Other Men's Daughters by Richard Stern Page A

you’re going out of town? I fixed Tom Fischer’s apartment for you.” He’d put sheets on the bed and orange juice in the freezer.
    â€œI just can’t. You don’t know him. He’d be deeply offended.”
    â€œI guess I’m not deeply offended.”
    It was worse than that. A week before, she’d canceled the trip because a photographer had invited her to a party in New York where she might meet people who could use her as a model. “I’d get all this money, then things would be easy for me. I could visit you whenever I wanted without dunning you or Daddy for money.” Merriwether felt trapped by her whims. He was disappointed, jealous, anxious, enraged. “Let’s just call it off,” he’d told her. “Have a fine time in New York. We’ll be in touch some day,” and he’d hung up and left the office to avoid a return call.
    The rest of that day was awful. There were no classes to distract him, no committee meetings, he couldn’t work in the lab. He went home early and played one-on-one with George in the backyard, and that night went with Sarah to a movie, one of the few times in the year she’d been willing to go out with him anywhere. The movie was an unlucky choice, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie . In it, a teenaged girl, after listening to her mad teacher’s spiel about “middle-aged Dante” falling in love with “child Beatrice” (“they were both nine years old,” said Sarah, edifying two rows of patrons), becomes the mistress of the teacher’s own lover. Merriwether flushed. Here he was, exhibited in the cage of the film, listening to the audience laugh at the young girl telling her lover—five years younger than he—that he was over the hill. Was the situation so comic? Over and over, the same situations, the same warnings, the same conclusions.
    He had to force himself not to telephone Cynthia. Instead, he wrote her a letter denouncing her frivolity, denouncing himself for being “taken in” by what he’d mistaken as a “deeper seriousness,” for being so foolish to think any twenty-year-old girl could be anything more than briefly diverted by “an old laboratory grub.”
    â€œI shouldn’t mail it.” But he put on the stamp and walked to the mailbox. Yet he knew he would tear it up, knew it, almost knew, almost, and then, before he could let himself think, he’d opened the blue lid and tossed in the letter.
    Why not? It was forcefully written; it would effectively bar the door .
    Friday, Sarah drove Priscilla back to Oberlin. He planned to stay home with George and Esmé, then couldn’t. Cynthia would be in Someone’s Bed, he could not wait that out at home. Hanson, an epidemiologist, was lecturing on the degenerative disease, kuru. He’d go to it.
    First, he took George and Esmé to dinner at the Wirthaus. They had a spat about who spilled the 7-Up, he was firm with them, and at home told them to stay apart, he had to go to a lecture. “Take any messages, sweetheart,” he told Esmé. “Be sure you write them down. Don’t forget. Put the messages on the bed-table.”
    â€œI always do, Dad.” Esmé was very responsible, he kissed her, she stroked his cheek. “You didn’t shave too well today.”
    â€œI’m only going out for a bit, darling. But don’t worry if I’m not back at nine-thirty. Though maybe you ought to go to bed in our room, in case the phone rings.”
    Which puzzled but also delighted her.
    â€œAnd please, children, be very good with each other. Don’t let anyone in unless you know them. But don’t use the chain, or I won’t be able to get back in.” He always repeated instructions when these two were left without a sitter. It was a recent arrangement, they enjoyed the independence and the run of the house.
    The lecture was first-rate. Hanson was a