The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe Page A

a typical small town. He liked people, and people liked him, coming to him with their family troubles as well as tlieir physical ailments. He was the kind of man who is more appreciated by his friends than by his family. The women who came to him with their aches and pains, real or imaginary, went away sighing enviously for that lucky Mrs. Bender the doctor's wife. He was such a gentle, giving-in sort of man, and he gave so much of himself to his patients and their silly, tedious problems that he had very little left to give to his family. He never took his son to a football game. He often fell asleep right after dinner, in front of the television set or with a medical magazine in his hands, and then like as not he would be aroused an hour later for an emergency house call. Almost the only girl in town who didn't confide in Dr. Bender was his daughter Caroline. She confided exclusively in her mother, and her mother came to guard this privilege with something that was very like jealousy. It was often, "Your father doesn't know about those things." And Dr. Bender, who loved and respected his wife very much, came to say more and more often, "Ask Mother. She knows," until finally there was no more reason for him to have to say it at all.
    When Caroline brought home the manuscript the night of her first day at Fabian, it was her mother she told. And when she read it, and found to her amazement that she did not agree with Amanda Far-

    row's comments at all but found the novel to be boring in spite of its facile style, it was her mother she consulted.
    "I read this book last night, Mother. Well, a manuscript reaUy. They're probably going to publish it because Miss Farrow said it was wonderful. I read it and I thought it was downright dull. Do you think I'm in the wrong field? I thought I knew about hterature, but this book really put me to sleep. Maybe there's a secret about paperback books."
    "You always had good taste" her mother said staunchly. "A book is just a book as far as I can see. Everybody's entitled to his own opinion. I never could stand The Scarlet Letter myself, and that's a classic." This reminded Mrs. Bender of an English Literature course she had taken in college, and what the professor had said to her, and she went oflF into one of her lengthy nostalgic anecdotes about college, which was one of her ways of escaping temporarily from life in Port Blair. Caroline had heard the story before, and many others very much like it, and she finished her breakfast coffee drifting off into her own thoughts.
    They would more than likely pubhsh the manuscript-but she thought it was so dreadful! Was it any of her business? But she'd read it. ... The manuscript was due to go next to Mr. Shalimar, the editor-in-chief, and it was she who was supposed to put it on his desk. If she were to type up a comment sheet with her personal opinion of the manuscript, the worst he could do would be to throw it away and tell her to stay in her place. He wouldn't fire her; he would understand the overenthusiasm of a novice on her first job. And she might just possibly be right, or at least worth listening to. Perhaps he would let her read some other manuscripts. With her comment in such complete opposition to Miss Farrow's, she had to know if she was on the right track-otherwise it was aU too bewildering; her editorial hopes, her beginning feeHngs of responsibility toward the company . . .
    "I'm late," she said, kissing her mother on the cheek. She took the envelope and headed for the door. "Oh, I forgot. I won't be home for dinner. I'm going to eat with a girl from the oflBce."
    "Oh? Someone interesting?"
    "I hope so," Caroline said, smiling. "So long."
    She was ten minutes early for her train, and she stood on the outdoor platform watching her breath go off in puffs of smoke on the

    cold clear air. Up ahead, where the smoker would stop, were the men who commuted every day; very few, however, because most of the men who lived in Port Blair