good thing he was thinking of the should or shouldn’t he while doing sixty for he’s sure he would have been nabbed, no other cars near him for half a mile now it seemed. Then Julie awoke, knuckled her eyes and he said “Good, you napped almost an hour,” and she said “I wasn’t asleep, I only had my eyes closed and was thinking,” and Margo said “What about?” and she said “None of your business,” and that she was thirsty and had to pee and Margo me-tooed and that she was also hungry, so they stopped at the next rest area for gas and bathrooms and a snack, coffee to go for him, curly French fries between the girls for the car and fruit punch he had them drink in the Roy Rogers because he didn’t want them to make a mess and if the car suddenly had to slow or stop, the straws to cut their palates, “but if you’re good the rest of the trip, real hamburgers in warm hamburger buns and all the trimmins for dinner and ginger ale in champagne glasses”—took no more than twenty minutes. Wanted to get home fast, get the mail, unpack quickly and put everything away, garbage and two weeks of plastic, bottles and cans on the walk for tomorrow’s pickup, get the kids’ dinner ready, while things are cooking have a scotch on rocks as he sits in his Morris chair and goes through the newspapers and mail that had collected past two days and dump the catalogs and advertising circulars and inserts that had come before Lee gets ahold of them. Then after dinner make a couple of calls and finish his work work. No calls. Tomorrow the kids can talk to Lee before they go to school, or she might not be up, so that evening, and he’ll see his associate soon enough and work he’ll do after the kids are asleep. Read them a story when their lights are out and they’re in bed, or tell them one from his head, maybe about a car, the trip, New York City, the road. Comical incident in the tunnel or at a rest stop. Or they’re being followed in an unmarked car by Goofy — loves him as a character, as he gets to talk in a stupid voice and say funny dumb things — and Nancy Drew, since Margo says she’s getting too old for just Goofy and Minnie and the gang. Goofy and Nancy are an item, he’ll say, and explain what “item” here is. They think the car he and the kids are in is stolen and while they’re tailing them they put in a check on their license plate. They pull them over and Goofy asks all sorts of dumb questions. He’s much better at dialog than description or that thing that moves the action along and has all the filler and fill-in, like what the setting is and surroundings look like and why the characters do this and that and so on. “Is this a car you’re in?” Goofy can say. “You mean,” Nancy can correct him, “is this their car they’re in.” “Um-m-m, I think that’s what I said, didn’t I? Is this a their car they’re in?” “Excuse me, Goofy, but what’s a their car?” and Goofy can say “Um-m-m, wha’d’ya think? A their car is their car just as an our car is ours. Gosh, Nancy, you goofy or something? No, you can’t be, since you’re Nancy, I just said, and I’m Goofy, I think, and the captain would never put two Goofys in one patrol car, would he? ‘cause how could we be able to figure out the more harder police things?” “Oh, I give up on you already, Goofy. Our engagement’s off and I don’t want to be your police partner anymore either. And now that he’s out of the picture,” she can say to the girls, “you two want to be my sidekicks? Even if our engagement’s kaput, police work’s got to go on.” Not that but something like and Goofy can say “Hey, don’t blame me for getting out of your picture, for who wants their sides kicked?” The girls love when he brings them into the stories. But he’ll forget this one by the time he decides to tell it tonight and he might even forget he was planning to tell them about Nancy and Goofy. Knows his memory. He’ll come up with something though. Always does even if most as stories with satisfying endings that relate to what came before it and tie it all up, fail. Maybe one with his wife and kids in the car. Taking a vacation or the highway suddenly opens up and they drive spirally down an Alice-like hole. Or where the kids and he drive straight home, no Goofy and Nancy stop, open the door and she’s there, house warm, fire going, dinner ready, table set, drink waiting for him with the ice just plopped in, while he’s sitting reading the paper and having the drink, his wife and kids unload the car and put everything away and the garbage, plastic, bottles and cans on the walk, lots of good mail to go through, correspondence and checks, no ads or bills. “But how’d you get here?” he can say and she can say “Flew.” “Plane, and then you cabbed over?” and she can say “No, this time with my arms,” and demonstrates around the house, up the stairs, down to the basement, then opens the front door while hovering above it like a hummingbird and holding the knob and flies outside. “We too,” the kids can shout, “teach us,” and he can say “Not Daddy, he’s afr-fr-fraid of heights when his f-f-feet aren’t on something,” but they convince him it’ll be a great unforgettable family event and they all, after the kids and he ask her how and she says “Just hold your arms out, no trick to it, and say the magic blessing, ‘gefilte fish,’” fly someplace. Out the window, or door, for windows are too Peter Pannish and he tries with these to be original as he can, so to Inner Mongolia, outer Bessarabia, Central Chile, interior Australia, soar with condors and wine and dine with aborigines who are swinging on vines while the four of them glide. “Whee, whee,” it could all be pretty happy and the right kind of dream-generating stuff for the girls before they go to sleep. So something with Lee, and it’ll be nice for them too if he includes her, Mommy with them if only in this way. Actually, he thought, wishes she were in the car with him; talking with her passes the time better and he likes putting his hand on her thigh while he drives and rubbing and squeezing it or under her knee and maybe her backside. If he were doing it now with the thigh, he thought, kids in back, she’d probably smile for him not to go further and maybe even say as she’s done a number of times for something like this “Can I take a raincheck on it?” If one of the kids said “For what?” he or she has always said “Conversation.” Alone with her on a big empty road or just a car now and then flitting past, he’s stuck his hand on her crotch, even unzipped her fly a couple of times in broad daylight and tight as her jeans still were was able to push her panties down enough to stroke her hair there and once got the tip of his middle finger to the top of her crack but not far enough to touch the bump. Never got that far with any girl in a car, he thought. Once, though, forgets who, though she was very pretty, long dark hair, and slim and always smelling of some intoxicating rose perfume or cologne, Fanny or Franny her name was, they were in high school, rich kid who at the time said she wanted to be a medical missionary while he wanted to be a dentist — called her several times after that and then lost track of her — on the way back on a date where they danced and illegally drank in a Long Island nightclub, and she stuck her hand in his fly, or he steered it in for her. He’d unzipped it, she had to have heard the zip and probably the couple in the front seat too, and he put her hand in under his coat and she jerked it around a little. Tried to get his hand in her underpants under her skirt but she wouldn’t let him. Then tried sticking his finger in her vagina through the underpants and she put her lips to his ear and said “No, that hurts. I’ll do this for you,” jerking him some more, “but do you have a clean cloth? — that stuff can gush.” “How do you know?” and she whispered “Don’t be immature or I’ll stop.” He got out a hanky, forgets how far he got or if she had to stop because of the couple in front or something. Once, though, maybe this was the first time, he met a girl at a party who after he danced and necked with for a while, did it to him till he came. Her name he remembers: Honey and that she had lots of wavy honey-colored hair on top and that when they sat on a radiator cover in the dark she took out some pins and let it drop to her butt. Never even phoned her after that though she gave him her number and said she’d really like to see him. When he was going back to the subway with his friends — party was in the Bronx, they lived in Manhattan — he told them they’d never believe what happened with that girl he was with and one said “She gave you a handjob,” and he said “You saw? It was almost pitch black in the room and I had my jacket over me,” and his friend said “No, but she did? — what a triumph. Nat got jerked off by a chickie he just met, Nat got jerked off, the fucking lucky.” They all said for him to call her and she’ll bang him the next time or the time after and then every time after that and he said he probably will but she’s so homely and they said “So what, her cunt isn’t; they’re all the same, a big juicy slit.” What complete schmucks they all were. Winced in the car when he thought of himself then, vulgar, ugly, stupid, and the girl: she liked him and was nice to him, how could he have been such a creep? His father once said, when he told him he was going on a date with a girl he liked, “Don’t tell me: when you’re your age all a girl’s good for is for whatever you can get. That’s what it was for me and don’t tell me it isn’t for you. But be smart like I was though; you get her in trouble, deny everything or your goose is cooked for keeps.” He said “Wrong, this girl is sweet and from a good family and a real brain and I like her and would be satisfied with just lots of talk and being with her on more dates and at the end of them and only if she wanted, a goodnight kiss,” and his father said “Who do you think you’re fooling? Ah, you’re already on the road to being a patsy with that attitude and ruining your whole dumb life.” Honey didn’t seem very bright and had been too eager to do him, he didn’t understand that since they’d only just met and he never said he liked her, and her dress was too loud and she wore these sparkly dangling ear things and clunky bracelets and had on pancake makeup and her mouth was very wide with a ton of smelly lipstick on it and when she smiled, too much of her gums showed and he wondered if she was doing something to keep a lot more of it hid. She got his number from the girl who gave the party who got it from a friend of his and she said “So, were you serious about wanting to have a date or was that just a line?” and he said she lived too far away for him to subway back and forth to her all the time and she said she could meet him in Manhattan every other date, she loves the city, and he said okay, when he didn’t mean it, “but not this weekend, I got all this studying to do plus my deliveryboy job,” and she said “Maybe I should’ve gone slower with you, but that I didn’t says something about how I felt, doesn’t it?” and he said “Sure, no complaints, I appreciate it,” and didn’t call back. Then Lenore when he was sixteen, girl who did it to lots of guys he’d heard and first to do it to him more than once. That was how he’d heard of her: “She does it to you first date sometimes and to some guys, once she gets to know you, she sticks your prick between her tits and squeezes them into it till you get off. All you do is introduce yourself to her at a dance or on the street, even, if she’s walking with some girls and then you call her up and say you’re the guy who said hello to her or something and is she doing anything now, can you come over? and if she isn’t doing anything, like whacking off another guy, she usually invites you up if she liked your looks and style and she isn’t sick.” Her parents or one of them were always there but they left her alone with him in her bedroom. Amazing, he thought, and with the door shut and lights off except for a bedlamp of such low wattage that it couldn’t have been there for reading or anything but lying back listening to music or having sex. He’ll never permit that with his kids when they reach that age or even twenty and they’re still living home, and it’s probably more accepted now than then so might even be more accepted ten years from now. Knows it’s more accepted: some parents thinking better the kids do it in your home where you can give them a condom than on a beach or in back of a car without one and where they can get mugged or the girl gang-raped. Door will always have to be open, main lights on and music not so loud to drown out every sound. Eight years from now with Margo it might begin, though he hopes not after what they’ve subtly instilled in her so far and he expects to openly impress on her later on: do young youthful things while you’re young, save the older fake reveling and rebelling stuff for when you’re over twenty-one and have half a brain what’s right in those goings-on, and he’s sure Lee will go along with him on that, though who knows? She might say “I had my first all-the-way when I was sixteen with a boy several years older who I loved so why not her when she’s a year or two older than I was if she truly wants to and is prepared for it and the boy’s nice and they’ve been seeing each other awhile and are genuinely fond of each other and absolutely safe about the act?” On his first date with Lenore, and he can’t really call it that and he never saw her outside her apartment, she answered the door and said “Come in, hello, these are my folks, Martha and Mo” or something, “this is Nat,” as they passed the living room, parents were seated reading the papers and waved, sometimes he went into the living room if they were there to say hello and shake their hands, “Now I want to show you my room,” and they went in and she said “Close the door, it’s okay, they hate me and I hate them, they’re demented old assholes but they’re cool.” “Jeez, what a way to talk about your parents,” and she said “Why, something wrong with it? I live with them, you don’t, but if my talk’s not up to your standards, split,” and he said “No, I don’t mind.” She had her own little refrigerator in her room with sodas and snacks inside, double electric burner for making hot chocolate and mint tea, she said, though she never once offered him anything but a cigarette every time he was there when she knew he didn’t smoke, record player, shortwave radio, TV set when lots of homes didn’t even have one, all sorts of things, even a toaster and table cigarette lighter and a carton of cigarettes on her night table and a typewriter on a desk and two walls of tall bookcases filled with books. She said when he was staring at them “Do you like to read?” and he said “Oh, I love it,” and she said “Good, we got something in common — who are your favorite authors?” and he mentioned a few and she said “They stink — maybe I can loan you some of my books; I got too many,” and he said “Sure, I’ll give them a closer look after,” and she said “After what?” and wasn’t smiling and for a moment he didn’t know what to say because he didn’t want to ruin it and he said “When I’m going, now let’s just talk…where do I sit?” and she said “I guess the bed, there’s no good chair for sitting here,” and they sat together on the bed and talked about people they knew and movies they’ve liked or they want to see and what clothes she thinks boys his age look good in and he said he wouldn’t mind owning some of those but it’d take every dime he earns—“My parents have the money, I suppose, but I want to be independent and I think it’s good,” and she said “I should be more that way too with money but Martha and Mo won’t let me — they give me more things than I need and always leave plenty of money in a kitchen drawer for me for whenever I want it — even enough to buy you a restaurant dinner with me if you’d like to one night,” and he said “Sure, that’d be nice, I’ve hardly ever gone except with my parents for lunch, but I wouldn’t want you to pay and I don’t think I could pay for myself unless it was a kind of cheap place,” and she said “Don’t be silly, it’s an invitation, and I hope you like French food, I do,” and he said “Sure, probably, what do they have?” and she said “Snails, atmosphere, cloth napkins, who cares?” and moved closer and he did and they kissed and did that for a while, kissing, rubbing each other’s backs and necks and he thought this is probably a good time and reached for the night table light, wanted to get it over with and go home and maybe call one of his friends and tell him, and she said “Wait, listen at the door,” and he said “For what?” and she said “Do what I say, tell me if you hear anything, or I’m not turning off the light,” and he got up and put his ear to the door and heard nothing and said “Your parents?” and she said “Lock the door, they can be snoopy even if they are cool — I think they’d like to burst in here sometimes and see me naked, not with boys so much but when I’m undressing for bed or drying after showering — I have my own shower, by the way, with these needlelike side sprays from Sweden if you ever feel like taking one when you’re here,” and he thought “With you? I shouldn’t say,” and said “Thanks, but about your parents barging in here, come on now, they wouldn’t do that,” and she said angrily “You don’t believe me?” and he said “Hey, if you say it, it’s got to be true, but you can still see how someone could find it hard to believe, parents doing that,” and locked the door and got back on the bed and she turned the light off and they kissed and he said “Could you put out your cigarette, please, it’s the smoke, it gets in my nose,” and she said “If you insist, sir, though I hope you’re not going to next complain about my breath; I try to be mindful of others with what I smoke; they’re mentholated,” and he said “No, I don’t mind cigarette smell even if it doesn’t have that,” and they lay, as they always did, on the bed — this probably happened five or six times before he said “Do you think you could put my thing between your boobs and rub and stuff and do it that way?” and she said “Where’d you ever get that idea? You’ve got to be sick, sonny, thinking I’d ever do that to a boy. Better you get the heck out of here and pronto,” and got off the bed and buttoned herself up and shooed him out and told him not to call her anymore, he did and she said “I was serious; leave me alone or I’m calling the police”—and she’d grab his penis through the pants after he touched her breasts through her shirt and then he’d unzip his fly or she would and she’d jerk him up and down and he’d stick his finger in her vagina and poke and probe and wiggle it around inside and they’d go on like that and continue kissing till he’d come into a bunch of tissues she’d quickly pop out of a box by her bed and hand him or cover his penis tip with. She never came but maybe she did. He didn’t think about those things then for girls and didn’t talk about it with her and for all he knew he had probably hurt her with his finger. He just didn’t know what to do in there or around it and he’s not so sure he does now. Several women before Lee tried at times to improve his fingering technique and even Lee now and then says he’s not doing it right or he could be doing it better, though Lenore never complained about it and she was the sort of person who would have or at least said when he hurt. Maybe she didn’t even know what she was supposed to get out of it. Or she had somehow come to believe that a boy scratching deep inside her was about the gentlest and most skillful fingering she should expect to get. But she had to have done it to herself lots of times and there must have been a couple of guys before him who had done it well, so who knows what she thought when he did it. Anyway, the poor parents, he thought in the car before. Lenore was a little homely too. Big nose, nothing that would bother him today, he found ugly then. He didn’t want to be seen outside with her, and she was also a little heavy. His friends would have said, which they did when he told them what they were doing to each other in the room, “Take a peek at Nat with Miss Beak” or “L’Amour Schnoz” or “the blimp.” Maybe her folks thought this was the only way she was going to get a guy. That’s what he thought then. But they didn’t look or seem dumb. Father was a doctor, mother an interior designer and both were always reading something when he went into the living room to say hello or waved when he left: news magazines, books, professional journals, big thick newspapers, Times or the Tribune. He should have taken her out. She would have felt better about him and her folks would have thought he liked their girl. To a movie, not to a party, or the dark neighborhood hotel bar he and his friends occasionally went to with fake ID’s and eventually she might have put out for him more than she did. He always had bags on him and they could have done it in the bedroom with the door locked and it would have been the first time with anyone but a paid whore. Though she told him a couple of times when she was jacking him off and he made some motion with his body that he wanted to stick it in her and started pulling off her panties or with his hand pushing her face close to his penis, “I want you to know the only guy I’m ever going to give head to or screw is my husband, if maybe a short time before with him when all the marriage arrangements have been worked out, and I’m not planning on getting married till after college. So don’t expect even a lick from me and don’t ever think I’ll let you do it with your mouth to me either. That’s also only for my husband or when he’s my bona fide fiancé.” Then another girl. Renee, about three years later. She only wore black and her short hair was dyed black and she had black eye makeup and liner on and sometimes an inch-wide strip of black makeup or paint under her eyes and black lipstick when she wore lipstick or it looked like it. He was at a table in the college cafeteria when she put her tray down beside his and said “So how you like your soup?” smelling of incense and sweat and even her mesh hose and shoulder bag black and he said “I don’t know; hot, I guess,” and she said “That a man; how’s it taste?” and he said “It’s something called mulligatawny and it tastes odd, not like soup,” and she said “That’s the curry in it, Mr. Greenhorn, from India where they know how to make exotic sculptures and food. But who’s dragooning you to eat it? You don’t like, push it away. Tell me, you a bonebrain or do you have the force of the raw nerve and divine breath in you plus a bit of sybaritic responsibility?” and he said “I don’t get what you’re saying,” and she said “I didn’t ask if you have a boner — you can’t keep your freaking eyes off my voluminous bust, that I can say; you like, right?” or something like; anyway, he thought in the car, she said things like this in this way, “but I was saying, do you only think of lucubrating and calibrating and slide-ruling and laboratory tooling and scoring in your chosen boredom and becoming chairman of the Sanitation Department one day?” and he said “No, I like to read for enjoyment too and do other things, movies, run around; I’m not an engineering major and I haven’t stared at what you said I did; I’m just eating here, my crackers and soup,” and she said “Tell me, if there was a contest in this sonofabitch dreary collitch for future statistics for the chick with the pinchiest waist and biggest tits, you think I’d have a chance and would you vote for me and shove your ballot in the box — I need every vote I can get,” and he said “Why do you want to think of that? You’ve other things going for you; you’re obviously articulate, got brains, words at your command, et cetera,” and she said “Oh, come on with the line, Harold, come on, give it to me, give it to me, you fucking square — I want the truth; do you like chicks with big tits or not?” and he said “Big, small, they’re all nice, I don’t like you cursing at me, whatever they have,” and she said “Pigshit liar; maybe mine are so heroical they border on the grotesque, I’ll accept that, like the David paintings with the French flags and rafts, but tell me, you’d take a no-tit chick over an above-average-size one, all other things being equal?” and he said “I haven’t thought of it,” and she said “What fugging excrement,” and he looked around, people at their long table were looking, and he got up, “Excuse me,” and took his tray to another table and she sat down beside him with her tray and said “So I’m sorry, so I was crudely rude to you, oh poo-poo me and boo-hoo, so do you accept my apologonorrhea? and you’re still eating your green soup you said you didn’t like, you must be hungry and poor. Listen, Arthur, or whoever you art, I’ll be straight with you. You look good, you don’t smell, you’re no dumbbell, you’ve a cute ass and lots of curly hair locks and a dimple in your chin like my favorite Jewish movie star and are no know-it-all or psycho blowhard, you’ve some dignity and ingenuity and a trace of guilelessness which I like and yet you’re still complex and like sex preferably with chicks, that’s obvious, and are artistically but not ostentatiously dressed and you didn’t tell me to fuck off, which a sliver of me would’ve preferred — I detest noblesse politesse — so we should talk some more, for I believe we’re mutually putting the make on each other. Come to my dump tonight — it’s in the city and near a subway stop and then if you like, sit across the room and ogle at these all you want,” swelling her chest, “I don’t care, even my derrière and legs, they’re I swear not grotesque, so long as you yak a blue streak with me and do everything I want. If you turn out to be taciturn and uninteresting and half of what I thought, out you go, a deal?” and he said “After my last class I work in the Garment Center till seven, but you have your own place? — I don’t know anyone who does,” and she said “Own john, own bed, own radiator, own linen closet, own electric coffeepot, own toilet paper rolls, own night light, I got it all,” and gave her address and subway directions to it and said to bring a creamy cake dessert and two India Pale Ales. Her mother answered the door; they lived in the same apartment on the top floor of a six-story walkup but once in the entrance hall there were two other doors with front door locks and peepholes on them. Never saw anything like it. Her mother, very small, almost a dwarf, maybe a couple of feet shorter than her daughter who was tall, yelled out “Renee, a gentleman visitor,” and she opened the door, said “Thanks, Mom, and how’s it going today?” and her mother said “You know, the same, I’m dying, but am I going to complain, and if I do, who to?” and Renee said “Good, for it’s a pain in the tush when you do,” and to him “Did you meet my madre?” and he said “I said hello,” and her mother said “I said good evening too, that’s what she’s told me I’m supposed to do,” and went into her place and they went into Renee’s. “Strange setup,” he said or something like, probably looking out the peephole and she said “Mom pays for the rent for both of us; it was that and turning this into two flats or my moving out and probably starving on the streets till I got my degree and with not only no comforts but few pleasures. For she knows I like reefers and strong beer and this here with plenty of men,” her big toe poking his penis through the pants, “so it’s what we came up with where she also wouldn’t have to live and die alone. You smoke ‘em?” and he said he never had and she said “Then let’s light up; I love virgins, they’ll always remember me,” and he said “I’m not a virgin,” and she said “I know that, dummy, I was talking about tea — gosh, and I had you pegged as a semisophisticate who I could make whole but you’re too far behind,” and they smoked and had the cake and ale and she said “Let’s go straight to bed, no staring till after; I love the feel of feasting on some rooster’s coxcomb while I’m naked and high and he’s also supping me. You do do that, I hope, or else out you go. And that foreplay’s my final play, you know. I never want to get pregnant from something I don’t especially like doing and ruin my body while also bringing some piglet into this hideous world with people like you and me, and I’m also not one for postcoital snoozes and snores and morning-mate coffee and toast,” and he said “Fine for now, but we’ll see,” and she said “Oh, I’m telling you, Bernard, that’s the law. Don’t so much as unzip your fly now if you think we’re going any further than what I said. To me, it’s the only thing, not simply out of necessity but choice.” In bed he said how come no black pillowcases and sheets, for she had black window curtains and towels and washrags, and she said “Those they don’t make yet but they will. It’s one of my life assignments to put them in every bedding department and store.” Saw her in her flat about a dozen times over three or four years and it never went further than she’d said. She screamed a lot during it and yanked his hair and pulled back his ears and dug her black fingernails into his rear till he snarled for her to stop and later he said “Don’t you think your mother will mind about the noise?” and she said “Let her install soundproofing in my room, for there’s no other way I can do this.” Doing it in her room and the business about the noise and how she acted to her mom and stuff made him think of Lenore just as thinking of Lenore before had made him think of Renee. “Had”? Just “made”? There were others. Renee became a window dresser for New York department stores and could have been the designer behind black bed linen a number of years ago when it was the rage, and maybe it still is or has come back. Of course he never could have remembered exactly what happened with those three, Honey, Lenore and Renee, but what they did and said and the circumstances and some of his thoughts then went something like the way he put it. Women he’d only call to have sex. If they wanted to go out to a restaurant or bar or movie first, fine, if he had the money or could borrow it from them, and he always insisted on paying and paid back, just so long as they knew how the evening would end up. Wasn’t nice, he knew, but if they didn’t like it they could have said no, and none of the women he went with saw themselves as easy playthings. And he used to call some of them at one or two in the morning if he was a little high and lonely and wanted to have sex and a few would let him come over at that hour or would cab to his place if he paid for it and met them in front of his building. He’d look out one of his street windows or lie in bed usually playing with himself while listening for a cab to pull up and then jump up and throw on a bathrobe or pants and shirt and run down the three flights of stairs. If they lived close and said they were on their way, he’d say “When you say ‘on my way,’ does that mean in two minutes or ten or fifteen or what?” and if they said in two, he’d wait in the building’s vestibule, usually reading a magazine or book, or if it was a nice night, sit on the wrought-iron fence on the little garden wall bordering the sidewalk. But most after a while called him a horny bastard and said not to phone again if all he was looking for was to make it with them, but he still called and gradually there was just about no one to have sex or go out with. Sure, lots of dates and encounters over the years and several one-or two-night flings and a few brief romances which he thought might turn into something more but for years nothing that lasted till he met Lee. Doesn’t know why it was different with her. Used to call her at one or two in the morning sometimes too, even when he wasn’t drunk, just wanted to get laid, and most of those times she said to come over or phone her at work the next day if he wanted to see her tomorrow night. A few times she called him around those hours, or maybe no later than twelve, asking if she could drop by for the night or if he wanted instead to cab to her place. If he said it was late or he was tired, she’d say something like “Listen, sweetie, it’s no problem; I suddenly felt like I needed your company and that even a little sexual release would be nice, but we can see each other at a more sensible hour tomorrow or whenever,” and he always ended up saying he’ll come by or she can. Talking to her, he got excited, and she probably even intended him to, or he just didn’t think it a good thing — manli-hood, something — not giving in, and that if he could ask it of her, why not she of him? Maybe it was that, her calling him to come over those few times, and that she put up with his late-calling crap, or only gave him a slight scolding for it because it was two o’clock, three and she was sleeping, but never said never call again if it was just to get laid. Next day if he had come over she usually even said she was glad he did. So she was different in that way, more accommodating and less reproachful than other women he’d known or just not as harsh in the way she carped and blamed, and as pretty and sweet in other ways and well-built and intelligent and quick-witted and good-humored and lots of other good things and better in bed than most of the others but not as good as one or two for a short time, though almost anybody can be hot stuff for a couple of nights with someone new, but over the long run, the best. Dozen-plus years and they still go at it almost every day and lots of times twice in an hour or so, something when it happens now often surprises him that he’s still able to. Second’s never as good as the first anymore when it’s done so soon after, and maybe never was — he forgets — but that he’s still up to it with the same woman after so long and finishes more than half the times he starts and never any other woman since they met, is something. Maybe also it was just time to marry and have kids if he was ever going to, for he’d always said he wanted them, and there were no serious disagreements between them when they were seeing each other and he was actually making an okay living then when he never had before. Glad he did marry, and especially the kids. And continuing to go out on dates at that time and trudging around to different apartments and too often being rejected on the phone after a couple of dinners or in their living rooms or foyers after they’d been kissing and fondling awhile and he had most of the woman’s clothes off, just wasn’t in him anymore. But some of the others? Vicki, last one or maybe the one before the last before Lee, in Boulder when he was there being interviewed for a job he didn’t get, woman around twenty years younger than he but that didn’t stop her from inviting him to her place and it for sure didn’t stop him from accepting, “Breakfast,” she said, “nothing fancy: orange juice and health bread and scrambled eggs and then I’ll get you to your plane,” flat-chested he thought when he first saw her when she picked him up at the airport to drive him to her boss, but when she took off her shirt it turned out she’d been self-conscious of her large breasts and did everything she could to conceal them, like loose-fitting clothes and a special bra that seemed to strap half her breasts to her sides, in fact she almost put her shirt back on when he said “My goodness, your breasts.” Wait. He’s lost his train again. He was thinking of women just jerking him off years ago, though how the thought started he doesn’t know, and who was the last woman he slept with before Lee? when Margo said she was starving and wanted to stop. “We can’t while Julie’s sleeping.” “She’s not, are you, Julie?” Margo said, probably shaking or pinching her for Julie said “What, what? — get off me, that hurt.” “Margo, leave her alone, she needs her sleep.” “I wasn’t sleeping,” Julie said groggily. “I was only resting with my eyes shut.” “Boy, I’ve heard that before,” he said. “It’s true. It gives me as much rest as sleep does and later makes my eyes see better too which sleep doesn’t do.” “That’s foolish,” Margo said and he said “Who knows, maybe she has a point. It might’ve even, that later-see-better stuff, been something studied and proven by scientists, only we haven’t read it in the papers yet. I’m sure some major experiments start like that, from what people said they’d experienced, and maybe just one person. Have any scientists been eavesdropping on your conversations, Julie?” and she said no. “Daddy’s only kidding you,” Margo said and he said “I am, somewhat, but I’m not discounting — making little of what she said. We might have a great budding scientist in our midst and one principally interested in the differences between deep rest and light sleep and the benefits and limits of each,” and Julie said “I don’t want to be a scientist. I want to be a poet, do you think that’s a good thing to be?” and he said “Poetry? Fits your wistfulness and sensitivity. And what could be better doing and more beneficial to everyone? So sure, if it comes to you, become one — meet my daughter the poet — though you’ll have to do other things for a living, like marrying a doctor or best-selling author — only kidding. And you don’t marry for a living; you do it out of love, like poetry, because someone’s been called to you, right? In fact, for our driving pleasure today do one in your head now and recite it to us, I’d love hearing it,” and she said “I’ll try, I’ve never made up one in a car,” and he said “Take a few minutes, make it a special one,” and turned the radio on. A reverend, or preacher or Christian healer, anyway, obvious by the snake-oily voice and every other sentence with the word “Christ” in it or reference to Him — He’ll move things, stand by Him, He’s with us, believe in His ways and words and your luck and fortune, spiritual and otherwise, will rise, as He did — that it was, oh, lost the train there too and anyway not interested in what he was thinking about this hustler, “Come my little pretty,” pulling the girl’s pants down, they used to joke as kids, “and let me put “Christ” in you,” for that’s what he sounds like, asking for dough now in that universal reverend-rabbi-probably-imam voice, since he’s never heard one, the whole thing for dough — money and sex, and don’t forget power, so like just about everyone else when they have the chance and no different than selling soda and cars on TV, right? though being a man of God — but what’s he going on about? — this might be the one decent preacher of them all, just as to my kids most times or let’s say lots I’m the best daddy that ever lived, and moved the dial up the band and back — wait, do those two con nect? some other time, but what do they all do, go to a special religious speech school to talk that way? how can people fall for it? or maybe it’s just if enough do it’s worth the air time — and all he could find was another preacher or healer, must be the area they’re driving through and also the scarcity of stations or low or short frequencies of them if that’s the word, and then some hillybilly music as one of his professors said it, another fake, for though corrected by students with their laughs — he was German — he said it that semester a half-dozen times more—20th Century Intellectual History, Part One, maybe his favorite college course overall, though Two, and he never looked forward to a course more, was a dud, forgets why, maybe became a strain to make out his speech in that huge lecture hall and also got tired of his crowd-pleasing ways, and dropped it—“Love will get you down,” singer was singing, “but love will get you up too, so risk it, for life’s” something, incomprehensible, followed by a plucking instrument and backup caterwauls from a group. Double entendre? Why not, simple enough, and nobody’s got gonads like these guys, and just another kind of preaching for dough, no? and turned it off. “Daddy, I liked that,” Margo said, “you finally had something good,” and he said “So okay, listen to it on your own radio at home with your door closed and the sound low,” and she said “We won’t get it, we’ll be too far away and the program will be off,” and he said “So what can I say? Rough. No, that wasn’t nice, I’m sorry,” and she said “It’s all right, at least you admitted it. But if I can’t listen to the music, there’s nothing to do, so we have to stop,” and he said “I’m not going to ask this, for if I do you’ll say yes even if the real answer’s no, but do you have to go to the bathroom? — be honest,” and she said “Not yet,” and he said “Then if a rest stop doesn’t come up soon, we’ll stop,” and she said “What’s that mean?” and he said “If there’s one in the next two to three miles, or make that three to four or even five, but no more than that — the odometer here says 22-0-8-7 point 6, so we’ll say anything past 0-9-3, no, 9–2, which is less than five miles but I want to be fair and take in the half-mile or so we’ve done since I started talking about the rules of how we’ll stop. In fact why don’t I set the trip odometer,” and he did, “this even littler mile measurer thing here for car trips and when it hits 4–0, to be really fair, for we’ve gone about a mile since I first started up about all this, then the first rest stop that comes after that number will be the one we stop at, okay?” and she said “I don’t understand, you make it too complicated,” and Julie said “I have a poem. It’s not one of the same ones I’ve said to you before and it’s not good because I didn’t take long in making it up, but here goes. ‘The radio’s playing and went off. My daddy was saying and then became grorph.’” “Grorph?” Margo said and Julie said “For gruff. ‘The music was swaying and then got lost.’ That didn’t happen but I didn’t want another rhyme with ‘off.’ And I first had ‘and then like sounds got lost,’ but then thought it sounded better without it. ‘Night isn’t near and the stars aren’t out yet. But I see clear. I see clear. For passing the time in a car, poetry’s the best bet.’ The end.” “God, that’s something,” he said. “Even down to the contractions and the repeat line and that throwaway ‘lost’ for ‘off,’ and rhyming ‘best bet’ with ‘yet’? Why’d you say it wasn’t good?” and Margo said “May I say something?” and Julie said “I know you hated it,” and Margo said “No, it was fantastic. Recite it again though, I want to hear it whole,” and Julie leaned over, he saw in the rearview, and kissed Margo’s shoulder and said “You’re so nice,” and Margo shut her eyes as if touched and he thought “That’s what I love to see, almost nothing better, more than their looking up with that look at me, wouldn’t it have been great to have had an older brother to worship or a younger one I loved who worshiped me,” and said “I wish I had a pen around to jot the poem down,” and Julie said “Down and around, whole and though. Jot the dots. The pen and the…the…” “Men,” Margo said and she said “Doesn’t fit with what I’m thinking. I got it. ‘Pen in my own den, when I’ll write this down, all words all around, till then say it again and again.’ Den is my room, you see; I’ll remember it by then,” and he said “Good also, sweetheart, and do write them down, espe daily the first one, but second one if you can do it too, when we get home or at the rest stop where I’ll borrow or buy a pencil or pen. I want to read them to Mommy on the phone tonight and also keep copies of them to show later on what a wonderful poet you were even back when,” and she said “When’s that?” and he said “When you were a kid, now; for I’m talking about for when you get older,” and she said “Maybe you can help me type them on your machine — I have so many I can even make a book of them and Margo can draw the cover,” and he said “And Mommy can do the music — okay, will do or I’ll even type them myself.” They drove. She recited the first poem whole. Margo said if Julie didn’t mind she had some very small criticism; she didn’t like that “‘best bet’—it sounds like something you buy in the supermarket,” and then to him she was starving even more than before, couldn’t they take the next exit and go somewhere on that road and then back on? — they must have gone more than four miles and they wouldn’t lose, by going off and back on, more than a few minutes, and he remembered the bagels he’d bought for the trip early that morning and slapped his forehead and said “Stupid Dada, I have bagels, plain and sesame, from Bagel Cottage in New York, anyone interested?” and Margo said “Plain, me,” and he pulled the bag out from under his seat, “Oh lucky bag,” he said, “saved the day, made a girl happy,” passed a plain back, Margo split it and gave Julie a piece and they ate. Then they played together and by themselves. Then what happened happened.