fourth. But you’re certainly the most fun.” I gave her a look that was intended to quash undue flattery. “You are!” she said. The coquette I’d heard about emerged. “What, you can’t take a compliment? A big man like you?” (I know that our taste in women often diverges, but neither of us would get in a fight over Ann. The fire she has is sheer petulance and wounded vanity, I think, not true passion.)
I dared not tell Frances that I couldn’t keep her aunts’ names straight either. “So Frances tells us that you teach,” said Aunt Helen. Or Mary, or Peggy. All nervous with purpose—paying you the utmost attention but behind their eyes troubled by a sheet somewhere that needs hospital corners. Three notes chiming together in a chord. “How do you like it?” they asked. “And you’re from Boston? Why, where’s your accent? What do your parents do? How do you like our Philadelphia? Frances tells us you’re an only child. Have we split your eardrums yet? We bought a bottle of aspirin just for you, it’s in the medicine cabinet. Frances tells us you like roast beef, so we had Mary make her special one. Frances must not be cooking for you, otherwise you’d be green around the gills.” (Had she even told them about my hospitalization? She must not have, I concluded. When I asked her about it later, she neither confirmed nor denied and instead said, “That’s none of their business.”) Then, a joke after dinner. One of the aunts brought out a towering flaked coconut cake, set it down without ceremony, said, “Now, who wants some dessert?” and began serving. Then another aunt brought out a rectangular slab of what looked like spiced meat, gray in the main but crisped brown at the edges, set it down next to the cake, and started to carve it up. “Bernard,” this other aunt said, putting a slice of this on my plate, “you’re having scrapple for dessert. Frances said you’d love it.” Laughter all round. “Oh, give him the cake,” someone said. I refused it. Then a husband of one of her cousins, who I believe might have been a fireman, ate some along with me in sympathy. I made a big show of enjoying it. Damned if I had two slices. It’s actually quite good. As I put the last forkful of it in my mouth, Frances gave me the most caressing look she’s ever given me.
Her father drove us to the train station after dinner. While Frances was off buying a paper, he turned to me. I saw sympathy, intelligence, and curiosity in his face, as well as, I am fairly sure, approval. He’s a head shorter than me but he’s broad-shouldered and confident, brusque and pointed in his movements but generous and fluid in his speech, and I can sense the absolute goodness in him. He would have been a priest, I think, had he perhaps had the intractability of his daughter. Whatever makes Frances indefatigable, she must get it from him. Whatever makes her intractable must come from her mother and the aunts. “That cake is off-limits!” I’d heard one bellow from the kitchen. “I’m assuming you’re attracted to the idea of an early death?” I have no doubt she was talking to a man.
“I think it’s nice, you two,” her father said at the train station. “I think it’s nice, two writers. I bet you keep each other good company.” “We do,” I said.
Frances returned. “Bring her home again soon,” he said. “We miss her dearly.”
I watched her embrace her father—she shut her eyes, the better to commit this moment to memory, I suppose, should it turn out to be their last, and hung on to him for a few long seconds in a way that made me think she’d throw herself in front of a train for him. I was, of course, jealous. I was also jealous because she had a father who was not afraid of what he did not understand and who would find a way to talk to you about it. I don’t think you’ll be surprised when I tell you how difficult it was to be around people who made a point to weave themselves together because they had poured out their blood among one another. They may be annoyed with each other, but they do not hate each other. They understand that annoyance is a fair price to pay for the strange protective love of