Judy Bennett

Judy Bennett felt Peter Taylor’s eyes resting on her, and she involuntarily straightened her back and stared with a more thoughtful expression at Reynolds Houston, who was reading the Scripture lesson. She liked Peter Taylor, and thought that he admired her, but when she felt him studying her at length, as he was doing now, she went cold with terror, fearing that because he was a spiritual man, he might be able to see into her soul. And she did not want him seeing into her soul—she did not want anyone seeing into her soul. So she began energetically to envision the apparent facts of her life, as if summoning them up in her mind she could build a force field of pleasing, safe ideas that would protect her from Peter Taylor’s scrutiny.

She was Judith Bennett, married to Ronald Bennett, mother of John and Cynthia Bennett. Her husband was an intelligent and well-educated man who was much admired by the town. Ron was an independent contractor; he also spent a great deal of time in community endeavors. He served on boards, he headed fund-raising campaigns, he worked tirelessly for certain charity groups. At the present time he was involved in a huge and important task: he was building the Londonton Recreation Center. He had never been in charge of such a large construction before, but when the town raised the money for the youth center the managing committee had decided unanimously that Ron should be the contractor. They had even gone to the trouble of forming a private charitable organization so that they could appoint Ron without the hassle of putting the job out to bid, something they would have had to do if they had been a public organization. Ron was living up to their expectations. He worked day and night. He was obsessed with the center, devoted to it; he wanted it to be perfect. They were paying him well for the job, but financial payments could never equal the time, energy, and concern he had invested in the rec center. Judy did not mind his commitment to the project; she knew this would only enhance his position in the community.

Judy was also proud of her children. Cynthia, her eighteen-year-old daughter, was a freshman at Smith, and making straight A’s as she always had. She was not as physically attractive as her older brother, but she was smarter, she had her father’s determination and ability to work, and she would make a name for herself someday. And Johnny—well, she was so proud of him and so grateful to him that if she could take years off her life to give to Johnny, she would gladly do it. It seemed to Judy that she had never looked at her son once in all his life without amazement on her part: he was that beautiful. He was six feet two inches tall, with long legs, a long torso, broad shoulders, slim hips. He had perfect white teeth and enormous green eyes, thick blond hair that held glints of gold in the summer. Where had he come from, this beautiful man—out of her body? It was amazing. She was so proud of him. Ever since he was a toddler, girls had swarmed around him, and Judy had wondered how in the world he’d ever choose among them, there were so many, such an endless supply. She could imagine how eagerly all those girls offered themselves up to him once he was virile; she had been afraid that he’d make a mistake and get some little fool pregnant. But he had come through his youth into such a triumph Judy was still reeling with the pleasure of it: he had gotten himself engaged to Sarah Stafford, the daughter of the president of one of New England’s most prestigious colleges. If anyone judges me, Judy Bennett thought, let them judge me by my son. She carried him before her like a shield.

It did not occur to her to think at any moment in her life that people were only seeing her rather than judging her, for she was always judging other people, and she knew precisely how much her charitable actions were a cover for the lack of charity in her heart. Judy judged everyone, herself included, severely and without clemency. It was a habit that had come to her too early and forcefully in her life ever to be changed. Its twin was a devotion to appearances that was obsessive—and she knew it was obsessive and did not care. There were worse obsessions one could have; she knew that, too.

This Sunday morning Judy had awakened at six-thirty without the aid of an alarm clock. It was a deal she had with her body; she would say to herself before going to bed at night: “It is now ten-thirty. Wake up at six-thirty.” It always worked. She was pleased with her body’s complicity, and her silent waking enabled her to rise from the bed without the noise of an alarm clock waking everyone else in the house. She had wrapped her fleecy robe around her body and gone into the bathroom to brush her long brown hair; she tied it back with a yellow ribbon, knowing that it was a cheerful thing for her son and husband to see a yellow ribbon at breakfast time. Very quietly she had padded down the stairs of the enormous old farmhouse, and through the long hall into the kitchen.

Which room was the most beautiful in her house? She believed it would be hard for anyone to say. The front rooms were elegant and a bit formal, but the kitchen was in its own way the most luxurious. It was a large bright room with a fireplace at one end and many windows along the long left wall. Judy had decorated the kitchen in a colonial country style; instead of cabinets she had armoires and pine cupboards, and at the cooking end of the kitchen stood a long pine table. She worked at this table, mixing up cakes or kneading bread, and was still a part of whatever was going on at the other end of the room, where a multicolored braided rug lay before the fireplace and rocking chairs covered with patchwork cushions sat on either side. This morning Bruce, the black Lab, was stretched in the very middle of the rug; Rags and Flapper, the cats, each occupied a rocking chair. The scene was as symmetrical and cozy as if Judy had arranged it herself.

“Out you go,” she said to them all, opening the kitchen door to the side yard. “Go on now. You’ll get your breakfast in a while.” She did not especially care for the animals except as they decorated her life—she was well aware that people considered animal lovers to be kindhearted and warm-spirited; in short, morally superior to other human beings. Quite often, as Judy washed the floor of muddy tracks or vacuumed up the ubiquitous balls of hair, she thought that the animals’ charm did not quite make up for their bother. But she was committed to appearing to be an animal lover, and she did not want to change.

This morning the braided rug was still fairly clean, so Judy kicked off her slippers and laid her robe over an armchair and stood in the middle of the rug to do her exercises. At forty-five, her body was not voluptuous—it had never been that—but it was slim and firm and tight. It was neat. Like everything else in her life, this body of hers was kept up to her standards by discipline and energy. Even though the rest of her family were continually engaged in jogging or lifting weights or working out, and the house was often filled with the rhythmic thumps and thuds necessary to the maintenance of physical excellence, it would have discomposed her to have her husband and children know that she, too, exercised, because she needed to have them believe she was effortlessly perfect. So she waited until her husband and son had gone off to the office for the day, then locked herself in her bedroom on the second floor where no passerby could glance in, and went through her exercise routine to the accompaniment of radio music. But on Saturday and Sunday, when her family was at home all day, she found it necessary to run through her routine in quiet secrecy in the kitchen. If anyone woke and came downstairs, she could hear immediately and be in her robe and at the kitchen sink before they caught her. But this had never happened; her family liked to sleep late.

Now she bent frontward, touching her toes with her fingers, then stretched upward. For twenty minutes, she exercised her body to a routine she had established years ago. Her goal was not beauty. She did not want to have a body that drew attention; quite the opposite. She was determined to have a body so clean and trim that no one would think to notice it at all.

When she had finished her exercises, she sat for a moment, catching her breath, then slipped back into her robe and slippers. She would shower later, when the others were up. Now she opened the damper of the fireplace and laid kindling across the arms of the brass andirons and lit a fire. She went outside to gather up logs from the woodpile, and stood for a few moments to consider the day. It was cool and overcast, winter was coming: and on Christmas Day her son would marry the daughter of a college president.

After the fire was going, Judy went into the working part of the kitchen. She had several things to accomplish this morning before going to church, because they would be having guests today. Ron had recently finished building a home for a new young doctor in town, and it was his custom to invite the more prosperous of his clients to dinner. Judy never minded fixing these dinners or spending the time telling newcomers about the town. She was always glad to give them the names of the best plumbers, electricians, clothing stores, and supermarkets. She was more than pleased to linger over a homemade chocolate cake in the dining room, telling her guests about families in town who had children the same age or similar sports or hobbies. By doing this, she received exactly what she wanted: people’s admiration and gratitude. In fact, almost nothing pleased her more than the sight of a new young couple staring with envy at the sight of her copper pots, silver bowls, crystal chandeliers, casually packed bookcases, well-trodden antique rugs. They yearned immediately to live here, to be her: to have a life as graciously arranged as her own.

Today the couple coming to dinner were relatively young and as yet childless, so the entertaining would be easy. They would sit on the porch, if it did not rain, drinking cocktails, then have an early country dinner. There would be beef stew in wine, and Judy’s homemade whole-wheat bread, and applesauce Judy had made from apples fallen from trees in the old orchard, and a pie made from raspberries Judy had picked and frozen this summer and set out to thaw last night. Now she put a white paper filter in the glass coffeepot and set the water to boil. As she turned to the antique glass canister that held the flour, she remembered that Reynolds Houston had called yesterday afternoon and asked if he could stop by tonight. He said he would come around eight; the newcomers would have gone by then, and Reynolds would surely have had dinner. There would be enough berry pie left from the afternoon to offer him. She looked in the refrigerator: yes, she had remembered to buy enough whipping cream.

She measured flour into a red crockery bowl and began to mix in the butter she had let soften in the cupboard overnight. The room began to fill with an agreeable brightening warmth from the fireplace. She was aware of how the scene she made would look to anyone coming in: a slender woman with a yellow ribbon in her long brown hair, rolling out piecrust dough on an antique pine table while at one end of the room the fire crackled and nearby on the stove coffee brewed. How warm and attractive her room was, her family was, and perhaps this was why Reynolds Houston wanted to visit.

She did not know him well. He lived alone and kept to himself and was polite at cocktail and dinner parties, but he was not the sort of man Judy felt comfortable with. There was something chilling about such an immaculate man, Judy thought, and as she lay the dough in the pie pan and carefully crimped the edges into patterned scallops, she felt that old familiar monster, anxiety, stir and wake inside her, in the pit of her stomach, where it always lay in wait. She could not breathe. Why had Reynolds Houston asked to come tonight?

It could not be because of a simple desire for the company of his fellow man. He had almost nothing in common with Ron, except for the few committees they served on. Perhaps something was wrong. But what could possibly be wrong? Reynolds Houston had no connection with her life that she could think of. Still, the anxiety was now fully aroused within her, and greedy and powerful in its arousal. It bloomed inside her, like a malevolent cloud, filling the cavity of her stomach and chest relentlessly, pushing her breath away. There was no room left inside her for air. Something was wrong. She knew it, and could not get her breath. She gripped the edge of the pine table with both hands and shoved her chin down into her chest to stifle a scream. She gasped, trying to pull air into her lungs, but the anxiety had mushroomed within her and was billowing upward now, blocking her throat. She could not let her son and husband see her like this.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to herself. “Judy, it’s okay. Just give yourself a minute. You’ll be okay.”

It was only a matter of steps from the kitchen to the half-bath off the hall. She kept the Valium in the linen closet in here, with sanitary napkins and tampons and other things the men in her family would find, if not embarrassing, at least not of interest. She kept the Valium in an old Midol bottle next to a small brown prescription bottle which also contained Valium: if anyone cared to check, it seemed the Valium bottle was seldom opened. She took two blue pills out of the Midol bottle and swallowed them immediately—long ago she had taught herself to swallow pills without water. Oh, Valium, dear, sweet, blessed Valium, how she loved it. She knew the drug was a crutch, but the important thing to keep in mind was just that: that she knew she was using it in just that way. She was in control of it. She believed quite firmly that in this case self-knowledge provided sufficient exoneration. She did not believe she was addicted to Valium—she would only be truly addicted if she were not aware of her addiction. As long as she was aware of the frequency of usage, she had the usage under control.

Besides, she had been using the drug for years under the supervision of a highly qualified and respected psychiatrist. She saw him only once every few months now, but she had been going to him regularly for seven years. He knew almost everything about her there was to know, and he agreed with her that until both her children were grown and gone away, a moderate, controlled use of Valium was sensible and even necessary. He did not know what he did not need to know—that Judy also had a prescription for it from a local doctor for her bad back. And another source—an old school friend.

Even at eighteen, Judy had been sophisticated enough to realize the possibilities inherent in forming an alliance with such a shy, homely, lonely girl as Katrina Brouwer, who lived down the hall in Judy’s dorm at college. Judy had made it a point to be kind to Katrina, and if her friendship was premeditated, calculated, it was still the best Katrina was to get. Katrina went through life with an attitude that put people off—she was too modest and shy. When she graduated from college, she went back to the poor New England city she had come from, lived with her mother, and worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. So it was easy for her to call in prescriptions to the local pharmacy for a nonexistent patient, pick up the prescriptions herself, and mail them to Judy. Judy always reimbursed Katrina for the cost of the postage as well as the medicine, and she also remembered to send her gifts and cards on the appropriate holidays. In addition, Katrina had the pleasure of receiving the intimate confidences of another living human being.

“Oh, Katrina, you are so kind,” Judy would say during one of her phone calls. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. Londonton is so small, and I know all the doctors personally, and the pharmacists—well, if I took one Valium, everyone in town would know it and would wonder about my private life. It would be such a strain. This way, no one knows but you—and we are too close to judge one another.”

Perhaps Katrina would have judged Judy had she not been under the illusion that the Valium she supplied Judy was the only Valium Judy ever took. But what did it matter what Katrina didn’t know; in this case the illusion did everyone nothing but good. Katrina had a friend and the satisfaction of knowing she was helping a friend; and Judy had her Valium.

Judy had her Valium, and in the evenings she had her vodka-and-tonics or scotch-and-waters, and sometimes at lunch she had her wine. Still she did not think of herself as addicted. She never, ever lost control. The alcohol, like the drugs, helped her keep control. And in a life with a façade as flawless as Judy’s, control was essential.

And control was flowing back into her body, she could feel it in her blood. That blessed calm. She slumped against the bathroom wall, closing her eyes for a moment, taking deep breaths, shaking her head in wonder at herself: How could she continue to let such insignificant things upset her? How silly she was! Reynolds Houston was alone and winter was approaching, and he was probably only feeling that human need to reaffirm human contact against the coming darkness. She checked her face in the mirror: she looked normal, quite pretty and composed. She went back out to the kitchen to finish the pie.

Now, here she sat in the sanctuary of the church, studying Reynolds as he read the Scripture lesson. She had known she would see Reynolds at church, so she had fortified herself with another Valium before leaving the house this morning. By now the drug did not so much flow through her as appear to flow around her, screening her from anything that could cause pain. She felt wrapped around by a gauze as clear as air, as impenetrable as iron. She felt beautiful, in a sturdy and respectable way. It pleased her to think how she must appear to the other people around her: a slim, strong, perfect woman, with a family that anyone would envy. She knew that no one could have been a better mother, wife, woman. And what did it cost her? Nothing. She did not drink so much that her health was impaired, and although the gloomy newsmongers, looking for something sensational, occasionally claimed that Valium might cause cancer, she knew better than to take them seriously. If Valium were harmful to human beings, why, it would be taken off the market. No one else in the world knew that she indulged in her helpful little habits, and she looked upon the drugs with gratitude. They helped her make her life pretty, and what could possibly be wrong with that? Life was difficult; life was hard; the world needed people like Judy to move through it with serenity and generosity and grace. Actually, she could think of any number of people in this very church who would do well to start improving their lives by taking nature into their own hands.

If she turned her head ever so slightly to the left or right, she could see someone who was anxious, disorganized, not pretty, someone whose spirit was cramped by the hardships of life; it showed in the person’s face. Such a person would be much better off for the use of drugs, and would certainly be more presentable.

For example, Leigh Findly. Sometimes it wrenched Judy’s heart to see Leigh come into the church with her daughter. Judy felt no special sympathy for Leigh—as far as Judy could see, Leigh was a silly woman who had managed to get herself divorced from a charming and intelligent man. But Leigh considered herself an artist, or so the story went, or as much of the story as Judy had been told by mutual acquaintances. Leigh considered herself an artist, and her husband had been too demanding, expecting her to do such monumental tasks as cooking regular meals and doing the laundry, so she had asked him to share the housework, and naturally he had gotten a divorce. After all, he worked at a real job and brought home the money and while some people might call the pots Leigh made valuable, they didn’t, as far as Judy knew, bring in real money. Judy felt sorry for the husband—or had felt sorry for him; it had all happened years ago. He had quickly remarried and moved away. She felt even sorrier for the child, an eighteen-year-old girl named Mandy.

In the first place, Mandy—what a name! Judy had read in the church directory that Mandy’s real name was Amanda, and she wondered why on earth Leigh didn’t call her daughter that instead of using such a tacky nickname which conjured up images of servant girls. Mandy was a pretty girl, with long, thick blond hair that Judy would have loved to see put up in a classy French twist. But from the looks of it, Leigh Findly never reminded her daughter to put her hair up, or even to comb it. How many times they had come rushing into the church at the last minute, their clothes aflutter, Leigh’s face uncomposed, her eyes darting here and there, looking for a place to sit, and then breaking into a grin when an usher approached to seat them. What a way to enter church! Then Leigh and Mandy would sit, whispering and grinning and shuffling, taking off their coats or sweaters and turning to the right page in the hymnal, or looking for a tissue in Leigh’s purse—whatever they were doing, they did it in such an obvious way, as if they were a pair of birds settling into a nest. Judy always studied Mandy and owned that the girl did not look unhappy. But she did look unkempt, and that was never necessary. Perhaps Leigh thought that wearing such shabby clothes gave her an artistic air, but that was no reason to let her daughter dress that way. Sometimes when Mandy entered the church in sneakers of all things, or a sweater that was missing a button, Judy wanted to rush to the girl, snatch her from her mother’s side, close Mandy up in a protective embrace, and say, “It’s all right. I’ll take care of you. I know how you’re suffering!” For if Judy could know anything, it was how a teenage girl could suffer.

But this line of thinking was courting disaster, and Judy looked away from Leigh Findly’s obvious fluffy head. It would not do to think of mothers and daughters today. She needed the tranquilizing sight of familiar, like-minded people whose lives reaffirmed her own.

Discreetly, so that she would not insult Reynolds by not appearing to attend to his reading, she gazed around at the heads in front of her, searching for consolation. The heads that were white or gray or bald she dismissed—nice enough people, but old: they did not count.

The Vandersons kept her attention for some time; she studied Mrs. Vanderson especially, and was torn between admiration and disgust. They were such snobs, the Vandersons, true old-New-England-family snobs, the worst kind. Jake Vanderson was president of a paper-manufacturing company that had been in his family for generations; as president he really worked very little. He didn’t need to work, because the wealth that had been handed down to him by his ancestors was more than any one family could spend in a lifetime. He spent his time traveling—“for the company”—to places such as Bermuda and St. Tropez and Geneva, and his wife Lillian accompanied him. When they were in Londonton for any length of time, Lillian headed up charity committees and gave elaborate parties for their friends. Everyone talked about these parties—they were so clever and lavish. Judy and Ron had never been invited to one of these parties, and this was a source of irritation and even grief in Judy’s life. Oh, the Bennetts had been in the Vandersons’ house, but only for the charity parties—and those did not count socially. It was to one of the frivolous theme parties—the disco party, the F. Scott Fitzgerald party, the Halloween masquerade party—that Judy wanted to be invited; she didn’t hope to be included in one of the intimate little dinner parties. Lillian Vanderson always greeted Judy and Ron with perfect friendliness: “It’s so nice to see you,” she would say, “and how is that handsome son of yours these days?” But she never invited the Bennetts to any of her parties—and Lillian and Jake had never attended any of the Bennetts’ parties in spite of Judy’s consistent invitations. The Vandersons’ excuses were always impeccable and given with the utmost kindness, but Judy would still take their refusals as yet another private defeat. What were they doing wrong? she wondered. Sometimes she dreamed of asking: Why don’t you like us? Why won’t you include us? What can we do? Every time she heard from another couple about one of the Vandersons’ parties, her mouth went sour with bitterness. Who did they think they were, to snub the Bennetts? She and Ron had gone to the right schools, they had enough money, they wore the right clothes, they sent their children to the right schools, they attended the right church and gave to the right charities. They ran with the right social set, shopped at the right stores, read the right magazines and newspapers, voted for the right party. They were attractive, affluent, pleasant, genial, responsible, and well-liked members of the community. Why did the Vandersons leave them out?

Well, Judy thought, with a flash of inspiration that made her nearly explode with laughter, well, she thought with a pleasure of discovery and justification so violent she felt a shiver pass through her body: Well! She would be sure that the Vandersons were not invited to the Wedding!

This could prove tricky—for undoubtedly Sarah’s parents were acquaintances, if not friends, of the Vandersons. Since Jake Vanderson was an alumnus of the college, he always donated a satisfactory sum to the college each year. But Judy would manage it somehow. She would ask to help mail the invitations, and then lose the one to the Vandersons. Or she could ask the Staffords not to invite the Vandersons—although that would take a lot of thought in order to come up with a proper excuse. Still, she would manage it, and the idea of excluding this family who rankled in her heart provided her with the greatest satisfaction she had experienced in days.

Now Judy felt benevolent, and as her gaze slid away from the backs of the Vandersons, she saw Pam Moyer and thought: I must do something nice for Pam. Pam and Gary Moyer were old, close friends of Ron and Judy’s; they had known one another for almost twenty years. Pam and Gary had three children, and Judy and Pam had seen each other through diapers and teething and Little League and ballet lessons and school trips and legs broken while skiing and the agony of waiting for acceptance into the right college. They had so much in common. The men also had a lot in common: Gary had started his law practice the same year Ron had opened up his own contracting business. They weren’t as close as Pam and Judy—men never were—but they played tennis regularly once a week, and were comfortable enough with each other so that the two families had even taken vacations together. They had spent Christmas Day dinners together; the Bennetts and the Moyers were an integral part of one another’s lives.

Recently it had seemed to Judy that Pam was overdoing it with her community service and political work: Pam was becoming so serious, so involved. Judy appreciated the energy Pam was dedicating to the various social issues in the world, but wished that Pam could be a little lighter—her earnestness was getting to be a bore. It must certainly be hard on Gary, Judy thought, to have someone so dreary around; it couldn’t be good for the marriage. Judy wondered if she should speak to Pam about this, out of friendship. But no, probably she shouldn’t, for Pam had been prickly lately, and it seemed whenever they bumped into each other in the grocery store or post office, Judy could see a mote of anger floating like an unwanted shard of light in Pam’s dark brown eyes. Why should Pam be angry with her, though; what had Judy possibly done?

Judy smiled: of course, Pam was undoubtedly jealous of the marriage between Johnny and the Stafford girl. If only she would just come right on out with it and admit it. It would be such a relief to both of them. Pam’s children were all doing well. One was in law school, one was in med school, and the youngest boy was finishing his senior year at Londonton High School. Still, none of the Moyers’ children’s accomplishments could come close to equaling John’s marriage to the daughter of the president of one of New England’s finest colleges. Judy could understand Pam’s jealousy—she would certainly feel exactly the same way if she were in Pam’s shoes. Yet she thought that Pam was being rather silly about it. She ought to be grateful that her three children were alive, healthy, and happy. Not everyone could marry the child of a college president. It would be just so much nicer if Pam would go ahead and admit how she felt. But she could not think how to approach the subject gracefully without somehow further injuring Pam. She would have to be oblique.

She would send Pam flowers. Or buy her a book—she had seen a new coffee table sort of book on needlepoint in the local bookstore. She could get that for Pam. In the past she and Pam had often surprised each other with just such gifts, spontaneously thanking the other for her friendship, or simply giving the other woman some one thing that she would want. Women tended to do that sort of thing more than men, Judy had discovered; men just didn’t think that way. She and Pam were lucky to have each other.

She especially was lucky, Judy thought, and as she carefully glanced around the church, looking at the other people, she smiled a small secret smile to herself: for she felt superior to every person there. Just in her line of vision, on the side, sat Suzanna Blair, who hadn’t been able to keep her husband and was now struggling along trying to raise two small children herself. Judy pitied Suzanna, but couldn’t develop very much interest in the woman, for Suzanna was younger, and didn’t have much money, didn’t run with Judy’s group, would never be of any use to Judy. In front of Suzanna sat Jean and Harry Pratt—what a time they had had of it, when Harry lost his executive position at the mill. It had been so embarrassing for everyone; no one knew what to say. One couldn’t say, “I’m so sorry that you’re suddenly poor.” It wasn’t the same in Londonton as in other less wealthy towns; wives couldn’t rush over to the Pratts’ house with casseroles and cakes, and no one could pass the hat to help them make it through a month’s mortgage. Instead, everyone in town had simply left the Pratts alone, which seemed the kindest thing to do. To his credit, Harry had rallied, and now was a manager of one of the local clothing stores. Once more the Pratts were a central part of the Londonton social life. But what a strain they had caused the community for a while!

Near the Pratts sat Liza Howard, who was just a whore. Judy couldn’t imagine why she was allowed in church; everyone knew she had the morals of an alley cat. Judy made it a point to snub her, cut her dead, at every occasion. Liza was beautiful, that was a simple fact, but it still was a puzzle to Judy that Liza could attract men so easily. Only a fool would want to get involved with someone who was so cheap.

Judy felt valuable and smug by contrast. Here she sat in the sanctuary of the church, with her handsome husband on one side and her handsome son on the other. She was wearing a light gray houndstooth-check suit with a melon-colored silk shirt and gray suede pumps. Her hair hung in a rich, competent, braided rope down her back. Once, years ago, a little old lady named Dotty Dinkman had accosted Judy after church. Laying her wrinkled hand on Judy’s arm, she had said, “Dear, I just want to tell you what beautiful hair you have. I sat staring at your nice braid all through the sermon, and it gave me the greatest pleasure—your hair is such a pretty color, and that braid is so—well—satisfying! I hope I’m not embarrassing you by telling you this.” But Judy was not embarrassed, and she thanked Dotty Dinkman with real gratitude. That was just the sort of remark that Judy rearranged her life by, and since that day she had not entered the church without that agreeable memory returning to her mind. She, too, found the neat interweaving of substance greatly satisfying; and she found herself fancying from time to time what a pleasure it must be to God, who could look down with His magical eye to see the way the lives of the people of this town interwove with one another in intricate and congenial designs.

Everyone had problems, yet life was good. Judy was devoted to the idea of a good life, and determined to have one. No one could ever say that she did not work hard to bring this about. And she liked to work at it, at life; she was not afraid of work. If only fear were not such an intimate part of her life. If only God would speak to her with the same sweeping authority that Carlos Aranguren had.

Carlos Aranguren taught French and Spanish at the local college; his wife taught German. They were a marvelous couple, always in demand for parties and occasions because they were so majestically entertaining. Now, in church, they sat slightly out of Judy’s sight; she would have to turn her head rudely in order to see that pair of elegant heads: the serenely blond Ursula, the dramatically brunet Carlos. They were certainly the most glamorous couple at the college, if not in the entire town. They had reached Ron and Judy’s age without ever having children, and this did not seem to be an absence in their lives—they were always traveling here and there, and adding on unusual sections to their house, and having dinner parties replete with exotic foods, and they went about in such romantic clothes: tunics, caftans, ponchos, capes. Still they were respectable—no one taught at the college who was not respectable—and while this couple more than any other held the promise of doing something adventurous, outside the social pale, they had as yet done nothing outrageous. They were the town’s darlings consistently whetting the social appetite for scandal, and as consistently keeping just within the bounds of custom. It was quite a trick, and Judy imagined that the Arangurens gave the energy to this that they would have had to give to raising children. Judy was slightly leery of the couple, and knew it, as if she were a house cat occasionally required to occupy the same territory as a pair of flamingos. Yet Carlos had once said something to her that had touched her deeply.

It had been almost exactly a year ago, around Halloween, that time of year when night fell early and the woods around Judy’s house were full of rustling and she wished her children were still at home, young enough to dress up in costumes which established the idea of ghosts and witches as childish human fancies. The Sloans had had a dinner party, a casual buffet affair, with hot chili and cornbread and green salad and beer. The Sloans’ house was a modern, architect-designed oddity with a family room floored with red tiles and a black metal fireplace in the center encircled by a sort of dry moat. This was called “the conversation pit” and everyone exclaimed in admiration of it, but Judy thought it looked like a setup in a bad restaurant. And in spite of the thick red carpet that covered the steps down into it, she found it terribly uncomfortable to sit there. But Nina Sloan was a good hostess, and she placed fruits and little chocolate cakes and trays with a variety of unusual liqueurs at the four sections of the pit that were left uncarpeted to serve as tables. Her guests arranged themselves around the blazing fire, seeming happy enough. Everyone found themselves, of necessity, divided into intimate groups—it was difficult to hear someone on the other side of the fire, and almost impossible to see anyone without kneeling uncomfortably so as to peer above the flames but below the vast cast-iron hood.

Judy found herself seated next to Carlos, and his proximity just slightly alarmed her. She wondered what on earth they would find to talk about. She was aware of how she must look to him: the All-American Housewife in her long plaid skirt, Shetland sweater, and gold chains. Few people discomfited her as Carlos did. He was so brazenly masculine—and he was such a flirt! Tonight he was wearing—of all things—a floor-length caftan which a student from South Africa had given him. It was quite beautiful, a silky deep blue with the neck and cuffs and hem embroidered in gold. Most men would have looked like fools in it, but Carlos wore it with ease. In fact, it suited him, and he knew it. He was tall, with a burnished look to his skin, and thick black hair, startling black eyes. He was vain, careful of his appearance, but his masculinity had never been called into question—he was such a womanizer.

“Oh, my darling,” he would say to whatever woman happened to be near, “I haven’t seen you for so long. Let me hold your hand. How delicious you smell. That scent reminds me of the white flowers that bloomed outside my bedroom when I was a boy in Spain.”

In spite of all his years in the United States, he still spoke with a Spanish accent, which added the thrill of foreign possibilities to his words. Men were never angered to hear Carlos romancing their wives, for Carlos was so democratic in his compliments, and so obvious. No woman at any party escaped his extravagant Spanish praise, and he did love women so much that he never found one he could not somehow admire. His blond German wife went about her own conversations quite naturally, with no more sign of jealousy than if her husband had been playing a game of tennis. She was beautiful and clever and did not need to worry.

It had been a long time since Judy had seen Carlos, however, and as she attempted to arrange herself on the carpeted steps around the fireplace, she felt that quick flash of fear she always felt when privately encountering Carlos: what if he could not think of anything about her to praise? But Carlos immediately took up her long braid of hair and held it against his face with such tenderness that it almost seemed to become as sentient as a limb of her body.

“Ah, your beautiful hair, Judith,” he said to her. “So thick, so rich. It must be so long that unbraided it would cover your breasts.”

“Oh, Carlos.” Judy laughed—which was usually the most she could muster when he went on like this.

As Carlos spoke, he ran his hand gently along Judy’s face and down her thick braid, which fortunately had fallen down her back. Carlos’ hand slid from the end of her braid to her sweater-covered lower back, and rested there a moment.

Judy shivered. She really did not like to be touched like this. She was always delighted to receive compliments from Carlos, because he managed to compliment her on something she was in fact proud of. But tonight his words—his hands—bordered on being openly sexual, and it annoyed her. If she thought of sex at all, she saw it as a sort of personal Loch Ness monster, and she did not understand why grown ups kept trying to entice the creature up from the murky depths when after all these years they should have finally placated and subdued it. She had worked this out a long time ago with her psychiatrist, and she knew that different people had different sexual needs at different times. Men were more demanding than women. She did not mind having sex with Ron once or twice a week, because it provided relief for him. She imagined it did for him more or less what Valium did for her. Ron was a sensitive and considerate lover. He did not expect Judy to throw herself about as if she were a teenager in the throes of a hormonal assault. They had come to an implicit, sensible arrangement: he would not pester her, and she would not ignore him. She did not think they were the only couple who had worked out their marriage this way. She did not like it when Carlos slipped from the verbal into the tactile, and she found the sensations he teased up to the surface of her skin irritating. He might as well have sat on her back and tickled her; it was the same sort of thing. She had outgrown all that.

But Carlos removed his hand before she could speak, and studied her for a moment in silence. Then he took her right hand in both of his.

Oh, no, not more of the same, Judy thought, and said aloud, “What courses are you teaching this semester, Carlos?”

But he did not answer her question. He spoke as if he hadn’t heard. “I am going to read your palm,” he said.

“Well!” Judy exclaimed, startled. “Can you actually do it? I didn’t know you were so talented. Oh, yes, of course, now I remember—you did it last spring at the fair for the hospital. But I thought it was all a joke.”

“Not at all,” Carlos said. “You would be amazed at all the talents I possess.” He paused to let the innuendo settle, then went on. “But it is true, I can read palms. I have been trained, I have studied, and it is in my blood from Gypsy ancestors.”

“That’s so interesting, Carlos, but you know I’d really rather not—” Judy tried subtly to withdraw her hand from his.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, smiling, not releasing her hand. “Are you afraid that I’ll reveal some secret?”

“Of course not!” Judy declared. She was trapped. She could not bear to let him think she had anything to hide, and she didn’t really believe in what he was doing.

“Good,” Carlos said. “Then I will read your palm. The question is—how honest shall I be?”

Judy smiled. “Be perfectly honest, Carlos, of course.”

Carlos turned her hand slowly in his, studying it all around. Then, with a little flourish, he took the four fingers and laid them back flat in his right hand, exposing her palm with an air so triumphant that Judy quickly glanced at her hand as if expecting to see something amazing there. But it was only her familiar palm, crosshatched with two sets of parallel lines that ran like avenues, one horizontally, one diagonally, across it. Between one avenue and her thumb a smaller and more intricate network of lines lay; it all made her think of the map of a very small suburb.

“Ah, yes,” Carlos said. “I see. You have a strong, good life line, and you are excellent at handling money. But—this is very interesting. You have an astonishing private life. You have secrets, hidden deep within you. There are obvious things here, too—you are generous, kind, loving, immensely capable—”

“Is Carlos reading your hand?” It was Nina Sloan, calling to Judy from the other side of the fireplace. Without waiting for Judy’s reply she turned to the couple sitting near her and said, laughing, “That Carlos. He can find more ways to compliment a woman than there are stars in the sky!”

Nina’s comment distracted Judy, and for the next few minutes she listened with impatience as Carlos peered into what she suddenly felt to be an embarrassingly ordinary hand. He was saying pleasant enough things—but then he had known her for years now, and there was nothing he was telling her that he hadn’t already discovered by simply living in the same town with her. She almost snatched her hand back, but then he spoke with sudden authority, almost sharply.

“Judy. Listen to me. You think I am a charlatan, I know. But I see something here I want to tell you. Something you should know.”

Judy glanced around quickly to be certain that no one else was listening. “Well, what?” she asked, hoping by her smile to let Carlos know just what a joke she thought all this was.

“I am only an amateur at this, and yet the lines are so clear. They show that something happened to you when you were a child. I can’t see what. Perhaps a death, an accident, a siege of misery. But something happened to you before you were eighteen, and nothing that bad will ever happen to you again in your life.”

“Carlos, are you sure?” Judy cried. She was completely entranced. She stared in surprise at her hand, feeling gratitude. “Please tell me all that again.”

Carlos repeated it: something terrible had happened to her when she was young; nothing that bad would ever happen to her again.

“God, how I wish you had told me this years ago!” she whispered, then sat back quietly for a moment, stunned. All the nights she had spent worrying about her children—their illnesses when they were small, their lateness when they were teenagers riding in other teenagers’ cars—and yet, here they both were, safe and sound. If only she had known! When she thought about it, she supposed it was not too much to expect from Fate, because something terrible had happened to her as a child.

“You look rattled, Judy,” said another guest, a woman. “Has Carlos struck a nerve?”

“No, no,” Judy said, moving from the internal to the social with only a slight shiver at the change. “It’s just that Carlos really seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Oh, how exciting! Carlos, come share your talents—come read my palm.”

And Carlos left Judy’s side. But Judy didn’t mind, she had suddenly become very tired. She made the effort to talk politely with the other guests, but over and over in her mind she was thinking: Oh, dear Lord, what if Carlos is right? What a relief it would be to live out her life, knowing that the worst had already happened!

After that night, Judy had seen Carlos read other people’s hands at parties, but she had avoided him. She was aware that he was more entertainer than seer, and she did not want to be disillusioned by having him read her hand again only to give her a completely different interpretation of what he had seen, or claimed to have seen.

Judy knew that very few people have perfectly happy childhoods, but there are degrees of happiness and misery, so that looking back, a person can say: Well, after all, I was fortunate.

When Judy summed up her childhood, she thought: Well, after all, I did not die of misery, and it did test my mettle and strengthen my character and show me what is important in life.

Money was what was important in life. Money was the most important thing. If she could have changed anything, she would have chosen to lose her father or her mother or her brother rather than to lose what her family had so stupidly, stupidly lost—their money.

When she had been a little girl, there had been plenty of money, and all the nice things that it could buy: a canopy bed for her room, candy after school for her and her brother, bikes and roller skates, trips to the ocean, Easter outfits complete with white gloves and white patent-leather shoes. All of Judy’s friends and Judy’s parents’ friends had more or less the same amount of money, and it seemed in fact that everyone in their small New England town had the same amount of money, so for Judy as a child, life spread around her like the prosperous green fields which surrounded the town: as far as her eye could see, abundance was the rule.

When she was ten, Judy had her first epiphany. She sat in church, not listening to the minister (he droned; he was boring). Instead, she moved her wrist in and out of the block of sunshine that fell across her lap so she could see the way her silver (real sterling silver) charm bracelet caught the light. And she realized why people came to church. It couldn’t be because they wanted to hear the minister’s sermon—he really was often boring! It was to see other people, to show off new clothes, to say thank you to God. She was not an especially spiritual child, but she did always remember to say thank you to God.

So it seemed a personal slap in the face by God when Judy’s family lost their money. It was even worse because they lost their money because they followed their Christian beliefs. What fools they had been, Judy thought, what fools! And she could never forgive them for their stupidity or God for His treachery.

After her thirteenth birthday, life began to unravel with the determined rhythm of a pavané. Each step her parents took moved them further along the ritual of their undoing. They went bankrupt with unswerving grace.

“Did you have a chance to ask Rupert about that bill?” Judy’s mother would ask Judy’s father as they drove home from church.

“I saw him, but I didn’t mention the money,” Judy’s father would reply. “I don’t suppose church is the proper place to discuss business.”

“No, you’re right,” Judy’s mother would agree, and then there would be a silence between the two grown-ups that was so powerful and sad that Judy and her brother, sitting in the backseat of the car, felt it chill their skins like rain.

Later that year, Judy became aware that her parents spent less and less time entertaining people and going out with friends and more and more time sitting together in the living room, talking in low voices. The grown-ups did not like the children to hear their conversations, but of course Judy eavesdropped, as did her older brother; and they realized that a mysterious sorrow was taking over their family and they needed to know the cause.

The cause was simple and crass. Their father owned a large wallpaper and paint store, the only one in their small town. Individuals came to the store to buy three rolls of this or a quart of that, but most of the business was with contractors doing major jobs for building developers. These men were her father’s friends; some even attended the same church. So when they asked for credit on their purchases, it seemed only right to give it to them, and then long-term credit, because of extenuating circumstances.… Judy was too young to understand it all, and her parents did not think to call the children into the living room to explain it to them. But what developed over the course of the year was that Judy’s father continued to give the men their wallpaper and paint in spite of the fact that these men did not pay him; and he continued to pay the conglomerates from which he ordered the paint and wallpaper, in spite of the fact that he had to take it out of his own pocket, because he believed that his friends would pay him back when they could. But they did not pay him back. Some eventually took bankruptcy, some left town, and Judy’s father finally had to declare bankruptcy, too.

Bankruptcy. The ugliest of words. Judy heard the word over and over again as she listened at the living-room door, which by this time was always closed when her parents were in there, as if they wanted to protect the rest of the house from a growing, pervasive contamination. Judy heard this ugly word, bankruptcy, and could envision it exactly: the rupturing of their lives, a mortal wound, a horrid tear that let all the money that made their lives beautiful spill out into the void, leaving them empty and desolate. Judy thought she would rather be dead than so suddenly poor.

And the worst of it was that her parents had been such fools about it, such saps! She would never, ever, forgive them for their irresponsible set of values. They actually tried to live a life that conformed to the teachings of the Bible!

Hiding at the crack in the living-room door, Judy would hear her mother speak: “Listen, Will, I’ve found the passage the minister read in church this morning.

“ ‘Jesus said unto him, if thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

“ ‘Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

“ ‘And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ ”

“But Mr. Watson is not POOR!” Judy would want to scream through the door. “Why can’t you see that? You’re not helping a poor man, you’re helping a rich man, and you’re hurting your own family!”

But there was nothing she could do. She was only thirteen, and it was all so complicated, and it all happened so fast. In one year she witnessed a regular flowing away of all she loved, while her parents cried gently and reread the parable of the Eye of the Needle. Then, with a fluid continuity, things began to disappear from their lives: the silver, antiques, and finally the house were all sold. The vacations disappeared—and then so did the work.

Judy’s father started off optimistically enough each day of that long bruised time. As she dressed for school, she would hear him whistling, and see him, clean and shaved and dapper, going out the front door. But when she returned from school in the afternoons, she would find her father lying on the living-room sofa, dressed in old slacks and a sweater, a newspaper hiding his face; he had sagged into the sofa with all the heavy passivity of a bum on a park bench.

Judy could no longer bring friends home. And she was no longer invited to the homes of former friends. She had moved, away from the gracious section of town where her life had begun, and she was learning with cruel sharpness that life was not a stretch of prosperous pastures for everyone. Her friends were not mean to her. They did not taunt her. They just forgot her. They would swish by her in the halls at school, in their full skirts with cancan petticoats trimmed in matching material, and they would hardly take time to flash a quick smile and say hello. Judy felt stranded, estranged, diseased. She did not like the people her age in her new neighborhood; she had nothing in common with them, coming from such dissimilar backgrounds. Generally the kids in her new neighborhood were the dummies, the wise guys in her class. As the years went by, those kids grew tough and insolent and bold, fortified by their own company; they were the ones who taunted Judy. As the months passed and she showed no sign of wanting to become one of them, the taunts changed in tone. At first they only called her “snob” and “creep,” but she quickly gained the labels “bitch” and “whore.” She was smart enough to know that these taunts did not mean they thought she was actually a whore, but simply that they hated her, and were discomfited by having her intrude into their lives. Still, that her own superiority was the only refuge she had in life was a cold knowledge.

In the beginning, when the drastic changes in her family’s life had just begun, Judy had been naïve enough to assume that God would reach down an invisible remunerative hand and reward her parents for living a truly Christian life. But this did not happen. In fact, it seemed that almost the reverse happened, for at church the people who had greeted Judy’s family with such warmth now greeted them with condescension. Judy learned that even in church there was one cardinal rule: A rich man is loved more than a poor man. A church, after all, is a business, too. Not one person in the church thought that Judy’s father had been virtuous and kind; they all thought he had been a fool, or so it seemed from their treatment of him. Friends flowed away from the family’s life as if they were being carried away on the current of rapidly vanishing money.

Judy’s mother got a job as a secretary. Judy’s father spent more time each day lying on the living-room sofa. Soon the very lineaments of the furniture in that room seemed tainted and shaped by despair. Judy had to do the dishes, ironing, and cleaning. There was no longer someone to do the housecleaning, and her mother, who worked all day, could not do it herself. Her father, being a man, did not do such things. So it all fell to Judy. Her brother, who was three years older than she, was also exempt from household chores due to masculinity, so he filled his time by getting into trouble. He was finally sent away to boarding school for his last two years of high school; and though it was Judy’s mother’s engagement ring that paid for most of that particular cost, it drained their pallid financial life even more. There was nothing left for Judy at all.

Finally this dark period had ended. Judy’s father got a job with a large chain of paint companies, and although he had to travel quite often, still it was a profitable job. Judy’s mother continued to work as a secretary, and by the time Judy was eighteen, they were able to send her to a decent state university. The pleasure of knowing she could attend a university was offset by the realization that all her friends from her former neighborhood were going off to small private colleges. So she felt she had been cast out and away forever: her parents would never be able to earn enough money to buy away the misery she had learned.

Religion, Judy decided, was nonsense, and those who practiced it were fools. She realized that her parents had gained some perverse satisfaction from their struggles, but all their patient virtue could not ease the pain, or buy her a dress to wear to the Senior Prom—although she was not asked to her Senior Prom, because by her senior year, Judy lived almost in complete isolation. She felt scorned by half the school, and she scorned the other half. She spent hours in libraries, poring over ladies’ and society magazines; she was determined not to let poverty affect her taste. She worked hard in school, and although she was not innately brighter than others, her hard work paid off. Gradually, a plan for her life took shape. She knew she had to defend herself. The religious and financial crisis that had beset her family proved only one thing: money was all-important. She felt betrayed by her parents; she turned her back on them with cold finality. For the rest of her life she saw them as she felt they were: cruel fools.

This hurt. The worst thing that can happen to a person, the most scarring knowledge, Judy came to believe, is to realize that one’s parents are fools.

At first there were fights.

“Judy,” her mother would say, “it’s time for church. You aren’t even dressed.”

“I’m not going.”

“Oh, Judy—”

“Why should I go to church? How can you expect me to go to church? How can you and Dad bear to go? How can you stand to go to church and see Mr. Lawton driving up in his brand-new Cadillac, when he cheated you out of so much money that we lost our nice house? How can you keep from standing up in church and screaming? Half the people in that church are hypocrites! They’re thieves! Liars! How can you go to a church that lets people like that in? How can the church let people like that enter the doors?”

Judy’s mother, shaking her head, would sink onto a chair. “Judy,” she would say, when Judy had calmed down enough to listen, “you’ve got it all wrong. Where did you ever get the idea that church was for good people? Haven’t you been paying attention? Church is for all people—and we’re all hypocrites and sinners, Judy, every one of us. No person on earth is perfect, and we all know it in our heart of hearts. Church is the place where we are forgiven, where we are reminded of what we are striving to attain. Heavens, darling, if sinners and hypocrites weren’t allowed in church, the churches all over the world would be empty!”

“But, Mother,” Judy would cry, her fists clenched in anger, “how can you stand to be in church, in that church, wearing your old shabby coat, while Mr. Lawton’s wife wears a brand-new fur coat? She’s wearing a fur coat, and Mr. Lawton said he was in debt, and we lost our house. I don’t understand how you can be in the same room with that man!”

“Judy, in the Bible, Jesus says to forgive the brother who sinned against you seventy times seven. We must forgive others just as we expect God to forgive us. We—”

“Oh, stop it!” Judy would scream, and would cover her ears and throw herself on the bed, knowing she was acting like a much younger child. “That thief Lawton first cheated you, and now he snubs you, and you quote the stupid Bible! Well, don’t talk to me about it anymore, because I don’t want to hear it. It’s all a bunch of rubbish made up to help the rich keep power over gullible people like you and Dad!”

“Judy,” her mother said, “I’m worried about you. I think you are losing your religion.”

This made Judy laugh. “Oh, Mother,” she said. “No. I’m not losing religion. Religion is losing me!”

The worst fights happened at the beginning of Judy’s senior year, when she was terrified that she wouldn’t be accepted into a university. By then she had convinced her parents that she would not go to church, and they went off on Sunday mornings by themselves, after softly tapping on her bedroom door to say that they were on their way and would be home around noon. Judy would wait until their car had pulled out of the driveway and disappeared. Then she would slip out of bed and go into the kitchen and make herself breakfast. With her brother away at boarding school and her parents off at church, Judy found herself alone in the house for a definite period of time. Sunday mornings, she discovered, were luxurious. What fools people were to give up this lazy stretch of time to sit with hypocrites and thieves in buildings built to the glory of a God that didn’t exist. After eating her breakfast, Judy would go back to bed, and read romantic novels or magazines. If there was any time during her senior year when she could rely on being happy, it was on Sunday mornings when she didn’t have to go to church.

One Sunday her mother came home, came into her bedroom, and sat on the edge of her bed, as she did so often.

“I want to read you the parable that the minister talked about in church today,” she began. She had the black family Bible in her hand.

But Judy had been looking at the new spring issue of Mademoiselle, and as she studied it, she had realized that she wouldn’t be able to afford those dresses, espadrilles, clever costume jewelry, purses, lipsticks, eye shadow, and perfumes. Her spring wardrobe would come from Black’s basement, where the sale rack was. Her mother would pull out a dank ruffled shirt and suggest that she buy if for both of them to wear, herself for work and Judy for dress.

And so Judy screamed, “Goddamn you and your goddamned parables and the goddamned Bible and stupid fucking lying goddamned God!” She wrenched the Bible from her mother’s hand and threw it across the room; it smacked into the wall and thudded to the floor. “I do not believe in God!” she yelled, shaking with rage. “I do not believe in the Bible! And I do not believe in you!”

Judy’s mother had only sighed, “Oh, my poor little Judy,” and she rose, picked up the Bible, and walked out of the room. After that, there were no more invitations to church, and no more discussions about religion. Judy found a job at an ice-cream parlor and worked there all day Saturday and Sunday and evenings after school. She lived out her senior year in a rapture of frugality, saving all the money she made from her job to buy books and clothes for her new university life. What did her high school matter, she decided, or the creeps she saw there—soon it would all be behind her.

At the end of her senior year in high school, the fights with her parents stopped after one final confrontation. The minister of the church had called Judy to ask if he could meet privately with her, but she had been adamant in her refusal. That evening, both her parents had questioned her over dinner.

“There’s no reason for me to talk to Reverend Thompson,” Judy had said. “I do not believe in God or in the Church, and frankly, the whole subject bores me to tears. I’m sick of discussing it.”

“You’re getting arrogant, young lady,” her father said. “It doesn’t become you.”

“Poverty doesn’t become me, either,” Judy replied.

“Judy,” her mother intervened, “how can we explain it to you? You are such a child. When you are grown up, perhaps you’ll understand how necessary it is to live by your chosen values. Otherwise, life is meaningless.”

“Your precious values ruined my life,” Judy said.

Judy’s mother stared at her for a while, then lifted both hands gently, palms open to Judy, as if holding out an invisible gift. “I think when you have children of your own, you’ll discover that life doesn’t always turn out the way you intend for it to. You can’t control everything, and so you do your best to control your own actions. Even your own children don’t turn out as you intend them to.” She smiled at Judy, her gentle Christian smile that both moved and infuriated her daughter. It was the closest she would come to stating that she was just as dissatisfied with her daughter as her daughter was with her.

The fights ended. A cold peace reigned. There began to be more money in the family. For her graduation present, and as a sort of unadmitted apology, her parents gave Judy a car. It was a used, dented, clunker of a car, but it was a car, and it made Judy’s life much easier. Still, her harsh judgment on her parents remained, and her second thought after seeing the car was: I bet they really got taken on this, the fools. They probably paid twice what anyone else would have.

When she got to college, her life was a mixture of pleasure and pain. Pleasure because she was finally away from her parents, controlling her own life, purchases, and activities, working as hard as she could to get ahead. Pain, because no matter how fiercely she controlled and worked, there were others so far ahead of her. It took all her energy not to collapse in despair, because she had fallen into the seductive habit of selective envy. She envied this person her brilliant mind, that person her wealth, another person her social skills, and another her figure. Rarely did she stop to consider the entire person, or when she did, it was only to consider someone who possessed all the enviable qualities. Judy became adept at envy. Still, she did not quite let it rule her life; she kept her life charted toward goals.

First, she decided to major in education. Really, what else was there for her to do? She had to be prepared to support herself, and she wasn’t interested in abstract ideas. By her junior year, she discovered one definite talent: she was an excellent committee member. She liked committees. She enjoyed the structure, hierarchy, the sense of assembly, the shared achievement. She was either secretary or treasurer of several clubs. When she was sitting at an oval table, taking down the minutes of a meeting with earnest scrupulousness, the touch of the pen to paper provided her with a physical pleasure. There was more reality and worth to her in the details of a projected car wash for the French Club than in the academic substance of many of her courses. However, one could not get a university degree in committees, so she plodded through her education courses dutifully.

Her junior year she met a girl named Sharon Lake in an education course, and they quickly became close friends. They double-dated, studied together, did favors for each other, and soon Judy came to wonder how she had ever enjoyed life without Sharon’s friendship. But one night, as they sat in the student union drinking coffee and quizzing each other on a test for the next day, Sharon said to Judy, “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

“What?” Judy said. “Remember you? What are you talking about? I just met you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Sharon said. “You’ve seen me lots of times. I used to go to the same high school you did. I used to pass you all the time in the hall. And I lived two blocks away from you—well, my family still lives two blocks away from your family.”

“On Whitton Drive or Green Street?”

“Green Street. Well, I mean your family lives on Green Street, of course. My family lives on Drake. You had to pass it on the way to school. The white house with thirty-seven bikes in the front yard.”

“How strange,” Judy said. “I can’t believe we lived so close and never got to know each other.”

“Well, you always sort of kept to yourself, you know. In fact—to be honest, I always thought you were stuck-up.”

“Oh, no!” Judy protested. “I was shy. Well, thank heavens we finally met.”

How cruel Fate was, Judy thought, to have let her live so close to such a perfect friend for so long without somehow causing them to meet. It drove yet another peg into her scoreboard against God.

Her friendship with Sharon continued through their senior year. Judy was devastated when Sharon accepted a graduate fellowship at a university in Oregon. At the end of her senior year, Judy’s determination almost foundered; she could not think how she would live without the gratifying structure of Sharon’s friendship and college life. She was offered a teaching position in a high school near Boston, and although she spent the summer nearly sick with fear, in the end it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to her. It was there that she met Ron.

The years of the past have a way of melding together, memories flow past the mind’s eye in a great flood. Judy felt she had little control over which events and people tumbled to the surface of her memory; and even so, the ones that did emerge floated on past too rapidly, visions beckoning from boats or the tops of unanchored garages, visions seen at best briefly and indistinctly before they were swept from sight. Judy married Ron, moved to Londonton with him, had two children, decorated their home, but these happy events did not stand out with the precise integrity of the scenes of her adolescence. Perhaps contentment is not as easily remembered as misery.

And now, after so many years of being safe, Judy shied away from remembering the pain of her childhood. She kept far away from all that, as if it existed on the other side of a chasm. And she looked back only now and then in order to remind herself that she must protect her own children and herself. She did not like memories; she liked the present, and planning for the future.

She and Ron were in this regard well matched. They were hard workers; they were both embarrassed by their families. Ron’s parents came from wealthy, establishment Bostonian stock, and they were handsome people. But Ron’s father was an alcoholic, and gradually he declined in life, taking the family pride and possessions with him. If Ron’s maternal grandmother had not had the foresight to establish a trust for her grandson, Ron would have been penniless. But the trust saw him through college and helped him set up his business. After that, it was just a matter of work—and Ron and Judy were both glad to work. Their pleasure, even, was their work, because they shared a common goal; they measured their progression up the social scale of Londonton with the same sort of pride with which they marked the ascending heights of their children on the kitchen doorjamb.

John and Cynthia were healthy, intelligent, graceful children, well liked by everyone. They had the normal childhood illnesses, an occasional broken leg from skiing or sprained arm from playing tennis, but they were never seriously ill. Ron’s business flourished. Judy organized and ran her days with the efficiency of possessive love.

Ron and the children left the house at eight-thirty, and by nine-thirty Judy had cleaned the bathroom sinks, made all the beds, done the breakfast dishes, and vacuumed the front hall. She then had plenty of time to devote to charities and committees, and the years went by just this way. Because it is in the nature of the human creature to be continually amazed at the trials with which life besets him—no matter how fortunate he may seem to others—Judy always assumed that she had a lot to cope with. It was not until the fortuitous gathering by the fireplace at the Sloans’ house, when Carlos made his startling pronouncement, that Judy stopped to think that she had lived her adult life with really unusual ease. She did not attribute any of this good fortune to the intervention of God. She had joined the Londonton church for the same reason she had joined every other socially prominent organization in town; and she did not plan to be taken in by anything the ministers or hymns or Scripture readings said. Still, she enjoyed the rituals, and it was nice to see the children, when they were little, dressed in white robes and singing Easter songs. Over the years she had become friends with Jews and atheists and Catholics, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that one’s fortune in life had absolutely no connection with one’s belief in God. She did not believe in God; and yet for the past twenty-five years of her life she had been fortunate.

Why, then, was she always afraid? It really had nothing to do with religion—she probably would have led an even more anxious life if she had believed in God, because she knew so well what that belief could do. Not until Carlos had spoken with her at the party had she realized that in a way she had come through it; through much of her life, unscathed. She decided, as she sat in church listening to Reynolds Houston finish the Scripture reading, that it was probably not fear that she felt after all. It was just that she was so vividly aware of the possibilities of each moment, and she wanted desperately for each of those moments to be as perfect as possible. What else was life about? She was proud of the standards she set herself, and if fear provided the necessary energy, so be it: look what she was accomplishing. Look at all she had: her intelligent daughter, her admirable husband, her handsome, devoted son.