Chapter 1

You'll have read that breast-fed babies have fewer colds and stomach-upsets. Studies suggest that they will be safer from asthma and have fewer allergies as they grow up. There are even suggestions that they will develop a higher IQ and be less susceptible to acne in adolescence. People tell you that breast-feeding might make you less likely to suffer from breast cancer in later life and will definitely speed the loss of that extra weight that you developed during pregnancy.

Forget all that.

The real reason for breast-feeding your child is that, when you visit your in-laws, it's the only way to get her back from her grandparents. And from her aunt. Have I mentioned her aunt?

Well, I may be exaggerating a little bit.

My husband Bob and I went home for Christmas when our daughter was seven months old. She was quite a hit on the train, and The Kitten enjoyed the attention for most of that time. By the middle of the second day, however, she'd had enough of being the cynosure of a score of strangers, enough of new sensations, enough of being fed under a cloak. She even seemed to dislike the swaying of the train, which she'd loved when the trip began. As anyone who has traveled with kids will guess, this tantrum was peaking about the time that we arrived at the station where Bob's parents had been waiting for more than an hour.

When we struggled off the train with all our paraphernalia, Bob apologized for The Kitten's mood. "Right," said his mother. "And next you're going to blame Amtrak for your tardiness. Is my namesake going to say hello?" At that point The Kitten wouldn't let her father hold her, much less this strange woman. Katherine was disappointed but philosophical. "Been there, dear. I mean where you are not where she is. But we've probably all been there too, just don't remember it." They had a baby-seat already installed in the van. (Bob was also carrying one; car seats have other uses.) We all got in, and we were on the road.

By that evening, after a long nap and a long nurse in absolute privacy, The Kitten and I were fit to meet people. Her grandmother got her first. "Come to Grandma Brennan," said Katherine, and then, when she had her in her arms, "CATHerine Angelique Brennan, CaTHERine Angelique Brennan," all eight steps to "Catherine Angelique BrenNAN. That's you." The Kitten gurgled at her. "Well I think that you should be proud. And guess what?"

"Oooh," said The Kitten.

"My name is Katherine, but with a K. YOU were named for ME!" Unimpressed, the Kitten made a grab for the string of beads around Katherine's neck. "Don't worry," Katherine said to me, "those beads are safe. Vegetable dyes." She did take the precaution of putting her glasses on a high shelf.

The baby food, disposable diapers, and baby wipes that we brought had multiplied while I slept. A table, neatly covered with a plastic garbage bag, had been set up for "downstairs changes," in Katherine's words. The senior Brennans had not only been eager for our visit, they had prepared for it. I commented on that to Bob when we were in bed that night. The room came equipped with a dim night light; there was a quilt on the floor and another one downstairs for any occasion in which The Kitten needed to be on the floor; there was a changing table; The Kitten slept in a refurbished crib. (Our bed however was still the twin-size from Bob's teenage years. That's all right, there is plenty of room for two in a twin bed.)

"Ihm hmm. Have you looked at the heater in the corner?" I had. It was an electric space heater. In front of it, keeping The Kitten from getting too close, was metal shelving such as you might find in a tool room. "Those shelves are attached to the walls. I might be able to pull them over on me; you're too light; The Kitten doesn't stand a chance. There is a switch controlling the heater; it is attached to the shelves at eye level. A little bit of overdesign, there; but my father doesn't miss a trick. Now, aren't you glad that you married me?"

"Now I am."

"Well, you have to take the bitter with the sweet." Meaning that I would have to put up with my husband to get my in-laws. Truth to tell, I was very happy with him right then; and I rapidly became even happier. He kissed all over my face before starting to nibble my ear. I pulled away to give him a real kiss. Our tongues played for a bit before he began to caress me.

Bob is usually a marvelously slow, gentle, and seductive lover. This was one of the occasions, however, when he was an annoyingly slow, subdued, and dilatory lover. For those times, I have some subtle hints to suggest to him that I'd welcome a more rapid approach. This night, for example, I took his wrist in both my hands and moved it so his hand was between my legs. He grasped my meaning ... and my mound.

His kisses traveled over my face to my neck while his hand kindled a flame down below. You can talk of Don Juan or Casanova, but Bob knows me. He knew the spot on the side of my neck which turns me on when he licks it. He knew how to wait until my arousal was great enough that the turn-on was stronger than the tickle. He knew that my nipples were sore and to lick them very gently rather than sucking on them. He knew how to stroke me to take me to the ragged edge of my climax.

And he knew that I wanted his kiss to muffle my cry as he stroked me over that edge.

He knew that I loved being held by him as I recovered from the climax. His arms were around me and his voice whispered in my ear. "Beloved, marvelous Jeanette, sweetheart, darling, sweet, love, darling Jeanette..." he murmured as I gasped.

"I love you," I said when I had recovered my breath. "Give me a little time."

"All you need." He took my right hand, however, and began kissing each finger. When I reached my left hand across toward him, he kissed the palm of my right. That kiss tickled; it also aroused me. "Now?" he asked.

"Not quite." I moved down in the bed a bit. "Now." We kissed as before. This time, however, I caressed him as much as he caressed me. When he licked my nipple, I stroked the backs of my fingernails down his abdomen.

"It's been two and a half days," he said.

"For me too," I answered; but I stopped at his pubic hair. After I had toyed with this for a moment, he groaned and started climbing over me. As soon as he was between my legs, I scrunched down a little bit more.

He kissed me once on the lips and then came forward until he touched me. After an instant of adjustment, Bob eased in. I curled myself up to meet his thrust. When he was all the way inside, filling me completely, I kissed his shoulder. "Let me," I said. Then I kissed down until I could lick his nipple, which hardened for my tongue. He straightened more at that attention, but it was a strain on me even so. I dropped my head back on the bed and slid my hands up his arms to his back. He moved slowly back and forth, in and out.

The sensations of his motions within me were delightfully arousing; the sensations of his muscles tensing and moving under my hands were arousingly delightful. I slid my hands down his back until I could cup his hips which were driving our entire connection. I felt them harden as they pushed him inward, loosen as he eased back out. "Love," he whispered as they tensed; he slipped deep in me, slowly filling me up. "You," he whispered as they relaxed and other muscles pulled him back until only my entrance held any part of him. "Love, ... you, ... love, ... you." He was speaking louder now, although not quite at his regular volume. His motions were still slow and steady. I raised my loins to meet his motions, curling my belly in the process. "Love," clenching muscles, sliding entry, curling belly, complaining springs; "You," softening muscles, withdrawing husband, relaxing belly, complaining springs. I used my grip on his hips to pull myself into his thrusts. "Love," clenching muscles, sliding entry, curling belly, straining arms, complaining springs; "You," softening muscles, withdrawing husband, relaxing belly and arms, complaining springs. He sped up a little for my pulls, but he tried to slow his withdrawals even more. I wanted none of that delay.

I tucked my fingers so that the tips touched my palms. That rather ruined my grip for pulling him closer, but you can't have everything. As he started inward, I straightened my right hand, scratching his butt and a little of his inner thigh. I was still moving my fingernails backwards, and they are the short fingernails of a typist and mother. Still, they scratch. He shoved forward hard. He stayed pressed into me for a second. "Jeanette?" he said.

"Ihm hmm?" I responded. I don't know what I was asking, much less what he was. So I tightened his very favorite muscle around him. That started him moving again. I waited another few strokes before straightening my left hand to scratch him again. The very next stroke, it was my left hand again. I chose the hands in random order at random intervals, although always when he was coming in; I had no desire to have him pull all the way out. Soon he was moving much faster, saying "Love" on every thrust. He abandoned the "you"; he had to breathe sometime.

Oddly enough, my concentration on all this stimulation had lowered my own excitement level. That was okay. I had had a climax, I wanted to feel his. I caressed his driving butt. Then, as he sped up once more, grunting instead of saying words, I slowly moved a finger to the point right behind his scrotum. Just before I pressed there, I clasped around him as hard as I could. He shoved himself into me as if trying to reach the top of my head.

He grunted once more. Then he was pressing against me, shaking, and groaning. He pulsed within my clasp and I felt him spurt deep within. Doctor Gupta can say what she wants, I do feel his seed hit me. I could just make out his grimace in the dim light.

Then he collapsed on top of me. After a minute I rolled him over until I could see his face again. He looked just like his daughter when she has fallen asleep nursing.

There is room for two in a twin bed, you need a double bed for two and a wet spot. I seriously doubted that Bob would change any diapers that night. Still, I was a very satisfied woman as I drifted off to sleep. Daughters and husbands both create messes, but my daughter and my husband are both worth it.

I haven't the slightest memory of feeding or changing The Kitten during the night, although I must have done so. The next memory I have is of Bob presenting a hungry, dry, baby to me in the morning. The Kitten, her mother's daughter, is not generally a morning person. This morning, however, she was wide awake. By the time I looked at the clock, it was after ten. That explained it. "What was that about?" asked Bob.

"What was what about?" I honestly hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.

"Last night." Oh that. How should I know what my feelings were about? It just seemed like a nice idea, and it had worked out fine. It is also totally unreasonable of Bob to ask about my sexual desires. They had been nicely under control before he started inciting them, thank you.

"I don't argue when you want something." Something sexual, I meant.

"Yah! Shure!" he said. Well I haven't recently, at least not much. "Anyway, I was inquiring, not complaining."

"Considering the look on your face last night, it would show remarkable gall to complain," I said before remembering that Bob shows remarkable gall twenty times a day.

"Look?"

"You two look remarkably alike when you are blissed out." By this time, The Kitten had satisfied her first hunger, and was mostly playing. I handed her to Bob and grabbed a robe. I took as little time in the bathroom as I could, but she was not happy about the interruption.

"I did get a bubble," Bob said on my return, "but only a small one. Anyway, it isn't the same." While I lay down and returned The Kitten to my breast, I tried to figure out why the bubble wasn't the same. Same as what? "She just blisses out from a full tummy," I believe that there is some maternal interaction involved as well, but never mind; I now knew what wasn't the same. "I, on the other hand, only bliss out when I experience an erotic encounter with the most arousing woman in North America."

"I just decided to run some things last night. Is that a problem?"

"Indeed not!"

"When you want to run things," (Which is most of the time) "that's fine by me."

"You wouldn't mind if I ran things today? Or do you still have plans?" Plans? I had been out of bed, which does not mean awake, for half an hour. At this time in the morning, he was lucky I could answer him coherently. Plans were out of the question.

"I don't have any plans at all."

"Then I can run things?"

"Go right ahead." I must point out that I never would have given him carte blanche if I had been awake. He began to knead my feet. He does this sometimes when I'm tired or have been on them all day. He did it frequently during my pregnancy, and that protects him at times like this. About the time I see that he plans to take advantage of an agreement which he extracted from me when I was non compos mentis, I remember that he cared for me so gently when I was retaining more water than Lake Michigan and having problems fitting through doors.

He finally had mercy on me, though. He was kissing my stomach when it rumbled loudly.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"Very."

"You know, Mom wouldn't mind your feeding The Kitten while you ate."

"The Kitten would mind my feeding myself while she ate." And so she would. She even objected to my giving attention to Bob for that conversation, although I gave her plenty of reassurance in our pauses. She is learning a little independence from Maman, but any independence on the part of Maman is a horse of a different color.

The Kitten, however, finally finished her play and was ready to be burped. She's the opposite of her father in that way; she starts off sucking on the nipples and ends up just playing with the breasts. Bob started chanting "Just for a handful of silver he left us," and I escaped to take a shower.

Bob's father was at work. Katherine, Catherine, and Bob were in the kitchen when I got there. I had decided to wait for lunch since everybody else would be eating soon, but Katherine asked, "Would you like to finish up the waffle batter?" I couldn't say no to that. She handed The Kitten to Bob, and gave me a hug first. "Welcome home," she said. I hugged her. The Kitten hadn't allowed me to touch anybody else when we had come off the train.

"It feels like home," I said. I didn't mean like the home I was raised in; I meant like a real home. Katherine got busy with the waffle iron and the batter. "Waffles are a treat," I said. "We don't have a waffle iron, and the frozen ones don't taste the same."

"Yes," she said. "Bob was telling me that." Suddenly, I suspected that this was the reason why she hadn't given me a choice between breakfast and lunch. I looked over at Bob. He gave me his innocent look, not one of his more convincing looks. "Are you really off coffee?" she asked. I'm really off coffee. Nine months without caffeine taught me what an addict I had been. Not that I would start on Brennan coffee, anyway. What's the point?

Instead, I drank orange juice with my waffles. Bob took The Kitten into the living room to play on the quilt. "Are you sure she can't get into trouble?" I asked when he got back.

"Is she crawling already?" Katherine asked. "She can't be!" She isn't.

"She can turn over," I explained. "and over, and over. She travels sideways." Bob and I spent some time listing her recent exploits. It's not as if Katherine hadn't heard them before, but she was eager to hear them all again. There was batter for one more waffle than I could eat, so Bob helped out.

Normally, we would have talked around the table another hour, but Katherine was antsy to see The Kitten again. "Wash up, would you dear?" she said. "Let's go watch my namesake, dear." The first "dear" meant Bob, and the second meant me.

The Kitten had managed to roll onto the rug, though not in any dangerous position. I took her favorite rattle out of the diaper bag and shook it on the far side of the quilt. She demonstrated her rolling technique for her grandmother. As soon as she got to the center of the quilt, she got the rattle and verbal praise from two of us. I think that Katherine's was quite genuine.

"You know, dear," she said, "so many of my contemporaries see their lives as getting worse and worse. Physically, of course, that's true. But The Kitten is the crowning pleasure of a great period of my life. And Russ feels the same way. Vi is a pleasure, too, of course." Vi is Kathleen Violet Brennan -- M.D. as of this spring, and we are all so proud of her.

"It must help as well that you no longer have tuition to pay."

"We're still helping with Vi's analysis," (Vi isn't crazy. She is in process of becoming a psychoanalyst.) "but yes. And you aren't going to escape that easily. Your degree is next."

"Sometime soon," I said. "Not while my baby needs me." Bob and I had specifically decided on our trying for a child before I tried for a college degree. "But you must have worried continually about money these past dozen years. I felt incredibly guilty about the first trip to Paris. We didn't have the time to warn you, but putting the air fare on our credit card was a little much. We couldn't have paid it off without you, we shouldn't have spent it without one of those famous Brennan family meetings."

"Russ was so proud of Bob for that. 'Anybody can see, ' he said, 'when money is well spent; Bob has learned to see when it is well risked.' Although I'm not sure that everybody can see when money is well spent, dear. Russ's standards for 'anybody' are a little high sometimes. Of course, Bob got a dissertation out of the risk, but Russ wouldn't have blinked if the risk had failed. It was a good bet.

"No. My worst worries were before that. And money was the center of it, but not the harshest worry. Let's see, you met Bob early in my first year of teaching. That was when he was in the tenth grade, and Vi was in the fifth. I was in the third grade, of course. They went on, but I didn't. The year before was the nadir. I was finishing up my teaching certificate."

"I'd already taught art in New York, but there were two art teachers in this county laid off or teaching other subjects for each one still employed. The first year we were here, we paid down our debt by six thousand dollars. That was nowhere near ten percent. I needed to have a salary, but Russ's position kept me out of most of the labor market. The wife of the president of Brewster Office Equipment could no more work as a secretary than she could work as a cleaning woman.

"So I needed to teach, so I needed some more courses to allow me to teach grade school in this state. That meant more money going out. And when I needed a car for my student teaching, that was the last straw. I finally financed it on my credit record, since Russ owed everything in his name. We were almost as deeply in debt as we had been when we moved here. And the tuition problem was looming on the horizon even back then. We didn't get into that mess through lack of foresight, dear.

"Once Russ came in shaking because of a near miss in the car. That night, he laughed at himself. 'Why was I worrying?' he asked. 'That car crash would have settled all our problems.' That scared me. Going broke worried me, but the idea of Russ driving the car into an embankment so his life insurance could keep us from going broke scared me to death. I lay beside him shaking for hours.

"Anyway, the next year, we finally sold the condo. (That was a little after Bob met you, dear.) That cut nearly thirty thousand off our debt, besides the condo mortgage. I was earning money. Russ finally went in to the bank which the company used and laid the whole record on the table. They refinanced the mortgage on this place, giving us a variable rate; and we used the extra money to cut down the old debt. We paid about two thousand less in interest, and all that we paid was deductible. Of course, the principal payments took most of that, but still. The year after that, he got a raise, I got a raise, and the car payments ended. The last little bit of that debt was paid off by the money that Bob brought back from his second year of road construction.

"We had checked out the tuition and room costs at the University already. We put that amount into loan repayments and interest every year since my second year teaching. Into savings at the very end, of course. We knew that we could hack it.

"You were rather a problem for us, dear. But when we offered to pay for another year of your education, we knew where that money was coming from. We never offered to pay for two years more. You and Vi talk about the carpets which we sold; leave me a bed and a table in the house if I can keep my husband to share them with."

I hadn't heard all of this before, although I had heard parts of it. "I didn't mean to be a problem," I said. I couldn't see how I had been.

"You weren't a drain of resources, dear. The problem was that we couldn't fit your tuition in with the other two. That was the problem. Indeed, we stopped paying Bob's room and board after the marriage. I should have put the Chinese carpet into your room; that and my grandmother's dishes were what would have gone on the block were it not for you. It just wasn't fair."

Now, I lived my whole life with "It just wasn't fair." This was a woman who once had every reason to expect that her husband was destined for higher income and higher responsibility, but he had a heart attack leading to his income being cut in half. They had put everything that they had saved and could borrow into a risky high-potential investment; that went sour while her husband was lying in the hospital. She had trained for a profession, but the demand for that profession had disappeared. She was willing to pay for the education of her children, and each of them had chosen a career that required years of graduate study.

Any of that could be covered with "It just wasn't fair." Any of that was less fair than most of the situations people describe with those words. (Bob just finished teaching a course in which he required a short paper every week but one. The students could pick the week to miss. Many students, against his oft-repeated advice, skipped an early paper. Several of these got into assignment crushes after taking that skip. Most of them said that it wasn't fair of Bob to lower their grades since the second week they skipped was really necessary.)

Katherine meant that it wasn't fair to pay tuition for "the other two," her children, but not pay tuition for her daughter- in-law. She meant that it wasn't fair to me.

I didn't know what to say. The Kitten saved me from having to say anything by spitting up on the quilt. "I hope that the quilt isn't valuable," I said as I rushed up with some Kleenex.

"Priceless," she said. "My daughter learned to crawl on that quilt. She already knew how to spit up. Dear, babyproofing is our responsibility." I gave her a hug, awkward on the couch.

"Don't worry about college," I said. "I did what I wanted to do. And I'm glad that I did. Besides, there is the French." They had provided the means for my studying that, mostly out of school.

"You've been happy then?" I had been, not continuously or deliriously happy, but mostly happy. I was about to say so when Bob walked in.

"She's married to me," he said. "What was there for her to be unhappy about?"

"Being married to you!" Katherine and I said in almost perfect unison.

Bob, willing to be a straight man but not an audience, ignored us. "The Kitten's next meal is from a jar, no?"

"Not for a while, Bob," I said. "But there is an open jar of beets in the 'fridge."

"Well, the first baby I fed developed brain damage," said Katherine, "but the second went on to become a doctor. If you two would trust me with this one, you could take a little time without the responsibility. Would you want to borrow the car as well?"

"That's the story of this trip," Bob said. "You want to see The Kitten, Jeanette's an essential source of nutrients, I'm entirely superfluous."

"Now dear, not superfluous. I'm sure that you washed the dishes quite well. I'd like to thank you for that, dear. Vi washed the dishes before you married Bob and educated him. He did the laundry." I should thank her for Bob's skill with the laundry. For that matter, I didn't teach Bob how to load a dishwasher. At home, he washes dishes by hand.

"I don't think we'll need the car," Bob said. "We'll be upstairs if you need us desperately." I knew what he wanted; surely Katherine knew what he wanted.

"What's with this 'us'?" Katherine said. "You're superfluous, remember. I'll try very hard not to need Jeanette. Oh my! She's blushing. Dear, after a decade married to Bob how can you still blush?" Which made me blush worse.

How could I be married to Bob and not blush? I was terribly embarrassed by the transparency of Bob's actions. On the other hand, while The Kitten is a darling, she does tend to interrupt at the most inconvenient times. A little quality time between maman and papa without worry about her seemed like a great idea.

"Maybe I wanted to go for a drive," I told Bob after we were safely in our room with the door bolted. It was a fairly specious suggestion. Anybody whom I would want to see would want to see The Kitten.

"You said that I could run things today." He kissed me deeply. I sank into the kiss, and chased his tongue with mine. Bob's hands were all over me, but I couldn't respond. After a minute, he stepped back. "You're tense," he said.

"It's having her down there knowing what we're doing."

"Would you like to go for a walk?" he said.

"You mean that?"

"Once, when I lived in this room for example, I would have given my eyeteeth to have your consent to sex. I'm spoiled now. I want your enthusiasm."

At that, I kissed him with real enthusiasm. "Bob Brennan, I love you!" I said. We got dressed in warmer clothes, pausing only for him to kiss my belly, and went back downstairs.

"You don't trust me?" asked Katherine.

"We trust you utterly," said Bob. "We're going for a walk."

I suppose the outside was miserable from any objective perspective. It was wet and cold, although we were dressed for Michigan and didn't mind it. Bob always insists that cold rain is worse than snow.

To me, at least, it was freedom. I love The Kitten, I really do. She's a particularly happy baby, partly -- we are convinced -- because we are there when she wants us. But...

Even when Bob's home and actually responsible, I listen for her cry. Even when she is sleeping, she might wake up and need something -- comforting if nothing else. "Whee!" I said. "I feel like I'm playing hooky."

"If I feeled like that, I'd be playing feeled hooky." That this pun sounded funny to me at the time demonstrates just how manic my mood was.

I hugged him and we kissed for a moment, then we rubbed noses. This is a nice cold-weather hug Bob an I have stolen from the Eskimos. "If you wanted to hug," Bob whispered into my ear, "there was no reason to leave the house. We could have stayed in the room where I dreamed of you so many years. I could have removed each piece of clothing and kissed each new piece of skin thus revealed. You could have lain on the bed while I knelt at your feet and kissed up your thighs to your most secret, most feminine, place. Then I could have kissed you there, and licked you there, and smelt" (I don't think that's a past tense, but Bob does) "your femininity turn to desire, and tasted your desire turn to lust, and then to passion. And I could have been right where your passion is centered until it turned into satisfaction. And I would have enjoyed it, and you would have enjoyed it. But, no, you needed to come out into the cold and rain."

We were standing on the sidewalk alone in the entire world when someone said "Kids today!" quite loudly. This man, who looked not a decade older than us, was less than a yard away. We jumped apart, blocking his way even worse.

When he had managed to get by us, and we were heading back towards the house, Bob asked, "Did he hear me?"

"I don't think so. Your mouth was an inch from my ear, and I had to strain to hear you." We walked past the house; we had only chosen that direction because the man was going in the other. Suddenly it was hilarious. We walked along laughing and saying "Kids today."

"Anyway," I said, "you can still do that tonight. The Kitten would sleep through it." Not that The Kitten is old enough to be shocked at where Papa kisses Maman.

"But that would interfere with what I had planned for tonight."

"What is it with you on these trips home?" Bob is a sex maniac, but less of one than he was ten years ago. We seldom have matinees in our own home.

"Ah love. Once upon a time, I lay in that room night after night. Afternoon after afternoon, for that matter. I lusted after you, totally unrequited."