“Each of his parents lived home till they were married, then moved to Brooklyn together when they came back from their honeymoon. They’d already furnished the place: a large ground-floor apartment opposite Prospect Park and with a woman working full-time for them from around the second month after they got there. ‘I had a difficult pregnancy from almost day two of my marriage, so the woman always had plenty to do, since half that time I could barely get out of bed.’ She was a virgin when she married. His mother was. A story she told a lot was that when she was pregnant the first or second woman to work for them complained of ‘“serious female ailments.”’ His mother took her to her own gynecologist and he said she was pregnant and had syphilis and rectal tissue damage and if he were her he’d get rid of the woman right away. ‘Lax morals like that and not too careful, you don’t want her taking care of your baby. For one thing, you won’t know what she’ll drag into the house while you’re out. For another, she might develop a fantasy about taking your husband away when you’re big and bloated and so not as attractive.’ ‘I discharged her on the spot though with two weeks’ severance pay and the address of a good a.b. man if she wanted. I felt sorry for her for she said her boyfriend had deserted her and her entire family was in Ireland. I should have known better, having been a medical secretary though for a roentgenologist, but I thought syphilis could spread sometimes just by touching the syphilitic or sitting on things she’d put her bare bottom on or touched. I’d also seen photos of people, though mostly newborns, who had it in the mouth and I winced when I pictured her kissing my baby. Also the “lax morals.” But I knew your father would never fool with her. She was too pimply and pudgy for him and she didn’t seem to bathe or brush her teeth enough and she wore a cross. I didn’t want to tell him my real reason for discharging her. He wouldn’t have given her the severance pay and might have even docked her a week’s wages for jeopardizing the health of our unborn baby, or some insincere excuse like that. Anything to save money. For he never expressed any interest in the baby’s or my health during the pregnancy. I’d come home from my monthly examination and near the end, from my weekly, and he wouldn’t ask a word about it or how things were going or even once think of accompanying me.’ But every good woman then was a virgin, she told him. ‘Oh, I played around. Did what we called harmless petting — squeezing fingers, a bit of kissing with our mouths closed, rubbing each other’s backs very hard — but no more than that. Now I regret it. To only have experienced one man in your life isn’t enough. I should have had more adventures before I married. Gotten madly involved with a couple of men, had an affair that nearly broke my heart before it dissolved, even gotten pregnant by some rotter who didn’t want to help me and had an abortion all on my own and at my expense. Maybe not that far, and no venereal diseases. Traveled more. Then I could have drifted into marriage a little more easily. But your father persuaded me. He had a way with words, a wonderful smile and a great sense of humor.’ ‘I remember. And you’ve told me most of this.’ ‘So I’ve told you. So what? It only indicates how true it was. But whenever things turned sour for him he could be as disagreeable as they come.’ ‘I know. I saw that too. Over the dinner table. Christ, the battles you had, and all over money. He’d throw your weekly allowance across the table at you and you’d yell you won’t be treated like that and throw it back and all of us kids around and he’d yell and you’d scream—’ ‘I don’t remember that.’ ‘It’s true. I’ve mentioned it several times.’ ‘I don’t remember that too. And Gerald has no recollection of those arguments.’ ‘He was out of the house by that time. But let’s forget it. Maybe it was wrong of me to bring it up, or at least now.’ ‘We argued, and over money sometimes, because he could be tight, as I know I’ve told you, but not at the table. That’s one place it stopped. I didn’t want to ruin your meals, send you to bed with bellyaches because of it. But I felt — your father — if I massaged his scalp enough I could bring some of his hair back and make him handsomer. And I put him on a diet and a regimen of exercises from the day we came back from our honeymoon, hoping to make his body less flabby, so more attractive to me, but it never worked. He went, with or without me, to his mother’s for dinner two to three times a week. Think of it — they lived off Delancey, we lived in the middle of Brooklyn, but that often. Took the car. All right, traffic wasn’t as bad then and you could park where you pleased, and for our first ten years his office was either in her building or right near her, so he could just close it and walk over. And most Sundays and Friday nights some of you children went with him — she loved feeding all of you and her cooking for that kind of food was pretty good — so it gave me some relief. I know I’ve told you he worshiped her. The very ground, even if it had gook on it sometimes, and worse. One of my greatest fears was that my father-in-law would die and she’d come live with us, even though she had a daughter to go to. But your aunt was poor, living in a space half the size of ours with your cousins running all around and her husband a schlemiel and your father doing most of the supporting for them, so I knew she’d come to us, where we had a maid and he’d let her boss me. As it was, she died first and your grandfather wanted to live alone. I would have taken him in but I doubt your father would have let me — his silence and nebbishness made your father uncomfortable. You know your father phoned her at least once every day when she was married.’ ‘You mean