spark."
"Why don't you take the rock out?"
"That's what I'm trying to do. Don't get so close now, you might get hurt."
The piece of rock came free at last; he lifted it out and knelt to claw at the sliding tan pebbles of the pit until the depth and the shape of it looked right. Then he heaved and rolled the boulder into place and packed it tight, and another step was completed. A light swarm of gnats had come to hover around his head, tickling and barely visible as they hung and flicked past his eyes.
"Daddy?" Jennifer said. "How come Mommy slept on the sofa?"
"I don't know. Just happened to feel like it, I guess. You wait here, now, while I go and get another stone."
And the more he thought about it, as he plodded back up through the trees behind the house, the more he realized that this was the best answer he could have given, from the standpoint of simple honesty as well as tact. She just happened to feel like it. Wasn't that, after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?
"I love you when you're nice," she'd told him once, before they were married, and it had made him furious.
"Don't say that. Christ's sake, you don't 'love' people when they're 'nice.' Don't you see that's the same as saying 'What's in it for me?' Look." (They were standing on Sixth Avenue in the middle of the night, and he was holding her at arm's length, his hands placed firmly on either side of the warm rib cage inside her polo coat.) "Look. You either love me or you don't, and you're going to have to make up your mind."
Oh, she'd made up her mind, all right. It had been easy to decide in favor of love on Bethune Street, in favor of walking proud and naked on the grass rug of an apartment that caught the morning sun among its makeshift chairs, its French travel posters and its bookcase made of packingcrate slats—an apartment where half the fun of having an affair was that it was just like being married, and where later, after a trip to City Hall and back, after a ceremonial collecting of the other two keys from the other two men, half the fun of being married was that it was just like having an affair. She'd decided in favor of that, all right. And why not? Wasn't it the first love of any kind she'd ever known? Even on the level of practical advantage it must have held an undeniable appeal: it freed her from the gritty round of disappointment she would otherwise have faced as an only mildly talented, mildly enthusiastic graduate of dramatic school; it let her languish attractively through a part-time office job ("just until my husband finds the kind of work he really wants to do") while saving her best energies for animated discussions of books and pictures and the shortcomings of other people's personalities, for trying new ways of fixing her hair and new kinds of inexpensive clothes ("Do you really like the sandals, or are they too Villagey?") and for hours of unhurried dalliance deep in their double bed. But even in those days she'd held herself poised for immediate flight; she had always been ready to take off the minute she happened to feel like it ("Don't talk to me that way, Frank, or I'm leaving. I mean it") or the minute anything went wrong.
And one big thing went wrong right away. According to their plan, which called for an eventual family of four, her first pregnancy came seven years too soon. That was the trouble, and if he'd known her better then he might have guessed how she would take it and what she would happen to feel like doing about it. At the time, though, coming home from the doctor's office in a steaming crosstown bus, he was wholly in the dark. She refused to look at him as they rode; she carried her head high in a state of shock or disbelief or anger or blame—it could have been any or all or none of these things, for all he knew. Pressed close and sweating beside her with his jaw set numbly in
"Why don't you take the rock out?"
"That's what I'm trying to do. Don't get so close now, you might get hurt."
The piece of rock came free at last; he lifted it out and knelt to claw at the sliding tan pebbles of the pit until the depth and the shape of it looked right. Then he heaved and rolled the boulder into place and packed it tight, and another step was completed. A light swarm of gnats had come to hover around his head, tickling and barely visible as they hung and flicked past his eyes.
"Daddy?" Jennifer said. "How come Mommy slept on the sofa?"
"I don't know. Just happened to feel like it, I guess. You wait here, now, while I go and get another stone."
And the more he thought about it, as he plodded back up through the trees behind the house, the more he realized that this was the best answer he could have given, from the standpoint of simple honesty as well as tact. She just happened to feel like it. Wasn't that, after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?
"I love you when you're nice," she'd told him once, before they were married, and it had made him furious.
"Don't say that. Christ's sake, you don't 'love' people when they're 'nice.' Don't you see that's the same as saying 'What's in it for me?' Look." (They were standing on Sixth Avenue in the middle of the night, and he was holding her at arm's length, his hands placed firmly on either side of the warm rib cage inside her polo coat.) "Look. You either love me or you don't, and you're going to have to make up your mind."
Oh, she'd made up her mind, all right. It had been easy to decide in favor of love on Bethune Street, in favor of walking proud and naked on the grass rug of an apartment that caught the morning sun among its makeshift chairs, its French travel posters and its bookcase made of packingcrate slats—an apartment where half the fun of having an affair was that it was just like being married, and where later, after a trip to City Hall and back, after a ceremonial collecting of the other two keys from the other two men, half the fun of being married was that it was just like having an affair. She'd decided in favor of that, all right. And why not? Wasn't it the first love of any kind she'd ever known? Even on the level of practical advantage it must have held an undeniable appeal: it freed her from the gritty round of disappointment she would otherwise have faced as an only mildly talented, mildly enthusiastic graduate of dramatic school; it let her languish attractively through a part-time office job ("just until my husband finds the kind of work he really wants to do") while saving her best energies for animated discussions of books and pictures and the shortcomings of other people's personalities, for trying new ways of fixing her hair and new kinds of inexpensive clothes ("Do you really like the sandals, or are they too Villagey?") and for hours of unhurried dalliance deep in their double bed. But even in those days she'd held herself poised for immediate flight; she had always been ready to take off the minute she happened to feel like it ("Don't talk to me that way, Frank, or I'm leaving. I mean it") or the minute anything went wrong.
And one big thing went wrong right away. According to their plan, which called for an eventual family of four, her first pregnancy came seven years too soon. That was the trouble, and if he'd known her better then he might have guessed how she would take it and what she would happen to feel like doing about it. At the time, though, coming home from the doctor's office in a steaming crosstown bus, he was wholly in the dark. She refused to look at him as they rode; she carried her head high in a state of shock or disbelief or anger or blame—it could have been any or all or none of these things, for all he knew. Pressed close and sweating beside her with his jaw set numbly in
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