"Off to the library," Bob Brennan told his wife. "Anything you want before I go?"

"I'm going to call Kathleen," Jeanette answered. "Sure that you don't want to stick around?" He was sure. The news of his family filtered through Jeanette just fine. His mother called Jeanette one Saturday in three, called his sister Vi the next week, and Jeanette called Vi (except she called Kathleen Violet "Kathleen" -- the girl kept changing her mind) the third week. His family knew much more about his life than they had before his marriage -- more, his mother claimed, than she had known when he was living at home.

"I'll stick around for the call before my birthday," he told her. "Other times, I'd just inhibit the girl-talk."

Jeanette fed her baby, The Kitten, before making the call. She got out more than the first months, even took one class, but these family calls were a good part of her connection to the world. She didn't want them interrupted.

"Really," she told her sister-in-law when the amenities were done, "the date of the baptism depends on you. It has to be a Sunday. Which Sunday is your choice. The godfather is a member of the church." Faint sounds came out of the phone. Kathleen was doing something with paper.

"I'll have to confirm it. But let's say tentatively the 23rd. I could never get Thanksgiving. Couple more things. Have you thought about the recordings?" Kathleen had suggested confronting Bob and his father with the way that they talked about each other when they were apart. It was ridiculous that two grown men who expressed such admiration for each other when apart should bristle and quarrel so when together.

"I have a couple. Do you?"

"One since I talked to you. I got nervous about the phone. But I'm going back before I see you. Next week, in fact. That's a complication with the schedule." Kathleen was a hospital intern. Getting time off was a problem.

Kathleen changed the subject. "Does your sofabed still pull out?"

"Yeah. And you're welcome to do so." Jeanette wondered why she would bother. The folding mattress had seen better days; the cushions were more comfortable.

"The thing is, I want to bring a guest." Ever self-confident Kathleen was sounding very nervous.

"It's not Greg, is it?"

"No his name is Charles. We were in med school together, but his internship is in Cleveland."

"Ouch." Jeanette had suffered through a fifteen-month period when Bob was at school or on a summer job almost constantly. Long-distance relationships suck. "This sounds serious." She wondered why Kathleen hadn't told her earlier. They talked often, but Kathleen's romantic life was seldom included.

"This is serious. And one more thing. Could you not talk to mother between the time I go there and the time I visit you?"

"She calls me." And the conversations with Katherine Brennan were high spots in her life. Katherine called her every third Saturday.

"I'll ask her not to." And what one member of the family asked another, that member almost always got. Jeanette had depended on that, and not only from Bob. Now it was the time to deliver.

"Okay," she said. "Keep in touch."

"I will. What's my niece doing now?" The Kitten was trying to munch on her toes, and that was worth five minutes more of conversation. Then she gave her hungry cry, and Jeanette hung up. The Kitten was going through a growth spurt. Sometimes it seemed to Jeanette that she was nursing more than half the time. But that did give her a little quiet time to plan how she was going to tell Bob.

Bob didn't mind offering hospitality to a friend of his sister's. Offering his sister was a totally different proposition. "Vi! Little Vi."

"Little Vi," his wife retorted, "is a woman grown, 26 years old, a medical doctor, and has been calling herself Kathleen for four years." He ignored the last bit. Kathleen Violet was lucky to get called Kathleen in her presence. In her absence, she was still Vi.

"But still." They might have fought like cats and dogs inside the family, but he had still protected her against schoolyard bullies, let alone mad rapists. "We don't have to put our stamp of approval on this."

"I didn't put my stamp of approval on it. I don't approve or disapprove of Kathleen's friends, let alone friends I haven't met. I told her that she was welcome. Welcome with her friend."

"But still." He was repeating himself. Couldn't she see how wrong this was? Vi was coming to be a godmother to their child. And simultaneously they would encourage her to live in sin?

"But still your sister is too pure for this. She's 26. How old was I?"

"We were married." That was totally different. That was an act of love, not lewdness. He'd thought that she had known that.

"And whose fault was that? Who wanted to take me to bed? Who tried his damnedest to seduce me when I was much younger than Kathleen is now?"

That was totally unfair. He had loved her, had never tried to plunder her warmth without extending his protection.

"But your sister," Jeanette continued, "your sister is purer than that. Your sister is chaste. Your sister has to maintain her virginity for her whole life."

"That's unfair! I loved you. I wanted to marry you. You drew a line and I respected it." Well, mostly he had respected it. "That wasn't like this."

"Oh Bob!" Her voice changed. "I know what that was like. I was there, after all. But how do you know that Kathleen and Charles aren't like we were?"

"How do we know that they are?"

"We don't. But Kathleen must think they are. It's The Kitten's baptism; do you think that she'd bring a casual affair to that? For that matter, maintaining a romance between Chicago and Cleveland must be one big pain. She's serious."

"Maybe she is. But is this med-school Casanova?"

Jeanette loved her husband, she felt a little guilty for the manipulative comparison that she had made, but neither of these mitigated her exasperation. "It's her life. She knows the guy. He is coming to meet her family. Really, she is a catch: bright, pretty, friendly, well-educated." Well-endowed, which she probably shouldn't mention just now.

"Quarrelsome, with a flash-point temper, will argue for arguments sake."

"Didn't stop me."

Bob had the grace to laugh. Vi might well be the most argumentative person in the city of Chicago; she wasn't the most argumentative person in her immediate family.

"Anyway," she continued. "She's a Brennan. She's decided, and hasn't asked our opinion. Not that we have any grounds for opinion yet; that may be why she wants us to meet him." Bob snorted. Well Vi -- Kathleen, must remember to call her Kathleen, she'd be here in a couple of months -- made up her own mind. She and Bob were a lot alike. "But she asked for something we could give. I gave it. Now I need you to be civil to this guy."

"While he boffs my sister."

"Feel free to ignore him completely at those times."

"I don't have to like it," he said.

"You only have to do it."

"Jeez! You sound like my mother."

"Thank you." Katherine Brennan was the woman whom Jeanette admired most. Bob didn't have to talk as if it were disgusting.

"Look. Talking to The Kitten like Mom talked to me might be fine. She never talked to her husband like she did an eight- year-old."

"There might be a reason for that." On the other hand, Bob's father could be as stubbornly wrong-headed as he was. Did Katherine never respond to that childishness? Not the way that Jeanette was, at least in her hearing. Talk about being hoist on one's own petard. "Look Bob, this is important to her. For that matter, this is my daughter's baptism; it's important to me. Keep it a smooth social situation for me, will you?"

Bob thought a bit. Jeanette had given him so much, and received so little. Well, The Kitten wasn't trivial. But he had contributed only a little spurt of semen to The Kitten's genes; she had cost Jeanette so much pain and effort. Anyway, Bob had sworn on the altar to back Jeanette.

"Backed," he said.

"Thank you," she said in a tone that showed that she meant it.

They didn't speak any more about it until they were in bed that night. He was idly caressing his wife, and occasionally his daughter, while one nourished the other. If he concentrated at such times, he could usually understand the reports on the day which Jeanette delivered to her daughter in French. But this was a time for relaxation, thinking his own thoughts and putting the day aside in preparation for the pleasures of the night. And, to be sure, appreciating any of his wife's softness that his daughter wasn't using right then.

"Et, avec Tante Kathleen, arrive..." Jeanette was saying, "Bob, should I call him 'Tcharlz' or 'Sharl' when I'm talking to her?"

It wasn't as if The Kitten would be repeating what her mother said. On the other hand, it was a policy issue. "I think that a person's name is what they call themselves. Didn't George Sand insist on the English pronunciation of her first name even when she was speaking French?"

"Et, avec Tante Kathleen, arrive Tcharlz. Il est son bon ami." Well, that was one way to express it.

"How long do you think that they've been sleeping together?" he asked. He was lying behind his naked wife, watching tiny lips sucking where his had sucked so often. He had often before stiffened against her in this position, even when the conversation was non-erotic; just as this conversation was.

"Well, they couldn't have started after graduation, now could they? Being in different cities and all."

"I wonder if he was her first?"

Kathleen hadn't told her much. On the other hand, Jeanette had held her hand one Christmas when she had decided to turn down a boy who wanted to go all the way. A letter from college a few years later had come with a private note: "Thank you. Thank you so much! Throw this sheet away before you show the rest of the letter to Bob." She'd believed ever since that Kathleen had consummated a love affair just before she wrote it. If so, Jeanette had never learned the boy's name. But it wasn't this Charles whom she'd met in med school, and that was strictly Kathleen's business, anyway.

"She didn't tell me." By now, Bob was nearly rigid against her butt. Speculation about his sister's sex life seemed to be a turn-on; not that turning on Bob was terribly difficult. She knew a psychiatrically-trained intern who could probably tell her more about the dynamics of being turned on by discussions of one's sibling's sex life; unfortunately the intern and the sibling in question were the same person.

For that matter, the baby playing with her nipple was turning her on; and her pediatrician (as well as Kathleen) had assured her that this was perfectly normal. Of course, Bob's kisses on her back and shoulders weren't helping, either. Or, depending on one's perspective, they were helping a great deal.

The Kitten was done and needed burping. That, however was her father's job when he was home; and he was busy kissing her mother. That spot on the back of her neck meant serious business, and Bob knew it. She turned on her back. "Your daughter needs a burp and a change."

Bob got up. He walked out of the room patting The Kitten's back and wearing only a spitcloth. Jeanette, on the other hand, wore a robe to the bathroom and back. The Kitten's changing table and crib, in the dining room, would have to be moved before company came.

She lay there listening to the voices from the next room. Bob recited poetry to The Kitten. Her recent growth spurt was leaving her mother rather frazzled. And the phone call and subsequent talk with Bob hadn't helped, either. Jeanette hoped that Bob wasn't in the mood for one of his "games" tonight. Well, he claimed that she could have what she wanted, when she wanted anything particular in the way of sex. Treating her husband like a sleeping pill hardly seemed fair, but he never objected.

Did she want to be cherished by her loving husband, the gentleness of his hands and lips and tongue? Not really. This was only a slightly-frazzled night, and Bob was gentle enough when not provoked.

Did she want to provoke him? Did she want her tiger in her bed? She had been doing that a lot lately, after a period in which her body wasn't up to strenuous sex. Maybe she could have a mixture. She took out one condom and hid the box.

Bob finally got back to the room, already half erect. "Your daughter has been rough on my nipples," she told him. "You think you can find somewhere else to kiss?" Now he was pointing slightly upward.

He pecked the nipples very lightly. "Poor breasts," he said. He planted a real kiss on the valley between them. He kissed a path upward to her face, and licked her lips open. Their tongues wrestled, then nestled, and then wrestled again. He kissed her face and both ears before starting downwards again. He skipped her nipples, almost skipped her breasts entirely, on his road to her belly. It was so flabby these days and covered with stretch marks, but he beautified it for the moment with his kisses. When he got to her side, it was very tickly, but even more arousing.

When he reached her mound, she lay there enjoying his kisses before rolling over. He got behind her and used her left thigh as a pillow. His breath tickled her lips while he reached around to play with the hair on her mound. Finally, he parted her outer lips to lick her inner ones. She should have been used to that sensation, but it jolted her anyway. She felt his snort of satisfaction, then he licked her again. She became quite conscious of all the moisture on her labia; not all of it could have come from his tongue.

When he finally licked her labia apart, however, she abandoned her self-consciousness for pure sensation. She reached her right hand back to grasp his calf to anchor her, and used her left to pull a pillow across her mouth to muffle her. His tongue warmed her whole lower belly, and then all the way to her breasts. These ached suddenly, feeling as full as if The Kitten had been gone for hours. Then the warmth became fire which roared through her again and again. It roared through once more, and she pushed Bob's head away from her center. His breath was still an incitement, and then she relaxed.

Bob loved being so near the epicenter of Jeanette's climaxes. He tasted her sweet juices acquire a slight, almost metallic, savor. He felt her thighs tighten around his head. He watched as her belly straightened and tightened. Then he felt her shake and heard her groan.

At that point, he sucked firmly until she stopped moving.

When she had relaxed, he squirmed out of his position and kissed his way up her back. He hugged her and crooned to her while her breath slowed. Meanwhile, he wiped his mouth on the top of the sheet.

When Jeanette's breath slowed to her normal rate, she turned onto her back. He brushed his lips over her ear and licked it once. When she moved away from the tickle, he leaned on his elbow to get a comfortable position for kissing. He began on her mouth, licking her lips until her own tongue came out to play. When she broke the kiss to breathe, he kissed all over her face and down her neck.

He remembered her sore nipples by the time he reached her breasts, so he contented himself with the smooth surfaces. His hand played with her fur and then stroked the inside of her thighs. He cupped her mound in the palm of his hand while his fingers touched her outer lips as softly as possible.

When he kissed up to her mouth once more, he was well beyond light playfulness. His tongue invaded her mouth and explored it all. She sucked it briefly, and then played tag with it. When that kiss relaxed into gentleness, he parted her lower lips and stroked her valley once.

He pressed one finger, and then two, into her heat. She was ready for him, and he was much more than ready for her. Nonetheless, he rubbed against the top of her tunnel until he could feel the little bump there. Her clitoris would still be supersensitive. But a little stroking here, a few wiggles of the fingers against each other, would raise her excitement to need.

And so it did. She gasped around the kiss. When she arched off the bed, he abandoned her mouth to kiss her belly. She dropped immediately, but the next wiggle of his fingers cut off her giggle. When she arched again, he kissed the bottom of her engorged breasts. Her face tightened into a frown. Leaving her moist warmth with a stroke that passed on both sides of her sensitive nubbin, he reached for the box of contraceptives. And reached again, and flailed over the books on the nightstand.

"I have it," she said. "Come here." He crawled between her legs, his knees almost against her butt. By this time, Junior was sticking out and painfully swollen. She pulled the packet from under her pillow and opened it slowly. "You know," she drawled, "Vi must not get to meet her boyfriend often enough to justify the pill." How could she think of other people at such a time? "They may use condoms; I wonder if she puts it on."

Junior was bobbing madly with each heart beat now. She took hold of him at the base and considered her next move; he was beginning to ache. She fitted the end to his sensitive tip and rolled it over the head; he made a conscious effort not to fill it then and there. She slowly rolled the condom down the shaft; the friction as it passed drove his hips to move slightly. She firmed her grip on the base. "It takes longer if you can't hold still. There you go. Want my guidance?"

He didn't need her guidance; he didn't even need the help of his own hand. He shuffled back and lowered himself into position. Her fingers spread her lips as he moved forward. Junior found the goal he had reached so often, and sank right in. She left her hand between them until he withdrew the first time.

Then it trailed up his abdomen, fingernails more tickling his skin than scratching it. She moved her feet wide apart but pressed firmly into the bed; he raised himself on his hands and arms, looking at her face and breasts rather than touching them. He drove almost her full length every time, and she raised herself into every stroke. He watched her face tense into a rictus before the fury of his own passion blinded him. He tried to wait for her, but it was impossible. When she pinched his nipples, he groaned, thrust through her incredible tightness until his knees skidded on the bed, and erupted into her.

However intent Jeanette had been to tease out her tiger by holding onto Junior, she had enjoyed the throbbing in her hand and the feeling of power that its responsiveness always gave her. Her own naughty plans had excited her almost as much as Bob's lovemaking. The sweetly-delayed entrance had swept her much closer to the edge than she had anticipated. But she'd resisted her desire as Bob loomed over her, drove into her, and possessed her as his prey. When he had swelled that tiny, warning addition, she'd pinched his nipples and Keggeled his manhood. Then she'd surrendered to herself as well as to him.

The grinding of his groin against hers, the pulsation of his sex within hers, had swept her up. Her pulsations were luscious, they were frightening, they were nearly pain. And then they were over.

She was gasping for breath, each gasp lifting a weight greater than her own. She was a little sore on the insides of her thighs and a little more sore on her vulva. She knew that she was dripping onto the sheets, and that it was going to soak in before she could move. One leg was pinned and the other was out in the cold. She felt better than she had in weeks. She hooked the cold leg over one of Bob's. She would roll him over and extricate the covers when she wanted to; right now she wanted the blanket which loved her.

When The Kitten's cries woke her, she shook her husband sleeping beside her. He barely stirred. She fed The Kitten and changed her, and then she fed her again. Bob slept through it all. Tigers slept much more soundly than gentle lovers; it was a wonder that they survived in the jungle.

Still, the next morning when she was awake enough to think about it, she had no regrets -- a few aches which came more from lying under Bob afterwards than from the active sex beforehand, but no regrets. Bob looked quite happy and loving, too; but then, he'd also had more sleep than usual. She and The Kitten sent him off to church alone. She had come to accept the minor embarrassment of feeding The Kitten during the service, but this looked like a day when the choice would have been the service during the feeding.

The Kitten finally fell asleep again and slept until Bob returned home with take-out pizza. Jeanette gobbled some down while Bob changed his daughter. Finally she nursed The Kitten in the rocker while Bob fed her a piece at a time by hand.

"Y'know," he said, "I can see all that nutrition going in your mouth, flowing through your body, and into her. Wish there were a way to cut out the middleman." Well they weren't going to try formula. What breast-feeding cost in care during growth spurt time, it saved in care during sick time.

Katherine called just before Kathleen's scheduled visit home. "My daughter has issued a gag order," she said.

"She told me," Jeanette answered.

"I hope Bob won't mind my putting the boy in his room -- your room, I mean." It was Bob's room. It was a room in Katherine and her husband's house, really.

"As opposed to Vi's room? He'd be overjoyed. We don't have a second guest bed, let alone a guest room. How are you going to enforce it?"

"We are going to show one to one room, one to the other; then we'll close and lock our door and not come out until morning. You know, dear, in my day it went like this: 'I've met this nice boy ... I think he's serious about me ... I really love him ... We're moving in together.' One statement per letter, other letters in between. Not, mind you, that it always developed that slowly, but it was reported that slowly. I should think introducing us to Charles at the graduation would have been a nice gesture.

"Well, Bob wasn't very outgoing about his feelings for you, either. But I always thought that he had forgotten that he hadn't told us. I hope he told you, dear. I can picture him going on all those years taking you out and watching you race and everything, but not saying anything. Suddenly one day he says: 'I think this coming June would be a nice time for the wedding, what do you think?'"

"It wasn't like that at all." Bob and she had conducted what might be called their first family meeting three years before they were a family, less than two years after they had met.

The conversation circled. "And how is my namesake doing?"

"She's nursing right now."

"I'm sorry, dear. Do you want me to call later?"

"If you'd called when she wasn't eating, it would have woken her up."

"One of those periods, dear? I can remember." She went into a combination of commiseration and encouragement.

And it circled again. "I tried to be open with her about sex, dear. But children really don't want to hear about sex from their parents. Implies that those parents might have working knowledge. There was one point when I thought that she was taking you as a mentor. From a maternal viewpoint, you know, you were ideal. Aside from who you are, even. Not before marriage, but enjoyed it after."

"Were we really that obvious?"

"The situation was obvious, dear. Really though, which would you rather your daughter will think in sixteen years: 'Newly married couples do have a great time in bed, ' or 'Newly married couples don't have a great time in bed'? The answer, of course, is that you won't want her thinking about the subject. But teenagers do, about sex if not about marriage."

"Look, I have enough to worry about with growth spurts. I don't want to worry about toilet training yet, let alone sex ed."

"Yes dear. Back to Kathleen. She's not like you, dear. She doesn't have the selflessness to have been satisfied in an early marriage." None of the Brennans, the other Brennans, could see that being married to Bob was what she wanted, that she had wanted it for years as deeply as Kathleen had wanted to be a psychoanalyst. "And I wouldn't really want her the sort of woman who took no pleasure in sex. So an affair is really the least of three evils. It's the sort of thing which you don't encourage (presumably the boy is providing quite enough encouragement), but you don't allow it to break the relationship either. It's an 'I disapprove -- so how's the weather there?' sort of thing."

Jeanette was surprised into laughter. The Kitten objected and had to be soothed. "Not to speak of anything to do with my future parenting," she said when she got back to the phone.

"Well, dear, I wasn't consciously lecturing. I try not to be that sort of mother-in-law. You sound as if you have your hands full."

"I don't mind your advice, but yes, goodbye."

It wasn't until The Kitten was asleep that Jeanette remembered that this break in phone contact was going to be much longer than usual.

Jeanette could produce more milk, The Kitten's tiny stomach could hold more, and the feedings slowly returned to being discrete events. And The Kitten had grown, as Dr. Gupta's scales recorded on their next visit.

Jeanette had a new diaphragm fitted on that same visit to the medical group. Her cervix, recovered from the delivery and the subsequent surgery, was now a stable size. That night, for the first time in months, she felt Bob ejaculate deep inside her.

Kathleen asked for the sixteenth of November; Kurt, the godfather, agreed; the minister scheduled it.

They fitted The Kitten's crib and the diaper pail into their room. The top of Bob's dresser became the changing table. It was kind of cramped, but they could invite people for dinner once again. It was kind of cozy, too.

She shaved herself for Bob's birthday. He loved it. His friends took him out for a few beers to celebrate the same event. The Kitten didn't recognize him smelling of the beer, and Jeanette had to burp and change her that night.

The Kitten figured out how to turn from her back to her front. She first demonstrated that skill on the changing table, scaring her father half to death. Soon after, scorning all medical advice, she took to sleeping on her belly. Jeanette, although sure that Kathleen sent all that news along, would have enjoyed telling Katherine herself.

Years before, Bob's father had given her a small tape recorder to play back radio broadcasts from France. It had come with a microphone which she had hardly used. Now she dusted it off and took to carrying the recorder with mike plugged in when Bob might be induced to talk about his father. She also placed it under the bed sometimes and asked Bob directly for stories about his father.

"The weird thing..." He said one night in bed. "You sure I'm not boring you?"

"Not in the least," she answered.

"The weird thing is that he hadn't managed anything up till then. He'd evaluated plenty. But all that he had bossed was a small, totally dedicated, team. A skunk works, if you know that term, of never more than twenty men. If they had known what was wrong with Brewster, they'd never have sent him. They figure him for a dollars-and-cents man, but he finds out that the trouble was personnel. So he deals absolutely fairly with the men, gets rid of the worst supervisors, and bides his time.

"He waits until he knows an upturn is coming. One of the biggest companies in the field was in the middle of a bitter strike. As you can imagine, office furniture companies aren't hurt much by union boycotts. Anyway, he invites the union leadership to the house. He sells them on an agreement to have them sign a direct mail piece to union locals around the country to ask them to look at Brewster's product the next time that they bought office furniture. The pitch was that this was a company that dealt fairly with the union; they should have a chance. Second, he gets them to agree that every time a man is called back from layoff, productivity per person would also increase. (He knows what was happening on the shop floor, and that surprises them.) Every time a man is called back, he calls him into the office first. He tells him that his call-back is because the other workers on the floor are doing better work, and asks him to do better work so that the next man can be called back.

"Two years later, quality is through the roof and prices have been relatively stable. No one is laid off, and wages are competitive. The union leadership looks like champions, and so does management. They only fight about what they should fight about."

He gave her a loud, smacking kiss.

"I like being in your family." She pulled his hand between her legs.

"I like being in your mnmhmm, too." He parted her lips to caress her gently. After some silent minutes, she tugged at his arm. He came on top of her and into her. Ready for him and slightly guilty about the running tape, she licked his throat and pulled him deeper. "Love you," he said. "Love ... you ... Love ... you ... Love ... you! You! You. You..."