George Mills Part 16

" 'Oh no, doll. You You look. You're seventeen years old. This is your first employment. You don't have references. You're not used to living away from home. Certainly you're unused to living with your employers. Mr. Simon and I, however, have lived with servants all our lives. look. You're seventeen years old. This is your first employment. You don't have references. You're not used to living away from home. Certainly you're unused to living with your employers. Mr. Simon and I, however, have lived with servants all our lives.

" 'Do you know why it's necessary that you girls have references? Do you know what's actually in in those characters we write? Our phone numbers and addresses, doll. So we may telephone each other. So we may visit. So we may say to each other what it would not always be wise to put down on paper. those characters we write? Our phone numbers and addresses, doll. So we may telephone each other. So we may visit. So we may say to each other what it would not always be wise to put down on paper.

" 'Some girls are sickly, some nasty, some dishonest.'

" 'I'm not any of those things,' your mother said.

" 'Oh?' Mrs. Simon said. 'But as soon as my back is turned you invite a janitor into my home to use a bathroom you were specifically told was out of bounds. Mr. Mindian will definitely have to be informed.'

" 'He didn't use your toilet. I did.'

" 'You let him watch? Oh,' she said, 'loathsome!'

" 'No,' your mother said. 'Oh my G.o.d, you don't understand. Here.' And chose just that moment to return Mrs. Simon's wrist watch, which she took out of her purse, having put it there because she had not yet decided how to tell her she had found it.

"It was almost a formal exchange, trade. Wrist watch for wrench, the two objects changing hands, not returned so much as simultaneously surrendered, restored, like spoils appropriated in a war.

" 'I want you out of my house,' Mrs. Simon said.

" 'But where could I go?'

" 'Why, to your janitor,' she said. 'What, will he want a reference? Very well. You may tell him that you are a lying, quarrelsome young girl who steals watches and permits men to observe her while she sits on toilets. I will vouch for it. Get your things.'

"She kept house for him in the storage locker.

"It was more like a kid's clubhouse than ever, that tucked snug sense of coze and warm comfy, all of luxury they would ever know, the two of them, the brooding, self-conscious young man and the farmer's daughter returned to a kind of sybaritic nest condition, some quilted idyll of semiconscious life.

"It wasn't even s.e.x. It was more like bathing, some long, painless, post-op ease.

"They knew she was there, the maids and tenants and children. Even Mindian knew she was there. No one complained. Why would they? They were fearful of driving off for nothing in return the one absolutely special and spectacular thing that had ever happened to them. It was like having peac.o.c.ks in your backyard, tamed bears, docile deer. Just knowing they were there lent a sort of glory and luck to the neighborhood. They didn't even discuss it among themselves--as his catcher and teammates will say nothing even in the seventh and eighth and ninth innings of the pitcher's no-hit game for fear of jinxing they can barely say what--love in vitro, in vitro, domestic science in the cellar. The freak your father and the freak your mother belonged to all of them, and if they happened to make their queer nest in one of Mindian's buildings rather than in another, why that was merely the way Nature arranges these things. It was understood, accepted, the way Catholics understand and accept that the Pope must reside in Rome, or a Normandy Frenchman that Paris is his capital. If George, living alone in that storeroom, had been famous, the two of them down there were twice as famous, more. (Yet everyone, even those who were not Mindian's tenants, understood that they were not to be disturbed--that is to say, stared at; that is to say bothered.) domestic science in the cellar. The freak your father and the freak your mother belonged to all of them, and if they happened to make their queer nest in one of Mindian's buildings rather than in another, why that was merely the way Nature arranges these things. It was understood, accepted, the way Catholics understand and accept that the Pope must reside in Rome, or a Normandy Frenchman that Paris is his capital. If George, living alone in that storeroom, had been famous, the two of them down there were twice as famous, more. (Yet everyone, even those who were not Mindian's tenants, understood that they were not to be disturbed--that is to say, stared at; that is to say bothered.) "So they knew they were there. The housemaids even agreed, it may even have been without conferral, upon a suitable genealogy for the pair. They had it that your mother and father were the daughter and son of Polish and Italian janitors in the neighborhood, that not only could they not speak English, even though they had heard them speak it, but could not even speak to each other, even though they had heard them.

"The neighborhood, still without conferral, knew it had a problem. (They really didn't want anything to change.) It knew it was not enough not to rock the boat or simply to maintain silence. If they ignored the princ.i.p.als to their faces, wouldn't this be taken as a sign of disapproval? The lovers-though G.o.d knows that whatever they were it wasn't lovers, highly developed animals, perhaps, of two entirely different species, each the last of its kind, who took their comfort from each other only because there was no one else in the world they could get it from; lovers? they were too far gone in despair, too lonely to love; lovers? they were the King and Queen of cuddle is all-needed rea.s.surance they thought.

"The maids and housewives sometimes took Nancy with them when they went shopping. In the stores they would hold up ripe tomatoes, crisp stalks of green celery, fruits of the season, candy, candy, for G.o.d's sake, whatever was accommodate to that heatless, iceless larder in which they lived, whatever could be consumed raw. (Or left treats for them on the cellar steps, fresh-baked cookies, hard-boiled eggs, leftover meats which even your doggy daddy and puss mom understood were sc.r.a.ps.) Using Nancy's (George's) money of course, but giving it to the grocer themselves, the lovers' middlemen and agents, and counting the change, too-though who had ever heard of them would have ever shortchanged them?-before handing it over. As if Nancy were a child perhaps, or handicapped. And who knows, maybe they did need help. How many pounds of tomatoes and grapes do you need when you're shopping for two and tomatoes and grapes are all that you're buying? But the food was the single overture they made. They never attempted to add anything to, or alter anything in, the room itself. As if your parents really were animals and it was understood that animals knew best how to furnish their lairs and nests and dens. (If your father's light bulb had burned out, I don't think anyone would have thought to offer the loan of a spare for so much as a night.) for G.o.d's sake, whatever was accommodate to that heatless, iceless larder in which they lived, whatever could be consumed raw. (Or left treats for them on the cellar steps, fresh-baked cookies, hard-boiled eggs, leftover meats which even your doggy daddy and puss mom understood were sc.r.a.ps.) Using Nancy's (George's) money of course, but giving it to the grocer themselves, the lovers' middlemen and agents, and counting the change, too-though who had ever heard of them would have ever shortchanged them?-before handing it over. As if Nancy were a child perhaps, or handicapped. And who knows, maybe they did need help. How many pounds of tomatoes and grapes do you need when you're shopping for two and tomatoes and grapes are all that you're buying? But the food was the single overture they made. They never attempted to add anything to, or alter anything in, the room itself. As if your parents really were animals and it was understood that animals knew best how to furnish their lairs and nests and dens. (If your father's light bulb had burned out, I don't think anyone would have thought to offer the loan of a spare for so much as a night.) "George had his ch.o.r.es, his work. He rose at 5:00 A.M. to climb the twenty-four flights of back stairs in Mindian's eight buildings to take down the forty-eight garbage cans. He had his furnaces to tend, the small repair jobs, the sleds that he carried up from the bas.e.m.e.nt for the smaller children, the three or four emergencies a day that he could absolutely count on. (People locked themselves out of their apartments, they ran out of fuses, they let their bathtubs spill over.) I say count on because he counted on them for tips. (They tipped him now. All the world loves a lover.) "When he got out of their narrow bed in the fifty-degree room (the temperature of a cave) he told her to stay where she was and she did. While he dressed in the dark. She could just make him out, his naked body. And wondered: What is happening to me? What has already happened? Wondering not who this stranger was who had taken her virginity and with whom she had committed acts that had been reserved in her head not for some future when she was safely married but for other people altogether. Not questioning, as you might think, her own, or even George's, character so much as marveling at her luck. She loved it. She even loved the little room, their unicorn position in other people's imaginations. She too believed they brought luck to the neighborhood. She believed that she and George were a blessing to all of Milwaukee, a feather in the cap of the United States of America.

"And your father had barely got going. Having given her an overview of George Mills history, he had not yet unburdened himself of more than two hundred years of particulars. She loved it. History had been one of her favorite subjects in high school. Your father did not know he was wooing her and she didn't know she was being wooed. And that's that's what was happening to her. what was happening to her.

"She loved it. Whether the lovemaking-"

"Hey," George Mills said.

"-was an adjunct to the history lessons, or the history lessons a subscript to the lovemaking was a matter of indifference to her, as was, as you already know, the tininess of the room, which could have been, and in effect was, like a kind of carrel in a library. Even the narrowness of the diminutive youth bed-it was a time when as many undergraduates as could squeezed themselves into flivvers, phone booths, changing rooms at beaches-had an air of the makes.h.i.+ft collegiate. Your mother and father matriculated on that little, cotlike bed."

"Hey," George Mills said, "hey."

"Maybe she even expected to. It was the sort of virginal, celibate, nunnish, monkish bed she had slept in all her life. If she was at all romantic, the serf prince who was to free her would have come and ultimately joined her there. She would not have antic.i.p.ated that it could have been otherwise. She may even have thought that that was part of the lovemaking, part of the act itself, that that crimped, cramped, rush-hour press of person, that closely close-quartered, neck-and-neck propinquity was concomitant with the conditions and moods of penetration. She may even have thought that that stall-like storage room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of that apartment building was an out-and-out bower. And perhaps that was why she had been so offended the first time she had seen your father's living arrangements, not because she knew that no one had to live that way but because she knew that no one was ent.i.tled to occupy a bower by himself! no one was ent.i.tled to occupy a bower by himself! Perhaps she even moved in with him out of a sense of decorum and decency, out of some innate knowledge of how architecture was intended to be filled up and used. Perhaps she even moved in with him out of a sense of decorum and decency, out of some innate knowledge of how architecture was intended to be filled up and used.

"Mindian came.

" 'Be right with you, sir,' your father said. 'Just give us a moment, sir, if you would.'

"He slid the bolt back and opened the door, exposing the bright, flower-print oilcloth walls. Nancy was behind him. 'Yes sir?' your father said.

" 'It looks like a kitchen table exploded in here,' he said. 'Step out from behind George for a moment please, Nancy. I want to look at you.'

"She did as she was told. Mindian regarded her as he had regarded the interior of the room. 'So it's true,' he said.

" 'True?' George said.

" 'This woman is pregnant,' Mindian said. 'How far along are you? Four months? Five?'

" 'Not five I don't think, Mr. Mindian.'

" 'The maids told me. My tenants did.'

" 'A lot of busybodies,' your father said.

" 'Yes,' Mindian said. 'The same busybodies who've been protecting you for half a year now. Who not only countenanced your dalliance but actively supported it. We'd become fans, you see-I do not except myself-boosters and rooters. You kids were love's home team. Even the polack, dago and wog janitors were for you. You were everybody's darlings, apples of eyes, teacher's pets, America's sweethearts. I'm your landlord. I've come to marry you.'

"You will believe that your mother must certainly have thought about marriage. I tell you she did not. It's not even certain that she loved George Mills.

"And your father. Have we not already seen how he repudiated women? And do we not know from his actions that it wasn't women he meant but only the entailments pursuant to liaison, nervous not about his responsibilities to a real wife and a material son but to a hypothetical posterity which was even then fifty to sixty years off? Your father was an intellectual. He believed, that is, in the palpable reality of any idea or event which had not yet come to pa.s.s in his own lifetime. That's why, squeamish as he was, he hid out in bas.e.m.e.nts and cheerfully shouldered other people's garbage--to subdue allure and retract hope. He was a victim of myth and handled himself as other myth victims have, finding his solutions in amateur and immediate expediency, rarely reading between the lines, which is where fate always has its way with you. Told, say, that he would murder his father and marry his mother, he would quit Corinth; or that no man born of woman could harm him, he would confidently chum even his enemies.

" 'I'm your landlord. Marry or leave.'

" 'We can stay if we get married?' your mother asked.

" 'Hey,' your father said.

" 'Not down here,' Mindian said. 'The Board of Health would condemn my bas.e.m.e.nts.'

" 'I can't marry,' your father said.

" 'Then I shall have to fire you,' Mindian said. And then, more pa.s.sionately, with a concern that was the measure of how your parents had touched the life of this landlord, he asked your father if he really meant to abandon the girl.

" 'It's the kid I'm abandoning, not Nancy.'

" 'You needn't worry,' Mindian told your mother. 'You and the child will be taken care of. There's a vacant apartment in one of my buildings. It's one of the apartments reserved for the janitors. You may have it. The tenants and I will see that you and the baby are provided for.'

" 'Hey, wait a minute,' your father said. 'You mean there'll be all right anyway? Nancy and the kid, too?'

" 'Certainly,' Mindian said. 'Until they're on their feet. Certainly.'

"Your father groaned."

"Hey, wait a minute," George Mills said. "What did he think--"

"He'd spilled the beans by this time," Wickland said. "Nancy knew as much of the family history now as he did. Even he knew how interested she'd been. He figured she'd tell the child the story anyway, out of spite if nothing else. But he knew how good a scholar she was, that she wouldn't even have needed spite, that she would have told it out of the simple love of truth, out of innocent deference to the fact that history had been one of her favorite subjects."

"No," George said, "I mean about the baby."

"You were the baby."

"Then about me. What about me? I would have been in the picture anyway. Whether they got married or not. Whether Mindian took care of Mother and me or not. Or did he want Mother to have--"

"I don't think he even thought about it," Wickland said. "I think he simply trusted his bad luck. That he believed his bad luck had gotten her pregnant. You see he loved her now. He believed his bad luck would kill her."

"But that doesn't--"

"It does if you believe you're a myth victim. If you believe a thousand years have been up to nothing but shaping the fate of a single man. Expediency. Flee Corinth, kill a man, fall in love, marry. Tell yourself your hands are tied.

"They were married in the bas.e.m.e.nt on a Thursday afternoon in front of the maids and janitors and other tenants.

"Even Mrs. Simon was there. 'Well,' she said, 'you're married now. Is there anything you particularly want for a wedding present, doll?'

" 'Could I have a reference?' your mother asked.

"But I believe the community would have preferred it if your father had had abandoned your mother. They wanted their darlings, you see, and if they couldn't have their pa.s.sionate darlings whom pregnancy and the realities had taken away from them, then they would have been quite content to have their victim darlings, subst.i.tuting without turning a hair a wronged girl and a baby for a hero and heroine of love. Married, and with a baby on the way, they were just like everybody else. abandoned your mother. They wanted their darlings, you see, and if they couldn't have their pa.s.sionate darlings whom pregnancy and the realities had taken away from them, then they would have been quite content to have their victim darlings, subst.i.tuting without turning a hair a wronged girl and a baby for a hero and heroine of love. Married, and with a baby on the way, they were just like everybody else.

"They even lived like everybody else. In a first-floor apartment in one more of Mindian's buildings. They took the youth bed, but they were just another couple now, just more neighbors. That's not she."

"Who?" George said.

"Your sister."

"Where?"

"Never mind. It isn't she.

"Your father wanted a girl. He hoped for a girl. Though he knew that no Mills in a thousand years had put forth any but male children only, he even expected expected a girl. That was at the back of his mind all along, of course. That's why he'd agreed to marry her. If you'd been a girl he thought he would still have been able to dodge his fate. He still believed in his fate, you see, still saw himself in the myth victim's delicious position, squeezed dry of force to change his life, with, at the same time, his eye on all the eleventh-hour opportunities that could change it for him. Almost, as it were, on fate's side, confident he'd broken the code, taking the position that destiny has its fine print, oracle its double entendre, that whatever happens to people is a trick--G.o.d's fast one. If she could find me all the way down there, he thought, in these conditions, living like someone on the lam, and if she not only stood still for what we did to each other but didn't even once get up on her high horse or stand on her rights or read me the riot act when I put a bun in her oven or call in the Marines to shotgun the wedding and Mindian himself practically saying no harm done even if I didn't marry her, well, it's been too easy for all concerned, I think, for me and the grand George Mills design, and for Nancy, too. There's a dozen ways I could have blocked it, stymied circ.u.mstance, and I'm still only twenty, I haven't known this c.r.a.p but a year yet, I wasn't even trying, or shown them my stuff, or seen theirs. h.e.l.l, I practically didn't put up no fight at all, I'm hardly winded and nothing I seen yet, nothing they thrown at me and nothing I been forced to take, could have busted the will of a child. It's been too easy for all concerned so there's got to be a catch. We'll name the little tyke Nancy. a girl. That was at the back of his mind all along, of course. That's why he'd agreed to marry her. If you'd been a girl he thought he would still have been able to dodge his fate. He still believed in his fate, you see, still saw himself in the myth victim's delicious position, squeezed dry of force to change his life, with, at the same time, his eye on all the eleventh-hour opportunities that could change it for him. Almost, as it were, on fate's side, confident he'd broken the code, taking the position that destiny has its fine print, oracle its double entendre, that whatever happens to people is a trick--G.o.d's fast one. If she could find me all the way down there, he thought, in these conditions, living like someone on the lam, and if she not only stood still for what we did to each other but didn't even once get up on her high horse or stand on her rights or read me the riot act when I put a bun in her oven or call in the Marines to shotgun the wedding and Mindian himself practically saying no harm done even if I didn't marry her, well, it's been too easy for all concerned, I think, for me and the grand George Mills design, and for Nancy, too. There's a dozen ways I could have blocked it, stymied circ.u.mstance, and I'm still only twenty, I haven't known this c.r.a.p but a year yet, I wasn't even trying, or shown them my stuff, or seen theirs. h.e.l.l, I practically didn't put up no fight at all, I'm hardly winded and nothing I seen yet, nothing they thrown at me and nothing I been forced to take, could have busted the will of a child. It's been too easy for all concerned so there's got to be a catch. We'll name the little tyke Nancy.

"But he named it George because it was a boy, because you were a boy. He named it George who wanted the character of a rebel without any of the expense.

"Because if he'd been really serious he could have stopped it right then, asked your mother to marry him like a proper gent and never used Mindian as a broker at all. If he'd really been serious he could have called you Bill or Steve or anything at all, or teased what he thought he had for nemesis with the very initial 'G,' calling you Gill or Giles or Greg or G.o.d knows what. The point is it was always in his power to break the chain, as it was in the power of any of his ancestors before him, back to and including the first George Mills. But he didn't. None of them did. (Because people are suckers for fate, for all the scars to which they think they're ent.i.tled.) The point is he never wanted to.

"Though by the time of the second pregnancy Nancy did. Look sharp. She's coming. She's almost here."

The boy looked up. It was an ordinary afternoon. He could not have told by looking if it were Thursday or Monday, March or November. He was only twelve years old. There were people who believed he carried messages from the dead, that when he spoke their loved ones used his voice, that he knew things they would have to die to find out, that he had power, dread gifts. It was an ordinary afternoon. He knew his place in history and was waiting to be shown an infant ghost whom he would not be able to question because she had no vocabulary. It was an ordinary afternoon in his life. In Ca.s.sadaga. Where ego did not exist. Where it merged with bereavement, where grief was the single industry. Where children grieved. And soon his sister would be there. To give him a message. Which he thought he had already guessed. That there were no ordinary afternoons. That not just houses but the world itself was haunted. That death was up the palm tree. On the h.o.a.rding. In the square. It was an ordinary afternoon.

"Quite simply, she was bored. Fed up. She was the myth victim's victim and, now she had heard the whole story and was actually a part of it, wanted nothing more to do with a man who saw everything that happened to him as a decree, a doom, whose every action, no, activity, activity, whose every activity was part of some ritual of resignation, who believed, and performed whose every activity was part of some ritual of resignation, who believed, and performed because because he believed, that history was looking. Or not history, autobiography, diary, home movies and sc.r.a.pbook and family alb.u.m--all self-absorbed church rolls and records, deeds and registers: 'Now I am taking out the garbage.' 'Now I am shoveling coal.' 'Now I am fixing a toilet.' 'Now my sweat stinks of the lower oils and grimes, all the menial silts.' 'Now my back's stiff and there's a cramp in my leg.' 'Now I'm thirsty, now I'm hungry.' 'Now I am f.u.c.king my wife whose people are country people, farm people, and who has no references.' He was not even serving G.o.d, only some image of his own abas.e.m.e.nt, his soul gone groveling beneath the thousand top-heavy lean years of his second-fiddle fate. he believed, that history was looking. Or not history, autobiography, diary, home movies and sc.r.a.pbook and family alb.u.m--all self-absorbed church rolls and records, deeds and registers: 'Now I am taking out the garbage.' 'Now I am shoveling coal.' 'Now I am fixing a toilet.' 'Now my sweat stinks of the lower oils and grimes, all the menial silts.' 'Now my back's stiff and there's a cramp in my leg.' 'Now I'm thirsty, now I'm hungry.' 'Now I am f.u.c.king my wife whose people are country people, farm people, and who has no references.' He was not even serving G.o.d, only some image of his own abas.e.m.e.nt, his soul gone groveling beneath the thousand top-heavy lean years of his second-fiddle fate.

"While all she wanted was to be like Mrs. Simon. To learn bridge. Mah-jongg. The ladyfied games and graces. Gossip and shopping and haggling with tradesmen not over price but quality. Learning pot roast and studying chop, a fruit wisdom and a vegetable cunning. Now that she was no longer a lover she yearned to be a wife, Mrs. Simon's kind of wife, not George Mills's, to decide menu and judge drape, to fuss furniture and worry hors d'uvre. To run her house like some Wisconsin geisha and know the neighbors. She even looked at those manuals-G.o.d knows where she got them-that explain what goes where and when, and set up the secret asiatic pleasures like a blueprint or a diagram for wiring houses, the simple line drawings, about as erotic as the ill.u.s.trations in gymnastic texts. (Though she knew your father would never have permitted these refinements, declining them not on moral grounds but on aesthetic and cla.s.s ones, as he would have refused to eat cold soups and high-faluting breads if she had prepared them.) "To be like Mrs. Simon, who had become in even the short time Nancy worked for her a kind of heroine to the country girl. Not resenting for a moment that the master bath was off limits to her but, on the contrary, made a little weak in the knees in the presence of such contrived disdain, for, give her credit, she had it on the evidence of Mrs. Simon's underwear that the disdain and distancing were entirely willed. That's what she she wanted. That complete, casually indifferent and solidly confident social hypocrisy. Not, you will see, to make herself over-that's too hard, it can't be done anyway-so much as to make others over, to get them to accept at least a little her judgment of them. That's what wanted. That complete, casually indifferent and solidly confident social hypocrisy. Not, you will see, to make herself over-that's too hard, it can't be done anyway-so much as to make others over, to get them to accept at least a little her judgment of them. That's what she she wanted. You will see that it was the exact opposite of what your father wanted. Who wanted. You will see that it was the exact opposite of what your father wanted. Who lived lived by other people's judgment of him. Who refused to live otherwise. by other people's judgment of him. Who refused to live otherwise.

"Above all, she wanted to write references. (If she wanted a maid it wasn't so someone else might do her work for her, it was so she could always have someone around who would feel the force of her judgments.) In the absence of a maid of her own she borrowed other people's, the girls she saw in the laundry room, or the ones who came to their apartment to report things that required the janitor's attention. She watched them in the park with their charges, the children of the other tenants, who would never quite be neighbors, when she wheeled you in your carriage, when she pushed you in your stroller-both, not gifts exactly, hand-me-downs from those strange storage lockers which had served first your father, then your mother, and now yourself, like some queer furniture and appliance mine (so that in a way you were already sister'd, brother'd, not just because older children had outgrown the baby and toddler implements which you yourself would outgrow and which would be held in a kind of brotherly escrow for the child your mother would bear dead, but because they came up out of those same dampnesses and darknesses where you yourself were conceived, the ground of your being in the ground)-and carefully noted how attentive or inattentive they were, whether they exceeded their authority by abusing children who did not mind, and observed them marketing, whether they watched the scales when meat was weighed, produce, whether they counted their change. Discovering what she could of their personal habits, whether they were clean, whether they flirted.

"But mostly she talked with them. (And they with her, her mystery and whatever of aura and cachet she possessed for them dissolved by the marriage they had so fiercely supported.) Asked leading questions and closely considered their answers, grading them, listening, the janitor's wife, to their grammar, discovering what interest they had in history, current events (though intelligence and knowledge were the least of what she looked for, only seeking to get by these methods some clue to their intentions, their loyalties and commitments).

" 'You said you have a fellow back in Menomonee Falls.'

" 'Oh yar. Pete. Pete's all right. He's real cute, but he's awrful shy.'

" 'Shy.'

" 'Well, he ain't like Roger, my other beau. Roger's a scamp. He don't hardly give a girl time to say yar even if she's of a mind to. Roger just goes ahead and makes all the big decisions hisself.'

" 'Doesn't that bother you?'

" 'Why? Roger ain't never yet took me no place I didn't really want to be.'

"And Nancy, the handwriting flourished, almost sculptured, more elaborate than any she'd ever used, would make a note: Molly. Molly is a cheerful, healthy girl of doubtful morals. She has at least two boyfriends, and has hinted at her willingness to go 'all the way' with both of them. While Molly's personal life is her own affair, she strikes me as s.e.xually careless. She could become pregnant at any time, leaving her employers high and dry. Molly. Molly is a cheerful, healthy girl of doubtful morals. She has at least two boyfriends, and has hinted at her willingness to go 'all the way' with both of them. While Molly's personal life is her own affair, she strikes me as s.e.xually careless. She could become pregnant at any time, leaving her employers high and dry.

" 'Mrs. Faber's dishes seemed very beautiful when I saw them that time.'

" 'I should say so! They're ever ever so expensive. Forty dollars a place setting and they have service for so expensive. Forty dollars a place setting and they have service for twelve. twelve. I don't know what they'd do if a plate were to break. They don't even make that pattern anymore.' I don't know what they'd do if a plate were to break. They don't even make that pattern anymore.'

"Or: Helen. Helen is a very serious young woman who knows the value of her employers' things and has a respect for them which is admirable. She displays concern for their safety which leads me to believe she would care for the goods of a household as if they were her own. Helen. Helen is a very serious young woman who knows the value of her employers' things and has a respect for them which is admirable. She displays concern for their safety which leads me to believe she would care for the goods of a household as if they were her own.

"But something sad and pathetic about the characters she was always perfecting in her head. She never actually wrote them down, knowing that as long as she was married to your father she would never have the opportunity to give a genuine reference. She knew more. She knew that if she had a son nothing would change. Your father wouldn't change. She made a promise to herself."

"A promise?"

"That you were never to be told about the Millses. That the buck stopped there.

"But nothing changed. And your mother was forced into a position people seldom find themselves in. She was forced, that is, to make plans.

"It is an astonis.h.i.+ng fact, George, but the truest thing I know. Our lives happen to us. We don't make them up. For every hero who means to cross an ocean on a raft, there are a hundred men fallen overboard, a thousand, who find themselves in the lifeboat by accident.

"Not Nancy. Nancy had plans. What she planned was a new life. She meant to take you and the baby-she was pregnant again-and to leave your father, to get as far from the apartments and bas.e.m.e.nts of Milwaukee as possible, not to divorce him, because she didn't want your father to know where you would be, and once she brought the law into it-separation agreements, court decrees, visitation formulas-there would be no hiding from him. She planned, you see, to disappear in America.

" 'Maybe it's a good thing that I have no references, that I'm one of those for whom there is no record. Look at my husband. He is all references. The trouble is he believes them. They are all he believes. I will have to write home less often. One day I shall have to stop altogether. They don't know yet I'm pregnant with Georgie's sister. It was a mistake to tell them about Georgie. I didn't know. Oh well. Live and learn. They won't find out about baby Janet. Leaving George I leave them all.

" 'And if I meet a man? On my travels? Wherever it is I'm going. New Jersey! I shall go to New Jersey! If I meet a man in New Jersey and he wants to marry me and give me maids, what does it matter if he thinks me a widow? How would he ever find me out? My kind is free.'

"She found out the coach fare to New Jersey and began to save for it by not spending all the money George gave her for food. She hid what she was able to put aside in their storage locker off the laundry room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the apartment where they now lived. She hid it under the thin mattress at the bottom of the stroller you had now outgrown and which was being kept for your sister.

"The handwriting in her head now: "Nancy. Nancy is a basically honest person. Forced by circ.u.mstance to deceive her husband by withholding money specifically budgeted for household expenses, she carefully saw to it that she and she alone did the stinting. This, incidentally, is evidence of her organizational abilities, her initiative and growing skill with detail. She planned nutritious, comprehensive menus, carefully subtracting from her own portions what would look to the casual observer like hearty enough breakfasts, quite appetizing lunches, full-course dinners. She knew down to the unpurchased potato and unsqueezed orange, she knew to the slice of toast, to the egg and very fraction of stew or knifeload of peanut b.u.t.ter, the exact cost of what she would not not be eating that day. Her hunger was her bankbook, and if she carefully managed to set aside from seventy-five cents to a dollar or so a week toward the price of her railroad tickets, George her husband and George her son were not only none the wiser but not a bit less comfortable for it. (Nor did she, as some might, add to the nest egg by telling her husband that hen's meat and produce were inferior and could she have a little more money be eating that day. Her hunger was her bankbook, and if she carefully managed to set aside from seventy-five cents to a dollar or so a week toward the price of her railroad tickets, George her husband and George her son were not only none the wiser but not a bit less comfortable for it. (Nor did she, as some might, add to the nest egg by telling her husband that hen's meat and produce were inferior and could she have a little more money-fifty cents a week would do it-in order to shop at Hilton's.) "She was trying to save three lives--hers, yours, your sister's. By the sixth month she had socked away most of the cash for her tickets-the baby, of course, would ride free-and had even selected a place to go to, Paterson, a small industrial city in north-eastern New Jersey, about seventeen miles from New York. She had gone to the library. She even knew what they did there--textiles, cotton and silk. (She had always sewn, she knew material; she didn't think the big treadles and looms of Paterson, New Jersey, would be that much more difficult to handle than the Singer she was already accustomed to.) So it was all planned out, not only where she would go and what she would do but-she got hold of the Paterson newspaper-where she would live. All this from a woman who when she had been fired, sent away a few years before, could think of nowhere farther off to go than just downstairs.

"It wasn't just the money for your ticket, George, that gave her second thoughts.

" 'George can almost read now. He'll be writing in a year. He knows his address. Suppose he wants to get in touch with his daddy? How could I stop him from writing a letter? If I can prevent that, how do I keep him from running back in three or four years with my my address? And there's his ticket. I'll have put away only enough to pay for our fares. There'll be nothing left to start over with when we get to Paterson.' " address? And there's his ticket. I'll have put away only enough to pay for our fares. There'll be nothing left to start over with when we get to Paterson.' "

"She was going to leave me? She was going to leave leave me?" me?"

"Nancy. Nancy is devoted to her family. She is determined that her children remain with her no matter what. I should add that this is not a decision arrived at lightly, or reached on the basis of emotion alone. (Though a naturally warm and loving person, the young woman in question doesn't allow her heart to interfere with the facts. Nancy can be depended upon to look at all sides of an issue and to take decisive action only after her judgment has been thoroughly consulted.) "She counted the cost. She counted the cost as she had estimated not only the price of the meat the others would consume in a week but the value to the penny of the two and a half or three slices of red beef she would not."

"She was going to leave me?"

"Forcing herself to post the debits and credits involved if she took you.