She had heard the Alfa pull into the driveway, had heard her son slamming the door of the car, and then swearing as he stumbled over something in the darkness. She had listened to his noisy progress to the front door, heard him fumbling with his key until he realized the door was unlocked, and then heard more swearing as he made his way to his room. She lay in bed now with the night noises all around her, the sound of the lake, and the sound of a thousand crickets, and she thought, I shouldn’t have told him, it does not pay to tell them, I shouldn’t have told him.

She had told Arthur in the bedroom of the Talmadge house as they were dressing to go out. She had been sitting before the mirror in her slip when Arthur came in from the bathroom, wearing a robe and drying his head with a towel. She watched him in the mirror as she brushed her hair, counting the strokes, thirty-one, thirty-two, watching Arthur as he hummed and rubbed his head briskly, thirty-three, thirty-four, a smile on his face, throwing the towel onto the bed, turning to look at Julia. She felt a sudden chill in that room. She suddenly knew what was coming. Thirty-six, she put down the brush.

Arthur watched her with his head cocked to one side, humming. She picked up her bottle of nail polish, unscrewed the top, wiped the excess polish on the lip of the bottle, and applied the brush to her left thumb.

“How does it feel to be home?” Arthur asked.

“Wonderful,” she answered.

Her hand was trembling. She smeared polish onto her cuticle, wiped it off with a piece of cotton, and then picked up the brush again. She had no reason to believe this would turn into anything more than a normal discussion, and yet she sensed that it would. And sensing it, perhaps willed it. Or perhaps willing it, only then assumed she sensed something out of the ordinary. If only it were over and done with, she thought. If only the duplicity were finished. She should not have come back at all. The boy, the boy, David, ah yes, a mother cannot simply vanish. She sighed and concentrated on her nails, steadily applying the blood-red polish in a smooth even coat.

Arthur walked to the dressing table. He watched her in the mirror.

“You smell good,” he said. “I forgot what you smelled like. I’d know you were back in the house again, Julia, if only by the scent of your perfume and cosmetics. Even if I couldn’t see you. Even if I couldn’t touch you.” He raised his hands and put them on her naked shoulders, lightly, gently.

“Don’t.”

He did not answer. He met her eyes in the mirror. She lowered them quickly.

“I’m polishing my nails. I don’t want to smear them.”

He did not remove his hands from her shoulders. She ignored him studiously, but she could feel the weight of his hands on her, even though he exerted no pressure, even though they rested there so lightly, she could feel their weight. She concentrated on her nails, refusing to meet his eyes in the mirror, refusing to acknowledge the weight of his hands on her shoulders. He stood behind her silently, unmoving, as if challenging her to reject him, as if waiting silently and stiffly for her to say “Don’t!” once more.

“Aren’t you going to dress?” she asked casually.

“It’s only seven-thirty,” Arthur said. “We’re not due for an hour.”

“Have you shaved already?”

“Yes.”

“Still, don’t you think …”

“I can be ready in five minutes.”

“It’ll take me much longer than that.”

“I’ve seen you dress very quickly when you wanted to,” Arthur said. His hands were still on her shoulders.

“Yes, but this is the first time I’ve seen the McGregors in a year. I think I should—”

“We have plenty of time,” Arthur said. “In fact, Julia, I don’t even know why we’re going.”

“They’re our friends,” Julia said.

“Yes, I know that.”

“And I haven’t seen them since—”

“Yes, and you haven’t seen me since last Christmas.”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve been home for a week, Julia.”

The hand holding the brush had begun trembling again. She did not answer him. She held out her painted hand and looked at the finger tips.

“Aren’t you glad to be home, Julia?”

“Why, Arthur, of course I am.”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“I’m delighted to see you, Arthur.”

She turned her shoulders slightly, trying to dislodge his hands without seeming to. But his hands remained where they were, following the motion of her shoulders, and she said, “Please, Arthur.”

“What the hell is wrong, Julia?”

“I’m trying to do my nails.”

“I’m not talking about your nails. I want to know what’s wrong. I’m your husband, Julia. We’ve been apart since—”

“Arthur,” she said, and this time she shrugged his hands away with a very definite forceful shrug. “There are certain natural female functions over which I have no—”

“You’ve been home for a week, Julia. I may be a poor mathematician, but you’ve been home for a full week.”

“That’s right,” she said calmly.

“That’s right, Julia.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

She thought for an instant how stupid they both sounded, and she fought for control of the silence that had descended on the room, and she knew that the next words had to be hers, that the conversation had moved to an impasse, and she wondered suddenly why he was forcing the issue. She turned slowly on the dressing stool.

Slowly, her words evenly spaced, she said, “What is it you want, Arthur?” as if she were delivering a slap.

He did not answer, and she respected his silence. There was a strength in his silence and the set of his jaw. She respected him, but she would not let it go.

“Do you want me to take off my clothes, Arthur?”

He still would not answer.

“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, and she turned back to the mirror and picked up an emery board.

“All right, tell me,” Arthur said.

“We’re going to be late. I hate walking into a—”

“The hell with the goddamn dinner party, Julia! Tell me.”

“Tell you what, Arthur? Just what do you want me to tell you?”

“What happened in Aquila?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what happened in Rome?”

“Nothing.”

“Then where did it happen, Julia?”

“Where did what happen?” She turned on the stool angrily, her eyes flashing, furious because he had guessed, and wanting him to know, yet enraged because he already knew, and refusing to tell him, and feeling hopelessly embroiled in a stupid situation that he alone had provoked. “Just what do you imagine happened?” She looked up into his face defiantly.

“I … I don’t know,” Arthur said hesitantly.

“Then stop accusing me!” She stood up suddenly and walked to the closet. Angrily, she pulled a dress from one of the hangers.

“I … I wasn’t accusing you, Julia. I simply felt—”

“You simply felt that because I didn’t want—”

“Julia, Julia …”

“I suppose that whenever you get the damn—”

“No, but, Julia …”

“Then let it go, damn it!” She turned on him, the dress in one hand, her eyes blazing, and she saw the sudden embarrassment on his face. He’s going to back down, she thought. He only wanted assurance. He only wanted to know I still love him. Tell him, she thought. Tell him you love him. Tell him you want him. Tell him.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” she said. “It happened in Rome.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. He looked at her, puzzled, and he shook his head slightly, not understanding, or not willing to understand.

“In Rome,” she repeated.

“What are you …?”

“With an Italian soldier.”

“Don’t, Julia.” He turned away.

“Whom I loved,” she said.

“Don’t.”

“Whom I still love.”

“Don’t.”

“Who’s waiting for me to—”

He turned swiftly and sharply, like a prisoner who has withstood the flailing of his torturer for too long, who regardless of consequence would proclaim his manhood, proclaim his humanity, state that there is still dignity here in this destroyed heap of flesh, he turned swiftly and sharply and said, “Don’t!” again, like a defiant whimper, and lashed out at her with his right hand, slapping her face.

She did not raise her hand to block the blow. She did not touch her stinging face after the blow was delivered. She stared at him in the silence of the room, and she said, “Yes.”

Arthur sighed. His hand dropped slowly.

“Yes, I deserved that,” she said.

The room was silent.

“But it doesn’t change anything,” she said. “It’s too late to change anything,” and she told it all then, told everything while he sat foolishly on her dressing-table stool with his head bent, and his hands clasped and hanging between his knees, almost touching the floor, told him all of it, while he sat listening and not listening, told him what had happened and what was yet to happen, while he listened soundlessly with his eyes squeezed shut.

“I’m going back to Rome as soon as the war is over,” she said.

She paused.

“I’m taking David with me,” she said.

“Yes, leave nothing,” he answered. “Take everything, and leave nothing. Total up seventeen years of marriage with a zero.”

“I’m sorry. A woman needs her children.”

“Yes, certainly. And that does it. I’m sorry. That explains everything. I’m sorry. Forgive me for killing you. This is what separates men from animals. The two words ‘I’m sorry.’ This is what gives men the nobility our novelists are always trying to express, the wonderful nobility of man, I’m sorry. Yes, be very sorry, Julia. You should be.”

She said nothing.

“I wish I could curse you. I wish I could say …” He shook his head. “You don’t seem like a slut,” he said almost to himself. He wiped his hand over his eyes, and then passed the hand downward over his face, disguising the action. He was silent for a very long time. Then he lifted his head, and looked directly into her eyes, and very quietly said, “Stay.”

She did not answer.

“Stay, Julia. If not for me, then for—”

“No.”

“—your son.”

“My child,” she said.

“David,” he answered. “Your son.”

“I’m going back to Rome. I have to. You know I have to.”

“And me? What about me, Julia?”

“I … I can’t … I can’t think about that, Arthur.”

“No, don’t think about it. Do you know what will happen to me, Julia?” He paused. “I’ll die.”

“No.”

“Yes, Julia. I swear to you, Julia. I’ll die, or I’ll kill myself, I can’t—”

“Please,” she said. “Please don’t make this any harder than—”

“Please? Please? Who? Who is pleading? How can you look at a corpse and say, ‘Please, please, don’t let me realize I killed you’? What do you want, Julia? A clean conscience besides?”

He did not bother to wipe at his eyes again. The tears ran down his face. He sniffed and said, “No, don’t ask me for that, Julia. Not absolution. You’re taking my life, and that’s enough.”

“I won’t ask you for anything,” she said. “And you won’t do anything foolish, either.”

“It won’t be foolish, Julia. You killed me when you said, ‘Yes, it happened in Rome.’ That was death. The rest is only ritual.” He sniffed and said, “I haven’t cried in all the time we’ve been married, have I?”

“No,” she said.

He nodded. “Because I wanted your respect.” He sniffed. “I’m sorry.” He searched for a handkerchief in the pocket of his robe, found none. “Well,” he said. He gave a curious shrug. “Well, you’ll have the boy.”

“Thank you, Arthur.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “You’ll have the boy.”

There was something more in his words, unspoken, yet how could she have really known, there was so much confusion that day. “You’ll have the boy” sounded like a promise, not a threat, and yet he had said, “I’ll die, or I’ll kill myself.” Still, how could she have known? And at the lake, the look in his eyes, did she know then, did she know what he was about to do in that rowboat, did she even suspect? She tried to remember, but that day too was confused in her memory. Perhaps she had known that day at Lake Abundance when the shutter clicked and the boat edged away from the dock, known she was sending her husband to his death, and let him go because this was the only thing left to him. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she had taken everything else, robbed him of everything else, and now she couldn’t steal from him the one thing left, the one thing he could still do with a measure of dignity and pride. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she wasn’t that big a bitch yet.

She listened to David snoring in the room next door, listened to the impersonal lake outside lapping at the dock pilings. The night was so still.

She lay alone in the night.

Alone.

The letter had come a few days before Memorial Day in 1943. Her son was in a naval prison, and she was waiting for the war to end, and the letter came in its hesitant Italian hand. She had turned it over to look at the flap, and had seen the name Francesca Cristo, his sister. Hastily, she had ripped open the envelope. The letter spoke of Renato, the letter told what had happened during an Allied bombing attack on the seaplane base at Lido di Roma, fifteen miles southwest of Rome.

“Mi dispiace che tocca a me di dirtelo, sorella mia, ma egli é morto.”

I am sorry that it falls on me to have to tell you, my sister, but he is dead.

It was a lovely day, the kind of day David appreciated. Standing by the window in his office, he looked down the twelve floors to the street, saw newspapers sweeping along the gutters on Madison Avenue, the only falling leaves south of Central Park, saw topcoats whipping about the legs of people who rushed into the wind with their heads ducked. There was a pace to the city now that fall was here. Summer died slowly, gins-and-tonics dulled the senses, languid winds lulled the flesh, but in the fall something changed. He smiled and turned away from the window. The New York Times, Herald Tribune, News, and Mirror were stacked on his desk. He glanced at the headlines only cursorily, PRESIDENT INVOKES TAFT ACT IN MOVE TO END PIER STRIKE; SEE PIER STRIKE END BY T-H BAN, and then turned to the television sections and read the reviews of last night’s show. Not too bad. Gould and Crosby had liked it, even if …

“David?”

He looked up. “Yes, Martha?”

“You’ve got an appointment at ten with Mr. Harrigan. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“No, I haven’t …”

“Good. On those calls …”

“Yes, how’d you make out with MCA?”

“We really did leave that name off the crawl, David.”

“How’d that happen?”

“I’m checking it now.”

“Well, there isn’t much we can do about it, anyway.”

“No, but I can send them the cockroach letter.”

“Okay, what about that judge?”

“David, he’s merely a municipal court judge, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“Sure, he’s only window dressing, anyway. It’s a strong enough show without him.”

“Should we offer him money?”

“Why not?”

“It might offend him.”

“Not if we offer enough.”

“Well, whatever you say,” Martha said dubiously. “Let me see. Was there anything else?”

“Benton and Bowles.”

“Oh, yes. They want to consider the package a little longer, David. They have the feeling a live show would be better for this particular product.”

“What’s live or filmed got to do with it, would you mind telling me?”

“I’m only repeating what they—”

“Get me MacAllister. No, never mind, it’s almost ten. Listen, I don’t want to spend more than a half hour with this Harrigan. Come in at ten-thirty and remind me of a meeting, will you?”

“There is a meeting at eleven,” Martha said. “In Mr. Sonderman’s office. And you’ve got a screening this afternoon at four. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“And I’d hoped to catch an early train!”

“Are you going up to Talmadge this weekend?”

“Yep. It’s my birthday.”

“No! When’s your birthday? The fourteenth is your birthday.”

“The fourth, Martha. Sunday.”

“Oh, for hell’s sake … Oh, that’s awful. Really, David, that’s awful. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I took a full page in Variety. You mean you didn’t see it?”

“Now what shall I do?” Martha said. “I haven’t anything to give you. I thought it was the fourteenth.”

“You can give me a great big kiss,” David said.

“All right,” Martha answered, smiling. “Your place or mine?”

“Mine, I guess.”

“Now or later?”

“Later. I think I heard someone outside.”

“Mr. Harrigan, probably. Shall I send him right in?”

“Just give me a few minutes to clear my desk.”

“Okay. Happy birthday, stinker. You could have said something.”

She walked out of the office, and he watched her, smiling, thinking how much he liked her and how fortunate he was to have rescued her from the typing pool. Martha Wilkins was a woman in her early thirties, married to an architect, a plain girl who wore her simplicity with such distinction that she created an impression of offbeat glamour. Her dark hair was straight and long in a time when most other women were clipping off their locks with wild boyish abandon. She never wore lipstick to the office, and some of the Sonderman wags claimed she kept her mouth cosmetics-free in order to facilitate the grabbing of a quick kiss by the water cooler. David had never tested the validity of this theory—and he never would. Their working relationship was too good, a quick give-and-take, which he found rare, an understanding, a communication that bordered on linguistic and mental shorthand. The cockroach letter, he thought, and then smiled as he remembered the joke that had provoked the Regan-Wilkins label.

The joke involved a man who was flying on a major airline when a cockroach crawled up the side of his seat and onto his hand. The man indignantly sent a letter to the airline the moment he landed in San Francisco. A few days later, he received a letter from the president of the firm, assuring him that the pilot and copilot on that particular flight had been suspended pending a full investigation, that the stewardesses had been fired without further ado, and that the caterers who provided food for the airline had been notified that their contract would not be renewed when it expired.

“We are distressed about that cockroach, sir,” the letter went on. “It is the first one ever reported in the long history of our company. We are doing everything in our power to see that responsible and effective action in the future prevents any such vermin from being carried aboard our airplanes or remaining there. I sincerely hope you will overlook whatever embarrassment or discomfort the incident may have caused you, and continue to fly with us in safety whenever your needs so dictate. Sincerely yours, J. Abernathy Michaelson, President.”

The passenger, naturally, was very pleased when he finished reading the letter from the president of the airline. Beaming, he figured he had wrongly judged that fine company, and he was determined to fly with no one else in the future. But as he was putting the president’s letter back into the envelope, a small slip of paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up. It was a memorandum from the president, obviously intended for his secretary. It read: SEND THIS SON OF A BITCH THE COCKROACH LETTER.

David and Martha had heard the story together and roared convulsively when the punch line was delivered. And from that day on, any conciliatory letter, any letter of placation or apology, any letter designed to smooth the ruffled feathers of anyone Out There, was immediately referred to by both of them as The Cockroach Letter. MCA, who had complained about last night’s credit crawl, would receive a cockroach letter in the morning. David smiled again. Your place or mine? he thought. Now or later? Martha Wilkins. He liked her.

A knock sounded on his door.

“Come in,” he said.

Martha entered first, swinging the door wide.

“Mr. Harrigan is here, sir,” she said.

“Thank you, Martha,” David answered, and he rose and walked around his desk, extending his hand to the bulky man who entered the office.

“Mr. Regan?” the man said, taking his hand.

“Yes, sir. How do you do?”

“Fine, thank you.”

Martha winked at David as she went out of the office. David indicated a chair alongside his desk, and Harrigan sat in it. He was a heavy-set man in his middle fifties with gray hair and dark-blue eyes. He wore a pencil-stripe suit, double-breasted, and he carried a dark-gray topcoat over his arm, a black Homburg in his left hand. He sat as soon as the chair was offered, pulling his trousers up slightly as he bent to sit, preserving the creases. He was from California, and his voice showed it.

“I hope you had a nice trip,” David said.

“I did,” Harrigan answered.

“Did you fly in?”

“I don’t trust airplanes,” Harrigan said. “I took the train.”

“That’s a long trip.”

“Yes, it is.”

“What brings you to New York, Mr. Harrigan?”

Harrigan looked surprised. He put his Homburg down. “You,” he said.

“Me?”

“At least I understand you’re the man who produces our show,” Harrigan said.

“Yes, I am,” David answered, puzzled.

He had received a call from the advertising agency the day before, telling him that Mr. Harrigan would be in New York and would like to see David, and would David please extend every courtesy to him since Harrigan did represent the company who sponsored the Thursday-night hour-long dramatic show. David had no idea what sort of courtesies were expected of him. In some cases, “every courtesy” meant dinner, tickets to a show, and a little discreet female companionship. But the agency had been somewhat vague about Harrigan’s visit, and now it seemed he had come to New York specifically to see David, and this puzzled him, and also worried him a bit. The show they packaged for Thursday-night viewing was a big one. It had been sponsored by Harrigan’s firm ever since it went on the air the season before. David produced the show, and the ratings were high, and he’d thought the sponsor was pleased with what he was doing. But if that was the case, why would Harrigan … now, wait a minute, he told himself. Let’s not push the panic button. He offered Harrigan a cigarette.

“Thank you,” Harrigan said. “I don’t smoke.”

“Mind if I do?”

“It’s your funeral.”

David lighted a cigarette, mulling over Harrigan’s last words, beginning to get even more worried. “You said you’d come to New York to see me, Mr. Harrigan?”

“Yes. About our show.”

“We’ve been getting some very high ratings,” David said casually. “Last night, we even outpulled—”

“Yes, the ratings are fine,” Harrigan said. “We’re very pleased.”

David smiled a trifle uneasily. If the ratings pleased Harrigan, then what was it that bothered him? He took a deep breath and said, “I think the quality of the show, as a whole—”

“Well, quality is a very nice thing to have,” Harrigan said, “but not unless it sells tickets.”

“It’s selling tickets for you people,” David said, grinning. “I understand sales are up some fifteen per cent since the show went—”

“Yes, that’s true. And we want to keep selling tickets. I’ve heard a theory about television shows, Mr. Regan. I’ve heard that when a show is too good, when the people are too absorbed in what’s happening on that screen, they resent the intrusion of the sponsor’s message, actually build up a resistance to the product. This theory holds that the duller the show is, the better it is for the product.”

“Well, I don’t know how valid—”

“Naturally, we’re not interested in dull shows,” Harrigan said. “It’s the business of the advertising agency we hire to make our commercials interesting enough to compete with the liveliest dramatic presentation.”

“And they’ve been doing a fine job,” David said, figuring a plug for the ad agency wouldn’t hurt at all.

“Yes, and they’re happy with the package you’re giving them, too.”

“Then I guess everyone’s happy all around,” David said, beginning to relax a little. “We’ve got a good show, with a Trendex topping—”

“Yes, and we want to stay happy,” Harrigan said. “As you know, it’s not our policy to interfere in the selection of dramatic material for the show.”

“You’ve certainly given us all the latitude—”

“Yes, we usually see only a synopsis of the script, and aside from certain very minor objections, we’ve been very tolerant of your choice of material and your manner of presentation. I think you’re a bunch of smart creative people up here at Sonderman, Mr. Regan. We are, in fact, thinking of asking you to work up another package for us.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir.”

“Yes, but that’s all in the future, and what we’ve got to talk about now is a script called ‘The Brothers.’”

“‘The Bro—’ oh, yes. That’s two weeks away, sir. Goes into rehearsal next Friday.”

“Yes, I know. I saw a synopsis of the script a little while ago, and I asked our advertising agency to get me a copy of the completed teleplay, and they sent me one last week, and that was when I decided I had better come to New York.”

“We’re getting a judge to introduce that show, you know. We think it’ll add another dimension to it, and point up the allegory.”

“Yes, that’s very interesting. It’s always good to do allegories, especially if they’re clear. And this happens to be an unusually fine script, Mr. Regan, make no mistake about it. I’d like you to get more material from this same writer in the future.”

“That’s easy enough,” David said, smiling.

“Yes, the allegory is very plain, and very fine, especially in these trying days of world tension. A wonderful script. I understand you’ve got two excellent actors for the parts.”

“We were very lucky, Mr. Harrigan. A Broadway show folded last week, and the actors—”

“Yes, and I understand you’ll be doing a chase scene right on the streets, by remote pickup, is that right?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Yes, it sounds wonderful. A magnificent show.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But we can’t do it, of course.”

“Sir?”

“I said we can’t do it.”

“You said …” David hesitated. He stubbed out his cigarette. “What did you say, sir?”

“Impossible, Mr. Regan. Believe me, I’ve gone over it thoroughly. I’ve even considered a rewrite, but the entire framework is based on—”

“I don’t understand,” David said. “Why can’t we do it?”

“Tickets,” Harrigan said.

“But it’s a good show. You just said—”

“Yes, but one man in the show is a lawbreaker, and the other is a policeman who actually condones his lawlessness.”

“He doesn’t do that at all,” David said. “He understands it. The whole point of the show is … is … it’s a plea for understanding. Why, even the title of the show is ‘The Brothers.’ Don’t you see what—?”

“Oh, yes, I see, Mr. Regan. And you see. But will our viewers see?”

“Of course they will.”

“We think not. We think they will associate our product with an attitude which seems to condone lawlessness.”

“That’s nonsense,” David said.

Harrigan stiffened slightly in his chair. “Yes, of course it’s nonsense. But if our product becomes associated with—”

“The possibility is extremely remote,” David said, “if not nonexistent. We’re not dealing with a bunch of boobs, Mr. Harrigan. The message is as clear as—”

“Mr. Regan, if we allow this show to be done, and if it is misunderstood, we will never sell another ticket as long as we’re in business.”

“How can anyone misunderstand it?”

“The show seems to condone murder.”

“The murder has nothing at all to do with it! If it’s the murder that bothers you, we’ll change it. We’ll—”

“To what? To another crime? How would that be any different? Mr. Regan, I have gone over this quite thoroughly, believe me.”

“Look, it’s a good show,” David said, a surprised tone in his voice. “It’s a really good show. Now look, we’ve … look, we’ve got two big stars, you couldn’t ask for bigger names, they’ll play beautifully together. Look, Mr. Harrigan, we’ve got one of the best directors in television. And those remote pickups’ll knock the viewer right on his—”

“I’m sorry, we’ll have to substitute another show for it.”

“We’ve already paid for the script,” David said in desperation. “We’ve signed contracts with the actors. The network—”

“We will honor whatever commitments you have made,” Harrigan said, “but we will not do this show.”

“What are you afraid of? The network’s continuity section has approved it already. A judge has read it and is willing to introduce it. I don’t see what you’re worried—”

“None of those people have to sell tickets, Mr. Regan.”

“Your own advertising agency approved it!”

“Yes, and I’ll be talking to them as soon as I leave this office.”

“Really, Mr. Harrigan, this is silly. With all due respect, sir, I think you’re being overly sensitive.”

“Yes, and with all due respect, I really feel the decision is ours to make, and not yours.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t agree with you.”

“Then I suppose I shall have to talk to Mr. Sonderman himself.”

“If you think that’s …” David paused. “Why does he have to be brought in? This is my show.”

“This is his company.”

“I have full authority over any show I handle.”

“Yes, but apparently you’re refusing to exercise it.”

“You’re asking me to kill a good show! You’re telling me our viewers are morons! That they won’t understand what we’re driving at, that they’ll come away thinking we’re asking them to go out and shoot people. Well, damn it, I disagree. They will understand it, they will know what we mean, and they’ll applaud us for our stand. Look, the hell with it. Go see Curt. Let him handle it.”

“Very well. Is Mr. Sonderman in now?”

“I think so. I’ll have my secretary buzz him.” David reached for the phone.

“I’m sorry this is causing so much trouble,” Harrigan said. He glanced at his watch. “I had hoped it would be a simple matter.”

“It’s a simple matter of knowing what’s good for your product,” David said. “This would get your product talked about. It’s a good show, Mr. Harrigan!”

“Would you call Mr. Sonderman’s office, please?” Harrigan said.

David picked up the phone.

“I’m sure he will see this my way,” Harrigan said.

David hesitated.

“And while I’m in there,” Harrigan said, “I might as well discuss that new package with him.”

David buzzed Martha. “It’s a good show,” he said to Harrigan, his voice low.

“Ah, but I know it is, Mr. Regan. You misunderstand me completely.”

Martha’s voice came onto the line.

“Yes, David?” she asked.

“Martha, would you …” He paused. He looked at Harrigan.

“Yes?” Martha said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Never mind.” He put the phone gently into its cradle. He stared at his hand covering the receiver. “We’ve got a script being rewritten,” he said. “It’s about a second honeymoon. We’d planned it for three weeks from now. I suppose I can speed up the writer.”

“I suppose you can.”

“There may be casting problems. We may not be able to get a star on such short notice.”

“I’m sure you will surmount whatever problems may arise, Mr. Regan.” Harrigan rose and extended his hand. “I’m not a stupid man, Mr. Regan. I know what’s good for our company, and I know what’s bad.” He paused. “The same way you know what’s good or bad for yours.” He shook hands briefly and firmly. “Good day. I’m glad we were able to work this out.”

David nodded and walked Harrigan to the door.

“Goodbye,” he said.

Then he closed the door and walked back to the window and looked down at the street where autumn raced.

His decision annoyed him all that afternoon.

It seemed to him that he had broken faith with a great many people by agreeing to cancel the show. He had certainly broken faith with the writers and the actors, and possibly Curt, too. He tried to visualize the scene in Curt’s office, Harrigan indignantly marching down the corridor to the end of the hall, stamping into Curt’s paneled sanctuary, and stating, “I have just had a discussion with Mr. Regan about canceling our Thursday-night show two weeks hence. Mr. Regan disagrees with me. I would like you to handle the matter personally.”

What would Curt’s reaction have been?

Would he have politely but positively told Mr. Harrigan to go to hell? Would he have reminded him that Mr. Regan was a full-fledged producer with full authority over his own shows and that the final decision would have to be his alone? And would he have also told Mr. Harrigan that he, Curt Sonderman, believed in this particular script and would back Mr. Regan all the way on whatever decision he finally made?

Sure, he would.

The president of Sonderman Enterprises, Inc., would have listened to Harrigan and nodded his fat head and thought about the new package deal being dangled before his eyes, and then he would have gone out to shoot his own grandmother if Harrigan suggested it. And then Martha would have buzzed David and said very quietly, “Mr. Sonderman wants to see you,” and David would have gone down that long hall and into the paneled office, and had his ear chewed off about client-producer relationships and the importance of maintaining a cordial liaison with the sponsor. But would that have been the end of it? Possibly, and possibly not.

He had always thought the stories about Madison Avenue head-rolling and back-stabbing were slightly exaggerated until he found himself in a spacious corner office at Sonderman Enterprises, Inc., on Madison Avenue, until he found the word PRODUCER discreetly lettered in gold on his door, and then suddenly knew that if success rarely arrived overnight, it almost always departed that way. Too many familiar faces, too many men and women vanished from the scene, if not the industry, as soon as they committed the single error too many. Antagonizing Harrigan would have been a monumental error. For all David knew, even his initial reluctance to cancel might still bring repercussions. No, defending a single unimportant—well, it was important to somebody, it was important to the man who’d written it, and the director who’d pulled it apart line by line, and the actors who were already studying their parts—still, defending a single unimportant show in a successful continuing series would have been taking the silliest sort of risk. Yes, he had done the right thing.

Then why did he feel so lousy?

“What time is that screening?” he asked Martha.

“Four o’clock.”

“It’s almost that now. Why didn’t you give me a warning? I’ve still got a dozen calls to make.”

“I told you this morning, David.”

“How am I supposed to remember something you told me this—”

“Hey, take it easy, birthday boy. This is me, Martha Washington. Tony’s on the line. Wants to know whether it’s true the show has been canceled.”

“Tell him yes, the show has been canceled.”

“It was a good show, David.”

“Are you starting on me, too?”

“I only said—”

“I heard what you said. Where’s the screening?”

“In 1204.”

“I’ll be there if you need me.”

“All right. Do you want me to make those calls for you?”

“I’ll handle them myself when I get back. You’ve got a run.”

“What?” Martha glanced at her nylons. “Oh, damn it,” she said, “goddamn it,” and she seemed on the verge of tears over something as simple as a run in her stocking.

The agent’s name was Ed Goff. He was waiting in room 1204 when David got there. He rose and extended his hand.

“Goff,” he said. “I think we’ve spoken on the phone.”

“How do you do?” David said. “What have you got for me?”

“A pilot. We thought Sonderman, Inc., might be interested in handling it for us. It’s pretty good, if I say so myself.”

“Why bring it to us? If you’ve already laid out thirty to forty grand to shoot a pilot—”

“No, no, nothing like that. This was part of a deal for an anthology. My clients—”

“Who?”

“Ralph Mordkin and Dave Katz. You know them?”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“Sure, well they produced five out of thirty-nine shows for this anthology. Filmed stuff, you understand. They thought this particular one would make a good series. So we added titles and some theme music and we’re showing it as a pilot. I think you’ll like it. It’s pretty good, if I say so myself.”

“You already said so yourself.”

“What?” Goff blinked. “Oh, yeah.”

“What kind of a show is it?”

“Private eye.”

“Another ‘Man Against Crime’?”

“Yeah, exactly like it, only different. This is pretty good if I—” Goff cut himself short. “Why don’t we run it, huh? You can see for yourself.”

“What kind of deal did you have in mind, Goff?”

“Well, we can talk about that after we see the show, huh?”

“Let’s talk now, and maybe save a half hour of each other’s time.”

“You had a rough day, Mr. Regan?”

“Are you my doctor, Mr. Goff?”

“No, but I want a fair showing. If you’re not feeling so hot, let’s call it off until another time.”

“I’m feeling hot enough,” David said. “I asked what kind of deal you had in mind.”

“Fifty-fifty?” Goff asked tentatively.

“We wouldn’t consider anything less than sixty-forty. If it’s good. If it’s what it sounds like, our cut would have to be even—”

“What do you mean, what it sounds like? I haven’t even given you the title of the thing. How do you know what it sounds like?”

“You said it was private eye, didn’t you?”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“Television needs another private eye like a hole in the head. This is 1953, Goff. Private eyes are on their way out. Television’s growing up.”

“Look, take a peek at it, will you? It’s a good show. Quality.”

“Private eyes are trash.”

“Yeah, but this is quality trash. Look, can we run it?”

“All right, let’s run it,” David said.

They turned out the lights and sat in the leather-upholstered chairs facing the mock television set at the front of the screening room. The movie projector inside the set began to whir, and the film flashed onto the fake television tube, just the way it would be seen in a viewer’s living room. David made himself comfortable. The leader flashed six, five, four, three, two, one onto the screen. The theme music started.

KIN-KAT PRODUCTIONS

presents

JOHNNY THUNDER

THEME UP. SUPERIMP TITLES OVER STOCK SHOT SUNSET STRIP. SNEAK SIREN INTO THEME. OPEN CONVERTIBLE SEEN RACING THROUGH BEVERLY HILLS, PULLING UP BEFORE BIG OLD HOUSE AS TITLES END. THEME OUT.

FADE IN

1INT. JOHNNY THUNDER’S OFFICE – DAY – FULL SHOT 1 – JOHNNY THUNDER SEATED IN CHAIR BEHIND DESK. OLIVER FIELDS SITTING IN CLIENT’S CHAIR. OFFICE IS ON GROUND FLOOR OF OLD “WHITE ELEPHANT” TYPE HOUSE IN BEVERLY HILLS. HUGE WINDING STAIRCASE SWEEPS UP FROM RIGHT, RISING OFF CAMERA.

THUNDER

I’m not sure I understand this, Mr. Fields. You claim your brother is trying to kill you, is that correct?

FIELDS

My twin brother, that is correct.

THUNDER

And what’s his name?

2CLOSE SHOT – FIELDS – SADNESS AND DESPERATION ON HIS FACE

FIELDS

Anthony. We should have had names beginning with the same letter, don’t you think? But my mother tried to raise us as if we weren’t twins, and she started with our names. Oliver and Anthony. I always liked his name better, to tell the truth. Anthony.

3MEDIUM SHOT – FIELDS AND THUNDER – THUNDER IS JOTTING NOTES ON HIS DESK PAD.

THUNDER

Yes, go ahead, Mr. Fields. You won’t mind if I call my secretary in, will you? I’d like her to take this down accurately.

FIELDS

No, not at all. I want you to get it accurately. After all, my life is at stake.

4CLOSE SHOT – THUNDER

THUNDER

(Calling to someone o. s.)

Bess! Bess, would you come downstairs a moment, please?

5CAMERA PANS BACK SLOWLY TO REVEAL THE GROUND 5 FLOOR OF THE HUGE HOUSE AND THE UNIQUE OFFICE ARRANGEMENT OF THUNDER INVESTIGATIONS, HIS DESK IN ONE CORNER OF THE LARGE ENTRANCE HALL, THE STAIRCASE SWEEPING OFF TO THE UPPER STORIES. CAMERA HOLDS ON STAIRCASE, THEN BEGINS PANNING UPWARD TO CATCH THE LEGS OF BESS CARTER AS SHE STARTS DOWN THE STEPS. THESE ARE GOOD LEGS IN NYLONS, HIGH-HEELED PUMPS; SHORTISH BLACK SKIRT.

6 CLOSE SHOT – BESS CARTER’S LEGS AS CAMERA 6 CATCHES THEM AT TOP OF STAIRCASE, KEEPS FOLLOWING HER DOWN, HOLDING ON HER LEGS AS SHE COMES DOWN THE STEPS.

David recognized the legs. He told himself it was impossible to recognize a person by her legs alone, but he knew those legs in an instant, knew them the moment they flashed onto the screen, the moment the camera panned up that long sweeping Beverly Hills staircase to catch the girl’s legs on the first landing, knew instantly from the walk, knew from the way one foot followed the other, the narrowness of ankle, the curve of her calf, even the thighs beneath the black skirt, he knew those legs. He watched the girl come down the steps, watched her legs as if they provided all the suspense, a suspense more exciting than the quality trash Mordkin and Katz, Kin-Kat Productions, had assembled out of a trunkful of 1930 Black Mask novelettes. The girl was walking into a medium shot, legs giving way to hips and waist and bosom. David wiped his hand across his mouth. The camera was pulling in tight on the girl’s face, she was walking directly into another close shot, that mouth, the green eyes, color leaped from the black-and-white screen, he could see russet hair in black-and-white, the same bangs, the same sleek mane brushed to the nape of her neck, the same defiant thrust of lip and nose and …

“Gillian Burke,” Goff whispered beside him. “Maybe you know her from that underwater series she did.”

“I know her,” David said. His voice came in a whisper. He was suddenly covered with sweat.

He sat watching her. He listened to her voice. She sounded much the same, that same wonderful voice that was Gillian’s alone, he almost began to weep when she said the word “marrr-velous,” rolling her r’s like an Irish washerwoman, she seemed to have lost a little weight, there was a good sparkle in her eyes, he watched her and listened to her. She was the only person on the screen. She pranced through the inanities of the script like a pro in a high-school senior play, she moved through that empty charade like a queen, and his eyes never left her for a moment. And while she worked hell out of a witless script, he watched another drama unfolding in his mind’s eye, the drama that had been Gillian and him, and he felt an empty sadness because the real Gillian was as far away from him as was the celluloid Gillian whose image was cast on the blank glass square resembling a television tube. He wanted to speak to her, wanted to say, “How have you been, Gilly? What have you been doing? Are you in love, Gilly? Have you found someone else?” but the girl on the screen was named Bess Carter, his Gillian in a Bess Carter costume, and the girl mouthed absurd clichés, played the private eye’s superglossed secretary, the wisecracking playmate of the hard-drinking, two-fisted, fast-shooting, quick-thinking Johnny Thunder. And yet Gillian showed through, the warmth of Gillian, and the incredible beauty of Gillian, and Bess Carter came alive because of her, Bess Carter romped through the insipid dialogue and the ridiculous action but she was warm and alive and sympathetic and lovable because Bess Carter was only a part pulled over the head of Gillian Burke.

The reel came to an end. The blank glass face in the phony television set was blank again. The lights snapped on.

“How’d you like it?” Goff asked.

“I liked the girl.”

“Burke. Great girl. We’ve already signed her for the series.”

“If you sell the pilot.”

“Naturally. There’s no series unless we sell the pilot.” Goff paused. “What do you think, Mr. Regan?”

He thought too many things in the few moments before he answered. He thought, It’s a crummy pilot, but maybe we can place it. He thought, I would probably get to see Gillian again, I’d have to if Sonderman were packaging the thing. I’d have to fly out to the Coast once or twice, wouldn’t I? I’d have to meet the people in the show, I’d have to watch some of the shooting. It’s a crummy pilot, he thought.

What’s the use? he thought.

What the hell is the goddamn use? What’s the use, because the world always closes in on you. The world is full of people like George Devereaux and Mike Arretti and Mr. Harrigan from California who takes the train in, I don’t trust airplanes, and who puts his foot on the back of your neck and squeezes you thin like a cockroach, send this son of a bitch the cockroach letter, what’s the use? The world was full of spoilers, yes, and some of them were named David Regan, at least one of them was named David Regan, what’s the use? You could see Gillian again maybe, you could okay this quality trash, you could commit your firm to a year’s option and you could break your back trying to sell the pilot to a network and an agency, you’d be giving Gillian a break, but it’s a lousy show.

Yes, let’s start worrying about lousy shows and good shows. The Sam Martin spectacle was certainly a terrific show, and you were its chief office boy and bottle washer, that was a magnificent show. As was the science fiction presentation every Wednesday night at 7:30 P.M. on a channel featuring wrestling, assistant to the producer, David Regan, that was a tremendous little show, so let’s start worrying about what’s lousy and what’s good. The afternoon live soap opera was wonderful, too, associate producer, David Regan, and so was the first real show you produced, the half-hour filmed Monday-night thing, that really was a masterpiece, so let’s turn up our noses at a private-eye show that has already signed the only girl who ever meant anything to you in your life, let’s turn arty and, it is good, my Thursday night show is good, yes, but what did Harrigan do to you this morning, what did Harrigan force you to do, so let’s get arty, right? You stepped on a good story, you knuckled under to the money, so now let’s suddenly find scruples when it involves a continuing series for Gillian, David Regan, with the neat gold-lettered PRODUCER on the door.

Yes, who squashed a good script this morning.

Producer.

With scruples. Big-scrupled producer. Go on, take the pilot. Tell Goff you’ll handle it on a 65-35 split and he’ll kiss both your feet and buy his clients a magnum of champagne. Tell him the girl stays, tell him the girl whose image filled that screen, the girl who came back like a ghost walking down that Beverly Hills staircase in a walk remembered, a walk familiar, her face, her eyes, her mouth, tell him the girl stays, tell him we’ll sell the pilot, I’ll see her again.

If.

If, of course, nothing has changed. If, of course, this is still the David Regan who entered that Sixth Avenue loft on November 20, 1947, oh yes, that was the date, if this was the same David Regan flinching from the world, unchanged, who found the girl with the big brass bed. Yes, the same David Regan. Exactly the same. Nothing changed. Yes. Certainly. And the same Gillian. The same Gillian, open and innocent and wanting only to be loved, and standing still while I slapped her open-handed across that wonderful face and the skyrockets exploded over Long Island Sound, slapped her with words as effectively as if I’d used my hands. Will you marry me, David? Slapped her with no after no after no, and left her feeling cheap and foolish, assuming she is the same girl, not destroyed, not thrown away and discarded by David Regan, television producer extraordinaire who blew it completely on the Fourth of July, 1949.

Four years.

More than four years.

And one day look at yourself, simply look at yourself in the mirror one day, startle yourself with the image staring back at you, and then ask yourself where the kid who stamped books disappeared to. Ask. He disappeared somewhere, yes, we know that, he vanished someplace, the way the buffalo and the bison vanished, and on Sunday I’ll be twenty-nine years old, happy birthday to you, make a birthday wish.

I wish I could run out into a street covered with snow, holding Gillian by the hand.

I wish the world were still and white.

But it isn’t.

“It’s a piece of cheese,” he told Goff. “I’m sorry, but it’s not for us.”

JANUARY 1

Snow. Snow outside. The world is still and white. It is New Year’s Day. The new year. Matthew is still asleep. He drank an awful lot last night. Julia Regan never drinks, I hadn’t noticed that before. The children are in the living room, still fascinated with the Christmas gifts. I think we give them far too much. Why doesn’t the new year start in September?

I would like to resolve so many things for 1954, but I can’t seem to put them in order.

I would like to be a better person.

I don’t know exactly what that means. A better woman? A better wife and mother.

A better person, that’s all. Better. I think I know what I mean. The house is so very still, the children are so absorbed. I called home last night to wish my parents a happy new year. Mother cried on the telephone.

I will be. Better.

It is still snowing.

JANUARY 4

Matthew off to station at 7:45. Orange juice and coffee, as usual. He doesn’t eat enough breakfast. I don’t know how he gets through the day. Kate asked me at table when she could begin wearing lipstick. I told her she was only 12. She said, “Agnes wears lipstick, and she’s only 12.” I told her I didn’t begin wearing lipstick until I was sixteen, and she answered, “Well, you’re from another era.” Another era! She barely caught the school bus. Drove Bobby to nursery school, came back to empty house. Limbered up with Czerny for an hour, fingers very stiff, before men came to clean windows. Something wrong with washing machine.

JANUARY 13

Wednesday. Meeting of P.T.A. at Talmadge School. Matthew refused to come, is working on Daley brief. Roads very slippery. I am afraid to drive at night on icy roads. Bobby has slight temperature. Called Dr. Anderson. He said to give him a few St. Joseph’s and call him in the morning. Meant to try jazz arrangement of “Clair de Lune,” but that was before I remembered darn P.T.A. meeting. Must remember to call Phipps tomorrow, accept cocktail invitation. Are we running out of logs for the fireplace? Ask Matthew to call the man.

JANUARY 23

Bobby to dentist in afternoon before party. Says he may need braces by the time he’s 12. When he’s 12, Kate will be 19, and probably married. She asked me again about lipstick today, and I said firmly NO! Matthew asked why not. I said because she was still a little girl. “A little girl?” Kate screamed. “I’m as old as Agnes!” I told her I was not Agnes’s mother, and I didn’t care what Agnes did. End of argument.

SUNDAY

I tried to play “Rhapsody in Blue” today, made a total mess of it. Reminded me of Gillian, somehow. Children in a squabble stopped my effort.

I have an idea.

FEBRUARY 12

Received a Valentine card from Matthew and also one marked “From your secret lover.” Kate got 6 cards, all from boys at the school. Bobby complained because he didn’t receive any, even though he sent a beautiful handmade effort to a girl named, of all things, Melody!

February is so depressing.

FEBRUARY 14

My secret lover was Matthew.

He confessed all today. Also bought me an evening bag which must have cost him at least $100 at Lord & Taylor, the idiot. I knew it was Matthew all along. Other men just don’t seem to … well, I think there must be something wrong with me. At a party Saturday night, a man dancing with me said I was very pretty and I said thank you and changed the subject. He started telling me about the restlessness of modern American women, and again I changed the subject. I don’t know how to flirt. That’s the truth of it. Matthew is an unconscious flirt, and Julia Regan is an expert flirt, though it looks sort of silly on a woman who must be approaching 50, if not there and gone already, however well-preserved she may be.

Is it necessary for me to be a flirt? Why do all the men in Talmadge seem to be seeking a love they never had?

I get puzzled sometimes.

FEBRUARY 25, 1954

Suppose it were a chorale? Not in the true style of a Lutheran hymn, nor even anything similar to Bach or the baroque composers. But instead something—I don’t know. If it could state something definite. If it could have a solidity.

The pump is out again. I called the Brothers Karamazov who always descend on that pump like two vultures ready to pick the bones clean. I asked the fat one why he always smiles so happily when he tells me there’s big trouble with the pump. He apologized, smiling.

A church theme? Or more than that, something infused with the sort of thing Copland got in “Appalachian Spring,” or Sessions in his early symphonies, an elemental feeling of the frontier, and perhaps the Negro church? It sounds a little somber, but I’d like to try it, if ever I get the chance. Tomorrow is a meeting of the League of Women Voters. How do I get involved in such stupid projects? We had to fill the bathtub with water while they fiddled around outside, otherwise we’d have nothing to drink until morning. Kate complained because she won’t be able to shower. She brought home a record called “Rock, Rock, Rock.” Music? Certainly. Elemental, definite, and solid, why bother?

MARCH 5

Bill from the Vultures. $300 to fix a pump! I asked Matthew to call and complain, and he said we were at the mercy of the world’s technicians, and I said not if the man of the house were willing to call and complain. This led into one of Matthew’s wild theories, this time on castration, of all things! Matthew said the popular theory was that women are castrating the men of America, and then after they have eaten their (I won’t use the word he used) go seeking lovers who they feel are real men. He doesn’t buy this theory. As far as I can understand it, this is what he believes:

Women and men fall in love when they’re still girls and boys. They’ve been raised in a culture which romanticizes everything, and so romance is the keynote. But romance, according to Matthew, is for children. The boys and girls get married, and suddenly the boys are face to face with a world full of killers in which they must somehow survive. They learn. They survive by becoming men, by losing the boyishness they once had. So Matthew says the reason for a woman’s restlessness is not that the male has been castrated and rendered impotent. Oh, no, Matthew says it’s just the opposite, it’s simply that the boy has become a man at last. But the woman did not fall in love with a man, she fell in love with a boy. She doesn’t like this new person around the house. She wants the boy, the romantic boy who wrote her love poetry and spent hours with her on the telephone. So where does she find the boy, the romance? In a lover. I never knew he thought about such things.

I think he’s faithful. I would shoot him!

MARCH 16

Bedlam! Absolute! Bobby drank finger paint.

Don’t ask me how finger paint got thin enough to be drunk, don’t ask me where Mrs. Haskell was when he drank the stuff, don’t ask me how that nursery school is run when a child can be allowed to drink finger paint! Dr. Anderson said I had better take him to the hospital in Stamford, which I did, and they pumped out his stomach, some fun, and we discovered Matthew’s Blue Cross had run out. Always when you need it. Kate had a fit! We didn’t get home until after 5, and I was supposed to drive her to Mary Bottecchi’s for an after-school party, and she was absolutely frantic. I told her that Bobby could have poisoned himself, and she said, “Fine, it would have saved me the trouble!” and I almost slapped her. I would have, but she seems so adult, and I don’t want to destroy this feeling of independence which seems to be a part of this phase. I never would have said anything like that to my mother, but Kate is not me, and I don’t want her to be me.

In any case, the Amanda Bridges Taxi Service flew into high gear and got Kate to her party slightly late. I seem to be taxiing children all over the countryside. How does Kibby Klein manage with her five kids? Must go shopping again tomorrow. Why do I always look too sexy in a bathing suit the moment I try it on again at home? Matthew asked me to bend over, and I did, and he said, “I can see your navel,” which of course he could do nothing of the sort. But I guess it was a little too revealing. It looked all right in the shop. Maybe Matthew is a prude. Maybe I am, too.

I tried to get to the piano, but someone from the library came and spent an hour telling me how vitally our donations were needed this year—as if they are not needed vitally every year. I wrote a check for $25. I think she expected $50, but that’s too bad.

APRIL 7

Well, I finally got something down on paper. It was a lot harder than I thought. I worked for a full 3 hours this morning while Bobby was gone. The house was absolutely still, my what a relief! I don’t know if it’s any good, but I managed to fill a page of manuscript, and when I played it back it sounded at least as if I’d got the feel of the thing. I didn’t want anything like Schönberg or Hindemith, a cosmopolitan veneer without roots—who was it that said, “I wouldn’t be found dead with roots?” But at the same time I wanted to avoid a feeling of unintentional primitivism, or artlessness. It wasn’t easy. These are the first several bars where the rather solemn major theme is established. I still have a lot of work to do on the chords, filling them out, making them richer somehow without too much sophistication. But this is the way it goes:

Bach is probably turning over! But I felt pretty good about what I’d accomplished, even though Matthew seemed to shrug it off. I played him everything I had, and he said he liked it, but I don’t think he knew quite what—well, I’m not sure I know quite what I accomplished, either, but—well, I don’t think someone should expect a pat on the head just because she put a few notes on paper. Still, I guess it was something. May Collins says she is going to open a novelty shop in Talmadge.

APRIL 8

Matthew’s car had a flat, drove him to station and Kate to the bus stop at the same time. Took Bobby with us in pajamas, then back to the house for breakfast, and over to Mrs. Haskell’s. She reminded me about the show the kids were doing this afternoon. I promised I’d be there. Met Julia Regan at the post office, had a cup of coffee with her. She was on her way to Tulley’s office. Is there something going on there, or am I crazy? She said she was going to have a showing of some slides she took in the Virgin Islands in February, would I let Kate come? I said of course I would, must mark it down on the calendar, it’s a Friday evening, April 16. Connie Regan, no relation, joined us when we were almost finished, said she wished she could do something like taking pictures, and Julia laughed it off. Connie said she gets tired of being referred to as a housewife, which amused me because what is she if not a housewife?

I went to get newspaper and some things at the drugstore and was just ready to sit down at the piano when Parsie informed me that Railway Express in Stamford had called to say I’d better pick up the package they have there for me, or it would begin accumulating storage charges. Hopped into the car and off to Stamford, picked up the package, the garden stuff I ordered from Ohio. Had lunch at Tiny’s, and then back home in time to catch Bobby’s nursery-school show. He was a rabbit. There was some reference in the skit about him preferring finger paint over almost any other beverage. I think this showed a huge lack of tact on Mrs. Haskell’s part, considering the fact that Matthew is a lawyer who was ready to sue her and the school at the time of the accident.

Kate marched in after school with three girl friends and asked me if I had forgotten the pajama party which I had forgotten completely. At 9 o’clock tonight, four boys from the high school came around with a ladder and tried to climb into the upstairs bedroom window while Kate and her girl friends screamed to high heaven (in delight, naturally). Matthew finally asked them to come in, and we served them cocoa and cookies. I refused to let them dance. The girls were in pajamas and robes, and enough is enough. The boys left at 10:30, and the girls stayed up another hour discussing them. I told Matthew I thought Kate was a little boy-crazy. He said she was only 12 years old. I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other.

I sometimes miss my sister Penny.

APRIL 18

I drank too much last night. Matthew says he remembers a time at Gillian’s apartment when I drank so much I passed out. He says he covered me with his coat. I couldn’t remember.

Last night Brant Collins said I have the prettiest behind in all Talmadge. I told Matthew that Brant put his hand there while he was dancing with me, and Matthew said that was par for the course. I asked Matthew if he put his hand there when he was dancing with other women, and he said, “No, I don’t believe in it.” I asked him why he wasn’t angry now that I’d told him about Brant, and he said we had reached a stage in the development of American culture where it was considered boorish to slug a man for making a refined pass at your wife. I told him Brant’s pass hadn’t been exactly refined, and Matthew said, “So why didn’t you slug him, Amanda?” I wonder why I didn’t. I think I enjoyed it.

I’m sorry I wrote that. Because I didn’t really enjoy it, and I know Brant is a wolf, but anyway I was fascinated by it. I think it was the first time any man in Talmadge made a real pass at me. There’s something forbidding about me, I think. I wish men wouldn’t look at me as if I were so pure. Well, I am, I guess. But it’s one thing to be pure and another for everybody to know it. Oh, damn it, I sometimes wish—I don’t know what I wish.

I’ll bet Gillian would have socked Brant right in the nose.

MAY 10

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I will be 31 years old. I thought 30 was a landmark. But tomorrow I’ll be 31, and now that seems like a landmark. I get the feeling there are so many things to be done. But who wants a novelty shop like May’s? I can’t see any sense to that. After all, Brant makes a good living. Besides, Matthew would never allow it, I know. Well, anyway, tomorrow is my birthday.

I know every gift I’m getting, except Matthew’s. Bobby made me a pot holder in nursery school, and he spent all day yesterday wrapping it, tempted to show it to me, and yet at the same time making a huge production of hiding it from me. Kate bought me a merry widow, black, the sexiest undergarment imaginable. I wonder what kind of person she thinks her mother is. I have half the notion Matthew helped her pick it out when they went shopping together Saturday. But Matthew’s gift is the real question mark. He hasn’t given me the slightest clue, but he’s been walking around like the cat who swallowed the canary. I can tell he’s just bursting with pride over whatever it is he’s done. I can hardly wait. I know it’s absolutely girlish and foolish to get excited over a birthday gift, but Matthew’s spirit is contagious.

Well, I’ll know tomorrow.

MAY 11, 1954

Mink!

MAY 17, 1954

I worked in the garden all morning. The soil is still a little stiff in spots, and I got blisters on my right hand. I wonder if Myra Hess digs in the garden between concerts. Nursery school ends next week. I asked Mrs. Haskell why she can’t keep them until the end of June, but she said this was the way she’s been doing it ever since she organized the school in 1951, and this was the first time anyone complained about it. I told her that down South they’d been doing things a certain way for a long time, too, but that today the Supreme Court voted unanimously to change it. I think she missed the analogy. Thank God Bobby starts at the elementary school this fall!

Spring seems such a long time coming this year.

MAY 18

I suppose, technically, it’s a suite. At least, it seems to be naturally dividing itself into 4 distinct sections, or certainly 3 sections with a bridge passage. I enjoyed working on this second part immensely, maybe the change of tempo accounts for that. I tried to combine funk with prayer meeting here, using a lively call and response that leads back into the major theme again, something like this:

I think it has a spiritual quality. Matthew raised his hands heavenward and began waggling his fingers when I played it tonight, so I guess he got the message. I wish I knew why his attitude infuriates me. It’s as if he thinks I’m simply doing something to occupy time, or to kill time, or to waste time. I think that’s terribly unfair of him. The suite may be nothing—although I do think it has some good things in it—but it’s not a silly novelty shop like May has. So why does Matthew approach it as some sort of game? Like taking a child on his knee and saying, “That’s a good girl. Stay out of trouble.” I’m not doing this to fill the empty hours. I’m doing it because I want to do it, I want to do something. I wish he could understand that. It would make things so much easier.

It’s getting too warm to wear the mink.

JUNE 3

Thursday, and Parsie’s day off. She rushes out of the house at 7 each Thursday, as if she’s afraid we’ll change our minds about letting her go. I spoke to her last Thursday about making sure breakfast was on the table before she left. So today she must have got up at dawn. The orange juice was sitting there when we came down, having already lost whatever vitamin C it contained when she set it out in the wee small hours. I want to fire her, but Matthew insists she’s a good girl, especially with the children. I think Bobby has an ear for music. He sat at the piano yesterday and picked out “Yankee Doodle.” Perhaps I should begin giving him lessons.

I am fooling with a variation on the suite in a minor key. It sounds very Russian, which is perhaps not too good a thing to sound in this day and age. I wonder if the Russian people want war. Why would anyone want war? Matthew says everyone does—men and women alike. He says the invention of an ultimate weapon is the most frustrating thing that’s ever happened to mankind. It prevents them from doing the one thing they really love to do, and that is waging war. He seems so cynical and bitter sometimes, and yet I know he really isn’t. I’m much too dependent on him. I wish I had an original idea of my own. Well, I have the suite.

JUNE 8

I left Bobby with Parsie this morning, and walked over to the university. I don’t know why I went, really. I walked through the campus and looked at the young boys and girls worrying about their final exams. They all seem so innocent. The old dorm looked exactly the same. I stood on the front steps for a while, but I didn’t go in. I walked from the dorm to Ardaecker, passing the three chapels, and the library, and the law buildings, and then standing outside Ardaecker and listening to someone playing the piano inside. I was going to look up some of my old instructors, but I decided against it.

It’s very difficult to go back.

I think we lose ourselves.

I think somehow we lose ourselves, and we go back to old unchanging places, but it’s not as if the memory is one of ourselves in that place, no. It’s a stranger who stands on familiar ground and tries to visualize another person there, a person so long ago she’s unreal. I wish I could really explain what I felt. It is so hard for me to put words on paper. But why did I go back? I think to learn for myself that the person who moved in that university world is not me, Amanda Soames Bridges.

And yet, I destroyed something today. So maybe Matthew is right. Maybe all we want to do is wage war, destroy each other and ourselves. I destroyed a fragile warmth today. I destroyed a memory. I took a stranger to a place I once had loved, and because the stranger did not fit there, because the stranger questioned the validity of a memory, the memory itself was destroyed. I won’t go back to the university again.

And yet, it was a part.

JUNE 19

The annual P.T.A. dance.

I still don’t know quite what to make of it.

There are two musicians sleeping downstairs, and I’m sure they’re both drug addicts. I wonder if Kate is safe. Matthew is out like a light, after all his ranting and raving. The thing that happened was this. Someone on the committee asked me if I knew of a good band they could hire, and I asked Matthew, and he asked one of his partners who used to play saxophone. His partner, Len Summers, said he knew a very good drummer who had a small jazz combo, and he thought they would be happy to come up to Talmadge to play at our yearly dance.

Well, they came up. The first thing that happened was that the trumpet player left his horn outside the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan. I don’t know how anyone could possibly leave his horn on the sidewalk, but he managed to do it, and he made a few frantic telephone calls to friends in New York, and they finally located his horn and said they would drive up with it. In the meantime, the band—piano, bass, drums and tenor saxophone—played without the trumpet man. Well, not exactly without him, since he had his mouthpiece in his pocket, and he kept blowing through it like a kazoo, making the most horrible sounds which everyone in the band, I gathered, thought were very cool and progressive. The trumpet finally arrived at about 11 o’clock, and the band went into high gear.

It was along about this time that someone discovered the bass player and the tenor-saxophonist were both smoking a sweetish-smelling cigarette, and Teddy Bernstein, who is a biochemist, said the stuff was marijuana. You can imagine the stir this caused! We’re not even allowed to leave whiskey bottles on the tables because the dance is being held at the school. Everyone drinks, of course, and everyone gets drunk, but the bottles are all on the floor, under the table—which is where some people wind up by the end of the night. Matthew, who had hired the band, began to hear comments about the marijuana, and about the way the boys were playing really progressive jazz stuff which was nice to listen to, but not very good to dance to. Brant Collins, who was telling me again how beautiful I am, while discreetly exploring everywhere, told me he appreciated this far-out stuff, but not at a “family-type gathering,” the hypocrite! Matthew had drunk a lot of bourbon by this time, and was beginning to get a little angry. “These men are musicians!” he kept saying over and over again. Not that anyone had denied they were musicians. Everyone had simply stated that they were a little far out, and a little hopped-up to boot. It was Brant Collins who finally went to Matthew and said he thought it was disgusting that a school dance should have hired a bunch of “junkies,” an expression he no doubt picked up from Mickey Spillane.

Matthew said he thought it was disgusting that the world was being overrun by people like Senator McCarthy and Brant Collins. Brant wanted to know what, exactly, Matthew meant by that, and Matthew said again, “These men are musicians, and entitled to respect!”

“We’re giving them respect!” Brant said. “More than they deserve.”

“Why don’t you go dance with some willing housewife?” Matthew said, and again Brant wanted to know what, exactly, Matthew meant by that, and I swear Matthew would have hit him if Elliot Tulley and Julia Regan hadn’t stepped in and separated them. The musicians were playing all through this, “How High the Moon”-ish stuff, oblivious to anything that was happening on the dance floor.

Well, the whole thing broke up at 1 o’clock, without any suggestion of overtime, which is unusual for the P.T.A. dance. The musicians found themselves in another quandary. Apparently the person who’d driven them up had decided to visit some “chick” in Westport, and they had no transportation home, and no place to sleep.

Brant Collins, who was sticking his nose into this thing all over the place and refusing to let it lie, said, “Go sleep in the street!”

Matthew, at the top of his lungs, bellowed, “In my house, nobody sleeps in the street!”

I don’t think he realized how funny that was because he kept repeating it over and over again.

“In my house, nobody sleeps in the street!”

So now there are two musicians sleeping downstairs in the living room, the bass player and the tenor man, the ones who were smoking the marijuana. Elliot Tulley took the other three home to sleep in his guest house. The trumpet player forgot his horn at the school, and Elliot had to go all the way back for it. I think that man is trying to lose his trumpet. I read somewhere that nothing gets lost or misplaced by accident.

One of them snores. I can hear him all the way up here.

Maybe I ought to ask Kate to lock her door.

I wish I understood Matthew.

JULY 5

Lake Abundance. We drove down to Playland last night to see the fireworks. It was jam-packed. I must say I didn’t enjoy it. Today we moved into the house here. I refused to take the same house we had last summer. I’m not superstitious, but one fire is more than I want in any lifetime, thanks. David Regan was up for the weekend with Julia.

I asked him about Gillian, and saw immediately that I shouldn’t have. He said Yes, he had known Gillian very well. I asked him if he still heard from her, and he said No, he hadn’t heard from her since the Fourth of July in 1949, 5 years ago, and that this was his annual celebration in honor of the occasion. He wasn’t drunk, nor had he been drinking, but he sounded very bitter. I told him how talented I thought she was, and I filled him in on some of the things we used to do together at school. He tried to affect indifference, but I could tell he was very interested in everything I had to say. From what I could gather, he must have met Gillian shortly after Matthew and I were married, which would place it sometime after the summer of 1946. My God, we’ve been married 8 years already, time is disgusting. Although he did say something about the blizzard of ’43, which I could barely remember, and I did recall seeing Gillian in, it must have been 1947, and her not mentioning David at all, so perhaps they met after that. Whenever it was, apparently it didn’t work out too well.

He’s a very strange person, I think. I get a feeling of total lovelessness between him and his mother, and yet I know they are mother and son, and I sense a bond between them, but there’s more there too, more than meets the eye. Julia seems to lavish more attention and love on my daughter Kate than she does on her own son. Of course, he’s a grown man, but still—it’s hard to put my finger on it. Kate said tonight that David was “cool.” I must agree that he is. He gives less to anyone than any other human being I know. Oh, he’s a fine conversationalist and he knows some wonderful jokes—the Russian joke he told, wasn’t that one of Gillian’s?—and he’s remarkably poised and at ease, but he gives absolutely nothing. And the oddest part is that I instinctively feel he likes me and Matthew, and yet he gives us nothing.

I don’t think these are the Frantic Fifties. I know it’s not alliterative, but I think these are the Distrustful Fifties.

I’ll bet people will eventually stop shaking hands.

JULY 14

The lake. Sun. Water. Easy living. Same old stuff. I was tempted to go back home and play the suite today.

JULY 17

Lake. Swimming. Outdoor barbecue tonight.

JULY 21

Lake.

JULY 25

Lake.

AUGUST 14

Party at Julia’s house. David there with a television actress named Betsy something. In the John, she asked me how well I knew David. She said he had asked her to go with him to Puerto Rico for a week, and she wondered whether she should or not. They would have separate hotel rooms and all, she said, but she wondered if it would look bad. I couldn’t begin to advise her. She’s only 23 years old, and yet I felt she was so much wiser and more experienced and older than I am. Would I go to Puerto Rico with a strange man?

No.

AUGUST 24

Lake. I have been reading magazines all week. I refuse to believe that American women are solely concerned with, in the order of importance:

1) How to convert their kitchens on $500.

2) 400 ways to prepare potatoes.

3) The Royal Box by Frances Parkinson Keyes.

4) Toilet training.

I refuse to believe it. I’m not a snob, but I refuse to believe that American women are quite that shallow or quite that self-centered or quite that witless.

In China, the Communists are talking about invading Formosa and President Eisenhower has all but promised the Seventh Fleet will leap to the rescue—but the magazines are worried about the new eye make-ups.

We don’t need eye make-up. All we need is a few peepholes in our hoods.

SEPTEMBER 6

Labor Day. Barbecue party at the lake. Klein, Regan, Bottecchi, Anderson, Phipps. Broke up early. Drove back to the house in Talmadge. It’s good to be home. It’s always good to come home again. I sometimes forget how beautiful the house is, or how much it means to me. I tried a few notes on the piano. It needs another tuning after lying idle all summer.

I envy the children in September. Wednesday is Bobby’s first day of school, and Kate starts at the junior high. Gave permission for her to wear lipstick. She immediately called Agnes and said, “My mom says okay, so now your mom’ll have to say okay!” Matthew calls her “the con man.”

I am very anxious to begin work on the suite again.

SEPTEMBER 17

The minor key section has bogged down. I worked steadily on the passacaglia, needing only a modulation to take me from the restatement of the major theme, but nothing as florid as the Tristan and Isolde prelude—and suddenly it dried up. I mulled around all day before leaving it and going back instead to the revival section which seemed to suggest augmentation. I’ve given it a dancy counterrhythm now by using a left-hand arpeggiated figure. Maybe I’m procrastinating. But I will get back to the minor key section as soon as I have an idea. And meanwhile, I like this variation on what I had earlier. These are the first several bars:

SEPTEMBER 18

Called Fred Carletti about the new garage door. He left chalk marks all over it, claimed that was the way the lumber yard marks its lumber and that the chalk would come off with soap and water. Parsie was out there all morning and the chalk marks are still there. Fred doesn’t feel like coming back to sand them, but that’s his problem, and I still haven’t paid his bill. Saks Fifth agreed the clasp on my hand bag must have been defective, and are ready to exchange it. Must give it to Parsie for United Parcel’s pickup truck. Bulbs arrived today, should hire a man to help me get them in.

The woods are alive with color!

SEPTEMBER 19

Invitations out for the party on October 2nd. Ask Matthew to check his liquor. Do we need a bartender? Matthew says a bartender inhibits whiskey consumption. But it frees Matthew for socializing and being the host. Six of one, half a dozen. Agreed to work on committee for clearing Talmadge roads of empty beer cans dumped by high-school kids. Suggested local boy-scout troops handle the actual clearance. Zoning meeting at Town Hall Thursday night. Parsie’s day off. Must get a sitter. Or can Kate sit?

SEPTEMBER 21

First day of Autumn.

I sometimes get so bored.

OCTOBER 12

Meeting Matthew in town tomorrow for dinner and theater. He thinks he can get seats for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.

I would much prefer Tea and Sympathy.

The law offices of Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang were located in an impressive forty-story structure on Wall Street, nor had the location been chosen by caprice. The firm dealt mostly with criminal law, and the Criminal Courts Building was on Centre Street, not five city blocks from Matthew’s office.

Amanda Soames Bridges, who enjoyed the unbending logic of music, could appreciate the mathematics that made proximity to the criminal courts desirable. She could appreciate it, but she found it increasingly difficult to enjoy, especially on days like this when she was forced to make the long haul from the midtown shopping area to Matthew’s office. She had never liked driving, and she loathed driving in city traffic. The streets seemed more congested than ever, with more taxicabs and more buses, and bigger automobiles, would Detroit never stop making their cars bigger and shinier, were Americans determined to have the absolute biggest of everything in the whole world? The streets, too, were cold and bitter. She could hear the wind whistling over the hood of the car, rattling at the windows, so cold for October.

She pulled into the parking lot on Chambers Street, put the claim ticket into her bag, and began walking swiftly toward Matthew’s office building. The sun at four-thirty was almost gone. The wind knifed through the concrete alleyways, cutting through her skirt. I should have worn a coat, she thought. This stole is for a true autumn, but there won’t be any damn autumn this year. She was grateful for the lobby of the building. She took the elevator to the twelfth floor, stopped in the ladies’ room at the end of the hall to comb her hair and repair her lipstick, and then walked down to Matthew’s office, pausing just outside the entrance door. She always thought of it as Matthew’s office even though there were four names on the door, even though Benson and Stang were the senior partners of the firm. The fact that Matthew’s name headed the listing was a tribute to his powers of persuasion, as was the décor of the office itself.

“Look,” he had said to his new partners, “it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. You can stick my name on the bottom of the door in letters usually reserved for escape clauses. The door can read Benson, Stang, Summers and Bridges, just the way you want it to. I’m the junior partner, and I really have no business suggesting anything radical.”

Stang, fifty-seven years old and sporting a potbelly and a bright checked vest, had tweaked his nose and said, “Matthew, you are the biggest bull thrower in New York City. Say what’s on your mind.”

“Okay. The sound of Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang is cleaner. That’s what’s on my mind. It reads simpler and swifter, and it’s easier to remember. It creates a corporate image that is good for our purposes.”

“What are our purposes?” Benson asked. Sniffing at a nose inhaler, his long thin legs propped on a hassock, he looked at Matthew sourly and then shook his head as if he were dealing with a maniac.

“To get clients,” Matthew said. “To become the biggest law firm in the city.”

“We’ve been doing all right so far,” Benson said.

“We’re going to do better.”

“Sometimes I wonder why we took you in.”

“Stop wondering, Harry. I’m just what this creaking combination needs. I’ve lost only two cases in the past two years. That’s right, I’m pretty damn good. And I’ve got some ideas about how we should decorate the new office, too.”

“He’s not a lawyer,” Benson said dryly. “He’s an interior decorator.”

“No, I like his ideas,” Summers, the fourth partner, said tentatively. He was blond and strapping, a man of forty-two who sweated a great deal. He offered his opinion, and then shrugged.

“Thanks, Len,” Matthew said. “I don’t think the new place should look like this one.”

“What’s the matter with this one?” Stang asked.

“It’s dusty, it’s dingy, it looks dirty and creaking and old.”

“My wife decorated this office,” Stang said.

“And it may have been great in nineteen-twenty, but time marches on.”

“Now he’s a news commentator,” Benson said.

“How do you think we should decorate?” Stang had asked, leaning forward.

That had been a long time ago.

The name on the door was Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang. Amanda smiled and twisted the knob.

The reception room started just inside the door with ten feet of gray carpeting flowing back spaciously from the entrance to two low modern couches, which shared a marble coffee table and a double-bullet wall fixture. A single abstract painting hung on the wall opposite the couches. Beyond the couches, there was more carpeting, which stretched to the reception desk and the girl behind it. Beyond that, and hidden from the reception room, were the filing cabinets, the four separate private offices of the firm’s partners, and a conference room. The firm’s law library was shelved on glass-enclosed bookcases hanging free on the wall above the filing cabinets. The scheme throughout was clean, almost austere. If it denied a dusty, tradition-filled interpretation of the law, it created instead an atmosphere that was dynamic and businesslike, and not without a subtle beauty of its own. The girl behind the reception desk seemed to echo the aesthetics of the office. She looked up when Amanda entered, smiled, and said, “Hello, Mrs. Bridges.”

Her smile was a carefully calculated instrument of greeting, a warm welcome which flashed suddenly on a face that could have belonged to a teen-age model. Annie Ford, at twenty-seven, looked more like seventeen, with tiny bones and compact breasts, her long black hair worn in a page-boy, her brown eyes sparkling with a curious combination of naïveté and worldliness. The top of her desk was covered with legal forms, but it looked scrupulously ordered nonetheless, as if she had already straightened it for the evening before putting the cover back on her typewriter and heading home.

“Hello, Annie,” Amanda said. “Mr. Bridges is expecting me.”

“I’ll tell him you’re here.” Annie picked up the receiver, pressed a button in the phone’s base, and smiled again at Amanda.

“Is he busy?” Amanda asked.

“He has someone with him,” Annie answered, “but I don’t think he’ll be very … hello? Mr. Bridges, your wife is here. Yes, sir, I will.” She replaced the phone, smiled again at Amanda, and said, “Would you mind waiting, please, Mrs. Bridges? He’ll be about ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said. She walked toward the nearest couch, sat, and picked up a copy of Life. She began thumbing through it uneasily. She always felt a little strange in Matthew’s office, the unwanted visitor who somehow managed to upset a carefully rehearsed business routine. The telephone rang. Annie Ford lifted the receiver.

“Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang,” she said, “good afternoon.” She listened and then said, “Oh, hello, Mr. Cohen. Just a moment, I’ll see.” She pressed a stud in the base of the telephone, waited. “Mr. Stang, it’s Arthur Cohen, on six.” She replaced the phone in its cradle, smiled briefly at Amanda, and walked to one of the filing cabinets.

Watching her, Amanda felt a sudden envy.

She knew the envy was foolish. Annie Ford was twenty-seven years old, a bachelor girl who lived in a furnished apartment on Seventy-second Street, who earned eighty dollars a week as a receptionist, who probably dreamed of a husband, and a family, and a home in the country, who probably wished for all the things Amanda already had.

But Annie got up each morning and dressed to go someplace.

Annie came into the heart of the most exciting city in the world, and she talked to people on the telephone about matters slightly more important than a United Parcel pickup. She personally greeted people who were concerned with more than a few chalk marks on a new garage door. Annie Ford was part of a successful law office, and she knew what she was supposed to do there, and she did it efficiently and quietly, and she no doubt derived a great deal of pleasure from the knowledge that she was doing it well.

She did not have to wake up each morning and wonder how she would occupy her time for the rest of the day. She did not have to sit through inane luncheons, or serve on meaningless half-witted committees, or shuttle children around the countryside, or doubt the worth of a musical composition that seemed less and less important each day. No! More important! More important to me than anything else in my life!

Now, Amanda.

Now, Amanda dear.

She sat quite still and watched Annie as she filed her legal forms, watched the quick movement of her fingers, the studied concentration on her face.

Oh my God, Amanda thought, I wish I didn’t have a mind.

I wish I weren’t a woman in this day and age, part of the giant female convalescent ward, we sit around doing water colors or dabbling in oils or baking ceramic ash trays or weaving baskets or arranging flowers, busy, busy with our hands, doing anything, anything to stop us from realizing we are really useless human beings. Doing anything, and doing nothing.

The only thing I ever created in my life was my son Bobby, she thought.

The telephone on Annie’s desk buzzed. She looked up from the filing cabinet, smiled, walked quickly to the desk, and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” she said. “Oh, yes, just a moment.” She turned to Amanda. “Mrs. Bridges? Would you mind taking the phone, please?”

Amanda put the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

“Amanda, this is Matthew. Honey, this is going to take a little longer than I expected. Do you think we could meet at the restaurant? Can you keep yourself busy for a little while?”

“I suppose so,” Amanda said.

“I’m sorry, but …”

“I understand,” Amanda said. “What time? Where?”

“Let’s see, it’s almost five now. Can we make it six-thirty?”

“The stores close at six,” Amanda said absent-mindedly.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ll meet you at six-thirty. Tell me where.”

The bookshop was on Sixth Avenue, in the Forties, a tiny shop set between a locksmith and a hamburger joint. She wandered into it because it seemed to invite browsing, and because she had more than an hour to kill before meeting Matthew at the restaurant. The shop was long and narrow, its walls lined with bookcases and dusty volumes, its center aisle cluttered with open stalls of remainders. She wished it were not October and cold. A shop like this cried out for a rainy day in April. She could remember cuddling up in the armchair before the fireplace in the Minnesota house, could remember reading Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop, and later Where the Blue Begins, which portrayed dogs as humans and which raised some serious questions about God. She had felt sacrilegious just reading the book. When she’d read one of the passages aloud to her father and then asked him if she should continue with the book, he had nodded in rare wisdom and said, “I really don’t think it can hurt you to hear another fellow’s viewpoint, Amanda.” She’d read only two more chapters, and then closed the book of her own accord.

There was the smell of dust in the shop. The shop was almost empty. An old woman with a flowered hat was picking through the stalls searching for a bargain. A bald-headed man in a tweed overcoat was at the far end of the shop, taking a book down from the shelves, replacing it, taking another book down. The proprietor sat behind a high counter just inside the entrance door, reading Dostoevski. Amanda browsed idly. She looked at her watch. It was only five thirty-five. Slowly, she worked her way toward the back of the shop. She found a battered old copy of a Nancy Drew mystery. Excited by her find, she decided to buy it for Kate, and then realized Kate had outgrown Nancy Drew. Reluctantly, she put it back on the stall.

“I used to read Bomba the Jungle Boy,” the bald-headed man said.

“Yes, weren’t they fun?” she answered, almost without turning, smiling at the man in an idle reminiscent way, and then moving past him to the other side of the stall.

“And Tom Swift,” the man said.

Amanda glanced at him, smiled in polite dismissal, and began walking toward the front of the shop.

“Amanda?” the man said.

She stopped. Puzzled, she turned.

“It is Amanda?”

“Yes,” she said, “but …?”

She looked at the man more closely. He had a round face, and a bald head, and the collar of his tweed coat was pulled high on the back of his neck. He looked very sad, a chubby man wearing a very sad face.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Morton,” he answered. “Morton Yardley.”

For a moment, the name meant nothing to her. And then the man made a curiously embarrassed gesture, pulling the coat collar higher on his neck, as if he wanted to pull it completely over his bald head, and all at once she remembered Morton Yardley and his hooded Mackinaw. A smile broke on her face. She rushed into his arms spontaneously and hugged him.

“Morton!” she said. “No! Morton, is it you?”

“Hullo, Amanda,” he said, and he hugged her with great embarrassment, grinning, awkward.

“What are you doing here?” She pulled away from him and looked into his face. “Of course it’s Morton! Oh, how good to see you!” She laughed, still unable to believe it, and then they fell silent and stood staring at each other somewhat curiously. The hugging was over and done with, the surprise was past, the first rush of honest emotion was gone. Now two strangers looked at each other in the cluttered aisle of a musty bookshop, each taking the measure of the other. Amanda touched her hair unconsciously, fluffing it.

“How have you been, Amanda?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Are you married now?”

“Yes. Yes, I have two children.”

“How wonderful for you.”

Don’t let us be this way, she thought. I liked you so much, Morton. Don’t let us end as strangers talking about the weather.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“No. No, I never married, Amanda.”

“Is your parish here in New York?”

“My …? Oh, well, I sort of changed plans.” He nodded. “I gave up my ideas about the ministry, you see.” He shrugged. “I work in a bank now. I’m an assistant manager. Manufacturer’s Trust, do you know it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, well, that’s where I work.”

There was a long pause. Morton wet his lips nervously. He really has lost all his hair, she thought, but he still looks so sweet, he is still a very sweet person.

“Do you live in New York?” he asked.

“No, we live in Talmadge.”

“Really? Near the school?”

“Well, fairly near. On Congress.”

“Oh, yes.” Morton nodded. “You didn’t marry a professor, did you?”

“No, a lawyer.”

“I thought because …” He nodded. “Well, a lawyer, that’s good. Gee, it must be … how many years?” He nodded again, and then was silent.

The silence lengthened. There seemed to be nothing more to say. After all these years, there was nothing to say but How are you? Are you married? Where do you work? Where do you live? She didn’t want it to be this way. She wanted to know about Morton, and she wanted to tell him about herself. She had liked Morton too much, had shared too much with him, had touched his life with her own, and been touched in return, had really known Morton too well to allow this to happen. You can destroy a place, she thought, you can come to it with all the tricks and veneer of living, come to it with cynical eyes and destroy the memory of innocence, but you cannot do that with people. I won’t let it happen with people.

“Could we have a drink together?” she asked. She smiled gently. “I don’t have to meet my husband until six-thirty.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Morton said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t, Amanda.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. Maybe you can do it with people, she thought. Maybe life is simply a matter of learning that the present has nothing whatever to do with the past or the future.

“I’m going over to the museum,” he said. “I have to see this movie.” He paused. “Would you like to come with me?”

She almost said no. This was going badly, this was awkward, this was stupid and disenchanting, and she almost said no. She shook her head, not in reply, but as if to clear it.

“I would like to come, Morton,” she said.

“Good. Gee, that’s … well, good, Amanda. Good.” He grinned.

“Is it far?”

“Fifty-third.”

“Let’s walk,” she said. “Then we can talk to each other.”

Morton let out his breath. “I was hoping we could talk,” he said.

October dusk had settled on the city. The subway-bound office workers rushed along the streets with their heads bent against the strong wind, their hands thrust into their pockets. The sidewalks echoed with the clatter of high-heeled shoes, the streets with the empty bellow of bus horns. The sky was a mottled deep blue, not yet black, no moon showing as yet, no stars.

“I like this time of day best,” Morton said. “Everybody going home. I feel very good at this time of day.”

“I do, too.”

“Are you warm enough with just that little thing?”

“No, I’m freezing,” Amanda admitted.

“It’s very pretty. What is that? Mink or something?”

“Yes.”

Morton nodded. She had the impression this was the first time he had ever had a close look at mink. There was something very naïve and boyish about him, as if he had learned none of the … the tricks of living, as if there were no guile in that entirely open face.

“I’m glad we got out of that shop, Amanda,” he said. “You know what I thought? I thought we would shuffle our feet around a little more, and then say goodbye. That would have been sinful, I think. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” Amanda said, smiling. “Absolutely sinful.”

“Are you kidding?” He turned to her, his eyebrows raised.

“No. I’m serious.”

He smiled. “Good.”

“May I take your arm? I’m very cold.”

“Sure. Here. Do you want my coat, Amanda? Let me give you my coat.”

“No. Thank you, Morton.”

“Come on, I don’t need it. Look at you. You’re shaking.”

“I’ll be all right.” She smiled at him and hugged his arm. “I’m glad we ran into each other, Morton.”

“Yes, I am, too. You’ll like this picture, Amanda. A friend of mine made it. I don’t know what it cost him, thirty cents or something. Anyway, it was very cheap, and it’s received all sorts of praise. Do you know you look exactly the same? You haven’t changed a bit. Not a bit.”

“You haven’t either.”

“Amanda, I’m all bald!” he said, laughing, as if surprised by the knowledge but willing to share it with her.

“But you look the same.”

“But you didn’t recognize me,” he said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“I wasn’t sure it was you, either. Not because you’ve changed, though. Only because … well, who expected to meet you in a little run-down bookstore on Sixth Avenue?”

“We didn’t even buy anything,” Amanda said, and she laughed. “Morton, I’m freezing.”

“We’re almost there. We can get some hot chocolate in the cafeteria. The picture doesn’t go on until six.”

“Why did you leave the ministry, Morton?”

“Oh, that’s a long story. I was in the stockade, you know.”

“The what?”

“In the army. Jail. They call it the stockade. Which is sensible since it was designed for cattle and not men. I had a chance to do a lot of thinking there.”

“About what, Morton? Ooooo, Morton, do you know where I’m really cold?”

“Where?”

“My feet.”

“That’s why you’re cold all over. That’s a known fact.”

“You’re a mine of information,” she said, smiling.

“You mean you didn’t know that? Anyway, I was locked up there for about six months, here, put your hand in my pocket … how’s that? Is that better? and then they sent me overseas as a corpsman, you know, noncombatant, the red cross on my arm, the whole business. And then I saw it, Amanda. I saw what people can do to each other.” He shook his head. “And I began thinking some more. I’ll tell you, Amanda, a funny thing happened. I was out there without any weapon, you know, and … and … I wished I had a gun! But not for self-protection, Amanda, not for that. I wished I had a gun so I could kill the people who were leaving those broken bodies all over the place. That’s right, I wanted to kill. Now, remember the reason I’d objected in the first place. Now, remember that, Amanda. And here I was wanting to kill, and ready to kill. Now, that can make you wonder about yourself a little bit, believe me.” He shook his head.

“But you were at war, Morton. You had to expect …”

“Oh, I know, I know. But I looked into myself, and I asked myself, What’s all this God stuff, and did I really believe it? Did I really back out of the war because I didn’t want to kill anybody, or only because I was afraid of getting killed myself? And if that was my reason, and how could it be otherwise when there I was ready to kill, why then I’d only used religion as an excuse. I suppose I could have decided then and there, Amanda. I suppose I could have asked for a gun. I didn’t. But I did decide the ministry wasn’t for me. Are you happy, Amanda?”

He asked the question so unexpectedly that he startled her.

“Why …” She squinted her eyes against the wind and looked into his face. There was honesty there and openness, Morton Yardley had not changed at all, Morton Yardley had acquired none of the shellac. And his face demanded an honest answer, no, not demanded because he was not one of those who forced their will. His face simply asked quietly for honesty. And asked for so gently, honesty could not be denied. “I don’t know, Morton,” she said.

“You look happy.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. Here’s the museum. You’re still very beautiful, Amanda,” he said as he pushed open the door, said it into the raised collar of his coat, as if not expecting her to hear it, and yet hoping she would.

“Thank you,” she said, because she wanted him to know she had heard.

They drank hot chocolates in the cafeteria off the garden. The garden was deserted. The modern statues defied the cold, bronze and stone standing erect against the wind. The whipped cream dissolved in their cups, and they sat facing each other discussing old times at the university, and she realized all at once that there was a smile on her face, and that perhaps it had been there from the moment they left the bookshop. She felt completely at ease with Morton, completely without façade. There was no need for stupid fencing with him, no need for the clever answer, the provocative question. She felt honest and somehow exuberant. And curiously, she felt more like a woman than she could ever remember.

“Do you get into New York often?” he asked, and she looked into his eyes because she had heard this approach often at Talmadge parties, had heard it whispered in her ear as she danced, had heard it dropped casually as she sat alongside a polished attractive man on a living-room couch sipping a Martini, she had heard it often, and she knew the intent, and she knew the answer, she knew the game. But Morton Yardley did not play games.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“Good,” Morton said. “Because I’d like to see you again.”

“Why, Morton?”

“Well … I guess because I loved you, Amanda.”

The words startled her. Not because she hadn’t suspected. But only because they were spoken in utter simplicity.

“That’s very sweet, Morton,” she said, and instantly thought, I don’t mean that, it’s not what I mean. I’m not parrying, Morton, I’m not giving the cocktail-party answer to the standard proposition. Believe me, please. I don’t mean what that sounds like. “Morton, you’re very sweet,” she said. “You have a very sweet face.”

He looked at her curiously, as if her words had embarrassed him.

“You make me feel very good,” she said softly. “You make me feel like a woman.”

She thought all at once, How easy it would be. Truly, how very easy. Without guilt, without soul-searching, because this was not the fantasy of the grand amour, this was not the excitement of the pale dark stranger, the secret meetings in hotel rooms, the swell of clandestine passion, this was nothing at all like that. Morton was hardly a glamorous figure, hardly the dashing lover, and yet she thought, How easy it would be, and thought, It would be something, I would be giving, I would be giving, and looked into Morton’s eyes and back to a time when it could have been uncomplicated, and thought, It could be uncomplicated now, and suddenly thought of herself in bed with him. Surprisingly, the thought did not shock her or disgust her. She accepted it calmly, continuing to look at Morton and continuing to feel this strange sort of pulsing warmth that seemed to hover over the table, not a sexuality at all, although she imagined him touching her, but rather a feeling of ease, of emotion without pretense, the thought was exciting. And she knew it could be that, she knew the discovery of another person was always exciting, and she knew she could find in Morton a total adoration, she could see that in his eyes now, not lust and not passion, she knew that somewhere in this strangely naïve man who sat across from her there was still the little boy. There was still trust, there was still hope, there was still, yes, romance. How easy it would be. How easy to turn a doorknob and open a new world, how easy to say, “Yes, let’s have lunch sometime,” how easy to accept the love of this man, “Well … I guess because I loved you, Amanda,” and to know that a love could be returned, a different love than she had ever given, returned with fierce purpose, the love of a woman trying to find meaning in a world that seemed oddly and stubbornly unreceptive. How easy.

How easy to find something with him, something she had already found with him on the short walk from the bookshop, and over hot chocolates already gone, staining the thick white mugs with a residue of brown, something sheltered from the noisy October wind outside and the statues standing defiant in the garden, sheltered. I could love this man, she thought. I could take off my clothing for him unashamed and eager, I could allow him to caress me, I think I would feel rather rich. And savage. And pure. She looked at his thick hands around the thick white mug. How easy it would be. Yes, and excitement, the excitement of somewhere to go, and someone to meet, a purpose, a life, how easy.

“Hey, the picture’s going to start,” Morton said. “Come on.”

He took her arm and they walked through the museum, and she kept watching him, puzzled because she had not yet made her decision, puzzled because she even considered making a decision, and feeling no guilt at all, she was not betraying Matthew nor her children, she was betraying no one by her consideration of something she had always thought of as betrayal, “keep you alone unto him as long as you both shall live.”

They sat together in the darkened theater. She took his hand and held it. Thousands upon thousands of stop-action photos flashed upon the screen, spliced together to show the blooming process of a plant from tightly closed bud to extended flower. She thought, That’s the way it was, that’s the way you get married, and then she shoved the thought aside because she did not wish to defile a memory that was no longer even that, a blur instead, something that had happened very long ago to a very young and innocent girl.

But that was how it had been, she knew. Photo upon photo flashed in rapid succession upon a screen, no single photo important in itself, the change imperceptible from one still shot to the next, and yet each separate shot essential to the steadily unfolding sequence, each barely discernible change combining to form an overwhelmingly dramatic change, the juxtaposition of a remembered closed bud against a sudden bloom touched by morning sun. That is the way people get married, she thought.

Six-thirty was not very far away. Six-thirty was a heart tick away when they came out into the cold again, when the sudden cold attacked their faces and their eyes, six-thirty was so very near. They stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-third Street. The street lamps were on, the department-store windows were lighted, they beckoned like potbellied stoves. The taxicabs rushed along the street. Amanda and Morton stood on the street corner with the wind lashing at them. They seemed like lovers. To the passer-by, to the casual passer-by intent on the cracks in the pavement, they looked like secret lovers, and perhaps they were.

“Do you think we can have lunch sometime?” Morton asked hesitantly.

She searched his face, open and sweet, he has such a sweet face, she thought. She reached up and touched his mouth with one ungloved hand.

“I don’t think so, Morton,” she said.

He smiled. He nodded. He seemed pleased somehow.

“Goodbye, Amanda,” he said. He took her hand. He would have been content with a handshake. She leaned close to him suddenly and kissed him on the cheek, and then awkwardly said, “I’ve got lipstick on you,” and rubbed at the stain with her gloved hand, and then squeezed his hand and said, “Goodbye, Morton,” and turned away from him quickly and walked across the avenue against a light, and knew that he watched her until she was out of sight, and told herself the tears in her eyes were caused by the wind.