o change in the way he is to them. He’s not that bad, but be better. Said it to himself a lot but this time he means it or at least means he’ll give it an even bigger shot. Little while later when he heard them sucking their lollipops: “Hey, will ya don’t make so much noise with those things?” “What things?” Margo said. “The lollipops, what else?” Snapped it out; jeez, already forgot. “You have your radio music on, so our sounds shouldn’t sound so loud.” “Just each of you, please deal with it more quietly, that’s all I’m asking. No reason for any disagreement about it. In fact there is none. It’s just a lollipop, and I’m glad you’re enjoying them, but please, you know, eat it by licking and sucking more quietly. If you can’t, but you’ve tried, so be it.” “Okay.” “Fine, thanks, good. I thank you for your cooperation. My mud-duh thanks you, my foddah thanks you, my brudduh—” “Are you being insulting?” “Me? To my two dollcakes? No. I’m being serious though maybe throwing in that other stuff just for laughs, which again didn’t work, right? But I won’t if you don’t like.” “We don’t mind.” “Great.” Julie slept part of the way. Good, he thought after he looked back and saw her; she can use it. Got to sleep way too late last night, Lee said. He knew she’d make it up in the car and now he can tell Lee that on the phone tonight. New York classical music station till it began to fade. Stayed with it another ten minutes of increasing distortion and fading because he liked the piece and wasn’t listening before when the announcer said what it was and who wrote it — modern, for voice and chamber symphony he thought and the words sounded Russian or Polish but the music in parts Brazilian like that Bachianos whatever number it is, so maybe the language was Portuguese, and unbearably sad but uplifting in a way, he can’t explain it, and then it was gone. Tried the other two New York classical stations, both commercial; wouldn’t it be something if one of them had that same piece on, a musical miracle or just a one-in-a-million situation, but couldn’t find them or they were gone too. Dialed to the Philadelphia station, had the number for it in his head and the one in Delaware further on the way, but couldn’t bring it in yet. Tried the Delaware one; just maybe some fluke and it got through because there was no interference from there to here and its transmission was that strong; country-and-western music or something. “I like it, keep it on,” Margo said and he said “Oh really, sweetie, and it might wake Julie, so do you mind very much if we don’t?” and she said “It’s okay, you’re right.” Good, this is the attitude. Patience patience patience. Respect thy youngsters, and so on. “Daddy, could you help me with my numbers, then, if we do it softly? I’m good at them but I want to be better and we did miss a school day.” “That sounds like something, well, it’s amazing, but something what I was thinking just before, but I won’t go into it.” “What was it?” “No, I’m sorry — okay, why not, and you’re older so you won’t misinterpret it. That I should behave much better to you kids. That’s it. And that I suppose I’m okay sometimes but I definitely could be better, more patience, less stridence and anger — you know, hotheadedness, mad, sharp, knocking you down with words, even insulting you like you said, which I don’t think I did then — I didn’t — but every time I do do it I can kill myself for.” “You’re all right.” “As Julie said, and let’s speak just a teeny weeny lower, you’re just saying that, aren’t ya? — ever notice how many times I use the word ‘just’?” “No. And you do yell too much but when you don’t you’re mostly nice.” “And not just because I give you things, bribe you, because I don’t do that too much, do I? Mommy thinks I do.” “No, you’re nice, like now, except when you get too rough with us.” “When the heck do I do that may I ask?” and she said “Like today when you punched me.” “I punched you? You mean when I asked you to get dressed so you can have lunch and we could get going? I just grabbed your arms — didn’t grab but simply held them — I didn’t even clutch or hold hard — and I said we got to get moving and eat and our things together or we’ll never get out of here and if you do it, Julie will too, that’s all I did and said, don’t you remember?” and she said “You held me hard, you pressed my arms above till they hurt and left marks,” and he said “What marks?” and she said “They were there when I undressed but are gone now and I started crying and you let me go when you saw it, I’m sure, my eyes,” and he said “I didn’t see your eyes, sweetheart, were they crying?” and she said “Almost, because you don’t think one or two tears is crying,” and he said “I’m sorry, I swear I only held you — you know, that kind of holding to give the other person time to get some sense into his head, or hers, meaning just to think about things when she’s a little out of control — but I didn’t grab or clutch or squeeze. Or maybe I squeezed a little without knowing it, and your skin’s very fair and sensitive so I might’ve left some red marks, while on a darker skin I probably wouldn’t have, but I’m sorry. I’ll try not to be even as rough as that again, if that’s what I was, rough, okay?” “Okay.” “We’ve ironed it out — you know, worked it—” and she said “I know what that kind of ironing is. Yes, it’s worked out. It’s all better. Really, Daddy, thank you, now that we’ve talked. And I love it when we talk like this, personally. Want to do it some more?” and he said “Now? It’s difficult without seeing you, or constantly turning around to see you because, you know, some things ought to be said right to the face, and straining my neck, so maybe later. We’ll talk some more personally later.” “Without Julie.” “Sure. Though I’ll also talk personally alone with her, but sometime later. You want me to do your numbers now, something I can do with the back of my head. But quietly so she can sleep.” “She looks like a doll, doesn’t she, Daddy? She can be so sweet when she sleeps,” and he said “You’re the same.” “But look the way her arm’s around the top of her head and hand under her chin. I never do that,” and he said “How do you know? And I’m driving, so can’t look.” “Use the mirror. She might never be scrunched up like that again and you should see it.” “She probably formed that position in the womb sometime, like one does thumb-sucking, I think, and sleeping with your knees and whole body squashed into itself because eventually you get so jammed in there, and things. So I picture it; I’ve in fact seen it. And both of you dolls, believe me. F.A.O. Schwarz would say ‘priceless, out of sight, just for display.’ Really.” “No, I’m ugly, she’s pretty,” and he said “What a thing to say about yourself, and so untrue. Self-abuse. We’ll have to call the cops in on this to arrest you. You have your toothbrush and a complete change of clothes packed?” “Mommy put them in—” “No, I meant — ah, what about what you want with your numbers?” “I am ugly, and really tough multiplications that I can do in my head. The teacher’s quizzing us on this, minute each and no paper or pen, and I want to get a hundred on it.” “Two hundred sixty-two times sixteen.” “Okay. You take the zero from the ten in sixteen, add it to two hundred sixty-two, get two thousand six hundred twenty, and now six times two hundred sixty-two. Well, there you make it easy for yourself — Why’d you think up those times’ numbers?” “First in my head, I guess, though they could mean something more. Social Security for women, for instance — the sixty-two — when they can first collect it, I think, the full amount, which I wouldn’t mind after working straight almost thirty-five years. And two hundred — nice and even and not the hundred percent you mentioned wanting to get on the test, though maybe influenced by it. Sixteen? How old are you two altogether? Fifteen, so doesn’t count, but maybe deep in my subconscious I added up your ages to that. Bad in math down there, still doing it like an average five-year-old. Or good, better than up here,” knocking on his head without turning around. “Because with your added months, yours almost three, hers more than seven, it’s almost another year, which could be considered a year, since you don’t say when you’re nine years and ten months, let’s say, that you’re nine, do you, or even nine and three quarters? You’d say ‘almost ten.’” “That’s right. Or ‘about ten.’ That’s what I’d say.” “So there.” “Six times two hundred fifty, or six times two hundred and then six times fifty, and you get with either…fifteen hundred. This problem’s too easy. Now six times ten and six times two — what was the first number I had, two thousand six hundred twenty?” “I believe so.” “Three one nine two.” “What’s that?” “The answer to everything. Three thousand one hundred—” “Good, you got it, great,” he said, “you’re a whiz.” “Fooled you. It’s four one nine two. How can it be three one nine two if the first part of the answer was two thousand six hundred and twenty? Six is more than half of ten, and one thousand and three hundred is at least half of two thousand six—” “I don’t get you. But maybe we should check the first part of your answer.” “Why? Zero added to two six two is two six twenty.” “So? I still don’t get your point. Anyway, let’s say you’re right and I’m slow today. When I was a kid though—” “Give me some even tougher ones. A hundreds number times one in the thousands.” Did. “Another.” Did and several others. She got them all right or some she got before he did and he just assumed they were right, for while he was still doing one she’d ask for another and he’d give it. “Now some minuses in the thousands,” and he said “Those you need paper for. And even if you of all quiz-whizzers don’t, no no no, I just want to be quiet and think.” She started talking and he said “Pleez, sweetie.” Her lips poufed and he said “All right, but whisperingly, and last gab from you for a while, what?” and she said “I wanted to ask what you were thinking of or planning to,” and he said “I haven’t given a thought to it yet, okay? Now finished, and don’t tell me you’re bored. You’ve books, paper, pencils, markers, imagination, introspection, fanciful inventiveness, memories and so on and you’re also musical and can hum a sweet soft tune, besides those ole standbys, passing scenery, dreams and do-nothing sleep.” He drove and thought she’s not talking and what should he think about? Work, but hell with that, wants to be rapt or entertained. Turned the radio on, woman on the Philadelphia public station was gushing about a group called The Jazz Messengers and he thought he doesn’t know these guys but he hates jazz or most of what he’s heard for forty years, same thing and shallowness and no talk’s going to make it more interesting, and turned it off. If not deep music or just about anything by Vivaldi, Poulenc or Bach then why couldn’t it be, and in a car preferably, something to think about and maybe even stir him up, a good talk, debate or discussion about ideas and stimulating people and things, not crime, drugs, health, business, politics, finance or another international or cultural report — alligator hunting in the Everglades, icebound Aleuts going potty or getting juiced — but art, philosophy, ethics and if art not opera, films, musicals, crafts or dance and where it’d go on for an hour and had only now begun. Maybe once every three years he catches something like that on the road, and really almost any poet or playwright who talks about his life and work on the radio’s okay, novelists are always pushing their books or beating their chests or he can hardly understand. Should he get up to seventy? No other cars around, it’s legal on the Interstates in Maine and New Hampshire and places, so why not here? It’d be fifteen over the limit and if he’s stopped it wouldn’t so much be the cost, though that’d hurt, but getting delayed. What’s, he crazy? — it’d be about a day’s wage. Hadn’t seen, and then he saw one, between some trees in the median strip, car facing his way and trooper watching him as he passed, so good thing he was thinking of the should or shouldn’t he while doing sixty for he’s sure he would have been nabbed, no other cars near him for half a mile now it seemed. Then Julie awoke, knuckled her eyes and he said “Good, you napped almost an hour,” and she said “I wasn’t asleep, I only had my eyes closed and was thinking,” and Margo said “What about?” and she said “None of your business,” and that she was thirsty and had to pee and Margo me-tooed and that she was also hungry, so they stopped at the next rest area for gas and bathrooms and a snack, coffee to go for him, curly French fries between the girls for the car and fruit punch he had them drink in the Roy Rogers because he didn’t want them to make a mess and if the car suddenly had to slow or stop, the straws to cut their palates, “but if you’re good the rest of the trip, real hamburgers in warm hamburger buns and all the trimmins for dinner and ginger ale in champagne glasses”—took no more than twenty minutes. Wanted to get home fast, get the mail, unpack quickly and put everything away, garbage and two weeks of plastic, bottles and cans on the walk for tomorrow’s pickup, get the kids’ dinner ready, while things are cooking have a scotch on rocks as he sits in his Morris chair and goes through the newspapers and mail that had collected past two days and dump the catalogs and advertising circulars and inserts that had come before Lee gets ahold of them. Then after dinner make a couple of calls and finish his work work. No calls. Tomorrow the kids can talk to Lee before they go to school, or she might not be up, so that evening, and he’ll see his associate soon enough and work he’ll do after the kids are asleep. Read them a story when their lights are out and they’re in bed, or tell them one from his head, maybe about a car, the trip, New York City, the road. Comical incident in the tunnel or at a rest stop. Or they’re being followed in an unmarked car by Goofy — loves him as a character, as he gets to talk in a stupid voice and say funny dumb things — and Nancy Drew, since Margo says she’s getting too old for just Goofy and Minnie and the gang. Goofy and Nancy are an item, he’ll say, and explain what “item” here is. They think the car he and the kids are in is stolen and while they’re tailing them they put in a check on their license plate. They pull them over and Goofy asks all sorts of dumb questions. He’s much better at dialog than description or that thing that moves the action along and has all the filler and fill-in, like what the setting is and surroundings look like and why the characters do this and that and so on. “Is this a car you’re in?” Goofy can say. “You mean,” Nancy can correct him, “is this their car they’re in.” “Um-m-m, I think that’s what I said, didn’t I? Is this a their car they’re in?” “Excuse me, Goofy, but what’s a their car?” and Goofy can say “Um-m-m, wha’d’ya think? A their car is their car just as an our car is ours. Gosh, Nancy, you goofy or something? No, you can’t be, since you’re Nancy, I just said, and I’m Goofy, I think, and the captain would never put two Goofys in one patrol car, would he? ‘cause how could we be able to figure out the more harder police things?” “Oh, I give up on you already, Goofy. Our engagement’s off and I don’t want to be your police partner anymore either. And now that he’s out of the picture,” she can say to the girls, “you two want to be my sidekicks? Even if our engagement’s kaput, police work’s got to go on.” Not that but something like and Goofy can say “Hey, don’t blame me for getting out of your picture, for who wants their sides kicked?” The girls love when he brings them into the stories. But he’ll forget this one by the time he decides to tell it tonight and he might even forget he was planning to tell them about Nancy and Goofy. Knows his memory. He’ll come up with something though. Always does even if most as stories