Statoids



Hard Words

A NOVEL

by Gwillim Law

[Monday, September 12, 1960 - anything in brackets is a note to myself and will be deleted or replaced.]

The misogynist and the blonde were alone in the classroom. The last bell had rung a quarter of an hour ago, and the homeroom teacher had gone to run off some papers. The misogynist had stayed late to work on his service project, marking addresses on a map. The blonde was reading, passing the time until her ride was due.

The misogynist looked up and spoke. "Jocelyn, would you do me a favor?"

"What is it?"

"I've never been able to look any girl straight in the eyes. Could I practice with you?"

She sat there, poised on the edge between a frown and a grin. Then she hopped up, came around to the desk in front of his, and sat in it sidesaddle, facing him with her hands on the seat's back.

As if lifting weights with his face, he slowly raised his eyes to hers. The instant he made eye contact, he gave a stifled groan and shaded his eyes with his hand. After a short pause he uncovered his eyes, gazed for two seconds, blinked, and abruptly turned away. Setting his jaw in resolution, he focused once again on her eyes - eyes which any but the most inveterate misogynist would have found it easy to look at. This time his stare held firm for a full ten seconds.

She said, "You're doing great, Russ -" but the moment she spoke, he bent his eyes back down to his desktop. "Aaah!" he cried. "Talking and looking! Too much at once!"

"All right, do you want to try again? I'll be quiet this time."

"All right," he replied, and raised his head once more.

She deliberately crossed her eyes.

His lips compressed with the effort, but he stared without wavering until she laughed and got up. "I think you're getting the hang of it," she said. "My ride should be here now." When she had left the room, he let a small, private chuckle escape and sat with his eyes closed for a few minutes before he went back to his mapping.

She carried her books out to the curb, where an old brown Nash Rambler was idling. The driver greeted her, "Hi, Lyn. What are you smiling about?"

"Hi, Dan. It was that Russ DeWitt. What an oddball."

"Oh. The nerd boy. Did he say it again?"

"Say what?" But she knew exactly what he meant. It was a running joke between them.

"'Cigarettes are dettermental to saroobity.'"

"That's 'detrimental to salubrity'. No, he didn't say it this time. Something else funny. I don't remember the exact words. Listen, Danny. I have to be home by five or Mother says she'll ground me."

They spent about an hour at the YMCA, where Dan played pool with a couple of his buddies, as Lyn looked on. Each of the three boys had his own gesture to herald a successful shot. One of them pumped his arm; another gave a satisfied downward nod, as if he were tracking the plunk of the ball with his nose. Dan's was a slight twist of his hips, a sort of body English. Restrained gestures, but meant to be noticed. The game concluded and the couple left with more than enough time to meet Lyn's deadline. However, Dan stopped the car for a few minutes before they reached her street.

She actually walked in her front door at 5:01, but her mother was not one to fuss over a minute's dereliction. "Is that you, Lyn?" Mrs. Marano asked brightly. "I'm glad you're home, dear. Oops! Your hair needs a little fixing! I promised to pick up some lawn posters. Could you watch dinner for me while I take a quick spin downtown?"

"Yes, Mother." She primped her hair in a hall mirror. "Do you think I have nice eyes?"

Strafford High School was not large, and there were very few students or teachers in it who didn't know that Russ DeWitt was a misogynist. He was more than willing to let them know about it. In fact, it was thanks to him that many of them even knew what the word meant. He was thus responsible for a small rise in Strafford's SAT average one year when the word appeared on the test.

Not many of them knew or cared how he had come to be a misogynist. And yet, it was a very simple recipe. He was sensitive and stubborn.

In second grade, he fell headlong in love with a cute little long-haired girl named Patricia O'Finley. He had not learned the art of dissemblance, the wearing of the mask so essential to civilized life. His passion declared itself not by words but by deeds. Having read about Sir Walter Raleigh's gallantry, one day he spread his winter jacket over a mud puddle in the playground for sweet Patty's accommodation. Sweet Patty wrinkled her nose, walked in the opposite direction, and splashed through the next mud puddle in her white lacy socks and Mary Janes.

I could list a number of similar episodes, but their cumulative effect was easy to foresee. Russ became the target of ridicule, the object of obloquy, the butt of badinage. Nothing subtle, nothing behind his back; Russ was easy pickings.

He reacted in a very normal way, one which has eased the growing pains of countless other boys. He became, at least ostensibly, a girl-hater. Miss O'Finley conveniently moved to another town, so he was granted a fresh start in third grade. He was determined not to make the same mistake twice.

A couple of years later, his father unwittingly sealed Russ's fate. Russ was grumbling at the dinner table over some foible of the female gender that had recently come to his attention. His father said, "Just wait until you're sixteen and see how you feel then." He answered not a word. He merely turned a key in his heart.

[Tuesday, September 20, 1960]

The Altrusa Club of Strafford met at The Spa every third Tuesday. As the September meeting broke up into conversations, Mrs. Connie VanZandt leaned closer to Miss Mildred Fahnestock. Mildred taught history at Strafford High School, and the students liked to remark that she had read most of American history as it came out in the daily papers.

"Mildred," Connie said, suppressing an impish grin, "my daughter Judy told me the most wonderful story on you. I just had to find out if it was true."

"Oh, how sweet," the demure spinster simpered.

"She said you were teaching the class about Abelard and Heloise." Miss Fahnestock's expression changed as if she had suddenly been illuminated from below.

"She said you told them how Heloise's father sent out some thugs to have Abelard emasculated. Then you asked the class what 'emasculated' meant. That was injudicious, Mildred."

"Well, my goodness," Mildred sputtered. "I was thinking of one meaning, and one meaning alone. They gave him a sound thrashing."

"Judy says that no one answered, so you started going around the classroom, asking each student in turn what they thought it meant. They were all stumped until you got to Russ DeWitt. According to Judy, his exact words were, 'They cut off his ... progeny.'"

"Pshaw. That impertinent boy. And I suppose you knew all about that other meaning, Connie?"

"Well, after I looked it up in the dictionary, I did. Oh, come on, Mildred. Don't look so glum. It was a harmless mistake. No one thinks you were trying to corrupt our youth."

Mildred's expression finally softened. "I suppose I'd be a poor teacher if I couldn't laugh at myself once in a while. Oh, dear. I don't know how I got through the rest of the class period."

"While I'm talking with you, I wanted to ask something more serious. What do you plan to do about the Great Debates? I mean, are you going to follow up on them in Judy's class?"

"I most certainly am. This is history in the making. Never before has it been possible for two presidential candidates to debate each other with the entire nation watching. In American History, on Friday, I've assigned several students to take specific issues and try to address them as they think the candidates would. Of course, it's not quite as germane to World History, but in your Judy's class, we will spend the entire period discussing our impressions on the Tuesday following the first debate."

"What do you think about the whole idea? Is this really a step forward for democracy?"

"Unquestionably it is. How can it possibly hurt for millions of voters to hear both sides of the questions of the day, presented in an absolutely fair arena?"

"'Absolutely fair'. Are you sure? Oh, the rules will be the same for both men. But Senator Kennedy is so much more handsome than Mr. Nixon. I'm afraid that will give him an unfair advantage with at least half of the electorate."

"Come now, Connie. Give our gender more credit than that. Many members of this society," indicating the gathering with a gesture, "are professional women. Do you suppose that they let themselves be swayed in their business dealings by the good looks of salesmen or clients?"

"Mildred, I'm a businesswoman, and I have eyes. I just might be in a position to answer that question better than you know."

[Saturday, September 24, 1960]

In Strafford, by September 24, blazes of fall color have usually popped out here and there on the surrounding hillsides. The days, should they be blessed with sunshine, are uniformly mild - exactly the temperature you would order, if the weather service made deliveries.

Mr. Thurman, the advisor to the Honor Society, paused to admire a maple tree and fill his lungs with fresh air before entering the school building. It was Saturday, the day of the bottle drive. Students had previously passed around sign-up sheets to get the name and address of anyone willing to contribute deposit bottles to the campaign. It was those addresses that Russ had marked on a map of Strafford, now dissected into five pieces. As he entered the auditorium, Mr. Thurman found ten students assembled. He asked, "Who will be driving?" Lyn Marano and four boys raised their hands. He passed out a piece of map to each of them.

"Now, who's riding shotgun? Russ, you go with Lyn."

Mr. Thurman had Russ in his English IV class, and had already had occasion to reprimand him for starting out an oral report by addressing the class as "Friends, people, and girls." Mr. Thurman took it as part of his mission to confound the plans of the wicked. Compelling Russ to spend an entire afternoon with a girl would be a condign punishment.

Russ took it with a face of stone. Nonetheless, once they were on the road, he was not tongue-tied. On the way to their first stop, he mused, "Jocelyn, did you ever consider that mankind might just be nature's way of releasing all the carbon that was locked into the rocks during the Paleozoic Era?"

"Good heavens, what put that thought in your mind?"

"Looking at that thick exhaust from the dump truck in front of us. Well, think about it. Carbon is a basic building block of life. Over the course of the eons, countless living things have died, piled up in layers, and been covered by lava flows or by layers of sediment. That leaves less and less carbon available for new life forms. Now has come an era when humans are busy as beavers, digging up millions of tons of coal, pumping millions of barrels of oil, bringing all that carbon back to the surface. We think it's all for our convenience. But look at the long term. Once we've put enough carbon dioxide into the air, the earth may no longer be habitable for us, but it will be a hospitable environment for the lush tropical jungles that will grow to replace us."

"Don't forget diamonds."

"H'm?"

"Mining millions of carats of diamonds. Those are pure carbon."

"Good grief. Only a girl would think of that."

"'Only a girl'," she mimicked. "Well, I happen to think that human life is more significant than just ... turning over the soil for the next crop."

"Wait ... here comes our first stop."

Lyn pulled over to the side and let Russ hop out, run up to the house, ring the doorbell, collect the donated bottles, and stick them in the back seat. As they started off again, she asked where the next stop would be.

"153 Cold Springs Road," he read. "Hm! 153 is an interesting number."

"How so?"

"Well, for one thing, it's the number of fish the disciples caught in the last chapter of John."

"Really? What else?"

"It's also the total of the numbers from 1 to 17. But even better than that, it's equal to the sum of the cubes of its digits."

"The sum of the cubes... Slow down, you're going too fast for me."

"Okay, the number 153 has three digits, one, five, and three. One cubed is one. Five cubed is 125. Three cubed is 27. Add them up and you get 153 again."

"And there aren't any other numbers that do that?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well ... how about the number 1?"

"You know what, Jocelyn? You're right! And there's 0, too. Slow down: here comes 153 Cold Springs Road right now!"

A few minutes later, they went by a house with a Brazilian flag flying just below a U.S. one. Russ pointed it out, and added, "There are a Brazilian state capital and a U.S. state capital that are named for the same person."

"Washington? Lincoln?"

"No, but I think you know both of the cities."

"Oh, I don't know. What are they?"

"Well, how many cities do you know in Brazil?"

"Rio de Janeiro ... Buenos Aires ... no, that's in Argentina, isn't it? São Paulo ... that would be a saint's name, wouldn't it? Saint Paul? Ohhh! Saint Paul, Minnesota!"

"Very good, Jocelyn!"

As Russ continued to steer the conversation, Lyn began to find it a little uncanny. It sounded as if he had written it all out in advance on three-by-five cards. No, that couldn't be. So many of his remarks were related to unplanned sights along the route. He hadn't even asked to partner with her. She felt a vague need to probe, to find out if he was up to something. She got an opening when she saw a plumber's truck parked in the neighborhood they were visiting.

"Oh, look! There's Dan's dad's truck! You know, my boyfriend Dan!"

"Sure. Everyone knows you're going with Daniel Travis. What's his middle name?"

"Uh, Leroy."

"Okay, let me think for a minute. Daniel Leroy Travis. Varsity ... Ideal ... Alienated ... Velleity, that's a good word ... Wait, I've got it. 'Ideally, isn't a rover'. That's an anagram of 'Daniel Leroy Travis'."

She almost gasped. "How do you do that?"

"You ... rearrange the letters," he said matter-of-factly.

After a pause, she said, "So you've never smoked a cigarette in your life?"

"No, never."

"Why not?"

"Cigarettes would be detrimental to my salubrity."

She laughed delightedly. Russ didn't show any reaction. He only searched the map for the next address.

Mr. Thurman's presence was only required twice for the bottle drive. His first task, handing out the maps, was accomplished. Around three hours later, he was due to collect the money from the returned bottles. It was certainly too beautiful a day to sit indoors reading or grading papers. A perfect time to stroll around town.

Howard Thurman was a newcomer to Strafford, and still hadn't completely oriented himself to the town. A new shopping center with a large parking lot was under construction at a crossroads just outside of town, but for now downtown was still the place to shop. Most of the stores were closed on Sunday, and quite a few were closed on Saturday. Two blocks' walk took him to Main Street, past a soda parlor and a narrow shoe-repair storefront. The first store he saw on Main was DeWitt's Books. This was the only decent bookstore in town, and even so, it was struggling to stay in business. Mr. Thurman enjoyed books. He stared at the window display, but then he turned aside, with an unformulated aversion to having any further dealings with the DeWitt family today.

Making the unexpected movement brought him almost face to face with Connie VanZandt.

She recovered first. "Well, Mr. Thurman. How have you been enjoying your new house?"

"Oh, please, call me Howard. I'm not your customer any more. I'm very pleased with the house, thank you."

"It isn't often that I find a fit so easily, Howard. Most of my clients have no idea what they're looking for."

"If there's anything you can say about me, Connie, it's that I'm a man who knows his own mind. Of course, it must be a lot easier to satisfy a single man than a whole family. But you're headed away from your office. Closing up early?"

"No, I was going to the Uptown Tea Room for a late lunch."

"Ah! A cup of coffee would be just the thing right now! Would you mind if I join you?"

There was just a flicker of a pause while Connie did some quick mental calculations. She had an admirable flair for solving transcendental equations in terms such as the younger-man factor, the gossip quotient, and the future-business function. Apparently the result was positive, because a smile uncurled on her face and she said, "Please do."

When they entered the Uptown, Howard headed for a booth at the back. Connie, however, sat down, without comment, at a well-lit table in the center of the room. He had to turn back when he realized she was no longer with him. Still, he smiled pleasantly as he sat down. He dressed rather the English professor than the English teacher. He wore horn-rimmed glasses with large rectangular lenses, a conservative tie that might have been "old school" but wasn't, and a tweed sport jacket with, of course, elbow patches. He had a squarish face with sharply defined features and appeared to be in his early thirties.

For an opening conversational gambit, he began, "Rather amusing name for this place. As if Strafford were big enough to have an uptown and a downtown! When I was living in New York -"

"Oh, don't misunderstand. Around here, we say 'uptown' when we mean 'downtown'. No one talks about 'downtown Strafford'."

"Oh, I see." (Lost a pawn. Not important.) "Tell me about yourself, Connie."

"Not much to tell. Married Carl in 1942. One daughter, Judy, born in 1943. She's in your English IV class. One son, Frank, born in 1948. Carl, having survived the Battle of the Bulge and Remagen, was killed by a drunk driver in 1956."

"I'm very sorry to hear it. Was it very hard for you?"

"Well, you know, I have a hard time even answering that."

"That bad? Really?"

"No, that's not what I mean at all. Yes, it was terrible getting the news, and just as bad telling the kids. But it's strange. When I look back, it just seems as if each day presented its tale of challenges, I met them, and then I moved on to the next day. It wasn't either hard or easy. I just never had to think about it."

"Was it your husband's death that made you go into real estate?"

"Actually, no. When Franky started first grade, I studied and got my license. I was thinking more in terms of a career after the kids went off to college. Then when Carl died, I only needed to take a couple of classes to reactivate my license."

"Do you think you'll ever marry again?"

"At this point in my life, I have no interest in marrying. The only thing is, I wonder what Judy and Franky are missing out on, not having a father. Excuse me, Mr. Thurman, but your foot seems to have wandered past the centerline of our table."

"Oops. My mistake," he said, uncrossing his legs. A waitress showed up at last, and they gave their orders.

Howard continued, "You know, by far the grooviest feature of the house is the built-in walnut bookcases. They give such warmth to the den. I've already filled many of the shelves." He paused for questions, but not getting any, he went on, "One shelf for first editions, another for autographed copies, another for old leatherbound books.... Who is your favorite author, Connie?"

"I haven't had much time for reading since Carl died. I used to love Jane Austen."

"Ah! I have a wonderful old copy of Sense and Sensibility with Hugh Thomson illustrations! You might like to see it sometime."

"I'm sure it's charming. Do you have any other hobbies besides book collecting?"

"Why, yes, I do. I'm a kind of amateur entomologist." As he said this, a new light came into his eyes.

"You study insects?"

"Yes. But not just any insects. I've found it simply fascinating to delve into the life cycle, and especially the feeding behavior, of the Blattidae."

"I'm not up on biology. That would be ...?"

"The cockroach family." Howard, it transpired, had read all the scientific literature on these highly adaptable little creatures, as well as observing them closely in their natural habitat. As he eagerly pointed out, "they're readily obtainable for study in most American households." His sincere enthusiasm for the subject removed most of the conversational burden from Connie's shoulders. There was some risk of it removing her appetite as well, but years of motherhood had fostered her ability to turn her imagination on and off as needed. She proceeded to enjoy her lunch, making only perfunctory responses whenever Howard paused for a sip of coffee.

[Monday, September 26, 1960]

When Sputnik was launched in 1957, Russ DeWitt and Timmy Benk were already entrants in the space race. That summer, they had built a homemade rocket using a carbon dioxide capsule for an engine. Timmy lived on the same block as Russ, but he also had access to his uncle's farm, fifteen minutes away by bicycle. They set up their launchpad behind a silo and boosted their vehicle to an altitude of over ten meters, as determined by triangulation.

This was the first of the team's many collaborations. They shared an interest in Pogo, and between them they had a pretty complete collection of the works of Walt Kelly. In Timmy's basement, they set up a model railroad layout combining both of their individual sets. They operated a private bicycle repair shop in Russ's garage. For a while, they organized some younger kids in the neighborhood and filmed silent melodramas in eight-millimeter, complete with title cards. Currently, they were having a contest, the object of which was to use a word in conversation that the other one didn't know.

Timmy had reached the age when most Timmys prefer to be called Tim, but "Tim Benk" sounded too harsh, too brusque. It reminded Timmy of the sound of a pinball hitting the bumper. The issue was moot for Russ, who simply didn't use nicknames. He always addressed his friend as Timothy.

On the evening of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, Russ went to the Benk house to watch. Russ and his father still didn't have a television set. When the debate ended, Timmy and Russ retired to the front porch to escape the ruckus of Timmy's little brother and two little sisters.

"Did the debate change your mind?" Timmy asked.

"No. I was for Nixon going into it, and I think Nixon presented his case better. But Kennedy's going to win the election."

"How do you know?"

"I just know. Well, do you really want to hear it? This is why. The only way I ever get what I want is by pretending not to want it. I forgot to pretend that I didn't want Nixon to win."

"Man! Are you okay? I've never heard you talk like that."

"Yeah, it's fine."

"You aren't bothered that people call you a nerd, are you?" Timmy was thinking of an instance he had heard earlier that day.

"Nerd? What's that?"

"You don't know what a nerd is?!"

"No, Timothy, I don't know what a nerd is. I guess that's one point for you."

"Well, one definition I've heard was, a nerd is a guy who goes around sniffing the seats of girl's bicycles."

Russ was hardly any more enlightened than he had been. He pulled out a small notebook from his pocket and made a mark on a score sheet under the name Timothy.

"Another definition of a nerd is someone who carries around five ballpoint pens in a pocket protector," added Timmy.

Russ glanced at his breast pocket to count the pens. He said, "Anyway, I don't care what people call me. Listen, Timothy, whom are your folks voting for?"

"They're going to cancel each other out. Dad's going for Kennedy, Mom's for Nixon. Mrs. Marano came around with a lawn sign for Kennedy this afternoon. She said Dad had asked for it. But Dad wasn't home, and Mom said no thanks."

The two boys contemplated the stars for a while, scanning the skies in a desultory way for artificial satellites.

Timmy resumed, "You know, Mrs. Marano's daughter is a real dish."

Russ turned to look at him a moment. Then he drawled, "So why don't you ask her for a date?"

"Aw, man! She's way out of my league."

"Huh. I guess every guy in Strafford High thinks she's way out of his league. That must be why she's going out with Daniel Travis, who isn't bright enough to realize it. It's a rebarbative bismer if you ask me."

"Wow! Great words, Russ! Explain?"

"Rebarbative means repellent. Visualize a woman flinching from a man with a bushy beard. Bismer means a shame or abuse. Two points for me."

Russ somehow neglected to mention that he had spent three hours cruising around town with Mrs. Marano's attractive daughter that weekend.

[Friday, September 30, 1960]

Dan Travis tightened the last lug nut and tapped the wheel cover on with a rubber mallet. Then he lowered the jack and rolled it away to the side. Mikkelsen's Service Station did have one bay with a hydraulic lift, but for changing only one tire, the s.o.p. was to use a jack. Dan unrolled the sleeve of his t-shirt to extract a cigarette from the pack he kept there. It was nearly 3:30, his quitting time, too late to begin another task.

Morgan "Red" Evans came back inside from filling a customer's tank with Cities Service Hi-Test. "Hey, Danny boy! Through for the day already?"

"Yuh, I gotta go."

"Gonna pick up your girl Lyn? Don't be late, Danny. Girls don't like to be kept waiting."

"That's a hot one! Nine times out of ten, I'm the one who's waiting for her!"

"Yeah, well, you got one who's worth waiting for. What does she see in a loser like you, anyway?"

"Who's calling who a loser? I got my high school diploma, anyway. I haven't seen yours anywhere."

"That's because I keep it in my sock drawer, underneath my Ph.D. from Harvard. It's Friday night, lover boy. I hope you got something on the schedule for you and Lyn."

"You bet I do, wise guy. We're going to an early flick, a burger joint, and then the football game."

"And then?"

"Whaddya mean, 'and then'? That's a big evening right there."

"I mean, does she put out?"

Dan gave the older man a shove. Red had crossed the line this time, and he knew it. But Dan had actually been saving up a shove ever since the "loser" remark, which had touched him in a tender spot. They squared off as if to begin a boxing match, but almost immediately Dan turned away with a dismissive gesture.

"I'm going somewhere where the society is a little more refined," was his parting salvo.

He was still smarting over the word "loser" as he drove to Strafford High. When he picked Lyn up at the school, some of his thoughts came blurting out. "Lyn, you think I have a future, don't you?"

"What's the matter, Danny? Has somebody been picking on you? Of course you have a future. You're good with cars. People like you are needed. Cars are going to need fixing for a long time."

"Yeah, that's what I think, too. I'm almost earning enough to make it on my own. Not many guys my age can say that. I don't see why I couldn't have my own service station some day. Mikkelsen makes real good money."

There was only one movie theater in Strafford, the Hobson. This week, "High Time" with Bing Crosby was Hobson's choice. It was the story of a rich widower who, at age 51, decides it's high time he got a college degree. [High Time premiered Friday, September 16 in NYC.]

As they walked from the theater to the diner, Dan asked, "So... you're still planning to go to college next year?"

"Yes, Dan, you know I am. But it's not going to be like in the movie. I mean, I won't be taking classes with Fabian and Tuesday Weld."

"Lyn, with you in the classroom, the guys wouldn't even notice Tuesday Weld," he said earnestly, if a bit hyperbolically.

"Aw, you're sweet, Danny."

"Do you think you'd want to live in one of those fraternities?"

Lyn's laughter tinkled like a chandelier in a draught. Dan winced as if he had been hit by a shard of cut glass.

"Fraternities are for guys, Dan. Girls live in sororities."

They had arrived at the Starline Diner. When they went in, Lyn immediately spotted some of her friends together in a booth. Judy VanZandt was seated across from the Chamberlain brothers, Mark and Clark. Clark, who was two years younger than the others, was playing peg solitaire. Judy and Mark were playing table football by flicking a folded matchbook cover back and forth. While they played, they were discussing which of the latest hit songs were more likely to be guys' favorites versus girls'. When they noticed the newcomers, Judy slid over to make room for Lyn to sit by her, and Dan drew up a chair to the end of the table.

Judy said, "Speak up, Dan. You've been awfully quiet all evening."

"What do you mean? I just got here."

"That's more like it. Now you're the life of the party."

"So you think this party needs some life? Okay, here's one for you. What's round and yellow and wears a ranger hat?"

After a few seconds, Mark said, "We give up. What?"

"Smokey the Pear!"

They laughed. The others were all reminded of jokes of the Moby Grape variety, and started telling them. Clark probably knew more of these jokes than anyone else, but was unable to make himself heard. He kept listening to Judy or Mark telling jokes that he himself had been on the verge of reciting. Finally he raised his hand as if he were in class.

"Why is a lion with a toothache like Morton Salt?" he asked.

"All right, why?" asked Judy.

"When it pains, it roars!"

Judy groaned and said, "Why is telling jokes like Superman's secret identity? Clark can't!"

"Hey, hold on!" Mark said. "While I'm around, nobody picks on my kid brother but me." He looked out at the street and saw some dead leaves blowing around. He said, "It's really starting to look like fall out there."

Clark said, "Fallout? Quick! Head for the shelter!"

Everyone laughed, as the brothers exchanged grins. They had thought of that joke a few days earlier, and were gratified at the success of its public debut.

"You know," Dan said, "we used to hear about fallout shelters all the time, but I bet none of you has one, or even knows anyone who has one." None of them could gainsay him. "My dad says there are no more than ten or twelve of them in the whole town."

"Oh, I'm sure everyone comes to your dad to tell him before they put in their shelter," Judy scoffed.

"The way he knows is, there's a special water filtration system that most of them use. There's only one supplier of that system in this part of the state, and my dad found out from him how many of them had been ordered. My dad actually installed one."

Clark and Lyn both asked "Who for?" at the same moment.

"He won't say. Most people who build one are worried that the neighbors will all try to swarm in, if they ever need one."

Mark said, "That's sad. That's really sad. I mean, well, sure, there won't too many people fit into one shelter, but to think of locking your friends and neighbors out and leaving them to die...."

"That's a lot of hooey," Judy broke in. "If there's ever a full-scale nuclear war, we're all going to die, and the ones who go soonest will be the luckiest."

"Cheery thought," said Mark. "I'd sooner go back to telling jokes." But the joking mood had passed. They sat somberly for a while. Clark went back to his peg solitaire. Then a waitress came to take their orders. Judy asked for a B.L.T. and a frappe. Lyn ordered a hamburger, fries, and a Coke. Dan said, "Me, too." Mark said, "Me, three." Clark said, "Me Tarzan. You, who?" No one even cracked a smile, so he weakly amended, "I mean, same for me." The waitress nodded and departed.

Judy turned to Mark. "Mark, can you sit on your brother or something? I mean, it's getting embarrassing."

This time Mark really took offense. "What the Sam Hill is the matter with you? You've had a chip on your shoulder all evening. Cool it!"

Judy said, "Let me out, Lyn. I need to go powder my nose."

"Me, too," Lyn replied. They filed off to the ladies' room. Once inside, Lyn said, "You're being awful, Judy. What's the matter?"

"Oh, can't a girl be herself once in a while?"

"Is it boy trouble?"

"You won't catch me having boy trouble. It's the boys who have Judy trouble."

"Well, is it that time of the month?"

"For Pete's sake. Do I have to spell it out for you? Do you remember what happened four years ago tonight?"

"Ohhh! Judy! The night your father died."

"And the lady wins $64,000."

"Oh, Judy, I'm sorry." Lyn gave her a long hug. Then she looked at Judy's face and saw glistening drops in the corners of her eyes. "Do you need a cry?"

"No. I'm all cried out."

"Judy, tell me about your dad."

Judy composed herself for a moment. "Carl Albert VanZandt. Born 1918, died 1956. Five foot ten, jet black wavy hair, deep dark brown eyes.... His eyelids were kind of heavy. I remember the way he looked at me when I came in once, all covered with mud. I can see his eyes now. I guess he was trying to be stern, but not doing a very good job of it. It was more as if he was trying to ... memorize me.

"I'd like to say he was always there for me, but sometimes he wasn't. But when he was there, he always made me feel I was important. I remember once or twice when Mom gave him a shopping list and he took me along to the store. He talked to me, and then he really listened. It made me feel grown up." She thought for a while.

"He must have been nice," Lyn said. "I saw him a few times, like Parent Night. I thought he was very fond of you."

The restroom door rattled. Another patron wanted to get in. Lyn called, "Just a minute." The two girls washed up and went back to their table.

"All right, I'll be a good girl now - for a while, anyway," Judy told the boys.

[Tuesday, October 4, 1960]

It was Russ's custom, after school, to bicycle to his father's bookstore. Some days he had to restock the shelves. When that was done, he would select a book and retire to a back corner of the store to read. From time to time, he would put on a new record: his father liked to have classical music softly playing to set the mood in the store. At dinnertime, he would bicycle home, fix a simple meal for himself and his father, and take it back to the store for them to eat together. After that, his time was his own.

One brisk day in early October, while Russ was reading the loose cannon episode in Victor Hugo's Ninety-three, he heard the tinkle of the chime on the shop door. Then he heard a woman's voice say, "Good afternoon, Mr. DeWitt. My name is Emily Marano." He inserted a bookmark in his book.

The voice went on, "I've been asking some of the merchants if they would be willing to put a Kennedy poster in their display window."

"Oh, no, I'm sorry, Mrs. Marano. You know, some of my customers have strong political convictions on both sides of the fence. I don't want to antagonize any of them. I've always made it a policy to keep my store neutral ground."

"I understand, Mr. DeWitt. Do you mind if I ask if you personally are for Kennedy?"

"Well, since you ask, no, I'm not. No, I expect I'll be voting for Nixon."

"And yet I see you have Senator Kennedy's book prominently on display." On the counter next to the cash register there was a red, white, and blue rack with a dozen paperback copies of Profiles in Courage.

"Of course. It's a good seller. But I believe you're misstating the case when you call it Senator Kennedy's book."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Didn't you hear what Drew Pearson said about it? Something to the effect that Jack Kennedy was the only man who won a Pulitzer prize for a book he didn't write?"

"Drew Pearson is nothing but a muckraking yellow journalist."

"Ah, ah, ah, Mrs. Marano. Ad hominem fallacy."

"You'll remember that the network retracted his insinuation."

By now, Russ had stood up to get a view of Mrs. Marano. She didn't appear to be taking this personally; she still had a polite smile. But she in turn spotted him. "Oh," she said, "you must be Russ DeWitt." He nodded mutely. "My daughter Lyn talks about you. She said you -"

Russ desperately wanted to know what she said, but he even more desperately wanted not to hear it in front of his father. He interrupted, "You mean that incident with the slide rule?"

"What incident was that, Russ?" his father asked.

"Oh, it was nothing, Dad. In Chemistry class the other day, I set my slide rule aside so I could write, and Benjamin Watson grabbed it. I reached for it, but he tossed it across the room to Judith VanZandt. It was the middle of the class, so I couldn't do anything right then. At lunch time, I asked Judith to give me the slide rule. She stuck it into the waist of her skirt, right here," (he pointed to his hip) "and flaunted it at me. She said, 'Go ahead, take it.' Well, you know I wasn't going to touch a girl's hip. I'd rather buy a new slide rule. I just turned and walked away. Of course, Jocelyn, that's Mrs. Marano's daughter, was enjoying the show. But it's okay. At the end of the day I found my slide rule lying on my desk in homeroom.

"Guess I should go get dinner now."

He headed toward the door. Emily took that as her exit cue, and walked out as he held the door for her. She continued along the main street, from one office or store to the next, with mixed success. Presently she came to the real estate office where Connie VanZandt was sorting through papers while waiting for a customer to show up.

Emily and Connie were acquainted mainly through their daughters. Emily was the smaller of the two women. She wore owlish librarian glasses and a pleasant smile which helped conceal the force of her personality. Connie was built like a statue on a monument - perhaps Ceres, holding a scythe and a sheaf of wheat.

After they had greeted each other, Emily made her pitch for the poster. Connie explained that only her boss could make the decision, but she accepted a poster to use in case of an affirmative. Then she asked, "How have you been doing with the other merchants?"

"About as well as expected. Many of them don't want to mix politics with business." She suddenly thought of Russ's narrative, but, realizing that it reflected poorly on Judy, decided to suppress it. Instead, she said, "For example, DeWitt's Books. That man seems so sad. And his son behaves so strangely."

Connie suggested, "I suppose growing up without a mother can do that to a boy."

"Oh, I'd forgotten. How old was he when he lost his mother?"

"I think he was about six. It could explain his father being sad, too. Someone should just give Vernon DeWitt a good shake and tell him to move on with his life."

"And who would do that, Connie? You?"

"Ah, there's the rub. He doesn't seem to let anyone get close to him. Me? No thank you. I need a gloomy gentleman friend the way Kennedy needs a hearty endorsement from Khrushchev."

[Saturday, October 8, 1960]

Saturday in the early afternoon, Howard Thurman sounded the door chime of DeWitt's Books for the first time. He browsed for nearly an hour, lingering longest at three bookcases full of used books in the back of the store. He uttered a low cry of satisfaction, and went to the cash register with his purchases.

"I was simply thrilled to find this one," he told Vernon, handing him The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg in the Author's National Edition. "I have about six other Mark Twain books in this same edition. Found four of them at the Strand Book Store in New York when I was living there. I love to fill in the gaps in my sets."

"Glad I could help you," Vernon replied. "And Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. Do you like Nabokov?"

"I hear he's terrific. My name is Howard Thurman, by the way. I teach English at the high school. I have your son Russell in English IV."

"Vernon DeWitt." They shook hands. "You aren't going to be using the Nabokov in your classes, are you? It's rather controversial, you know, at least for high school."

"Oh, no. It's only for my own literary enjoyment. No, I don't think you would want your son reading Lolita."

"It's about the last thing he would want to read. It might as well be printed in Russian, as far as he was concerned."

"Imagine. Suppressed in France, of all places, but freely available in the U.S.A. And I used to think that all the Philistines lived here."

"All right. That will come to four dollars and thirty-nine cents."

"Mr. DeWitt - may I call you Vernon? Vernon, I expect that you must learn a great deal about the people of Strafford as a book dealer. For example, you've just learned that I collect old sets of books and used to live in the Big Apple."

"Oh, well, to tell the truth, I don't pay that much attention. I don't like to get involved in other people's affairs."

"Really, now, Vernon. I'm not speaking of interference; it's only natural to take an interest in what's going on in the world around you. Take me, for example. The woman who found me the house I'm living in is a Mrs. VanZandt. She's a working widow with two children. I have no personal stake in the matter, but I'm curious how she manages the demands that must be placed on a woman in that situation. Who knows? I might even be able to help her in some unexpected way."

"Hmmm. Mrs. VanZandt. I don't really recall her."

"Her office is only a few doors up the street from here."

"Oh, I think I know who you mean. Above average in height? Black hair? Lays on her make-up a little too heavily?"

"You may have identified the right woman, but I'll have to enter a demurral on your appraisal. I would say that she's right in touch with the latest cosmetic styles. In New York, the women attending the opening of a new Broadway show look very much like that. Have you by any chance noticed what kind of books she likes?"

"No... I don't know how long it's been since she came in here. I expect she gets her books at the library."

"Oh, yes, the library. I have been rather disappointed with Strafford's excuse for a public library. Not only is there a meager selection, it seems to consist mostly of cast-off sentimental nineteenth-century novels. I suppose that's good for your business, though - not much competition from the library?"

"That's one way to look at it. Although sometimes I think a better library might get people more interested in books generally."

"That's the truth, I kid you not. Well, I suppose I must be going. I've really enjoyed this little chat, Vernon. We must get together again."

[Thursday, October 13, 1960]

Miss Fahnestock spent the first ten minutes of each World History period going over the news headlines. Each student was supposed to bring in one news item to discuss. One Thursday, Sharon Arkwright reported, "Yesterday, Premier Khrushchev interrupted a speech at the U.N. General Assembly. He called the speaker a jerk, and then took off his shoe and pounded it on the table. Miss Fahnestock, I'm frightened. Just think, a crazy man like that is able to send atom bombs to our country."

Russ raised his hand. "Miss Fahnestock, I don't think we can draw the conclusion that Nikita Khrushchev is crazy. I read a book on game theory. It said -"

Miss Fahnestock silenced him. "Russ, this classroom is not the place to talk about games. We are facing a very serious moment in history."

"But, Miss Fahnestock, game theory helps you understand history."

"I have studied history for many years without finding anything about games to be relevant, thank you, Russ. All right, Timmy, what is your news item?"

Russ swallowed his frustration, and soon forgot about it. He was surprised when Lyn approached him in homeroom after the last bell.

"Russ," she said, "maybe Miss Fahnestock doesn't want to know what game theory has to do with Nikita Khrushchev, but I do."

"Oh! Well, it takes some explaining. I guess she was right to cut me off. It would have taken up too much class time."

"I have time now," she said, with a lilt in her voice.

"All right. You see, game theory was invented to study the best strategy for simple games like tic-tac-toe. Well, no, that's not exactly right. You can figure out tic-tac-toe in ten minutes with a piece of paper. What I mean is, the people who developed game theory wanted to find the best strategy for complicated games with many players. To get a handle on the problem, they started out with simple two-player games. The thing is, these games don't have to be children's games, with dice and tokens and things. They don't even have to have rules. They can be about anything in life, as long as people are competing to try to affect an outcome."

"Like a love triangle?"

He was caught short by the question. "What made you think of that? Oh, I forgot. You're a girl. Actually, one of the examples in the book I read came from the opera Tosca, and it was about precisely that."

"Precisely what?"

"What you said."

"Come on, now, Russy, say it out loud. It won't hurt you."

"A l-l-love triangle!" He was perfectly capable of enunciating the words, but her persistence made him feel as if he was expected to put on a show. "Anyway, one of the principles in game theory is to assign a number, a value, to every possible outcome. Then you want to pick the strategy that makes your outcome highest, no matter what any of the other players does. Well, when you do the calculations, this is what you find out: in some cases, the best strategy you can follow is to randomize. For example, you could flip a coin in private, and choose your move based on how the coin turns up."

"How can that be? Wouldn't the best move be the best move, regardless?"

"All right, here's an example. Suppose two people, A and B, have a bet. Each of them goes on an errand every day at noon. It's either the bank or the post office. They agree that if they go to the same building on a certain day, A will pay B one dollar. If they go to different buildings, then (later on, when they meet) B will pay A one dollar. You can see that it doesn't matter which place A chooses to go, he has a fifty-fifty chance of winning.

"But now suppose it's not just a one-day bet. They agree to do the same thing every day for a month. What is the best strategy for A? Obviously, it would be foolish of him to go to the bank every day. The first couple of days, B might win or lose, but pretty soon he'd catch on, and he would go to the bank every day, too. Or suppose A went to the bank on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the post office on Tuesday and Thursday. B would still figure out the pattern in a few days, and as soon as he knew the pattern, he'd win every time. It would be smarter for A to flip a coin in order to decide which building to go to. Then, no matter what B did, the chances are that they'd break even at the end of the month. Are you with me?"

"Yes."

"All right, now let's talk about history. History is a game with billions of players, all trying to get the best outcome they can for themselves. But it's a game that's only played once. The best strategy for some moves may still be to randomize - to flip a coin - but there won't necessarily be a long run of outcomes where your gains and losses cancel out.

"Now, another thing you need to know about game theory is that it assumes rational behavior on the part of each player. For the theory to be studied at all, they have to assume that every player is doing his own calculations, and can be depended on to pick the strategy that gives him the highest possible outcome. Do you see what that means?"

"Well, it's getting a little clearer, but - no, you'll have to explain some more."

"Let's see. How can I explain? Let's just say, for simplicity, that the world is split up into two teams: the Free World and the Iron Curtain. Each team has a captain: Eisenhower and Khrushchev. The captain decides on each move, although he has a bunch of game theorists in a back office to tell him what the best move is for each situation. The game theorists are doing all sorts of calculations, but they always assume that the other side will act rationally. Now, Captain Khrushchev's game theorists come to him one day and tell him, 'We've figured out the entire course of the game. It's going to end up with our side losing.' Khrushchev would naturally ask them, 'Are you sure? What assumptions have you made?' They say, 'That both sides will act rationally.' Khrushchev says, 'And their team is making the same assumption?' They say, 'Yes.' Khrushchev says, 'And their team is choosing its strategy based on that assumption?' They say, 'Yes.'"

"I see where you're going now!" Lyn exclaimed. "So Khrushchev says, 'I'll act irrationally. That will spoil their assumption, and it might change the outcome of the game in our favor.'"

"Right! I knew there was a mind behind those eyes of yours, Jocelyn."

"But what does that mean about the chance of a nuclear war?"

"Well, it's hard to imagine a worse outcome for the game than nuclear war. It would be like a score of negative googolplex for both sides. Now, if my guess is right and Khrushchev is rational but is only acting irrationally, that means he still doesn't want to have an outcome of nuclear war. Basically, his strategy is just to keep us guessing. It's in his best interest to make us believe that he would pull the trigger, but it's also in his best interest not to pull it. So I guess the answer is, there could still be a nuclear war, but Khrushchev's crazy behavior doesn't make it any more likely. I don't know if that's much comfort to you."

"Actually, it is. Thank you, Russ. Gotta run. B'bye!"

She was gone. Russ subvocalized, "Good-bye ... God be wi' ye."

[Saturday, October 15, 1960]

October 14 was Russ's seventeenth birthday. The following day, Saturday, his father closed up the bookstore at six o'clock. Vernon had told Russ to pick his own birthday treat. Russ chose to go out for dinner and bowling. His father suggested eating at The Spa.

"Naw, Dad, you never get your money's worth there."

"Don't count the cost, Russ. This is a special day."

"I'd enjoy Olson's more."

Olson's was a rustic place a few miles outside of Strafford. The tables were covered with red-and-white checkered oilcloth. The walls and ceiling were all solid white, and appeared ready to collapse if two people sneezed at once. The room was brightly lit by about ten ceiling fixtures, bare bulbs with shallow white enamel shades. The kitchen was separated from the dining room only by a low counter with a row of stools. Russ was oblivious to the ambiance. The food was good standard fare, and the prices were excellent. Mr. DeWitt ordered chicken fried steak.

Russ told the waitress, "And I'd like roast chicken, white meat, with applesauce and cole slaw on the side." He would have felt shamefully libertine to have mentioned chicken breast to a waitress.

"Well, well, well," said Mr. DeWitt. "Seventeen already. How does it feel?"

"A whole lot like sixteen, so far."

"Well, I suppose that's so. You get no new privileges or responsibilities at seventeen; most of them come when you're eighteen. Do you feel pretty independent these days?"

"We solipsists have to be independent." They both laughed.

Mr. DeWitt attempted to top Russ's joke. "I don't mind solipsists, as long as they don't try to proselytize me." They laughed again, but not quite as hard. "But you're not really a solipsist, are you, Russ?"

"No, of course not. I acknowledge the existence of the outside world, and of other people. I just don't feel much connection to them."

"Might we say, in John Donne's terms, you feel like an island?"

"It's just that I don't criticize other people. I don't try to influence their decisions. I let them live on their own terms. All I ask in return is that they do the same for me."

"You might be surprised how much influence you have."

Russ was sincerely incredulous. "Me? Pooh. I don't know anyone who would want to be like me. Me, the misogynist? The weirdo? The nerd?"

"You know, there aren't too many people in this world who know who they are. The great majority of them just follow someone else's example. So, you see, the few people who follow only their own inner light - those people are the ones that the others follow."

"Hnh. I pity anyone who has only my example to follow."

"Have you ever read Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Russ?"

"No."

"Try it out when you get a chance. One of its themes is the evil of independence. The trolls are the bad guys, and their motto is, 'This above all, to thine own self be ... sufficient.'"

"The evil of independence? I really don't see that, Dad. What's wrong with not being a burden to anyone else?"

"Well, perhaps you're not ready for that particular truth yet. I'm not even sure I am."

The food arrived and they dug into it. Presently, Mr. DeWitt said, "I only wish we had a present for you to open."

"We already discussed this, Dad. I've got a good watch. I've got a good bike. I've got a good record player. I've got all the books I could ask for, on the shelves of the store. Wait a minute, there is one record I'd like to get."

"All right, look it up in the Schwann catalog and I'll order it for you."

As they drove to the Bowl-a-Drome, the father said, as he had for the past three birthdays, "Russ, is there anything you need to know about the birds and the bees?"

"I have no use for that information, thank you. And if I did, you have plenty of health books in stock. But I don't."

Two people bowling together can't have an extended conversation. While one is bowling, the other is keeping score, and vice versa. They bowled three strings each. When either of them got a strike, they both bounced up with unforced enthusiasm. Mr. DeWitt especially enjoyed the physical exertion; usually the extent of his activity was to carry boxes of books across his store.

When they got back home, the sky was thickly spread with stars. They could see their breath by the porch light. When they had hung up their coats, Russ said, "Dad, I love you," and gave him a hug. He realized that he was at least an inch taller than his father now. How tall had he been the last time he hugged his father? Up to his shoulders?

Mr. DeWitt said, "Russ, I don't know when I've had a nicer evening. I feel as if it were my birthday."

As Vernon DeWitt lay waiting for sleep to come, he thought, "If we had such a good time, why don't we do this more often?" As if to answer him, an image of Russ's mother formed in his mind's eye.

[Wednesday, October 19, 1960]

The assignment in English IV was to compose sentences containing the vocabulary words. When it was Russ's turn to recite, Mr. Thurman read off the word "poltergeist". He pronounced it "pahl'-ter-jist". People who pick up their vocabulary from reading rather than conversation often exhibit such gaps in their orthoepy.

Russ read off his sentence, using the correct pronunciation. "Poltergeists constitute the principal form of spontaneous material manifestation."

Mr. Thurman said, "Aha! I see we have a Pogophile in the class. Russ, would you let the rest of the class in on the joke?"

"Well, it's just that in one continuity in the comic strip Pogo, there was a young pup dog who was just learning to talk. The only sentence he knew how to say was, 'Poltergeists constitute the principal form ...' - what I just said."

"Impressive, Russ. I seem to recall those cartoons appearing in the New York Star when I was living in New York in 1950. Have you memorized the entire run of Pogo?"

"Oh, no. There are just certain parts that stick in my mind. Besides, I've read it more recently than 1950. It's in the first Pogo book."

"Ah! You have some Pogo books?"

"Just about all of them ... and Timothy Benk has some of the old Pogo Possum comic books."

"How intriguing! All right, Judy, the next word is 'insinuate'."

Judy read, "The priest said to the glutton, 'in-sin-you-ate'." Laughter filled the classroom.

"A most worthy pun!" Mr. Thurman approved. "But do you have anything more to the point?"

"Sorry, Mr. Thurman, that's all I wrote."

After class, before Russ got out the door, Mr. Thurman asked to talk to him for a minute. He said, "Russ, I have been avidly following Pogo in the newspapers for ten ever-lovin' blue-eyed years." (He was quoting the title of a Pogo book.) "When the comic books came out, I was too old for comic books and too young to appreciate Walt Kelly. It would make me very happy to get to see them, I kid you not."

"Well, Mr. Thurman, as I said, they belong to Timothy Benk. I'll have to ask him and see what he says."

That evening, Russ went over to Timmy's house. The front porch was wet and chilly from the day's rain. The smaller Benk children were sitting mesmerized around the television, which was showing "Huckleberry Hound". It was likely that when the show was over, they would release their stored energy, so Timmy advised Russ to come with him for a "walk 'n' talk".

"Have you finished your application to Jefferson-Wilson College yet?" asked Russ.

"No. I'm stuck on the essay. I just don't have anything to talk about! I mean, my grades are average, I didn't make it into the Honor Society, I don't know how well I'll do on the SATs, I haven't won any awards, I haven't lettered in any sports ..."

"Don't worry about the SATs. We've already agreed to have some prep sessions in my Dad's bookstore after school. You're a smart guy, Timothy."

"Is that an enantiosis?"

"Enantiosis? You've got me there."

"Enantiosis is irony. It means saying the opposite of what you really mean."

"You just proved my point." Russ marked Timmy's score in his notebook. "See, we're smart in different ways. I just happen to be good at taking tests. You're good at mechanical devices. What you have to do on your essay is show your area of strength. Colleges want a variety of people with different strengths. You need to write about a few of the projects we've done together, or maybe that you've done on your own. The model rockets. The banked turn on the railroad layout - remember how we calculated the radius of curvature, the slope, and the angle of bank? That would look really good on an essay."

"Will you look over my essay before I type it?"

"Sure, I'll proofread it. I can't rewrite it, but I'll mark any errors.

"Another proof that you're smart," Russ continued, "is that you like Pogo. But that might not look so good on an essay. Oh, that reminds me. Mr. Thurman asked if he could look at the old Pogo Possum comic books. He's a fan, too."

"He is?"

"He says he's been reading Pogo for ten years. I wouldn't have thought it of him. The thing is, I almost didn't even want to ask you. If he doesn't give them back, there's no way I could replace them."

"He's a teacher. Sure he's going to give them back."

"Your faith is touching. Well, it's your decision."

"Okay, he can see them. Maybe you'll get extra credit."

"Don't want it. Now, Timothy, I've been thinking about this way you have of underrating yourself. If I remember, you said Jocelyn Marano was 'out of your league'. I reject the concept. Either she likes you or she doesn't. Why don't you invite her to your birthday party? Whether she says yes or no, the pressure is much less than if you asked her for a date. I'm pretty sure she goes to parties."

"Hey, it's an idea. I'll think about it."

[Monday, October 24, 1960]

Russ had Algebra and Trigonometry for first period. One Monday, he was the first to arrive for class. He had two math books with him which he had been reading independently. They were paperbacks with brightly-colored covers, which set them apart from the textbooks he carried. He set all his books down on his desk and went to the front corner of the room to sharpen a pencil. While he was grinding away, the other students began drifting in. Henry Passevent was the first to notice the paperbacks in Russ's stack. He picked one up. He looked at it and whistled.

"Hey, everyone, look what Russ DeWitt has been reading."

Judy VanZandt grabbed the book out of his hand and read the title aloud. "Curves and Their Properties! Va-va-voom!" She flipped through the pages and pretended to read from it. "He casually placed his hand on her Cycloid. She turned to him and caressed his Lemniscate with her moist Hyperbola. He said, 'You're such a Tractrix, my little Witch of Agnesi!'" Each time she spoke the name of a mathematical curve, she lowered her voice to a throaty contralto.

Henry was scrutinizing the second book by now. He yelled, "My gosh, look at this one! He's trying to get to fourth base!" The title was Propositional Logic. A half dozen voices at once began to comment.

"Who's he planning to proposition?"

"Russ, compute a winning line for me, won'tcha?"

"Pro-o-ove your love for me, my dear!" That was Judy.

"Logic has nothing to do with it!"

"Now we know why he's so good at figures!"

"He just wants to find a cute factor and multiply!"

Russ, still in the corner with his pencil, had turned a couple of shades of red, and confronted his hecklers with a fierce scowl. He started to shout, "I'll prove a thing or -" but at that moment the teacher appeared in the doorway. Silence fell on the room as a tiger drops on a rabbit, and the students decorously found their way each to his or her assigned place. Russ was deeply grateful for the interruption. He had known all along that a dignified silence was his best response; only his momentary surge of irritation had prompted him to protest. But he gave way to one more weakness. He glanced across the classroom toward Lyn Marano. She was looking back at him. He snapped his eyes back toward the blackboard. What was that expression she was wearing? Amusement? Pity? Tenderness?

When school let out, Russ was reminded of the morning's frustration as he packed up his math books. However, when he arrived at DeWitt's Books, a pleasant surprise was there to distract him. His record had come in. His father had even gift-wrapped it, and they opened it ceremoniously.

"Thanks, Dad! Just what I wanted! Opera highlights - Gounod's Faust, Bizet's Carmen, Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila ... Can I put it on the phonograph now?"

Russ had not read the entire contents aloud. One of the selections was the Berceuse de Jocelyn, from Benjamin Godard's only successful opera, Jocelyn. With his usual self-control, he didn't skip straight to that cut, but played the record through from the beginning, reading along in the liner notes. When the Berceuse came up ("Cachés dans cet asile où Dieu nous a conduits..."), he observed that the name Jocelyn appeared nowhere in the lyric of the aria. It was a lullaby, not a love song. Even if he sang the whole song in front of the entire school during the Senior Day assembly, his reputation could remain intact. There wasn't a chance in a hundred that anyone would associate it with a specific girl. Although French was not one of Russ's accomplishments, he began to memorize the song phonetically.

[Saturday, October 29, 1960]

"Well met, Mildred!" Connie VanZandt exclaimed, having spied the history teacher in an aisle of the IGA grocery store.

Mildred gave a start. "Oh, it's you, Connie! This is a fortuitous encounter. I've persuaded my younger sister Augusta to try taking instant coffee instead of ground. Now I'm facing a bewildering range of choices. For example, what about these 'flavor buds' in Maxwell House Coffee? Are they lumpy?"

"No, Mildred. It's just an advertising slogan. Whatever they are, they're completely dissolved."

"And would it be the same with the 'pure coffee nectar' in Chase and Sanborn, or is that some kind of sludge at the bottom of the cup?"

"Same deal."

"Mr. Thurman has repeatedly lauded the Chock Full o' Nuts stores he patronized in New York City."

"I've noticed that Mr. Thurman approves of products because he uses them, not the other way around. Anyway, Chock Full o' Nuts doesn't make an instant coffee." [Chock Full o' Nuts' website says the instant was introduced in 1961. Other brands available then: Nescafé, Yuban, probably Folgers and Crosse & Blackwell.]

"Ah. Well, that being the case, I may as well try the most inexpensive brand first." Connie helped her figure out which one was the cheapest per ounce.

"I didn't realize you lived with your sister, Mildred. Have I met her?"

"I believe not. Augusta is somewhat infirm and doesn't go out often. She is sixty-nine years old, and one no longer has the élan of youth at that age."

"But you called her your younger sister. Why, Mildred, you must be way past retirement age."

"Indeed I am, my dear, but I'm not ready to call it a day yet. I believe being in contact with those young people revitalizes me. The school board summons me every spring, and every spring I tell them they'll just have to endure me a while longer. They seem to find a way to do it. Oh, saints preserve us! Did you see that woman?"

It was Connie's turn to be startled and then bewildered. "What about her?"

Mildred's voice sank to a hoarse whisper. "Her skirt was so short, I could see every inch of her knees."

"Oh, that. I'm afraid you'll have to get used to it. It's getting to be the style."

"It is my firm and settled conviction that God made the knee the ugliest part of a woman's leg as a warning not to raise the hemline above that point."

Connie chortled.

[Friday, November 11, 1960]

[Timmy's 18th birthday party. Timmy, Russ, Mark, Mitch Johnson, Judy, Lyn, Karen Sturgis are present. Sharon was invited but didn't make it. No couples.]

[Wednesday, November 16, 1960]

Wednesday evening, November 16, the Strafford High School Band gave its first concert of the school year. As Connie VanZandt entered the auditorium, removing her sensible cloth coat with black velour trim, she looked around for familiar faces. She turned back toward her son, who was tailing close behind her. "Down that way, Frank. I want to say hello to the Maranos."

Manny Marano rose with a grin when Connie walked up. "Greetings, young lady," he said. "Won't you and your escort favor us with your company?" He stepped into the aisle to let her and Frank squeeze past Emily into their seats.

When they had settled down, Connie said, "Well, Emily, I haven't seen you since the election. You must be pleased."

"Oh, I do feel good that Senator Kennedy won. He has so much to offer the country. A war hero, an honored author, a dynamic legislator -"

"And husband of the sexiest first lady since Dolley Madison," Manny interrupted. "There won't be any hanky-panky in the White House with Jackie there to keep Jack happy."

"All right, Manny, that's enough of that," his wife reproved him, whereupon he turned to his program. Turning back to Connie, she said, "It really is nice to see you, Connie. You've become a regular recluse since Carl...." She trailed off.

"It's all right, Emily. Since Carl died. Kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, passed away. But you have a false impression. I'm out and about all the time. It's just that I'm spending my time with my clients, and when it's not them, it's my children. A working mother doesn't have too much time for socializing."

"No, I suppose you wouldn't."

"What instrument does Lyn play now?"

"The clarinet. And Judy, what does she play?"

"She's on percussion. Not drums, but the triangle, glockenspiel, chimes, and so on. That gives us one big advantage: she doesn't practice at home.

"While we're talking, I need to catch up on your older kids. What are they up to now?"

"We just heard from Tony last night! He seems to be very happy in his career. You know, he works for NBC in New York. He's a researcher. He checks facts for them before they go on the air. And his wife Diane is so sweet over the phone. I used to worry about daughter-in-law problems, but she's very agreeable.

"Then there's Pam. She's in the last year of her nursing program at Amherst. She's getting good grades. Dates occasionally, but there's no one boy that stands out in the crowd - at least that she's mentioned. But she's always been very open with me about those things.

"It's wonderful when the oldest child is well-behaved, because that sets the tone for the rest of them."

Connie replied, "Yes, that's certainly a big help, although they're all unique in their own way. I'm so grateful, Emily, that Lyn and Judy are friends. I think Lyn is a really good influence."

Frank was totally bored by now. He tugged on his mother's sleeve. "When does it start, Mom?"

"Excuse me," she said to Emily. "Let's see, Franky. It's 7:35. It was supposed to start five minutes ago."

"Can we go out for ice cream after?"

"We'll talk about it when the time comes. While we're waiting, why don't you draw pictures on your program?" She gave him a pencil out of her purse and turned back toward Emily.

"I'm going to draw maps," Frank continued. "I'm going to draw a map of Gotham City."

"What a good idea! Now, Emily, you said that Pam tells you everything. That must be such a comfort to you. Is Lyn the same way?"

"Well, truthfully, Connie, I don't have quite the same - oh, here we go." The curtain had started to open, and they turned their attention to the stage.

Some high school bands are good enough that a music lover can listen to them without too much discomfort. Strafford was not fortunate enough to have such a band. However, not many people in the audience were listening with a critical ear. The first part of the program consisted of simplified arrangements of tunes from Kismet, a far remove from the original Borodin, but pleasantly melodic.

At intermission, the Maranos and VanZandts all stood up to stretch. Frank asked if he could run and get a drink of water. Connie said, "All right, but be sure to be back here in your seat before the second half of the concert." He climbed over the seats in front of them, where he was able to reach the aisle without squeezing past anyone.

Connie turned once more to Emily and said, "The reason I asked whether Lyn confides in you is a personal concern. I think Judy is a good girl. But I've been getting little dribs and drabs that have raised, I'll just say a hint of a doubt. Since Judy and Lyn spend a lot of time together, I was hoping - oh, shoot the bunny!"

This profane outburst was occasioned by the approach of Howard Thurman. He came and stood in the row in front of them to talk.

"Ladies, and Mr. Marano. Isn't this lovely? You must be so proud of your daughters. They did such a good job with Kismet. It really took me right back to 1954, when I saw it performed on Broadway. I still have my Playbill with the Hirschfeld illustration on the cover."

The two mothers made polite sounds. Howard prattled on for a while. Then he said, "Connie, I have an empty seat by me. Would you like to continue the conversation?"

"No, I can't leave this seat. Frank will be coming back here after the intermission."

"Pity." He wandered away.

"What was that all about?" asked Emily.

"One of the minor afflictions of a widow's lot. He comes by the office once or twice a week to have a little chat. He seems harmless enough, so I just turn my attention level down a few notches and let him drone on. The poor chump doesn't seem to have any family within a thousand miles, and I don't think he's made any friends here."

"You're an angel of mercy to put up with it, Connie. As for what we were talking about, I think I see what you want. I'll see if I can't pump Lyn a bit, and if I learn anything you should know, I'll give you a call. Oh, they're dimming the lights."

"And Franky not back yet. I'd better go hunt him down. Thank you so much, Emily, you're a pal."

Connie found Frank walking the halls of Strafford High, yanking on one locker padlock after another.

"What are you doing, young man?"

"Looking for a locker that's open," he replied truthfully.

"And what did you plan to do if you found one?"

"I dunno. See if I could fit inside. Look for mash notes. Stash my gum."

She rolled her eyes, at a loss to know which peccadillo to address first. "Come on, or we'll miss the concert. And just forget about any ice cream afterward." They reached the auditorium as the curtain was parting, so they quickly slipped into two empty seats at the back of the room.

[We need to have some kind of follow-up where Emily reports back to Connie, but she hasn't found out anything very substantive about Judy.]

[Saturday, December 24, 1960]

Russ was home alone on Christmas Eve. He wrapped his father's Christmas presents and laid them under a two-foot artificial tree made of wire and green tinsel, which sat on the coffee table in the living room. He made his supper, ate it, and washed the dishes. Then, he indulged himself in luxury. He changed into pajamas and bathrobe; opened a pack of Hydrox cookies; poured a glass of cold milk; put his opera highlights record on the phonograph; and lay back on the couch with a math book.

After about twenty minutes, the phone rang. It was his father. Vernon was keeping the bookstore open for last-minute shoppers. A lot of them were asking for gift wrapping. As a modest form of advertisement, he had a supply of foil stickers embossed with his business name and address. He liked to use these stickers to hold the ribbon in place on the package. However, he had used up all the stickers on hand. There were more sheets of them in a drawer in his desk at home. Would Russ be willing to bring some of them uptown for him?

"Sure, Dad, but I'm already in my p.j.'s, so it will take me a while."

"Oh, I didn't realize that, son. Forget about it. I don't really need them."

"No, Dad, I don't mind. I'll be there in a half hour."

Russ looked first in the broad top drawer. He flipped through a pile of papers, but didn't see the stickers. Next, he tried a deep drawer full of file folders. Some of the folders clearly indicated on their tabs that they were not of interest: taxes, phone bills, car papers, and so on. One folder said "labels", but when he pulled it out, it contained sheets of blank labels for addressing envelopes. Then he found a folder at the back of the drawer with nothing written on its tab. He pulled it out and looked inside.

It contained a half dozen old letters, still in their envelopes. The stamp on the first one caught his eye. It was a light green commemorative showing a map, inscribed "Annapolis Tercentenary 1649-1949". The postmark confirmed the date, [Wednesday,] September 14, 1949.

He would have put the folder back, but he happened to glance at the envelope's address. Something about the handwriting struck a chord in some deep part of his memory. He took the letter out of its envelope and read.

"Dear Vern,

"I'm sure you know why I left. We've talked about it often enough. I waited the war out with you. I waited till Russy started school. I'm not waiting any longer to live my life.

"Don't try to follow me. I'm mailing this from Zanesville, but I'll be far away from Zanesville when you get it. I don't even know where.

"Well, now I guess I'm supposed to say I'm sorry, or I love you, or something like that. I can't. I'm still numb. I'll just say I wish it had worked out better.

"I know you'll take good care of Russy. You two have such simple needs. You'll get along fine without me.

"Goodbye,

"Mimi"

The tears were silently streaming down Russ's cheeks as he replaced the folder in the drawer. He searched once more in the top drawer. This time, he found the stickers right away, under a legal pad. He went to get dressed and wash his face.

[Howard is still trying to insinuate himself with Connie. Something that Connie hears gives her the impression that it's Judy he's interested in. One evening, Russ goes to his house to try to recuperate the Pogo comics. While he's there, Connie comes over for some reason, something that Howard had been carefully setting up to get her alone with him. Russ is there, defeating his plans. She sees his copy of Lolita lying around and it confirms her suspicion. She drops by DeWitt's Books and gets an oral plot summary of the book from Vernon. From here on, every attempt Howard makes to get together with her sounds to her like a plot element from Lolita. Also, Howard is mad at Russ for spoiling his rendezvous, and tries to get back at him by making him read a love scene with Lyn as a class exercise.]

[Tuesday, February 21, 1961]

When he was in tenth grade, Russ's Biology teacher had asked if there was anyone in the class who knew how to run a movie projector. Russ had worked with eight-millimeter, so he volunteered. The movie at hand, a reel of photomicrography of one-celled animals doing their jerky dances, was sixteen-millimeter. A sixteen-millimeter sound projector is considerably more intricate than a silent eight-millimeter, but the projector was labeled with very clear instructions, and Russ had no trouble with it. Thereafter he was often asked to work the projector.

For the February meeting of Altrusa, Connie had procured an educational film from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She knew she could borrow a projector and screen from the school, and she asked Judy to recommend a projectionist. A quick call to the DeWitt home, a munificent offer of two dollars for an hour's work, and the deal was settled.

On the evening of the meeting, Russ showed up early at The Spa to set up the screen and projector. He was meticulous in his work, and whenever possible, he tested the equipment before the program started. He stood in the restaurant lobby looking hesitant until Connie strode up to him.

"Russell, thank you for being willing to help out. Let me show you where everything is. Oh, and first of all, here's your two dollars."

"Thanks, Mrs. VanZandt. It's fun to run the projector."

"Judy has told me all about you."

He frowned, walking behind her where she couldn't see him.

"She's almost in awe of you," Connie continued. "To hear her tell it, you know more than the teachers do."

He was nonplussed by this disclosure. Judy had never acted awestruck.

"Now, there's no need for you to stay after the film ends. I'll see that the screen and projector are packed up and returned to the school."

"I'll rewind the film and put it back in the can for you, anyway. Sometimes they include a clip to keep it from unspooling."

"Oh, I see. Now, another thing: Judy and her friend Lyn are supposed to meet me here around 7:30. They may come in during the movie. Don't let them bother you. I'll be driving them home afterward."

And thus it happened. Judy and Lyn did arrive during the movie, and sat at the back of the room where the projector was. None of the three students had any interest in the proceedings of Altrusa. When Russ had finished packing away the film, Lyn leaned over to him and asked, "Russ, do you know when this thing is supposed to end?"

"Mrs. VanZandt gave me a program. Let's see. It says 'Meeting ends 9:00'."

"Oh, that's the pits. I've got homework tonight."

"Well, I have to stay till Mom's through," said Judy. "You don't."

"That's an idea. I'll just walk home. Tell your Mom I couldn't wait."

Russ made no comment, but left the restaurant a few steps behind Lyn. When they were out on the sidewalk, he spoke. "Would you like me to see you home, Jocelyn?"

"Ooh! Monsieur is so gallant! To what do I owe this honor?"

"Noblesse oblige."

They set out toward the Marano household. The direct route took them up Main Street. A block before they would have come to DeWitt's Books, Lyn asked, "Do you want to turn up Tyler Street?"

"Why?"

"You wouldn't want your father to see you walking with a girl, would you?"

"My life is an open book," he answered, quite disingenuously. They walked right past the store. Russ marched by like a soldier, eyes front. As it happened, his father was in the back office and observed nothing.

"Jocelyn, I know your mother is a Democrat. Are you?"

"I'm too young to vote."

"Yes, I know. So am I, but I know what my political views are."

"Oh. I haven't thought about it very much. It sounds like homework to me."

"Well, take welfare. Do you think the government should be making payments to poor people?"

"Well ... I guess so. I wouldn't want them to starve to death. Especially innocent children."

"That might not be the only alternative. For example, there are private charities and religious groups, like the Salvation Army."

"Mm-hm. What's your opinion, Russ?"

"Well, here's my thought, for what it's worth. When Congress allocates money for welfare programs, there's no virtue in it. The people who make the decision are members of Congress. They may have to pay a little more in taxes, but it's rather painless for them. Their personal financial security is guaranteed by the excellent pensions they've provided for themselves. And by voting for the programs, they buy the support of the people who benefit from the programs. They gain more than they lose. That's no virtue in them. On the other hand, the people who actually pay for the programs are the taxpayers, and they pay reluctantly, under duress. There's certainly no virtue in that. Now, charities are acts of virtue by definition. People only contribute to charities of their own free will. When the people who pay are the ones who make the decision, that's a virtue."

"What if the charities can't provide for everyone who needs it?"

"That's a practical problem. Maybe the government can't reach everyone, either. Another practical problem is how to decide who's worthy, and who's a malingerer. The government might be better at reaching everybody, but private organizations might be better at triage. I think those are all posterior considerations. The proper way is to decide what should be done before you decide how to do it."

"So what have you just proved? Is virtue more important than keeping people from starving?"

"We're talking about a choice, not a proof. Your choice depends on what's most important to you. To me, virtue is important, so that affects my choice."

By now, they were out of the business district. The street lights were farther apart. More stars were visible, and the moon, almost in its first quarter, cast a cerulean glow on the snow-covered lawns.

Lyn said, "Yes, we all know how important virtue is to you. I suppose all of Strafford knows about Russell DeWitt and his virtue."

"What do you mean?"

She stopped walking and faced him. "Do you really not know what I mean? When people talk about you, what's the first thing they say?"

"I guess you mean 'misogynist'. I didn't know that was a virtue."

They could both see their breath. Russ noticed that the two moonlit puffs mingled in midair.

They walked on in silence for a while. Then they came to a place where the street crossed a small creek. Russ said, "Have you ever played Pooh-sticks?"

"No. What's that?"

He stopped and leaned his elbows on the parapet of the bridge. "My father and I used to play it on this bridge. You drop sticks into the water on the upstream side. Then you run over to the downstream side and see whose stick comes out first."

She peered over. "Not a good night for Pooh-sticks tonight. The creek looks like it's solid ice."

"Oh, no, it's not solid. There's flowing water under the ice. But you're right, this isn't Pooh-sticks weather. You can't play in the dry season, either - around August. I've walked under this bridge dry-shod many times."

They resumed walking again. As they turned the last corner, Lyn said, "My house is the fourth one on the right."

"I know."

They reached the end of Lyn's driveway.

"Goodnight, Jocelyn. I enjoyed the walk."

"Some day, some woman is going to break through the ice and discover the deep waters of Russ DeWitt. I hope I get to meet her. Goodnight."

When the Altrusa meeting was over and Connie was driving Judy home, she said, "That Russell DeWitt seems so polite, and very competent. Do you think you'd like to go out with him sometime, Judy?"

Judy laughed scornfully. "Mother, you have just named the least eligible boy in the whole school. He's a girl-hater!"

[Thursday, February 23, 1961]

"Did you notice that the last two commercials both claimed to get the brightest wash?" asked Russ.

"Yeah, that's right. They need to think up a new word that means even brighter than the brightest," Timmy replied.

"You're right! Think how much money you could make by selling new, improved words to advertisers!"

"Well, we've got the comparative and superlative already, we need a degree that's beyond superlative. How about 'ultrative'?"

"Good! Good! Now, how would you form the ultrative? Bright, brighter, brightest, ... how about brightoop?"

"All right, so you add 'oop' to the base adjective. Let's see. Brightoop, cleanoop, freshoop, cheapoop, goodoop, bigoop, newoop -"

"Oh, I don't like that one. 'Newoop'. It's hard to say. You need a different rule for when the base adjective ends in a vowel sound."

"I've got it! If the adjective ends in a vowel sound, change the 'oop' to 'poop' and add 'i-e'!"

They broke up in laughter. When Timmy recovered himself, he started listing off more ultratives. "Newpoopie, freepoopie, tastypoopie."

"This is the goodoop idea ever!"

"If it's not the goodoop, it's certainly the newpoopie!"

"Okay, now the next thing is, we've got to keep the ultrative from going the way of the superlative. I mean, just anyone can say his product is the best, the biggest, the newest, the refreshingest. There has to be some kind of regulation, so that only one product is ever the goodoop, or the fastoop, or the newpoopie."

"Well, we just take out a copyright or a trademark on all the ultrative adjectives. We only let an advertiser use one of them if we've tested the product in our labs to make sure it really qualifies."

"Wow! That's how you get rich! Not necessarily charging to use the words, but charging them for the lab tests before they're even allowed to use the words."

Timmy thought for a moment. "Of course, there are the enforcement costs to take into account."

"What enforcement costs did you have in mind?"

"Well, you'd have to have someone listening to every conversation in the United States to make sure no one was abusing our ultratives. The hyperbole police. If someone said to his friend, 'That's the niceoop thing anyone's ever done for me,' the hyperbole police would come swooping down and arrest him."

"That would get expensive. Do we have to have enforcement?"

"If people are allowed to use the ultrative any time they feel like it, the whole scheme collapses."

"Shucks. Well, on to the next million-dollar idea."

[I probably need some set-up for the next scene. Someone or other has organized a field trip. Some seniors from Strafford are busing to a college town 50 miles away, in order to see the 1959 movie "Solomon and Sheba" (Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida), which has finally reached the college rerun circuit. It's supposed to be an educational experience.]

[Friday, March 10, 1961. Full moon was March 2.]

A few snowflakes curvetted down out of the black sky, appearing as if from nowhere when they entered the range of the street lights. Thirty-odd students were filing out of a college auditorium in Jefferson, and onto a chartered bus. They had an hour's ride back to Strafford. Some of the teenagers exclaimed at the sight of snow. "Cool! Might be a snow day tomorrow!"

Russ was one of the first to get on. He picked a window seat towards the rear of the bus. Lyn stepped aboard soon afterward. She looked around and sang out, in carrying tones, "I want to sit by Russy!"

Russ was accustomed to being teased in this way. The only concession to public opinion that he felt obliged to make was to act flustered.

When the bus was under way, he remarked to Lyn, "I read the original story in the Bible last night. I wanted to be able to compare the movie to the source. They took a lot of liberties with it."

"Oh, I'm sure. After all, it's Hollywood. What did they change?"

"Well, the main thing was the romance between Solomon and Sheba. In the Bible, there's no hint of it. All that happens is that Sheba comes to visit Solomon, gives him lots of gifts and compliments, he gives her even more gifts to show off how prosperous he is, and she goes back home."

"Well, I suppose they couldn't hire Gina Lollobrigida and then tell her that she didn't even have any kissing scenes."

"The thing that gets me about the whole story is that Solomon is supposed to be the wisest man who ever lived, but he had seven hundred wives. I would think that the wisest man who ever lived wouldn't have any wives. And, you know, the rest of the story vindicates me. His seven hundred foreign wives insist on having their idols, just as they did back at home. Solomon allows many religions to be practiced. As a direct result, the kingdom splits in two after his death. As an indirect result, first Israel and then Judah are invaded and the people taken away from their homeland."

"I suppose you're going to be wiser about marriage than Solomon."

"I like to say that my destiny is inuxorable."

"You watch your mouth, Russell DeWitt!"

He cringed, wondering if anyone else had heard her. He explained, "I made up the word. You know, an uxorious man means one who is excessively fond of his wife? That was one of our vocab words. It's from the Latin word uxor, meaning wife. Get it?"

They were silent for a while. Then Lyn said, "Oo, it's so pretty looking out the front windows. You can't see them from where you're sitting, can you, Russ?"

"No, all I can see is this side window, and it looks totally black out there."

"Oh. In the headlights, I can see the snow driving at us. It's snowing in big clumps now, like powder puffs."

Craning his neck to see forward, Russ noticed that in the seat in front of them, a girl had rested her head on the shoulder of the boy next to her. He thought, "How shameless!" but immediately caught himself, remembering that he had renounced any and all criticism of other people's mores.

She went on, "And it's piling up on the windshield, until it drifts down and the wipers push it off. It's hypnotic!"

He said huskily, "You are getting sleeeepy!"

"Now that you mention it, I am getting sleepy. Would it be okay if I lean on your shoulder?"

The ensuing pause gives us time to reflect on the French philosopher Jean Buridan. As the story goes, he tied up a donkey exactly midway between two equal bundles of hay. When he released the donkey, it was unable to choose between the bundles, and so it starved to death.

"Nnnnno, Jocelyn, I don't indulge in that kind of thing. Anyway, I think you'll find that you sleep more comfortably just sitting upright."

Without replying, she closed her eyes and fell into a quiet slumber. She awoke with a start about ten minutes later, though, when something about the bus's motion felt wrong. The rear wheels seemed to be sliding sideways. The bus lurched and bumped. There were a few shrieks. Then the motion ceased. The bus was upright, but it was sitting in a snow-covered field.

For a few minutes, they waited while the driver gunned the engine. Forward, back, forward, back. Finally he took a flashlight and stepped out for a look. In a minute he returned, stood in front, and addressed the students.

"Kids, it looks like we're stuck. I'm gonna have to call for a tow. I'll be going on up the road to find a farmhouse. It won't take long. Now, if I could, I'd leave you with some light and heat, but the battery and gas are low. We want to be able to get back to town once we're out of this ditch. So I've gotta turn off the engine and lights. Just relax, and snuggle up with someone to keep warm."

With the lights off, it was totally black. There were no street lights in this farmland. The snow clouds covered every single star. The moon had not risen yet, being in its last quarter. There was a chatter of voices. In a whisper, Lyn said, "Russ?"

"Yes, Jocelyn?"

"I'm cold."

He put his arm around her shoulders and she turned toward him and put her arm around his waist. In the darkness, his face was an unseen battleground of warring emotions.

When he got home almost an hour later, as he was changing for bed, he examined his clothes carefully. He found three long blond hairs. He put them in an envelope. Then he plucked three dark hairs from his own scalp, one by one, and put them in the same envelope. He sealed it and wrote on it, "Solomon and Sheba". He placed the envelope in the back of one of his drawers, underneath some file boxes full of index cards.

[Saturday, March 11, 1961]

Dan Travis finished a lube job on a DeSoto and lowered the hydraulic lift. Before he could back it out, he saw that he would have to move a blown-out tire out of the way. Red Evans was the only other mechanic in the shop just then; he must have been the one who left it there. Dan called, "Hey, Red! Pick up after yourself, can'tcha?"

From under the hood of a Chrysler New Yorker, Red answered, "Hey, yourself! I'm working on an important job here, and the guy's coming for it at noon! You can move a little-bitty tire, can't you?"

"Oh, forget it. I already did."

Although too busy to put down his tools, Red was able to carry on a conversation. "Say, Romeo, I thought you and your chick were kinda going steady?"

"So?"

"Well, if you are, she's two-timing you."

"Aah, stuff it."

"Look, Danny, I'm not just yanking your chain this time. You know I drive a bus sometimes, after work, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, last night, I took a bunch of kids down to Jefferson. On the way back, your girl Lyn made a big fuss over sitting next to some guy. Later on, the bus skidded off the road and I had to go call a tow. When I got back to the bus and turned on the lights, they were cuddling. Hey! You little turkey..."

Dan had punched him in the ribs. Red dropped his tools and quickly pinned him against a bench by his elbows, with a knee pressing into his abdomen.

"Stop squirming, kid, you'll only hurt yourself. Why would I lie to you?"

"'Cause you're jealous!" retorted Dan, just for something to say.

"Don't make me laugh. I've seen 'em come and go, but they never stick around for long when they live on the other side of the tracks. Now, if you're through trying to hit me, I got work to do."

Physical labor is an anodyne. Dan stayed busy the rest of the morning, thinking as little as possible. When he stopped for lunch, he asked Red, "All right, who was the guy?"

"Oh, you believe me now, do ya? I don't know any of those high school kids. Kind of tall, dark-haired. I think she called him Rusty."

There are many different ways to deal with a revelation of this nature. Dan's was to ask Mr. Mikkelsen for longer hours. The next time he saw Lyn, he told her with a subdued demeanor that he wouldn't be able to pick her up at school or date her for a while. He explained that he was trying to save up for his future. She felt a little hurt, but didn't complain.

[Wednesday, March 29, 1961]

[Russ overhears Emily Marano telling Connie VanZandt that Dan has dumped Lyn, and Lyn's feeling really blue. Perhaps we get the idea that Lyn tends to define herself through relationships with males, and now feels that she doesn't have any.]

What was Russ telling himself as he bicycled out to Mikkelsen's Service Station? Did he hope to hear that Dan was definitely out of the picture? Did he want to ride up like a knight of old to slay a dragon for his damsel? Did he simply regard Lyn as a project he had taken on, as you might rebuild a Lamborghini in your back yard? He himself could not have sorted out the voices. He only knew that he wanted to find out what was wrong.

He locked his bike to a telephone pole before going in to the building, and as he did so, he tried to rehearse what he was going to say. He walked in to the overheated warmth of the office. No one was there, so he turned and walked through a swinging glass door to the garage area. Dan's legs were sticking out from under a Chevy.

"Daniel Travis?"

He trundled out from under the car on his creeper. "Yeah?"

"You might have seen me before? Russell DeWitt?"

"Oh! Yeah! Mr. 'cigarettes are dettamental to sloobitty'."

"Oh, I guess Jocelyn has told you about me. Daniel, I heard that you dumped Jocelyn. Is that true?"

Dan's face darkened. "What's it to you?"

"I'm just a friend of Jocelyn's. She's taking it kind of hard."

"It's something between me and Lyn. We don't need anybody butting in."

Just then, Red Evans took the liberty of speaking up. "I'll tell ya why they broke up. Lyn found somebody else she liked better."

Russ was perplexed. "What? Who?"

Dan answered reluctantly, "Someone named Rusty."

Red added lasciviously, "Someone she was making out with on a bus."

"What?!" It took Russ a couple of seconds to put two and two together. Then he laughed. "Not 'Rusty', 'Russy'. That was me! Wait a minute, don't get mad. Just listen. A lot of girls pretend to chase me. It doesn't mean a thing. They all know I'm a misog- a girl-hater."

Red said helpfully, "Yeah? Well, how come you two were in a knot when the lights came on?"

Russ hesitated. "Listen to me, please. If I tell you, you've got to promise to keep it strictly to yourselves. I would be dead if this got out."

"Okay, I'll go along for the ride," said Red. "As if I cared."

Dan nodded his assent. Russ explained, "While it was dark ... she fell asleep. I just wondered what it would be like. I slipped my arm over her head and around her shoulders. She must have dreamed that I was her mother or something, because she shifted around and put her arm around my waist. Look, she doesn't care a snap for me. It would be a shame if you two broke up over this."

Dan turned to Red. "Could it have been that way, the way he said?"

Red said, "Well, they did kind of jump apart when I turned the lights on. I thought it was just 'cause they got caught. But maybe..."

That was enough for Dan to hear. To Russ, he said, "I gotta say, thanks for coming here and telling me about it. I have to give you credit for that. But, say, you got the worst technique with girls I ever heard of."

Relieved, Russ said, "Yuh, I know. Look, I have to go now." He was sweating heavily, what with the heat in the service station, the fact that he was still wearing his winter coat, and the stress of the conversation. It was a comfort to get back out into the frigid night. As he rode off, the air in the garage was heating up still more from the discussion that the two mechanics were carrying on.

[Thursday, April 13, 1961]

One Thursday in April, a substitute took Miss Fahnestock's classes. She did nothing but take attendance, give a reading assignment, and allow the students to start reading. The scuttlebutt in the school hallways was that Miss Fahnestock's sister had died.

Judy VanZandt's strategy was to give her mother verbose reports on everything that didn't matter, so that she could avoid scrutiny on a few points that did. As soon as her mother came home, Judy told her the news about the history teacher.

Connie sprang into action at once. She phoned Mildred's number. It took seven rings before an answer.

"Oh, Mildred, I just heard the news. I'm so sorry. ... What happened? ... Oh, how awful! ... To come home and find that ... I'm sorry, Mildred, I can't make out what you're saying. ... Now you look here, Mildred Fahnestock, I'm coming over there with a nice meal to eat with you. Do you feel up to some chicken? ... All right, how about chicken soup? ... I'll be there in thirty minutes."

"What did she say?" asked Judy.

"The poor thing. She's been living with her sister Augusta for the last eighteen years. Yesterday evening, she came home from school, opened the door, and there was Augusta, dead at the foot of the stairs. She must have had a fall. There was a little puddle of blood. I hope that means that her heart stopped beating right away, so that she didn't have to lie around waiting to die."

"Oh, my goodness!" Judy exclaimed.

"She kept crying while I was trying to talk to her. Judy, I want you to baby-sit for Franky while I take a dinner over there and visit."

"Mother, may I go with you?" Judy didn't know what had impelled her to make the request. She didn't consciously like Miss Fahnestock; on the other hand, sitting through so many hours in the classroom where she presided created a kind of bond, as if they were survivors of a shipwreck who had spent weeks drifting in a lifeboat together. "Franky's almost thirteen. He doesn't need a babysitter."

Connie made another of her rapid calculations and said, "Very well, sweetheart."

They drove together through the twilight. A light drizzle had turned the pavement such an obsidian black, it was hard to see the lane markings. Alongside the curbs, sawtoothed piles of hardened snow were speckled with mud and soot, a drastic metamorphosis from the fluffy down of pristine white that had fallen in December. Where a patch of grass broke through the snow here and there, it was a dead-looking brown.

As they drove along, Judy asked, "What do I say, Mama?"

"You don't have to say a thing, sweetheart."

Mildred lived on Garden Avenue, often called "Brick Street" because of the number of large brick houses along it. Her house, though, was a Victorian frame house. At her door, Connie twisted a knob that sounded the bell. The old lady who answered the door seemed to Judy to have shrunk visibly. Connie sent Judy into the kitchen to rewarm and serve the chicken soup. As she did, the girl heard her mother asking about funeral arrangements, police reports, probate, and the like.

The three of them sat down together in the dining room. It was a dark room with thick, fringed drapes, a ponderous sideboard, a Tiffany ceiling lamp casting its feeble beams on a yellowed lacy tablecloth which partly covered a heavy oak dining table.

Connie said, "I barely knew your sister, Mildred. Would you like to tell us about her?"

Mildred stared into the distance and the pain eased on her face. "I remember when she was the tiniest little thing. A beautiful child with long golden locks. I felt like a mother to her, although I was only three years her elder. Oh! how I doted on the little tyke. But it wasn't always like that ... well, I mustn't get ahead of myself.

"When she was eleven, twelve, thirteen or so, Augusta took piano lessons. We had a spinet in the parlor. She was a child prodigy! Perhaps not another Mozart, but it was such a delight to hear the Humoresque, the Air on the G String, or Bizet's Farandole echoing through the house. And the boys loved it, too. When she was a little older, she would often have a crowd of the local beaux hovering around her, singing along while she played.

"I went off to college, but Augusta went right into the working world from high school. She became a stenographer. Now I must tell you that in college, I met a man named Herbert Bauer. I found him very attractive, and he seemed to take a fancy to me. He had so many wonderful accomplishments. At least, so I thought them at the time. He danced like a deep flowing river. His manners were elegant. Even today I can envision him in his snug-fitting vest. His stomach was so flat, his watch-chain dangled in front of it. Imagine! That was just before the wing collar went out of style, you know.

"And, strange as it may seem, he favored me with his attentions. For two years I was only one of many lady friends, but that last year, he was seeing no one but me.

"Augusta and I wrote to each other regularly while I was off at college. I poured out my heart to her about, well, simply everything I was experiencing: my classes, the professors, collegiate society, city life, and of course I didn't neglect to mention Herbert. She was my chief confidante. I poured out my heart to her. I told her about every trifling attention that Herbert paid to me. You see, I wanted her to confirm that he cared for me. Later, when I was persuaded that he did, I wanted her to share my joy. Oh, dear. I was so silly then. I knew so little.

"During my last year of college, Augusta arranged to come and stay with me for a week. Of course, I must have her meet my Herbert. I was so pleased with how well they got along. I thought perhaps, one day, they would be brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and I delighted to think how close we would all stay. I made sure that Herbert listened to her playing the piano. She was in peak form, and Herbert professed himself to be in raptures.

"And then - can you believe it? My darling little sister stole my Herbert away from me.

"I never knew until it was an accomplished fact. He must have visited her surreptitiously at our parents' home. I graduated and returned to Campden (that was where we lived). The very next day, Herbert appeared at our door, and he and Augusta announced their engagement.

"I'm afraid I took it rather badly -"

"You had every right to!" interrupted Connie.

"I refused to attend the wedding. I broke off entirely with Augusta. A few letters came from her. I returned them unopened. I even had my mother write 'return to sender' so that I wouldn't have to touch them.

"I started teaching history then in Campden. Then came the Great War (you know that as World War I, Judy). In 1928 my father died and left me very well provided for. In college I had specialized in German history, because my parents spoke German at home when we were growing up. When I found myself mistress of a steady income, I decided to fulfill an old dream. I had always been fascinated by Friedrich Schiller. My dream was to write his biography, doing research in all the cities in Germany where he had lived. I started in Leipzig, at the National Library, and went on from there.

"Of course, all sorts of awful things were happening in Germany in those days. As a general rule, I only read about them in the newspapers. In Weimar, there was such a kindly Jewish grocer. On April 1, 1933, the Nazis called a boycott of all Jewish businesses. There were fierce-looking Stormtroopers standing at his front door, scaring people away. But I played an April Fool prank on Herr Hitler. I knew a way around to the back door of the grocer's shop, and I bought several cabbages, as I recall.

"I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you about Augusta, and most of the story seems to be about myself. But I have to tell you this in order to get back to Augusta. In 1934 I finished my research and returned to my teaching in Campden. Then, in 1942, I got a call from the Office of Strategic Services - the O.S.S. They call it the C.I.A. nowadays. Somehow they had heard about my years in Germany. They were looking for someone who spoke fluent German and who would be familiar with the German culture. Of course, someone who would be loyal to the United States beyond all doubt."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Judy. "You were a spy?!"

"Nonsense. You make it sound so melodramatic. My task was merely to attend the meetings of certain German-speaking organizations in the Campden area, and report on them to the O.S.S."

"My history teacher was a spy ..." Judy muttered.

"Well, I had to go to Washington for preliminary training. On my third day in Washington, I was walking on E Street near Virginia Avenue. I can still picture it, almost at the back door of the White House. I saw my sister Augusta walking on the other side of the street! I was sure it was she. The years had taken a toll, but I knew her by her walk as much as by her face.

"I found that I was no longer mad at her. Those stormy emotions of so many years ago had simply dried up. I ran across the street, almost getting run over, and took her in my arms."

She stopped to wipe her eyes, with a bittersweet smile. After a few moments she went on.

"To make a long story short (although I'm afraid it's too late for that), Herbert was dead. According to Augusta, he had treated her well for two years. Then he took to drink. Before long he was beating her. I'm sorry you have to hear this, Judy, but it's true. Her arm was a little misshapen where the brute had broken it. She stayed with him through thick and thin. I called her a fool for doing it, but I didn't mean it harshly; I was just speaking out of solicitude for my sister.

"She agreed to come live with me as soon as she was excused from her service. She had been working as a stenographer for the War Department. After the war, we moved to Strafford. It made me feel like a teenager again to hear her playing the Humoresque in the parlor."

Mildred went on with her reminiscences as she thought of one anecdote after another to keep the memory of her sister green. Finally, Connie said, "I hate to think of you all alone in this big house another night. We have a guest room that's all spruced up. How would you like to visit us tonight?"

"Oh, I couldn't ..."

"You certainly could. It's your choice, Mildred, but we would love to have you. Wouldn't we, Judy?"

"That'd be keen!" she said with every appearance of sincerity, although a malign voice in the back of her head was whispering, "Creepy! Your history teacher sleeping in your house - and she's a spy!"

[Saturday, April 15, 1961]

Mildred was still staying at the VanZandt house Saturday evening, at Connie's urging. Disparate though they were, they got along well together. Mildred found Connie's candor shocking at times, but it gave her the security of knowing where she stood. Connie appreciated Mildred's naive transparency for the same reason.

Judy had gone out with some girl friends and Frank was watching Perry Mason in the living room. Connie and Mildred were cleaning up from supper in the kitchen.

[Mildred reveals that Judy has been saying that she killed a man. She lets it out without the vaguest idea of its significance. Later on, Connie and Judy are alone. They have it out. It turns out that Judy threw a tantrum the night her father died. She wanted him to go to the store to get her something. Ever since, without saying anything about it, she's blamed herself for his death. Connie tells her the whole story of that night. They had sent Judy to bed after her tantrum. Carl had no intention of giving in to his slightly spoiled little girl. But something else came up, and he had to drive out after all.]

[Saturday, April 29, 1961 is Lyn's eighteenth birthday. Maybe we'll take a look at the party.]

[Tuesday, May 9, 1961]

Judy and Lyn went through the cafeteria line together, while Judy finished telling an anecdote.

"The top was down on Flip's ragtop, right?" she said. "So Mitch decided he'd vault over the door and into the seat, the way they do in the movies. Well, his foot hit the door, and he fell into the car headfirst."

Lyn hooted. "Oh! I wish I'd seen that."

"And you know how a cat does, when it misses a leap? It kind of looks around to see if anyone noticed, and then pretends it meant to do it that way the whole time? That was just how Mitch looked when he stuck his head up over the seat."

"Oh, how funny!"

They sat down facing each other at the far end of one of the long tables. Lyn seemed troubled about something. She said, "Judy, do you think college is all that important?"

"Pretty important. Why?"

"But a lot of girls go to college, get married, and never use their degree for anything. And it's a lot of money to throw away."

"Lyn Marano, are you thinking about not going? But you're the kind of girl who's got to go!"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, look at you. You're a good girl. You get good grades, you don't smoke or drink, you get along with your parents. Girls like you just naturally go to college. What would you do instead? Get a job?"

"I never said I wasn't going. I was just wondering if it's worthwhile."

Some other students sat down next to them, and they started talking about the million things they had to do before graduation. When they left the cafeteria, the two girls went in different directions. Lyn headed toward the school library. On her way, she happened to meet Russ, who had some new reflections that he had been wanting to impart to her.

He said, "Hello, Jocelyn. I've been thinking about something you might find interesting. Do you remember what I said about Solomon? You know, on the bus trip?"

"Let's see. When you joked about how you were wiser than he was because you weren't ever going to get married?"

"'Joked'? ... I was bothered because I couldn't understand how the wisest man who ever lived wasn't also the best. Well, I think I've achieved more insight now. I've been reading Ecclesiastes."

"That's the book about 'vanity of vanities'?"

"Yes. In it, Solomon gives several hints. You just have to put them together. He said that he became the wisest one of all. We know that kings came from other countries to tap his wisdom. But still he wanted to become even wiser. Toward that end, he tried out every pleasure, every experience, every possession. It didn't matter whether it was good or bad. He tried being foolish and getting drunk. He had to experience everything. I suppose that would account for the seven hundred wives, too.

"You see what had happened? He got a reputation for being wise, and he liked it. He liked it so much that he became obsessed with wisdom. Nothing else mattered. Finally, he chose to be wise rather than to be good."

"Reputation," Lyn repeated. "So his mistake was that he cared too much about what other people thought."

"Why, yes, you could put it that way."

"I think that's very profound, Russ. We should apply it in our own lives, shouldn't we?"

"Well, I...." He stopped to consider how this precept might possibly apply to him.

"I mean, how much does it matter what other people think? They're not living your life. You are! You have to live with the consequences; they don't. Russell DeWitt, I knew you were smart, but I'm beginning to think you're truly wise." She turned and hustled away.

[Alternate version: "... Russell DeWitt, I could kiss you, only I hate to think of you having to scour your cheek off with Brillo." She turned and hustled away.

He said to the empty hall, "I could just use a sponge...."]

[Thursday, May 11, 1961]

It was 10:30 at night when the phone rang. Russ took it; his father had already gone to bed.

"Is Lyn Marano there?" It was Mrs. Marano's voice, with a worried tone.

"No. Why?"

"She said she'd be at your house for a newspaper meeting tonight."

"We did have an editorial meeting, but Jocelyn - er, Lyn - didn't come."

"Oh." She sounded deflated.

"What's the matter?"

"She was supposed to be home by 9:00, but I thought your meeting must have run overtime."

He felt a sudden chill, without knowing why. "Mrs. Marano, can I come over?"

"Oh, no, dear. I'm sure we can take care of it."

"Maybe I can think of something, somewhere she might have gone. Or at least I could run errands for you, or something."

"No, no, no. Please don't worry yourself."

He sat up reading to take his mind off the matter, without much success. At 11:50, the phone rang again.

"Russ, dear, she still isn't home. I told my husband what you said - that you might have an idea where she could be."

"I'll be right over."

When he hung up, his father called out, "Russ! Tell your friends not to call so late!"

"That was an emergency, Dad. A g - a kid from school is missing. I'm going to go see if I can help."

"Oh, golly. What is it, a search party?"

"No, Dad. We're just thinking up possibilities."

"Well, call me if there's anything I can do. Yeah, you can take the car."

When he arrived at the Maranos' house, Emily Marano greeted him with a mixture of gratitude, annoyance, and distraction. In another room, he could hear Manny Marano dictating a description, with frequent pauses.

"Five foot five ... Blonde hair ... Blue eyes ..."

Russ called out, "Technically, they're blue-gray."

Manny wasn't paying attention, but Emily filed the thought away in her mind.

Manny came rushing into the front room. "They say we have to wait twenty-four hours before they can put out a bulletin. Meanwhile, we're supposed to check whether any of her clothes are missing."

"I have checked," she replied. "I can't be sure, because the laundry isn't sorted." (She couldn't help thinking, "Why does the DeWitt boy have to hear this?") "But I think there's a suitcase missing from the attic."

"Was she mad about anything? Did she have a fight with you today?"

"Not in the least! She - why, she gave me a big hug and a kiss before she left for that meeting. She was so affectionate."

"Where could she stay? Could she have gone to Minerva's? I'm calling Minerva."

"You're not calling Minerva! Not after midnight, and with her condition."

"All right, then, I'm driving over there and see if there's any sign of Lyn. And if there's not, maybe I can drive around town looking for a while. I'll go crazy if I have to just sit here waiting."

When he had left, Emily was able to turn her attention to Russ. She asked him if he knew anything that might help. He told her everything he could remember about what Lyn had done and said in his presence in the last few days. He told it without nuance or embellishment, just one fact on top of another. When he reported the conversation about Solomon, neither of them found it significant. When he had finished, he sat in embarrassment. He felt that he hadn't really had anything to contribute. Nothing he had said had provided any clues to Lyn's absence.

"Well, thank you, dear. Can I offer you anything to eat?"

"Listen, Mrs. Marano. Someone said that the thing to do when there's nothing you can do is to pray. Would it be okay with you if I prayed?"

"Certainly. Go ahead."

"Okay." This was rather awkward. Russ was not usually asked to give a prayer, and he had never volunteered before. He knew it was only a matter of saying what was in his heart, but there were things in his heart that he was definitely not ready to share. What exactly did he want for Lyn? "Dear God, all we ask - all I ask is for Jocelyn to be safe and happy. Amen."

"Amen," repeated Emily. Suddenly, she felt assured that Lyn was safe and happy. How silly she had been to worry! All they had to do was wait until they heard from her daughter.

And then she looked at Russ with new eyes.

"Russ, dear, this means more to you than just a friend in trouble, doesn't it?"

He looked slowly into her eyes. They weren't the same, but there was more than a hint of those blue-gray eyes he had memorized for ten seconds one day. He took out his wallet. In a compartment, hidden behind his driver's license, there was a folded paper with spots of dirt and lint on it. He unfolded it and handed it to Emily, explaining, "I wrote this. It's an acrostic."

She read the carefully hand-lettered sonnet aloud.

"Just one scintilla flashing from your eye,

One cheery chime of laughter from your lips,

Can chase the darkest clouds from out the sky,

Educing every ray from its eclipse.

Lest any ling'ring languor shroud our souls,

You speak of gentle things, and fair, and true.

Now warm, now fond, your happy heart cajoles

Hope from despair, and life begins anew.

Mellifluous motions of your supple wrist

And tranquil inclination of your head

Restore our peace, our phantasms dismissed,

Anxiety allayed, chimaeras dead.

No other solace can so long persist,

Or salve this aching world whence joy has fled.

"December, 1960"

Then she read down the first column of letters. "Jocelyn H Marano." She was quiet for a long moment.

"Oh, my," she said. "That was beautiful, Russ. But, you know, it's not Lyn."

"It's not?"

"No. It's a beautiful description of how you feel. The girl in that poem could be anyone.

"My husband and I love Lyn as much as anyone can. Yes, her smile makes us happy. But what about when she's not smiling? She's a human being, Russ. She has ups and downs. She can be tender-hearted, or she can be vicious. To me, loving her means taking the whole package, and wanting it no other way."

"Oh..."

The telephone rang. Emily pounced on it.

"Jocelyn Hope Marano! Where on earth -"

A pause.

"Married?!"

Manny still hadn't returned when Russ left.

"I'm sorry I wasn't much help, Mrs. Marano."

"You know what, Russell? You were. You really were. Just not in the way you expected.

"If you ever need to talk about anything, give me a call. After what we just went through, you're family."

[Friday, May 12, 1961]

The next day, Lyn's elopement was conversational fodder by third period. Russ didn't say anything about it, and no one thought to ask him what he knew.

After dinner, though, Russ dropped by Timmy's house. He said, "Timothy, I've got a load on my mind. Are you up for a walk 'n' talk?"

"Okay, Russ. Just hold on a minute while I put away the dishes for Mom."

As they walked up the street toward the outskirts of town, Russ said, "I don't know where to begin. This is really hard for me to say. I've made a big, big mistake."

"Dang! Are you in trouble with the law?"

"Nothing like that. Actually, worse than that. I've been lying to you for years."

"Aw, man! I think I can forgive you for that. What about? The Pogo comics?"

"I've been telling you I was a misogynist. I've been telling everyone I was a misogynist. I've been telling Jocelyn Marano - I mean, Travis - that I was a misogynist."

Timmy guffawed with relief. "Is that all? Buddy, don't scare me like that."

Russ looked somewhat offended. "Hey, look. When a guy is confessing, it isn't polite to tell him -"

"Sometimes a friend has to tell you things you don't want to hear. Nothing personal, but - nobody cares whether you're a misogynist or not."

Shot down again, Russ said in a surly tone, "Well, it makes a difference to me."

"I suppose it does. I'm sorry. Just tell me about it."

And Russ went into excruciating detail about his history with Lyn Marano. Every memory was inexpressibly sweet to him. To have held a secret so long, to have thrilled at every chance of exposure, to have been one thing on the outside and something so totally different within, to have contrived so many meetings without appearing to want them, all poured out of him in a gush. When he had finished his narrative, he said, "I've found out what's wrong with lying, anyway. Only the truth can build up your life. A lie is like a backtrack on a hike. It cancels out part of what you've accomplished. It makes you less you than you were supposed to be."

"Speaking of backtrack," Timmy inserted, "we're out in the boonies already. Can we start heading back now?"

They turned toward home, and Russ said, "What's hitting me hardest right now is the thought that maybe I would have been so much better for Jocelyn than Daniel. Maybe, if I had been out in the open with her, she would have given me a chance."

"Russ, you didn't even know her. You just told me that. That was part of the lie. You put her on that pedestal with 'woman' carved on the plinth."

"That's right. And now I'll never get to know her."

"I mean, good grief. If you knew her at all, you would've called her 'Lyn' like everyone else does."

"But I loved saying those three syllables. Jah, suh, linn, descending the scale. It's a sensual pleasure for my mouth, like chewing gum."

They walked on in silence for a while along the gravel shoulder. The sun sent long shadows ahead of them. Queen Anne's lace stood like a fence along the edges of the fields. At long intervals a car rumbled by.

Russ broke the silence. "So what do I do now? How can I get back on track? I mean, should I go on the P.A. system tomorrow morning and announce, 'Russell DeWitt is not a misogynist'?"

They both laughed at the idea. Timmy joked, "No! No! You write it on the graffiti rock!" Then he asked, "Is there any other girl you like?"

"Na Not now. That would make me feel as if I were cheating on Jocelyn. Think of that. Cheating on another man's wife."

"Well, I'm no headshrinker, but I think you should just be yourself. The only change is, now you know a little better who 'yourself' is. And maybe one thing you could do is start calling people by their nicknames!"

"Let me try. Timmy?"

"Yeah?"

"Hey, it works!"

[Saturday, May 13, 1961]

The next morning was a Saturday. Russ sat down with his father at the breakfast table. Vernon gave thanks for the food they were about to eat. After the "Amen", Russ said, "Dad, you know how, every birthday, you ask me if I need to know about the birds and the bees?"

"Oh, my. Is it time for that talk now?"

"What I want to know, Dad, is ... how come you've never offered to tell me something much more important to me."

"What do you mean?"

"Who is my mother?"

[Friday, May 19, 1961]

A few days later, Russ was home alone in the evening when the phone rang. He assumed it was either his father or Timmy. "DeWitt Exterminators. 'De-bug me, baby.'"

"This is Emily Marano, Russ. I was just wondering if you'd like to come over for some homemade cookies and chocolate milk."

"Good golly, Miss Molly! I'm sorry, Mrs. Marano! I mean - well, sure I'd like to."

What on earth does the woman want with me, he wondered as he bicycled over. Is this a trap? Does she think she owes me something? Does she have another daughter I don't know about? Maybe she just wants me to run a projector.

When he rang the doorbell, Emily invited him into the kitchen, seated him at the table, and served him a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven. He could hear a loud television in another part of the house; it sounded as if Mr. Marano was watching a sports program. He bit into a cookie. It was half an inch thick and soft and tender as a lullaby. It left gouts of melted chocolate on his lips which he slowly licked clean.

"So, Mrs. Marano, what's happening with Lyn?"

"She and Dan have set up housekeeping in a mobile home that Dan has rented. So far, she's as gay as a skylark. She even says she does her housework singing. I must admit that she sang quite a different tune when we asked her to do housework."

"What are her plans?"

"Well, first of all, we talked her into staying on to get her diploma. She was so close, and there's no sense throwing that work away. So I expect you'll be seeing her in class next week."

"That'll be nice."

"Second, she was planning to get a waitress job and help Dan save up for a down payment on a small house. I've talked it over with her and Connie VanZandt, and instead of that, she'll be doing typing for Connie's office. It pays better than waitressing, and she'll have a chance to improve her skills and work her way up.

"She put up some resistance to the typing job. It seems she was embarrassed about having her friend's mom for a boss. But Connie won't be her boss; she'll actually be working for the office manager."

"I'm really glad that things are going so well for her, Mrs. Marano. She's a swell girl, even if I don't really know her, and even though she has her faults."

"That's very kind of you, Russ. I see you're a fast learner."

"Is that why you called me over? To talk about Lyn?"

"Yes, Russ, and one other thing. I want you to tell me a little about your mother."

"My mother?! Why?"

"Oh, just call me an incorrigible buttinsky, if you like. I would appreciate it if you were willing to say anything, but of course you don't have to."

"Well, I guess I don't mind. I didn't really know much at all until last Christmas. All I knew was that I had a mother for a while, and then I didn't. I remembered a little about her. I remembered snuggling up against her warm bathrobe, sitting in front of a fire in the fireplace. Or when she came in on a cold day, and I laid my cheek against her frosty fur coat. I remembered hearing her sing; I think she had a beautiful voice, but I was just a kid, so I suppose I would naturally think that.

"Since then, I've found out a lot more. Apparently she was never satisfied with my dad. He says he didn't have much to give her, but I don't know what he means by that. Anyway, when I was almost six years old and starting first grade, she decided that she couldn't take it anymore - whatever 'it' was. She withdrew her savings - again, I don't know how she and Dad had divided their money - and just left one morning, without saying a word. A few days later she wrote, and told Dad not to follow her. She was going to make a new life for herself. She was born to be free - whatever that means.

"Since then, she's written Dad every year or two, usually when she's about to leave a place and move on. She never apologizes, never tells any details about what her life is like. The most she'll say is that she's happy, or fulfilled, or living the life she was meant to live."

"Did your parents ever get a divorce?"

"No. She doesn't seem to care, and Dad doesn't want to marry again. I think he feels like a failure at marriage, so why try again?"

With an effort, Emily toned down her indignation before she spoke again. "Russ, there is something you need to know. Your mother should have told you. With her gone, your father should have told you. Apparently, he doesn't have enough sense to. All that's left is an old buttinsky neighbor lady, so I'm going to tell you. Russ, you have been shortchanged. You didn't deserve this. Even if you had been a bad boy you wouldn't have deserved it, and I don't think you were a bad boy. That's all I want to say right now. You should think about it for a while now."

He went home and he did think about it.

[Emily calls on Vernon and talks to him like a Dutch uncle. She essentially points out that he's been carrying the torch for an indifferent woman, while all along he's had a pretty neat son who loves him and stands by him. She rips Mimi to shreds, comparing and contrasting with her own story. (Since Mimi never puts in an appearance, she might as well be the villain.) As a result, he invites Russ to go on a wilderness expedition, just the two of them, to celebrate Russ's last summer before college.]

Copyright © 2004 by Gwillim Law. All rights reserved.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download