A Week as Andrea Benstock

Monday September 21, 1964

“More coffee, Eileen?”

“Oh, do I have time? It’s two-thirty. I guess I have time for one more cup. But let me get it.”

“Don’t be silly.”

But Eileen Fradin was on her feet, headed for the kitchen. “Don’t you be silly,” she said. “Listen, you’re supposed to be in a delicate condition, remember? You might as well milk it for all it’s worth.”

“I feel about as delicate as a rhinoceros.”

“Well, I can get my own cup of coffee. More for you? Give me your cup. I wish my coffee tasted like this. Will you listen to me? I sound like somebody in a commercial. But it’s the truth, my coffee’s lousy. What brand do you buy, Andrea?”

It was the pot, not the coffee. She and Mark had received four electric coffee-makers as wedding presents, and three of them had been promptly returned for refunds. The fourth, with a twenty-four cup capacity, had been retained; it might be useful for large parties. Andrea made coffee in an old-fashioned drip pot like the one her mother used.

Hadn’t she told Eileen this? Hadn’t they had this conversation before?

“About four months to go, Andrea?”

“Three months and three weeks. According to Dr. Lerner.”

“Getting excited?”

“I don’t know. Not exactly.” She sat back, folded her hands over her rounded abdomen. She remembered the first time she’d felt life, that extraordinary sensation of alien movement within herself. “I suppose I’m excited,” she said. “It’s hard to be excited from day to day.”

“I know what you mean. With Jason I was nauseous the whole nine months, did I tell you?”

“I think so.”

“So I didn’t have time to be excited.”

Andrea lit a cigarette. She had tried to stop as soon as she had learned that she was pregnant, apprehensive that smoking might have a bad effect on her unborn child. So many things seemed to be bad for the unborn. Her own morning sickness had lasted less than three months, but during its duration Lerner had refused to prescribe anything for it.

“Not since Thalidomide,” he’d said. “You wake up nauseous, you have a glass of orange juice, you throw up, and then you’ll be set for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t even take aspirin for headaches if I were you.”

But it had been impossible to stop smoking. It made her terribly nervous, and mightn’t the nervousness be as bad for the baby as the smoking? Mark had suggested the possibility and it made a certain amount of sense to her.

“I’ll just finish this coffee and then I’ll get Jason,” Eileen was saying. “Nursery school makes such a difference in my life. It’s not even two months yet, I’m not used to it, but it makes a real difference. You feel as though you’ve got space to breathe again, you know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“But I shouldn’t be saying this to you. You haven’t even had the kid yet and I’m telling you what a pleasure it is to be able to dump him on the nursery school. Well, I’ll enjoy my freedom while I’ve got it. It won’t be long before people tell me to sit down while they bring the coffee.”

“You’re not—”

“No, not yet, but didn’t I tell you we’re going to try in a month or so? Because I’d rather have the baby in the spring or early summer so I don’t have to carry in the hot weather. And if I’m like I was with Jason I won’t have to try for very long. All Roger has to do is look at me and I’m pregnant.”

Andrea drew on her cigarette. It was a strange relationship that she had with Eileen Fradin. She felt at once both more and less mature than Eileen. She was almost three years older, had gone out of town to college, had lived and worked in New York. Eileen had never lived other than in her parents’ house until the day she married Roger Fradin. She had read almost nothing, had done no traveling to speak of, and had spent all her life in a world bounded by her family and the friends of her childhood.

On the other hand, Eileen had been married for four years and had a three-year-old son. She lived not in an apartment like Andrea but in a tract house in Tonawanda. She knew whom to call when something went wrong with the washing machine. She was more experienced at the business of being a wife and mother and, Andrea sometimes thought, more efficiently designed from the beginning to play those roles.

“I got pregnant so easy the first time, Andrea.” She leaned forward and her eyes narrowed. “If you want to know something, I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure I wanted to. And then it was too late to change my mind.”

“How did you feel then? After you found out you were pregnant?”

“Oh, well, you have to feel excited, right? I mean maybe I was going through some doubts, but then it was too late so I put it out of my mind. We wanted children, and there was no question about it. I just got to thinking maybe we should have a little more time to ourselves. Not so much for Roger’s sake because he was older.” Roger was a few years older than Mark. “But for my own sake, I was like still in college and so young. Of course I was looking for an excuse to quit college anyway but I thought, you know, if we had another year or two to ourselves who would it hurt? You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“So now I think things worked out for the best. Jason’s three and I’m not even twenty-three yet. If I get pregnant right away and have the second one in, say, July, they’ll both be in college and I’ll be how old? Twenty-three and eighteen, I’ll be like forty-one. That’s still young.” She thought for a moment. “I think we’ll probably stop at two. Especially if the second one’s a girl. To have one of each. Or is it better to have two the same? What do you figure?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know Roger wanted a son to begin with, but I wonder does it matter to him if he has two sons or a son and a daughter? What he said the first time is all he wanted was a healthy baby.”

“That’s what Mark says.”

“I think that must be what everybody says, but I knew Roger wanted a boy, and afterward he admitted he was glad it was a boy. Does Mark want a son do you suppose?”

“I don’t honestly know. I suppose most men do, don’t they? But I don’t honestly know in Mark’s case.”

“I’ll tell you who was happiest Jason was a boy and that was my father. Having three daughters of his own and then my sister Marsha had a girl and I guess he never thought he’d see a grandson. Sometimes I think I’d like a little girl and other times I just don’t know. You didn’t have any brothers or sisters, did you, Andrea?”

“No.”

“I had Marsha three years older than me and Rochelle two years younger. Just a couple of weeks ago I was reading a magazine article about the middle child and it suddenly hit me. That’s what I was, a middle child! It gives you a lot to think about.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, I don’t know. To put it into words. But I was thinking, how many children are you supposed to have? If you got one it’s an only child and that can be a problem, and if it’s two they’ll be competitive, and if it’s three you’ve got the middle-child situation, and if it’s four — but a person could go crazy trying to bring up four children. Listen, don’t laugh.”

“You don’t want to be late picking up Jason.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth.” She set her cup on the end table, got to her feet. “Listen, give me a call or I’ll call you, huh, Andrea? Don’t bother, I’ll find my own way out. I think I can remember where the door is.”

“I’ll walk down with you. I want to see if the mail’s here yet.”

“I could bring it up, save you a few steps.”

“Oh, come off it, Eileen.”

“Listen, I’m telling you. Take advantage of it while you can. Once they’re born you never stop running.”

She carried the mail upstairs and sorted through it. All of it was addressed to Mark except for her Alumnae Bulletin from Bryn Mawr. She put Mark’s letters on the sideboard and sat down with the bulletin, but before she could open its envelope the telephone rang.

It was her mother. “I know I talked to you this morning,” she said, “but I just had a phone call. Sadie Robbins passed away. That’s Essie Davis’s mother.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

“In this case it’s a blessing. I won’t say what she had, but she was wasting away to nothing and they couldn’t even stop the pain toward the end.” The word cancer, of course, could not be spoken aloud, Andrea thought. “The funeral will be tomorrow. Your father and I will go, of course.”

“Do you think Mark and I should go?”

“I don’t see why you have to. Your condition is always a good excuse, but even if you weren’t. You could make a call tonight, or even that you could skip. I would say skip it. What you can do, you can send a contribution. Mrs. Joseph Robbins, and put that acknowledgment should be sent to Mrs. Harold Davis, and I’ll give you the address, or you could get it from the phone book. It’s on Chatham but I don’t remember the number.”

“I’ll find it.”

“I wanted to tell you in case you missed it in the paper. Send a couple of dollars to the prayer-book fund or for research on the disease, whatever you want. Well, I don’t want to keep you. You’re probably busy.”

“No, not really. Eileen Fradin was here but she left a few minutes ago.”

“It’s nice the two of you are getting friendly. How does her husband get on with Mark?”

“Well enough, I guess. They don’t have too much to say to each other. Mother?”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We were talking about how many children to have.”

“One at a time is usually a good policy.”

“God, imagine having twins!”

“Well, people do it and survive, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Eileen’s having another?”

“In ten or eleven months.”

“Well, that’s very nice, but I think they can wait awhile before booking the hospital room.”

“That’s not what — oh, I was just thinking about something she asked me, and wondering, and — oh, wondering what it would have been like if I’d had any brothers or sisters.”

There was a pause, and when her mother spoke her voice was pitched lower. She said, “Well, you know I lost a baby when you were three.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well.”

“That’s what I was thinking about. Was it that you couldn’t have any more after that or did you decide not to or what?”

“Well, Andrea—”

“It’s just that I’ve wondered about this, you know, for years, and I thought I would ask.”

“It’s funny talking about it on the phone.”

“I’m sorry, it’s stupid of me. Some other time.”

“No. Just a second, let me get a cigarette.” She waited, and then her mother said, “It’s not that there’s any reason not to talk about it. And there was nothing physical to stop me from having another baby. But it was very upsetting, losing the baby. To your father also, but especially to me, because whatever they say it’s always different for a woman. You carry it, it’s physically a part of you. And then to lose it, and after such a long time.”

“Did you carry it almost to term?”

“I carried it to term. Andrea, I did not want to go through that again. And we already had one healthy child that we loved, and I did not want to go through that again. I didn’t want to take the chance. Even if there was no chance involved I didn’t want the anxiety. Do you understand?”

“Of course I understand. Mother, I—”

“It was a normal baby, Andrea. If you were worried.”

“I never even thought about that, Mother. I just—”

“What happened was a freak. Purely a freak. What happened, the baby, the cord got wrapped around the baby’s throat—”

“Mother, stop. Please.”

“I’m all right, Andrea.”

“Of course you are.”

“I’m perfectly all right. It’s funny how things can take you back so completely in time. You suddenly get a total recollection of a moment from years past and you feel emotions you thought were gone forever. It was, it would have been, it was a boy—”

Her mother’s voice broke, and when Andrea tried to speak her own throat wouldn’t unlock. For a long moment both women were silent.

Then briskly: “Well, I wanted to tell you about Mrs. Robbins.”

“Yes, I’m glad you called.”

“My love to Mark.”

“I’ll tell him. And we’ll see you Friday night for dinner as usual.”

“I look forward to it.”

“So do I.”

“Maybe I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

She wrote out a small check for the American Cancer Society and enclosed an appropriate note. There was a mailbox on the corner and she walked to it and dropped the letter in the slot. It was a good clear September day, the sun high in a cloudless sky, the heat softened by a steady breeze. When it was good, Buffalo’s weather was very good indeed.

Well, that was done, she thought, heading back to the apartment. She felt an immediate sense of satisfaction at having attended to a duty so promptly and efficiently. Then, climbing the single flight of stairs to the apartment, she wondered why she had been so quick to send the contribution in Mrs. Robbins’s memory. To get it done with? To act on something on her own...?

She let herself into the apartment. She walked through the rooms in turn, the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining area. She picked up objects at random, reading them with her hands like a blind person, feeling their weight and substance, returning them carefully to their places. This ashtray. This picture in its silver frame. This candy dish. This table lighter.

You are being silly, she told herself.

Eileen Fradin wouldn’t have these thoughts. Eileen Fradin had wondered if perhaps it might not be wiser to wait longer before getting pregnant, and then she had found out that she was indeed pregnant, and so she had stopped thinking along those lines. Simply stopped. Told the brain to point itself in another direction entirely.

How nice to be able to do that.

Or was it?

She paused for a moment in front of the portable television set and flicked it on. But even as the picture was coming into focus she shook her head firmly and pushed the button to extinguish it.

No, not daytime television. Too much of a symbol, thank you all the same. Sit and stare at the walls if you must but do not sit and stare at that brainless box.

Back to the kitchen to pour more coffee into her cup. Back to the living room to shake a cigarette out of the pack and light it with the heavy Ronson table lighter (a wedding gift, everything was a wedding gift). A drag on the cigarette, a sip of coffee. She thought of Prufrock complaining (or was it precisely a complaint?) that he had measured out his life with coffee spoons.

And she? How did Andrea Benstock measure out her life?

With phone calls from her mother. With little checks in memory of old people she had known only by name. With breakfast in the morning and lovemaking at night. With Friday dinners at the club with her parents and Sunday dinners with his parents. With Eileen Fradin dropping in for coffee or Sondra Margolis calling to ask her if she wanted to go shopping.

Weren’t you supposed to do something? Could you just walk through it like this?

But this was ridiculous. She was happy.

She had everything she could want. Her family. Her friends. A husband who loved her. A baby quick with life inside her. Enough money — she didn’t know what Mark earned but knew that it seemed to be enough. She’d never asked him, he’d never volunteered. It was something, by tradition, one didn’t talk about... besides, she liked it this way. It was part of her safe refuge not to know about certain things. The apartment was attractive and comfortable and would do at least until the baby was born, and perhaps for a year beyond that.

Of course a house would be more work than an apartment, and a baby would make more demands on her after its birth than before. Perhaps that was what she needed. Perhaps she had too much time to think, and that was the problem.

Or, more likely, there was no problem in the first place. She was pregnant, and she had heard and read enough about pregnancy to know that it tricked the mind. It put odd thoughts into a head that would otherwise not entertain them.

She was very lucky. She had to remember that. Because right now she was feeling almost as she had felt at times in New York, experiencing a similar vulnerability.

Those black holes, black holes circling at the perimeters of thought. You had to be very careful not to sail near them. If you fell into them you would fall forever in emptiness. You had to keep a very tight hold on your own mind, and whenever your thoughts approached the edge you had to tug them back and keep them where they belonged...

The baby kicked. She stubbed out her cigarette, placed the palm of her hand over her stomach. She felt a smile forming automatically on her lips, on her whole face. Mark told her often that she glowed with pregnancy and she liked that particular verb, with its connotations of warm radiance enveloping her in an aura. There were times when she could feel herself seeming to glow. This was one of them.

Another kick. She thought of the conversation with her mother, of the brother she had never had. But that memory steered her toward the black holes and she pushed it resolutely aside.

“Jeremy,” she said aloud. “Or Robin. I honestly don’t care which you are, you know. You’re going to make all the difference in the world. You really are.”

She was still sitting on the sofa when she heard Mark’s car in the driveway. She got quickly to her feet and went into the kitchen to make drinks. When she met him at the door he kissed her and held her close for a moment, then released her and accepted his drink.

“I think I need this,” he said.

“Rough day?”

“Oh, I don’t suppose you could call it rough. Let’s just say it was a long day.”

“Poor baby.” She heard herself saying the words, was shocked by them, and then relieved he didn’t question them, however condescending they seemed to her.

“There’s something the matter with the air-conditioner in my office. The guy was supposed to come around to look at it today but he didn’t show up.” He tugged at his tie, removed it, arranged it over the back of the chair. “So I was hoping to get away early, but then I had that schmuck Siegel at four o’clock and I couldn’t get rid of him. It’s bad enough that he’s stupid but on top of that he gets offended easily.”

“Do I know who he is?”

“I don’t think so. He’s in Lester Kalisher’s office. Nobody ever accomplishes anything with Siegel. That’s not what he’s for. Lester always sends him around for the opening rounds. It’s his method of softening up the opposition. After a few hours with Siegel you’re prepared to give ground when Lester comes over and pretends to be the reasonable one.”

She took a sip of her own drink and asked him about the case.

“Oh, it’s all boring as hell,” he said. “You don’t really want to hear about it, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Really? Well, a client of ours is buying a restaurant from a client of theirs. It’s a German place way over in South Buffalo on Cazenovia, and the whole deal shouldn’t be complicated but it is. Our guy wants a clause to prevent the seller from opening a restaurant under his own name or within a two-mile radius for the next ten years, which is fairly standard, and the seller is supposedly going to Florida to spend the rest of his life in a trailer court in St Pete, but Kalisher wants to stick on this point to prove he’s a lawyer, and I’m just as determined to prove I’m a lawyer, and — you can’t really be interested in all this crap.”

“I am vitally interested in everything my darling husband does.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.” He dropped an arm around her, squeezed her bottom, brushed her forehead with his lips. He had taken his jacket off and she could see the sweat circles under his arms. She liked his smells — the fresh one after a shower, the sweet-sour smell of his perspiration, the darkly pungent man-smell of him when they made love.

The sense of smell, she sometimes thought, was rather more important than people realized. It was somehow so much more evocative than the other senses. A suddenly familiar aroma brought back the past much more sharply than a comparable sight or sound or taste or touch.

Just a few weeks ago there had been a hot, sultry night, and the air had had a particular flavor to it, and she and Mark had turned to each other simultaneously to reminisce over their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. It had convinced him that they were telepathic, but she was sure it was merely an identical response to the scent and taste of the air, which that night had been distinctly tropical.

“Why don’t you sit down, baby?”

“I’ve been sitting all day. Don’t give me that delicate business, huh? I was getting enough of that from Eileen.”

“Oh, did you see her today?”

“She came over for coffee and insisted on racing me to the kitchen. She says I should milk this pregnancy for everything it’s worth.”

“Well, she’s right.” He scooped the letters from the sideboard and leafed through them. “Bills and junk mail,” he said. “Just what I always wanted. Is this all we got?”

“It’s all you got.”

“Emphasis noted, counselor. What did you get, a mash note from an old flame?”

“Nothing that exciting. Just the Alumnae Bulletin from Bryn Mawr.”

“Oh, thrills and chills! Can we read it together in bed?” They’d done that once, taking turns reading social notes from the Bulletin in a mock Main Line accent.

“Oh, come on,” she said.

“But I’m looking forward to it! I can’t wait to find out what’s new with Woofer and Tweeter and all those other sweet little preppy Protestants.”

“Woofer and Tweeter!”

“Well, that’s what they all sound like. I don’t know who gives them those nicknames—”

“That’s perfect, Mark. Woofer and Tweeter.” She picked up the Bulletin and began to flip through it. Already, in the few years since she’d graduated from Bryn Mawr, she had noticed the beginning of change in the Class Notes. At first virtually all of the items about her class members had been marriage announcements. Now there were fewer marriages and more birth announcements, and lately divorces had been making their appearance in the listings.

When she held the Bulletin in her hands it was always 1959 again. But whenever she read the notes of her classmates it quickly became present time again.

“I’ll be sending in an announcement soon,” she said.

“For the baby. Good ol’ Jeremy-Robin. How’s J-R been behaving today?”

“All right. Kicking a lot.”

“I don’t see what he’s got to kick about. He’s got a pretty soft life if you stop to think about it. Meals served on time, perfect weather, not too many responsibilities.”

“You sound as though you’d like to trade places with him.”

“Well, I do what I can. Come on, read me about Woofer and Tweeter and Poopie and Guppy and — honey?”

She felt the blood drain from her face. Her chest was constricted and her stomach felt as though she had been kicked. She opened her mouth and tried to breathe through it. But she couldn’t breathe.

“Andrea, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”

She looked up at him. He was standing but he was so very far away and there was a fog between them that blurred his features. She opened her mouth again and made herself breathe, in and out, in and out. He was talking but the words wouldn’t cut their way through the fog.

“Andrea—”

Her own voice, now, returned to her as from a distance. She seemed to understand her own words only by hearing them.

She said, “Winkie is dead. Winkie.”

He was moving toward her. She tried to extend the Alumnae Bulletin to him. Her arm stretched far out from her body but her fingers couldn’t maintain their grip on the paper and it fell, fell so slowly toward the floor.

Then the fog got thicker and covered everything.

In her first year at Bryn Mawr Andrea had shared a room in the freshman dormitory with a girl named Pauline Spooner. Pauline’s father was a Unitarian minister in Three Rivers, Delaware, and Pauline was assistant freshman coordinator of a campus organization called Liberal Religious Youth. She was tall and stoop-shouldered and had bad skin and went out on infrequent dates with a young man from Haverford who looked enough like her to have been her brother. At first Pauline had found Andrea very interesting on account of her being Jewish. “I’ve always hoped for an opportunity to talk with Jewish people,” she’d said. “I hope it’s not a sensitive subject with you?”

Andrea hadn’t thought it was.

“Then tell me this. Do you often feel aware of an enormous inner void in your soul resulting from your denial of Christ?”

They were not destined to become close, and Pauline did not return to Bryn Mawr the following year. In the course of her first year Andrea met and became friendly with the two girls with whom she was to share rooms for her remaining three years. They were Dana Giddings and Winifred Welles.

Dana was from a suburb of Boston. She was of old Massachusetts stock on both sides and her father was a partner in a Boston advertising agency. Dana was a very slender girl with deeply set dark eyes and a manner of quiet assurance. She had entered as a political science major but changed her major to history midway through her second year. An attractive girl, there was nothing striking about her beauty, perhaps because her shy manner did nothing to call attention to it. She had a dry acerbic wit which was commonly expressed in an undertone audible only to those in close proximity to her.

For three years Dana had never dated the same boy more than twice. She was not unpopular, and it was hard to know whether she actively discouraged boys from developing relationships with her or whether her aloofness somehow put them off. She seemed content enough. Then, in the fall of their senior year, Dana met a graduate assistant in the history department at the University of Pennsylvania. She met him on a Friday and was not seen again until the following Monday.

Andrea was alone in their apartment when Dana returned. “Thank God,” she said. “We were trying to decide whether to call the police. Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious.”

“How often do you two stay away for a weekend?”

“But that’s us. You never stayed away like that. You had us worried. I’m not kidding.”

“We’re going to be married in June,” Dana said quietly, matter-of-factly. “He’s from New Mexico. He says I’ll like it out there.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I suspect he’s right,” she said.

Andrea thought of any number of remarks and didn’t make any of them, and in June Dana was married and went to live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That was Dana Giddings. And Winifred Welles was Winkie.

Remembering Winkie:

“Hey, Kleinman? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Alive.”

“Seriously. Here we are with all these roads stretching out in front of us and I get to wondering if maybe they all lead to Rome.”

“You lost me.”

“Well, what if whatever we do we wind up in exactly the same place? Or to put it another way. How would you like to wake up one fine morning and discover you have turned out to be a road company version of your mother?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. Anyway, my mother’s all right.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t. I’d like nothing better than to trade mothers with you. I’ll throw in the good ten of diamonds and my pearl ring. That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“Well, you don’t want to grow up to be your mother, do you? Oh, I’m not coming across, am I?” Head cocked to one side, eyes (blue now, but sometimes they verged on green) glinting under uneven never-plucked brows. “I don’t mean you’ll marry a dentist, and don’t interrupt, I’m not criticizing dentists, but I don’t mean you might marry one, or that you’ll wind up in a house on Admirable Road—”

“Admiral Road.”

“Whatever. Oh, shit, Andrea Beth. You know what it is? My awful secret?”

“If it’s something you did after lights out at Foxcroft—”

“Shithead!”

“Tell me your awful secret, Winkie.”

“Damn straight!” And then, in a little-girl voice, “I wanna be somebody. That’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

“You mean famous?”

“No, I don’t mean famous.”

“Well, you can’t mean rich. You’re already rich.”

“Yeah, and big hairy deal to being rich. And I know it’s easy for me to say, and that’s why I get to say it. I will tell you, Andrea Beth. I want to be somebody. But I don’t know who. And I want to do something.”

“But you don’t know what.”

“Yeah. I can’t even talk like this to Dana. She’d give me that number with the eyes and I’d begin to wonder if maybe I forgot how to speak my mother tongue. You think I’m crazy too but at least I can talk to you. But you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Sort of.”

“I don’t mean a meaningful career. Shit, the last thing I want is a meaningful career. Doesn’t this get to you, Kleinman? Where you could spend hours staring at the wall and looking at your future and it’s all these roads leading to Rome?”

“I don’t know.” Pause. “I guess not.”

“You know what I’ll do? I’ll trade selves with you, and I’ll throw in the ten of diamonds and the deuce of spades and my pearl ring and all my cashmere sweaters and two Princeton boys and that schmuck from Villanova, who incidentally called again.”

“I told you he would.”

“Uh-huh. God, I wish I was Jewish. Can I be Jewish, Andrea Beth? Please?”

“Oh, come on.”

“I’m serious.”

“Well, I guess a person can convert. People do when they get married.”

“I don’t want to get married. If I get married maybe I’ll marry a Jew but who cares because I’m not going to get married. And I don’t mean converting. I don’t want any religion, for Christ’s sake. Hey, did you catch that one? ‘For Christ’s sake.’ I like that.”

“If you were Jewish you couldn’t say that.”

“I could live without it. I wanna be Jewish. Please?”

“But how can you be Jewish without the religion?”

“You’re Jewish, right? And you’re about as religious as I’m Episcopalian, right?”

“That’s different.”

“That’s the whole point, you dumb Jewess. That’s the whole point!”

“Wink, I’m beginning to think maybe you’re crazy.”

“Well, I know that, silly. But what I want is to be a Jew the way you are and screw the religious part.” She sighed theatrically. “But it’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“I couldn’t go out and get circumcised or something like that, could I?”

“Idiot.”

“Well, you ought to be able to, dammit. I don’t want to wake up one morning and there I am being my goddamn stupid shithead mother, and I don’t want to be Bette Davis, and what other choices have I got?”

“Where did Bette Davis come from?”

“Oh, you know. In all those movies with the bitchy career girl who makes it in a man’s world but her blood dries up along the way. You remember all those movies, don’t you, daahling?”

“Of course I do, daahling.”

“So that’s the point and — hey, I know what I’ll do.”

“Okay.”

“Well, ask me, huh?”

“What’ll you do?”

“I’ll be Pope. Hah! Got you that time, Kleinman. We got to keep laughing, right? Right?”

Things swam back into focus. Mark was saying her name. She was on the sofa, her arms folded over her breasts, and he was at her side, half seated, half crouching, his hand on her shoulder.

“I’m all right,” she said.

“Are you sure? You scared hell out of me.”

“Did I pass out?”

“I don’t think so. You just seemed to go blank for a minute there. There wasn’t very much time involved. Baby, are you sure you’re all right?”

She nodded. “My mouth’s all dry.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“I can get it myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She sat there, still hugging herself, while he went to the kitchen and returned with a tall glass of cool water. She drank it all down in little birdlike sips, pausing to glance up at his broad face. When the glass was empty he asked if she felt better and she assured him that she did.

“I’m going to call Lerner,” he said.

“Oh, don’t do that. I feel fine, honest I do.” She cupped a hand over her abdomen. “Everything’s fine here, Mark. You don’t lose a baby by emotional shock. It only happens that way in the movies. If I fell down or something, but I was sitting right here the whole time, wasn’t I?”

“Just let me call him.”

She waited while he made the call from the kitchen. When he had confirmed what she had said herself, it was her turn to make some telephone calls. She didn’t know where to start, who to call first. The Alumnae Bulletin didn’t tell you anything, really, “It is with deep sadness that we report the death in New York City on July 17th of Winifred Crispin Welles. At the time of her death, Winkie was employed as an assistant features editor for Holiday Magazine. Previous positions included a stint as researcher at Time-Life, Inc.”

That was all you had to know, really. That Winkie had lived and was gone. But you felt you had to know more.

She was on the phone for an hour, spending most of that hour trying to reach people, and when she put the phone down finally she had learned what she now felt she had somehow known all along. Not a hit-and-run driver, not an unspeakable disease, not a mugger in Central Park. Winkie had killed Winkie.

When she put the phone down for the last time she turned to tell Mark what she had learned. But he’d overheard enough of the conversation. “You’d better sit down,” he told her. She said she was all right but she sat down anyway. He made her a drink and told her it was just what the doctor ordered. “Literally. ‘Give her a big drink and tell her to take things a little easier.’ Here’s your big drink. And please take things easier.”

“I couldn’t take things much easier.” She extended one hand, fingers separated. “God, look at me,” she said. “I’m shaking again.”

“I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been like this.”

“Well, it’s a shock.”

“I never knew anyone who killed themselves. I hardly ever knew anyone who died. Winkie was the first in my class. No, wait a minute, there was a girl who died of a brain tumor about six months after graduation and one a couple of years ago in an automobile accident. But I never really knew either of them. I never really experienced a death before.”

“What about November?”

“November? Oh, Kennedy. But I didn’t know him. You know something? That was so immediate, having a front-row seat, and now this. It happened two months ago and I never knew it until now.”

He had picked up the Bulletin again and was scanning the notice. “It doesn’t mention a husband,” he said.

“She wasn’t married.”

“Winifred Crispin Welles?”

“Crispin was her middle name. Her mother’s maiden name.”

“There’s a custom I’ve never understood. I suppose it’s all right with a guy but with a girl it’s confusing. It makes an unmarried girl sound married.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Also, what’s the point of it? With a man it’s a way of carrying on the name from the mother’s side of the family, but with a girl she’s going to drop her middle name when she gets married.”

“I suppose so.”

“‘Jeremy Kleinman Benstock.’ Nothing against your name, but I’m not wildly crazy about the sound of that.”

“I don’t think it works with Jewish names.”

“No, I’ve got to admit it works better with something like Crispin. The goyim have a distinct advantage over us. Are you feeling any better, baby?”

“Much better. But also worse, because it’s soaking in now. Winkie’s really dead. It’s funny, I haven’t thought of her middle name in years. Crispin. She said once that they tried to give her ‘Crispy’ as a nickname at Foxcroft but it didn’t stick. I can understand why, although I don’t think I could explain it. ‘Winkie’ seemed to suit her.”

“Was she a very good friend?”

“Well, she was the best friend I had at Bryn Mawr. There were really only two girls I was close to. Winkie and a girl named Dana Giddings. The three of us roomed together and of the two I was much closer to Winkie.”

“You’d think they’d have been closer to each other.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

“Well, they were both gentile, weren’t they?”

“Oh.”

“Or maybe it didn’t matter.”

“It didn’t.”

“I wonder why she killed herself. Unless it was accidental.”

“She took pills. Can you do that by accident?”

The question had been rhetorical but he nodded in response. “You sure can,” he said. “It happens frequently, from what I understand. You take a couple of pills and you don’t fall asleep and then you’re so groggy you forget you’ve taken them so you take some more. Before you know it you’ve knocked off the whole bottle. And alcohol, they can combine with alcohol and it magnifies the effect. Did she drink?”

“Everybody drank.”

“So you can’t be sure. Unless there was a note.”

“I don’t know if there was a note or not.”

“Well, in that case—”

“Look, what in the fucking hell is the difference? She wasn’t some Catholic, she’s not going to have to be buried in sacred ground. She wouldn’t have had an accident. She didn’t do things by accident.”

“Honey—”

“She killed herself, for God’s sake.” He looked at her and after a moment she averted her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sure.”

“Let me get dinner on the table.”

Remembering Winkie:

“Tell me something, Andrea Beth. Do I look positively terror-stricken?”

Winkie at the wheel of her crippled Plymouth coupe, her long hair bound up in a scarf, eyes hidden behind large round-lensed sunglasses, one hand draped casually over the steering wheel, the other coiled in her lap.

“No. Not at all.”

“Are you absolutely certain of that?”

“You know what you look like, Winks? First World War flying ace. Veteran of countless missions.”

“Nerves of stainless steel?”

“Absolutely.”

“An old hand at crash landings?”

“Now you’ve got it.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it, all right. And we’re on our way to get rid of it, and I’m not flying around in my Sopwith Camel after all. I’m scared, can you believe it?”

“Look, everything’s going to be all right.”

“Oh, everything’s going to be sensational, Kleinman. No question about it. He’s a living legend and everybody’s favorite father figure and it would be a sin against God to go to college in Pennsylvania and not pay a single visit to the kindly old Reading rabbit-snatcher.”

“Huh?”

“A cunning colloquialism I read somewhere. I never actually heard anybody say it aloud. Rabbit-snatcher for abortionist. Picturesque, don’t you think? Picture a man drawing a rabbit not from a hat precisely but from a—”

“Ugh.”

“Quite. How much further to Reading? There was a sign back there but I didn’t see it.”

“Neither did I. Maybe twenty miles? I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. Light me a cigarette? Thanks. Tell me it’s going to be all right. No, fuck that, you already told me that. Tell me he’s going to be the compassionate dedicated abortionist in the legend.”

“That’s what everybody says. His daughter had an illegal abortion and died and now he performs them so other people won’t have to go through it.”

“It’s so perfect I keep gagging on it. If he winds up looking like Jean Hersholt I’m going to shit. But he’ll be terrific, right? Not your everyday dirty old man with whiskey on his breath and filth encrusted under his fingernails.” Her voice went suddenly serious. “Andrea, I’m scared shitless.”

“Turn the car around.”

“No.”

“There’s no law says you have to go, Winkie. In fact the law says just the opposite. Turn the car around.”

“I’m going through with this.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“But I do. Listen, it’s ridiculous, I’m twenty years old and haven’t had a single abortion yet. I mean, it’s like a secondary virginity, if you follow me. So what if I’m nervous? I was nervous when I lost the primary.”

“I think we should go back to campus.”

“And break our appointment? Suppose we got charged anyway? Doesn’t your father charge when patients don’t show up?”

“I’m serious, Winkie.”

“I’m serious, too. I’m very fucking glib but I’m also serious. I’m going through with this. Look, what choice do I have? Stop and think about it for a minute. Have the baby and put it up for adoption? Come on. If I actually had the baby I’d keep it. You know something? If I were five years older I’d do that little thing. ‘How do you do, world? I’m Miss Winifred Crispin Welles and this is my illegitimate daughter, and isn’t she the sweetest thing?”

“What if it were a boy?”

“Then I’d strangle the little bastard. Men are evil, Andrea Beth. I thought you knew that.”

“You could get married.”

A theatrical reaction, the steering wheel abandoned, then gripped quickly when the car begins to swerve. “Married? I’ll be an angel and pretend you never said that.”

“Wouldn’t he marry you?”

“Do you want to know something? I’m almost sure he would, the pig. I’ll tell you this much. He’d marry me a lot faster than I’d marry him. Hell would freeze a lot faster than I’d marry him. I don’t want to marry anybody, and I don’t want to marry anybody for a dumb reason like being pregnant, and I wouldn’t marry him under any circumstances. And having the baby and keeping it would be terrific if I were a much stronger person than I am—”

“You’re a strong person.”

“Oh, like hell I am. I don’t have a tenth of your strength, and would you keep an illegitimate baby?”

“No.”

“What would you do, as far as that goes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you must have thought about it.”

“Of course, loads of times. And especially now. Just now.”

“And?”

“I guess I’d do what you’re doing. Have an abortion.”

“Because there’s nothing else to do, right?”

“I guess.”

And, a little later, “Listen, not to worry, Kleinman. I’ve got my luck working for me. Nothing can possibly go wrong because I’ve got a Jew along for luck. Jews have always been lucky for me.”

“You told me that the first day I met you.”

“What did you think?”

“That you were probably crazy. But in an interesting way.”

“That’s something. Were you offended?”

“Offended? I don’t know. Probably a little.”

“You didn’t let it show.”

“Oh, of course not.”

“You’re not offended now, are you?”

“No. But I still think you’re probably crazy, Winks.”

“What a revelation. ‘Reading — 18 Miles.’ But it’s on the other side of Reading, isn’t it? You’ve got the directions?”

“That’s the tenth time you’ve asked me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. The first boy I ever fucked was Jewish. I must have told you that.”

“About seventy-three times.”

“I didn’t know you were counting. Do you suppose that’s why I’m keen on circumcision?”

“Maybe.”

“Because I just think it’s so much cleaner and more aesthetic. It doesn’t much matter for screwing, but when you get a little more intimate it does. Don’t you think so? Or don’t you?”

“I think the weather’s going to be great if the rain holds off.”

“And I think you’re a fucking prude, Andrea Beth. That’s what I think. Why am I manic and depressive at the same time, will you tell me? Isn’t it supposed to alternate? Oh, the hell with it anyway. Can I tell you something terrible?”

“Could I stop you?”

“I don’t see how. No, this is a monumental confession. I’m enjoying this a little. I’m terrified, that was no bullshit, but part of me is sitting in the back seat observing this, this fucking film entitled Winkie Gets Aborted. It’s sort of a sequel to Gidget Goes Bananas. Do you know what I mean? I mean all of this stupidity appeals somehow to my sense of theater. Now isn’t that disgusting?”

“A little. I’m nervous, too, and I’m enjoying it in a way, and it’s not even me it’s happening to. Maybe that’s more disgusting.”

“It’s the notorious Jewish empathy. Hey, maybe the doctor’ll be a Jew. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“He hasn’t got a very Jewish name.”

“Maybe he changed it. Or maybe he doesn’t use his real name for abortions. In fact I’m sure he doesn’t, so maybe he’s a Jew.” Then, with a swift shake of her head, “No, not with my luck. With my luck he’ll be a Catholic. He’ll save the fetus and let me die, the bastard.”

“You never talk much about Bryn Mawr.”

“Don’t I?”

“Not really. Not about Bryn Mawr, not about your life in New York.” The Huntley-Brinkley Report had just ended and he had turned off the set. He straightened up. “I’m not suggesting you’ve got some deep dark secret—”

“Hardly that.”

“Just wondered if there was anything you wanted to share.”

“Well, you don’t talk much about college, either. You’ll talk about law school if it’s a story involving a legal point or if it includes someone we’re friendly with now, but how many times do you tell Stover-at-Yale anecdotes about the time you spent far above Cayuga’s waters.”

“I guess that’s true.” He sat down beside her, picked up her hand in his. “Maybe it’s because we can’t really share those parts of our lives. They’re areas of our separate pasts. When I think of Cornell. To a great extent those were the years when I grew up. Being away from home — oh, we’ve talked about this, how easy it is to tell if someone went away to school or not. It was enough of an influence on me, those years at Cornell, that I didn’t have to go away to law school. I’d been away once and I could come back.”

“Yes, we’ve talked about that.”

“But if I were to try to think of anything from that very important time in my life that I wanted to talk about, or anyone I would even be inclined to mention... Now my two closest friends were both from Buffalo and both in Phi Ep with me.”

“Dan and who else?”

“A fellow named Mickey Ginsberg. I don’t know if you would have known him. He married a Baltimore girl and hasn’t been seen since. Those were my two best friends at college, but there were also several other guys I was very close to, extremely close to, and you know how it is at that stage of your life. I was sure I would never lose touch with them.”

“Yes.”

“I never invited them to the wedding. Never even sent them an announcement. Just a couple of years, but it makes that much difference. I never would have thought so at the time. I think you mentioned Winkie at one time or another.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“But you lost touch, and it’s been fewer years for you.”

She nodded.

“Were you very close?”

“She was the closest friend I’ve ever had.”

“Any idea why she would kill herself?”

“Not really.”

“Did she ever—”

“No.”

“Any history of emotional instability? Anything in the family, anything like that?”

She glanced at him, then broke her gaze when she realized she was staring. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose she was a little crazy. We were all crazy, all the good guys were crazy.”

“How do you mean that?”

“I don’t know. She had a very original mind. She had as good a mind as anyone I’ve ever known. And she was terribly sophisticated — mercurial, I guess you could say.”

“Ups and downs?”

“Huh? Yes.” She paused to light a cigarette. “Intensity. That’s the best way to describe her. Everything was so desperately important and intense.”

“You mean she took things too seriously?”

“No, no, no. I don’t mean that at all.”

“Well, don’t bite my head off.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. Come here.” She moved over and drew his head down into her lap and stroked his forehead with the tips of her fingers. “I didn’t mean she was serious. God, she had the most antic wit I ever came across. But she was — ‘intense’ is the only word I can come up with. Every moment was so very urgent and important.”

“Isn’t part of that the age she was when you knew her? College kids are always more intense.”

“And then you grow out of it.”

There must have been something in her voice because his eyes widened for a moment. “I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. Not a matter of outgrowing it necessarily. But it’s rare for that kind of intensity to last throughout a lifetime.”

“Unless the lifetime doesn’t last very long.”

He didn’t say anything. She went on stroking his forehead. She liked these times, this silent closeness, but tonight she felt both closer and more remote than usual.

“Eileen Fradin,” she said suddenly.

“What about her?”

“She never could have had that intensity that Winkie had.”

“You didn’t know her until recently.”

“No, but I know her well enough to know that about her. And in the same way I know Winkie didn’t stop living intensely, feeling things deeply. Maybe that’s what killed her.”

“You’re reaching, don’t you think?”

“Am I? Maybe she burned herself out.”

“Maybe.”

“Which isn’t likely to happen with Eileen.”

“Where does Eileen come into it? You sound as though she doesn’t measure up.”

“No, I don’t mean that.”

“She’s a good friend to you, isn’t she?”

“Yes, I guess she is,” she said slowly. “I don’t really know her. I spend a lot of time with her but we don’t really talk about anything. I’m not close with her the way I was with Winkie. I don’t think I ever could be.”

“You might be surprised. How long did you know Winkie? A couple of years at college and a couple of years in New York?”

“I hardly ever saw her in New York.”

“Well, we might be friendly with Eileen and Roger for the next forty or fifty years.”

“God.”

“Does it sound that unpleasant?”

“No. I just never thought in those terms. But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“And you and Eileen have things in common that you and Winkie didn’t.”

“You’ve got that backwards, don’t you?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. No, not at all. You and Eileen grew up together, whether you really knew each other at the time or not. Their son’s older, but their second baby’ll be about the same as our first. Roger’ll join Northlawn in a year or so. He and I get along reasonably well. After the baby comes we’ll want a house, and if we don’t buy in Amherst we’ll probably buy near the Fradins, and if we do buy in Amherst their next house will probably be in Amherst. Add up all the different variations on those themes over thirty or forty or fifty years and compare them to what you had in common with what’s-her-name, Winkie. And all that really amounted to was that you happened to go to the same girls’ school at the same time.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Not really.”

“It sounds as though you resent Winkie. Do you? I can’t imagine why you would.”

“I don’t. Sometimes, oh, I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I think you take people like Eileen for granted.”

“But that’s not fair!”

“Hey, I’m sorry. Baby? Don’t be upset. Listen, let me put on some records. Is there anything special you’d like to hear?”

“Anything at all,” she said.

Was there anyone she should call? Anything she should do?

July 17th, the Alumnae Bulletin had said. That was more than two months ago. And no one had called her.

But who would have called? Dana? Dana would probably have learned the same way that she learned — if Dana even bothered to keep up with alumnae news. And Dana wouldn’t call her any more than she would now call Dana. There was no one who might have called her with the news, and there was no one for her to inform in her turn.

She had never met either of Winkie’s parents. They had been long divorced and Winkie had never been enormously fond of either of them. Andrea’s parents had met Winkie twice. No, three times. They had seemed to like each other well enough.

That was one person she could tell. “Mother? You remember Winkie Welles, don’t you? Well, she killed herself two months ago. It’s too late to go to the funeral, not that there would have been any reason for you to go in the first place. I won’t say what she died of but she took a lot of sleeping pills, so as far as where to send the contribution—”

Where? Was there an American Suicide League to accept contributions? An institution that collected funds and sponsored research that mapped those black holes on the edge of thought?

Oh, but there was always the prayer-book fund. And that would be quite perfect. For every three dollars you sent they purchased yet another prayer book for the temple, and a bookplate inside the front cover memorialized the deceased. “Presented in Loving Memory of Winifred Crispin Welles.”

Excellent. She would write a check herself, payable to the prayer-book fund of Temple Beth Sholom. And no acknowledgment need be sent, thank you.

Winkie, wherever you are, you’ll get a laugh out of that, won’t you? Won’t you?

“College must have been very different for you.”

“Than high school?”

“Than it was for me, is what I meant. I mean from a social standpoint primarily.” He put a cup of coffee on the table for her, then straightened up. “In terms of being Jewish.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Well, we’ve talked about college being just an extension of high school for the kids who went to U.B. and went on living at home. In terms of being Jewish, Cornell was just an extension of high school for me. All my friends were Jewish. I just went out with Jewish girls. I was in a Jewish fraternity.” He walked halfway across the room, turned, put his hands on his hips. “What’s interesting is that I never questioned any of that. I don’t think I felt any real prejudice against gentiles or that they were prejudiced against me. Of course overhearing my parents and their friends, but that was something that applied to older people. I didn’t feel personally affected by it. But I took it for granted, that while I would be friendly with non-Jews in the sense of being on good terms—”

“That it would never go further than that.”

“Exactly. I wonder when it started.”

“In the womb?”

“No, a little later than that.” His voice was serious.

“For me it was when I finished grade school and entered high school. There were certain activities that were separate before then. Boy Scouts and dancing class, because those were activities that were centered around the temple.”

“And Sunday school and Hebrew school.”

“Well, obviously those were centered in the temple. Oh, I see what you mean. They were still activities that set us apart. That’s true enough. But the big thing was high school. Before then you didn’t pay any real attention to who was Jewish and who wasn’t in terms of who your friends were. Then one morning I got up and went to Bennett High, and there were fraternities for us and fraternities for them, and there was no cross-dating to speak of and if a Jewish girl went out with a gentile boy she got a reputation—”

“And if a Jewish boy went out with a gentile girl it meant she put out, or why else would he bother with her. That was really the way we thought, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “And because of the way we thought, it wound up being true. Self-fulfilling prophecy. You knew what you were getting into, so when you went ahead and did it anyway—”

“Uh-huh.”

“We’re missing the eleven o’clock news.”

“I don’t really care, do you?”

“Well, there were a couple of baseball games tonight, but I don’t really need to know who won them. No, I’m enjoying this conversation. You know what’s funny? That we’ve gone this long without having it. I wonder how it all started?”

“The conversation?”

He shook his head. “The separation, the way it begins for real at the high school level. Oh, I know the answer, come to think of it. It’s how society prevents intermarriage. Let them be close until they’re old enough to take an interest in each other. Then keep ’ em apart.”

“Like in the South?”

“Oh?”

“Negroes and whites in the South. White and colored kids play together in their cradles, they’re the best of friends and nobody thinks anything of it. I never even saw a colored person who wasn’t somebody’s maid until I went to high school, and how many Negroes were there at Bennett when I was there? I think three.”

“Well, there has been some changes made since then, Sapphire. You wouldn’t recognize the place these days.”

“So I understand, but don’t let me miss my point. I grew up in the North and never had any colored friends, but in the South they play together from infancy as a matter of course, and then there’s complete and total segregation the minute they go to school. Not high school, of course. Kindergarten or first grade, whatever it is. They have the segregated schools and as soon as they go to them they stop speaking to each other; It’s not that extreme here in Buffalo between Jews and gentiles—”

“Hardly.”

“But it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I wonder.”

“What’s the difference, Mark? It’s just one of degree.”

“Maybe.” He refilled their coffee cups and brought in a plate of cookies. “Tell me about Bryn Mawr,” he said.

“About Bryn Mawr. Okay. Perched on the Main Line just north of the teeming metropolis of Philadelphia, the esteemed college of Bryn Mawr—”

“Come on. Were there many Jewish kids there?”

“There were enough. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t understand the question. I never counted, for God’s sake.”

“But you weren’t friendly with any of them.”

“I was friendly with a few. I wasn’t close with any. There weren’t many girls I was close to, Jewish or otherwise. Look, some of the Jewish girls tended to hang out together. They did terrific ethnic things like joining the Hillel Society at Haverford and having a seder every year with an actual rabbi to preside over it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I didn’t say there was.”

“No, you didn’t, did you? Did your friends have the same attitude you did? That maintaining your Jewish identity that way was a dull Mickey Mouse thing to do?”

Her mouth snapped open and she almost spoke. But the words stayed bottled up. She put one hand over her stomach. For a moment her brain filled with the sudden unbidden image of a baby with its umbilicus wrapped around its throat but the image flashed away as abruptly as it had come.

She was not sitting over coffee with Winkie and Dana, not now. She was not at the Greek’s or the Dive. Nor was she at the bar of the Kettle or San Remo or the Riviera. She was in her apartment on Kenmore Avenue, with her built-in kitchen and her Danish furniture and her casement windows, and words could no longer be spoken without having been weighed first. The automatic responses were safe, whether they’d been learned or were inborn, but before fresh conversational ground could be broken one had to consider. One heard the words first and then one spoke them.

“I’m sorry, Andrea.”

“What for?”

“It was just the tone you used, it got my back up.”

“It’s nothing.”

“What are you looking for, a cigarette? Here?”

“Thanks.”

Let it drop now? He would probably follow her lead if she wanted.

But she said, “I felt more Jewish there.”

“Sure, because of the contrast. I never felt whiter than when we went to that jazz club on William Street. I wouldn’t say I was uncomfortable exactly. Maybe I was uncomfortable but on top of that I was aware of being Caucasian in a way I’m usually not.”

“That’s just part of what I meant. There was more.”

“Oh?”

“I felt more aware that I was Jewish but at the same time I felt less Jewish.”

“You lost me.”

“Because being Jewish was something that made me unique in my particular group of friends, so I was aware of it, but once you get past the fact it stops mattering because I was the same as they were and felt the same way—”

She went on a bit, talking as much to herself as to him, talking perhaps to Winkie more than to either of them. And when she stopped talking he assured her that he understood what she meant. She wondered.

There was clean linen on the bed. She lay under the top sheet letting her eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. He drew back the sheet, slipped into bed beside her. She turned toward him, suddenly breathless, and when his arm went around her she felt herself rocked by a great wave of relief, relief from a tension she had not consciously felt.

“Oh, my darling!”

“Hello there.” He kissed her forehead, traced his lips through her hair. He put a hand on her shoulder, ran it down along her side to her waist.

“Getting fat,” she said.

“Just a little.”

“Well, I’m just a little pregnant. Pretty soon I’ll look like a pigeon.”

“I like pigeons.” His hand moved to her stomach. “Tell him to kick, will you? I never get to feel it.”

“You’ve felt it.”

“Not in any very dramatic way. C’mon, J-R. Right through the goal posts.”

“Wait a minute. There! Didn’t you feel it?”

“No.”

“God, that was a good one, too.”

“I can’t believe you’re not making this up.”

“Maybe it’s just easier to feel on the inside.”

“Well, there’s not much I can do about that, is there?” He rubbed her belly, rhythmically. “I love you very much, Andrea.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “Your mother swears you started kicking in the third month.”

“Is that possible?”

“I don’t think so, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. She also told me when you said your first word and took your first step.”

“I didn’t realize you spoke to her that often.”

“I think she likes me more now that I’m pregnant.”

“She’s always liked you. Did she mention what my first word was?”

“No, and I was careful not to ask.”

“Probably a good move.” His hands moved on her body. “If there’s such a thing as prenatal influence, I have a fair idea what Jeremy Robin’s first word is going to be. Unless I start stuffing towels in your mouth every night.”

“Was I terribly loud last night?”

“Let’s say you were audible.”

“Oh, dear. Must I hide my face from the neighbors, do you think?”

“Let’s say a delicate blush might not be out of place.”

She drew back and squinted, trying to make out his features in the darkness. “You don’t really think anyone could hear me, do you?”

“Are you embarrassed? Yes, I guess you are. I suppose it’s remotely possible that the Gilchrists could hear you. I assume they can hear us because of the ease with which we hear them, but they’re downstairs and doesn’t sound travel up? Like heat?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anyway, they’re not all that hard to hear.”

“She isn’t, you mean. I never hear him at all. Mark, for all we know she could be alone in there.”

“Well, she wants someone to bite her breasts, and I’m taking the giant leap of assuming it’s him.”

She started giggling. “Aren’t we terrible? To talk like this? I guess she does want her breasts bitten, though. It seems to be an essential part of their lovemaking.”

“That it does. And it seems he has difficulty remembering, because she has to tell the poor bastard over and over again.” He moved on the bed, pressed his face to her breasts. “Shall I nibble?”

“Don’t you dare. They’re so damned tender.”

“Also large. Not that they weren’t always, but this is a nice bonus.”

“One of the little fringe benefits of pregnancy.”

“Fringe is a nice word.”

“Oh, that’s lovely, darling—”

Their lovemaking proceeded gradually in the pattern that had slowly evolved between them — sporadic conversation accompanied by caresses that built up excitement in gentle tentative stages. The banter between them functioned almost in the manner of a stage magician’s misdirection, focusing the attention of the brain while the body was stimulated in spite of itself. She adored this tender and friendly way they had of making love; it was so much more intimate than anything she had ever known.

Until at last he lay atop her, between her legs, her breasts crushed just the least sweet bit painfully beneath his chest, and he was inside her and it all became wordless between them. And all the words went out of her mind as well.

It was so good, so very good, and at one point it came to her that perhaps this was all there really was. When you passed a certain age you could not be as open and honest and certain and true as you might have been in earlier years. Those options ceased to exist for you. So God gave you lovemaking to take their place, and in the dark cave of the marriage bed you and the one you loved could be all those things again, to and for each other, justifying in the minutes preceding sleep all the small deaths and failures of the day.

His lovemaking was long and thorough and gentle, his climax powerful and seemingly whole.

She didn’t come. She didn’t always, especially lately during her pregnancy, and it truly was not necessary for her to come. At those times when she wanted to she nearly always did, and at other times, like this night, she felt no need for orgasm, no emptiness for lack of it.

He didn’t ask if she had come. He said nothing beyond stating his love before turning to his side and slipping into his sleep rhythms. She was grateful for this.

Ten, fifteen minutes later, when she was on the very edge of sleep, her body twisted suddenly as if she were swerving to keep from falling. Her heart was beating violently and her temples pulsed with some unknowable fear.

She lay where she was until she had her bearings. She must have slipped into some dream, and in the dream she must have fallen. Or else she had simply shifted position in her half-sleep and had incorporated the act into a spontaneous dream. All that was disturbing was the anxiety which had accompanied the incident, that and the realization that she was not going to be able to fall asleep again, not for a little while yet.

Mark lay sleeping in his usual position, lying on his side facing the windows, one arm gripping his pillow — to assert possession or to express insecurity? She sometimes wondered. His chest rose and fell with his deep regular breathing. She laid a hand lightly on his upper arm, just wanting to touch him for a moment. He did not stir. She got quietly out of bed and tiptoed from the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

She moved through the apartment, turning on some lights, finding her cigarettes, lighting one, walking toward the window before remembering that she was naked. She got her robe from the bathroom and put it on and then walked to the window and smoked her cigarette all the way down, counting the infrequent cars on Kenmore Avenue. In the time it took her to finish the cigarette, not a single person passed by on foot.

She wanted something but couldn’t decide what. Not coffee — it didn’t keep her awake, but seemed a ridiculous beverage to drink when one could not sleep in the first place. A glass of milk? Good for the baby, certainly. A glass of warm milk, carefully heated on the stove in a saucepan? Everything appealed about it but the thought of actually drinking it.

Whiskey, of course. It was a night on which one ought to be sitting up into the small hours, drinking whiskey with old friends, telling old lies and older truths, knowing they’d all be safely forgotten when dawn came with sermons and soda water. Whiskey by the glass in a snug Village bar around two in the morning in the middle of the week, with the tourists all back at their hotels and the day-trippers back in Queens and Brooklyn and nobody around but the handful of regulars committed to serious drinking.

Not that she often had all that much to drink. But it wasn’t a matter of quantity. It was more a question of attitude.

She found the scotch, carried it into the kitchen, took a large rocks glass from the cupboard. Just as she was starting to tilt the bottle she changed her mind, put the glass away, selected an orange juice glass instead and filled it almost to the brim. Then she capped the bottle and put it away and carried her drink into the living room. She sat down in the wing chair and held the glass to the light, approving the mellow color of the whiskey.

Cheers, Winkie. Requiescat in pace. Olev hasholem.

She drank about an ounce of whiskey and felt it burn its way down her throat. Warmth spread in her stomach and she fancied she could feel the warmth slipping into her blood, moving through her body, bringing life and quickness to her toes and fingers. For a moment there was a sensation of heaviness in the center of her chest and then that passed and there was nothing but the warmth and a feeling of comfort.

She thought of Winkie and tried to think of other deaths. Grandparents, the parents of some of her friends. A classmate at Bennett, barely known to her, existing in memory as no more than an occasional bloodless smile in the hallways, tossed during their third year through the windshield of her father’s car. A boy a class ahead of her in Sunday school who had died of a blood disease of some sort, presumably leukemia but that, too, had been a word one never heard spoken aloud. How old had she been when he died? Eleven, maybe. Eleven, perhaps twelve.

What was his name?

She drank more whiskey. She thought of a poem of Dylan Thomas, who had himself died before she’d ever been to the White Horse, damn him for being so inconsiderate. He’d written that there was no death after the first one. Well, neither was there any death before the first one.

Oh, Winkie. For Christ’s sake, Winkie, why?

Eileen would never swallow pills and wish the dawn away. Eileen understood enough not to seek to understand too much. She knew intuitively when to avert her eyes, and when to blink. She could survive, bending but not breaking, like that fable about the tree and the reeds.

And Andrea?

She had been a friend to Winkie, finding the role a perfectly natural one, and now without any strain she was a friend to Eileen. They were so very different, those two friends of hers, different in such a variety of ways that neither could gladly have suffered the other’s company. Winkie’d find Eileen boring and mindless and predictable. Eileen would see Winkie as snobbish, weird, undependable.

So what did it mean, that she herself was capable of friendship with both of them? She frowned inwardly, chasing the thought, trying to catch its tail. Did the two of them represent disparate aspects of herself? Or different stages of her life? Or did they combine to prove that she herself was undefined, an empty slate, a mirror that served only to reflect whoever posed before her?

Whiskey clarified and distorted at one and the same time. Like the shop in Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice could see what was on the shelf above and the shelf below, but not on the shelf she was looking at. Alcohol’s insights came obliquely, and when you reached for them you were grabbing empty air.

Her glass was empty. Odd, because she didn’t recall finishing her drink. And she had put the bottle away because she had decided to have one drink and no more. She walked very steadily, got the bottle, poured her glass half-full, replaced the bottle and went back to her chair. She lit a cigarette and found one already burning in the ashtray. She stubbed it out very carefully, very very carefully.

Two months ago. What had she been doing the night Winkie had died? What day of the week had it been? She closed her eyes and tried to calculate but gave it up as impossible. And it didn’t seem worth the trouble of checking the calendar.

Some conversations, solitary dialogues, while sipping scotch from a juice glass:

“Winkie, why?”

“Oh, put a cork in it, Kleinman. Didn’t you always know I would do it? Face it, I wasn’t put on earth to be somebody’s grandmother. Nobody wants a madcap grandmother.”

“You had plenty to live for.”

“I had plenty to live up to and plenty to live down. I would have had to grow up, kid. And if you grow up you can’t fly, Wendy. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“You’re making me laugh, damn it.”

“Well, I could always make you laugh, Andrea Beth. That’s what each of us loved about the other. And what’s so bad about laughing, huh? Tell me that.”

“Who’s gonna make me laugh now, Winks? You tell me that.”

And:

“The thing is, Winkie, you keep dying. You died a little bit when we moved to New York, and then you died again when I came home to Buffalo.”

“Home to Buffalo. Remember that phrasing, Andrea Beth.”

“Stop it, you’ll make me miss the point of this. Then you died really two months ago, and then you died again when I found out about it this afternoon. And here we are having this conversation.”

“Spooky, huh?”

“Why weren’t we friends in New York?”

“Because we reminded each other of college.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“Oh, I wound up in Yorkville and you wound up in the Village. I got involved with the Time-Life crew and you were hopping Village saloons.”

“I didn’t ask what happened. I asked why.”

“Being dead doesn’t mean knowing all the answers. It means you don’t get called on quite so often, that’s all.”

“Winkie, I keep losing more and more pieces of you.”

“But I’m not completely dead, right? Right? I mean am I right or am I right, Kleinman?”

“You’re crazy.”

“I always was. ‘The part of me they could not kill/ Lives on to orrrrrrganize.’ Remember when we sat up until dawn singing Wobbly songs? Remember how that idiot Giddings wanted us all to join the IWW when I told her they still existed? Then she heard they were on the Attorney-General’s list and how would she explain it to her mother? Do you remember all that?”

“Oh, God. I remember everything.”

“Course you do, Kleinman.”

“It’s Benstock, now.”

“That’s right. I keep forgetting.”

And again:

“Winkie? I just realized something.”

“What?”

“I’m going to have a son.”

“How can you tell?”

“You just know these things, that’s all. And—”

“Remember when we went to that kindly old abortionist in Reading?”

“How could I forget? And—”

“Let me finish, please. Death has its privileges. You were busy being a tower of strength afterward, and I told you how I asked the doctor whether it would have been a boy or a girl, and you got these huge saucer eyes and were all prepared to nurse me through a complete emotional catastrophe, and I told you he said it was neither, it was a dachshund? Remember?”

“I thought I was going to die laughing.”

“Well, if you gotta go—”

“But this is important, Winkie. I’m going to have a boy, I know it, and that’s what I want. I thought it didn’t matter but I was wrong. It matters. I want a son.”

“Okay.”

“Because a son is better off.”

“Okay.”

“Because girls keep killing themselves. Sometimes all at once and sometimes a little at a time but either way they just, they just keep on killing themselves—”

“Don’t cry, Andrea Beth. Please don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it!”

Until it was time, finally, to go to sleep. She knew this without literally knowing what time it was, because she had rather deliberately avoided looking at the clock once since getting out of bed. It couldn’t have been too late. It was still as dark outside as when they had gone to bed.

She was drunk, of course, but not too drunk. She was sober enough to wash and dry her glass and put it away, sober enough to empty the overflowing ashtray, sober enough to return her robe to the hook in the bathroom, sober enough to swallow a couple of aspirin against the morning.

Sober enough to get into bed without waking her husband, and to press her mouth briefly against his sleep-warm flesh, and then roll over onto her back and close her eyes.

Drunk enough to sleep.