Chapter 2

The Brennans participate in what Bob, in his more cynical moments, calls Mammon-mas. I dreaded the trip home in the train with all the loot they would give their first grandchild for her first Christmas. They also, however, pay attention to the religious aspect. On the last Sunday of Advent, we all made it into church during the prelude.

The Kitten behaved a little better than she does at our home church, but Bob still had to take her into the narthex and carry her back and forth. His father relieved him at the end of the sermon, and was surrounded by his friends commenting about how sweet she was when the rest of us came out.

At Sunday dinner, my attention wandered to a sound from the next room, but I decided that The Kitten didn't need me. When I was paying attention again, Bob and his father were talking about bubbles. It took me a minute to see that they weren't talking about her bubbles. It was economics. "1987 did it," Bob's father was saying. "People learned then that a sharp drop could be recovered from. The problem is that they learned that one would be recovered from. There is still air in the US market, but it will leak out. Can it happen without a 'whoosh'? I don't know."

"Bob was telling me," I said, "that you could show that the claims I read are wrong that stocks are a sure thing for the long run. I didn't get it all."

"I don't know it all," said Bob. "I only remember the joke and the conclusion. 'Mr. Morgan, Mr. Morgan, '" he said in a falsetto. "'What will the market do?'"

"'Son, '" his father answered in an artificially deep bass, "'the market will fluctuate.' Well," he continued in his usual voice, "the market has fluctuated ever since. This is easier on paper than it is across the table..."

"You never spared me across the table," said Bob.

"And who would want to spare you?" his father asked. "Anyway, I'm not going to spare her, only apologize in advance.

"This is easier on paper than across the table, but there is a simple formula for the value of this year's stock market in any future year."

"That sounds like it would make you a fortune," I said.

"No!" he said. "The formula is the product of multiplying four numbers together. It is impossible to know those numbers, but it is possible to estimate their range.

"The first number is GDP, or the value of everything that the country produces in a year. The second number is the percentage of the GDP that goes to corporate profits. Multiply these two together and you get the corporate profits for the year.

"The third number is what we call the price-earnings ratio. This is more usually applied to a single stock, but here we mean the ratio of the value of the stock market in that year to the profits which support that value. Because the stockholders can put a quite different evaluation of the same profits. Multiply that number times the first two, and you get what the stocks of that year are valued at.

"The fourth number is the percentage of stocks that year which actually exist this year. Because companies continually issue new stock and new companies come into being and issue stock. So in any year, the stock includes stock which didn't exist the year before. If the stock market is worth twice as much in fifty years, that doesn't mean that the average stock bought this year is worth twice as much. Also stocks disappear through failures.

"Okay. Now there are four numbers. The first one increases over time, usually but not always from one year to the next, but increases in the long run. The fourth number almost always goes down. The numbers in between generally fluctuate. The percentage of the GDP which goes into profits fluctuates slightly except in real recessions, when it takes a plunge. If Brewster would be working at 70% of capacity, we'd have -- not 70% of the profits -- but a disastrous loss.

"Anyway, aside from a few years, that percentage fluctuates within rather narrow bounds. The price-earnings ratio, however, is a roller-coaster. This year it hit highs that it hasn't seen in recent times.

"Now, the snake-oil salesmen point out that, historically, this product has increased over almost any twenty-year period. The history, with apologies to our historian," he nodded to Bob, who nodded back, "includes the price-earnings ratios of the past. Buying into a market with P-E ratios above fifteen is a sucker's game, historically. Individual stocks can support it by growing much faster than the economy, but the market cannot."

"Y'know," Bob said, "the philosophy of history considers 'History' to only mean the written analysis of what happened in the past. It's a useful distinction, but we don't own the word." Great, just what my mind needed. A summary of economic theory followed by lecture on philosophy and semantics.

"That's nice, dear," Katherine said. And the subject changed.

Undaunted by his previous experience, Bob's father insisted on feeding The Kitten her cereal and fruit. She wore a bib with "Grandpa's angel" on it in fancy lettering. We hadn't brought it. He wore his suit pants and dress shirt, which was tempting fate. Fate resisted temptation no better than the rest of us do.

Bob hauled his mother upstairs for an undisclosed purpose. That meant that he had mailed my Christmas gift to her and meant to wrap it now. Just why this needs the heavy hand of secrecy every year, I don't know. Bob specializes in clothes in a package that rattles and tiny gifts hidden in large packages. Packing them in suitcases tends to crush the packages, and mailing them would be worse. (I can imagine postal inspectors calling the bomb squad after x-raying one of his specials.) Mailing them unwrapped so I never see my gift makes sense. Pretending that I haven't figured out what he is doing doesn't. Not after ten Christmases, one of which involved a gift which had to be mailed back North, it doesn't.

On the other hand, Christmas is a matter of tradition.

Bob's father brought The Kitten back in after washing off the disaster. I will say this for her, The Kitten readily forgives the people who try to inflict baby food on her. He sat down in his armchair and began a this-little-piggy game. He stopped when she tired of it, turned her so that she was facing him, and recited "Plus que possible, ma poule noire,..." I was intrigued. French verse that I hadn't heard before. He followed it with the English version, significantly different.

"What is that from?" I asked.

"The Black Hen is a poem in various languages in a book that we must still have. You'd like it." Actually, nobody in the Brennan family considers it possible that people won't like a book. This man's son thinks that Decline of the West is the sort of book that one can't put down and that Scientific American is good popular reading. However, the books that the Brennans recommend are surprisingly often good reading; go figure! "Kate," he called to Katherine who was just coming back down stairs, "where is 'The Black Hen'?"

"She's in the relative-when laying eggs. Is that a trick question?"

"You know what I mean. Where is the book?"

"The book, dear, is A Space Child's Mother Goose. It isn't my book. I have enough trouble keeping track of my books and library books in this house." She had a point. Everybody in the family had a stack of books by their beds which they had put aside because something came up which meant looking in another book. At home, I limit Bob to four. When there are five books in his stack, I put the bottom four back on the shelves in the living room. When I was vastly pregnant, so pregnant that I could get almost anything from him that I wanted, he put them back on my request.

Bob's father changed to the game where he tries to catch The Kitten's nose with his finger while she tries to impale her eye on the finger. "You should let her play on the quilt while she still wants to be in your arms, dear," Katherine said. "Never let her get sated." He obeyed, but settled back where he could watch.

"Are you happy about your decision?" he asked.

"Do you mean The Kitten instead of full-time school? I'm quite happy. My greatest unhappiness is dread that some of this might be taken away from me. I have a husband whom I love and loves me, a child whom I love and who needs me. I'm not certain that it is love at this age. I and mine are reasonably healthy. We make enough to keep us warm and fed and such. What more could I want?"

"A house of your own," said Katherine, "a car of your own -- I mean 'ta auto.'" (She meant "ton automobile.") "You might want jewels or a fur coat or a housemaid or a nanny."

"A housemaid would be very nice, a nanny would be awful. I'd like a girl to come in and change her and then go away. A house with a yard would be nice when she's walking. If I won the lottery, I could figure out how to spend it. If he won the lottery, Bob wouldn't quit teaching; you know that."

"But," Bob said from the foot of the stairs. "I would take every summer off and spend it taking my family to France."

"You could spend alternate summers with us," said Katherine.

"Jeanette and I could go to France and leave The Kitten with you here. We're really de trop."

"It's a deal," said his father. "When can we expect her?"

"I was thinking of the terrible twos and most of her teenage years." That brought the subject to a laughing close. I shivered and reached out to knock on the table. We have so much.

The Kitten gets fussy late in the afternoon, even when the two of us are alone. The difference on this trip was that her fussiness took the form of wanting maman. I took her upstairs to nurse her, looked at the rocker, and decided for the bed instead. With the covers rolled up on one side and me on the other, she is totally safe in the middle of the bed. Besides, she is unlikely to try going far from me in those moods. I lay down with her on my breast and spoke to her maybe three times. Bob woke me an hour and a half later.

"Do you want supper?" he asked. I did. He called down, "Ten minute delay." Then he changed The Kitten while I was in the bathroom and getting my top back on. I don't often use the nursing bra in private.

"Sorry," I said when I joined the table.

"Don't be," said Bob's father. "You were caring for our grandchild. For that matter, caring for our daughter-in-law is a priority, as well." Now, that is not a warm emotional statement; but it's a genuinely loving one.

After supper, the conversation moved to church that morning and then the mechanics of getting The Kitten to the Christmas Eve service. That moved on to our church in Michigan. Bob mentioned that I had joined and had been attending more often.

"That's backwards," I said. "My attendance went up first, and then the baptism, and then I joined. I couldn't see any reason not to. Actually The Kitten was the reason that my attendance increased."

"Yes, dear. Parents start thinking about what sort of circles they want to raise their children in."

"That isn't it at all. If I went to church with Bob more than once a month, the next time that I slept in, people would tell me that they had missed me. This would embarrass me. So once I had slept in, I had reasons to avoid attendance for a while. The Kitten is a great excuse. I can sleep in, and the next week it is all her fault. I'll bet the first time she goes to church with her father while I sleep in, my attendance drops again."

"Or," Bob said, "as soon as actually sleeping-in becomes an option once more." I don't know. I think that I had just shown that sleeping around The Kitten was quite possible. When she gets to the crawling stage, I could set up a child-proof area, move in with the sleeping bag, and let her choose her own feeding times. But that was too nebulous to suggest then.

My attention drifted away, and they were comparing former pastors when it got back. Which was a good excuse to let it drift again. Soon The Kitten wanted to come back to the familiar. "Maman," she said when I held her.

"That's right, darling," said Katherine. "That's mama."

But The Kitten had definitely said "maman."

"Isn't she the cutest baby in the whole world?" asked Bob. The agreement was unanimous. Even the conversation tailed off, and the three of us went upstairs soon thereafter. "Happy?" asked Bob.

"Very," I said. As I had told his mother, I wasn't continually happy or ecstatically happy. I was usually contented. "Bob, I'm scared."

"Why? What can I do?"

"We have so much." He came over to hug me.

"We aren't taking it from others," he said.

"But what if we lose it?"

"Then it would be stupid to not have enjoyed it while it was there," he said. "Look at Mom. She enjoys every day with my father. It might be the last. And The Kitten is surer if not so sad. She won't be a baby much longer. Let's enjoy her while she is." I'm sure that his words made sense, but his hug was the only comfort.

Three is a crowd in a twin bed, even if one of them is tiny. Rather than risk The Kitten on the edge, I laid her between us. Bob held the bed frame all the time I nursed her because, I would guess, he was in danger of falling off. He was right at the top of the bed kissing my forehead or hair occasionally. Mostly he patted me or rested his arm on my side. I felt much better by the time The Kitten was done.

I went to the bathroom and made my preparations for the night while Bob changed The Kitten. We used to change her both before and after feedings when she was newborn, but in those days she ran like a spigot and also had more delicate skin. These days, we try for a change right before sleep but make an exception if she is smelly or really wet before the feeding.

"Y'know," I told him when I came out, "you have done more changes than I have since we came here."

"My mother decreed that you wouldn't do any changes at all unless their changing her would mean one of them would have to invade our privacy. She figures that one person handling the input doesn't balance three handling the output anyway. They aren't interested in lowering my workload; but they have. When both of us are around and awake, I had better do the work. Otherwise I'll spend Boxing Day at Mickey D's. She's right, anyway. You do more than your share of the work."

"Not counting that you earn our income."

"Well, that didn't affect housework when you earned all of our income." That isn't quite the same. In those days, he was a full time student. These days, he does the breadwinning and I do most of the housework and child care, mostly child care.

"You're sweet," I said.

"And I have hidden motives for being sweet."

"Not with your pants off, you don't." He was laughing when he kissed me.

"I love you like this," he said. He loves me all the time. He prefers me like this. For that matter, I do too.

We had a nice, long, quiet, kiss with our mouths closed. He pecked me on the nose, hugged me briefly, pecked me on the forehead, and came back for a real kiss. He kneaded my butt while our tongues played. When we paused for breath I said, "Should we be standing up?" He pulled off the top bed clothes and motioned for me to lie down. Then he covered me and tucked everything in at the bottom before sliding in beside me.

This time he stroked everywhere while we kissed. Then he stroked only my mound and thighs. I parted my legs to ease his access. He played with my outer lips for a minute before beginning a frenzy of tongue play. During that, he slipped a finger between my inner lips. I smiled at his attempt at sneakiness. I think half the nerve endings in my body are near there; does he really think that I don't notice?

All those little nerve endings not only noticed his arrival; they enjoyed it. He stroked toward my clitoris but stopped short, a little closer each time. Just when I was about to ask him to keep going, he kissed me so firmly that I couldn't speak. Then he did cross the magic spot. I gasped. I could feel him grin at that.

His kisses and caresses were lovely; but, as they became lovelier they became less adequate. Rather that break the kiss, I trailed my hand down his chest to ask for more. When he let me continue across his belly, I knew that we would have more very soon. He was erect and hard and hot. He was the one who broke the kiss.

"Do you think that you could be on top this time?" he asked. I thought about it. The motions of his hand, if not exactly conducive to thinking, were very conducive to agreement.

"That would be lovely," I said. He moved toward the middle as I retreated to the very edge. Then I climbed over him. This position, even after all the years of practice, takes a little adjustment. He held me with one hand and himself with the other. As I eased down, he fitted us. I had to move an inch lower in the bed, but I sat on him until I was totally impaled.

He inhaled with a hiss. "Darling wife," he said. "I love you, Mrs. B."

I said, "I love you, Mr. B," tightening his favorite muscle as I said "B." I leaned down so he could lick my breast. "Gently," I said. He was very gentle, and very loving, and very exciting. Soon, I had to move.

I concentrated on making the motions that felt best for me. Bob had taken a while to convince me that this was what he wanted, but I can tell that he enjoys it. My eyes having adjusted to the night light, I could see his frown turn into a grimace. His hand reached between my moving thighs. He stroked me in time with my motions, first on the lips and then on my center. Suddenly, I couldn't keep to the rhythm. Flame swept through me, and I went away into sensation, and into joy, and into ecstasy.

When I came back, I was sprawled on Bob. He was hugging my hips to him, the only hug which wouldn't interfere with my gasping breaths. "Sleep here," he said. I couldn't, but I could stay for a few minutes. All his careful adjustment of the bedclothes had gone for naught. He was out of me and all the mess was running out on him. I didn't even mention that; I know his priorities.

I had gone from comfort, to desire, to joy, to fulfillment, to being held in love. Okay, some times I am ecstatically happy.

Bob points out that I am fifty times The Kitten's age and argues that a week to her is like a year to me. I'm not persuaded that it works like that. Still, each day is an adventure at her age. She'd recovered rapidly from whatever trauma had resulted from the train trip. Katherine, who had stayed mostly in the background so that her husband could get granddaughter time, was now an old friend whom The Kitten hadn't seen enough for the past two days. And the beads were still fascinating.

Bob brought the rocking chair down the first thing in the morning, and I was ensconced in it when he brought The Kitten to me. Katherine had made waffles for breakfast again. I ate last, but otherwise was treated like a queen. Katherine suggested that Bob and I might want to have some old friends over to meet The Kitten. "Vi is going back Sunday dear. You wouldn't want to drag The Kitten on that trip." (The train north is late with notorious frequency. The trip would take less than an hour each way, but might last five hours including the wait. I did not want to take The Kitten into that.) "Why don't you set up a party for then. It wouldn't kill any granddaughter time. I can take care of the munchies."

When we agreed, she reached out her arms and said, "Come to Grandma Brennan, dear." The Kitten reached out her arms in return. Bob and I made our list and the calls while she played with The Kitten.

Lunch was light but on time. Bob and I played hooky again, leaving Katherine to the baby-food wars. I swear that she was wearing the same clothes when we returned, and they were spotless. That woman never fails to impress me. She handed The Kitten to me immediately on our return. "Maman," said The Kitten.

"Yes, darling," I replied. "Ta maman." I gave her a big smacking kiss on the top of her head. Satisfied that I was on call, she soon tried to see the rest of the room. I can't believe that it helps to do this lying back with her head upside down, but that is the method she uses. Half her genes, I constantly remind myself, come from Bob.

We all moved into the kitchen to watch Katherine prepare dinner. Bob held The Kitten for a while. He had been doing his share of the diaper time, but not getting his share of the play time. "Isn't she the cutest baby in the whole world?" he asked for the umpteenth time.

"I believe so, dear," his mother said. "But I might be somewhat prejudiced."

"Nonsense. Sober fact."

He was doing "This little piggy..." when I asked his mother about his life before I met him. He studiously ignored the account, putting all his attention on The Kitten.

Those stories led to what the courting of Jeanette Jacobs had looked like from the home front. Not much, apparently. "He said almost nothing dear. From the time that your father permitted him to drive you on dates (and I've never faulted your father on that, though Bob was always a careful driver) until the letter arrived asking me to deliver the enclosure to you (and Bob always was good enough to put some news in the cover letters; more than half the letters I ever received from him were cover letters those two summers), I never saw your face. Of course, you knew that.

"Anyway, when a high-school boy who misses most of the football games starts going to every girls' track meet, you suspect something. It was like the discovery of Pluto. You couldn't see it but you knew it was there from the behavior of the other planets. Or was it Neptune, dear?"

"Both actually," said the man who wasn't listening to this nonsense.

"Maman," said The Kitten. Bob immediately gave her to me. She hadn't intended that, but she is going to learn the meaning of that word.

"And then," Katherine went on, "there was the time that Russ set him up for the road-construction job. Russ wasn't half furious. He'd pulled in a favor from a friend, after asking Bob if it were a good idea. Everything, as far as we could tell, was set up. Then Bob said that he had to think about it, and could he borrow the car the next day."

This is an important event in my relationship with Bob. I sent a loving look toward him, expecting one back. He was staring at his mother flabbergasted.

"Anyway, Bob took him to work before driving to school. He picked him up after work. He didn't say a word about road construction. That night he gave Russ the application for the work, all signed and filled in. Russ said that the only thing that kept him from strangling Bob was that Bob looked so happy he doubted that he would have noticed."

Bob looked so shocked that I was glad that I was holding The Kitten. I don't seriously believe that he would ever drop her, but still.

"We finally figured out what must have happened," Katherine continued. "We couldn't fault him for consulting you, although 'The other party did right, ' doesn't diminish Russ's anger any more than it diminishes anyone else's. Just the opposite, don't you think, dear. It's one thing to forgive your neighbor's faults and quite another to forgive the damage which your neighbor does to you with his virtues." She didn't really expect an answer. Which was nice, since I didn't have one.

"Anyway, all we could picture were those two preadolescents whom we drove to those dances. You two were so cute with those innocent good-night kisses." (Innocence is in the eye of the beholder. Those good-night kisses involved closed mouths, but they nearly melted my braces before we got rid of the chauffeur- chaperons. Then we could touch as well as kiss.) "We'd seen Bob mature, of course; but our picture of you hadn't changed. Brought to consciousness, that couldn't be right." Bob had recovered by that time. I handed The Kitten back to him.

"Russ, however, was both grateful that you had saved his bacon with his friend, and impressed that you had taken the long view. We had come to expect the long view of Bob."

(I don't recall Bob asking directly if he should go away for the summer. It was whether I thought that we might have a future. I believe that he was so sure that having a future made going away the right choice that he hadn't articulated that. Maybe not. It had been the high point of my life that far, but not a time of clear communication.)

"Oooh," The Kitten said.

"No, Kitten," said Bob. "It's not August. It's December. Say day- som-brrrr." To be fair, The Kitten's pronunciation of "Aout" is at least as accurate as Bob's pronunciation of "Decembre."

"Does that ever change?" Katherine asked at the third repetition.

"She'll grow out of it," I answered.

"Yes, dear, but will he?"

"Maman," the Kitten said suddenly. Bob handed her back to me, and I gave her a big kiss. "Maman," she said happily.

"I am being sorely wronged," Bob said. "My conversation with my daughter has changed over time."

"Hush," I said. "I think that The Kitten has just figured out the meaning of 'Maman.' Here Kitten, I'm Maman."

"Oooh," she said. I kicked Bob before he could respond.

"It will happen, dear," Katherine said. But I wanted it to happen now. She went back to food preparation, and her next comment was on the spice she was using. "Powdered ginger loses half its flavor, but I only use the real root for major feasts. I wouldn't want to use it around the baby, anyway, since the juice stays on your hands. Gorgeous smell, though, from chopping ginger."

Even with merely-powdered ginger, the dinner was a feast in my book. Chinesish, it featured chicken and vegetables all stirred together and put on a bed of rice. Katherine, wouldn't you know, stir-fries in a wok.

After dinner, though, she left us to go to her room and read. She figured that her husband would monopolize The Kitten. He did until she wanted the familiarity of her mother. Bob took the far end of the couch, I lay with my head on his lap, and The Kitten lay partly on me and partly against the back of the couch. I didn't trust her near the edge; that girl has no respect for the law of gravity.

I was fully ready to doze through another Brennan debate on politics or literature, but that was not to be. Katherine came downstairs soon after I got The Kitten back. This must have reminded Bob; or, perhaps, he wanted both his sources present to see if their memories agreed.

"Were you really furious with me back before I started the road construction job?" Bob asked his father as soon as Katherine was in the room.

"Wouldn't you have been?" his father answered. "You had been asked, and raised no objection. I had called in some favors. My family can't work for the corporation, but Jeremy had taken a job with another firm. He had been an ally, but we had exchanged no more than Christmas cards for several years. Then I called him up and asked him to find a job for you. He had to go down several levels. If you hadn't shown up, he would have looked ridiculous.

"Anyway, he comes through. Then you ask for time to think it over, and you want to have the car for that day. Meanwhile, I keep trying to think what I'll do if the answer is 'no.' So, finally, you show up in the parking lot at the plant, fifteen minutes late."

"I was on time," said Bob. "You were still in your office."

"If you were an hour later," his father said, "I'd still have been there. The CEO doesn't wait around in the parking lot. You come sauntering in, obviously walking on air, and give me the keys. I'm too afraid of my reaction to ask until we are alone. So, I wait until I have started the car to ask. I can give our conversation word for word to this day.

"I say, 'Are you going to take the road job?'

"You say, 'Y'know, I really think she really likes me.'"

I couldn't help laughing. The Kitten complained, but she's held on through worse. Bob was laughing, too. He reached over to help me hold The Kitten on.

"Well, you may laugh now," Bob's father said. It sounded like he was near laughter, himself. "It was not funny at the time. The only reason that I didn't slit your throat on the spot was that you were so clearly anesthetized that you wouldn't have felt it. I drove home very carefully under the speed limit. If I hadn't concentrated on that, I would have been going ninety. You went straight to your room. At dinner, you handed me the job app. with your signature. By the next evening, you were almost normal. Normal for Bob, I mean.

"What could I do? You had decided the way I wanted you to."

"It was mostly my fault," I said.

"Well, you indicated that you might have liked him, unless there was another girl out there who I never heard of. (And we hardly heard of you.) But he could have worked that summer if you didn't like him. All that sweat would have helped him forget."

"It was perfectly logical," Bob said.

"I saw your face, sonny boy. Logic had nothing to do with it."

"Logic had everything to do with it," Bob said. "If I went to work that summer, I would have had to leave Jeanette. We were having a wonderful time together, and leaving her would tear me apart. It would also, I hoped, have cut into her happiness. (That doesn't sound right.) In the long run, however, I knew that this job made my chances better all through college. If we had only another year, it wasn't fair to Jeanette to cut the summer out of it. If we had a long future, then she would share the benefit; we could both survive the parting.