Man, woman, and child(15)

"What?"



"He never called. Not even to apologize. Fink tiger-rat. Anyway, your Yalie's quite attractive. Do you think you'll.. /'

None of your dirty-minded business, Sheila thought. But since she'd always felt that Margo meant well underneath it all, she answered simply, "Time will tell."

"When are you seeing him again?"

"Next weekend. Fll be going there."

"Oh," said Margo. "By the way, does he have a friend?"

"I could ask. But I thought you were through with undergraduates."

"Yes, but Fm doing this for you. Sheila. You need the benefit of my experience."

"What you're saying, Margo, is that you haven't got a date next weekend. Right?"

"Well, as it happens, yes. Peter was too juvenile to ask me straight out. You can use my phone tomorrow if you like."

"Thanks, Margo," Sheila said, and yawned to give her friend a hint.

"Sweet dreams," said Margo. "We'll chat tomor-

row."

At long last she left, to visit someone else for yet another soul-to-soul encounter.

Sheila lay back in her bed and smiled. I wonder if he's serious, she thought.

"Thanks for the car, Bern."

"Did you use it?"

"Obviously. I drove to Vassar—"

"I know you drove, schmuck. I mean the back seat."

Bob had to satisfy his roommate's intellectual curiosity.

'Teah. I banged her twelve times."



"You^re lying."

**Would you believe six?"

''Stop lying, Beckwith."

''Okay, Bern. The honest truth is that I kissed her. Once."

"Now I know you're lying."

It was after three and this was midterm week, but nonetheless Bob sat and fed his friend a few well-chosen vague details.

"Fm getting the impression that you like her, Beckwith."

"Well, I think I do." (To say the least!)

"Is she that great-looking?"

Of course she is, you asshole. You'd faint if she just looked at you with those green eyes. But Fm not giving you specifics. So Bob hid behind a little erudition.

"Remember Spenser's 'Epithalamion'? Well, she has that 'inward beauty which no eyes can see.' "

"In other words she's fugly, right?"

Bob smiled.

"Don't you think I could pick a winner, Bern?"

"Frankly, no. I mean, what would she see in you?"

"I don't know," Bob answered, poker-faced. He rose and started toward his bedroom.

"Where ya goin'?"

"To sack out. Good night." He closed the door.

Inside his tiny cubicle, Bob took out a leaf of Branford College stationery and wrote:

16 November 1958 (3:45 AM.) Sheila—

I meant every word I said. Bob



1 HE FXJNNY THING IS THAT THEY DID GET MARRIED.

Not as soon as either of them wanted, but in June of 1960, one week after Sheila's graduation. Everyone was happy, though at times during their long engagement Sheila's mother, who "thought the world" of Bob, tried to convince her daughter not to hurry into matrimony.

"You're both so young. Why not live a little first?"

"I want to. Mother. But I want to live with himr

Dan Beckwith had no such hesitations. "She's a super girl," he told his son, "just super."

They honeymooned in the Bahamas, where Bob, unaccustomed to the tropics, got a serious case of sunstroke. His bride became his nurse.

"Maybe this is God's way of punishing us for not waiting till the wedding," Sheila said, almost half believing it.

Bob merely groaned and said, "Gimme some more Noxzema, huh?"

As she gently rubbed his blazing back, she once again posed the question of divine retribution for their premarital pleasures.

54



"Sheila," said the boihng lobster Bob, ''even if the sunburn is a punishment, it's worth it for a year of making love to you/'

She smiled and kissed his shoulder.

"Owf he said.

On their second anniversary, Bob asked his twenty-three-year-old wife if she had any regrets.

"Yes," she answered. "I should have married you the day you first proposed."

"You're together all the time," said Bernie once when he was up from Yale Law to visit. "Don't you ever—you know—get bored?"

"No," said Bob. "What makes you ask?"

"I. mean, I sometimes get bored after two or three dates."

"Then you just haven't met the right girl yet."

"Shit, Beckwith, you're a really lucky bastard."

"Yeah, I know it."

Bernie was inspired. Three months after that, he got engaged to Nancy Gordon, an abridged edition of the former Sheila Goodhart. Everybody crossed his fingers. But it worked. In fact, they had a son within the year.

Neither Bob nor Sheila could recall a time when they had been without each other. They had walked hand in hand through what remained of college. And then in Cambridge, while Bob worked on his doctorate at MIT and she was hired by the Harvard Press, they walked hand in hand along the Charles. Once or twice a month they'd have a bunch of friends for dinner. They all, like Bernie, looked at Bob and Sheila and would yearn for a relationship like theirs.