Gould (6 page)

was
funny,” and he said “No, I said it seriously, so I must, as another one of my paternal virtues, be losing my marbles,” and she said “Anyhow, it wasn't a real abortion, so there was no money involved, unless you want to help me make up for the three hours' work I missed; I would have missed more but I stuck it out on the floor for as long as I could. Can I come over and talk?” and he said “Not right now; and there's no one here, that's not why. But ‘on the floor' where?” and she said “Woolworth's. I first found out I was pregnant when my period was late,” and he said “You mean you got suspicious,” and she said “So I got a test at a pharmacist's—after other signs had appeared—and when it turned out positive I took something someone gave me—a drink to induce the abortion or miscarriage or anything you want to call it,” and he said “And it worked like that?” and she said “Not the first time. So I took it again and then realized—it's supposed to take a day or so—that I had to be at work behind the counter, so like an idiot I went. I needed the money,” and he said “You should have called me,” and she said “And then it started happening—terrific cramps—maybe from the first time I took it, or the second, or both, but I had to go to the bathroom real bad and was also discharging,” and he said “Blood?” and she said “When I later looked in my underpants, everything. So I went, I was a mess before I even sat on the toilet, and the rest of it just swooshed out of me there. I tried to check what sex it was, didn't have a clue from what I could observe of it, and flushed it down. An ignominious way to go, wouldn't you say? Now I wish I had saved it, given it a backyard burial, but that wouldn't be so good. Dog might dig it up and eat it, or worse, walk around with it and drop it at my feet as if he'd caught and killed it,” and he said “It's no joke; it must have been terrible and physically painful for you; I'm sorry,” and she said “I felt sick after but told myself I wasn't going to let this send me home—why should I lose good pay?
Good?
The lousy cheapskates but after a few hours I told them I had the flu, and left. I hope that won't be the last time I get pregnant,” and he said “Why should it be? Look how easily you conceived this time? We went out for how long, a couple of months?” and she said “More than three, but it's not as if we did it just once,” and he said “Anyway, you're fertile. You took precautions and you still got pregnant, which either means, and I doubt you'd do this—you're too much of a perfectionist—” and she said “Me? Not me. Miss Unperfectnik. But regarding what?” and he said “Your IUD device. About putting it in right,” and she said “The ‘D' is for ‘device,' and the device is always in, didn't you know?” and he said “Sort of. But my point is that you had to have put it in right originally, being what I think you are—” and she said “The doctor does that, and then takes it out if you need a new one or it expels on its own or it's irritating you,” and he said “But it didn't expel, did it?” and she said “No, it's still in there and feels fine,” and he said “But anyway, that you're so fertile that you got pregnant despite the device. So at least you now know you can conceive, and against one of the most uncompromising obstacles, which has to be of some relief to you, unless it's happened before,” and she said “It hasn't, this was a first, and the good you see in it with that relief thing is too premeditatedly positive a notion for me—think right and ye shall be all right, and that sort of baloney—and I'd think for you too. Because you, do you feel any relief in knowing you can help conceive? Nah, you've probably got a chorus line of knocked-up women behind you,” and he said “Not that I know of,” and she said “So I'm your first, huh? Well, that's something; you'll always remember me. But some women I've heard of, and in their twenties, have had just one conception disruption like mine and were never able to conceive again. Doctors couldn't explain it. It's as though all their repro organs went down the toilet too, or wherever their predelivery took place—doctors' offices' waste containers, in trash bags out the window or in the incinerator. It would be horrible to imagine that this little guy of mine I flushed down was it, the very last of my unilluminated lonely line, since, I think I told you, I'm siblingless and so are my parents on both sides,” and he said “I'm sure it wasn't,” and she asked why and he said “Just, I'm sure, because you'll be at your procreative peak for years—why wouldn't you be? you're just that age. Meanwhile, if you're not feeling well, anything I can do for you?” and she said “You won't like this, I'm
positive
, but could you come see me? You can even sleep with me if you wish, not to make me pregnant. I'm not about to do one of those predictable bits: immediately after losing it, try to make up for it by getting another. No, it's simply that I'm feeling extra sad today over losing it—” and he said “You wouldn't have kept it, would you?” and she said “Probably yes; I'm hypocritically opposed to abortion, in addition to my fears that this was my last huzza. I also don't have any present company to speak of—not even to speak to—so you'd be welcome,” and he said “You know that wouldn't be any good,” and she said “You have another steady already?” and he said “If you must know, I haven't had sex or, to be vulgar, even a handjob with anyone since you, and not because I haven't wanted to. Just haven't met anyone or anyone where it went that far.” She said “I could always come to your room if you still haven't a car and it'd just be one last shot. I'm not exciting you with this chatter? It's not doing a thing to you?—be honest,” and he said “No; I've got an erection, but what's that? I don't want to say I also get them when cats jump in my lap or I'm holding a particularly heavy book there for a few minutes. I'm sorry for what happened to you, I wish I could have done better by you, I don't know what the hell didn't happen with me in relation to you, but it didn't and that's all I can say,” and she said “Okay, I like that honesty, and I thought you'd want to know about baby Gil—they have gills, you know; and about our getting together a final time, I felt I ought to at least give it a whirl. I wish you felt the same for me as I do for you,” and he said “I wish that was so too,” and she said “But you don't,” and he said “I suppose not,” and she yours?” He still hadn't had sex since he was last with her, but he'd reject the offer, tactfully, saying “No, thank you, I'm all tied up with work these days, but that's very kind of you.” And if she pleaded? How would she plead? “Please, cut the bull, I just want to get fucked, it has nothing to do with you except you're the only guy I know around here that way—wear a mask, even, what do I care?—all I want is your goddamn penis in me and then you can buzz off and never come by or call again, and I won't contact you again either.” Or nicer, politer, but he'd reject it no matter what, and she'd never plead and he doubts she'd ask. But here's something: what if she had come up to him last November right around the time of the abortion and said “I want to have your baby I'm pregnant with, will you go along with me?” He would have asked, what does she specifically mean will he go along with her, and she would have explained, and he would have said “No, because the truth is I don't want to live with anyone I might have to support or take care of in any way and I also don't want to be responsible for a child—I don't have the money or time.” Suppose she'd then have said “All right, then I want to have the baby but not with you; you don't have to see me again or the baby ever, not even in the hospital after it's born. But will you at least give me your moral support—your financial support I promise never to ask you for and will even sign an affidavit regarding that—and say you don't mind my having it? I just want the child to know its father wasn't against its birth, even if he wasn't strongly for it either, and then just leave it to the future for you two to work that little issue out.” He would have said “Okay, sure, have it, I don't see any problem—I'll in fact come see you and it sometime, and maybe even in the hospital, if I'm still in the area and you wouldn't mind. And if I ever make any money beyond what keeps me bordering on poverty, and again if you don't mind, I'll contribute to its upkeep.” Because he was beginning to want children, two of them, though not necessarily by the same woman. In fact, probably by two women, since he feels the courts would go after him for child support quicker if he had two by the same woman in one state. But he just wanted to say, or this was
mostly
it, “Yes, I'm a father,” and doesn't think he'd be embarrassed at saying “And no, I was never a husband,” for he was already twenty-eight and the way he was going he didn't think he'd have enough income in the next ten years to have kids any other way and he didn't want to wait till he was forty or so to have his first one, if he'd be able to afford to have it even then. She sent him two tickets in May to the graduate theater department play she did the lighting for and had a small role in—“In case you want to bring a friend, gal or guy, but I'd love for you to see what I've done stagewise and am pretty proud of—not my acting: that's always been bad.”—but he didn't go. About a year later he got a letter from her mailed to his graduate department and forwarded to him. She'd left school, never got her masters, was back in Mass., had given up theater altogether and was now working as a housekeeper and applying to the American Studies programs of several grad schools, none in Cal., and rest assured: not because, as she's heard, he's still there. “After you didn't attend the play I lit and acted passably in I tried out on myself lots of times what I'd say if we bumped into each other: ‘You're not interested in what I do, then you're not interested in me, and no doubt vice v. for both of us (after all, it was a big mirror I was doing this to, though it actually doesn't hold true from me to you, but anyway), so nice knowing ya, Bucko, and take a flying leap!' so then why'm I writing? Not to knock you. Probably to say that if I had bumped into you I never would have said those things: no guts, flair or bravado and I simply ain't the censorious type. I also thought you might want to know why you never bump into me anymore or see me thermosing in the main caf, perhaps to give you additional liberty if you've been trying to steer clear of me the past year. As for Cal., I've had my fill of that empty self-absorbed state and don't know how anyone can go through four nominal seasons without wearing an overcoat and galoshes or their equivalents and still call himself a healthy-headed human being.” She hoped he was well, and despite everything she's said here she still thinks of him fondly, “Believe me. The only person I bear a grudge against is myself.” He wrote back saying he'd left grad school too but wasn't planning to apply to any other kind of program no matter how enticing another fat stipend seemed—he just wasn't a student, something he knew since first-year grade school, so he'd continue to work at what he was persistently pursuing so unsuccessfully and see if he got lucky enough and also a miracle occurred, where it eventually came out half okay. As for housekeeping, he was doing lots of it these days, as he was living with an extremely indolent, indefatigably sybaritic woman—“picture the most famous odalisque picture you can picture and you'll picture her, except she has pigtails and bangs—and her rambunctious, untidy son from her first husband. Did that sound as if I'm her current one? I'm not, nor does she plan to remarry or rekid by anyone, so who knows how long, considering my ballooning penchant for pahood and dandling and so on, I'll be living with her and grooming her sumptuous home. You'll also be surprised, since I don't think you ever thought of me as hardworking and resourceful, that for dough I have three jobs, as this woman and boy are essentially living off me and the monthly pittance her ex sends for the kid every other month: artist model around ten clockwatching hours a week, substitute teacher in several high schools till the state board boots me out when it learns I haven't the ed credits I said I did, and my main labor: thirty working hours a week at a Woolworth's in the area but not the one you slaved at, and mostly doing stock, and I didn't mention that place to bring back bad memories for you. I'm tremendously sorry for what you had to go through alone a year ago and how terribly I behaved and I hope you've forgiven me or will sometime soon.” She didn't answer his letter and he never wrote her address down, thinking she'd write back and he'd get it then, and a few years later he tried recalling her last name when he met someone her age from the same town she grew up in, but couldn't. He tried describing her, it didn't work, so he said “Maybe this will help you remember her. She had a large open hole in her left foot, I think, or maybe it was the right, from an accident in childhood, she said—a car or truck ran over it. It was about the size of a quarter and was on the top part of her foot—what do you call it? the instep—a hole so wide and deep I swear you could almost see flesh and bone in it, so something you would have noticed if she wore sandals with thin straps or was barefoot,” but this woman, who looked as if she was getting sick because of his description, kept shaking her head no.

He was living with a woman in California, was called to New York when his father had a life-threatening massive heart attack, or that's the way it was put to him on the phone by his mother: “Fly in quick, you might not even have time if you got on the plane this minute; they're all saying, or you can see and hear it in the way they're wavering, that he might die.” His father pulled through easily, and while there Gould met a woman at a party. Nice face, intelligent and attractive, dressed simply, tall with a slim figure, quiet wry smile, pleasant educated voice, the look of someone with a good disposition and no affectation, seemed to have a young son with her and to have come with another woman, since she was always standing beside or moving around the apartment with her and occasionally stopping the boy to tend to him—“You want something more to eat?     . This will be dinner, so perhaps you ought to have a second walk around the food table with me.     Did you see there's another boy here around your age? He looks nice.”—and there didn't seem to be a man she signaled across the room to periodically and met up with every fifteen minutes or so and things like that—what he always does when he goes to a party like this with a woman—and he went over to her and said, pointing to the boy, “He yours?” and she looked warily at him and nodded and he said “Excuse me, the introductions, very rude of me to you two—Gould Bookbinder,” and held out his hand to her and she shook it and he shook her friend's hand and the friend said “Miriam,” and he said “How do you do, Miriam, Gould Bookbinder, but I said that,” and then to the boy, while he was thinking should he ask the woman her name? Ah, she doesn't want to offer it now, let her, “Rude to all three of you I should've said, right there, kid?” and put out his hand and the boy looked at it and he said “Really, and I hate using this word, but he's adorable, and I'm not going to steal him so don't be leery,” and the woman said “Who even said?” and he said “Of course, but you see, I just look at him and realize how much I miss the little kid I live with in California—towhead too and same height and haircut—in fact, they almost all have the same cut today, people of a certain     well, just so many people with kids this age, I mean his age with people like that—got popular with the president's son, if I'm not wrong, and before that the elite prep schools and Prince Valiant, though I think Valiant's was a little longer and he was older,” and Miriam said “Who's he?” and he said “A comic strip, which might not be around anymore and I never read it  .   .  and after the president got shot and the son got older, it just kept on with boys that age     and he's not biologically mine either, I should have right away said, but I think acts like he is, whatever that's supposed to mean—relies on me a lot, hangs on me a little—and I guess I feel like his father too after so long, as I also hang on to and rely on him for different emotional things. But what's yours, five in a couple of months?” and she said “Three, in one, and he's not tall for his age, far as I know—is your boy unusually short? But where in California? That's where I'm from originally,” and said she grew up in the county just south of the one he now lived in, Miriam and she had gone to the university he'd been a grad student at, which wasn't a coincidence, since the couple giving the party had been in their undergraduate class and he'd first met them when the man came back after a few years for a master's in his department—but to get to it: they talked, Miriam stepped away and then called the boy to the window to see a sliver of one of the new World Trade Center towers they could just about make out through two buildings, his grad student friend came over and said “So you two need no introducing?” and he wanted to say “I still don't know her name yet” but they both said “Yes,” and he said “Jinx,” and held up two joined fingers and she said “What's that supposed to mean?” and he said “An East Coast thing kids used to and still might do, and maybe on the West Coast too, when two people say the same word or phrase synchronously: ‘What comes out of a chimney?'” and she said “What?” and he said “You're supposed to say ‘smoke,'” and the host said “I don't know it either,” and left, and he said “And then I say ‘What color is it?'—the chimney smoke. There are four to five quick questions: ladies' pocketbooks, coins, gray and gold, and then you do the—I mean I do, the questioner—though you're certainly questioning me now—'Do not speak till you are spoken to.' That's right, it's not my fingers joined together but both parties' in this, the index fingers at the tips, and when it's all over, questions answered correctly, one of us breaks the fingertip conjunction with a gentle chop of his hand. You want to go through with it?—though if we go by the rules it's already too late,” and she said “Please, no games. What am I, a child?” and he said “Sorry, it all just suddenly came back, but only having fun.” Married for five years, lived in Madison where her husband taught law at the university, only here a week to be with her best friend from college “who apparently thinks I should be talking to you alone—I must have told her last night more about my life than I should have, and which I've already disclosed to you, in just saying that, more than enough too,” and he said “So you're saying I should be diplomatic, untactical and gallant,” driving back in two days with her son and he said “Why so soon?” and she said “Because I've been here five,” and he said “Oh jeez, what a pity, because I don't know, I'd love seeing you again, maybe that's it,” and she said “Excuse me, and I'm not trying to prompt you with this query nor induce you into a clumsy confession you'll regret later, but whatever for? You have yours, I have mine, there are children involved, I'm leaving in less than two days and you'll never see me again unless by accident and then we probably won't recognize each other or remember this party, and we've only just met and spoken a few minutes together,” and she looked at her watch and said “My watch must have stopped, what time is it?” and he said “I don't wear one,” and she said “Well, I know I have to be out of here in less than half an hour to take John to a birthday party another college chum's having for her girl—we all seemed to have had our first babies around the same time,” and he said “‘John,' like the president's son with the prep cut if not even the prez himself,” and she said “Yes, it's the boy's father's and grandfather's name too, though he's not the third,” and he said “He's not?” and she said “After his name.” “Excuse me, but this isn't right what I'm about to say,” and she said “Please now, I can sense what's coming, so don't,” and he said “Ya gonna let me continue, lady?” and she shut her eyes as if she'd just stay that way tolerating what he was going to say and then walk away and he thought Should I say it then? and said “To say it then, and this isn't a line I'm giving you—” and she looked at him and said “You've used that one before,” and he said “Never—but low, though, so nobody else hears, and maybe the most important words of my life,” and she said “Jesus Christ,” and he said “I wish, and this after only ten minutes alone with you—even more than ten, but good conversation, time flew, so another solid sigh—
sign
, but I won't bring that up to add to my argument,” and she said “Ha-ha, all right, enough? you got your laugh,” and he said “And I didn't trip over that sigh-sign thing intentionally—but that you were—this is the continument; that's not a word, I don't think, but seemed apt—the woman I was now living with,” and tears, really just a couple of drops popped out, one from each eye, and he wiped them and said “Talk about silliness?” and she said “What are you doing?—are you a professional actor?” and looked at him in a way where he thought I think I'm winning her over, and said “No, I told you, or maybe I didn't, but that'd be strange, since you told me what you do, but I'm in something—” and she was shaking her head and started to move off and he said “Don't go, and notice I'm not grabbing your hand or touching your cheek or using any of those restraining actions or physical and facial tricks—moving closer, looking straight into your eyes soulfully of sorts in an attempt to engender more sympathy from you if that's what it was and employing to me grandiloquent words like ‘engender,' ‘employing' and ‘grandiloquent' to impress you and strengthen my
présentation
, and French
aussi
or
aussi français
and that drippy stuff with the eye sacs before which I swear I had nothing to do with except to furnish the liquid; they just sprouted, little there was, naturally, but you seem, and here it it comes, despite our respective homelife situations—I couldn't come up with a better term for it     . you know: spouses, kids and place—like at last my ideal mate: mind, body and face, soft voice and ways, interest in lit and involvement in music     . that you play the viola and are in a quartet no less     . for godsakes, the six Mozart quintets I bet when you add another violinist,” and she said “Violist—don't take away one of the few breaks our underappreciated instrument gets,” and he said “Humor, skin, everything, sense of this and irony of that plus straightforwardness, the entire corpus, litany and library, that I'm panting in the pants for you, pardon me pa, he does not know what he brays, and even look at our sizes and physiques—we were cut from two different bolts for each other,” and she said “Done?” and looked miffed, and he said “I really overdid it too much, serious as I—” and she said “Please, be done, done, because whether anyone heard you or not I still feel humiliated and embarrassed—why do you think you have to b.s. so? And who knows, if you stopped slinging it I might even be a little interested,” and he said “I stopped, though it wasn't slinging, at least I don't think so, but I'm so relieved I haven't killed it off completely, which your remark implied, and I haven't with what I just said after I said I was done and had stopped, have I?” and she said “It shouldn't be but it's okay and I'll accept all heretofore as an anomaly, your getting carried away for so indeterminate an end,” and he didn't quite understand what she meant but let it pass because he knew it wasn't too critical and she was still standing beside him and he said “I won't say a thing; can we sit down?” and she said “I don't know why we should; I must be lonelier than I am nuts. Uh-oh, said too much.” Lunch the next day. After they arranged it and the place he said “Could we also meet later after the birthday party? Or I can pick you and John up at whatever the time—I just want to be with you,” and she said “Tomorrow,” and he said “And of course bring John along; really, I'd love it,” and she said “I wouldn't, and we went over this: he's going to the shore with Miriam,” and he looked puzzled and she said “The friend I came with and you spoke to and, honestly, the sole reason I'm here—I dislike parties and huge reunions,” and he thought then the person he's indebted to but won't say it because she'll think that's just more coming-on. “One priviso though,” she said. “When we do meet tomorrow promise to have toned down and tamed to subaudible and indistinct the words and approach, for you're much too gusty, rutty and fast,” and he said “Check.” Lunch. Kissed during it. Pushed the bud vase aside, leaned forward and she met him above the table. “Well,” she said, “for half a kiss that wasn't half bad. But nip it;
people.”
Invited him back to Miriam's apartment. At lunch talked about her husband: brilliant, could be a U.S. attorney or solicitor general, everyone thinks so, clerked for a federal judge, first in his class everywhere, could make a quarter of a million a year in five years with some big city firm but chooses to teach, a skirtchaser from the word
gesundheit
but the most deplorable thing he does is sleep with his students. If he only did it with his colleagues or from the secretarial pool she'd say Well, that's what's going on today, everyone seems to have someone on the side, and the worst thing about it is they're not doing it out of power on his part or wanting to get ahead on theirs but for good old sheer sensual Circean fun, or so he tells her. Imagine, at their age and when she'd like another child before John becomes too old to play with it, they now have separate beds but in the same room for the once every month he wants to sleep with her and half those times he passes out from wine or drugs before he gets the pensum done. She had a lover she admired but he went to Japan last spring to design bridges that won't collapse during earthquakes. Before that a couple of one-night stands she met after out-of-town concerts, but she thought them too cheap and problematical with disease. Yet look at her now, in all problematicability another one to two-nighter or afternooner and he said not on her life. Did he tell her his head's reeling and heart's going whack whack whack whackety whack for her? She said resist that crap, she doesn't go for it and nothing quicker will turn her off and he said okay, his heart isn't pulsing thus, but he'd love riding back to Madison with her, she can drop him off at the airport there just before she goes the rest of the way to her place and she said that'd be too peculiar to John, even if she would relish the help with the driving, and though her husband wouldn't begrudge her a brief fling in New York he'd resent her bringing the beau so close to home, and he said then let him off in Michigan or Illinois if either's before she hits Wisconsin and she said what about his California woman, wouldn't she mind? and he said that little romance is definitely on the way out and has been for two years. Not his ideal mate or even a simulacrum of one and same in spades for her with him. She wants a rich businessman or professional with a P.A. who likes camping and horseback riding and outdoor barbecuing and cars and canoes. He needed a place to stay for a week, they got along okay for a month or two and then he got so taken with her kid and too lazy to move, he's been able to keep all her house bills paid or just a month behind, they have adequate to sometimes apotheosized sex when she's not busting his chops to the point where he doesn't even want to make love with her or suffering from one of her half-dozen imagined ailments or states of fatigue; the loss would be the boy; besides, she smokes. In bed after they undressed she said he should probably know beforehand she's never had an orgasm. Oh, perhaps once or twice when she was pubescent and did it to herself. But either she's lost that touch or something's happened to her nervous system since to make it a near physical impossibility. She's not saying she doesn't participate actively and at times avidly during the act, though occasionally fakes it as much as anyone, and does most of the things normal heterosexual couples do except anal sex, but to her regret he shouldn't expect any vociferous end-screams and yips and yaps and then postcoital sighs and later postorgasmic sleep from her, so she supposes she's saying he should, as every man she's been with has, after a reasonable period of time get what he can before she begins tiring of it and suddenly stops. He didn't bring a condom, assuming she'd take care of everything, and she hadn't brought her diaphragm to New York, having given up on one-night stands and also preferring to pack as little as she can, so they decided he'd pull out a few moments before his peak ones. He was about a minute away from ejaculation, he figured, starting that familiar climb, at least long enough away where he'd be able to hold it back if he had to and he said “I don't think I'll be able to pull out, nor do I really want to the first time, will it be okay?” and she said “I can be a little irregular but think I have my dates sufficiently straight where it'll be safe, but to reduce the chance of fertilization don't go in too deep when you discharge.” When he was about fifteen seconds away, he figured, and knew that though he couldn't hold it back or even control the amount he ejected he could pull out in time, he thought but does he want to? He'd like getting her pregnant and having a hold on her like that and maybe even a child if she wanted it or he could persuade her to keep it or just something troublesome they went through like an abortion that would sort of seal something between them and where he could fly to Madison for it or the birth if she wanted him to and her husband didn't object, when he came, involuntarily shoving his hands under her and grabbing her buttocks so he could get in as far as he could get. “I asked you,” she said after and he said “What?” and she said “And will you please?—I've been trying to get your big load off me for the past minute,” pushing him and he rolled himself off and said “The depth?” and she said “Gee whiz, all of a sudden he's showing signs of life again—where do you go? The depth, yes; you knew, don't tell me, even if you are sleepy and spent, so why did you? and it hurt besides. Simply so you could experience the experience of experiences fuller—well darnit, haven't you done it enough, and this isn't out of bitterness because I never arrive there, where when someone asks you earnestly not to and for extremely important reasons, you don't?” and he said “But you said it was okay to shoot in you,” and she said “But not so far in and hard. Do you have a tissue or handkerchief, please?” and he reached over her to the floor and felt her skin as he did and wanted to rest across her and kiss her belly and belly button and things but knew she wasn't in the mood and got a hanky out of his pants pocket and gave it to her and said “It's clean, or maybe at the most I used it for one nose blow but folded it over,” and she said “Where I'm putting it, who cares?” and wiped her vagina—“Even if I get fifty billion with this, there's another fifty billion I didn't. Probably I should flush the buggers out,” and went to the bathroom; he watched her and thought beautiful ass too but won't say it, that's all he needs. When she was back in bed he said “Sorry about all that, but how much would it have reduced anyway?” and she said “If you ever read a manual on conception or spoken to a specialist about it, you'd know; but it would have even been worse if you'd done it that way from behind as you first wanted to,” and he said “That helps it too?” and she said “Tell me, why are you trying so hard to be dense?” and he said “Now you're busting my balls too; what's going on, what'd I say?—ah, screw you and all women, at least the grown-up kind: how quick you switch,” and turned over and she said “Who did?” and he thought “Who did”? What's she mean, “switch” or my “balls”? And what did I get myself into now with my big mouth and how do I get out of it? and she said “Gould, please, not now when we've just done lovemaking, and I couldn't bear another over-super-sensitive when-there's-something-to-gain-from-it self-centered misogynous man—I've had my fill,” and he said “Oh you have, huh? And ‘misogynous'; why couldn't you have just said woman-hating? When I use them it's always for fun or self-mockery but you're serious about your ostentatious words.” She didn't say anything, his back was still to her, and a few seconds later, while he was wondering if she was looking at him now, and then that he really did it this time; she'll never trust him again with his promises and she seemed so disappointed and pissed; well, the hell with her, who needs her? who needs any of them, just as he told her, she said “Oh no, it's happened, the same thing when I got pregnant with John; I know you don't want to talk to me or even look this way and think I'm nothing less than a pompous priss, but I just felt the tiniest kind of detonation inside me and several small aftershocks before it stopped; believe me, Gould, I've conceived,” and she touched his back and he looked at her and saw she was serious and said “Now that's nuts, much more than anything you said or did before,” and she said “Practically what Harry said when I told him it a few weeks later about John, but I'm sure it's happened with millions of other women and lots of them I bet even recognized what it was,” and he said “Girl or boy?” and she said “You sneer but if there's a calculably different sensation for a girl, then it's a boy,” and he said “Don't spare my feelings, I want to know now: Down's syndrome or completely free of it or anything like that?” and she said “That wouldn't be funny to a lot of people,” and he said “That's true, nothing to laugh about, and we should talk later about what you just felt, this is serious, but I'm feeling dozey after our sex and for the next half hour would like to be good for nothing else but a nap,” and she said “Just one or two more things if I'm right about this. As I already told you, John could use a sibling now more than later and if it's a boy then even better for him and I think easier for me and certainly fewer clothes to buy—I'm being facetious there—and I know I want another child some day so I might as well get it over with now. And you seem, other than for a few crank shortfalls, as if you have good genes and the chances are that between us we'd produce a healthy, reasonably nice-looking intelligent human being. Of course I'll have to tell Harry, something I'd do anyway about us—that's the agreement we have, not to keep it a secret for more than a month, though he's always gotten more incensed than I over the disclosure—but didn't think there'd be a fertilization to divulge too, and by then a moderately defined embryo. He's even said he wouldn't mind our having another child if it resulted by accident, and if it came to it he'd have no problem with it being from someone else. He's very fair that way,” and he said “It sure isn't how I'd take it if you were my wife. I'd throw you the hell out,” and she said “Maybe that's why if I were single again, something I'll never be unless Harry dies or leaves and doesn't return for several years or tells me he wants to remarry and actually does or suddenly begins to repeatedly beat on John or me, I wouldn't think of marrying you or even continuing with you for any extended length of time for fear it'd wreck my marriage,” and he said “Well, that gets me off cheap, for here I was about to do the right thing, which I had no desire to, and that's to propose to you,” and she said “Some funny joke?” They made up after he awoke. He said “I'm sorry but when I said I'd throw you the hell out I meant that if I were married to you I'd never cheat and would expect the same from you,” and she said “How do you know? And you can see how my phlegmatism and dispassionate—but you don't want those sort of words, so my  .     the way I'm  .    .  look, I can't think of simpler ones this moment for what I usually am that can so easily nettle a man or make him feel he has the license to skirtchase and frig whomever he wants to. But since I don't want to battle after only a day as if we've been married several years and also because of this new complication that I for one believe we'll have to face eventually, I accept your apology. Now, if you want to make love again—the carnal kind—for I suspect that's what you're building up to and perhaps why you apologized so generously  .   .”—“Not so though I wouldn't mind having sex.”—“.   . then okay, but if it's no hassle getting dressed I'd like you to go out and buy a packet of the most expensive unscented nonlubricated condoms to lessen the chances of conception in case I was wrong about what I felt before; this way will also make it easier, if you'd still like to, to come in deep as you want from behind.” He came over the next morning soon after her friend had left for work and when she thought John would still be asleep in the guest room. John walked into the living room while he was on top of her on the couch and he quickly pulled out and rolled off her and said “Oh my gosh, excuse me, this is terrible,” and tried covering his genitals with his hands and she said “What are you doing? don't panic, keep yourself exposed and your erection erect if you still have one till the normal time it'd take for it to go down and for you to put your underpants on. He's seen us so let him think what we're doing is entirely natural and not something to be hidden or feel guilty or discomposed about or he can be troubled by it for years and possibly into his own sex life. And it isn't as if he'll be telling his father anything Harry won't already know. I don't keep a journal of what takes place but I will remember the main events when I inform him.” She drove to Madison the day after, he didn't hear from her or write, and two months later  .     but why didn't he? Thought if she wrote him first he'd have permission to write back or she'd tell him where to write if not to her home—he had her address—and perhaps even how he should address the envelope, maybe by some other name or care of a friend or something. Maybe she wouldn't tell her husband what happened in New York but if she did he didn't want to make it any harder for her with him. They'd talked about it before she left. He said he likes her a lot, probably loves her, anyway, he feels very good about her, loves being with her and doesn't want to stop seeing her, and she said “I won't reveal my feelings for you. Obviously, they're fairly good or I wouldn't have slept with you. If