Man, woman, and child(6)

''Eat your breakfast, Jessie/' Sheila ordered, trying to feign normalcy.

"You look awful, Dad/' said Paula with solicitude.

''I worked late," he answered, hoping that his junior wife would not detect that he had spent a sleepless night in his study.

'Tou work much too hard," said Paula.

*'He wants to be world renowned," said Jessie to her sister.

"But he is already," Paula answered, then turning to Sheila for affirmation, "Right, Mom? Isn't Dad already famous everywhere?"

"Yes," said Sheila, "absolutely everywhere."

"Except in Stockholm," Jessie interposed, short-circuiting the flow of flattery.

"What's there?" asked Paula, taking Jessie's bait

"The Nobel Prize, you idiot. Your father wants a

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free trip to Sweden and a better table at the faculty club. Dig now, birdbrain?"

''Jessie/' Sheila remonstrated, "don't insult your sister."

''Mother, her existence is an insult to any person of normal intelligence."

"Want this peanut butter in your face?" asked Paula.

"Stop it, both of you," said Bob. "The Nobel committee takes family manners into consideration."

"Oh, American men," sighed Jessica, somewhat out of the blue.

"I beg your pardon, Jessie," Sheila said.

"American men are absolutely driven by ambition. It's what makes them so provincial."

"Do you mind?" said Bob to Jessica.

"I was just being sociological. Father."

Paula stepped in front of Bob, to shield him from the verbal bullets of his hostile elder daughter.

"Dad, she likes to dump on you. But when you're not around she brags like anything. Just to impress the boys."

"I don't!" objected Jessica, her face now crimson with embarrassed indignation.

For a moment sibling rivalry allowed Bob and Sheila to forget their marital abrasions. They smiled at one another. Then they both remembered that this wasn't quite a normal morning. They withdrew their smiles—and hoped the children didn't notice.

"You drop his name to all the jockos on the football team," said Paula, pointing an accusatory finger at her sister.

''Really, Paula, you are fatuous," said Jessica, more than a bit discomfited.

"I'm not. I'm just as thin as you are, Jessie."



"Children, please," snapped Sheila, losing patience.

"There is only one child in this house," retorted Jessica, not noticing her mother's irritated mood.

"Ladies," interrupted Bob, "Fm driving both of you to catch the bus. Immediately." He gave a worried glance at Sheila.

"Okay," said Paula, scurrying to get her books.

"Fd like to go on record," Jessie Beckwith stated. "Fm against forced busing."

"But Jessie," said Bob, "this is to your own school."

Jessica looked at him. It was clear he hated her. Had no respect for her convictions. Indeed, she had lately come to suspect that he wasn't even her real father. Someday, hopefully. Sheila would confide to her that she and Sartre ...

"Jessie, hurry up I"

But right now Sheila was still on his side.

He hovered by the door while the girls got ready.

"Uh—will you still be here when I get back?" he asked Sheila uneasily.

"I don't know," she answered.

She was still there.

"Are you leaving?"

"No."

"I mean, to work."

"No. I called the Press and said Fd work at home."

When he returned from ferrying the girls, she was still seated at the kitchen table, staring at her own reflection in a coffee cup.

I did this to her, he told himself, and was filled with self-loathing. He sat down across from her. She wouldn't start the conversation, so, after a long silence, he said:



"Sheila, how can I make it up to you?" She slowly raised her head and looked at him. ''I don't think you can," she said. *Tou mean we're gonna bust up over this?" he asked.

**I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything. I just..."

''What?"

"I just wish I had it in me to really hurt you back for this. I wish I could at least express my anger. . . ." Her voice trailed off. She had almost let slip that she was still, despite it all, in love with him. But that at least she would withhold.

"I know how you must feel," he said.

"Do you really, Bob?"

"Well, I have a notion. Christ, I wish I hadn't told you."

So do I, she thought.

"Why did you tell me, Bob?" She said it like an accusation.

"I don't know."

"You do, goddammit. Bob. You do/" Her fury was erupting. Because she knew now what he wanted from her. Damn him.

"It's the child," she said.