"Listen," my mother said. "I have an idea. I can call James and ask him if he wants to come over and drink some of it. Maybe he can bring that friend of his I told you about, Sam Larkin? The reporter. They live on the same block. You would like him, I think."

"Oh, I don't know. I'm not dressed or anything."

"You look fine, Pat. It'll be fun."

"Well, I don't know."

"Every encounter is not a major thing. Look, you don't have to marry the man. I'm only suggesting that they come over for a drink. Informal, friendly, no big deal."

"Oh, all right," Pat said. "I'll have to use your hairbrush, though. I left mine home."

So my mother went to the living room to phone James, and they arranged that he would ask Sam and call back in a few minutes to let her know. While she and Pat sat around waiting for his call this jittery feeling crept into the air, like they were two kids waiting for their first date. One of them would make a remark and laugh a little, then it would die down and the creepy silence would come back. To pa.s.s the time they sipped from the drinks lined up on the table, first one then another, as if it didn't matter which.

"What is he like, anyway?" Pat asked.

"Who, James or Sam?"

James.

I took my homework into the living room and shut the door, because if there is one thing I cannot stand, it is to hear grown women sounding like the high-school seniors who have taken over our pizzeria. They are both revolting, but at least the seniors are going through a normal phase for their age. I could still hear everything through the door, though. My mother told her how intelligent, good-natured, witty, etc., James was. Prince Charming himself, except for the horse. "Still, he's very reserved about some things," she said. "His privacy is important to him. I get the message that I shouldn't push anything. Not that I want to. I feel the same way myself."

"How about in the rocks department?" Pat asked, and she laughed.

"Pat, honestly, you must be looped."

"You're blushing, Barbara. Well, how about Sam? What is he like?"

Since my mother had only seen Sam twice there wasn't much to say, fortunately, as I was becoming sicker and sicker. After all, they are supposed to be mothers, though you'd never know it. First they spend the whole evening fooling around and drinking, with no self-control whatsoever, then they arrange this date, which will probably turn out to be a drunken orgy, music and laughing and everything, and I will have to go to my room to avoid it, then Sam will take Pat home and James will want to stay over and my mother will feel funny about it because of me, but in the end she'll let him, and I'll hear them whispering in her room, and in the morning he'll be gone before I get up and my mother will have that bright rosy but slightly guilty look, eyeing me like she's thinking, I dare you to say one word about it, and I'll go to school feeling all alone in the world and to top it off I will most likely meet a few dozen spitters along the way, not to mention pregnant women, since spring is almost in full bloom.

So when the phone rang about ten minutes later I dashed to get it first. My mother had taken Pat into the bedroom to give her the hairbrush and show her the new Frye boots.

It was James. He made his usual awkward attempt to be friendly, then said, "Can I speak to your mother, please?"

"Oh, she went out to meet some people. She just left."

"That's funny. I was supposed to call her back and come over with a friend."

"Yes, well, she got another call meanwhile and rushed right out. I think she was tired of waiting. Sorry."

There was a long pause. "I see. My friend's line was tied up before. Will you tell her I called, please?"

My mother appeared then. "Is that for me, Jodie? I'm expecting a call."

"Okay, 'bye," I said. "See you," and I hung up fast. "It was just Jennifer about the math homework." Jennifer calls every other night about the math homework.

"Oh." She looked like she was shrinking right before my eyes, very small and sad. "Well, listen, don't tie up the phone. James might call. He might be coming over."

They went into the kitchen again. It was very quiet. I could hear the gla.s.ses clinking on the table every now and then. Pat said, "Did you know Lisa had an abortion?"

"No! How awful."

"It wasn't so bad. She had broken up with him weeks before."

"Still," said my mother. "I'm glad I never had to. I don't know if I could."

"You've never ..."

"No. Just lucky. Also careful."

Long silence.

"What do you suppose happened to them?" Pat asked.

"I don't know."

"Maybe the signals got crossed or something. Why don't you try again."

"Oh, all right. I don't like to but I will." She came into the living room and dialed. I watched her. Her shoulders slumped as she wound the cord round and round her wrist like a bracelet. I got a little scared, but it turned out to be a false alarm. "There's no answer," she told Pat back in the kitchen.

"Maybe he's on his way."

"I doubt it. He's not like that. He would have called first."

"Something must have happened."

"I'll wash out these shakers," my mother said. I heard water running for a few minutes, then silence again.

"I thought you and he were getting along so well," said Pat.

"So did I. You never know what they're thinking. They're so peculiar, all of them. Maybe he didn't like the idea of my asking him on the spur of the moment, or of asking Sam. Who the h.e.l.l knows."

"There must have been a mix-up. Don't you think you ought to try once more?"

"Pat, I don't want to call again, all right? I'm going to make some coffee. I don't like those fancy drinks. I'm getting a headache."

"You're upset."

"No, it's nothing. I just thought it was different. ... I'm sorry about Sam."

"Don't be silly. I never even met him. I'm sorry about ... Finally Pat said she'd help clean up. "We might as well throw all this in the sink, right?"

"Yes, go ahead. I'm certainly not going to drink it. Jodie," she called, "you should be going to bed, you have the dentist tomorrow." Then she said to Pat, "I wish I had never thought of calling, then this wouldn't have happened."

"Don't get so upset. He'll probably turn up tomorrow with some perfectly reasonable excuse."

"That's the whole trouble," my mother said. "They always have wonderful excuses."

They drank their coffee and finished cleaning up and Pat left. I kissed my mother good night and went to bed. She didn't look like she was in the mood for talking.

This incident is actually no big deal. I mean, James will call again sooner or later, I suppose, and then it will all come out. My mother will be furious, and when she's through yelling at me she'll calm down and explain for the twentieth time how she's not over the hill yet and wants some fun out of life, but don't I know I'm still the most important person to her. And I guess I will feel rotten. Still and all, a person has to make some effort to keep things under control and I'm glad I did, even if it was only for one night. Because with kids it's different, I mean, that is why they're kids, but if grownups don't act their age who is going to keep any kind of order in the world?

THE ACCOUNTING.

RON, MY ACCOUNTANT, CAME over one morning to review our records of the six-month period just past. Usually I go to his office because I don't like a lot of people coming to the apartment, but I was recovering from mononucleosis-brought on by overwork, the doctor said-and was supposed to take it very easy.

Since it was Sunday, his day, Ron explained, he had brought along his five children from various marriages. They were four boys and a girl, which puzzled me. I had had the impression that his children were all boys. But the girl called him Daddy, so I must have been mistaken. He called her Erica or Angela; he introduced us in his customary offhand, mumbling manner, so that I couldn't quite make out whether he said Erica or Angela. Erica or Angela was wearing a dress, and that was puzzling too: all the girls I see out my window nowadays wear jeans or shorts. It was a white sundress with tiny blue and yellow flowers and a wide sash. A trifle short for this year, but at her age that hardly mattered. Very delicate, very girlish. A throwback to an earlier day. I might have had a dress like that. The girl's long scrawny arms and legs stuck out plaintively from the pretty dress, and her light-brown hair needed washing and was not well combed. She looked like a girl without a mother, a girl dressed by a well-meaning amateur, although according to my accountant she did have a mother, a most attentive one. Three of the boys were dark, ruddy, and robust, wore red shirts, and smiled a lot. The fourth resembled his father: reedy and tall for his age, very pale, with straight rust-colored hair, full lips, and inquisitive, cunning green eyes. All the children seemed about five or six years old, though surely that was impossible. No, not impossible if they all had different mothers. Yes, impossible, if my accountant had been married to each of the mothers in succession, as he claimed. I would have liked to ponder this mystery for a while, being a writer of mysteries, wildly successful ones; it is precisely such anomalous little gems that shatter into stories when handled. But real life was trotting along with its demands: I led the hungry pack into the kitchen and gave them juice and cookies, and then we settled down, my accountant and I, spreading our papers on the dining room table rather than in my study down the hall, so we could keep an eye on the children. I poured him some coffee.

He put on his silver-rimmed bifocals and peered at me over the top. "They'll be very quiet," he said with his diffident smile. "They're good kids. I had no choice."

"I don't mind. I'm used to it."

That was automatic politeness. I am not used to small children around the house anymore. I have children myself, twin sons, but they are grown up, in college now, and quite able to take care of themselves. They have not been around the house for a very long time. My husband took them and left, years ago, when it became clear that I was choosing perfection of the work rather than of the life. True, I was a good provider, he said, but he needed more than that. Warmth, companionship.

From the dining room table I could see into the kitchen where the three ruddy robust boys were playing cards. Go fish or rummy-they each held seven cards. A little young for cards, weren't they? Well, my accountant was noted for his crafty intelligence. It shouldn't surprise me that his children were the same. The slender, pale boy who resembled his father was drawing an abstract, geometric design with crayons on a sheet of white paper, and the girl was breaking off pieces of her cookies and eating them in minuscule bites, staring straight ahead with a sly, ruminative expression. Her oily brown hair fell over her cheeks, and every now and then she wiped her fingers on it. I could give her a napkin, I thought, but we were in the middle of a technical point about foreign sales, and besides, she seemed like the kind of little girl who would not willingly accept a napkin, who preferred using her hair.

For about fifteen minutes he explained and advised while I nodded soberly and a.s.sented, but I was distracted by a rumbling noise, like heavy things being moved some ways off. All week long, outside in the hall and on the landings, men had been installing and painting new window frames. They must have to work on Sundays too, in these inflationary times. I used to work on Sundays myself before I got sick, not out of financial need but out of compulsion-a frenzy to make up for years when I hadn't worked at all. There was also a muted sound of footsteps, most likely on the roof-I live on the top floor. Lately men had been up there adjusting the television cables, and on warm spring mornings like this one, some of the younger tenants go up to sun themselves.

Suddenly a high and pathetic wail pierced the air. We dashed into the kitchen and found the little girl huddled in a corner between the refrigerator and a china closet, hugging her arms close to her body. Her face was screwed up in despair, and as she wailed she stamped one foot rhythmically on the floor.

"What is it? What is it, sweetheart?" my accountant cried, rushing over and taking her in his arms.

I sensed something specious about her wails. Having had children, I am a connoisseur of their cries. These had erupted too suddenly and at too high a peak; they had been aimed too carefully in our direction. The stamping foot wore a white anklet and a black patent-leather Mary Jane. It looked odd, like some lone, detached thing pounding obsessively, like a heart in a researcher's jar.

"I want to go home," she wailed. "I don't like it here. There's nothing good to eat." She rolled her eyes towards me accusingly.

"Didn't you like those cookies?" I asked.

"No. They were disgusting."

I looked over at the table. Her cookies were gone and in their place was a perfect ring of golden crumbs. The other children, oblivious of her wails, were still absorbed in their card game and abstract drawing.

"But you ate them."

"I didn't realize they were disgusting till after I ate them." She rolled her eyes again, with her head slightly tilted. A very knowing, almost decadent glance. For a moment those were the eyes of a forty-five-year-old woman, cannily a.s.sessing her power.

"What a silly thing to say," said my accountant. "That makes no sense at all, Erica." Or Angela. I could never quite make it out.

Her remark didn't seem so silly to me. I could remember feeling the same way about several of my own experiences, though not cookies. Her words and her mature glance interested me, and while my accountant tried to soothe her and at the same time admonish her rudeness, I said, "I have apples. Maybe you'd like an apple better. Also Doritos, but I happen to think they're disgusting. How about an apple?"

"I don't like apples. I happen to think they're disgusting too." And then, after a brief struggle of the facial muscles, she finally smiled unwillingly at her own absurdity. I smiled back. All three of us began to laugh. But when she saw Ron and me exchange a wry private look, the way grownups do at the caprices of children, she stopped laughing and stamped her patent-leathered foot again. In the distance, the rumbling, bustling noises got louder, and the footsteps sounded closer.

"Now cut this out, Angela" (Erica?), Ron said, "and behave yourself. There's not a thing wrong with you. This is all an act."

Slowly and deliberately the girl sank to the floor, sliding her back against the refrigerator till her bottom hit the linoleum. She hugged her knees to her chest, pulled her white flowered dress modestly around them, put her thumb in her mouth, and bent her head.

My accountant squatted down to her level. "Sulking is no fun," he said gently. "Wouldn't you rather read one of the books you brought along?"

The oily hair swung four times from side to side.

I was about to say something in defense of the cookies, Pepperidge Farm Capri, and really very good, when all at once there came m.u.f.fled sniffs and sobs from behind us. The green-eyed boy who resembled my accountant was hunched over the kitchen table, weeping breathily.

"I can't believe this," Ron said. "They're usually so good. I can take them anywhere."

I shrugged. I tire easily these days and all I wanted was to get the accounting done with. Besides, I had a feeling that the girl, huddled on the floor, was peeking at me through her hair, waiting to see what I would do. The children might be in collusion, testing me in some way, but I had no idea how to behave to pa.s.s the test. There was nothing phony about the boy's sobs, though. My accountant must have felt that too: he sat down at the table, stroked the boy's head, and whispered something.

The three dark-haired robust boys continued to play cards, and I wondered what imminent scene they had in store. They might be triplets, yet my accountant had never mentioned having triplets, and it is the sort of thing one would mention, especially to someone who has had twins. They weren't identical-one's face was more round and merry, another had a faint cleft in his chin, and the arch of their eyebrows was not alike-but there seemed to be some visceral bond. When one smiled the others smiled too. They smiled in unison. They had the same mother, at the very least. Ten months apart? He had certainly kept her busy.

I went over to the weeping boy. "What's the matter? Can I do anything?" Not the cookies again? That would be too much.

The boy left his father's embrace and went to lean against the china closet near his sister, or half-sister, who didn't raise her head. "I'm so unhappy. I have no one. My mother is away on vacation for three weeks and my father is on a business trip in Spain."

"Your father?" I turned to Ron. "Aren't you his father?"

"Yes, yes, of course," he said impatiently. "His mother just remarried, so he's a little confused."

"Well, don't you think you ought to straighten him out? After all ..."

"He really knows, underneath. He's just saying that. Don't you know I'm your father?" he asked the boy.

"What's the difference who is, if everyone is gone?" With moist green eyes and skin the color of ivory, his face appealed to me, as if imploring me to agree. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't tell if that version of his life was real or not. And no one but me seemed disturbed by those rumbling noises.

"But I'm not gone," my accountant said. He sounded hurt, loving, and exasperated all at once. He took the boy's hand in his. "I'm right here. Aren't I with you right now?"

Turning his back on his father, the boy blinked away tears and told me, "My father's name is Juan Diego Cesar Romero de Castellan. He's Spanish. From Spain."

Again I glanced at Ron.

"It's true." His eyes clouded. "She married a Spaniard. He likes to pretend it's his kid. Can you imagine? The nerve of him!"

"It's a very long name," I said to the boy, and I smiled.

He smiled back. His anguish seemed to evaporate. The gleam that had left his father's eyes reappeared in his. Once more he looked cunning and inquisitive.

"A hidalgo," I added, and immediately amended it to "An hidalgo" not p.r.o.nouncing the h.

"What is that?" the boy asked.

"Oh, a fine gentleman. A knight, maybe."

The boy grinned, and with a nervous, adult gesture, ran his fingers through his russet hair. His lips curved in irony and a shadow pa.s.sed over his face, accentuating lines and deepening hollows, so that I had a fleeting intimation of those places on the face where furrows would appear years later. It was a glimpse of him as an adult, with gla.s.ses and a smooth coppery mustache and a faintly weary look, like his father.