Mothers and Daughters

Book Two Gillian

David Regan came back to Talmadge, Connecticut, on a warm spring day in 1947. He was twenty-two years old, but he knew he looked more like thirty. His image in the reflecting windows on the small station platform did not startle him. He could remember once, at Camp Elliott, seeing his face suddenly in the mirror one morning as he was shaving before quarters for muster. He had almost glanced over his shoulder to see who was standing behind him until he realized he was looking at himself. He had leaned closer to the mirror, his eyes wide, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. And then touched his own face exploringly, like a blind man feeling a statue. And then turned away.

He took a cigarette from the pocket of his jumper now, conscious of the ruptured-duck symbol sewn above the pocket, conscious of the way his hand shook as he lighted the cigarette.

“Help you with your bag, sir?” a voice beside him said.

He shook out the match and turned. One of the Talmadge cab drivers was reaching for his suitcase.

“Leave it alone!” David said sharply. “I don’t need any help.”

“Thought you might want a taxi.”

“I’m walking,” he said.

He picked up his suitcase and started down the main street. The town did not seem to have changed very much. There had been a war in Europe and a war in. the Pacific, and they had dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese towns and rewritten the history of the world, but Talmadge wrapped itself in springtime and looked exactly the same, the spires of the university in the distance, the sleepy look of the main street, the women in slacks, the shopping carts. Places never change, he thought. Only people do.

He tried to feel something as he walked down the street. He tried to remember a boyhood here, tried to remember buying comic books in Hurley’s, Batman and Superman, tried to remember the town huddled against winter snow, Jack Armstrong on the radio each afternoon, The Shadow every Sunday at five-thirty, fishing at the lake, the lake, ah the lake. His thoughts turned off suddenly.

If only he could feel something.

He had thought of this moment for half his lifetime, it seemed. He had spent his youth thinking of this moment, the time when he could return to Talmadge and breathe deeply of free air, walk down the main street of his home town without that P on his back and on his trousers, P for prisoner, the navy labeled everything. You wore your rating on your sleeve and your rank on your collar, and that P for prisoner branded into the flesh on your back and into the soft gray cushion of your mind, it’s over, forget it. Forget it. But he could feel nothing.

He ached to feel something. His eyes, his nose, his ears longed for something that would trigger an emotion, something that would tell him he was home. But there was nothing. He walked silently down the main street of the town, and the bells of the First Congregational Church on the hill sounded the hour, do I remember the bells, please do I remember the bells? But he felt nothing until he passed the naval recruiting office, and then he felt only a terrible urge to spit at the plate-glass window. He walked by rapidly.

He stood before the gate of his house, the lawn rolling new and green to the ancient building, the lawn chairs freshly painted. He could hear birds in the trees. A woman was singing somewhere in the house. Mother, he thought. He felt nothing.

He opened the gate. He stared down at the gate latch. He walked across the lawn and to the back door. He looked through the screen. She was singing as she stood at the telephone. She was dialing a number and singing, and he remembered a time long ago when she had stood by a telephone talking to Aunt Millie, but the memory meant nothing to him. He stood with his face pressed to the screen, watching her. She looked a little older, but nothing could ever touch the fine bones of her face, age could never destroy that structure. She’s still a very pretty woman, he thought, watching her as a secret lover would, but feeling neither love nor hate, feeling nothing, seeing the tall, slender woman who finished dialing her number and then tucked the phone under her brown hair, against her ear. He opened the screen door. It creaked noisily.

She looked up as he stepped into the kitchen. She said, “Hello, this is Julia,” into the telephone, and then she turned to look at him, and she said, “Yes?” her eyebrows raised, a slightly quizzical expression on her face, and he realized with grim amusement that she did not recognize him.

“Yes?” she said again. Into the telephone she said impatiently, “Just a minute, Mary, there’s someone...” and then she looked at him, really looked at him. “David?” she said. “David?” She put the receiver back onto the wall hook instantly, recovering immediately from her initial shock, was there anything from which Mother could not recover instantly? He watched her as she crossed the kitchen toward him, watched as she carefully rearranged her face, the shock fleeing before an opening smile, the eyes studying his face and rejecting what they saw and adjusting the new image to correspond with the memory. He marveled at what she could accomplish in the space of ten short steps across a kitchen. The smile she flashed at him was gracious and feminine, as if he were a beau who had come to call too early, but who was welcome nonetheless. He felt a phony theatricality to the scene, and then condemned his own cynicism and tried to think, This is my mother, for God’s sake, but he still felt nothing. For a moment, her poise faltered on the icy edge of his indifference. Her hands outstretched and ready to embrace him, she stopped in sudden embarrassment, pulled back one hand, and then seemed to feel the motion of the other hand had progressed too far to allow checking. Awkwardly, her hand caught in space, she completed the motion, reaching for his crew-cut head, running the palm of her hand across the erect bristles, and saying, “David, you look like a Nazi!”

He wondered if she had seen the scar across the top of his skull, a vivid scar in the stiff bristles, wondered if she had noticed that the hair itself had turned gray, almost white, wondered, and suddenly thought of Mike Arretti and Camp Elliott, the leaded billet crashing into his skull, the way the blood was suddenly gushing onto his face, spilling over his forehead and into his eyes, and Mike Arretti watching him and smiling as he fell to his knees.

His mother laughed once, nervously, and then her poise returned again with new strength. This was her son, he could almost hear the words, this was her son and greet him she would, so she embraced him and held him close and said, “You’re home,” which he felt was terribly stagey, but he answered, “Yes, Mother, I’m home,” and wondered when they would bring down the first-act curtain, and then wondered if this wasn’t all very genuine, if perhaps he was the actor, he was the one fake cog in this big homecoming machinery.

She held him at arm’s length. The gesture seemed corny to him. Would she say, “Let me look at you”? God, he hoped she would not say that.

“I’m glad,” she said simply.

He was thankful for that. He immediately chided himself for having underestimated her. But he could not understand his attitude, this feeling of being an observer rather than a participant.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I’d have arranged a parade.”

He smiled because it was expected of him. “I wanted to surprise you,” he said.

“Surprise me! I nearly died when you walked through that door.” She tucked a stray wisp of hair under a bobby pin, watching him as she did, apparently pleased with what she saw, or at least presenting a façade of pleasure, which belied that first moment of shocked recognition. You are not fooling me, Mother, he thought. You are looking at a stranger.

“Would you like some tea? How was your trip? Are you discharged now? Are you home for good?”

“Yes, I am. And yes, I’d like some tea.”

“You look tired, David.”

“I am tired.”

“A long trip?”

“Very long, Mother.”

“But you’re home for good?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. She seemed genuinely pleased now. Perhaps she was getting accustomed to him. Perhaps he didn’t look quite so strange to her now.

“Did you hurt your head?” she asked.

His fingers went instantly to the scar. He shrugged. “Oh. Yeah.”

“But you’re all right now?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“You look tired,” she said again.

“I can use a cup of tea.”

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

He watched her as she moved to the stove. “How’s my room?” he asked suddenly.

“Your room?”

“Yes. How... how is it?” He shrugged.

“Just as you left it, David.”

“I think I’d like to go up there.” He watched her warily. “Change my clothes. Get out of this uniform.”

“Well... well, David...” She seemed bewildered all at once.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Well, I... I gave your old clothes away,” she said. “Last summer. To the Red Cross.” She opened her hands plaintively. “I’m sorry, darling, I thought... I assumed you’d outgrown them.”

“Oh,” he said. He paused. “All of them? My clothes?”

“Yes.” She bit her lip. “Oh, David, I’m so sorry, really I am.”

“That’s okay.” He shrugged. “I just wanted to get out of this uniform.”

“Yes, I should have realized that. You can go to town later and buy some nice things, would that be all right?”

“Sure.” He began drumming his fingers on the table top. Julia stood near the stove, watching the teakettle. “How’s Ardis?” he asked.

“Ardis Fletcher?”

“Mmm. Yes.”

“She’s married, you know.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“No, I didn’t know. I wondered why she stopped writing.”

“Yes, she’s married.”

“Funny how...” he started, and then fell silent.

“I think the tea is ready,” Julia said. She brought two cups to the table and poured. “Sugar?” she asked.

“No, thanks.”

“You used to take sugar.”

“Yeah, but in the brig they—” He stopped himself short.

They sat sipping tea in the late afternoon.

“Do you remember the villa in Aquila, David?” she asked.

“Yes, I remember.”

“So lovely. So long ago.”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Well, you’re home.”

“Mom... “he said.

“Yes, dear?”

“Mom, why...” He put down his teacup. “Mom, I thought you’d come to see me again. I mean, after that first time.”

“What, dear?”

“When I was at Camp Elliott. You came once, and then... well, the other guys... I just thought you might come again. I mean, I know it was a long trip and all, but...” He shrugged.

Her eyes opened wide. She looked at him blankly and said, “But David, you know how ill your Aunt Millie has been.”

“Yes,” he said. He shrugged.

“I think I wrote you about it.”

“Yes. Yes, I remember.”

“California’s a long way off, darling. And Aunt Millie’s all alone in the world, except for me. You understand, don’t you? I hoped you’d understand, David.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “I just wondered, that’s all.” He wet his lips and nodded. Well, he thought, this is the second time Aunt Millie’s picked up the marbles. He lifted his teacup.

“Was it very terrible, David dear? Do you want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s over.”

“Yes. And things will be different now that you’re home.”

“I suppose so.”

Julia smiled maternally. “Tad Parker stopped by the other day. He asked about you.”

“Oh? How is he?”

“Fine. He’s enrolled at a New York acting school. He still wants to be an actor, can you imagine that?”

“Well, nothing wrong with that,” David said, and he shrugged.

“Will you be going to school, David? To college?”

“I guess so.”

“To Talmadge?”

“Well, I... I was thinking about New York. A school in New York someplace.”

“I see,” Julia said. She nodded thoughtfully. “What will you study, do you know?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Julia smiled warmly over her teacup. “I always had the feeling you could be... well, David, you always wrote such beautiful letters. Perhaps you could—”

“No!” he said, and then realized his vehemence had startled her. “No,” he said softly.

The theater was dark except for the single work light burning in the center of the stage. Gillian stood in the wings and looked again at the script, which had been handed to her not ten minutes ago. A young buxom blonde was on stage, asking the director if she could sit on the floor while reading for the part, would that be all right? She could get the feel of it better that way, she said. The director told her she could sit or stand, whichever put her more at ease, and the blonde promptly collapsed into a buttery heap at the base of the work light, and began reading. Gillian tried not to hear the lines. She concentrated on the script in her hands, thumbing through it, searching out the character’s biggest speeches in an attempt to second-guess what they would ask her to read. She suddenly remembered a time when she was eight years old and had rushed home excitedly to tell her mother she’d been cast in the role of a frog in the school play. “I got a pock in the play!” she shouted. “I got a pock in the play!” She wished it were as simple now. She wished...

“Thank you very much,” she heard a voice say. “Next, please.”

She looked up from the script, and then closed it. Well, she thought, here we go again. Good luck, Gillian. And she walked onto the stage. At twenty-two, she seemed to have acquired that elusively knowledgeable look which all New York career girls were wearing that fall, a look that was rescued from its usual shellacked hardness by the inherent softness of her body, the freshness of her features. Her face had lengthened somewhat, matured perhaps; it was economically beautiful, with startling green eyes, a generous mobile mouth, a finely turned nose. She wore her hair the way she’d always worn it, the russet bangs clinging to her forehead, the mane brushed sleekly to the back of her neck. She moved on stage with an energetic purposefulness that was nonetheless feminine, almost feline, utilizing a graceful long-legged lope that was hers alone and that she realized was out of character. I am Gillian Burke, she thought, take me or leave me. I want a pock in the play.

“Hello,” a voice from the theater said. “How are you?”

“Fine, thank you,” Gillian said. She could not see anyone in the theater, but she did not shield her eyes, nor did she squint. She looked out at what she imagined to be the sixth row center, and she spoke in a natural unforced manner, as if her conversational partners were sitting across a table from her.

“What’s your name, Miss?” a second voice asked. The voice was tentative, exploratory. She assumed it belonged to the author of the play.

“Gillian Burke,” she answered.

The other voice asked authoritatively, “Why did you choose that name?”

That’s the director, she thought. “I was born with it,” she answered.

“It’s an unusual name,” the director said.

“Yes, I know.” She smiled. “But I guess I’m stuck with it.”

She heard something that could have been a slight chuckle. She could not tell whether the sound had come from the playwright or the director. She was suddenly conscious of the work light. She moved a little closer to it, tilting her head upward so that the light caught her cheekbones and her nose.

“What have you been doing, Miss Burke?” the director asked.

She tried a tentative smile. This was the part she always hated. She knew they weren’t truly interested in knowing what she’d been doing. If she’d been doing anything really important, they’d have known about it already. The question was designed to start her talking about qualifications that were insignificant, the carbon-copy professional life of a thousand other acting aspirants in the city. The plot of the story was unimportant, only the lead character was. And the lead character was Gillian Burke, and they would be watching her all the while she spoke. She had experimented with this phase of casting a long time ago. She had decided that the details of her professional past were boring, and she had coupled this with the intuitive knowledge that people would much rather converse than listen. And so, whenever the question was asked — and it was always asked — she had tried to frame her answers in the form of a dialogue rather than a monologue, bringing her inquisitor into the action, creating a fake give-and-take, which was livelier than a simple recitation would have been. She had abandoned this technique when one director said, “We’re a little busy here, Miss Burke, and we haven’t time to pull teeth. Do you want to tell us about yourself, or shall we forget it?” From then on, she gave the facts straight. They were supposed to be facts, and they were supposed to allow those people in the darkened theater an opportunity to study her before she began reading, an opportunity to form an opinion about her voice, her face, her experience, the way she moved, an opportunity perhaps to decide whether she was right for the part even before she opened the script. She began her recitation.

“I’ve been studying with Igor Vodorin for the past four years. I also belong to a group that has been doing repertory at the Ninety-second Street Y, Shakespeare mostly, though we have done some Marlowe and some Jonson. My best roles at the Y were Ophelia in Hamlet, and Goneril in Lear. I’ve done summer stock at—”

“Could you speak a little louder, please, Miss Burke?” a voice from the rear of the theater asked, a new voice, producer?

“Yes, certainly,” she said. “I’ve done summer stock at Westport and Stockbridge, the usual straw-hat plays, but I had supporting roles in two originals that were being tried.”

“What were they?” the director asked.

“A comedy called Martha Walking, and a melodrama called Night Flame.”

“Neither of those reached Broadway, did they?”

“No,” Gillian answered. She smiled. “But that wasn’t my fault,” she added quickly.

She thought she heard another chuckle out front.

“I’ve also done a few radio spots on WOV and WNYC.”

“Commercials?”

“No. Dramatic roles.”

“Sustaining or sponsored?”

“Sustaining.”

“You’re Equity?”

“Yes. And AFTRA.”

“Done any television?”

“No. Not yet. I think... well, my agent thinks there’s something for me on Kraft.” She paused. “I’ve got an interview this Friday.”

“Why do you want this part, Miss Burke?”

“Because I think I’m right for it.” She paused for a fraction of a second and quickly said, “No, that isn’t true. I haven’t the faintest notion if I’m right for it. I want the part because I’m a good actress.”

“How do you know that, Miss Burke?”

“I know it.”

“Has someone told you?”

“Would that make me a good actress if I weren’t one?”

“No, I guess not,” the director said. She detected a smile in his voice. “Would you like to read for us now? On 1–23, the speech starting with ‘I can tell things without really knowing them.’ Do you see that, Miss Burke?”

Gillian opened the script, moved closer to the work light, and found the speech. “Yes, I have it.”

“Would you begin, please?”

She read well, she thought, with force and control. When she finished the speech, she closed the script and stood looking out into the blackness. The theater was silent.

“Ahhh, Miss Burke,” the director said, “would you mind turning to 3–17, please? The speech starting with ‘Yes, but Phyllis was always so sweet, so solicitous.’”

“I have it,” Gillian said.

“Would you begin, please?”

Her hands had begun to tremble slightly. She hoped there was not a quaver in her voice. She tried to pretend she was not in a theater, reading to a director and a playwright and God knew how many other concerned people. She read as well as she knew how to read, and then she closed the script again, and again looked out at the blackness.

“Would you walk downstage left, please?” the director said.

Gillian swallowed, pulled her shoulders erect, and walked across the stage.

“Now back to the light, please.”

She walked back to the light.

“How old are you. Miss Burke?”

“Twenty-two.”

“How tall?”

“Five-five,” she answered.

“Would you take off your shoes, please, Miss Burke?”

“What?”

“Your shoes. Would you mind removing them?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. She stepped out of her pumps without stooping, using the toe of one foot to remove the shoe from the opposite foot.

“And now would you walk down left again?”

“Without my shoes?”

“Yes, please.”

She nodded and walked down to the proscenium.

“Thank you, Miss Burke. Who is your agent, please?” the director asked.

“Marian Lewis,” she answered.

“Thank you,” the director said. “Next, please.”

The words almost leaped into her throat. She could feel them bubbling inside her, almost forming on her lips. Did I get the part? Did I get the part? She felt parched all at once. She stood in the darkness on the side of the stage and stared out at the empty seats, motionless.

“Yes, Miss Burke, thank you,” the director said.

She nodded dumbly, picked up her shoes, and went into the wings, wondering the same things she wondered each time. Did they like me? They asked me to read two speeches. They must have liked me. Maybe they’ll call Marian as soon as I leave the theater. Why did he ask me to take off my shoes? I’m too tall, I’ll bet. Who’s been signed for the male lead? Is he short? Maybe there’s a scene where the girl is barefoot, I should have looked more closely. But he asked me how tall I was. Damn it, who is playing the male lead? They couldn’t have liked me. They’d have said something, they’d have asked me to read more. But they did ask me who my agent was, that’s a good sign, oh God, maybe, maybe!

Outside the theater, she reached into her bag and took out her small appointment book. She thumbed through the month of November, stopped at the page marked with a big 20, and studied her own hurried scrawl:

She glanced at her watch. It was three-fifty. If she caught a cab, she could be at F.A.O.’s by four, maybe. The cab would cost her at least sixty-five cents, could she get away with a ten-cent tip? No, fifteen cents would be the absolute minimum, although cabbies did expect women to be cheap tippers, maybe she could get away with ten. No, she had better figure on at least eighty cents for the ride. Which meant her first hour at the store would net her exactly sixty cents, a penny a minute, a real fat profit that was. Or should she chance taking the bus and being late again? No, they’d fire her, sure as hell. She simply had to begin planning her days more carefully. But what was she to do when a reading came along? I wonder if I got the part, she thought. Will Amanda pay for dinner? There isn’t even time for dinner with her. I’ll have to take a sandwich to class. I wonder if I got the part.

She hailed a taxi.

She didn’t seem capable of concentrating on what Amanda was saying. She kept thinking of the telephone and wondering if they’d contacted Marian. She had called as soon as she’d left the store, but Marian was on another line and Dotty, the receptionist, had asked Gillian to call back at six-thirty. It was now six twenty-five, and she sat opposite Amanda at a circular table, listening to the polite chatter in the bar, and trying to concentrate on Amanda’s words, and thinking all the while of the reading that afternoon and the fact that they’d asked her to take off her shoes, asked her how tall she was, asked her to walk for them. Surely that meant something. They hadn’t asked the other girls to do that.

“... but, of course, Matthew’s new office is on Wall Street, and that would add at least another half hour to the commuting time. I don’t think he’s too keen on the idea, but I’m working on him.” Amanda smiled and lifted her drink.

It was amazing how elegant she looked, Gillian thought, amazing how marriage seemed to have changed not only the way she dressed but her face and body as well. She carried herself with a new certainty, as if she had found a secure niche and settled happily into it. She was wearing a stark black dress, sleeved to the wrist, hooded so that only a faint hint of her long blond hair showed. The dress, fitted through to the waist, flared to a circle of wool-jersey hem. She wore short leopardskin boots. A leopard jacket was draped carelessly over the back of her chair, together with her sling purse. A large circular gold coin showed on a chain at the throat of the dress. Gillian studied her and felt slightly displaced, as if she had stumbled into another time belt in which she remained exactly the same, unchanging, while everything around her progressed toward a vaguely understood middle age. Has Amanda really changed that much? she wondered. Or is it only because she’s married? She did not know the answer. But she felt as if she were sitting with a chic and elegant young woman who made her feel like an awkward adolescent.

Quickly, Gillian glanced at the clock behind the bar, and then toward the telephone booth. A grinning fat man was hugging the mouthpiece. Come on, she thought, hurry up. I have to make a call in two and a half minutes.

“Do you think I’m insane, Gilly?” Amanda asked. “Wanting to live in Talmadge?”

“No, it’s a lovely town,” Gillian answered. I wonder if I got the part, she thought. They must have liked me. They wouldn’t have made such a fuss otherwise. And I heard them laughing at some of the things I said. They liked me from the very start, even before I read for them.

“I always loved it,” Amanda said. “And it’s really only an hour and a half from the city.”

“When the New Haven’s on time,” Gillian said.

“Yes. Anyway, I’m going up with Matthew this weekend. Just to look around.”

“That should be fun.”

“Would you like to come along?”

“I’d love to,” Gillian said. “But I work on Saturdays, and I have a rehearsal at the Y this Sunday.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

Gillian nodded and looked at the phone booth again. Come on, she thought, get out. Get off the phone!

She shoved her chair back suddenly. “Amanda, will you excuse me? I promised I’d call my agent.”

“Go right ahead,” Amanda said. “Shall I order another drink?”

“Yes, fine. Yes, do that. Excuse me.”

She rose and walked away from the table, aware that two men at the bar turned to watch her as she shoved back her chair. She went directly to the phone booth and stared fixedly through the glass doors at the fat man. She turned to look at the clock again. It was six thirty-one. Oh now really, she thought. The fat man continued to grin into the mouthpiece. Oh, you unctuous thing, she thought, you’ll be in there all day, and the booth will smell of you after you’re gone. She crossed her arms over her breasts and began tapping her foot, scowling at the fat man. Now relax, she told herself. They probably didn’t even call. They probably didn’t like me at all.

The doors to the booth opened. The fat man grinned at her apologetically, and she gave him a frozen smile in return, and stepped instantly into the booth. She deposited her coin, dialed, closed the doors, and then opened them again immediately.

“Lewis Agency,” a voice said.

“Dot, this is Gillian.”

“Just a second, Gilly. Did you call your exchange?”

“No. Why?”

“Miss Lewis was trying to reach you there.”

“Anything?” Gillian said.

“I don’t know. Just a second, she’s free now.”

Gillian waited impatiently. At the table, the waiter was depositing the fresh round of drinks before Amanda.

“Gilly? Is that you, sweetie?”

“Marian, for God’s sake, did they call?”

“Did who call, sweetie?”

“Well, the Theater Guild people, who do you—?”

“Oh. No, darling, they didn’t. How did it go?”

“Oh.”

“Did they like you?”

“I thought so. They asked me who my agent was.”

“Did you tell them?”

“Of course I told them! Marian, when you ask stupid questions like that, I could...”

“Sweetie,” Marian said softly.

There was a silence on the line.

“They didn’t call,” Marian said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Yes, maybe,” Gillian answered.

“About that appointment with Kraft?”

“Yes.”

“On Friday?”

“Yes.”

“It’s with the producer-director, a man named Stanley Quinn. At WNBT. You know where that is.”

“Yes.”

“Four o’clock,” Marian said.

“Marian, I have to be at work at four.”

“This is important.”

“So is eating, damn it!” Gillian said.

“Sweetie,” Marian said softly.

“I can’t afford to lose my job. Make the appointment earlier. Or cancel it. I don’t care either way.”

“That’s no way to talk, Gilly.”

“I guess it isn’t. How many readings do you suppose I’ve been to since you took me on two years ago, Marian?” She paused. “I’ll be at class tonight. If anything happens, call my exchange.”

“All right.”

“I gave a better reading than anyone else, Marian.”

“I’m sure you did, sweetie.”

“They asked me how tall I was.”

“Did you tell them?”

“Marian, goddamn it...”

“Yes, sweetie. I’m sorry.”

The line went silent.

“You’ll be a big star, Gillian,” Marian said.

The line went silent again.

“I’ll call in tomorrow,” Gillian said. “Just... just in case.”

“All right, sweetie. Good night, now.”

“Good night,” Gillian said, and she hung up. She felt automatically for her coin in the slot, left the booth, and walked back toward the table.

For the first time in two years, she felt very tired.

The acting class conducted by Igor Ivanovich Vodorin was held in a loft on Sixth Avenue. To the left of the building’s entrance was a small bookshop, the window of which exhibited the latest best sellers together with a discreet display of silk-stocking photos. Gillian looked at the book titles — she had already read The Moneyman and House Divided and East Side, West Side — and then studied the photos, fascinated. She went into the kosher delicatessen to the right of the entrance, bought a hot pastrami sandwich and a celery tonic, and then went into the building. The stairway leading to the loft was steep and dimly lighted, but after climbing those rickety steps for nearly four years, she could have navigated them in total darkness. She did almost that now, reading from an open script as she climbed the steps, reaching the landing by blind instinct, turning right into the small cloakroom where she hung up her coat, and then walking into the large pipe-riddled room that was the studio itself. As she crossed the room to take a seat near the wall, someone said, “Hi, Gilly,” and she nodded briefly and mumbled an answer, absorbed in the script. She sat without looking up from the script, unwrapped the pastrami sandwich, stuck the soda-bottle straws into her mouth, and, still not looking up, continued with her memorizing.

Her method of memorization was simple. She would read a sentence and repeat it over and over again in her mind until she knew it. Then she would commit the next sentence to memory, and then repeat both sentences together. She could never understand why anyone had the slightest trouble learning a part. In fact, she couldn’t understand why anyone with a bad memory would want to become an actor. But she’d certainly met plenty of actors who couldn’t even remember the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” who were always searching for a new gimmick that would make the task easier. She could not abide sloppy memorization. She held a vast respect for playwrights and the printed word. If someone misread a line, it infuriated her.

She could remember criticizing a student’s performance once, and the argument that had followed it. The boy had done a scene from The Eve of Saint Mark, and after Gillian had commented on his particularly annoying mannerism of constantly stroking his hair into place, she had said, “And the line is supposed to be ‘The host with someone indistinct converses at the door, apart.’”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said, ‘The host with someone interesting.’”

“Well...” The boy shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

“I imagine it makes a great deal of difference to Maxwell Anderson. And probably to T. S. Eliot, whom he’s quoting.”

“I was trying to get the character over,” the boy said. “I don’t see where one word—”

“Private Marion is not a person who would quote poetry incorrectly,” Gillian said.

Igor, who had been listening to the exchange silently, suddenly said, “Of course, he is supposed to be a cultured man, and the mistake is unforgivable. But would you have made the same objection, Miss Burke, if the character had not been quoting from a poem?”

“Yes, I would have,” Gillian said. “The words in a play are everything.”

“Ahhhh?” Igor said, and he opened his eyes wide and moved closer to her. “In a book, perhaps, yes. But not in a play. In a play, the words must be brought to life. It is the actor who brings these words to life, Miss Burke.”

“His own words, or the author’s?” Gillian asked.

“You would allow no leeway to the actor, is that correct?” Igor asked. He was circling closer to her now, his shaggy head bent, one bony hand looped into the lapel of his brown sweater, his bright-blue eyes fastened to her face. He spoke English that had been learned in Russia and refined in a dozen foreign countries, but which was scrupulously and miraculously accent-free. “You would prescribe specific limits for the actor, is that right?”

“Yes. Where it concerns the language of a play, the meaning of a play.”

“Does an actor convey meaning by memorizing words?”

“He starts that way.”

“But I hope we may supplement words with actions! May we not?”

“Of course we may. I’m talking about the language of a play.”

“The language and the action are one and the same. They are only tools to express ideas.”

“Exactly,” Gillian said. “The playwright’s ideas. Not the actor’s.”

“Miss Burke, I hope you are not telling me that an actor is only a harmonica.”

“No. I’m simply saying that an actor’s job is to play a part the way the playwright heard it in his head when he was writing it.”

“I see. Then if we could wire this playwright’s head for sound, we would have no need of actors, isn’t that correct? An actor is a harmonica, after all.”

“No, he’s not. But if he won’t follow the speeches as written, why do we need the play at all? Why don’t we all get up and read from the telephone book?”

The class laughed, and Gillian felt she had scored a point. Igor stopped beside her, smiled, touched the top of her head with his hand, and gently said, “We need plays, of course, Miss Burke, and it is important to learn the words correctly. I would be a foolish old man if I tried to convince you that actors are playwrights. We are not. Although I must admit that some of us are better playwrights than those men who lay claim to the title.”

The class laughed again. Gillian, delighted, laughed with them.

“But, Miss Burke, will you grant me a single point? Will you grant me, perhaps, that a good actor, a great actor, can bring to the words something which the playwright never heard inside his head? A nuance of meaning, a subtlety of expression, an invented gesture which will suddenly present an idea in shimmering clarity? And that by doing this, by bringing this to the very lines the playwright has written, he will add to the creation, bring to the idea a greater significance? Will you, Miss Burke, grant to an old man this one small and totally prejudiced opinion? May we have the next scene, please?”

She recognized his technique, of course. She had recognized it from the very first. He would question her belligerently, often taking a stand in which he did not believe, simply to draw her out, to force a reasoning process that led to a seemingly self-formed conclusion. She knew this, but she entered each new argument with vigor and spirit, loving the old man for what he gave her: a secure knowledge of her craft, and a soaring pride in the profession she had chosen.

“Gillian?” the voice said.

She looked up from the open script in her lap. Tad Parker, one of the boys in the class, was standing with his arm on the shoulder of another boy. Her eyes touched Tad’s face, the tentative smile, the habitual dirty sweat shirt he wore to class, the army dog tags rattling under the shirt. And then she looked at the other boy.

“Got it down yet?” Tad asked.

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “I was only making sure.”

The other boy had not turned his eyes from her. She could feel them on her, ice-blue eyes that seemed emotionless, a face that held something of menace in it, the short-cropped graying hair, he could not be that old, he could not be older than twenty-five or so, the scar nesting in the short bristles, the way he stood stiffly erect beside Tad, his eyes never leaving her, something of menace, and yet something terribly yearning.

“I brought a friend to watch us go through our paces,” Tad said. “From my home town.”

Gillian nodded, and then smiled.

“David, this is Gillian.”

“How do you do?” the boy said.

“Hello,” Gillian answered.

“Look, if you’ve got work to do, we won’t bother you,” Tad said. He clapped David on the shoulder and led him to the row of chairs behind Gillian. They sat together, and Gillian went back to her script. When Igor entered the loft a few moments later, she did not look up. He walked around the room, nodding at his pupils, exchanging a few words with each of them, and then finally coming to where she sat.

“Miss Burke?” he said.

Gillian smiled. “Good evening, Mr. Vodorin.”

Intently, he said, “The reading? How did it go?”

Gillian shrugged.

“No theatrical shorthand, please,” Igor said. “Did they like you?”

She was suddenly aware that Tad and his friend, the boy he had called David, were sitting behind her and probably listening to every word of the conversation. “I thought they liked me,” she said, somehow embarrassed. “But they didn’t call.”

“Perhaps tomorrow then.”

“Perhaps.”

“Patience,” Igor said gently, and he put his hand on her shoulder. He took a gold watch from his pocket then, cocked his head to look at it, and said, “Well, we must begin the class now.”

She sat at the back of the loft in the folding chair, huddled in her own arms as if suffering a chill, watching the other students as they presented their scenes. Igor had insisted that they work alone for this particular project, and she’d had a truly difficult time finding a monologue in anything but Shakespeare. She had spent three afternoons at the drama library on East Fifty-eighth before coming up with a section from Dream Girl, and even that hadn’t pleased her entirely, but time was running out, and the project was almost due. She watched her fellow students now, bored by the monologues, and wondering why Igor had assigned anything so elementary. She contributed nothing to the criticisms following each performance. When Igor finally called upon her to do her scene, she rose from her chair, walked swiftly to the platform at the front of the loft, climbed onto it, faced the class, and said, “This is from Dream Girl by Elmer Rice. I’m Georgina. My mother has just called me from off right to tell me to stop daydreaming. Her last words are, ‘It’s almost nine!’” Gillian nodded and walked to the center of the platform. She took a deep breath and began the scene.

Igor, standing at the back of the loft, saw Gillian hesitate for a moment, falling instantly out of character. Her recovery seemed complete in the space of ten seconds, but he had seen the sudden puzzled look that crossed her face, and he frowned now as she picked up the scene again, the frown deepening when he realized she had not returned completely, had not fully recovered the intricate characterization she’d been building.

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful!” Gillian said. “With a published novel, I’d really be somebody.” She paused. The pause was a long one. Igor began walking slowly from the back of the loft. Had she forgotten her lines? No. Gillian Burke never forgot lines. And then he realized she knew the lines only too well, she was listening to each separate line as it left her mouth. She sighed deeply now and said, “Reviews... reviews in all the book sections...” Again she paused. She wiped her hand across her lip. “Royalty checks coming in.” And again the long deadly pause, as if she were suddenly understanding the words, suddenly allowing their meaning to penetrate to her secret heart. “Women nudging each other at... at... Schrafft’s and... and... whispering... and... whispering: ‘Don’t l-look now, but that girl over there — the one with the smart hat — that’s... that’s... that’s Georgina Allerton, the... the...’” She stopped again. She turned to the class. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have a terrible headache,” and she walked off the stage.

Igor caught her as she was entering the cloakroom.

“Where are you going?” he said.

“Home.”

“Why?”

“I have a headache.”

“An actress doesn’t go home when she has a show to do.”

She looked up into his face. “Igor,” she said slowly, using his Christian name for the first time in four years, “Igor, I don’t have a show to do.”

Igor grasped her shoulders. “You have a stage, you have an audience, you have a part to play. That is a show.”

“Igor, I have a creaking platform, and a roomful of kids, and a part played by Betty Field on Broadway last year, that’s what I’ve got. Not a show, Igor. Please, I want to go home.”

“To cry?”

“Yes, damn it, maybe to cry. Can’t I cry? Is it against the rules to cry?”

“You may cry,” Igor said. “I was only concerned that you would be alone. Stay here if you must cry, Gillian.”

She nodded. “Thank you. Thank you, Igor. But... I... I’d like to go home. Thank you.” She fumbled into her coat, and then looked around the cloakroom dazedly. “My bag. I guess I left it inside.”

“Gillian?” he said.

“Yes?”

“You will come back tomorrow evening?”

She hesitated for a long time before answering. Then she simply nodded and went into the loft for her bag. She walked rapidly toward her chair near the wall. Tad had gone to the front of the loft, preparatory to doing his scene. The boy David sat alone in the row behind her vacant seat. His eyes picked her up as she entered the loft and followed her as she moved toward the chair. She met his eyes with her own, and he turned away as if embarrassed. For no reason on earth, she said to him, “My bag.”

“What?”

“I left it here.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me,” she said. She took the bag from the seat of the chair. He was staring at her again. She looked at him, puzzled. “Yes?” she said. He shook his head. “What is it?”

“You... you were very good,” he answered. His voice was tentative, almost frightened.

“Thank you.”

“The scene you just did.”

“Yes.”

He continued staring at her. He wet his lips. It seemed he would speak, and then something claimed his eyes and he shrank deeper into his chair and said nothing. She looked at him a moment longer, nodded, and then walked rapidly to the door. Tad had already begun his scene. Igor was standing beside the platform, one arm across his waist, his other elbow propped on it, his hand supporting his chin. She tiptoed past the platform and started down the long steps to the street. She was halfway down when she heard the voice behind her.

“Miss?”

She turned. It was David. He stood on the landing above her, looking down at her solemnly, nibbling at his lower lip.

“Shhh,” she said. “Tad’s doing his scene.”

“I... I don’t know your last name,” he said.

“Burke.” She paused. “Why do you want to know it?”

“I... I thought I... I thought I might call you.”

“Why?”

He shrugged.

“Are you Jewish?” she asked.

“Why?”

“David always sounds to me like a Jewish name.”

“Yes,” he said suddenly. He brought his shoulders back. He seemed to have made a decision, seemed in that moment to have decided he would not call her, would not even speak to her any longer. “I’m Jewish. Does it matter?”

“No. Why should I care what you are?”

“Well, then I’m not Jewish,” he said.

“All right.” She looked at him curiously.

“May... may I take you home?” he asked.

“No,” she said quickly.

“May I call you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you in the book?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call you.”

“I have to go now.”

“I’ll call you,” he repeated.

She had been home no more than ten minutes when the telephone rang. She picked up the receiver, put it to her ear, and said, “Hello?”

“Miss Burke?”

“Yes?”

“This is David.”

“Who?”

“David Regan.” He hesitated. “We met just a little while ago. At the loft.”

“Oh. Oh yes.”

“Well,” he said. “I see you got home all right.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did I wake you?”

“No.”

“I’ve been trying the number for the past half hour.”

There was a long pause on the line.

“I thought you might like to meet me for a cup of coffee,” he said.

“Do you mean right now?”

“Yes. It’s only a little past eleven. I thought...”

“I was getting ready for bed,” Gillian said.

“Oh. Well, okay, I just thought...”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh sure. That’s all right.”

There was another pause.

“Can I see you tomorrow night?” David asked.

“What’s tomorrow?”

“Friday.”

“I have a class.”

“Then Saturday?”

“How did your hair get gray?” Gillian asked.

“What?”

“Your hair. How—”

“Oh. In the navy. At Camp Elliott.” He hesitated. “I was a prisoner there.”

“Why? What’d you do?”

“I hit an officer.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“He said something I didn’t like.”

“What’d he say?”

“Something about my father.”

“Well, then I guess he deserved it,” Gillian said.

“Yeah, I guess so. Can I see you Saturday?”

“All right,” Gillian said.

“Would seven-thirty be all right?”

“Fine,” Gillian said.

“What’s your address?” he said quickly. She gave it to him, and he repeated it four times, and then said, “I haven’t got a pencil.”

“Will you remember it?”

“Oh sure, I will.”

The line went silent.

“I never met anyone named Gillian before,” he said.

“It’s a silly name.”

“No, I like it.”

“It always makes me want to laugh.”

“I’m glad it’s not Lillian,” David said. “It could have been Lillian, you know.”

“I’d have shot myself.”

“Then I’d never have met you.”

“Well... well, I’ll see you Saturday night.”

“Yes, at seven-thirty.”

“Good night, David.”

“Good night, Gillian,” he said.

The play was being presented by a City College drama group at the little theater on the uptown campus of Hunter College, and David bought the tickets on Friday afternoon from a student at N.Y.U. who had acquired them from a pharmacy major at Fordham. He picked up Gillian at seven-thirty, and they had a drink in her apartment, and then rode uptown on the Woodlawn Road — Lexington Avenue Express. It was Saturday night, but they were almost alone in the subway car; most of the crowd was heading downtown, toward Broadway. The lonely car seemed to stifle conversation. Each opening gambit provided a few lines of talk, which suddenly trailed off into a muttered “uh-huh” or a nod of the head. The train rumbled along the track and they sat in the nearly empty car, each separately beginning to develop misgivings about the advisability of dating strangers. David began chastising himself mentally for not owning an automobile. Gillian began looking ahead to a dreadful college production of Ibsen.

“The thing that’s marr-velous about him, of course,” she said, “is that he still holds up so well today.”

“That’s Boston, isn’t it?” David asked.

“What?”

“The ‘marvelous.’”

“No. No, it isn’t.”

“Say it again.”

“Marr-velous.”

“It’s Irish then.”

“Yes. Does it sound awful?”

“No, it sounds lovely.”

The conversation lapsed again. David wanted a cigarette more than anything in the world. He was sure it would begin snowing the moment they hit the street. He felt in his coat pocket for the tickets, suddenly certain he’d left them home. The tickets were there, but he was still confident it would snow. When the drunk entered the car at 149th Street, he knew there would be trouble. He simply knew it. It was just one of those nights.

The drunk sat opposite them in the nearly empty car. The weather was uncommonly cold for November, but he was wearing only a sports jacket over a thin white shirt. He grinned at them the moment he was seated. Then he waggled his fingers at Gillian and said, “How do you do, miss? Call me Ishmael.”

“Hello, Ishmael,” Gillian said, smiling.

“My name is really Charlie,” the drunk said.

“Hello, Charlie.”

Charlie waggled his fingers at her again, and winked. “Don’t mind me,” he said. He turned his attention to David. He stared at him for a long time. Then he said, “Mister, your hair is gray.”

“Thank you, I know,” David answered.

“Thank you,” Charlie said. “It’ll be all white in a few years.”

“I suppose so,” David said, smiling. He turned to Gillian. “Does it make me look very old?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know how old you are,” Gillian said.

“Twenty-three.”

“No, you look only slightly older than that.”

“You look fifty-six,” Charlie said. “How’d it get gray, anyway?”

“In the navy,” David said.

“Yeah?” Charlie got up from where he was sitting opposite them, staggered across the center aisle, and plunked himself down alongside Gillian. Leaning across her, he said to David, “I was in the navy, too.” He studied David for a moment and then said, “He don’t look like a sailor, does he, miss?”

“Not at all, Charlie,” Gillian said.

“No? Then what does he look like, if not a sailor?”

“He looks very sweet-oh,” Gillian answered.

“That’s all right,” Charlie said. “Don’t mind me.”

“Were you in prison for a very long time?” Gillian asked David.

“Four years.”

“That must have been awful for you. Let’s not even talk about it.”

“Listen, don’t mind me,” Charlie said. “You just talk, you hear? Don’t mind me.” He nodded emphatically. “You married?”

“No,” Gillian said.

“Congratulations,” Charlie answered. “You have any children?”

“Three,” David said.

“Boys or girls?”

“A little of each,” Gillian said.

“Best way,” Charlie agreed. “Where you going now?”

“Uptown.”

“That’s a lucky thing,” Charlie said, “because this happens to be a cross-town bus, in case you wanted to know. Listen, don’t mind me. Go ahead and talk. I’ll just listen, okay? Go right ahead, I don’t mind your interrupting.”

Gillian laughed and said, “How do you happen to know Tad Parker, David?”

“He’s from my home town.”

“You’re not from New York?”

“Nope. Talmadge, Connecticut.”

“Are you serious?” she said.

“Sure, he’s serious,” Charlie said. “Don’t you know your own husband?”

“Do you know Talmadge?” David asked.

“Never heard of it,” Charlie said.

“I was asking the lady.”

“Oh. Apologies accepted,” Charlie said, and he nodded.

“I went to school in Talmadge,” Gillian said.

“When? Did you really?”

“Sure. Let me see. 1942? Yes. ’42 and ’43.”

“I was in the Pacific then,” David said.

“Guess who discovered the Pacific Ocean,” Charlie said. “Who, huh? Can you tell me?”

“Henry Hudson,” David said, and Gillian suddenly took his hand.

“Nope.”

“Christopher Columbus?” she asked.

“Hah-hah, smart young kids don’t even know who discovered the Pacific Ocean. Ferdinand Magellan, that’s who. Fer-di-nand Magell-an. An explorer. You bet your life.”

“Thank you,” David said.

“Don’t mind me,” Charlie answered.

“Why’d you leave Talmadge?” David asked.

“Excuse me,” Charlie said. “I beg your pardon.”

“That’s all right,” David said.

“No, that’s all right,” Charlie said, “you’re excused,” and Gillian squeezed David’s hand.

“Talmadge was only make-believe,” she said. “I much prefer Igor’s class. Are you going to school?”

“Yes. N.Y.U.”

“Did you say something?” Charlie asked.

“No.”

“Excuse me. I thought you said something.”

“No, I’m sure I didn’t,” David said.

“Oh, then excuse me.”

“Does that mean you’re living in New York?” Gillian asked.

“Yes. On Houston Street.”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful neighborhood. I go there to watch Maurice Schwartz. I learn an awful lot from him. Why did you say you were Jewish, David? In the loft.”

“I don’t know. I read someplace that Ernest Hemingway always signs his name as Ernest Ginsberg or Levine or something like that when he registers at a hotel. Because he doesn’t want to stay anyplace that’s restri—”

“That sounds like a press agent’s plant.”

“Maybe it is. I read it in one of the columns. Anyway, I guess I was testing you.”

“Why?”

“Because... well... do you want the truth?”

“Yes. Please.”

“I... I was a little afraid of the way I felt when I... when I saw you. Then you asked me if I was Jewish, and I figured if I said I was, and it made a difference, then, well then I’d have had an excuse for ending it right there.”

Gillian smiled. “I’m glad it didn’t end right there.”

“I am, too.”

“And I’m glad you said you were Jewish.”

“No, I’m Scotch,” Charlie said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Charlie,” Gillian said. “Why didn’t you go to school in Talmadge?”

Charlie shrugged. “I went to P.S. 80,” he said.

“I was talking to the gentleman,” Gillian said, smiling.

“Oh, that’s all right, you’re excused,” Charlie said.

“I wanted to get away from Talmadge,” David said. “I wanted to be on my own for a while.”

“Did your parents object?”

“Only my mother’s living.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Well, my father died a long time ago.”

“Both my parents are still alive,” Gillian said. She turned and peered through the window of the car. “We’ll be passing where I used to live soon.” She turned back to David. “Do you like N.Y.U.?”

“I did at first. To tell the truth, I’m not sure any more. Everyone else seems to know where he’s going, and I guess I don’t. Most of the guys are veterans, you know, and...”

“Like the lost generation,” she said, and nodded.

“Well, not exactly. Didn’t you always feel they were a little dramatic about their rehabilitation problems?”

“Oh, I think they were very sweet-oh,” Gillian said. “Sitting in their Paris cafés and talking about shooting trips to the Black Forest and the novels they were going to write. That’s very sweet and very sad.”

“Maybe I ought to leave school and find a Paris café,” David said. “Become a sort of a bum.”

“No,” Gillian said.

“Does that scare you?”

“No, but... well, I don’t think you should be a bum.”

“Why not?”

“There are too many things to do. No one has the right to be a bum.”

“That’s it,” Charlie said. “She hit the nail on the head. Eat, drink, and be merry.” He turned to look at the station platform as the train pulled in. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Burnside Avenue,” Gillian said.

“That’s good,” Charlie said, “because I haven’t the faintest idea where Burnside Avenue is.”

David looked at his watch. “We’re going to be late,” he said.

“I don’t mind,” Gillian said. “We don’t have to go at all, you know. Wouldn’t you rather talk?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“Why don’t we get off at Fordham Road and walk around a little, and then maybe stop for a drink later? I’d like that.”

“You would?”

“Yes, David. I really would.”

“Well then...” He dug into his coat and pulled out the theater tickets. He handed them across Gillian’s lap to Charlie.

“Thank you, sir,” Charlie said with dignity, “but I am not a panhandler.”

“These are tickets to a show,” David said. “We’d like you to have them.”

“Thank you, sir, don’t mind me.”

“Will you accept them as a gift?”

“Thank you,” Charlie said, taking the tickets. “What are they?”

“Tickets to a show.”

“Oh. Very well then. Thank you. Where am I?”

“You get off at Kingsbridge Road and walk to Hunter College.”

“Thank you. Are we in Brooklyn?”

“No. We’re in the Bronx.”

“Thank God for that,” Charlie said. “If we were in the Bronx, I’d lose myself completely. Do you know who discovered the Bronx?”

“Who?”

“That’s right,” Charlie said. “Sir, you are a gentleman. Thank you, don’t mind me,” he said, and he rolled over onto the seat and fell asleep immediately.

“I like you,” Gillian said suddenly, and David did not understand why she chose to say it at that precise moment.

They got off at Fordham Road and walked east toward the Grand Concourse. He bought her a charlotte russe and then later a jellied apple, and they walked to Poe Park, and Gillian pointed out the Poe cottage to him, and then they sat in the darkness on one of the benches and he recited two stanzas of “The Raven,” which he had learned by heart in high school. They began talking about poems they both liked, and he told her about a teacher he’d had in elementary school who’d made him memorize “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and how terrified he’d been when it came time for him to recite because she was a monstrous-looking woman who was a little cross-eyed and who was deaf in one ear, so that you had to shout lines you weren’t too sure of, anyway. Gillian told him about a teacher she’d had who’d rubbed her nose across the blackboard while trying to explain a problem in algebra. “You multiply this by this,” she’d said, her hand clutched in Gillian’s hair, rubbing her nose across the board from one algebraic symbol to the next. They began talking about games they used to play as children, Johnny-on-a-Pony, and Ring-a-Leavio, and I-Declare-War. “And Rattlesnake, did you ever play Rattlesnake?” Gillian asked.

“No, how does it go?”

“Oh, everyone winds in and out, and gets all twisted up, and you chant, don’t you know it? R-A-T, T-L-E, S-N-A-K-E spells Rattlesnake! You never played it?”

“No, not in Talmadge. How about Statues? Did you play that?”

“Oh, yes,” Gillian said delightedly. “Where you swung the other person out and he had to strike a pose? Yes, I loved that game!”

“And Flinch? No, I suppose that was a boy’s game.”

“Do you remember ‘Oh, I won’t go to Macy’s any more, more, more, there’s a big fat policeman at the door, door, door’?”

“That’s strictly New York, I think.”

“Did the girls in your town say ‘One-two-three a-learie’ or did they say ‘One-two-three a-nation’?”

“‘I received my confirmation,’” David said.

“‘On the day of declaration, one-two-three a-nation!’ Right! How about choosing sides? How did you do that?”

“‘Ink-a-bink, a bottle of ink, the cork fell out, and you stink!’”

“Yes!” Gillian said, squeezing his hand. “And what was the one the boys all did? Something about wine? When they were challenging someone to a fight.”

“Oh, wait, yes... wait a minute.” He thought briefly and then rapidly blurted, “‘Three-six-nine, a bottle of wine—’”

“‘I can lick you any old time!’” Gillian completed triumphantly, and they burst out laughing.

It was midnight before they knew it. They walked across the street to the tavern and asked the bartender if he knew how to make hot rum toddies, and he said, “Lady, this ain’t England.” They settled for whiskey sours. When they reached Gillian’s apartment again, it was two o’clock in the morning. She leaned against the door sleepily and said, “David, I had a marrr-velous time.”

“We didn’t do very much,” he said apologetically.

“Oh, but we did a lot.”

“Can I see you tomorrow, Gillian?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Sunday. We could spend the whole day together. If you want to, that is.”

“Yes, I want to.”

“Good. I was afraid...”

“Yes?”

“I was afraid you might not want to,” he said, and shrugged.

The hallway was very silent.

“I’d like to hold you, Gillian.”

“Yes. Hold me.”

“I’d like to kiss you.”

“Kiss me.”

He held her in his arms gently for a moment, and then touched her hair. He lowered his mouth and kissed her. She held him tight for a moment, and then moved her head to his shoulder and whispered, “I like the way you kiss.”

His hands cradling her face, he pushed her hair away from her ears, capturing it at the back of her head.

“No, please,” she said. “Don’t do that. I can’t stand it.”

He released her hair.

“But... kiss me again?”

He kissed her, and she tightened her arms around his neck and then released him suddenly and said, “David, I think...” She shook her head. She turned away from him, opened her bag, and looked for her key. She unlocked the door and threw it open. She was turning toward him again when his arms encircled her waist. Standing behind her, he kissed her throat, and she turned in his arms and breathlessly found his mouth, and they moved into the dark apartment silently, caught in the dim illumination from the light in the hall. He closed the door with one hand. They clung to each other in the soft dark. She lifted her mouth to his and whispered against his lips, “I’ve wanted you to kiss me all night long.”

“Yes, I wanted to kiss you.”

“We’re telling too much,” she said.

“We’re not telling half enough.”

“Oh, yes, I want to tell you. I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Neither have I.”

“I’m frightened. I don’t think we should start anything.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Oh, David, kiss me.”

His lips found hers in the darkness, parted, he held her close, she whispered, “I don’t believe in things like this, do you?”

“I believe in whatever happens.”

He could hear a clock ticking somewhere in the apartment. Her voice came into the darkness and the silence, a whispered voice, uncertain.

“David... David, do you want to make love to me?”

“Yes.”

“I never have,” she said. She paused. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes. Of course, I believe you.”

“I’m trembling, do you know that? Can you feel me trembling?”

“I can feel you.”

“David, don’t do this unless...”

“Unless what?”

“I’m not a casual person, David. Please... unless...”

“I loved you the minute I looked at you,” he said.

“Oh David, oh David, do I ask for the wrong things? Do I frighten you?”

“No. You ask for the right things. All the right things, Gillian.”

“Come with me,” she said. “Hurry, come with me.” She took his hand and led him down the hallway. Outside the door to her bedroom, she said, “Say it again, David.”

“I love you.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, you say it. Does it sound strange?”

“No.”

“Have you ever loved anyone before?”

“I think so.”

“Who? What was her name?”

“Ardis.”

“Did you go to bed with her?”

“Yes.”

There was moonlight in the room, streaming through the single window. They took off their coats, and he sat beside her on the bed, and they stared at each other very seriously, and suddenly she smiled, and he smiled back at her and said, “I can see your eyes in the dark,” and she said, “Touch my breast. Yes. Oh, I want to cry.”

“No, darling.”

“You’re so wonderful. You were so sweet to that drunken man on the train. Charlie. You were so sweet. You excite me tremendously. Should I tell you these things?”

“Yes, everything.”

“Hold me. You feel so hard. May I touch you?”

“Yes.”

“You make me dizzy.”

They leaned back against the pillows, and he kissed her again and then unbuttoned her blouse and said, “Your breasts...” and then stopped.

“No, please say everything. Never stop, David.”

“You’re beautiful, Gillian. You’re so beautiful.”

“Yes, yes, for you. I’m glad. For you. David, I’m very excited. Are you excited?”

He kissed her again, and she pulled her lips from his and said, “Should I feel embarrassed?”

“No, why should you?”

“I thought I would feel embarrassed. I don’t feel that way at all.”

“Good.”

“Shall I take off my clothes?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, is that what... I mean, does the girl or...?”

“Yes, take them off,” he said.

“I act as if there are rules.” She took off her blouse, but her hand hesitated on the button of her skirt. She looked at him and said, “David, I don’t wear panties.” She paused. “I feel embarrassed now. I... I suddenly do.”

He reached out and she extended her hand, and he pulled her gently to the bed beside him. He unbuttoned the skirt and lowered the zipper and his hand touched her belly beneath the skirt and then moved under the garter belt, flat against her skin, and she said, “I know I’m going to die when you touch me. I just...” and fell suddenly silent with a soft shocked intake of breath. She closed her eyes and said, “Please,” wanting to say more, wanting to ask him to be kind and gentle and not to hurt her and to please make this what it should be for her because this was the first time, but she only said, “Please,” and David, understanding all in that single word, answered, “Yes, Gillian.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be good.”

“You’ll be lovely.”

“I want to be good for you. I want to please you.”

“You do please me.”

“Take off your clothes. I want to touch you again.”

He stood beside the bed and took off his clothes without embarrassment. She watched him, intensely curious, studying his body with wonder.

“It’s brass,” he said suddenly, and then quickly added, “The bed, I mean.”

She thought that was the funniest thing she had ever heard in her life, and she began laughing suddenly, and suddenly he was beside her again, the long length of his body against her, and he kissed the laugh from her mouth, and she felt her brassière loosening, her breasts falling free, his hands suddenly claiming her.

“I’m wet,” she said. “I’m terribly wet. Am I supposed to be so wet?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I like touching you. Am I doing... is this right?”

“Yes.”

“How do I feel? Tell me how I feel to you.”

“Soft. Wonderful.”

“When... when will you...?”

“When you want me to.”

“Would you tell me when?” she said. “Because I...”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Am I beautiful?”

“You’re lovely.”

“My hair is all messed.”

“Your hair is lovely.”

“David, will...” she started, and felt him suddenly inside her, suddenly and without warning inside her, filling her, immense inside her, she wanted to move against him, stretch, enfold, she wrapped her arms around his neck and said “Oh!” in surprise, and then “Oh!” again, and then she bit his ear and pulled back her face and stared directly into his eyes and then thought, How comical we must look, and then forgot entirely how comical they must look because her body was suddenly not her own, her body was suddenly trembling in uncontrollable spasm after spasm after spasm, “Oh!” she said, “it’s... it’s... oh!” and she kissed his mouth and pulled her head away again and said, “Do it, do it,” her voice rising, “do it, love me, I love it, I love you, do it, do it!” and he plunged deeper inside her until she felt nothing but a rolling succession of waves, dizzy on the crest of each wave, falling uncontrollably into troughs of giddy faintness, and then the lurching shock of his release shuddered inside her, and she pulled him closer as a greater spasm echoed through her, pulled him deeper, squeezed her eyes tight shut as he drained himself, close to him, close. She stroked his hair as he lay limp against her. She kissed his cheek and his nose and his forehead. She smiled in the darkness, and in a little while, she asked, “Was it good?”

“Yes. Was it good for you?”

“It was marrr-velous.”

“I love you,” he said.

“Oh, and I love you. Oh, and I love what we did. It didn’t hurt at all, do you know that? Now you won’t believe me. Is there blood? Will there be blood?”

“Gillian, I’ll believe whatever you tell me as long as I live.”

“I feel I’ve known you always, since I learned to walk. It’s the oddest thing! I feel as if I’m part of you. I feel wonderful! Do you love me?”

“I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Will I have a baby?”

“No.”

“Did you... yes, you did. I didn’t even notice. You’re very good. And very practiced. I hate that other girl.” She paused. “I hate that officer who sent you to prison. How could you stand it in prison, David? Didn’t you want to explode?” She laughed suddenly. “Oh, my, but you did explode, didn’t you?”

“I like that.”

“What do you like, darling?”

“Your laugh. It’s a good dirty laugh.”

“Dirty?”

“Yes. Whores laugh that way.”

“Oh, what a nice thing to say!”

“I mean, I think they must. You have a beauty spot.”

“I have a lot of them.”

“I mean, right there.” He touched it with his forefinger.

“I tremble every time you touch me. Should I feel this way so soon? I must be terribly wicked. I want to touch you again. Are you going to marry me?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When would you like to get married?”

“Now. Tonight.”

“No, not tonight. I don’t want to leave this apartment tonight.”

“Neither do I.” She laughed suddenly and said, “My father should only see me now!”

“He wouldn’t approve?”

“He’d shoot you on the spot.”

“Maybe I ought to leave. I wouldn’t want to get shot.”

“I’d protect you. I’d throw myself across you.”

“That would only complicate matters. Look at what you’re doing.”

“Oh! Oh, look at that!”

“Yes.”

“That’s amazing! Isn’t it amazing?”

“No, I think it’s normal.”

“Am I very exciting?”

“You are very very exciting.”

“I want to excite you. I want you to desire me every minute of the day.”

“That could get exhausting.”

“I suppose so, but it’s what I want anyway. Should I stop? I mean, you’re not going to...?”

“No.” He smiled.

“Because I can stop, you know. No, I can’t, isn’t that disgusting? I can’t keep my hands away from you.” She paused. “Do you like that?”

“Yes.”

“May I kiss you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I meant...”

“I know what you meant.”

“Do I shock you?”

“No.”

“I just want... I want to do everything with you. If I shock you, you must stop me.”

“How can you shock me? You’re Gillian.”

“Yes, I am. Isn’t that nice?” She paused. “Your belly is good and flat. There.” She kissed his stomach and then said, “What should I do?”

“Whatever you want to.”

“Tell me,” she said seriously. “Tell me how best to please you. Before we part, tell me how I...”

“Part?”

“What a silly thing to say,” she said, and suddenly threw herself into his arms and hugged him fiercely. “We have a lifetime,” she said. “We have a lifetime.”

The city was new.

The late-December snow had heaped tons of whiteness upon her streets, turned her into a tundra wonderland devoid of traffic. There was a hush accompanying her rebirth, the silent tread of rubber-shod soles cushioned on snow, the lazy soundless swirl of snowflakes against amber lights, the secret hiss of radiators behind windows rimmed with frost. New and clear with biting cold that tantalized the cheeks and stung the teeth. New and fresh with voices echoing on nearly deserted streets and children sliding down new white mountains. The snow fell still. It melted when it touched your cheeks. It hung incredibly beautiful on the tweed of your sleeve, clung for just a moment, melted, vanished and magically reappeared an inch away, a new star on blue wool fading.

David walked through the snow pulling the child’s sled behind him, breathing deeply of the icy air. He had borrowed the sled from his landlady’s son, promising him he would return it in excellent condition, telling him it was very important that he have a sled to commemorate this very important day when God had managed to clean the city as no mayor ever had, and finally settling the debate with a well-placed quarter in a small cold fist. The snow whirled about him as he walked, clinging to his eyelashes, tracing wet trails down the back of his neck under his collar. He stopped every now and then to cover his ears with his mittened hands, and then plunged through the knee-deep snow again, anxious to reach Gillian’s place before the afternoon was gone entirely. He left the sled in the hallway of her building, and then clomped upstairs in his galoshes. Gillian opened the door at his first knock.

“My God, what happened?” she said. “I’ve been calling and calling...”

“Nothing’s moving,” he said breathlessly. “No buses, no cabs. I walked.”

“From First Avenue?”

David nodded. “Gillian, you’ve never seen anything like this. The city is—”

“I was ready to call the police. You said you were leaving two hours ago.”

“I did. Everything’s white, Gillian. The streets, the buildings, the sky, even the telephone wires...”

“Come hold me.”

He scooped her into his arms and held her tight, her face warm against his frozen cheek.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Brrrr. You make me cold.”

“Put on your coat. We’re going downstairs.”

“Oh, like hell we are,” Gillian said.

“I’ve got a sled.”

“Where’d you get a sled?”

“I bribed my landlady’s son.”

“You brought it all the way from—?”

“Yes, come on. Get your coat.”

“Oh no! I’m going to put on my bathrobe and huddle by the radiator.”

“Get your coat, Gillian! If I can lug a sled all the—”

“All right, all right, don’t get excited,” she answered. She pulled him into the apartment and closed the door. “Here, stand by the heat. Take off your mittens. Your coat is all wet. Warm your hands. Shall I make some coffee?”

“No. Get your coat.”

“Some hot chocolate? It’ll only take—”

“Gillian, it’ll be dark soon!”

“Oh, all right!” She nodded her head once, emphatically, and went down the corridor to her bedroom. Smiling, David pulled off his mittens and held his hands out to the hissing radiator. Outside the living-room window, he could see the swirl of snowflakes, large and wet. He heard Gillian coming down the corridor again and turned toward her. She had bundled herself into a fleece-lined ski parka, the hood pulled up over her head. She grinned and leaned against the corridor wall, one hand on her hip.

“You like nice Eskimo girl?” she asked.

“You ready?” he said, laughing.

“Nice Eskimo girl smell of walrus fat, you like?”

“Come on, let’s go downstairs before it gets dark.”

“You no like Eskimo girl kiss with nose?”

“You’d better put a scarf around your throat.”

“Very cheap. You like?”

“Go get a scarf.”

Gillian wiggled her eyebrows. “Ten sealskins all night. Very cheap.” In a whisper, she added, “Arctic night very long.”

David hugged her and said, “Who’s your agent?”

“Marian Lewis.”

“Thank you very much. But...”

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” they said together, and laughed.

She took his arm and said, “Where’d you park your sled?”

“Downstairs in the hall.”

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.”

“Where’s your scarf?”

“I don’t need one.”

“It’s cold out there.”

“Eskimo girl very hardy,” Gillian said, and they went out of the apartment. The street was silent with flying snow. The sky was gray. The world was hushed.

“David, we’re alone in the universe,” she whispered. “Just you and I.”

She took his hand.

Like children, they discovered snow.

February, and St. Valentine’s Day. He sent her fourteen cards, the first arriving on February first, each card a little bigger than the one preceding it until the last gigantic card arrived on the fourteenth. She tacked them all to the white wall just inside her doorway, and above the fourteen cards, in red paint, she lettered the words DAVID LOVES ME!

When he picked her up that night, he said, “You ruined your wall.”

“You ruined my life,” she said.

“How did I do that?”

“I can’t think straight any more.”

“Why did you use red paint?”

“Because red paint shouts. If I had a tall ladder, I would paint it across the front of the building.”

“Why don’t you rent a billboard in Times Square?”

“Or put up three-sheets on station platforms from New York to Washington. ‘David Loves Me.’ I think I’ll do it.”

“He does love you.”

“How much?”

“The world.”

“Enough to take me to dinner?”

“Well, now, I don’t know,” David said dubiously.

“Can I bribe you?”

“How?”

“I bought you a present. For St. Valentine’s Day.” She turned abruptly and went into the bedroom. He could hear her opening the dresser drawer. When she returned, she was carrying a small box in her hand. She held it out to him.

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

He took the box. Holding it on the palm of one hand, he began unfastening the ribbon.

“This makes me nervous,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. Yes, I do. I don’t need presents from you, Gillian. You’re the biggest present I ever got in my life.”

“That’s very sweet, David,” she said softly, suddenly shy.

“I love you,” he said.

He lifted the lid. A tiny tie tack rested on the cotton batting. Its rim was gold, encircling a miniature Italian mosaic wrought in delicate slivers of marble, capturing the image of a fly or a beetle or some fantastic insect with wings of red and gold and eyes of bright green, crawling on a background field of blue, skillfully and meticulously put together piece by piece. He looked at the pin and then took Gillian into his arms.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“I love it.”

“It’s a tie tack.”

“I know.”

“It was made in Italy.”

“I know.”

“You know everything, don’t you? Such a smart-oh.” She paused. “I picked a bug because I’m crazy about you, and being crazy is being bugs. Did you know that, too?”

“What kind of a bug is it?” he asked, looking at the pin again.

“Why, I think it’s the Green Hornet,” Gillian said in surprise.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, darling,” she said softly, “it’s a love bug.”

The touch of her, the wonderful touch of her, to be touched by her, to touch her in return. The hard line of her jaw beneath his exploring fingers, the high firm cheekbones and the sudden surprising gentleness of her mouth in the darkness in a face of planes exquisite to his finger tips, the taut skin on her neck swiftly curving to the hollow of her throat, he could feel the pulse beneath her skin, beating, her shoulder bones seemed glistening to the touch, bone-white like polished ivory, sight in his hands. Her breasts and softness there, wide and full, deep to his touch, the satin suddenly erupting in a coarse circle of sex skin, the hard flat buttons of her nipples, and the gentle undercurve where her bosom sloped back toward her body, gliding, the smooth flawless skin of her abdomen, and the yielding flesh of her thighs, the deeper moistness, the ultimate softness, fold upon fold of warmth, the touch of her, the wonderful touch of her.

Gillian was a crowd. She wore a million faces, she was a million people, and he loved them all, and waited for their appearances, like a man familiar with a repertory company. Gillian the lady, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, with her hair sleekly brushed, her lipstick immaculate, her lashes blackened with mascara, her seams arrow-straight, her high heels chattering in eternal femininity. Gillian the girl child, her green eyes wide in a questioning face, her lips slightly parted as she listened in awe, her body twisted into the ludicrously relaxed postures of the very young, believing in witches and magic and fairy godmothers and princes on white horses. Gillian the flirt, whose eyes flashed at men, who appreciated the wolf whistles that accompanied her provocative sway, who unashamedly used her most seductive voice when setting up an appointment on the telephone, who infuriated him once by starting a conversation with a teen-ager in a black leather jacket in the lobby of Loew’s Sheridan. Gillian the madwoman, who kissed him without warning wherever they happened to be, on a bus, in a restaurant, in a pew at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where they had gone to escape the bitter cold, who would suddenly seize his hand and run with him down Broadway, who once in a cigar store on Fifty-seventh Street walked up to the counter, put her hand into her purse, and said to the owner, “Don’t move a muscle. This is a stick-up!” Gillian the actress, who talked passionately of Stanislavsky and The Method, who left the performance of a play deeply brooding about technique and staging, who tried voice variations and mannerisms on David, who suddenly bent over into the stooped posture of an old woman and hobbled toward him on an imaginary crutch, whose hands moved emotionally when she tried to explain a point of theory. Gillian the uninhibited, who sometimes entered her bed with the rapacious appetite of a nymphomaniac, who experimented with every female wile, who tried on sex the way she would try on spring hats. Gillian the tender mistress, who made love gently and shyly, who brought to the act of love a glowing wonder that was almost religious. Gillian the businesswoman, who totaled her accounts like a bookkeeper, who kept her appointment book with stop-watch precision. Gillian the cook, Gillian the waif, Gillian the tyrant, Gillian the vulnerable, Gillian laughing, weeping, sleeping with the sheet curled below the curve of her breast, her red-brown hair spread over the pillow, an innocent smile on her mouth, Gillian the woman.

They could hear the February wind rattling the window on the other side of the room. The brass headboard behind them was cold to the touch. When they spoke, white clouds of vapor trailed from their lips. They had been in a giddy mood all night long, like tipsy partners in a comic vaudeville routine, and now they made love in the same way, feeling silly and passionless, laughing at themselves and each other, totally absorbed in a love that transcended the simplicity of love-making, not caring a jot about their clumsiness, mating haphazardly, an act that was necessary to their mood, silly and inept, but as binding as mortar.

“I’m freeeeeeezing,” she said.

“I’ll bang on the radiator.”

“You’ll wake the whole house,” she said, and suddenly began singing.

“Talk about waking the whole house.”

“I feel melodic.” She giggled and began singing again.

“At least sing something appropriate.”

There was a silence in the room. A fresh wind lashed the window, and the pane shuddered with its force. Gillian took a deep breath and sang,

David burst out laughing.

“Keep your mind on your work,” she said. “Make me warm.”

“You sing beautifully.”

“I have the feeling you’ll be at this all night,” she said, and giggled into his shoulder. “I’m not at all excited, are you?”

“No.”

“But don’t let’s stop.”

“No.”

“Shall I sing again?”

“Yes. What we’re lacking is mood music.”

“Mood music, that’s right. That’s what we need,” she said, and they both laughed. “Come on, be serious,” she said.

“All right, I’m serious,” he said, and they began laughing again.

“Now stop laughing,” she said. “You’ll make me feel unattractive.”

“I’m sorry, you’re very attractive.” He paused. “What did you say your name was again?”

Gillian giggled uncontrollably and bit him on the shoulder. “I’m going to sing,” she said.

“All right, sing.”

“What shall I sing?”

“Anything you like. You sing, and I’ll bang the radiator.”

“Never mind banging the radiator,” she said, and they burst into explosive laughter.

Giggling, they loved away the night, surprised when dawn timidly touched the frost-rimmed window.

She was wearing a bright-red bulky sweater, and she set his apartment on fire, curled up in the single comfortable chair in the room, talking while he stood at the sink mixing drinks.

“But how are you supposed to get to the heart of a character, David? Don’t you see? It’s not enough to give a simple surface portrait.”

“I don’t know how. I’d personally like to see a play sometime where a character walks on stage and says, ‘My name is John Doe, I’m twenty-eight years old, I go to S.M.U., and that’s all you have to know about me. The rest will happen during the course of the play, so please pay attention.’”

“That’s not enough. People don’t live only in the present. They’ve got pasts, David, and everything that’s ever happened to them is a part of what’s happening to them now. I can’t read a line in a script and take it as a self-contained statement. I have to know why the character is getting angry at this particular time, what it is that was said or done to him to trigger the anger. And when I know that, I have to look deeper because nothing, David, nothing is born today.”

“I think you’re making a big hullabaloo about what is essentially a second-rate art.”

“Oh, now, just wait a minute,” Gillian said, swinging her legs to the floor.

“I read something about a famous actress,” David said. “I forget who, Helen Hayes or Katharine Cornell, one of the really big ones, who had this final scene where only her hand was showing on stage, and the motion of that hand alone was enough to put the audience in tears. And when someone asked her what the rest of her body was doing off stage while the hand was provoking such misery, she said she chatted with the stagehands all through the scene.”

“That doesn’t prove—”

“It proves there was no emotion involved in the illusion of emotion. She could have been playing checkers off stage while her hand pulled tears from the audience.”

“Well, I can’t work that way. I’ve got to know. I’ve got to understand the character, know everything about her.”

“That’s impossible. Nobody knows everything about anybody.”

“We’re not dealing with real people, David. We’re dealing with characters.”

“That’s right! And they’re only representations of people. You’re creating an illusion. The illusion can never be really complete. If it were, well... well, Gillian, why not really shoot a person on stage when the script calls for someone to be shot?”

“David, that’s silly. If you’re—”

“It isn’t. Have you ever been shot?”

“Never. What’s that—?”

“Then how can you know what it feels like to be shot?”

“I don’t. But I know what pain is, and if I know my character well, I can tell you how she would react to pain. I can really be in pain when that bullet supposedly hits me.”

“And why do you consider that acting? If you really are in pain, then you’re not portraying pain. And if your play runs for two years, you’re going to be a wreck by the time it’s over.”

“Amen,” Gillian said.

“What?”

“That a play I’m in should run for two years.”

“Do you want an olive in this, or an onion?” he asked.

“Onions. Lots of them. Six.”

“Not five?”

“Oh, all right, five,” she said. She grinned. “You sure are hard to get along with.”

He dropped the onions into her glass, put an olive into his own, and carried the drinks to where she was sitting.

“What shall we drink to, Gilly?” he asked.

“To you and me,” she said. “To us.”

“Is that all?”

“And to forever,” she said softly.

He loved the way she walked into a restaurant. She became a curious combination of gourmet and hungry waif the instant she stepped through the door. Her eyes took on a new sparkle, an instant smile appeared on her mouth, she seemed to sniff savory delights in every breath she took. At the same time, her shoulders pulled back, her head came erect, she walked with the stately dignity of a princess, glancing around the room with imperial disdain while her appetite showed contradictorily all over her face. Even now, wearing slacks and an old trench coat, her face wet with April rain, here in a sleazy Chinese restaurant on Eighth Avenue, she brought an air of excitement into the place, the promise of a fantastic feast in glittering company.

“It smells good,” she said to David.

“I’m hungry, are you?”

“I’m only about to perish,” she said.

The waiter came over to them and led them to a table. He handed them menus and asked, “You want drink!”

“Gilly?”

“No.”

“No, thank you,” David said, and the waiter stared at them and then walked off.

“Did you ever notice that all Chinese waiters seem abrupt and surly?” Gillian said. “They really aren’t, you know. It’s just the way they speak, clipping off the words, delivering them sort of deadpan, so that everything they say sounds like an order for an execution.”

“I never noticed,” David said.

“Yes. You listen when he comes back. If he comes back. He doesn’t like the idea of our not drinking. And he thinks we’re crazy to be out in this weather.”

“He’s out in it, too, isn’t he?”

“No, he’s in the restaurant.”

“So are we.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Besides, the weather is fine compared to what we had in December.”

“I loved December,” she said.

“I read in the Times that it’ll be listed in the official records as the blizzard of ’47. How about that?”

“How about that?” Gillian said. “We can tell our children. It makes me feel like a pioneer. Now where did he disappear to? If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’ll begin throwing dishes.”

“Didn’t you have lunch?”

“No.”

“Why not? Damn you, Gilly—”

“Don’t damn me, David Regan! I had a reading.”

“What’s that got to do with having lunch?”

“I got up at ten, and I went down for the mail and found my copy of Theatre Arts and before I knew it, it was twelve o’clock. So I had some juice and coffee, dressed, and went uptown. And the reading wasn’t over until three, and then I had to rush right over to the store. So that’s why I didn’t have lunch.”

“Did you get the part?”

“No. They were looking for a blonde.”

“Can’t you bleach your hair?”

“Why should I?” She frowned. “Don’t you like my hair?”

“I love it. I thought if it meant getting a part...”

“No one suggested it. Besides, I like my hair the way it is. David, I’m getting very irritable. We’d better order quick.” She picked up the menu and said, “They have those wonderful butterfly shrimp here. Would you like to try them? The ones wrapped in bacon.”

“Good,” David said, “and some char-shu-din, all right?”

“No spareribs?”

“Sure, spareribs, too.”

“That’s two pork dishes.”

“Where does it say we can’t have two pork dishes?”

“David, we can have three if you like.”

“All right.”

“I’m sorry. I’m starving. Let’s just order, all right?” She looked at the menu again. “How about the chicken in parchment?”

“Fine.”

“And some soup. They’ve got fried-won-ton soup. Shall we try it?”

“Fine.”

“Okay, fried-won-ton soup, no egg rolls, all right? We don’t want to stuff ourselves. And some barbecued ribs, and the butterfly shrimp, and the chicken in parchment. There! That sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“You left out the char-shu-din.”

“David...”

“What?”

“I hate char-shu-din.”

“I like it,” he said.

She looked at him solemnly for a moment. “Are we having an argument?” she asked.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“I feel very bitchy.” She paused. “Please get the waiter. I’m so hungry, I feel faint. Get the waiter, please.”

He called the waiter. Gillian rested her head against the back of the booth.

“You ready to order!” the waiter said sharply.

“Yes,” David said. “We want the fried-won-ton soup and—”

“Are the won-tons good and crisp?” Gillian asked weakly.

“Yes, ver’ crisp!” the waiter shouted.

“Good.”

“And a small order of spareribs,” David said. “And the... uh...”

“Butterfly shrimp,” Gillian supplied.

“Yes, and...”

“And the chicken in parchment.” Gillian leaned forward, smiled, and said, “And the damn char-shu-din.”

David smiled back at her. “Waiter,” he said, “would you please bring some tea and noodles right away? The lady is very hungry.”

“You want fried rice!” the waiter shouted.

“Gillian?”

“Yes, all right.”

The waiter left the table and returned almost immediately with a pot of hot tea and a bowl of noodles. The tea brought the color back to Gillian’s face instantly. She drank two cups of it, and then sat munching contentedly on the noodles.

“Oh my,” she said, “that’s much better. Forgive me, David.” David was frowning. She caught his expression, and then looked at him quizzically. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I’ll bet I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“You’re leaping to the male conclusion.”

“And what’s that?”

“I was irritable and bitchy and I felt a little faint. I’m sure those must seem like classic signs to you.”

“Signs of what, Gilly?”

“Pregnancy.”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking of that at all.”

“You were.” She paused. “Would the idea frighten you?”

“No.”

“Would it make you angry?”

“No.”

“But you wouldn’t love me as much if I were fat and bloated, would you?”

“I’d love you no matter how you were.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I were pregnant?”

“No. I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m not,” Gillian said.

David nodded.

“That’s relieving, isn’t it?”

“I told you I wasn’t thinking that,” David answered.

“Then what were you thinking?”

“About char-shu-din. I like char-shu-din.”

“Well, we ordered it, didn’t we?”

“Yes.”

The table went silent.

“David?”

“What?”

“I went to the doctor yesterday.”

“Why?”

“To be fitted for a diaphragm.” She paused. “I thought...” She shrugged. “This tea is very good,” she said. “Did you notice about the waiter? The way everything sounds like a command?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“What is it, David?”

“I want to leave school,” he said. “I want to get a job.”

“Well, what’s so terrible about that?”

“Why didn’t you order a drink?”

“What?” she said, surprised. “I didn’t want one, that’s why.”

“That’s not true. You didn’t order it because you knew if we both had drinks it would have added a buck and a half to the check, and you were worried about whether or not I could afford it.”

“That’s an absolutely paranoid statement, David. And besides, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near a dollar and a half.”

“A buck twenty, at least.”

“You know, we could have stayed home, for that matter. I have food in the house.”

“Well, I have to get a job.”

“All right, so get one.”

“I’m tired of this college-boy allowance. And I’m not learning anything. I’m not interested any more. I have to get a job.”

“David, if you want one, go out and get one!” she said sharply, and suddenly realized there was more to this than he was stating, sensed at once that he wasn’t truly arguing with her but with something deeper inside himself, and wondered what it was like to be someone without any real goals, her own goals had always seemed so clear to her. Perhaps their relationship changed in that fleeting instant. Perhaps, staring at him across the table while the rain lashed the plate-glass front of the restaurant, she knew that something more was expected of her as a woman, as David’s woman. The thought frightened her a little. She felt inexplicably like a stranger to him, felt she was in love with a man she did not know at all. He sat across the table from her in hooded silence, surrounded by a shell she could almost reach out to touch. She was face to face now with the question of whether or not she wished to penetrate that shell, and this was what frightened her. She felt suddenly threatened. If she opened those doors, if she truly explored this man she claimed to love, became for him more than she now was, she had the oddest feeling she would lose her own identity somewhere along the way. She suddenly wanted to run.

The waiter brought their soup and put it down. Gillian picked up her spoon and began chattering nervously.

“You’d be surprised how many places don’t serve fried-won-ton soup,” she said brightly. “I once had a big argument with a Chinese waiter who told me there was no such thing as fried-won-ton soup, after I’d eaten it at least a dozen times. ‘Won-ton soft,’ he said. ‘Soft. All light, you fly won-ton, it get hard. You put it in soup, it get soft again. Why bodder fly it in first place? No such thing as fly won-ton!’ I almost hit him over the head with the teapot. Oh, this is good, isn’t it? They are crisp.”

“Yes,” David said.

She watched him and she thought, What do you want from me? What more can I give you than I’ve already given?

She knew. And when she was tied to the sacrificial stone, and when he drank her life’s blood and was nourished by it, and when he found himself somewhere in the maze of her body and her mind and her trust and her faith, what would be left of Gillian Burke? Silently, she weighed her love.

Nervously, she said, “Do you know the Orson Bean routine about the two Chinese who go to an American restaurant?”

“No.”

“It’s very funny,” Gillian said. “You know how he starts his act, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“He comes out and says, ‘How do you do, my name is Orson Bean. Harvard, forty-two.’ Then he pauses and adds, ‘Yale, nothing.’” Gillian laughed and looked at David, who remained silently pensive. “It’s really very funny,” she said, shrugging. “I guess I didn’t tell it well.” She lifted the spoon to her mouth. Her hand was trembling. He reached across the table suddenly, catching her hand. The spoon clattered to the table top.

“You see,” he said, “you’re the only person in the world who means anything to me.”

The time for decision was past. Perhaps it was past that night they met in the loft.

She covered his hand with her own and smiled. Gently, she said, “We must find a job for you, David.”

Matthew was certainly not keen on the idea of moving to the country. As early as last November, when they had made their first exploratory trip to Talmadge, he had stated in his most unsubtle manner, “I do not see, Amanda, why we should join the horde of migratory birds who are flocking out of the city. I happen to like New York. I find it exciting and interesting and convenient. Besides, I was raised in a small town, and I don’t think I’d like to live in one again.”

“I was raised in a small town, too,” Amanda had said.

“I know that. So how can you even consider—”

“Talmadge isn’t really a small town.”

“A town is either big or small. There are no in-betweens. Talmadge is a small town, Amanda. And it has the added disadvantage of being a university town. How can anyone possibly put up with screaming goldfish-eaters for the major part of each year?”

“Matthew, college students are no longer swallowing goldfish.”

“They’re sure to be swallowing something.”

“That’s their business, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course. But my business is the law. And it will take me two hours to get to my business from Talmadge each day. And two hours to return.”

“Only an hour and a half.”

“Plus the ride from Grand Central to my office.”

“You could move your office. You said you were thinking of joining an established firm, anyway.”

“Not right now, Amanda.”

“You could do it now if you wanted to.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to.”

“Well, let’s not decide yet,” Amanda had said.

She had said the same thing in February after they’d walked through seven houses accompanied by a real-estate agent who spoke with a German accent and who wore a pencil stuck into a bun at the back of her head. She had shown them four colonials, two contemporaries, and a bastardized version of a Southern manor, which, she claimed, had been copied from a place called Monticello. She had also shown them acres and acres of undeveloped land, which, she proudly stated, were alive with dogwood and cardinals and were a definite steal at two thousand dollars an acre. In the car on the way home, Matthew had said, “I don’t trust that woman.”

“You don’t trust any Germans,” Amanda said.

“I don’t trust Germans who show me swampland at two thousand bucks an acre, that’s for sure. Dogwood and cardinals! Cottonmouths and crocodiles is more like it.”

“How did you like Monticello?” Amanda asked.

“Wonderful! But didn’t you think the slaves’ quarters were a little cramped?”

Laughing, Amanda had said, “Well, let’s not decide yet.”

It was April now, and the Talmadge countryside was in the midst of a seasonal clash. The sky was leaden, the trees were bare, a harsh wind scraped the rolling landscape. But crocus and jonquil and hyacinth had burst through the stiff upper crust of the soil, and the brilliant green of day-lily shoots lined the old stone walls of Connecticut. The forsythia were opening tentatively, palely yellow because of their sparseness, showing none of the riotous gold that would be theirs when the weather turned really mild. Here and there, a brave magnolia cautiously emerged from its fuzzy bud, the petals closed tight in pink-and-white timidity. The lawns patched the landscape uncertainly, faded brown merging with new brilliant green. The waiting spring cowered before the last chill blasts of winter. There was a look of desolation and expectation to the land.

She fell in love with the house the moment they saw it. The date was carved into a wooden crossbeam over the front door, and she could visualize a colonial gentleman watching a carpenter as he carefully chiseled the numerals into the wood. She followed the real-estate agent into the small cozy entry, saw the winding steps leading to the upper floors, the polished banister. Wide wooden planks, hand-pegged, richly grained, covered the floors, led to the large living room and the enormous stone fireplace with its baking oven set into one of the walls, its big iron pot hanging on a swinging black hook. The ceilings were low and stoutly beamed. Something primitive and elementary rose in her breast as she climbed the steps to the bedrooms, somehow familiar with the curve of the banister, feeling an immediate intimacy with the house, as if she had lived in it for years and was now returning to it after a long absence. The bedrooms overlooked a small garden and a rolling field, which promised springtime lushness. There was a brook and an apple orchard and an enormous tree that seemed painted against the sky in twisted silhouette.

“I want it,” she whispered to Matthew.

“It’s probably got termites.”

“I don’t care if it’s got rats.”

“We’ll see,” Matthew said.

They discussed it with the real-estate agent. Amanda was floating on a giant pink cloud, but Matthew was cautious and suspicious. He activated his lawyer voice, to Amanda’s secret amusement, and began asking learned questions about taxes, and mortgages, and existing liens on the property. What about Talmadge zoning? he asked. Two acres, three acres, or four? Was there any light industry in town? How far was it from the house to the railroad station? Were the public schools good? How much were the school taxes? And finally he descended into the mundane and asked the agent why there was a large damp spot on the cellar wall, was there a drainage problem? Didn’t the northeast corner of the house get a terrible amount of wind during the winter? Who lived next door? Was the town friendly to newcomers? He thanked the agent for his time at last, and they drove back to the city silently, Matthew balancing figures in his head, Amanda planning on where to fit her piano into the living room.

When they reached the apartment, Amanda went upstairs and Matthew parked the car and picked up the mail. She had taken off her dress and her shoes by the time he joined her. She sat in the living room with a broad smile on her face, staring at the wall.

“It’ll be lovely,” she said.

“We haven’t taken it yet.”

“Oh, but we will. Won’t we, Matthew?”

“He said they’ve already rented the place for the summer.”

“Yes, but it’ll be ready for occupancy in September.”

“Who knows what those summer people will do to it?”

“Matthew, we’ve already made plans for the summer, anyway. Autumn is a nice time to move. Why did you ask about schools?”

“Well, why not? You’re supposed to ask about schools.”

“We can start a family,” she said, and she smiled again.

“You got a letter from Minnesota,” Matthew said.

He put the envelope in her lap and then slid his hand under her slip, grasping the flesh on her thigh.

“Let’s start the family now,” he said.

“I want to read my letter. Is it from Penny?”

“It looks like her handwriting. You’re still the softest—”

“Get your hand out of there,” Amanda said, scowling. “You fresh thing,” she added, and then opened the envelope. “Do you want to hear this?”

Matthew sighed. “Oh yes, a letter from Penny will positively make my day.”

“My dear darling sister,” Amanda read. “How nice to be fat, how nice of you to be fat.”

“What?” Matthew said.

Amanda shrugged. “How nice of you to be fat,” she repeated, puzzled. “What do you suppose she means?”

“She’s your sister,” Matthew said, shrugging.

“It must be a joke of some kind. She probably explains it.”

“Well, I’m going to take a shower,” Matthew said.

“Oh, sit down a minute.” She looked back at the letter again. “I am claws,” she read.

“I am what?”

“I am claws.” Amanda stopped reading. She looked up at Matthew.

“Go on,” he said, frowning.

“You... you better watch out, you better be good. It should not be hot in November when they die.”

“Are you making this up?” Matthew asked sharply.

“No. No, I... Matthew...”

“Read it.”

“Matthew, I’m frightened!”

“Read it!” he said.

“It should not be hot in November when they die,” Amanda read. The room was silent now. She spoke in a whisper, and she did not look up at Matthew as her eyes followed Penny’s wide scrawl. “Amanda, dear, don’t you think, dear, you should wear a yellow ribbon for my sailor who is far far away? Now Amanda, why don’t you write to me? I am so tired with crying. Don’t you help? You used to help me clean the house on November Saturdays, but not hot. Mother will not let me drive the car. Tell her to give me the keys or I will eat her all up. Love the flying rooster bird, the sailor dressed in blue. Love, Penelope.”

Her hands were trembling. Everything was suddenly in her head, behind her eyes. She looked up at her husband.

“Matthew, we’ve got to...”

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

Everything seemed the same except Penny. Nothing had changed except Penny. Her mother did not look any older, and her father still smiled with the curious lopsided grin that hid the gold filling in the upper right-hand corner of his mouth, and even the child, Kate, five years old now, did not seem to have grown very much, the house was the same, the lawn, the Minnesota air, nothing had changed but Penny.

“Hello, Amanda,” she said, “did you have a nice time?” and Amanda looked deep into her sister’s eyes and hugged her fiercely. The family reacquainted themselves with Matthew. Amanda’s father took him out to the garage to show him his new power tools. Kate had smeared finger paints on her dress, and Penny took her upstairs to change her, her hand at the back of the child’s neck, the long blond hair trailing over her fingers as she led her up the steps.

They talked in the garden not yet touched by springtime, Amanda and her mother. Priscilla Soames was calm and sensible, quite infuriatingly calm as she walked with Amanda, stooping to examine a new bud every now and then, but walking most of the time with her hands tucked into the folds of her brown sweater.

“What’s the matter with her?” Amanda asked.

“Nothing. Your sister is fine.”

“I got a letter that—”

“Your sister is a fanciful girl.”

“This letter wasn’t fanciful.”

“No? What was it, daughter?” Priscilla raised her eyebrows and studied Amanda coolly.

“It was a letter from a...” Amanda paused. In a rush, she said, “It was a letter from a lunatic.”

“Now really, Amanda.”

“Did you know she wrote to me?”

“No, I did not. But if you got a letter that sounded despondent, you mustn’t—”

“This was more than despondent.”

“Your sister has her black days,” Priscilla said. “We all do. And she has had more to bear than most. With God’s will—”

“Mother, this has nothing whatever to do with God’s will. Penny’s letter—”

“I wish you would not profane the Lord,” Priscilla said. “I can’t imagine what you’ve learned in the East, but this is still my house, daughter, and I won’t listen to any—”

“I want to know what’s wrong with Penny.”

“There is nothing at all wrong with her. Her husband died, that’s all. She loved him dearly. When he—”

“That was almost six years ago, Mother!”

“Yes, and does grief set its own time limits?”

“Grief? For God’s sake, when I came into the house, she acted as if I were—”

“If you take the name of the Lord—”

“Never mind the name of the Lord!” Amanda shouted, and her mother turned abruptly on her heel and began walking toward the house. Amanda caught her arm. “We’re finishing this, Mother,” she said tightly.

Priscilla stared at her coldly and said nothing.

“Do you hear me?” Amanda said.

“Don’t shout.”

“What’s wrong with Penny? Have you had a doctor for her?”

“She’ll hear you.”

“She’s upstairs with the baby. She won’t hear me.”

“In any case, I don’t like shouting.”

“Have you had a doctor for her?”

“Why should I have had a doctor? There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“What are you trying to hide, Mother?”

“Nothing. Is this why you came all the way from New York? You’d have done better to stay there with your husband and your friends, Amanda. There’s nothing wrong with your sister.”

“I haven’t seen her in two years, and the first thing she asks me is ‘Did you have a good time?’ as if I’m coming home from a date, but there’s nothing wrong with her.” Amanda paused. “Why won’t you let her drive the car, Mother?”

“There’s only one car, and your father needs it.”

“But you never denied it to her before.”

“Your father’s parish is larger now. Besides...”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me!”

“Your sister had a slight accident in town a few weeks back. We thought it would be best, until she... got over it to...” Priscilla shrugged. “Your father thought it would be best.”

“What kind of an accident?”

“A small one.”

“Then why won’t you let her drive?”

“Amanda, I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”

“That’s too bad, Mother, and I’m sorry. What kind of an accident did she have?”

“She hit someone.”

“What!”

“Don’t start imagining a terrible accident, Amanda. The woman wasn’t hurt at all. But we felt it was best—”

“Where was this? The accident.”

“On the old Courtney Road.”

“What was she doing there?”

“Just driving. Just out for a drive.”

“And the woman?”

“Was walking, Amanda. By the side of the road.”

“And Penny hit her? That’s the widest road in Otter Falls!”

“I suppose it is.”

“How’d she happen to—?”

“I don’t know, Amanda.”

“Did she hit her deliberately?”

“Of course not!”

“Did she?”

“No.” Priscilla scowled at her daughter. “Are you this rude in New York? You seem to have forgotten all your manners, Amanda. Of course, I suppose all your friends—”

“Penny needs a doctor,” Amanda said.

“She does not need a doctor! She’s as sane as—” The word startled Priscilla. She closed her mouth instantly.

“Yes,” Amanda said.

Priscilla did not answer.

“I’m going to call a doctor,” Amanda said.

“You’re going to do nothing of the sort. This is still my house. You live in New York.”

“My sister lives here.”

“It’s a little late to be thinking of her.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then I suggest you ignore it.”

“No! What do you mean?”

“You chose to live in New York, Amanda. All right, live there. We are quite capable of taking care of ourselves. And Penny.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You understand me very well, daughter. We have never had any trouble communicating.”

“Yes,” Amanda said, nodding. “Yes, I understand you perfectly.”

“Fine. I’ll go inside now. It gets a little chilly—”

“What happened, Mother? Did I spoil your plans for me? Was I supposed to come back to Otter Falls and marry the local butcher? And play piano for him beautifully every afternoon?”

“I had no plans for you, Amanda,” her mother said.

“Is that what happened?” Amanda said bitterly. “Well, I’m terribly sorry. I’m really so terribly sorry, Mother, that I chose my own life. But Penny is still my sister! And you’re not going to pretend she’s all right, Mother, the way you pretended I was going to school just to learn how to play piano, you’re not going to do that to her, Mother.”

“Penny is my daughter,” Priscilla said flatly.

“And so am I,” Amanda said.

The words hung on the afternoon air. Priscilla did not answer. Amanda stared at her mother long and hard.

At last she said, “You’re made of stone.”

“Thank you, daughter.”

“You’re a stonehearted bitch,” Amanda said, and she enjoyed the words, enjoying hurling them in her mother’s face.

The laugh shattered the April air. Amanda heard it with more than her ears. It hit her body like a closed fist. She turned toward the house instantly and heard the laugh again, a high, rising, hysterical laugh that came from the upper-story windows. Her eyes widened. She felt suddenly cold, suddenly bloodless. The laugh came a third time, hanging liquidly in the near dusk, trailing off into a hollow echo. The house, she thought. Penny, she thought. And then she said aloud, “The baby! Kate!”

She broke into a run across the lawn. She had covered this same ground a thousand times as a child, knew every rock and every blade of grass, but now the earth resisted her, seemed to cling to her as the laugh erupted in the silence again, she clattered up the front steps, fumbled with the doorknob, she could not open the door, she grasped the knob again, it seemed slippery in her hand and suddenly the door opened and she fell into the entrance foyer and saw her own frightening reflection in the hall mirror, wide-eyed, startled, where? she thought, the steps, she ran for the steps and tripped over the hall rug, scrambled to her feet again as a new sound joined the laughter, the sound of Kate screaming, she clutched for the banister, pulled back her skirt and took the steps two at a time, losing one shoe as she ran for the upstairs corridor and Kate’s bedroom.

They were sitting in the middle of the floor, mother and daughter. Penny was laughing. She held a lock of the child’s long blond hair in one hand, and a scissors in the other, and she snipped the lock quickly, and then held her fingers wide as the blond tresses fell to the floor to join the scraps of hair on the scatter rug. The child was sobbing, watching her mother, watching the scissors as they moved toward her head again, her face streaked with tears, her eyes puzzled and afraid.

“Penny!” Amanda said.

Her sister turned. There was vacancy in her eyes. She smiled absently and said, “I’m cutting it off.”

“Penny, give me the scissors,” Amanda said. She held out her hand.

The smile left Penny’s mouth. She frowned and rose from the rug. Beside her, Kate began crying again.

“Penny,” Amanda said softly, but there was fear in her voice now. The fear leaped the distance between them and seemed to ignite something in Penny’s eyes. She gripped the scissors tight in her fist and lunged across the room. Amanda saw the wicked pointed ends of the double blades, saw the utterly incredible vacant horror in Penny’s eyes, a look of terrible lost loneliness, and then the scissors flashed toward her breast. She seized Penny’s wrist and stopped the thrust, felt the unnatural strength in her sister’s arm. Penny punched her suddenly and viciously with her left fist, hitting Amanda over the eye and sending her sprawling to the rug, tumbling over Kate, suddenly spitting out the child’s hair, feeling the hair clinging to her face and her lips as Penny whirled on her, smiling now, smiling a deadly cold controlled mechanical smile.

“Penny!”

She drew back the scissors, ready to lunge.

“Penny!”

Her sister began laughing, the same high hysterical laugh that had tumbled from the house and invaded the quiet garden. She pushed the scissors at Amanda clumsily, almost blindly, tearing the sleeve of Amanda’s blouse, raking her arm, and Amanda thought, This is my sister, this is Penny, this is Penny, this is Penny, fought the idea until it burst from her fingers in a wild open-handed swing that caught Penny on the side of her face and rocked her head backward. She slapped her again, and again, swinging her arm while Penny laughed uncontrollably, and then the laughter turned to sobs and the scissors dropped from her fingers and she fell to the floor beside Amanda and threw herself into her arms. And they sat together in the center of Kate’s bedroom, sister and sister, Penny in her arms weeping, Amanda sobbing and stroking her hair, and the five-year-old child watching them in wide-eyed bewilderment.

They drove Penny to the Minneapolis General Hospital Psychiatric Clinic the next day. She sat on the back seat of the automobile and said nothing, brooding silently, staring through the window. Only once did she say anything, a shouted incoherency, and then she fell into her dark silence again. At the hospital, they told the resident psychiatrist about the events of the day before. He listened patiently, looking at Penny all the while. She sat stiffly in the chair beside his desk, sullenly studying the floor. When he talked to her, she did not answer him. The only notes he made were on superficial things like Penny’s age and marital status, the number of people in the family, things a general practitioner might have asked when confronted with a case of the measles. He told Amanda he would like to keep Penny there for observation, and he said that a psychiatric social worker would undoubtedly visit the house in Otter Falls within the next week to talk to her parents. In the meantime, he cautioned them against undue alarm. This could, after all, be just a temporary thing.

They kept Penny at the clinic for thirty days. Amanda stayed in Minnesota all the while Penny was under observation. Matthew had to get back to New York, but he wrote to her every day, and every day she answered, and each night before she went to sleep she prayed for her sister. Once, she went into the church where she’d been married, and played the organ, seemingly alone with the sunlight filtering through the stained-glass windows, and when she finished the Bach prelude, she heard her father’s voice. “That was lovely, Amanda,” he said, and put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. During Penny’s stay at the clinic, the psychiatric social worker visited their home four times. He was a very pleasant young man who listened patiently and took voluminous notes. When Amanda asked him how Penny was doing, he smiled sympathetically and said he really had no idea, but he was certain she was in good hands. At the end of May, they went to the clinic again and spoke to the psychiatrist who had been assigned to Penny’s case. He was a tall, loose-jointed man who sat behind his desk and seemed too large for his chair. When he took off his eyeglasses, he seemed much younger than he was, and oddly ill-equipped to discuss what he was about to discuss. Unemotionally, gently, with a minimum of words, he told them that Penny was a schizophrenic of the paranoid type, and that she needed a period of intense hospitalization and therapy. Amanda listened to his diagnosis and prognosis in stunned silence. Priscilla Soames sat calmly in a straight-backed chair and said, “I won’t send my daughter to a hospital.”

“She’s a very sick girl, Mrs. Soames,” the doctor said. Amanda suddenly had the feeling he had been through this very scene a thousand times before. She suddenly saw pain in his eyes, and she wished he would put on his glasses again.

“She’s been this way before,” Priscilla said.

“No, I don’t think so, Mrs. Soames.”

“How would you know? She’s my daughter.”

“Yes, but she’s my patient.” He leaned closer to her, his big hands awkwardly clasped. “We’ve had to keep her under restraint for the past two—”

“Restraint?” Priscilla said, and one hand left the bag in her lap, as if she would strike the doctor, and then fluttered aimlessly as she turned to Amanda, seemed to remind herself she would find neither assistance nor consolation there, and then turned helplessly to her husband, who sat white-faced and dazed.

“She’s become extremely violent,” the doctor said. “We wouldn’t have—”

“I don’t believe you,” Priscilla said.

“Mrs. Soames, believe me. Two weeks ago, she tried to strangle a student nurse on her ward.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Mother—”

“I don’t believe him.”

The doctor put on his eyeglasses. He tried to make himself comfortable in the chair that was too small for him. “I wish I could tell you something different,” he said. “I wish I could say she’s fine, she’s well.” He shook his head. “But she isn’t. She’s lost all contact with reality, Mrs. Soames. She soils herself, she’s refused to eat... we’ve been feeding her intravenously for the past few days. She needs to be hospitalized, Mrs. Soames. I can’t tell you anything but that. She must be hospitalized.”

“I won’t send her to a hospital.”

The doctor sighed, not in impatience, not in weariness, the sigh was almost one of sadness. “We can insist on a legal commitment,” he said.

The words resounded in the stillness of the room like a hollow slap.

“Then that’s what you’ll have to do,” Priscilla said.

“We’d rather not. If you commit her, Mrs. Soames, you can petition for her release at any time. If we’re forced into a legal commitment, she can’t return to society until the director of the hospital recommends her release.”

“And when I petition for her release,” Priscilla said sarcastically, “will they automatically let her go?”

“That’s up to the hospital.”

“That’s just what I thought. I won’t commit her.” She paused. “How... how long would she be put away?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Mrs. Soames. Until she’s well. We’re not trying to imprison her, we’re trying to help her. You can send her to a private hospital if you feel a state hospital wouldn’t be—”

“What’s wrong with the state hospitals?” Priscilla asked quickly, suspiciously.

“Nothing. Some families prefer private care.”

“How much does a private hospital cost?”

“That will vary. Two hundred, perhaps three hundred a week.”

“We could never afford that.”

“The state hospitals—”

“My husband is a minister, not a banker.”

“The state hospitals are very good, Mrs. Soames.”

“Really? Are they as good as your hospital, doctor? Where you look at a girl for a few weeks and then pronounce her hopelessly insane?”

“I never said—”

“I will not send my daughter to a hospital!”

“Would you send her if she had tuberculosis?”

“That’s different. You’re telling me my daughter is crazy!” Priscilla shouted.

“I don’t even know that word, Mrs. Soames. I’m telling you your daughter is very ill. I’m telling you we want to help her. If you won’t allow us to, we’ll seek legal commitment.”

“Very well, seek it,” Priscilla said, and she rose.

Two psychiatrists signed Penny’s commitment papers and attended the hearing before a justice of the superior court in Minneapolis. On June 6, 1948, Penny was committed to the Sandstone State Hospital in Sandstone, Minnesota. Before Amanda went back to New York, she spoke to one of the hospital psychiatrists. They sat in his office and discussed Penny quietly, like two old friends over tea at Childs.

“Is there really a chance for her?” Amanda asked.

“I don’t see why there shouldn’t be, do you?” the psychiatrist said. “There’s been an awful lot said about the hopelessness of mental illness, Mrs. Bridges, and I’m afraid the layman comes away with an impression of total despair. The fact remains, though, that some sixty to seventy-five per cent of all acute psychoses are recoverable.”

“I see,” Amanda said.

“And even when we can’t effect a complete cure, we can hope for considerable modification along favorable channels. We’ll take good care of your sister, Mrs. Bridges. Please be assured. We’ll do everything in our power to help her.”

“But... but how? She... she won’t eat, she...”

“We’ve had very good results with drugs, Mrs. Bridges. Once we can calm your sister sufficiently, once we can begin talking to her, establish a rapport, once we can understand her illness, why, then we can hope that she too will understand it, and understand herself as well. It’s a matter of leading her back to reality, to environment — as opposed to unreality or mental disease. This can’t be accomplished overnight, Mrs. Bridges. But then, neither does a mental disorder develop overnight.”

“And this will help her?” Amanda asked. “Once you can talk to her? Once she can talk to you? This will help her?”

“Communication,” the psychiatrist said. “There is hope if we can get her to communicate.”

I never wrote to any of the people I used to know, Gillian, because the return address on the envelope made it clear I was a prisoner and not just taking a navy rest cure.

They call it a naval retraining command, but that doesn’t fool a soul. My mother was the only one who knew I’d been put in jail, and I wrote to her maybe once a week. She told everyone in Talmadge that I was an SP at Camp Elliott. I suppose they believed the story. No one’s ever mentioned it to me, so I guess they believed it. You’re the only person in the world, besides my mother, who knows I was in prison. And I told you five minutes after I’d met you. I guess that proves something.

I’d begun serving my term in May of ’43, and at the end of two years, I applied for release. I almost got it until someone on the review board remembered that I had struck an officer. The board decided that I should remain in prison for the rest of my term. If I’d killed an old lady in Seattle, that would have been different, perhaps. But I’d struck an officer, you see. So they turned me down. I’d spent two years behind bars, but that wasn’t enough.

Gillian, two days was enough. But not to the officers on the review board, and so I was turned down. I began thinking of those years ahead of me, another three years of nothing while life went on outside, while people were laughing outside, or playing cards, or drinking beer, or standing near radiators warming their hands, free. I almost cracked. I almost said, What the hell, who cares? I’ll be here for the rest of my life, who cares? But then they dropped the atomic bombs, and then suddenly the war was over, and I could taste freedom, I figured they had no reason to keep me there any more, the war was over, they would let me go, I could taste it in my mouth. So I stuck with it, the model prisoner, hoping to reapply for release at the end of three years.

I met Mike Arretti during that time.

He’d been at Camp Elliott for quite a while, and he was going to be there for quite a while longer. He was a signalman who’d got stranded in New Orleans with a girl whose husband was in commando training in England. The girl had a six-year-old son and a house in the French Quarter. Mike had hitchhiked from San Diego, where his ship was docked, on his way to Easton, Pennsylvania, where his wife was. He had a two-week leave, and he planned to spend it with his wife, but he got sidetracked when he met the girl in New Orleans. He moved into the house with her and her six-year-old son, and stayed a week overleave, and then woke up one morning, did a little arithmetic, and figured that his ship would be pulling out for the Pacific the next day.

He didn’t have a chance of catching it if he took the train or hitched, so he began calling the various airlines. He learned that one airline would fly him to Dallas and then to Los Angeles for a hundred and one dollars and ninety-seven cents, and that another airline would fly him from Los Angeles to San Diego for ten dollars and twenty-eight cents, including tax, and the whole trip would take about seven hours, and that would get him back in time to catch his ship.

There was only one trouble. By this time, Mike was flat broke, and the girl had been awaiting her allotment check, which hadn’t come, and between them they couldn’t raise the fare. So he tried the U.S.O., which sent him to the Red Cross, which sent him to the Seaman’s Institute, but no one seemed able to come up with the cash he needed for that plane ride back to Dago.

In desperation, he called his wife in Easton and said, “Honey, I’m stranded in New Orleans, and I need a hundred and twenty dollars to get me back to Dago, would you wire it to me right away, please?”

His wife asked him what he was doing in New Orleans, and he said he’d been sent there for a signalman refresher course and was calling from the school where he’d got stranded when the rest of the group left, all lies that Mike’s wife might have bought if the six-year-old kid hadn’t come into the room right then and asked to talk to his mommy. Mike tried to push the kid away from the phone, telling him it wasn’t his mommy on the other end, but the kid kept yelling, “Let me talk to Mommy! Let me talk to Mommy!” which Mike’s wife heard clearly and distinctly. She may have been ignorant of most nautical matters, but she knew damn well they didn’t have little kids running around signalman schools asking for their mommies. She didn’t know what kind of a refresher course Mike was taking, but she was willing to bet it had nothing to do with blinker lights. So she told him to go to hell, and hung up on him.

Mike needed that money the way only a man facing a charge of desertion in time of war could need it. He walked into town, found a closed pawnshop, broke in by forcing a window, and stole a hundred and fifty dollars from the cash drawer. He kissed the commando’s wife, and then slapped that little six-year-old kid as hard as he’d ever slapped anyone in his life. He might have caught the ship were it not for a delay in the Dallas airport. But there was a delay, and he did miss the ship, and the SPs picked him up the next day. He was charged with desertion and burglary, the burglary charge having followed him cross-country from New Orleans, where the commando’s wife had notified the local shore patrol of Mike’s little adventure. Apparently, he shouldn’t have slapped her son before he left.

So there he was at Camp Elliott, serving something like twenty years, and hoping to be out of prison and the navy by the time he was eighty-eight or so. We got to be pretty good friends. He was a good talker, and I enjoyed listening to him, and we’d spend a lot of time discussing what we were going to do when we got out. It seemed like a pretty good friendship until the review board examined my plea again in December of ’45 and told me my request had been granted, I would be returned to active duty the following May.

I began to get excited then, Gilly. There it was. There was the whole damn world waiting for me. And naturally, the first person I told about it was Mike.

He listened to me silently, nodding his head, and then he said, “You’ll be leaving me, huh, buddy?”

I said something like “Don’t worry, Mike, you’ll be out of here before you know it,” or something equally foolish to a man who was facing such a long prison stretch, and Mike simply nodded again.

“You’ll be leaving me,” he said, as if I were doing him a great injustice.

“Hey, come on,” I said. “Aren’t you happy? I’m getting out! Man, I’m getting out!”

And Mike nodded and continued staring at me, and said nothing.

I was almost out when it happened. I had ten days to go when it happened.

It was May, Gillian, and very hot. I don’t think you’ve ever lifted a sledge hammer, and maybe you don’t know how heavy one can get after you’ve been raising it and dropping it for hours. I don’t suppose you know the way rock dust can get into your nostrils and under your clothes, either, the fine pumice that drifts on the air after each hammer blow, like powdered glass, crawling into your nose and under your shirt and making you itch, and getting into your eyes until you can’t tell the tears from the sweat. I was working side by side with Mike that day. We were wearing the leg irons, we didn’t always, but this was a little way from the prison and there was only one guard for twelve men, and all he carried was a rifle and a billet.

We were working side by side, the hammers going in that sort of mechanical picking-up-and-dropping, which is not really work, only labor. The guard assigned to our work detail had a voice like a parrot. Every five minutes he would yell out, “All right, mates, let’s look alive! Let’s make little ones out of all those big ones.” He delivered the line as if he had just made it up and was testing it for a laugh. Every five minutes his voice would cut through the hanging dust, you could almost set your watch by it, “All right, mates, let’s look alive! Let’s make little ones out of all those big ones.” Twelve men were pounding at the rock pile, and dust was hanging on the air and choking us. You could barely see the man three feet away from you, but you could hear that voice drifting through the layers of dust every five minutes, “All right, mates, let’s look alive! Let’s make little ones out of all those big ones.”

And suddenly, right next to me, there was another voice.

Mike’s.

And it yelled, “Go to hell, you moron!”

I turned to look at him, and suddenly there was a deep silence, Gillian, and into the silence the guard said, “What?” He said it very quietly. He didn’t seem at all shocked. He asked the question as if he hadn’t quite heard what was said the first time and was politely inquiring about it. “What?” he asked.

And through the hanging dust, Mike answered, “Go to hell, you fat bastard!”

The guard walked over to us. The hammers had stopped. The dust was settling now. We stood staring at him, our legs manacled together, the sweat and the dust and the tears streaking our faces, our throats dry, squinting against the bright hot sunlight as the dust settled. The guard wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning, either. He seemed a little hurt, like a night-club comic who’d been heckled by a drunk. He stood very close to us with the rifle hanging loosely at his side, and with the heel of his right hand cupped over the handle of the billet on his belt.

Very quietly he said, “Who said that?”

No one answered. I was shaking, Gillian. I was ten days away from getting out of that place, Gillian. I could see spending another two years on that rock pile. I could see everything I’d worked for vanishing as I stood there in the sun, biting my lip, gripping the handle of the sledge tight, keeping myself from shouting, “He said it! Mike Arretti said it!”

The guard waited patiently. “Well, what do you say, mates?” he asked, and there was more silence. “What do you say now?” Silence.

I had begun crying, Gillian. Not out loud, not so any of the men standing around the silent pile of rocks could tell I was crying, there was so much sweat on my face anyway, and tears from the dust, but I’d begun crying soundlessly, waiting for Mike to say something, waiting for Mike to tell the truth, waiting.

“Well now,” the guard said. “This don’t look too good, does it?” He waited. Then he turned to me slowly. Slowly and deliberately, he turned to me and said, “What do you say, Regan? Who’s the wise guy here, Regan?”

I didn’t answer.

“Come on, Regan,” the guard said. “You know who did the yelling. Now, how about telling me?”

I didn’t answer. The guard kept staring at me, and the tears kept streaming down my face, but I didn’t answer. The guard nodded briefly, and then turned, apparently starting back for his chair in the shade with the walkie-talkie resting on its seat. It was then that Mike shoved me.

He shoved me with all the strength of his arms, and I went pitching forward, and Mike pulled back on his leg so that the chain pulled up tight. I tripped and went falling toward the guard, grabbing at him for balance as I fell, the leg iron holding me. I thought I was going to land on my face, Gillian, I thought I’d smash my face on the rocks. I grabbed at the guard’s clothes, and he swung around with his eyes wide, his right hand sweeping toward the billet, and then he raised the club, and I tried to say “No!” I tried to shout, “No, I’m falling! I’m only...” but he hit me. He hit me once, sharply, on the top of the skull, splitting it wide with his first shot. I was on my knees, clinging to him, when I felt the blood gushing onto my forehead and into my eyes, and I turned and looked at Mike Arretti and I saw him through the blood, standing there and leaning on his hammer with a smile on his face, a smile, Gillian, a smile! The guard hit me again, on the shoulder this time, numbing my right side. I fell over into the dust.

It could have been worse. They could have put me in solitary, they could have left me to rot in that goddamned prison. Or they could have refused even to consider any future parole requests. I didn’t get out that May, Gillian, but actually they were pretty decent about it. I reapplied for release in December, and it was six months after that when they finally let me go. I didn’t leave Camp Elliott until May of 1947. Mike Arretti had cost me a full year.

I saw him in the recreation yard two days before they sent me to Treasure Island for my discharge. He smiled at me, Gillian. The son of a bitch smiled.

The third job David got was in the public library on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. Unlike the other jobs he’d held, he seemed to like this one. He recognized, of course, that it was only a temporary thing, but he felt completely at home in the small room where he worked, the sunlight pouring through the arched window that overlooked Bryant Park, a window surrounded by stone like an ancient cathedral. The books that passed through his hands were sometimes old and yellowed. He received manuscripts faded with time, written in script that was ancient and strange. He handled the books gently and with great respect. Alone in his tower room, he felt an enormous sense of continuity as history passed through his hands on the pages of dusty volumes and manuscripts. The official title of his job was “Accessioner.” One of his duties, among many others, was the marking of all new library acquisitions with the official library seal. Any book, pamphlet, or manuscript that found its way to his desk was instantly numbered on the page after the title page, and again on page 97 if the material ran that long. Gillian promptly dubbed him “The Lord High Accessioner,” and when he’d been at the job for a month and got his first raise, she shopped the stores off Sixth Avenue for a Japanese army medal and a libretto of The Mikado. She tore out page 97 and the one after the title page, and on the flyleaf she wrote:

On Sunday, they went to Central Park to celebrate. They had lunch at the Tavern on the Green, and then wandered leisurely over the paths, directionless, turning each bend by whim alone. They stopped at Cleopatra’s Needle, where Gillian read the translation of the hieroglyph for the first time, fascinated by it. “Are those lobster claws?” she asked, looking up at the metal figures at the base of the obelisk.

“Crabs, I think,” David said.

“They were probably added later.”

“No, I think they’re part of the original.”

“Do they have crabs in Egypt?”

“They have crabs everywhere. Crabs are one of the oldest forms of animal life.”

“Oh, such a smart-oh,” Gillian said. “What happened? Did you get a book on crustaceans yesterday, huh? Is that what happened, Accessioner?”

They walked west to the Shakespeare garden, where someone had smashed the glass front of the plaque telling why the garden was there. They came upon an old brown house, which seemed to have been transplanted from some Scottish moor. A girl was sitting on the stoop before the locked door, reading a comic book. They stumbled onto the lake suddenly, and Gillian laughed when she saw the hundreds and hundreds of people in rowboats. “I can’t understand it,” she said in mock puzzlement. “Such a nice day, and nobody on the lake rowing.” They took a winding path up from the lake and found an orchid corsage under one of the bushes. Gillian picked it up and held it on the palm of her hand.

“Now thereby lies a tale,” she said. “What do you suppose it was doing under that bush?”

“That’s where its owner was last night,” David said.

“A prom,” Gillian said. “They came here after a prom.”

“No proms in August, Gillian.”

“That’s right. A special occasion of some sort then. A birthday. An anniversary. And they were walking through the park, and they had an argument, and she threw his orchid under the bush.”

“Ja, go on,” David said in a thick German accent. “Dot’s very goot. Tell me more aboud your assoziations.”

“Your accent is terrible,” Gillian said. “Let’s hang it on a tree.”

“My accent?”

“The flower, David. Come!”

They unwound the wire holding the stem of the flower to its fern and then rewired the orchid to the leafy branch of an elm. The tree stood to the side of the path, the single purple bloom seeming to sprout magically from the end of one of its branches.

“Und now ve obzerve, doktor,” Gillian said.

“And that’s a good accent, huh?”

“No, but I do it with style,” Gillian answered.

They sat on a rock several feet away from the elm tree, trying not to seem interested in the orchid or the people who passed by. Three young men in tight jeans and Italian sweaters were the first to spot the flower. One giggled, sniffed it, shoved at his companions, sniffed it again, and then joined them as they went up the path laughing.

“You know what they thought it was, don’t you?” Gillian asked.

“No. What?”

“The late-blooming faggotry.”

“Here are some more customers,” David said.

Two little girls had stopped to study the flower. They approached it cautiously, standing several feet back from it.

“Be careful,” the first girl said. “It’s one of those stingers. Don’t touch it. It’ll sting you.”

The second girl moved closer to the riotous purple bloom. She peered at its petals and then tentatively stuck out her hand.

“Don’t touch it!” the other girl shouted.

The second girl touched it gingerly, pulled back her hand at once, and said, “Wow!”

“Did it sting you?” the first girl asked as they walked on. “Huh? Did it sting you, Marie?”

They watched the flower for at least twenty minutes. At the end of that time, an old man wearing striped trousers and a derby hat stopped at the tree, discovered the bloom, raised his eyebrows appreciatively, plucked it from the branch, stuck it in his buttonhole, and went jauntily down the path humming.

“Most of them didn’t even notice it,” Gillian said sadly.

“Ah, but that’s life,” David answered.

“Are you observant?” she asked seriously.

“I noticed you, didn’t I?”

“Do you notice anything different about the way I’m wearing my hair?”

“No,” he said, surprised, and turned to look more closely.

“I’m just checking. I’ve worn it this way always.”

“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful, Gillian.”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Why do you always think I’m joking when I say you’re beautiful?”

“Because I know I’m not,” she said, suddenly shy. “But it’s nice that you think so. It’s terribly nice, David.”

When they got back to the apartment, Gillian immediately busied herself with pencil and paper.

“What are you doing?” David asked.

“I’m making up my own Egyptian hieroglyph.”

“Why?”

“If Cleopatra could have one, why can’t I?”

“All right, go ahead. I want to hear the end of the Yankee game.”

“I hate baseball,” Gillian said. “Only boors are interested in baseball.” She shushed him as he began to protest, and continued working on her drawing, her tongue caught between her teeth, her brow knotted in concentration. She tried to show him the completed sketch in the middle of an eleventh-inning rally. David put her off until the excitement had died down, and then studied her work.

“Where did you find this?” he asked with an air of shocked discovery.

“Why, it just came through, sir,” Gillian said, immediately falling into the role of the apprentice. “I was simply sitting there, sir, when this papyrus scroll was put on my desk. I looked for the page after the title page, but there was none, and page ninety-seven was obliterated by ibis feathers. I thought I should call it to your attention at once, sir.”

“I’m glad you did,” David said sternly. “This girl, what was her name? We’ll have to fire her at once.”

“Which girl is that, sir?”

“The one who obliterated page ninety-seven.” David paused, thinking. “Iris, was that it? Iris something-or-other?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Ibis. Ibis Feathers. She used to be a stripper in Union City before she joined the library, sir.” Gillian paused. “We put her in the stacks, sir. She stacks very well.”

“Very well,” David said. “Do you realize the importance of this find?”

“Is it important, sir?”

“Miss Rourke, I can’t—”

“Burke, sir.”

“Yes, of course, Burke. Miss Burns, I can’t begin to tell you about its importance.”

“Try, sir.”

“Sit down on my lap here, Miss Barnes, and I’ll—”

“Burke, sir.”

“Yes, of course, Burke. Sit down, Miss Byrd, and I’ll tell you all about it.” Gillian curled up in his lap and threw her arms around his neck. “Mmmm, yes, where was I?” David said.

“The papyrus roll.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you, Miss Bikes.”

“Burke.”

“Burke, Burke, I can’t seem to remember that name. Well, Italian names always throw me. Forgive me, Miss Buggs. The papyrus roll. Is it seeded papyrus or onion papyrus?”

“I didn’t notice, sir. A little of each, I think.”

“In any case, it should go well with ham.”

“Is that a dig, David Regan?”

“No, my dear. The last dig I was on was in Australia in 1912. Found a Zulu skull. Remarkably preserved.”

“She’s very good, too,” Gillian said.

“Who’s that, my dear?”

“Zulu. Zulu Skull. A marrr-velous stripper. Not as inventive as Ibis Feathers, but remarkably preserved.”

“Yes, well of course she—”

“Are you happy?” Gillian asked suddenly. “David, are you tremendously happy?”

“I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life,” he answered.

They tried to reach Penny with drugs first.

They started with the barbituric acid group, shooting her with ten grains of sodium amytal intravenously, varying the administration with oral, intramuscular, and rectal doses, gradually increasing the dosage to fifteen grains. She would scream whenever they hit her with the needle. She would claw and scratch, and they would grab at her arms and her legs and hold her down while the hypodermic was plunged into her arm. The physicians and attendants began to dread that time of the day when Penny Randolph would be taken out of her restraining jacket in preparation for her injection. The narcosis seemed to have nothing but the most minor temporary effect on her. She still refused to eat. She still would spit at anyone who came anywhere near her, hurl obscenities at patients and staff. The moment the jacket was removed, the moment they took it off to get at the veins on her arm, she became assaultive. Once, she seized the hypodermic from the doctor, smashed it on the table top, and attempted to slit her own throat with the broken shard.

By the beginning of September, when Matthew and Amanda moved into the Talmadge house, the hospital staff had already tried veronal, paraldehyde, and hyoscine, and had switched to sodium nucleinate in their treatment of Penny. When they realized this wasn’t helping her at all, when they recognized they were no closer to establishing the communication they so desperately desired, they abandoned drug therapy completely, and called Priscilla Soames the next day to ask for permission to use electric convulsive treatment on her daughter.

Priscilla didn’t know quite what to do.

The girl she visited each week was certainly not her daughter, not the Penny she had known. But still, could she submit this poor distracted creature to electric shock three times a week, perhaps more? Could she do this to her own daughter? And yet, and yet, she wasn’t really her daughter. She no longer recognized anyone, nor did she seem recognizable, her face had changed somehow, changed from the face of someone Priscilla had known and loved to the face of a stranger. She did not know what to do. She turned to God, as she had so often in the past, and she prayed for guidance. The people at the hospital had told her the electric-shock treatments might help her daughter, might bring her to the point where they could at least talk to her. “We cannot help her unless we can communicate,” they had said, and now she communicated with her God and asked Him to show her the way.

She prayed formally, in a language she had evolved from the time she was a child, a highly stylized language, which she considered fitting and proper for discourse with the Lord. She prayed formally, but she prayed openly. If Priscilla Soames ever showed what was truly in her heart, she showed it to her God.

My Lord Jesus, she prayed, look upon me with pity. I need Your help, dear God. Please. I am cold. I am alone. I need Your help. Do not let me lose her. I do not mind suffering. I have never complained about the suffering. But I cannot bear the thought of losing her. I have been good. I never wished to be a mother, You know that, You remember my prayers, You remember the terror in my heart. But I have borne him children, I have given him daughters though I know his true desire was for a son. Forgive me, I do not mean to judge. I have been a good mother. I do not plead sacrifice, though I have sacrificed, still I do not plead sacrifice. I beg only for direction, help me, please, help me.

I am cold. I am alone.

I am a cold woman. I know this, dear God, it is the way I am. Oh my God, I have never held a baby’s foot in my hand and kissed the toes. I am cold. I know this. He has never said so. He is so simple sometimes, like a child himself, he has never complained, but I know he feels this in me, I know he feels this core within me which does not bend, which never yields. Love is divine, I know this, love is divine. He is so kind to me. He was so gentle, but he is a man of God, and I am cold.

I must, I wish, I must touch another human. Help me, oh please, help me. I cannot lose her, too. I have lost my younger child, how golden her hair was, and her smile, her eyes would light and she would rush to my arms and I would hold her tight against my breast. “Mandy,” I would say, but the name was alien to my tongue. “Amanda,” I would say, “Daughter,” cold, and the arms would sense, the eyes would cloud, but oh, oh, the golden sight of her hair, to kiss the top of her head, to hold her in my arms and kiss the top of her head freely without shame, I am so cold.

I was cold to him at first, tall and proud with his books under his arm. “I am a divinity student, Miss Bailey,” delivering the words with an aloofness of purpose, “I am a divinity student,” and I studied him with appreciative awe, but I said even then to myself, “Do not love him, do not love this man.” Ahh.

Ahhh.

I was a girl once.

She bit me once. Penelope. She bit my breast and the shock of it! I stared at her in my arms, my first child, I could feel her tiny teeth! I laughed. And then I cried. I put her back in her crib. I did not want her to see me crying.

God, help me. Please. Please!

She is my daughter. I know, I know, she is mine, I should not have let them take her from me.

I do not know myself sometimes, dear Lord. I hear myself saying things, and I do not know this person. I look at this grown-up person saying things, I do not recognize her. And no daughters.

I swear, I swear to You, I was not trying to create myself again in my daughters, I swear this to You. I did not interfere, she wanted to play piano, there was no money, You know that, there was none. But we gave her lessons, she played so well, I felt I would burst when I heard her play, but I never said. I watched only, and I listened, but I did not touch her hair. I did not interfere. I did not want Priscilla Soames twice again. They were new, so new, and smelling sweet as rain, both new, my daughters, my babies, I wanted them to be themselves.

Nothing.

Nothing now.

A daughter who has said to my face the things I only dared to say to myself, alone, said them aloud. They ring in my ears, they echo in my ears, said them to me aloud. I have lost her now. I have no daughter Amanda.

Penelope.

Help me, dear God. Should I let them do these things to her? Should I let them? But if she cannot talk, then how will they help her unless they do these things? My daughter, let me touch your hand.

Dear God, I once ran barefoot in the grass. I once picked a daisy.

Gillian saw her father suddenly and only from a distance. There was a brisk October breeze blowing through the city that day, and it attacked the eyes and made them water. Squinting against the wind, she wasn’t at all sure that the tall, redheaded man was actually her father. Or told herself he wasn’t. And then knew the man was Meredith Burke, knew without question, and watched him without shock, watched him as she would a slightly ridiculous figure in an old-fashioned movie. He had taken the young woman’s arm in a manner so courtly Gillian almost laughed aloud. He was leading her through the promenade, past the banks of shrubs, toward the golden statue of Prometheus overlooking the restaurants and the ice-skating rink. He did not see Gillian, and she pretended not to see him, but she remembered with sudden clarity her mother’s words — “What is there to say about my Meredith Burke and his little blond bookkeeper? What is there to say, Gillian?” There was nothing to say now, either. She watched them dispassionately and thought they made a striking couple, her father with his deep-red hair, and the girl’s head bent close to his as they walked, a bright natural blonde, very striking. How young she is, Gillian thought, he looks so old beside her. She felt curiously abandoned. She watched her father, and then quickly looked at the people on the sidewalk, wanting to know suddenly if they had all seen Meredith Burke and his bookkeeper, if they were as aware of him as his daughter was, and then silently condemning him for choosing a place as indiscreet as Rockefeller Center. She left quickly, seeking the shadowed anonymity of Forty-eighth Street.

She called him at the shoe store the next day. He didn’t recognize her voice at first.

“This is Gillian,” she told him. “Your daughter.”

“Well, Gilly!” he said, his voice booming onto the line. “Now, what a surprise!”

“How are you, Dad?”

“Fine, just fine. And yourself?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“Well, that’s marr-velous, Gilly. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Dad, what are you doing for lunch today?”

“Why? What is it, Gilly?” he said. “Is something wrong?” There was a curious concern in his voice. She wondered for a moment whether the concern was for his bookkeeper or his daughter.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said quickly. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Oh? Who, Gilly? A young man?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause on the line. “Shall I have my shoes shined? Will he be proposing?”

“No, I don’t think so. I just wanted you to meet him.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Where do you want to meet, and what time?” Meredith asked.

She set a time and place, and then hung up. She did not know quite why she was doing this. It’s time he met David, she told herself. She dialed David at the library. When he came to the phone, she said, “David, I’m having lunch with my father. I’d like you to join us.”

There was only the slightest hesitation on the line. Then David said, “Sure. I’d like to.”

They talked a bit longer. She listened patiently and then said, “I have to get dressed. Twelve-thirty, don’t be late.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

She hung up and stood staring at the receiver. When the telephone rang, it startled her. In the few seconds before she picked it up, she thought, It’s one or the other of them calling to cancel. She lifted the receiver.

“Hello?” she said.

“Sweetie, this is Marian.”

“Hello, Marian.”

“I’m glad I caught you. Have you got a minute?”

“Yes, sure.”

“What’s the matter, sweetie?” Marian asked.

“Nothing.”

“You sound... distant.”

“No. What is it, Marian?”

“Sweetie, do you remember my telling you about this man who’s going to shoot a pilot film in the Bahamas? Bimini, or some damn place, I can never remember the names of those islands.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“The underwater stuff, you remember. He’s trying to get Sterling Hayden or someone like him for the male lead, and he needs a girl to play the part of this trouble-shooter sort of broad, but she’ll be in every sequence, assuming they sell the pilot, of course.”

“Yes, Marian.”

“Well, he came into town Saturday, trying to tie up his financing and all that, and looking around for talent. I called ABC and arranged for a showing of that half-hour thing you did, the one with—”

“I remember it, Marian.”

“Well, he liked it.”

“That’s good.”

“He’d like to talk to you about the part. He’s one of these guys who likes to meet the actress personally and exchange ideas. He has the peculiar notion that actresses should be intelligent as well as talented. He’ll probably want to discuss the Berlin airlift — so brush up on your I.Q.”

“When is this, Marian?”

“Today. For lunch.”

“I can’t make it.”

“What?”

“I said I can’t make it.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Why not?”

“I’m busy today. Anyway, Marian, I couldn’t possibly go charging off to the Bahamas. That’s out of the question.”

“They’ll only be down there for a month or so — to get the underwater stuff and to do the location work. They’ll be shooting all the interiors here.”

“Here? In New York?”

“No. Probably on the Coast.”

“Well, I can’t go to California, either.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t, Marian.”

“Sweetie, there’s something I ought to tell you.”

“What, Marian?”

“I’m not complaining, but—”

“What are you doing?”

“Look, don’t be so damn touchy. This is Marian you’re talking to.”

“I’m sorry. What is it, Marian?”

“Oh, the hell with it.” Marian paused. “But look, sweetie, I just about break my neck setting these things up for you, and this is the third one you’ve turned down. Now what gives, would you mind telling me? Are you still interested in acting?”

“Of course I am!”

“Then why—”

“I don’t want to go to the Bahamas. That’s that, Marian.”

“The Ivory commercial had nothing to do with the Bahamas.”

“I don’t think I’m going to learn anything by doing soap commercials.”

“It’s exposure,” Marian said.

“Yes, but it’s not acting.”

“I know a girl who cashes a dozen residual checks each week. She earns five hundred bucks while she sets her hair in the morning, just opening her mail.”

“I’m not starving, Marian.”

“You’re not working, either.”

“Something’ll come along.”

“Honey, things have come along. Would you mind telling me why you turned down the summer-stock job?”

“It was in Ogunquit.”

“So?”

“So I asked you to get me either Westport or Easthampton, or the Paper Mill in New Jersey. You—”

“The Paper Mill does operetta and musicals. How could—?”

“I sing, Marian.”

“Not that good. What was the matter with Ogunquit? It’s a great showcase.”

“It’s too far from New York.”

“When did you fall in love with this city, all of a sudden? You can’t go to Maine, you can’t go to California, you can’t go to Bimini, where the hell can you go? Can I book a job on West Fifty-eighth, or is that too far uptown for you?”

There was a long silence on the line.

“What do you want me to do?” Gillian asked. “Get another agent?”

“Argh, who’d have you?” Marian said. “Will you do me a favor? Will you please see this guy today? Even if you won’t go south, he’s a producer, he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies, There may be something later on.”

“I can’t today,” Gillian said. “Make it tomorrow.”

“He’s leaving for Hollywood tonight.”

“I can meet him after lunch, maybe. For a drink.”

“What time?”

“Two o’clock is the earliest I can get away.”

“I’ll try. Will you be home for a while?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call you back.” Marian paused. “We still friends?”

“You know we are.”

“I’ll call you later, sweetie.”

“Okay,” Gillian said, and she hung up.

Her father was a half hour late. She made desultory small talk with David, certain her father would not show up, pleased when she saw him come into the restaurant at last. He looked around with that bright twinkle in his eyes, saw her, and went immediately to the table. He kissed her and then turned to David.

“Dad, this is David Regan. David, my father.”

David rose and took Meredith’s hand. “How do you do, sir?”

“How do you do?” Meredith said. “Sit down, please. I’m sorry I’m late, but we had a lunch-hour rush.” He paused. “I run a shoe store,” he said, watching David, as if anxious to get this piece of information out of the way.

“Yes, sir, Gillian’s told me,” David said. “Would you like a drink? We’re one ahead of you already.”

“Yes, I would,” Meredith said. “You’re looking well, Gillian. You should come to see us more often. The Bronx isn’t exactly the end of the world.” He looked at David. “Bring your young man. Your mother won’t throw him out.”

Gillian smiled. “I didn’t think she would, Dad.”

“Come for dinner some Sunday.”

“And will you be home?” she asked, and then wondered instantly if the question had not been too pointed.

Meredith raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Why yes, Gilly,” he said, “I’ll be home.”

“Would you like to go sometime, David?”

“Sure,” David said uneasily.

“I’m hoping your hair is prematurely gray, Mr. Regan,” Meredith said. “Otherwise my daughter’s seeing a man who’s far too old for her.”

“Would that matter very much, Dad?” Gillian said, and again Meredith raised his eyebrows and studied her, but said nothing this time.

“I’m twenty-four, Mr. Burke,” David said.

“That’s a good age. Are you studying acting, too?”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

“I saw Gillian on television a few months back. She didn’t tell us she was on, but I happened to catch the show by accident, anyway. You were very good, Gilly.”

“Thank you.”

“What do you do, Mr. Regan?” Meredith asked.

“I work for the library.”

“Oh? Doing what?”

David shrugged. “I stamp books, I guess.”

“That sounds interesting,” Meredith said.

“Well, it’s all right for now.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in selling shoes?”

“Well...” David said, and looked at Gillian.

“There’s nothing wrong with selling shoes, you know,” Meredith said.

“No, sir, I didn’t think there was.”

“Do you call everyone ‘sir’?”

“No, not everyone.”

“Then why are you calling me that?”

“You’re Gillian’s father.”

“Oh, I see. Where’s our waiter? I’d like some whiskey.”

It was one forty-five before she realized it. She made her apologies and left the men alone together. As she walked out of the restaurant, she wondered again why she was putting either of them through this ordeal. She shrugged and hailed a cab.

“Are you in love with my daughter?” Meredith asked David.

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“She’s a pretty girl.”

David nodded.

“Where’d you meet her?”

“At the Count’s... Igor’s. That’s where she’s studying.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, that’s where we met.”

“Where do you live, Mr. Regan?”

“On First Avenue. Near Houston Street.”

“Not with my daughter?”

“No, sir. I have my own apartment.”

“But you do sleep with Gillian, don’t you?”

“That’s my business, sir. And Gillian’s.”

“I wouldn’t want to see my daughter hurt, Mr. Regan.”

“Nor would I.”

“She’s a fine girl. With a lot of talent.”

“I know that.”

Meredith nodded and studied him. “How long have you known her?”

“Since last November.”

“Almost a year.”

“Almost.”

“And you love her, you say?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“You seem like a very cold person.”

David shrugged.

“Do you mind my frankness?” Meredith asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Shall we have more coffee?”

“I’d like some.”

The waiter came, and they ordered more coffee. Meredith Burke took his black, without sugar.

“Do you plan on marrying her?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“I haven’t found the job I want yet.”

“What job do you want?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Or is there any sense to marrying a free-and-easy girl who’s already...?”

“Mr. Burke,” David said, “you’re talking about Gillian. I’d hit any other man in the world who talked about her that way.”

Meredith Burke nodded. “I wouldn’t try hitting me, son,” he said. “I would knock you flat on your behind.”

“That’s happened to me before, too,” David said. “But it wouldn’t stop me.”

“Maybe you’re not such a cold fish. Whose idea was this meeting?”

“Gillian’s.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are we supposed to discuss? You’re not asking for my permission to marry her, that’s for sure.”

“No, sir. Not yet.”

“Would it matter if I said you couldn’t marry her?”

“No, sir, it wouldn’t.”

“Then what’s the purpose of this meeting?” He shook his head. “Why’d you agree to it?”

“Because Gillian asked me.”

“Oh, I see. You do whatever she asks you to, huh?”

“I love her,” David said. “I don’t think you know how much.”

“Maybe I do,” Meredith answered. “Does it embarrass you to talk about love?”

“A little.”

“Don’t let it. Drink your coffee. How much money do you earn?”

“Sixty-five dollars a week.”

“That’s not very much.”

“No, sir, it isn’t.”

“I’m very fond of that girl,” Meredith said.

“So am I.”

“She’s my favorite. My other’s in California, you know. I doubt if she’s ever coming back. Don’t hurt that girl, Mr. Regan.”

“I won’t.”

“Women can be hurt. And women can be used. Don’t hurt her, and don’t use her. She’s my daughter, and I’m very fond of her.”

“Does it embarrass you to talk about love?” David asked.

Meredith smiled. “I do love her,” he said gently.

“I thought maybe you did,” David answered, returning the smile. “I had the suspicion.”

“I’ve thought of this day. When she’d bring around the man she’d chosen. I thought of it, Mr. Regan. Even when she was a little girl, and damn pretty she was then too. I thought of it.” He paused. “I guess I don’t like you. But I guess I wouldn’t have liked the mayor of Dublin if my daughter brought him to me and told me she loved him.”

“I guess I don’t like you, either,” David said. “But that has nothing to do with how I feel about Gillian.”

“You know, you may be a big damn bull artist, for all I know.”

“I’m not.”

“Well, you’d just better not be. I don’t like you now, but I’d like you even less if you were handing my daughter a line.”

“I can understand that.”

“Yes, and don’t go getting her pregnant. I hope you can understand that, too.”

“What are you getting angry about?” David asked suddenly.

“Because, to tell you the truth, I can’t get used to the idea of your sleeping with her, that’s what. I feel like busting you right in the mouth, Mr. Regan. That’s what. Goddamn it, it annoys the hell out of me.”

“Well, calm down. I don’t think Gillian would want us to argue.”

“What the hell does she want? That’s what I’d like to know. Why’d she bring us together?”

“Maybe she thinks it’s time I married her.”

“Well then, maybe it is.”

“She knows I’m going to marry her. I told her that the day we met.”

“That was almost a year ago, sonny. When are you going to get moving?”

David shook his head. “I’m not ready for marriage yet.”

“Then you’ll never be ready. If you’ve got to think it over, you’ll never be ready. And if you’ve got to think it over, I’m not even sure you love her.”

“I’m the one who’s got to be sure, Mr. Burke. Not you.”

“You seem a lot older than twenty-four.”

“I am a lot older.”

“So’s Gillian.” He looked at David a moment. “Maybe it’s a good match. Who the hell knows?”

“Does anyone ever know?”

“Don’t get smart with your platitudes. Are we finished with our lunch?”

“I guess so.”

“Don’t hurt her, Mr. Regan. If you do, I’ll come looking for you.”

That night, she asked David how the lunch had gone.

“Terrible,” he said. “He didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him. Why’d you have us meet, Gillian?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and perhaps she really didn’t.

Perhaps she only wanted to remind David that sooner or later the Hamelin townsfolk would have to pay the man with the pipe. Sooner or later, David would have to take her to the altar and swear the sacred vows, sooner or later he would have to do that if he really wanted to keep her. Or perhaps marriage hadn’t figured in the meeting at all. Perhaps all she’d wanted was to prove to her father, prove to Meredith Burke with his young blond bookkeeper, that she, Gillian Burke, was also capable of having an affair.

“I don’t know,” she repeated.

They began the treatment the moment they received the signed permission from Priscilla. They gave Penny three electric shocks a week for a period of five weeks, and then began speeding up the frequency of treatment. For the next three weeks, Penny’s brain was invaded by electricity once every day. They would strap her legs and her arms to the long flat table while she kicked and gouged, trying to escape the machine behind her, hating it from the very first, hating it even before the first shock struck her, even before the blinding orange flash suddenly streaked behind her eyeballs, even before the sound shrieked into her head, hating the look of the machine itself, the sentient silence of the machine, the ominous machine, the hateful wired machine! Now she knew when they were taking her to the machine that ate her brain with fire. She could smell them as they came down the hall for her, dirty bastards come to take her to the eating machine, she would shout at them and roll her eyes in her head to frighten them away, but they would carry her down the hall, down the sliding sloping hall to the wire machine, strap her down, tie her to the slab, she would twist her head and bite and then sense the hum, that awful hum, know it before it came, feel the orange explosion and the crackling spitting sound inside her head, her hands clenching rigidly, her back arching, blackness.

Limp, unconscious, sweating profusely, she would be carried back to the ward and they would wait for her to regain consciousness, wait for a sign that something was happening, something was penetrating the shell. But she did not respond. So they wrote to Priscilla again and asked this time for permission to begin insulin-shock treatment. “It may help her,” they said, and Priscilla signed another form.

If Penny had hated the ECT, she hated the insulin shocks and the induced comas even more. She knew about the needle. They had done the needle before. They had done the needle to her when she first came here, had stabbed her day and night with the needle, and now there was a needle again, but this time it was an exploding needle, it rocketed into her skull and exploded there in dirty black filth, her eyes would bulge out of her head, she would scream in the blackness, they were trying to make her black, they were trying to explode her brain, they were trying to hit her with a hammer, they were trying to knock her head off with a hammer, five days a week they came with the needle, six days a week, hammer, hammer at her brain, blackness, forty times, forty-five, fifty, and then they stopped. The bastards stopped.

I am claws, I am claws, I am claws!

The doctors were already beginning to think of her as a Back Ward Patient.

The period of mourning was almost over.

The libertine days of World War II, the V-girls and the riveters, the tight sweaters and the low-cut blouses, the short skirts and the exposed knees, the what-the-hell attitude of a generation raised for the preparation and the waging of war, the one-night stands, the shoddy false stateside heroics and the unglorified real heroism overseas, the whole frantic pulse of a nation that had followed the war news as it would the results of a baseball game or a horse race, the entire wacky and unpredictable everyday living that was the United States of America during the war years, all this free and easy living, all this dropping of moral standards in the face of something bigger than both of us, baby, a goddamn war, all this sudden kissing and spontaneous mating had reached its culmination on V-J Day and then had immediately produced a feeling of guilt in a country as basically Puritan as Cotton Mather.

The first thing they did was lower the hem line. They pretended this was the latest news from the Paris couturiers, a hem line that suddenly dropped from a cozy spot an inch above a dimpled knee to someplace low on the shinbone. The women all took out their tape measures, and measured up twelve inches from the floor, and then made the startling discovery that even letting out the hems of their favorite frocks would never make them long enough for the new fashion. The longer dresses and skirts appeared sporadically — this was, after all, a nation in mourning, and mourners don’t go on spending sprees even though all the magazines were shouting about a war-free Christmas the moment the Japanese surrendered. The girls who first sported the longer lengths were mocked by their sisters, but mourning is contagious and someone had to bear the guilt of that wartime spree. So it started with the women, and the first thing they did was cover up those legs, cover up legs that were famous the world over because they were good strong straight legs, rickets-free, fed on good American sunshine and canned Vitamin C. They covered them up in what they called the New Look, a look that was as old as the Crusades, but a look that ushered in a new sense of morality, a stiffening of the sagging upper lip. The sneer that had first accompanied the new fashion turned into a fixed expression of approval. It was popular to mourn, and if the men of America missed seeing shapely calves and well-turned knees, they told themselves the new style was more provocative, a style that hid more than it showed, a style that encouraged speculation.

The new cars came out, the first since 1942, and color was the thing. It was odd that a nation in mourning should suddenly burst onto the automotive scene with the rainbow hues that issued forth from Detroit, but Puritanism is a crazy thing at best, and even in 1692 there was a certain exotic quality to the witches they hanged, a certain theatricality to the serious long-panned men who ranted about God and the devil, and who listened to the Salem maidens as they raved in Freudian free-association about the things the black enticer had asked them to do. Black should have been the color for this guilty people, this nation suddenly blushing, as was every nation in the world, for its wartime extravagances of emotion and rage. But even guilt must have its compensations, and so the automobiles blossomed in radiant splendor, tentatively at first, design still several years behind color boldness. People began buying the product, telling themselves they were entitled to a new car after all those years of deprivation. The war was over, after all, and if they bought a beautifully colored symbol of their own masculinity, it could help them to forget those foolish years. Oddly, everyone in America had already forgotten the very real and noble part they’d played in crushing a monster.

The skirts were longer, and the cars were flashier, and people came back to work as if they were returning from a long weekend that just happened to be World War II. The weekend had been a lot of fun, but now there was work to be done. There had been drinking and fooling around, and a little honest killing here and there, but now there was work to be done, now there was a desk to get in order, and the guilt was heavy. The Hollywood machine began grinding out a few sticky-sweet films on readjustment, the best of which was The Best Years of Our Lives, and a little Broadway revue named Call Me Mister was a smash hit, combining as it did memories of the military with the bewilderment of return to prewar values. The trouble was, however, nobody could remember what the prewar values were. The young people who’d gone off to fight the war couldn’t remember the thirties except as a time of NRA stickers and poverty, and all this had radically changed the moment the Japanese dropped their cargo of bombs and torpedoes on the sleeping fleet in Pearl Harbor. There was more than a simple diffusion of memory involved in readjustment. There was, in fact, no memory at all. The people who came back, and the people who were there to welcome them, suddenly discovered they were starting with a blank sheet. They had been children before the war, innocent and naïve, thrilling to the high whining voice of Henry Aldrich yelling for his mother, but now they were adults, beset with all the problems of adults, all the fears, all the guilts, all the obsessions. It was no wonder that the club was formed, and that it gained such immediate acceptance.

The club was not the Pyramid Club, although this too flourished for a few brief months, a vicarious sort of gambling thrill that replaced the real thrill of weekday dates with servicemen on leave, the real soaring pleasure of reading about the assault on Tarawa, the whole overstaged, overdramatic, overpoetic production that had been a world at war. The club was a better club, the common mortar of which was guilt: the age of the analyst had arrived. It became fashionable quite suddenly to discuss things like ego and id, repressed hostility, Oedipus, Electra, and Orestes. The Snake Pit was an instant smash, and audiences all over America cheered Olivia de Haviland as she writhed in the torments of insanity, feeling God knew what relief at her discomfort — better you than me, Olivia — and finally gave her the New York Film Critics’ Award. The top motion-picture awards that year, however, were divided among three pictures that were expressive of this new wave of subtler penetration, this psychological exploration of the self: the first, a brilliantly evocative film interpretation of Hamlet; the second, a story that probed the emotions of a deaf mute; and the third, a rare study of men searching for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Yes, the clocks had all stopped at fifty minutes before the hour, and a couch was no longer a piece of living-room furniture. The skirts were longer, and the cars were brighter, and all the people were deeper, God, how much deeper they all were! They probed constantly, wanting to know more about themselves and each other, digging, continually asking questions in search of a new identity to fit into this unremembered landscape. In New York City, some restless kids formed a street gang.

And then, because people were able to talk about their guilt instead of really feeling it, the reins began to loosen a little bit. It would be a long time before women began to show those good legs again, but the skirt was already inching imperceptibly higher on the calf. A play by Tennessee Williams involving some fairly macabre types was greeted with enthusiastic acclaim, and a new actor named Marlon Brando electrified New York with his portrait of an animal. Russia began talking about exploding her own nuclear devices, and the pointing finger of the world began to turn in another direction. The readjustment kick was on the way out. The guilt, ingrained as deep as the soul, a guilt that would linger and grow, was temporarily put aside as the war was recalled once again, not with patriotic fervor now, not with the screaming heroics of Bataan with Robert Taylor sitting behind his lonely machine gun as the camouflaged Japanese crept through the mist, fade-out, the end, nor with the wild capers of Errol Flynn cavorting behind German lines in the company of downed Allied flyers, not with any of that boiling-point celluloid magic designed to send the young to the recruiting office and the old to the local bank for a war bond, not with any of that, but with a serene contemplation, an attitude of “You know, we weren’t really so wild in those war days; those war days brought out in us the things that were finest.” In a Broadway roster that included such bits of froth as High Button Shoes and Make Mine Manhattan and Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’, there were two solid hits called Mister Roberts and Command Decision, both of which — in the new tradition of psychological depth and meaningful action — portrayed the inner machinery of men at war, rather than the external trappings like Stuka bombers and night patrols. In Hollywood, a giant movie called All the King’s Men was being made ready for release. It would explain demagoguery to Americans everywhere. In New York, the Giants followed the lead of the Brooklyn Dodgers and signed a Negro ballplayer named Monte Irvin.

The period of mourning was almost over. A nation that nominated to the presidency for the second time Thomas E. Dewey, a man with a mustache, was certainly a nation flirting with the frivolous, a country that could now remember with warm nostalgia a time of sacrifice and common endeavor. The biggest song hit of the day was “Nature Boy,” which proclaimed to the world at large that “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” The big bands were on their way out. Glenn Miller had been killed during the war, and he belonged to the past. The greats of the thirties, Basie and Krupa and Dorsey and Spivak and Goodman, were fading sounds on a new musical scene, which placed the emphasis on vocalists and arranged jazz. The discordant sounds of Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie were as new to the ear as were the slickly bright colors of the automobiles to the eye. A nation without memory needed new sights and new sounds and new heroes. Americans, perhaps unknowingly, were in the midst of a strange renaissance. There were changes in the country, and they seemed evolutionary, but perhaps they were as revolutionary as those that had swept over Russia in 1917.

In the midst of these changes, Amanda Bridges knew a change all her own, physical, spiritual, mental.

There were perhaps two things that occupied most of her waking thoughts before November. These were her sister Penny’s illness and the new house in Talmadge. She would arise each morning with Penny in her mind, and each morning she would write a letter to Sandstone, which Penny never answered. And then she would set about doing the thousands of things that any new house, even when it was an old house, needed done. In November, she felt completely changed, almost as if she had been reborn, almost as if a new person had emerged from the office with its clapboard shingles, a new woman. She felt rounder and softer and more female and curiously more sexy, but also a little more shy, and contradictorily a little more noticeable, but productive and real, and closer to God, and closer to Matthew, and closer to the new house and the town of Talmadge, the roots of Talmadge, a little awkward, a little more cautious, a little more recklessly flirtatious. The news did all these things to Amanda so that she was rendered completely unaware of the bigger changes happening around her, she was concerned only with the miracle of change in herself.

In November of 1948, Amanda discovered she was pregnant.

Matthew thought it was incredible.

He was not so much pleased by the news as he was astounded. He knew, of course, that there were certain natural functions that, if not carefully supervised, could very easily lead to this sort of thing, but it was not the simplicity of Amanda’s conception that amazed him. It was, rather, the fact that someone like his wife could suddenly become a potential mother. He didn’t know if he enjoyed thinking of her as a mother. He didn’t even know if he enjoyed thinking of her as a wife. Birth and motherhood implied mysteries he could never hope to fathom. He had never enjoyed suspense stories, and he felt, that he was mysterious enough for both of them and certainly didn’t need anyone shuffling around the house with the great secret of the universe in her belly. There was one secret in the old Talmadge house already, and one secret was enough.

The secret gave him immeasurable pleasure. It was a secret he had never divulged to Amanda. No matter what he shared with her, no matter how close he felt to her, the nights they exchanged kisses and dreams, the days when their marriage fell into the expected hiatus of the ordinary and they shared something less than passion but somehow more intimate, he would never tell Amanda what had almost happened to her on Christmas Eve five years ago. He knew he would never tell her this, and he realized their relationship was built on the solid foundation of — not a lie, certainly not a lie — but a truth withheld. Nor was he being facetious. He felt this withheld truth was a solid foundation. This was not specious reasoning, so far as Matthew was concerned. He felt that marriage was a totally illogical invention, anyway, and he thought it was far more honest to build a marriage around a withheld truth than it was to build it around anything like faith or trust, which were lies in themselves.

He had learned early in life that there were the weak and the strong, the poverty-stricken and the rich, the outsiders and the insiders, the loved and the unloved, the chaste and the unchaste, all excellent paperback titles, he surmised, but all nonetheless direct opposites in a world of conflict and contrast. He had carried this a step further and theorized that every human relationship was based upon a principle of greater or lesser possession or involvement. One party had more money, or loved more, or hated more, or was more ambitious or more cruel or more passionate than the party who was his opposite number. And the other person, by simple inversion, did all these things, or was all these things, or owned all these things, to a lesser extent, the More-or-Less Principle of Matthew Anson Bridges. The remarkable thing about his theory was that it could be applied to a personal relationship as well as a business relationship, and it worked exceptionally well when applied to the institution known as marriage.

On his wedding night, Matthew learned that Amanda loved him more than he loved her. He also learned that he was more passionate, more skilled, and infinitely more interested in sex than was his new bride. He felt it was a good thing that she loved him more because he could not visualize the reverse situation, a situation that could make life intolerable for the person on the short end of the stick. Oh, he loved her, all right. He loved her the way any red-blooded boy would love a girl who was beautiful and desirable and witty and talented and provocative. He certainly loved her. He loved her even after he learned that her early-morning beauty was sometimes a bit faded, and her desirability was simply an accident of the flesh, and her wit was sometimes hopelessly rural, and her talent sometimes included the playing of Mozart, Mozart, Mozart all damn day long, and her provocation was all too often unconscious and led absolutely nowhere; he loved her. What the hell, these were two people living together, and she probably didn’t like the way he tied his pajama bottoms or brushed his teeth. There were bound to be little frictions that would arise when two separate and distinct personalities moved into the same house and began sharing the same bathroom. He expected this, and was not surprised by it. There certainly was nothing about Amanda that would send him running into the streets shrieking for a divorce, and he did love her. But he was very happy that she loved him more than he loved her.

He was also happy about his secret. The secret gave him strength somehow. He never alluded to it, never by the slightest hint of word or expression gave any clue to its existence. But it was there inside him, and he often thought of that Christmas Eve, and how he had saved Amanda on the big brass bed, and the secret and his memories of the secret always made him smile a little. He would look at Amanda his wife, a little naïve, a little unknowing, his beautiful Amanda, and smile. Her innocence sometimes amazed him. He often wished he could have at every jury trial four witnesses for the defense who looked like Amanda and talked like Amanda. He would have her sit in the witness chair and answer questions in her unaffected, honest, Midwestern voice, smiling slightly perhaps, her blue eyes wide, her long blond hair framing an angelic face. He would not coach her beforehand, but he knew she would unconsciously cross her legs at some point during the questioning, and every man on the jury would desire her and then feel an enormous sense of embarrassment and guilt for his lecherous notions. Amanda would continue answering the questions sweetly, totally unaware of the conflict she was causing. But they would believe her if she told them the earth was flat. He was certainly glad she loved him more than he loved her.

And yet, sometimes, he wondered if her innocence wasn’t a pose. He never wondered whether he was seeing her accurately, whether Amanda at twenty-five and fast approaching twenty-six was the same Amanda he had rescued in Gillian’s apartment. No, he never wondered that, and never concluded that he was cherishing his secret, nourishing his secret, in an attempt to keep Amanda the constant college girl in tweed skirt and loafers, the inviolate female, pure and virtuous, the symbol of some half-forgotten youth. He never wondered about her as a woman, never thought to ask how she felt about herself, never imagined her as anything but a rather beautiful creature who put on lipstick and brassière, who rustled in silk, an amazing young girl who was somehow his wife to watch, to hold, to love — but not as much as she loved him. He only wondered if she affected naïveté because she knew it was appealing. And yet, it seemed genuine enough. She seemed to have an enormous faith in her fellow man, believing everyone was as honest and as trustworthy as she knew herself to be, believing Talmadge was a real town with real people. Matthew himself had recognized Talmadge for the phony town it was the moment they attended their first cocktail party. He decided then and there that he did not want to become even slightly involved with this bunch of bogus small-towners whose hearts and roots were still in New York. He tried to understand what had attracted them to Talmadge at all. The town was picturesque, true, with some of the most spectacular countryside he had ever seen in his life, especially during the fall when the woods lining the roads became unimaginably beautiful. And the first view of the town as you came around the bend in the road, with the church sitting off to the right on the hill, and the university spires in the distance, and the shaded leafy main street, was undoubtedly worth a great deal to the picture-postcard industry.

But what was there about the town itself, other than its scenic worth, that attracted families from New York and New Haven, depositing them in a no man’s land that was halfway between both and close to neither? Was it indeed the university and the shadow of its subtle beauty, its intimations of a scholarly citizenry, a town of knowledgeable, lively, inquiring people? Perhaps so, but its presence seemed only a deterrent to Matthew. Nor had the prices of houses and acreage been designed to encourage impetuous spending. So what was it? He pondered it for a long time, and when he thought he knew, when he thought he’d figured out what brought people to this fake-front town with its fake ideals and fake morality and fake standards, he tried the theory on Amanda, and she sat and looked at him in shocked wonder, as if he were suggesting they walk over to the Talmadge graveyard and disinter a few bodies. Her innocence stared out at him in disbelief. No, this was wrong. No, Matthew, you are doing the town an injustice.

“I’m reading it correctly, Amanda dear,” he said, “and if you didn’t look at the world through those rose-colored glasses of yours, you’d realize that this town and the people in this town are as phony as that exhibit they’re holding at the library this week.”

“And what’s so phony about the exhibit?” Amanda asked.

“If you can’t see it, Amanda...”

“No, I can’t, and I wish you’d explain it to me. We’re having a showing of old kitchen utensils and things. Now, what’s so phony about that?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just thought your postcards were very funny.” He grinned, remembering the cards she had mailed just the day before. He had picked them up from the hall table and leafed through them, smiling when he read the first one, and then bursting into laughter by the time he reached the fifth.

“Did you say phony or funny?” Amanda asked.

“Both.”

“I think it’s a wonderful exhibit and exactly what women would like to see. You’re a man. How would you know?”

“I think it’s phony as hell in a day and age when everyone’s kitchen has mechanical devices that can do everything but change the baby’s diaper.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” Amanda said, and she shrugged.

“Yes, and my opinion is that Talmadge, Connecticut, is the fakest town in the Eastern United States. And that takes in some pretty fancy fake towns like Darien and Scarsdale and New Hope and—”

“Oh, Matthew, what makes a town fake?”

“I know what makes this town fake.”

“Yes, people like you,” Amanda said accusingly.

“The first thing that makes Talmadge a fake is that university backdrop hanging in the hills over there. It creates an illusion of higher education when I’ll bet half the morons who live here haven’t even been through the sixth grade.”

“That’s not true, Matthew. You know it isn’t true.”

“All right, maybe it isn’t. They got to junior high school, some of them.”

“They’re some of the brightest people in New York!” Amanda said.

“Then why didn’t they stay in New York? That’s just my point!”

“What’s your point, Matthew?” she asked. “Would you please make your point, Matthew?” She had used his first name twice in as many sentences, a sure sign that she was getting angry.

“My point is this. Talmadge is a fake because only the scenery is real, the rest is all imported like those crumby Japanese toys you can buy in the five-and-ten and which break under the slightest pressure. These people are New Yorkers, honey. The sidewalk sings in their blood. Every time they talk about how much they hate the filthy city, their eyes gleam with nostalgia. You can’t become a small-towner, Amanda. You either are, or you aren’t, and they aren’t, and the whole damn setup here is rotten and phony.”

“Wow,” Amanda said.

“You said it,” he answered.

He did not tell her the rest.

He did not tell her what else he had observed about this phony town, because he felt she was a little too naïve to appreciate it, and besides he didn’t know quite what her reactions would be now that she was pregnant. He watched her moving about the house and wondered anew about her, wondered if this girl-woman he saw every day of the week was the real Amanda, the true Amanda. Something had happened to her suddenly, and whereas he had been a party to the abrupt prenatal change, he felt excluded now that it was a fact. He watched her from a seemingly great distance, and wondered how he felt about the coming baby. July. Not so very far away. July, and there would be a child in the house. Not simply the two of them any more. A child. To share with. To love.

He wanted Amanda to be the way she was.

He wanted Amanda to be the innocent college girl who had lain unconscious on the big brass bed.

The eyes are looking at her.

The eyes are looking at the girl with the claws.

Penny-ellow, Penny-ellow, Penny-ellow-penno-pee.

Claws.

Tear out the eyes with the rush of the wind on a wintry summer day in summer sky, on fairy feet, oh maiden fly, Penny-ellow-pee, Penelope.

Dead sea and ironbottom sound aloud a crowd of chowder eaters I love you and I will be home soon you are probably as fat as a house now the things I will do to you I love you my penelope your husband Frank Robert Randolph SM 2/c USS Barton DD 599 c/o F.P.O. San Francisco, California, born her of claws.

Sea wash squash the dead sea hero squad the dears the lovely dears of dd squadron number squash the sea.

Lulu had a baby his name was Sonny Jim.

They are looking at the girl with claw eyes the murderers.

It was the beginning of March.

She had been in the hospital for almost a year when they decided to perform the operation. Priscilla went to Sandstone, and they explained very patiently to her, told her all about this thing called a prefrontal lobotomy. The operation would be performed by a neurosurgeon, they told her, a consultant on the hospital’s staff. A sharp instrument would be pushed into a portion of her brain, severing certain connections between the brain and the autonomic nervous system. The patient...

“No!” Priscilla said immediately.

The patient would experience no pain. There was no great danger in the operation, little more than what one could expect from an appendectomy. But if the operation were successful...

“No!” Priscilla said again.

If the operation were successful, they might have their daughter back, Penny might be able to go home again. They understood it was a difficult decision for parents to make, but they had been unable to reach Penny at all, and the operation might help her. They did not mean to imply there would be no changes. Penny might tend to be a little silly at times, passive, vague. She would not be like her previous self, not like the person they once had known. But she would be quieter, and calmer, and perhaps they could take her home. It was a difficult decision to make, yes, but perhaps they could take her home. She would not be the same, no, but perhaps they could take her home.

“And if the operation fails?” Priscilla asked.

“She’ll be no worse off than she is now, Mrs. Soames.” The doctor paused. “Nothing else has worked. We’ve tried everything.”

“If... if it works, will she know us again?”

“Yes. If it’s successful, she’ll recognize you, talk to you.”

“Does it often work?”

“We’ve had good results. Of course, you must understand...”

“Yes?”

“This would not be a cure, Mrs. Soames. Your daughter won’t be the same. I can’t mislead you into thinking she’d be the way she was before her illness.”

“I understand.” Priscilla nodded. “How can I let you put a knife into her brain?” she asked, not looking at the doctor, staring at her clenched hands in her lap.

“Mrs. Soames,” the doctor said gently, “your daughter is suffering. I can’t begin to tell you how much she is suffering. If there’s a chance that we can relieve her of her pain, her total sadness, if there’s only the slightest chance that we can bring her at least a small measure of peace...” The doctor shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

Priscilla was silent for a long time. Then she sighed deeply and looked at her husband and said, “We must, Martin.” She turned to the doctor. “Yes,” she said. “If there is a chance, yes, do it. God forgive me, do it.”

Penny seemed much better after the operation. When Priscilla and Martin went to see her, she smiled blankly and said, “Hello, Mother. Hello, Dad.” She seemed so much better. A little slow perhaps, a little vague sometimes, and occasionally she would laugh or giggle unexplainably, but she seemed at least to have found that small promised measure of peace.

“Kate,” she said once.

Priscilla leaned forward.

“She would like Amanda and Connecticut.”

“We’re taking care of Kate for you, dear,” Priscilla said.

Penny seemed puzzled. “Can’t you send her to Amanda?”

“I... I don’t know if Amanda would... would want her, Penelope. She’s pregnant, you know. Your sister is pregnant.”

“Oh, don’t tell me about being pregnant,” Penny said, and laughed. “Kate would like Connecticut.”

“My dear, you’ll be coming home soon,” Priscilla said. “You can care for your daughter yourself.”

“My daughter, yes,” Penny said, and she nodded. “And the sewing machine.”

“What, darling?”

“What?” Penny said, smiling at her mother.

“Did you say...?”

“I said Kate would like Connecticut.”

“Perhaps,” Priscilla said. “But, dear, when you come home...”

“I think it’s sad,” Penny said.

Her mother stared at her wordlessly.

“Don’t you think so?”

“What, darling? What is?”

“About Kate.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Well, it’s a nice day,” Penny said. She seemed very thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned to her father and asked, “Do you still have the black hat?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Wear it when you come. It makes me laugh.”

Martin Soames wore his black hat the next time they went to visit Penny, and she laughed and told him it would be good to come home again, had they heard from Amanda? She giggled.

“I wish I were a lobster,” she said suddenly.

Four weeks after the lobotomy was performed, Penny attacked the nurse who was making her rounds with evening sedations. She hit the woman from behind, striking her at the base of her neck, and then catching her throat between her fingers and attempting to strangle her. A startled patient in the next bed pushed the alarm button, and three attendants subdued Penny and placed her under restraint once more. The next day, she wet the bed repeatedly and had to be removed from it forcibly when they wanted to change the sheets. She kicked over a night table and rushed with her head bent at the stomach of a burly attendant, slamming him against the wall and almost fracturing his arm. They thought it was the end. They sighed and glanced at each other with the utter despair of men who have tried everything they know, men who are fighting a terrible enemy, retreating constantly, weaponless now, utterly routed.

And then suddenly, the next morning, Penny smiled cheerfully and said, “Hello, Dr. Donato, how are you this morning?” and she asked when they would send her home, and she asked how her mother was, and how her daughter Kate was, and she said again, “It would be nice for her in Connecticut.”

They took off the jacket.

She tried to hang herself with the bed sheet that night. The next day, she refused to eat. Her eyes had glazed over, and a look of constant and indescribable horror was on her face, a tortured persistent look, the look of a woman trapped in a burning room with no escape. She began to soil herself again. She sang bawdy lyrics at the top of her lungs, she swore, she spat, she reviled God and the universe, she trembled with fear and screamed in rage. In ten days’ time, her intellectual and emotional deterioration was almost total; she had become again the patient they had first admitted to the hospital, silent, uncommunicative, lost.

The director called Priscilla and asked her to come. He told her what had happened and then he shook his head sadly and said, “There is nothing more we can do. Nothing.” He spread his hands helplessly. “Nothing. Your daughter will probably remain hospitalized for the rest of her life.”

They drove home in silence that night, the Reverend Martial Soames and his wife Priscilla.

After a long while, Priscilla said, “It is God’s will.”

Martin did not answer.

She went into the house and took off her hat. She paid the baby sitter and then she went upstairs to look at the child Kate asleep in her bed. She almost reached out to touch her hair, but her hand would not move. She went downstairs again and sat at the drop-leaf desk for a long time. In the church, Martin was playing the organ. Priscilla nodded, picked up a pen, and began writing the most difficult letter she had ever had to write in her life:

The scene was a particularly difficult one, and David’s absence wasn’t making it any easier. Gillian kept alternating her attention between the open script in her lap and the clock on the wall. He’ll call, she told herself. As soon as he knows anything, he’ll call. Now think of the girl in the play.

She looked at the clock, and then turned her attention back to the script, gathering the shreds of her concentration, seeking in herself a key to the girl’s character. She loves her husband, Gillian thought, that much we know. All right, so why did Igor ask me to work with an actor I despise? Just because of that, I suppose. The effectiveness of the scene depends entirely on how convincing the girl’s love is. Igor’s given me something that will be especially difficult for me. All right, I’ll be deeply in love with my husband. I’ll be charming and warm and sympathetic to him from the moment we step onto that stage. Oh brother, she thought.

She looked again at the clock, and then turned back to the script and began drumming an attitude into her mind. She told herself she liked him, no, better than that, she absolutely adored this simple, untalented jerk, she worshiped the ground he walked on, the last thing she wanted from him was an argument. The girl she was playing had been raised strictly, and on the premise that marriage was a sacrament, that marriage and obedience, and duty to one’s husband, the bearing and raising of children, were a woman’s only real goals. She was somewhat shy and reticent, a good wife and a good mother. In the scene, she was supposed to discover that her husband had been unfaithful to her, had indeed withdrawn a thousand dollars from their joint bank account and given the money to his paramour. Faced with this moment of truth, the girl was supposed to explode in a complete reversal of character, expressing whatever hostilities had been repressed during the years of her childhood and the eight years of her even-keeled marriage. Gillian made a face. She found the scene and the character difficult to believe, but she supposed this meant only that the character was someone beyond the scope of her own personality. Nonetheless, a good actress was supposed to create believable experience in terms of related, if seemingly obscure, experiences of her own, wasn’t she? Gillian sighed heavily, closed her eyes against the clock, and began to probe.

She could understand the girl’s upbringing because it was faintly reminiscent of her own, possibly reminiscent of every girl’s upbringing, but the similarity ended right there. As any of the embryo actors in Igor’s class might have put it, Gillian had “never done the marriage bit.” But she had certainly been subjected to the interminable pounding of a marriage-oriented mother, perhaps even a marriage-oriented society. Her own training was not unique. She recognized that possibly every son and daughter in the world were exposed to a childhood of propaganda, the word-of-mouth advertising passed from generation to generation, the key words of which were “when you get married.” She thought it interesting that this was the transmitted prophecy, an allegation that left no real room for choice. She could not imagine any mother, except in the novels of Colette, saying to her daughter, “When you grow up and become someone’s mistress,” no, she could not imagine it. Nor would anyone say to her son, “When you grow up and become a bachelor.” The word came down with unflinching adult authority, camouflaged in various guises, but always essentially the same:

“Wait until you have children of your own.”

“Someday you’ll meet a nice girl.”

“I’ve saved my wedding veil for you.”

“You want to plan for the future.”

The double talk of subliminal direction, which, when translated from the English, always added up to the same four words: when you get married.

Gillian had been subjected to the same subtle dunning approach, perhaps more so because she was a girl and marriage was the dangling carrot of successful womanhood. The training, she supposed, was as much a part of her as her liver or her heart, and although she accepted her relationship with David, accepted her role in the honesty of an unquestioning love that she felt was real and enduring, she admitted to herself that she was sometimes uneasy about it. Somewhere inside this uninhibited girl, there was a girl quite different, a young child who listened to and heeded the words of mother and God, who reeled back in shock at her own impropriety. Perhaps this was why she chose not to meet Julia Regan.

She could remember the first time David had asked her to accompany him to Talmadge on a weekend. She had hesitated a moment before answering, and then had said, “No, I don’t think so, David.”

“But why not?”

“It isn’t that... David, I’d love to meet your mother, really I would.” She shook her head. “But not now, not yet.”

She had turned away from him, avoiding his eyes, suddenly shy and embarrassed. But she knew she could not meet his mother yet, not this way, not the way things were.

She looked at the clock again.

Come on, she thought, think of the character in the play.

She turned her attention back to the script, read two speeches with forced concentration, slapped the page suddenly, and looked back at the clock again.

He should have been here by now. Or, lacking that, he should have called. He should have known she’d be on tenterhooks waiting for word one way or the other. The appointment had been for a five-thirty drink, she had made the appointment herself, she had called Curt personally the moment she heard about the job opening.

“I’m sorry, Gilly,” he’d said. “This isn’t an acting job. And besides, I’m looking for a man.”

“That’s why I’m calling, Curt. A friend of mine might be right for it.”

“Who? Anybody I know?”

“I don’t think so. His name is David Regan.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Nobody ever heard of you, either, Curt. Until Westport in 1946, and it was my agent who got you the job because I told her you’d—”

“Hey, what is this?” Curt asked. “Blackmail?”

“Not at all,” Gillian answered. “I’m refreshing your memory. Now that you’re a big-shot television magnate, maybe your memory—”

“Has he ever worked in television before?”

“No, but who has, Curt?”

“Well, Gillian, to tell you the truth...”

“Curt, darling, don’t snow old friends. This is primarily an administrative job, and hasn’t got at thing to do with television techniques. Will you talk to him, please?”

“Where do you get all your information, Gilly? What do you do, run at spy system in New York?”

“I simply keep track of old friends,” she said.

“Yeah, go ahead. Hit the ‘old friends’ theme one more time.”

“If you don’t like him, you don’t have to hire him.”

“I wouldn’t hire your father if I didn’t like him.”

“But you will talk to him, Curt?”

“What else are old friends for?” Curt asked sourly.

“You’re very sweet-oh,” Gillian said. “Can you make it this afternoon? Five-thirty?”

It was almost seven now, and no word from David. She sat on the living-room couch and looked through the open kitchen door to the clock on the wall, her legs tucked under her, hating the clock, and hating David for not having called, and hating Curt Sonderman, too. She couldn’t concentrate on the script, it was impossible. She picked up an emery board and began frantically filing her nails. She felt as excited as if she were applying for the job herself. She knew instinctively that it would be something good for David, and she desperately wanted him to have it. She would not allow herself to consider its ramifications, the possibility that if once he found a good job, a job he liked, a job that offered a challenge and a future, then he might... no, she would not allow herself to think in terms of a stupid shopgirl waiting for a man to make her honest, what the hell am I, Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl? She looked at the clock again and frowned. How inconsiderate of that oafish lout, she thought, not to call me when he surely knows I’m waiting. That big fool knows I’m sitting here sandpapering my fingernails down to the bone and beginning to resemble Venus de Milo, but does he care? He and that other idiot Sonderman are probably drunk in a Third Avenue bar discussing their conquests while I sit here like Elaine the fair guarding the sacred shield.

When the knock sounded on the door, she leaped to her feet instantly, rushed to it, and threw it open.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

“Hold it, hold it,” David said.

“Hold it! It’s seven o’clock! Didn’t you pass a telephone? Haven’t you got a nickel? I’ve been sitting here—”

“Now hold it, just hold it.”

“Did you get it, or not?”

“Good old Gillian, straight to the point.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do, you moron? Beat around the bush for an hour? Did you get the job or did you not get the job? If you don’t tell me right this minute, David, I’ll—”

“I think so.”

“You got it,” she said.

“Now wait a minute. I only think so. I didn’t say—”

“You got it,” Gillian said again, and she collapsed onto the couch. “I knew you’d get it.”

“I’m not sure I got it. He said he’d call me later tonight. There was someone else he promised to see.”

“If he’s going to call you later tonight, you got it. Tell me what happened. Tell me all about it.”

“Well, I walked in, and this portly guy at the bar—”

“Portly? Curt Sonderman? He was as thin as a rail when I knew him.”

“Well, he’s portly now.”

“That’s because he’s rich now.”

“Yes, the rich are always fat. Stereotype number six-four-five-three-one.”

“Don’t be such a smart-oh. He came from the bar, yes, go on?”

“And he said, ‘Mr. Regan?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘I’m Curt Sonderman. Nice to know you.’”

“Yes, yes?”

“So we sat down at a table and began talking about the job. Do you know what it is, Gilly?”

“I have some idea. But tell me.”

“Well, he produces two or three television shows, all of them live variety-type programs. The commercials on these shows, for the most part, are live too.”

“Yes, yes, go on.”

“I am. Most of his sponsors have New York advertising agencies, but some of the sponsors are out-of-town firms, the Middle West, California, who—”

“Yes, yes—”

“—who are using Los Angeles agencies with just very small branch offices in New York.”

“I see, yes. Go on.”

“Will you please stop interrupting me?”

“I’m sorry, go on.”

“Well, one of those sponsors had an incident happen on one of the shows where a fresh pineapple was supposed to be sliced, and the pineapple they used looked as if it had been sitting at the bottom of a garbage can for a week. When they showed the... what do you call it, Gilly? The film of the program?”

“The kinescope, the kine, go on.”

“Yes, when they showed the kine, the sponsor blew his top and decided to make sure this never happened again. So he called his Los Angeles ad agency and asked them to contact the other out-of-town sponsors on this one particular show, the Sam Martin show, to find out—”

“That’s a very big show. He’s very big, Martin is.”

“Yes, to find out if they’d be interested in getting together to hire a man in New York whose sole job would be to monitor these things, go to the studio when the commercials were being done, make certain the props were the right ones and all in the right places—”

“Yes, I see, yes—”

“—make sure the person doing the commercial had the right copy, generally ride herd on everybody, the premise being that an on-the-spot representative was absolutely essential. Well, the other sponsors thought it was a good idea, and the agency contacted Sonderman, who also thought it was a good idea, and they asked him if he’d take care of the New York hiring for them.”

“And he hired you!”

“Well...”

“That’s your job. It sounds exciting.”

“I haven’t got it yet.”

“How much does it pay?”

“Two hundred.”

“What! A week?”

“Yes.”

“Two hundred a week! David!” She threw her arms around him and kissed him. “David, you’ll get rich and portly!”

“That’s only the beginning salary, Gilly. Sonderman’s talking about getting the sponsors of the other two shows into the pool. And if that happens, the salary’ll go up.”

“Let’s celebrate!” Gillian said.

“I haven’t got the job yet. Will you please calm down?”

“You got it. I know you did. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I wanted to get back here as soon as possible. I gave him this number, and I was afraid he’d call while I was frittering my time away in a phone booth.”

“Where shall we go?”

“What do you mean?”

“After he calls. After we know you’ve got the job for sure.”

“Gillian, can’t we wait and—”

“Oh, I know you got it. What time did you leave him?”

“About forty minutes ago.”

“He’ll probably call in a few minutes. Curt does things quickly.”

“He seemed pretty much on the ball.”

“Did he like you?”

“I think so.”

“Did you pay for the drinks?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Did he ask many questions about television?”

“No. He seemed impressed by the library background. I don’t know why. Maybe he figures he needs a human catalogue to keep track of all the products on the show.”

The phone rang abruptly, shrilling into the apartment. They both turned to stare at it.

“Curt,” Gillian said.

“It’s too soon.”

“It’s Curt. I know it is. He doesn’t fool around. I told you that.”

The phone kept ringing.

“Answer it,” Gillian said.

“I think you ought to answer it.”

“It’s Curt.”

The phone was ringing noisily.

“Suppose it isn’t Curt?”

“You’ve answered the phone here before! For God’s sake, David, hurry! He’ll hang up!”

“I don’t think it’s Curt.”

“Answer it!”

David walked to the phone and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” he said. “Yes, this is he.” He paused. “Yes, Mr. Sonderman.” Gillian suddenly clasped her hands together. “Yes. Oh, just a few minutes ago. Um-huh. Yes, I see. Yes. Yes, I see. Yes, I understand. Thank you. Goodbye.”

He put the phone back into its cradle.

“Yes?” Gillian said.

David had a dazed expression on his face.

“David! Please!”

“Yes.”

“Really? Oh, Da—”

“I start Monday.”

Gillian sat on the couch suddenly and began crying.

“I never, never for a minute thought you’d got it,” she said.

They were standing on the lawn and waving as the car pulled out. It was May, and the Minnesota sunshine was bright. It illuminated Martin and Priscilla Soames with a harsh flat glare, so that they looked like painted marionettes against a false backdrop, someone pulling the strings attached to their waving hands.

“Wave to Grandpa and Grandma,” Matthew said. “Wave goodbye.”

Kate lifted her hand and waved. She continued waving until the house and the lawn were out of sight. Then she folded her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead through the windshield. She was wearing a bright-yellow dress and white socks and black patent-leather Mary Janes and a big yellow bow in her blond hair. She sat quite still beside him and Matthew thought, Great, now I have to make conversation with a child.

“It’s always sad to leave someplace,” he said, and thought, Oh, that’s a wonderful beginning. Matthew Bridges, the Uncle Don of the highway. “But I think you’ll like Connecticut,” he concluded weakly.

The child said nothing.

Matthew shrugged slightly and then pulled a sour face. He glanced at the child to see if she had noticed his displeasure, but she was oblivious to him, staring at the Minnesota countryside as it flashed past. He felt an active dislike for her in that moment, and instantly blamed Amanda for this whole foolhardy venture, but first he blamed Priscilla for her letter, but mostly he blamed Amanda. “You’re pregnant!” he’d said. “For the love of God, you’re pregnant!”

“A child needs a young couple to care for her,” Amanda said quietly.

“You’re going to have your own child in July.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So how are we supposed to...?”

“We can take care of both. We’re young.”

“I’m not so young any more,” Matthew said. “I was thirty-two years old in February.”

“You’re still young, Matthew.”

“I’m getting white hairs in my mustache, do you know that?” he shouted helplessly.

“She’s only a child.”

“Amanda, don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t start crying. I can see you’re about to cry. Now don’t do that, Amanda. It’s unfair. Let’s discuss this like—”

“Matthew, I want her.”

“Why?”

“She’s my niece.” She paused. “She’s my sister’s daughter, and I love my sister very much.”

“Your mother’s been taking care of her. She can continue to—”

“Not the way I can. Not the way we would, Matthew.”

Matthew sighed heavily. “And what’ll you do in July?” he asked. “When the baby comes.”

“We’ll manage,” Amanda said, and that was that.

Now, sitting beside the silent child on the front seat of the automobile, he was more than ever convinced this was a mistake. You simply did not throw a fully grown, well, a half-grown, well, she was almost seven, you simply did not throw a young girl like that into the arms of people who barely knew her.

“You comfortable?” he asked her.

“Yes,” Kate said. “Thank you.”

“Because it’s going to be a long ride.”

“I’m comfortable,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You look very nice,” he said grudgingly.

“Thank you.”

End of conversation, he thought. How do you talk to a six-year-old kid, well, she’s almost seven, hell, she’s only six and a half, let’s face it. What do six-and-a-half-year-old kids think about, anyway?

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“What?”

“I said—”

“Oh, lots of things,” Kate said.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

End of conversation, he thought. Ask a stupid question...

“Like my room,” Kate said.

“What about your room?”

“My bed had a quilt.”

“We’ve got quilts home,” he said.

“May I have one?”

“Sure.”

“I liked the quilt,” she said, and fell silent again. After a little while, she asked, “Will I have my own room?”

“Yes.”

“Where will it be?”

“Upstairs. Down the hall from us.”

“Is there a window?”

“Sure.” He paused. “It looks out over the orchard. It’s a very nice room.”

“An apple orchard?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good.” She paused again. “Is my mother crazy?” she asked.

He hesitated. He did not know what her grandparents had told her.

“Well,” he said, “she’s pretty sick.”

“Will she be in the hospital always?”

“Yes.” He paused. “Yes, I think so.”

“I feel sorry.”

“We all do, Kate.”

“Will I live with you always?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to?” He hesitated only for an instant, but she took her cue at once and said, “You don’t, do you?”

“Of course we do.”

“She cut off my hair,” Kate said. “My mother.” She paused. “But it’s all grown back now. Will you cut off my hair?”

“Only if you want us to.”

“I don’t want you to. I like long hair.”

“I do, too.”

“Do you think I have nice hair?”

“You have very pretty hair.”

“You do, too.” She looked at him carefully and then said, “When I get big, I’m going to grow a mustache.”

Matthew laughed. “Girls don’t grow mustaches,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Only men do.”

“Mrs. Schultz who has the grocery store in town has a mustache,” Kate said.

“Well...” Matthew pondered this one for a moment. “Maybe she’s a very special person. A woman can’t grow a mustache unless she’s very gifted.”

“Well, I’m very gifted,” Kate said. “I can play ‘Jingle Bells’ on the organ. Grandpa taught me. Do you have an organ?”

“No, but we have a piano.”

“I like organs better.” She paused. “But I like pianos, too,” she said quickly. “Do you play the piano?”

“No. But Amanda does.”

“Would she teach me, do you think?”

“If you ask her to. She plays beautifully. She went to music school, you know.”

“Maybe she’ll teach me,” Kate said. “If I ask her.”

“I’m sure she would.”

“Do you have any doll carriages?”

“No.”

“I should have brought my doll carriage. Grandma said there wasn’t room in the car, though.”

“Well, we’ll see about getting you a new carriage,” Matthew said.

“Grandma said I wasn’t to ask you for anything. She said taking me in was quite enough. That’s what she said. Quite enough.”

“You can ask for anything you want,” Matthew said. He grinned at her and added, “That doesn’t mean you’ll get it, of course.”

The child responded instantly to his joke. For the first time since she’d entered the car, a warm smile broke on her face. She relaxed immediately and said, “That’s the dairy up ahead. It’s got thousands of cows. Cows are the stupidest beasts in the world, did you know that?”

“I suspected as much.”

“It’s true. I read it in a comic book.”

“Well, then it must be true,” Matthew said seriously.

Kate giggled. “See them? All over the fields. All they do is chew grass and sleep.”

“And give milk.”

“They don’t really give it,” Kate said. “You have to take it from them.”

“That’s true. I never looked at it that way.”

“There’s where I went to school,” Kate said, pointing. “I’m in the first grade. Is there a school in Talmadge?”

“An elementary school, and a high school, and even a university,” Matthew said.

“What’s a university?”

“A... well, a collection of colleges.”

“College comes after the eighth grade,” Kate said.

“Yes, but a long way after.”

“Can I go to college?”

“Sure.”

“Mommy started college, but then she met Daddy. He was killed, you know. During the war. Were you in the war?”

“Yes.”

“Were you in the navy?”

“No. The army.”

“Daddy was in the navy. Did you ever hear of a place called Guadercanal? That’s where he was killed. It’s in the Pacific someplace. Did you ever hear of it?”

“Yes.”

“Were you ever there?”

“No.”

“Would you like to go there?”

“Not particularly.”

“Neither would I,” Kate said. “Are you going to be my stepfather?”

“I don’t know,” Matthew said honestly.

“You don’t seem at all wicked.”

Matthew laughed. “Did you think I would be?”

“Stepfathers are supposed to be wicked. I read it in the Blue Fairy Book. Did you read that?”

“I think so. When I was a little boy.”

“I can read, you know,” Kate said.

“Yes, I can see that.”

“When did you get your mustache?”

“Oh, I don’t remember exactly. When I was nineteen or twenty, I think.”

“Are you gifted?”

“No, I’m not.”

“But you got a mustache.”

“I guess I was just lucky,” Matthew said.

Kate nodded. “Maybe I’ll be lucky too. Will we pass through Minneapolis?”

“Yes.”

“Grandma and Grandpa took me there once. We had lunch. Could we stop for lunch in Minneapolis?”

“Sure.”

They came out of the lake country and down along the banks of the Mississippi, past St. Cloud and into Minneapolis and the state university, and they had lunch in Charlie’s on Fourth Avenue South, and then drove through to St. Paul, the capitol building shining bright and white in the early afternoon sunshine. May was upon Minnesota and the roads were lined with lady’s-slipper and dandelion, stands of white pine, down through Winona, following the banks of the Mississippi, the river frothy green and white as it rushed to the sea, and across into Wisconsin with Lake Superior high above them now, into the real dairy country and the smell of good fresh cheese permeating the countryside, the glimpse of factories, the giant engines waiting to be shipped farther west and east, the Diesel engines, the turbines, the auto frames, pasteurizing machines, tractors, paper, crossing the Kickapoo, the Indian name sounding on the evening air with echoes of massacres and scalp-taking and the ghosts of pioneers, pushing on to Madison, the town still with the ebbing days of a university semester, twilight in the hills behind the school, and then across the state line into Illinois, hitting Rockford and then cutting over to Waukegan, and the sudden magnificent sight of Lake Michigan and the suburbs falling away one by one, Oak Park, Cicero, the national memory of gangsters of the twenties, bootleg whiskey and machine-gun chatter lingering in the fast-falling night, and then into Chicago itself and the giant buildings and the blood smell of the slaughterhouse, Kate’s eyes wide in her head. They devoured a steak in the Pump Room and went to sleep exhausted at ten.

They cut off the corner of Illinois in the morning, passing into Indiana and the towns of Valparaiso and Plymouth, racing through the rich farmlands of the state, passing through Columbia City and Fort Wayne, another state line falling behind them, the barren stretch of the low flat plains from the border to Akron and suddenly the whir of a city and the smell of rubber hovering in the air pungent and vile, and through to Youngstown and the refineries adding their vibrant glow to the sun’s, and then Pennsylvania, across that entire shabby mining state, the houses covered with coal dust and poverty and dignity, over the Alleghenies and down the bank of the Susquehanna, pushing for Philadelphia before evening fell, passing through Harris-burg and then down through Lancaster and the Pennsylvania Dutch country with the hex signs on the barns and the Amish men in the fields. He was exhausted when they reached Philadelphia and checked into their hotel.

They made New York after ninety minutes of traveling the next morning. She always welcomed you, that city. She sat there on the other side of the river wearing a crown in her hair and smiling with a million banked windows reflecting sunlight, beckoning you to cross the bridges, to drop from the aerial highways and enter her arms, hung with clouds and neon. Busy and frantic, she nonetheless welcomed you the way no other city in the United States did, with the possible exception of San Francisco. She welcomed you simply by her existence, she made you feel this was the end of the journey and not a whistle stop, this was New York, you’d had them all once you’d had her. They stopped for lunch in Mamaroneck, and then pushed on to Talmadge.

By the time they reached the house, they were old friends.

Amanda watched them, feeling peculiarly excluded.

She had the oddest notion, all at once, that the birth of her own child would be completely anticlimactic for Matthew. Feeling bloated and unbeautiful and awkward and hot, as May squashed Talmadge flat under a blistering unseasonal thumb, she watched her husband and the child and was slightly annoyed by their mutual delight with each other. Now that Kate was here, now that her voice filled the house, now that her hand was in Matthew’s, her husband seemed to take on all the stereotyped traits of the new father. Everything the child did seemed to amuse him, and even though Amanda was forced to admit her niece had a delightful sense of humor and a marvelous laugh, which set the timbers of the old house ringing whenever she cut loose with it, she did feel that Matthew’s doting attitude was slightly unbecoming — especially when he was about to become a bona fide father in less than two months. Still Kate’s laugh was contagious, the incongruous raucous bellow of a fat woman watching a stage show. And every time it issued from Kate’s lungs and mouth, Matthew would begin laughing with her, and finally even Amanda, who thought these carryings-on were juvenile and nonsensical, was tempted into laughter, which hurt her back and her extended belly. Kate was a mine of misinformation, and Matthew listened to her solemn pronouncements and answered them with a dignity Amanda found foolish and indulgent.

“Do you know what the most dread disease in the world is?” Kate asked once.

“What?” Matthew said.

“Kansas,” she answered, without a trace of a smile.

“That’s true,” Matthew said, “but Biloxi is even worse,” and the child giggled uncontrollably.

He read to her each night. He bought books by the dozen, and Amanda could hear his voice drifting down from the upstairs bedroom. “The terrible, terrible, awful old cat, the cat who went down to the sea in a hat, now that was the cat, oh you know the cat, the cat who had never once captured a rat,” reading any idiotic story with drama and emotion until finally Kate’s inquiring voice would grow fuzzy with sleep, and he would kiss her and turn out the light and tuck the cover under her neck and say, “See you in the morning, Kate,” and she would say, “Don’t forget. Breakfast,” and he would come tiptoeing downstairs with a smile on his face. Amanda, in her last stages of pregnancy, slept late each morning. The two, Matthew and Kate, would cook breakfast and then sit in the kitchen and chatter like jay birds. Kate would tell him all her plans for the day, and he would feel very much like a father, a very real father who listened to the problems of his young daughter and advised her on how to care for a doll’s broken neck, or what to tell that snotty kid Iris next door, or how to tighten her skates with a skate key, or even how to blow her nose like a lady. He enjoyed his role immensely. She would walk him down the path to the garage, and he would back the car out, and then lean out the window, and Kate would kiss him goodbye and shout, “Will you be back soon?” and he would answer, “For dinner,” and she would yell, “Are you going out tonight?” and he would yell back, “No!” and race to the station.

The question was always the same — “Are you going out tonight?” — as if now that she had found a father, she could not bear letting him out of her sight.

And the answer was invariably the same, too — “No!” — because now that Kate had come to live with them, Matthew had no desire at all to socialize. The child’s presence, together with Amanda’s ever-expanding universe, provided a ready excuse for ducking Talmadge’s weekend get-togethers, which Matthew had never liked, anyway. Talmadge parties, to Matthew, were simply an extension of the fantasy land these well-meaning New Yorkers had created. He hated to attend them, and he hated to give them, and so he was grateful to Kate for her arrival because she introduced them to a Talmadge disease known simply as The Sitter Problem.

“We shouldn’t leave her with a sitter,” he said to Amanda. “The house is still strange to her.”

“You just don’t like parties, that’s all,” Amanda said knowingly.

“What gives you that idea?”

“You never dance with any of the women.”

“I dance with you,” Matthew said.

“Oh, and a lot of fun that must be for you right now. Look at me. I’m mountainous.”

He put his hands on her belly. “You’re lovely,” he said.

“Some of the women in Talmadge are very attractive, Matthew.”

“Are they?”

“Yes, and I’m just a pregnant old sow.”

“A pregnant young sow.”

“Young, excuse me,” Amanda said, smiling. “They are attractive, admit it. Very chic, and very—”

“Yes, they’re attractive. But you’re beautiful. And besides, I happen to love you.”

But not as much as she loved him.

She watched his growing attachment to the child, and wondered if she were jealous. She found herself hoping the baby would be a boy. She knew that no red-faced wrinkled little girl could possibly hope to compete with her blond and beautiful niece. Even the word “niece” worried her. She automatically thought of Kate as her sister’s child — but she knew that Matthew had already begun to think of her as his own daughter.

On a day early in June, the picture changed somewhat.

She had been sitting out in the sun, her eyes closed, her hands folded over her belly, when she suddenly realized the yard was very still. She sat up and called, “Kate!” and received no answer. Alarmed, she pushed herself laboriously out of the chair, waddled across the lawn, and went into the house. The house was still. She looked in the kitchen and the dining room and the living room, but Kate was nowhere on the ground floor. She heard the sound of Kate’s voice upstairs then, and she smiled to herself, took hold of the banister, and tiptoed up the steps and down the corridor to where the door of the master bedroom stood ajar.

Kate was standing in front of the full-length mirror. She was wearing a pair of Amanda’s high-heeled pumps and one of Amanda’s floppy hats. She stood with one hand on her hip and smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

“You’re so pretty, Amanda,” she said to the glass. “You’re so pretty, Mommy.”

Amanda backed away from the door silently.

She had suddenly remembered a day in the upstairs bedroom of the house in Otter Falls when a nine-year-old girl named Amanda had put on a dress and shoes belonging to a woman named Priscilla Soames.

The television program originated from a loft on West Sixty-eighth Street, just off Central Park West. The building was set among several apartment houses, and it had almost no windows in its brick face. Walking up the quiet residential street, one suddenly came upon the featureless brick wall with its six windows in a vertical line illuminating the stair well, and with two metal fire doors on the street level set some twenty-five feet apart. The building looked menacing, but all they were doing inside was putting on a television show.

The show was a popular item called Memos, which Curt Sonderman as producer had built around a genial raconteur and quasi-comic named Sam Martin. Martin was one of the forerunners of a school of television performers whose stock in trade was a lack of talent, a bumbling sort of oafish man who looked like the man next door and dressed like the man next door and even talked like him. In fact, looking at Sam Martin, the man next door had the distinct impression that this was exactly the way he would behave if someone suddenly dragged him into a television studio and told him to start talking. Martin said whatever came into his mind whenever it came into his mind. His opinions were based on a retentive memory for the trivia of life; his mind was an attic cluttered with unimportant knowledge. He was like the man who wore two wrist watches, one set with New York time, the other set with London time. When asked why he wore the second watch, he replied, “In case anyone wants to know what time it is in London.” Sam Martin could not, perhaps, tell you what time it was in London, but he could tell you who pitched for the Red Sox in 1939, which movie won the Academy Award in 1932, how many eggs to use in a pineapple upside-down cake, the best way to repair a hole in a screen, and how to remove ticks from golden retrievers. He could also tell a dirty joke without offending the ladies, and he could describe the latest fashion trends without disgusting the men. He was good-looking enough to provide a low-key sex appeal for the women — and yet not handsome enough to provide any real competition for the man in the house. He could not sing, and he could not dance, and he had a terrible speaking voice, and a plebeian sense of humor; he was, in short, untalented. But television in those early days was breeding a new race of untalented supermen who would pyramid their very lack of talent into a talent that appealed to those anxious viewers out there, those dial-happy fickle folk.

In a time when television dramas were trying their best to convince the man in the street that it was perfectly all right, in fact decent and honorable and praiseworthy, to be a slob, Sam Martin came on the air as visual proof of the theory. The television of that day was concerned primarily with the number of cockroaches in the kitchen sink. A new art school was being hammered into existence in the small inadequate studios scattered throughout the city’s more undesirable slums, the premise of the school being that no drama was real drama unless it dealt with small people, a premise Aristotle might have challenged had he been alive and involved in the medium. These small people fought to find themselves on the small screen while they simultaneously stepped on small cockroaches every time they snapped on the kitchen light. For a while there, some of the more perceptive viewers began wishing the cockroaches would march through Georgia to the sea, taking all the damn small people with them. It got a little boring, week after week, watching shows that posed such earth-shaking problems as whether or not a Borscht Belt summer romance would survive the winter, or whether a man who rescued a rich man’s son from a sewer would have his life ruined by this act of heroism, or whether a man who found himself unemployed in his fiftieth year could find a new job before the roaches carried him off. But the small people triumphed. Viewers began talking about “ears for dialogue” and “clinical verity” and “the minutiae of life” and “neorealistic objectivity” and “representational integrity,” and into this era of the contemplation of the involuting curves of one’s own navel came Sam Martin with his midday drivel, his storehouse of worthless observations, his rumpled suit, his featureless face. The viewers could look at him and know with certainty that he, too, was a man plagued by cockroaches.

David Regan worked for the sponsors who employed Sam Martin.

The show was built entirely around Martin, who opened it every afternoon at one-thirty with the line, “Hello, girls,” and then he would wink and say, “And you too, fellers.” He would tell a few jokes and relate a few items of disinterest, which he had dug from the newspapers and national magazines, and he would tie the stories in with bits of little-known lore from his vast steamer-trunk memory. Then a girl singer would sing a song, and Martin would sell a product, and a boy singer would sing another song, and Martin would sell another product, and tell a few more jokes, and that’s the way it went. He was on the air for two solid hours every day. His viewing audience was estimated at close to fourteen million people, and he earned the network millions and millions of dollars in advertising revenue, and all because he had no talent.

The rumors about Sam Martin ran rife through the industry and in the columns of those devoted to scanning the home screen. The rumors maintained that Martin, genial and affable on the air, was really a tyrant in private life, a man who beat his faithful employees with a cat-o’-nine-tails, seduced thirteen-year-old girls, kicked blind men, howled at the moon, and used cocaine. The rumors were dead wrong; Sam Martin off the air was exactly the person he was on the air. Bumbling, smiling, corny, affable, harmless. He had come into television after a dozen years in radio, most of them spent with an early-morning show in Los Angeles where he played records, told jokes, and sold products. In those early radio days, Martin wore glasses and sat behind his microphone, and when it came time to sell the product, he would lean closer to the mike and begin reading from the prepared advertising copy and then suddenly reach up and pull off the glasses and soar into an inspired emotional ad-libbing eulogy which sounded sincere and earnest and utterly honest. One of his Los Angeles colleagues remarked that Sam Martin was the best damn salesman in radio, that every time he pulled off those glasses and began ad-libbing his pitch, it was as if he were making love to a broad. Well, Sam Martin had pulled off his glasses for good the moment he entered television, but he still pitched those products with an emotional fervor that was difficult to match anywhere else in the medium. Perhaps this was his one real talent. Perhaps the salesmen were taking over the world.

If they were, David didn’t seem to mind too much.

The fact remained that Martin sold the sponsor’s product, and it was the sponsor who hired David as a watchdog over the product’s appearance, the man who made certain the commodity put its best foot forward on the video tube. The importance of David’s job could not be underestimated. Memos originated live from New York each afternoon at one-thirty after approximately an hour and a half of so-called rehearsal. This was not a filmed show, which could be edited and spliced. If a spot remover failed to remove a spot when it was supposed to, the sequence could not be done over again. There it was for everyone to see, and it was David’s job to make sure they saw it right the first time around. He usually accomplished this in the midst of a pandemonium starting at noon and relaxing only a moment before the show was beamed. It seemed incredible to David that anyone could possibly know what was going on at those Memos rehearsals or that a show with any sense of continuity or form could emerge from that tangled mass of camera cables, monitor tubes, shouting directors, musical cues, patient guests, gag writers, hanging booms, grips, cameramen, frantic assistant directors, electricians, pacing producers, press agents, audio engineers, stage managers, and make-up men. But a show did somehow assemble itself out of the rubble in the Sixty-eighth Street loft, and the show was remarkably relaxed and professional, a tribute to Sam Martin’s intuitive grasp of his audience and a calmness that was genuine and soothing.

There was nothing soothing about the rehearsal on that Wednesday in the first week of June. There never had been a rehearsal, to David’s recollection, that went well, but this one seemed to be defying every law of probability in its efforts to become a full-scale riot. It started with Louisa, the girl singer, yelling at Martin about the suitability of her material, she could not sing a sexy song on the air, her stock in trade was the homespun stuff. She was the peaches-and-cream girl, so how could she sing a torrid song like this one? She wanted a replacement for it at once. Martin affably and genially told her she was correct, which necessitated a last-minute scramble for a new song, and several hurried calls to Music Clearance, who, it was surmised, put in their own frantic calls to ASCAP or BMI and possibly Local 802, and got back to the rehearsal with the word that it was all right for Louisa to sing the song she had chosen, but this brought up the problem of an arrangement for the tune. The band didn’t have an arrangement, and it was too late to do one, so it was decided they’d accompany Louisa with piano, drums, and guitar, and Louisa flipped once more at this and went screaming off to Martin, who calmed her and told her their piano player was the best in the business, and didn’t Marian Anderson sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with only a piano accompaniment?

Along about this time, someone from Network Continuity came down and began protesting about an off-color joke that one of Martin’s writers had inserted into the script following a coffee commercial. The man from Continuity was an intense Presbyterian who kept insisting his taste in humor was catholic, but who felt that Martin’s viewers might take offense at the story and, following as closely as it did on the heels of the coffee commercial, might associate the joke with the product and not buy the product and cause the sponsor to cancel. The writer protested that he would not be ashamed to tell that joke to his own mother, and the man from Continuity said he didn’t know what kind of a mother the writer had but he certainly wouldn’t want to hear that joke told to his mother, whereupon they almost had a fist fight. Martin smoothed it all over by telling both the writer and the man from Continuity that they both undoubtedly had fine mothers, and fathers too, but that perhaps the joke might cause consternation in certain fringe fanatic groups, and he winked at both of them, and asked the writer to supply a new joke for the spot. The man from Continuity left mollified but righteously indignant, and the writer went back to Martin’s dressing room to prepare a nonoffensive joke.

Martin’s guest for that afternoon’s show arrived just about then. He was a noted theater personality who was starring in one of Broadway’s long-run smashes, a personable enough fellow when he was sober, but he arrived at the loft dead drunk. He began abusing everyone in sight, muttering that he was going to punch that square Martin right on the nose the minute the show went on the air. He resisted all efforts to pour a gallon of coffee down his throat, overturning a scalding-hot pot of the sponsor’s brew, and threatening to hit the make-up man, who he claimed was a faggot. Martin took him aside and gave him a fatherly talk about the traditions of the theater (“You call this crap theater?” the star shouted) and about the responsibilities of performers, and the necessity of rising above petty personality differences, and he cited a forgotten 1925 theater incident involving John Barrymore, casually comparing his guest to Barrymore, and reminding his guest that fourteen million people would be watching him from coast to coast, and didn’t he think he should have a few cups of coffee and a cold shower before they went on the air? The guest star shook hands with Martin and kissed the faggot makeup man, who was married with four children and who thought a faggot was a bundle of sticks, and then went off to shower and to guzzle some very strong black coffee, not the sponsor’s.

Some trouble developed in the cable to number-three camera, and the bank of floods illuminating the show’s single expensive set suddenly went out, and electricians began scrambling over every available inch of work space, moving ladders and hurling about screwdrivers, and Louisa complained in confidence to the wardrobe mistress that she had just been visited with her menstrual period and didn’t feel like singing at all, if the truth were known. There was a feeling of mounting tension in the studio as the clock ticked off the minutes to air time. David felt the rising panic, felt too an impending sense of doom, the inexorable sweep of that minute hand around the clock, the calamities that kept piling one upon the other in scattered hopelessness, and another feeling, too, the ghosts of George Devereaux and Mike Arretti suddenly crowding into that strident atmosphere and sending a chill of anticipation up his spine. He tried to fight the feeling, tried to disentangle himself from the sticky helplessness of a fate that seemed to weave itself tighter and tighter around him. He knew something would happen. Nervously, he awaited the explosion.

He was holding in his hand a new product supplied by a Los Angeles advertising agency when he approached Sam Martin that day. The product, one among a list of notable and superior commodities touted by the California admen, was a shaving cream called Beards Away! The name made David a little bilious, but there it was, one of those new shaving-cream bombs full of rich creamy lather, which erupted at the touch of a finger tip. Or, as was the case with Beards Away! not quite at a touch. Beards Away! had a built-in safety factor that prevented the cream from dripping all over the medicine cabinet when it was not in use. There was a small cap, which screwed onto the nozzle, and it was necessary to remove this cap before pressing the stud that released the billowing lather into the palm of your hand. The product had arrived from Los Angeles together with a directive explaining the use of the can, the part about the nozzle lettered in upper-case type, REMOVE NOZZLE CAP BEFORE PRESSING RELEASE STUD, underlined. David cornered Martin at about ten minutes after one when it was discovered that the set designer had supplied a wrong backdrop for a skit being done on the show, a view of the Brooklyn Bridge when he was supposed to have provided a Paris bistro. That was the way things were going.

“Sam,” David said, “have you got a minute?”

Martin turned from his talk with the designer. He was beginning to sweat through his make-up, and the make-up man hovered nearby with powder and brush, waiting to touch him up as soon as he could tear him away from all those other people. The armpits of Martin’s blue shirt were stained with sweat. A woman from Wardrobe stood behind the make-up man, holding Martin’s jacket and waiting to help him put it on.

“What is it, David?” Martin said, turning. He remembered to smile as he turned. Panic was in the air, and the sweep hand of the studio clock marked in one-second intervals seemed to be moving at a faster clip now, panic was something you could touch and breathe, but Sam Martin remembered to smile as he turned.

“Sam, when you’re demonstrating this new shaving cream...”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“This Beards Away!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“This stuff.” David held up the can. “It’s important to unscrew this little cap from the nozzle before you press the button. Otherwise, nothing’ll come out.”

“I know,” Martin said.

“Okay,” David answered, smiling. “Good luck with the show.”

“Thanks,” Martin said, and he turned back to the set designer.

At ten minutes before air time, the panic was so thick you couldn’t see through it. David remembered the shaving-cream bomb and decided to find Martin again, just to remind him, just to make sure. Martin was looking over the show’s timetable when he located him, underlining portions of the script, marking some passages with a red, others with a blue, pencil.

“Sam,” David said, “you won’t forget to unscrew that cap, will you?”

Martin looked up from the script and very calmly said, “Would you like to demonstrate the product, David?”

“No. No, Sam, no,” David said, backing away. “I just thought I’d, no, forget it.” And he went to sit in the sponsor’s booth while the announcer began warming up the studio audience. He could not shake the feeling of approaching tragedy. Unconsciously, he crossed his fingers as the clock swept toward one-thirty. There was a silence. The monitor in the booth flashed a ten-second station break, and then a telop announcing “Memos to follow,” and then the theme hit the tube simultaneously with a film clip showing New York City’s fabulous skyline and the announcer’s voice rode in over the theme, ending with the words “... and now the star of our show, Sam Martin!” The studio audience burst into wild prompted applause, and Martin ambled out casually, just as if he hadn’t been through the eight inner circles since twelve noon, and said, “Hello, girls,” and winked at the camera and then added, “And you too, fellers,” and then told a homey joke and introduced Louisa, who sang sweetly and demurely. David relaxed a little, but he kept his fingers crossed.

The shaving-cream commercial came in the second half-hour segment of the show, following the Paris bistro skit, which was finally played against the Brooklyn Bridge backdrop and which, happily, seemed even funnier that way. Martin picked up the attractive-looking can and held it up to the viewing audience and went into a homespun spiel about this new device that provided sudsy lather at his finger tips, and then said, “Well, this is how it works.”

The cap, David thought.

“You just press this little button—”

“The cap,” David whispered aloud, and a production assistant in the booth turned and looked at him quizzically.

“—and the cream comes out, it’s just magic, folks.”

He pressed the stud. Nothing happened.

“Oh, Jesus!” David said.

Martin grinned a boyishly sweet grin, studied the can casually, and said, “You’re supposed to press this button on top of the can.” He shrugged. “Well, let’s see.” And he pressed the stud again, still not removing the cap from the nozzle, and again nothing happened. David closed his eyes and then opened them and stared at the monitor in helpless fascination.

“All you do is press this button,” Martin said again, and again he pressed it, and said, “Now what the h—” and cut himself short and looked at the can of shaving cream as if it were a malevolent Russian weapon. He banged the stud with the palm of his hand. He hit the can on the edge of his desk. He hit it again, and pounded the stud again, and then said, “Well, you go out and buy a can. Maybe you’ll have better luck with it than I did,” and tossed the can across the stage to the orchestra leader, who, intent on his next music cue, missed the can as it came sailing toward him. The can hit the stage like a falling rock. The cap came loose from the nozzle and suddenly the can erupted in a shower of foamy lather, spraying everyone on the stage with shaving cream.

The call from Los Angeles came not ten minutes later. Curt Sonderman took it in his private office and said, “Yes, I know. It was just one of those unforeseen... well, how do I know whether the product was explained to him or not? Regan is supposed to take care of that, not me. Look, it’s his job! I’ve got enough things to do around here without... what? Yes, I’m the one who hired him, but... Look, don’t use that tone of voice with me! What the hell do you do, write crummy advertising copy all day long? Did you ever try to put on a network television show? All right then, shut up! All right, I’ll get a full explanation. Yes, I’ll call you back. After the show! We’re on until three-thirty, and I’m busy, and... look, what’s your name, Mac? Get off my back, it’ll be taken care of! If Regan has to be fired, he’ll be fired. Goodbye!”

David knew he was going to be fired. He had known it from the moment Sam Martin first pressed that stud. He ducked out of the sponsor’s booth as soon as the can exploded and the audience disintegrated, laughing for a full two minutes at the sponsor’s product. He went down the iron-runged steps to the street, and he lighted a cigarette outside the building and he thought, It’s happened again, and then he began walking toward Columbus Avenue, wondering what he should do, thinking, I don’t want to lose this job, why does it always happen to me?

When he saw the candy store, he entered it immediately and called Gillian. She listened quietly and patiently while he told her what had happened. When he was finished, she said, “Don’t lose the job, David.”

There was a curious note of command in her voice. He was silent for a moment.

“They’ll say it was my fault.”

“It was Martin’s fault. You did your job.”

“But he’s the star of the show!”

“Show them he was wrong, David.”

“But how? What can I—?”

“I don’t care how. Lie, if you have to. Cheat. Steal. I don’t care. Don’t lose the job.” She paused. “Where are you now?”

“In a candy store on Columbus Avenue.”

“You shouldn’t have run. Go back to the studio, David. Go back and tell them whatever you want to, whatever you have to, but make it good. And call me. I’ll be waiting for your call. Don’t lose the job,” she said, and hung up.

He walked back to the building on West Sixty-eighth. He paused outside the street entrance, and then he pulled open the door, and wet his lips, and walked upstairs to the studio. He was trembling. The sponsor had paid thousands of dollars for a one-minute spot, and Sam Martin had blown the thing sky-high before a network audience. It was David’s job to make sure things like that didn’t happen. That was why they paid him two hundred dollars a week. Damn it, he did not want to lose that income! Damn it, he liked this job! Should he go to Martin and plead with him, ask to be taken off the hook? But he had done his job, he had told Martin about the goddamn cap, so how...?

I don’t care how. Lie, if you have to. Cheat. Steal. I don’t care. Tell them whatever you want to, whatever you have to, but make it good.

Whatever you have to, and an undertone of desperation in Gillian’s voice, something he had never heard there before. He suddenly felt he was about to lose more than his job.

He found the typewriter in one of the empty offices. He locked the door to the office, and he sat at the machine, and he thought, Suppose this backfires? Suppose it only gets him sore? No. There had been so much confusion today, he won’t remember. He’ll back down. He’ll take the blame and smooth it over with the sponsor. They can raise hell with a two-hundred-dollar watchdog, but they can’t put Sam Martin, star of our show, on the carpet. He took a deep breath and began typing:

He looked over the memo. He put the original in an ash tray and set fire to it with a match. He emptied the ashes into a trash basket, folded the carbon of the memo three times, and stuck it into his inside jacket pocket together with his electric bill and a letter from his mother, and some cards he dug out of his wallet. Then he took another deep breath and left the office.

Curt Sonderman said, “Where the hell have you been, David?”

“Downstairs having a smoke,” David said. “Why? What’s the matter?” His heart was pounding. He fought to keep his eyes from blinking. His lips felt parched, but he would not wet them.

“What’s the matter?” Sonderman said. “Didn’t you see what happened with the shaving cream? The damn thing went off all over the stage!”

Calmly, smiling, David said, “Come on, don’t kid me.”

“If you think I’m kidding, you should have taken that call from Los Angeles. Now, what happened?”

“I don’t understand,” David said. “You mean the can exploded?”

“Yes, the can... no, it didn’t actually explode. It just... look, why didn’t you explain the operation to Martin?”

“Pressing the button? Why it’s so simple a child can—”

“Don’t give me the ‘child can do it’ routine. Sam Martin had to do it, not a child. Why didn’t you tell him to take that cap off the nozzle?”

“Cap off the...?” David stopped and looked at Sonderman skeptically. “You are kidding,” he said. “I told him about that cap at least a half-dozen times. You don’t... hey, wait a minute! What are you saying? He left the cap on? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

“But how could... Curt, I told him about that cap personally five times during rehearsal. The last time I told him, there were three people standing there listening to us, a girl from Wardrobe, and the make-up man, and a designer. I got specific orders from the Coast on this. Do you think I’d let him go on without knowing about it? Give me a little more credit than that, Curt!”

“If you told him about it, why’d he leave the cap on?”

“How do I know? You saw the confusion this afternoon. It’s a wonder he remembered his own name. Do you think I’m lying? Are you telling me I’m lying?”

“No, but...”

“I told him about that cap, Curt!” David said angrily. “I told him at least... wait, wait a minute! I even wrote him a memo about it. I handed him the memo personally when he walked in today.”

“What memo?”

“About the... just a minute, maybe I kept a copy. Hold on, now.” He dug into his jacket pocket and began leafing through the stuff there, finally coming upon the folded carbon copy of the memo he’d just typed. “Sure, here it is,” he said. “Here. Take a look at it.” He handed the sheet of paper to Sonderman.

Sonderman read it silently. Then he shrugged.

“What the hell,” he said. “You can’t ask for more than that. You did your job, David. What the hell.” He shrugged again. “It was Sam’s goof. I’ll ask him to square it.”

Sam Martin admitted that he’d been in something of a mad rush that afternoon during rehearsal, and anything was possible. Maybe David had handed him a memo, maybe he had been reminded about that nozzle cap a half-dozen times. The wardrobe girl and the makeup man and the designer certainly seemed positive they had heard David deliver at least one reminder. “Okay, I goofed,” Martin said affably, and he agreed to call the Coast.

The next day, he made a big spiel about the shaving cream, telling his audience a new lather had exploded on the scene (Laughter), a lather so anxious to shave you, it practically bursts out of the can (Laughter). “This is the way you really work this,” Martin said, and he carefully unscrewed the nozzle cap. “If you leave the cap on, the stuff definitely will not spill or leak out of the can unless you throw it across the studio at a lousy orchestra leader.” (Laughter) “If you want to throw things at musicians, I suggest you use rocks. But if you want a good close shave that leaves you feeling refreshed and clean, I suggest you try Beards Away! It works like this.” He pressed the stud on the can’s top, and a puff of rich creamy lather foamed onto the palm of his hand. The studio audience burst into spontaneous applause. “It looks good enough to eat, don’t it?” Martin said. He winked at the camera. “It’s good stuff, folks,” he said sincerely. “Try it.”

Perhaps David grew up the day he typed that memo.

Or perhaps he only lost his innocence.

The Fourth of July fireworks were supposed to start at 9:30 P.M. They had taken the bus to Playland that afternoon and spent the day on the rides and at the various gambling booths. There was only one thing on Gillian’s mind. She tried to enjoy what they were doing, but there was only one thing on her mind, and each time she moved away from the thought it returned until she forcibly ejected it, and then stubbornly returned again. Distressed, she tried to talk of other things.

“There’s a party Saturday night,” she said. “We’re invited.”

“Oh?” David said. “Who? Where?”

“John Dimitri, you remember him.”

“Tall thin guy with blond hair? East Thirty-sixth Street?”

“That’s right.”

“What kind of a party?”

“The same kind he always gives,” Gillian said. “You bring the booze, and I’ll supply the records and potato chips.”

“Should we go?”

“If you like.”

“Whatever you say,” David answered.

The thought persisted. She could not shake it from her mind. They leaned against the railing overlooking the Sound, waiting for the fireworks to start. There was the hush of expectation in the crowd around them. David stood behind her, his arms circling her waist. She looked out over the water to the spit of land where she could see men moving about with flares, preparatory to starting the show. She said, “Do you remember Michael Scanlon?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“It was a while back. Marian called me about this pilot he was firming in the Bahamas.”

“What about him?” David asked.

This is not the right time, Gillian thought. This is not the right place. Showdowns should be played on the main street, in bright sunlight, with dust rising and the town still.

“He called Marian today.”

“Yes?”

This is neither the time nor the place, she thought.

“He’s finished the pilot and sold it. NBC’s doing it in the fall.”

“Good,” David said.

She hesitated. There was a deep silence. A rocket suddenly shot into the sky, exploded in an incandescent blue, which tinted the water. The crowd went “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” She turned in David’s arms.

“They get better as they go along,” he said.

“He still wants me for the part, David.”

“Huh? What part?”

“The girl trouble-shooter.”

“Really?” David said. “That’s great, Gillian. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Another rocket went into the sky. It burst in a flash of red, exploded, another flash of yellow, another explosion. “Ahhhhh!” and “Ahhhhh!” the crowd went.

“Because he’s shooting the series in Bimini.”

“Bimini,” David repeated blankly.

Silver fishes filled the sky, darting aimlessly against the black wheel of night.

“Yes.”

“Well...” David paused. A white-hot flare went off over the Sound, illuminating his face. It fell suddenly, and his features were in shadow again. She tried to see his eyes. “Well, are you going to take it?”

“Bimini is a long way off, David.”

He nodded.

“Should I take it, David?”

“That’s up to you.”

“No, not entirely.”

“Is it a good part?”

“It’s an excellent part.”

“Who’s filming it?”

“Revue. That’s MCA, David. It’s going to be a big series. Nothing like it has ever been done on television. I couldn’t ask for a better showcase.”

“Well, it’s up to you, Gilly. Wow, look at that one!”

The triple explosion rocked the night, red and yellow and blue trailing to earth in a dissipating stream of sparks.

“David, it’s not up to me,” she said sharply.

“What’s the matter?”

“I want to talk about this.”

“We are talking about it.”

“Not here. Not with all these people.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t feel like discussing something as personal as this in front of a thousand people watching fireworks.”

“What’s so personal about a television series? It seems to me—”

“David!” she said sharply, and he looked into her face and saw the anger there, and nodded, and took her hand, and led her through the crowd. The amusement park was almost deserted. Everyone was down by the waterfront, watching the fireworks. The music of the merry-go-round filled the night, and behind it, like a syncopated counterpoint, the intermittent sound of the explosions and the deep sighs of the crowd.

“Do you want to go?” he asked.

“Yes. I want to go.”

“Then there’s nothing to—”

“But I also want to stay.”

David smiled. “Did you ever get the feeling that you wanted to go, and still have—”

“I don’t think it’s funny, David.”

“What do you want me to say, Gillian?”

“Are you going to keep this job with Curt?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“You’re happy with it?”

“Yes, I am. I like television. I like what I’m doing.”

“You’re earning two hundred dollars a week, David.”

“I know I am.”

“Do I have to ask you?”

“Ask me what?”

Gillian sighed.

“David,” she said, “I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long, long time. I’ve turned down a lot of offers in the past two years because I didn’t want to be away from you. I thought... I thought you needed me. So I stayed. But this is important, David. This one could just possibly lead to something. I want to be an actress, David. You know that’s what I want. And if there’s even a small chance of—”

“Then take it,” David said.

“No, let me finish. Please.” She hesitated. “I want to be an actress more than almost anything else in the world. I’ve wanted to be an actress for as long as I can remember. There’s only one thing I want more than that, David.”

“What?”

“You.”

“You’ve got me.”

“No, David. I haven’t got you.”

“Look, Gilly...”

“You’ve got me. But I’m not sure the reverse is true.”

“You know I love you.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“So...”

“David, will you marry me?”

There was a deep silence. They walked beneath the arching branches of the trees. The calliope music was behind them now. A few lovers exchanged kisses on the benches lining the walk. A skyrocket exploded over the water, its sound muffled and distant.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s what I want.”

“You’re not... you know... it’s not that you’re...”

“No. You don’t have to marry me, David.”

“I see.”

“But, David, I’m not staying in New York unless we do get married.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the way I want it.”

“Doesn’t what I want count at all?”

“David, you’ve had everything you wanted.”

“I thought you loved me, Gillian.”

“Oh, David, you don’t know how much!”

“Then what’s this offended-virgin routine? I thought—”

“I’m not offended, and God knows I’m not virginal, but—”

“Are you throwing that up to me now?”

“No, David,” she said softly.

“All right, now let’s take it easy, Gillian, before we both say things we’ll be sorry for, okay? Please.” He paused. “I know this Bahamas thing is important. I can understand that. And I can see how it puts a certain amount of pressure on... on... but, well, what’s the sense of rushing into anything?”

“Rushing, David?”

“I’m just getting started,” he said plaintively. “I could lose this job tomorrow, Gillian.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you know about it, Gillian, really? There are a hundred guys waiting to knife me in the back.”

“David, the job is yours for as long as you want it. Sam Martin went to bat for you, and the job is yours. You’re not going to lose it. If you didn’t lose it when that shaving cream—”

“All right, maybe I won’t. But maybe I want something better. Did that ever occur to you?”

“Yes, it’s occurred to me. I don’t expect you to keep this job for the rest of your life.”

“Okay, then how can I get married right now?”

“Why can’t you?”

“When I’ll be changing jobs?”

“Changing jobs? What are you talking about, David? What’s one thing got to do with the other?”

“You just said you expected me to change jobs, didn’t you?”

“There are married men who... David, I’m trying not to get angry.”

“There’s nothing to get angry about.”

“Damn it, there’s a lot to get angry about! What do you want from me? What do you want me to be, David? Your mother, your girl, your whore? What?”

“I didn’t know it was so trying for you, Gillian, I thought—”

“It isn’t trying! It’s only exasperating! I want to know what’s ahead for us.”

“Why? Do you think I’m going to lead you into—”

“I’m a good actress, David.”

“I know.”

“I’m a damn good actress.”

“I know. What’s—”

“I almost forgot that, David. I almost forgot how good I was.”

“If you want to act—”

“I want to be your wife!”

“You sound like my wife already,” David answered sharply.

“Is this how it ends?”

“Nothing’s ending.”

“In fire and smoke?”

“Oh, cut it, Gillian. You’re making a big dramatic scene out of—”

“Will you marry me?”

“I thought the man was supposed to ask.”

“Yes, the man is supposed to ask,” Gillian said.

“What does that mean?”

“Are you asking?”

“You know I’m going to marry you.”

“When?”

“I don’t know when. As soon as—”

“As soon as what?”

“As soon as I know where I’m going.”

“And when will that be?”

“I’m not sure.”

“And what do I do in the meantime?”

“I thought things were going along fine as they—”

“Well, they’re not. Now you know they’re not going along fine. Now you know I’ve had a firm offer to do a television series, which will be filmed in Bimini and which will take me away for at least six months, now you know all that, David. So what are you going to do? I’d like to know exactly what you’re going to do.”

“I’ll be here when you get back,” he said. “You’re acting as if you’re going to become an African missionary. You’ll only be—”

“I won’t come back, David. I’ll go to the Coast. There’s a lot of work there. Now, how about that, David?”

“I’ve never heard you talk like this. You sound like a first-rate bitch.”

“Yes, I’m a first-rate bitch, and I love you so much I’m willing to forget anything that ever had any meaning for me, and all I ask in return is that you love me enough to make me your wife. That’s the kind of nasty rotten bitch I am. I’m going to cry, you louse.”

“Gillian...”

“Oh, go, oh don’t, just don’t, oh get away, get away.”

“What are you crying about?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I want to go home.”

“I said I’m going to marry you.”

“When?”

“I don’t know when.”

“That’s not good enough, David.”

“It has to be good enough. I love you, Gillian.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I love you.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No. I want to go home. I’m going to take the job, David. I’m going to call Marian and tell her I’ll take it.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Then make me a better offer.”

“I don’t like the whole damn tone of this!” David said.

“Oh, that’s too bad, David. Really, that’s awfully sad, really. You don’t like the tone of it! Do you think I like it? Do you think I like getting on my knees and begging you to—”

“No one asked you to beg or—”

“No one asked me anything! Not a goddamn thing! Get away, you make me cry. Why do you make me cry? Get away, please, it’s over, go, do what you have to do, find yourself, know where you’re going, but without me, David. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Please, please, I want to go home, people are looking at us, don’t make me cry, I don’t want to hate you.”

“Gillian...”

“It’s over.” She paused and looked up at him. Her mascara had streaked her eyes and was running down her cheeks. “Isn’t it, David? Isn’t it really and truly over?”

“If you want it to be.”

“No, David. Don’t do that, please. It’s dishonest, David, and unworthy of you. You know it’s not what I want. I want to get married. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“We could still—”

“No. We couldn’t. Not any more. Not this way. I want to go to church and be married in a white gown and a veil. That’s what I want. I guess I’m a very old-fashioned girl. That’s what I want. I don’t want it to be ended.”

“I can’t marry you right now,” David said softly. “I can’t, Gillian.”

“Yes. Then it’s over.”

“Then I guess it’s over.”

“Yes, I guess so.”

They stared at each other, stunned.

Amanda felt only foolish.

She had not wanted to come to the hospital so soon because she was sure the pains were only minor, afraid they would send her home and tell her to come back in the morning. Standing at the admissions desk, feeling foolish and embarrassed because everyone in the wide world knew exactly why she was there, wearing her big belly like a billboard, she answered the nurse’s questions in a very quiet voice.

“Name?”

“Amanda Bridges. Mrs. Matthew Bridges.”

Matthew stood beside her. He had knotted his tie so that the bottom end was longer than the top end. One of the buttons on his button-down shirt was unfastened.

“And your address, Mrs. Bridges?”

“1412 Congress. In Talmadge.”

“Can’t you do this later, nurse?” Matthew asked impatiently. “She’s going to have a baby, you know.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” the nurse answered, smiling. “May I have your date of birth, please, Mrs. Bridges?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Matthew muttered.

“May 11, 1923,” Amanda said.

“And your obstetrician’s name?”

“Dr. Kohnblatt.”

“Would you have a seat, please, Mrs. Bridges? I’ll telephone upstairs for a chair.”

“For a what?”

“A wheel chair,” the nurse answered, smiling.

“I don’t need a wheel chair. I can walk.”

“Well, we’ll give you a little ride anyway, okay?”

“I don’t want a little ride,” Amanda said.

“Come on, Amanda, come on,” Matthew said. He took her elbow and led her across the polished lobby to a bench on the wall opposite the admissions desk. “How do you feel?”

“I feel fine. Why do I need a wheel chair?”

“Amanda, I guess they know what they’re doing.”

“You tied your tie all crooked.”

“How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“How are the pains?”

“They’re nothing at all. I told you we shouldn’t have come yet.”

“Dr. Kohnblatt said I should take you directly to the hospital. Those were his exact words, Amanda. Take her directly—”

“Yes, I know. You told me.”

“How do you feel?”

“Foolish. I think this is a humiliating experience. I think women should have their babies in the fields where no one can see them.”

“Listen, Amanda, you do everything they tell you to do, do you hear? You listen to what they say, and you do it.”

“Matthew, women have babies every day of the week.”

“Well, you don’t.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Button your collar.”

“The important part is bearing down,” Matthew said, buttoning his collar. “I read that someplace.”

“Yes, I’ll bear down,” Amanda said, smiling.

“I don’t know what you find so amusing about all this, Amanda. I really don’t see—”

“Matthew, you sound like a stuffy old—”

“Are you all right? Do you feel all right?”

“I feel fine.”

“How are the pains?”

“Tolerable,” Amanda said, and again she smiled.

“Here’s your wheel chair.”

“I won’t get in that thing.”

“Amanda, do what they tell you to do.”

“Mrs. Bridges?” a nurse said.

“Yes, she’s Mrs. Bridges,” Matthew answered.

“Do you want to get in the chair?”

“No, I don’t.”

The nurse smiled. “It’s a hospital rule,” she said.

“Go ahead, Amanda.”

Amanda pulled a face and got into the chair. “They’ll probably send me right home,” she said.

“Can I go with her?” Matthew asked.

“We’ll ring down for you as soon as she’s changed, sir,” the nurse said.

“Where are you taking her?”

“The sixth floor, sir. The maternity floor.”

“Oh. All right. You won’t forget to call down, will you?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in a few minutes, Amanda.”

“Yes, Matthew.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, Matthew.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in a little while.”

“Yes, Matthew.”

“Is that her bag, sir?”

“What?”

“The suitcase. Is that—?”

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

“I’ll take it, sir.”

“Sure. Sure.” He handed her the suitcase.

“Now just relax, Mrs. Bridges,” the nurse said, and she wheeled her toward the elevators.

In the elevator, Amanda said, “I’m not getting very many pains.”

“Well, let’s not rush it,” the nurse said. The elevator door slid open. “Here we are. We’ll just go down the hall here.” She wheeled Amanda into a room that was bare save for a bed and a night stand. “Would you take off your clothes, please?” she said. “I’ll bring you a hospital gown.”

“I brought my own gown.”

“Yes, but these are different. They’re sort of slit up the side.” She paused and smiled. “It’s hospital rules. Did you bring your own slippers?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You may wear those. And a robe?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll be right back.”

Amanda undressed silently. The nurse seemed so young. She wondered suddenly if she had ever had a baby. When the nurse returned, she asked her.

“No,” the nurse said. “Never. Dr. Kohnblatt phoned to say he’s on the way. Here’s your gown. Would you like to see your husband now?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I’ll call down.”

A sudden groan came from the corridor outside. Amanda turned toward the door sharply. “What was that?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“No, no, what was it?”

“Someone in the labor room.”

“My God!” Amanda said.

The nurse smiled. The groan came again. “She’s having a particularly bad time,” the nurse said.

“Well, can’t you close the door or something?”

“Would you like me to close the door?”

“Yes. Yes, I would.” The groan came again. “What are they doing to her?”

“She’s having a particularly bad time,” the nurse said again. She went out, closing the door behind her. The groan sounded down the corridor again, muffled somewhat, but the same animal cry, frightening, primitive. I wonder if I’ll scream, Amanda thought. I don’t feel anything at all yet. Well, a few little tremors down there, but nothing to speak of. The women say it’s like gas pains. I don’t think I ever had a gas pain in my life, my God, listen to her scream, you’d think they were pulling out all her teeth!

The door opened suddenly. A middle-aged nurse with a starched look and a toothy grin poked her head into the room. “Hello, mother,” she said, and Amanda winced. “I’m Mrs. Ogilvy, the delivery-room nurse. Are you Dr. Kohnblatt’s patient?”

“Yes, I am.”

“He phoned to say he’s on his way over. How do you feel?”

“Fine. Listen, can’t you do something for that poor woman down the hall?”

“Oh, she’s fine,” Mrs. Ogilvy said cheerfully. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“Yes, a taxi,” Amanda said, and she rolled her eyes.

Mrs. Ogilvy smiled. “It’ll be over before you know it,” she said. “You’re a nice healthy girl.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said. “Oooh!”

“A little pain?”

“Yes. Yes. A little... stronger than the others.”

“Have you broken water yet?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t let it frighten you when it happens.”

“I’m not frightened.”

“Of course not, that’s a good mother,” Mrs. Ogilvy said, and she vanished.

Amanda made a sour face as soon as she was gone. Well, where’s Matthew? she wondered. She said she was going to phone down for him, and it’s only six floors, so what’s...

The groan came again.

Oh, you poor creature, Amanda thought, why don’t they give you something to knock you out?

“Amanda?”

There was a worried look on his face as he came into the room. She felt suddenly protective of him and thought this rather odd. She was the one having the baby, and yet she felt it was Matthew who needed the protection. She almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea.

“Should we begin timing the pains?” he asked.

“No, I think there’s time yet.”

“Honey, if you’re in pain, don’t try to hide it.”

“I won’t, Matthew.”

“It’ll be over before you know it,” Matthew said, and smiled.

“That’s what Mrs. Ogilvy said.”

“Sure.” Matthew paused. “Who’s Mrs. Ogilvy?”

“The delivery-room nurse.”

Matthew nodded. “There was somebody screaming in the hall.”

“Yes, I heard her.”

“You’d think they’d have soundproof rooms.”

“I don’t mind,” Amanda lied.

Mrs. Ogilvy came into the room again. She ignored Matthew completely. “Are you ready for your prepping, mother?” she asked Amanda.

“My what?”

“Well, you come along with me, won’t you, dear?”

“Where are you taking her?” Matthew wanted to know.

“Mr. Bridges, she’ll be all right.”

“Shall I wait here?”

“Yes, won’t you, please?” Mrs. Ogilvy smiled. “There’s a nice view from that window.”

Amanda followed Mrs. Ogilvy down the corridor. They went into a small room with a table and a sink.

“Would you get up on the table, mother?” Mrs. Ogilvy said.

Amanda got onto the table silently. She felt suddenly embarrassed.

“We’ll just shave you first, and then you can have your enema, all right, mother?”

Amanda did not answer. Mrs. Ogilvy came back to the table with a bowl of lather and a safety razor. “Pull up the gown, won’t you, dear?” she said, and Amanda complied silently, certain she was blushing. She could feel the scrape of the razor and every now and then a sharp pain that rippled through her abdomen. It won’t be bad, she thought. I won’t scream, she thought.

They had taken Matthew downstairs again and given Amanda an injection of something, but the injection did not help to kill the pain. The pain was a constant thing, it seemed, a steady ebb and flow, but the valleys of comparative painlessness were brief and the pain seemed to roll in immediately, mounting to a shrieking crest and then dropping swiftly into a short restful trough and then rising hysterically again to a needlepoint sharpness. Her body seemed to be moving of its own accord, the pain was something beyond conscious will or direction, even the screams that came from her throat, which she recognized as her own screams, fueled by her lungs, propelled by her breath, voiced by her tongue and her lips, even the screams seemed to be connected to the convulsive area below her waist. Her abdomen, her vagina, her lungs, her throat, all seemed to be manipulated by something beyond her and outside her, yet intricately bound with her body, a single sharp pull of razor-honed steel thread and the pain would rumble upward from her crotch to a white-hot spot near her navel, the scream would gather force and burst from her lips, “Shhhh, shhh,” the young nurse said, and Amanda shouted, “You never had a baby!” and screamed again. She no longer felt foolish and she no longer felt embarrassed, nor did she feel as if she were in the hands of heartless torturers, she accepted the pain as a part of this thing that was happening to her, this half-glazed, half-drugged thing that was all pain and sweat so far, something stripped of modesty and sex appeal and attraction, something somehow stripped of all the vacuum-packed sterility of the twentieth century, something that was entirely animal, and yet more than that, more than animal because she did not think of herself as bestial, she grunted and she screamed and she twisted in pain and once she swore at her own doctor who had become only a voice beside her, a pair of gentle hands holding her own, she squeezed his hands each time the pain struck her, she could not remember what Dr. Kohnblatt looked like, she could only hear his voice beside her. She did not think of Matthew as they wheeled her into the delivery room, and she did not think of her mother or her sister or her sister’s child Kate, nor did she even think of the baby she was trying so hard to produce.

The act of giving birth, the act of pushing that small body out of her own, was somehow disconnected from the concept of giving birth, so that whereas everyone in the delivery room — the doctor, the nurses, the anesthetist, Amanda herself — was collected there to bring a life into the world, they were all only concerned with the mechanics of producing the child, their only concern was with the work, the labor of giving birth, and the act itself was completely alien to the concept. The lights over the table hurt her eyes. The anesthetic mask would be placed on her face and then removed, so that she was in a constant state of near-unconsciousness, and into the swimming cloudlike miasma of her brain she could hear Dr. Kohnblatt saying, “Bear down now, Amanda,” and she strained and pushed and she was afraid she would soil herself, he seemed to read her mind, he said, “Don’t worry about it, push!” and she pushed and the mask came down on her face again, her mind swam, she felt herself reeling, “Push!” Consciousness flowed back to her, she tightened her bowels and her vagina and felt something, felt something move and was suddenly tense, “Scalpel,” she pushed again, “No, wait, Amanda,” he said, “there, just a little, nurse, she doesn’t need more than that, you’re doing fine, Amanda, there we are, sponge, now push, Amanda.” She could feel the baby coming out. She could feel it wedged inside her and getting the baby out became a challenge, became something they had to accomplish together, she pushed and felt the baby move, “Good, Amanda,” she pushed again, “Oh damn!” she said, “oh damn, damn, damn it!” and she heard Kohnblatt laugh and she started to say, What are you laughing at, do you want to try this? and Kohnblatt said, “You’re doing a marvelous job, Amanda, we’ve almost got it, push as hard as you can, here we go, Amanda, come on, come on,” she took a deep breath and she gritted her teeth and she could feel the sweat standing out on her face and the baby wedged solidly in her crotch, she shoved, she tightened every muscle she owned, she pushed, and suddenly, suddenly, oh suddenly! she felt a sudden shock of exultation, she felt the baby moving out of her, felt herself trembling as it seemed to slide suddenly from within her, oh, felt a wave of excitement surging through her body, free and out, snapping into her brain, “Did I do it?” she asked excitedly, “Yes, you did it, that was it, Amanda!” she felt suddenly proud and joyful, felt a marvelous soaring ecstasy, a jubilance she had never known before in her life.

The mask descended on her face, and she took a deep breath, smiling, grinning. “I did it,” she murmured, and heard the baby’s cry.

When she opened her eyes, the baby was on her breast, lying with its legs on her belly. She did not move to touch it. She looked down at it peacefully and thankfully and then closed her eyes again.

“It’s a fine healthy boy,” Dr. Kohnblatt said.