The Husband by Sol Stein

let it go!” said Peter. He took Amanda by the arm in almost courtly fashion and walked her closer to Jack, smiling a smile he used with clients in serious situations, a smile that could crack at an instant if its bluff were called. “Hey, can’t I get you kids to shake hands?”
    The thing that helped the most was strained laughter coming from all of them at once.
    Bravely Rose said, “I think I’ll have another screwdriver.”
    “Isn’t Petey enough?” said Jack, ho-hoing, hoping now with the rest of them that things would calm down, that he would calm down, because he had felt that angina squeeze in his chest that the doctor said wasn’t angina and he himself was sure wasn’t angina, only God or Death or Somebody saying, take it easy, bud.
    “Petey,” Jack said, “what’s wrong with women? You make a little joke, let loose, have some fun after a goddamn day full of making-a-living crap, and they go straight, square, and simpleminded.”
    The cheese stood still in the middle of the room.
    “I’ll make my own,” said Rose, gladly adding the sin of bartending to that of having a second drink voluntarily.
    “I’ll get it for you,” said Peter, feeling kindly toward Rose, toward Amanda, toward all women at that moment. All women: Elizabeth? Rub the mind blank. Quick .
    Peter took Jack’s glass, gave Rose her drink, took Amanda’s glass, and when everyone, including himself, was armed, raised his drink: “To alcohol.”
    “Crap!” said Jack. “It makes strong men weak, weak men strong, all men weep, and nobody ought to be without it. The way the deck is stacked, it takes a strong man or woman to get a divorce. I don’t mean just think about it—everybody thinks about it—I mean, go—all the way! Amanda, baby, you’re lucky I’m a weak man.” Jack toasted her. “Skoal!”
    Amanda managed a weak smile.
    “Dinner will be ready in less than ten minutes,” said Rose out of nowhere, not being sure whether it would really be ready in ten or twenty but feeling compelled to say something.
    Jack sidled up to her. “Rosie, how come you’re so curious tonight?”
    Rose seemed to think about her answer for a long time. She wanted it to sound adult and thoughtful, even abstract, to establish the nature of her inquiry as something less than personal.
    “Every young girl is interested in marriage,” she said. “I guess every married woman is curious about divorce.”
    “Hey Petey,” said Jack, “your wife has turned into a philosopher.” Jack suddenly felt the platform disappearing from under his feet, his chance at building a spell gone. How to retrieve it? His gaze caught Amanda’s, and there were tears in her eyes.
    “Oh, come on now, baby,” he said to her, “I’ve just been having some fun. Too much inkohol. Baby, let me get you another drink, okay?”
    “All right,” said Amanda.
    “How about a little kiss for Uncle Jack?”
    Amanda shook her head.
    “How about a little old handshake? All right?” Amanda had no choice. Peter watched Jack and Amanda shaking hands. It was the kind of moment you wanted a camera for.
    Jack mixed Amanda’s drink. “Peter,” he said, “tears always get me. Don’t they get you?”
    “Another word out of you and I’m turning on the television set,” said Peter.
    “Dinner’ll be ready in a few minutes,” chimed in Rose.
    The exuberance was coming back into Jack’s voice. “You know what keeps marriages going these days? Those Connecticut parties. Everybody needs to switch around once in a while. Amanda, why don’t you go sit down in old Peter’s lap?”
    Amanda, to everyone’s astonishment, perhaps to her own as well, finished off her drink, set down the glass and said, “I think I will.”
    She sat down in Peter’s lap. It was a very strange feeling for Peter, as if his mother or his sister had suddenly made a sexual approach. He remembered the time he first saw Amanda in a bathing suit—at a beach party it was—and how astonished he had