Robin continued to lick the spoon. Calmly she said, "Sure, Dad. I know."

"The law is an honorable profession. The law is certainly not an easy profession. But my income has-"

"Dad, cool! I know."

Roger's lips were numbed as by novocaine. He could not believe he was uttering, to this sardonic, beetle-browed daughter of his, such empty banal self-condemning words.

They sat for a while in silence. Roger's eardrums throbbed. He'd have liked to give his daughter a hard shaking. She was so maddening, as a small child is maddening, without skill or finesse; without seeming to know what she wanted. Like her mother. Wanting to hurt. Lee Ann's taunting of Roger had sometimes ended in lovemaking; a hard swift unsentimental lovemaking; the kind of lovemaking that, in marriage, signals the onset of the end of marriage; for marriage isn't passion but tenderness, pure sentiment. But with Robin, Roger felt a physical animosity, repugnance. He wanted simply to knock the smirk off her childish face.

Still Robin persisted. "Basically, Dad, you defend white-collar criminals. What's to be proud of?"

Middle Age: A Romance *

"Criminals? That's ridiculous."

"Aren't they?"

Roger wondered if his daughter was truly so uninformed about his work. His life. Or whether this was part of her tormenting of Dad. He said, "Most of my work is contracts, wills. Legal agreements. More and more our firm works with corporations, not individuals. We rarely go near a courtroom. What gave you the idea your father is a defense trial lawyer?"

"I thought you were. Sometimes?"

"Rarely."

"You don't actually help people, do you? Poor people-"

" 'Poor people' are not the only people who require the help of the law."

Roger spoke calmly, though the pulse was hammering in his head. "I think you must have a very narrow concept of the law."

"Nothing you do is a matter of life and death, " Robin said, with an air of exasperation, "-it doesn't matter! Not really."

Roger tried to smile, an affable dad, though steeped in corruption. He said, "Most actions in our lives don't 'matter'-ultimately. Yet-they matter to us. My clients wouldn't agree with you, honey."

Calling this beetle-browed disdainful young person, hair hanging in her face, jaws chewing pecan pie with mechanical precision, honey! Dad was trying, trying pitifully hard. It would be noted that Dad was trying pitifully hard. But Robin dismissed this ploy with a wave of her fist.

"What's the law for, Dad? Basically to make money for lawyers, isn't it? I mean, basically."

"Law is-" Roger faltered, a man on the edge of an abyss, "-the cornerstone of civilization. Without law-"

"What's civilization," Robin interrupted vehemently, "just a power structure, isn't it? A hegemony, it's called. To keep the masses, and women, in subjugation? Sure, people like you love 'law,' the 'law' is always on your side."

"Without law," Roger said, gritting his teeth, "we'd be savages."

"We're not savages, now?"

"If we were, honey, you would know it."

Robin regarded her father across the white linen table top. Across the soiled remains of plates, cutlery. Something was exposed in her for an instant, a dark raging knowledge between them, of how far Daughter might push, and how far Dad might consent to be pushed, before there was a catastrophe. But, how delicious the possibility of catastrophe! Roger saw in his daughter's widened blinking eyes a look of spiteful innocence *

J C O*

that must have preceded the deliberate twisting of her ankle on the playing field. I hate myself, why shouldn't you hate me, too?

Quickly she looked down. Her heavy face darkened with blood. She pushed her dessert plate away, with just her fingertips, in a sudden fastidious gesture of repugnance. As if finally she had disgusted herself, and was frightened.

R * that night. In the bedroom that was his, ad-joining the bedroom that was his daughter's. (Quietly she'd locked the door between the rooms. He'd heard her.) His eyes kept opening, he was disoriented, confused. His guts were writhing snakes. He could not envision what the weekend would be. The whole of Saturday and much of Sunday in Washington, in the company of his daughter.

Yes, but Roger was the girl's father, he loved her.

Certainly, yes, he loved her.

He had not wanted the divorce, only his pride kept him from begging.

Why are you unfaithful?

Why? Out of loneliness.

Loneliness for who, for what?

Out of the fear of loneliness, maybe. Adam, I don't know!

But to jeopardize your marriage, your family, for a reason you can't explain?

If I could explain it, Adam, fuck it I wouldn't have to do it, would I?

When he woke, his eyes stinging, tears of rage, disappointment, loss, he couldn't remember where the hell he was. But he was alone, Adam had departed. He'd lost his best friend and what had he, instead?

He got up to use the bathroom. Quietly. Not wanting to wake Robin on the other side of the door.

He would have liked to talk with Adam. To talk and laugh together.

He had yet to tell Adam about the misadventure in Middlebury. Adam was the one to appreciate the pathos, and the grotesquerie.

This helpless yearning to come together with a woman: with the lost half of one's soul. Lost half of something.

How he and Abigail Des Pres had scrambled from each other's embrace like guilty children. Abigail went to open the door, why Abigail was compelled to open the door to that furious scratching Roger would have no idea, and in bounded Apollo, wolflike, tawny-eyed, burrs in his coarse Middle Age: A Romance *

silver-tipped coat. He was limping and panting. Though the dog must have been crouched outside the door it seemed, now the door was opening, that he'd been running, the force of crazed momentum carried him inside. He was ravenously hungry, Abigail fed him in the kitchen. Abigail and Roger watched the husky-shepherd eat. Politely then Abigail asked Roger, who'd adjusted his clothing, and more or less managed to regain his composure, if he would like to stay for dinner; but Roger coolly declined.

Was Roger Cavanagh no more-or maybe less!-than a dog, to be fed by this woman out of pity?

He went away, he wanted never to see her again. The very thought of her, the lurid soft mouth, the discolored eye and bruised face, the thin tremulous yearning body, was repugnant to him. It was an insult to his manhood, to be so treated! And the other woman, the red-haired woman, he would not think of, at all.

Still, Roger Cavanagh felt responsible for Abigail Des Pres, he worried about her, and found himself calling her; he wanted not to call her, and felt relief when she didn't answer her phone, and no answering machine clicked on to take his message. Finally, a week or so after the Apollo episode, Roger drove out Wheatsheaf to Abigail's house. In the circular driveway there was a lawn service truck, and Roger parked behind it. If Abigail was home, if Abigail would see him. If this was meant to be, then it was meant to be. He would obliterate utterly his love for the red-haired woman, he would sink and sink in this woman, and make an end of it. If he made love to her just once, she would adore him, she would become his wife, he seemed to know. He did want to marry again, he was in horror of remaining alone much longer. But when he went to ring the front doorbell, the foreman of the lawn service crew told him, above the roar of motors so powerful that Roger's skull vibrated, that Mrs. Tierney was gone for the rest of the summer-"To Nantucket."

I they drove in the direction of Washington, D.C., in pelting rain. Wind rocked the car, Roger seemed to know they would never get to their destination.

The previous day had been autumnal, beautiful. This day was a raw churning cloud-mass, spewing rain like gunfire. Breakfast at the Colonial Hanover Inn had not been a pleasant experience. At first Robin refused to order anything, screwing up her pug-face in a juvenile mimicry of nausea.

J C O*

"I never eat breakfast." Reprovingly Roger said, as any parent must, "You should, breakfast is the most important meal of the day." Deardeaddad's lips moved numbly. He had no idea what he was saying. Deardeaddad-speak. As if simply needing to be courted, Robin was easily won. "O.K. If you insist. I'll eat!" With grim satisfaction then ordering an enormous breakfast of eggs, sausage, waffles which she ate greedily, at times lowering her head toward her plate. Roger, skimming USA Today, which was provided free for hotel guests, tried not to observe. He had no appetite himself except for black coffee, fresh-brewed, as many cups as he dared. In the BMW, lurching through rain, Roger's heart leapt and thudded in his chest. Robin complained of the "gross" meal she'd had, rubbing her belly, blaming Deardeaddad, which was only logical. She began to fiddle with the car radio. No CD in the glove compartment was to her liking. They were bound for the nation's capital to see, mostly, museums. Such great museums! On the phone planning their weekend, their first father-daughter weekend in more months than Roger cared to recall, Robin had been excited as a young child. Especially, she was enthusiastic about the Air and Space Museum. A few years before, in eighth grade, she'd announced that she intended to study space; the "universe"; she would be an astronomer, or an astrophysicist; possibly, she'd even travel in space.

Earnestly she told her parents, "Space travel will be common, in the twenty-first century. We can all go!" Roger had smiled, hearing his daughter, thirteen at the time, make such a proclamation. Maybe the young are gifted, to see into the future?

While the middle-aged are captives of the past.

Midway to Washington, at about ten .., Robin was suddenly stricken with what seemed to be stomach cramps. Diarrhea? "Dad, exit please. I need a rest room fast." She moaned softly, rocking in her seat beside him; sweat beads were forming on her forehead. Roger exited immediately, at an interstate fast-food restaurant and gas station, and Robin climbed out, groaning, and stumbled through the rain to the entrance, bent over with stomach cramps. Anxious, dazed, Roger followed Robin into the building. Now what? What now? He didn't want to think that his daughter had made herself purposefully sick, gorging at breakfast. Or, was it the case, once she'd begun eating, her hunger was such she hadn't been able to keep from gorging . . . Roger waited, guiltily. Whatever this is, it's your fault. And you know it.

After some minutes, Robin emerged from the women's room. Her face was the color of paste and her lips chalk white. Tears shone in her eyes Middle Age: A Romance *

with an odd sort of elation. She approached Roger shakily, smiling. As he was about to touch her gently, to ask how she was, Robin murmured with pitiless candor, "Morning sickness, Dad."

Teenaged rock music was being piped into the lobby, loud. Roger cupped a hand to his ear. "I-didn't hear you, honey?"

"You heard me, Dad. You heard me exactly."

Robin pushed away from her stumbling Deardeaddad, baring her teeth in a grin, and stalked out of the restaurant. Numbly, a man in a dream, yet not a dream he recognized, Roger followed.

Morning sickness.

Morning sickness?

He had not heard. Yes, but he'd heard.

He felt as if his head was trapped inside a giant clanging bell.

"Robin! Honey, wait-"

He was sure it was a misunderstanding. A joke. Robin was a clever mimic, a gifted satirist. She was not the kind of girl who . . .

Roger tried to help Robin, who was swaying as if faint, walk to the car, but she shrugged away. In the car she hunched far over, arms crossed over her stomach. A sharp odor of vomit lifted from her like a befouled breath.

Roger slid into the seat beside her, trying to remain calm. "Honey, you said-morning sickness? Does that mean-?"

Robin said flatly, "You know exactly what that means, Dad."

"Does-your mother know?"

"No."

"Does- he know?"

"Who's he? "

"The, the-" Roger couldn't bring himself to speak the word, it seemed in that instant an obscene word: father.

They sat in a tense silence for what seemed a long time but was no more than two or three minutes, rain streaming down the windows of the new-model metallic-gray BMW. Roger's mind was working rapidly.

Trying to recall if Lee Ann had ever mentioned that Robin had a boyfriend; that she saw boys. Trying to recall if at the school Robin had breezily introduced him to a boy whose face should have lodged in his memory. Trying to think how much a fifteen-year-old at a progressive private school would know about pregnancy, the option of abortion.

Panting, trying not to sob, Robin said, "You know who the father is, Dad. Don't you?"

"I-do?"

J C O*

"Think!"

"I c-can't, honey. Who?"

Robin turned on him, pushing out her lower lip in a monkey-like gesture of disdain. " 'Honey.' How many females have you called that? "

Roger was stymied. He sat in a paralysis of indecision. He would have to telephone Lee Ann, immediately. They would have to confer. A decision would have to be made. It didn't occur to Roger to ask his daughter how long she'd been pregnant; when the baby was due. He would recall afterward that the very concept the baby was no more real to him than the concept of eternity, or space travel.

Robin blew her nose extravagantly. Clearly she was enjoying her own misery as well as his. Again that morning she'd put on the ratty flannel shirt, buttoned halfway over her big breasts, the green T-shirt beneath.

Her thighs were bulky in the khaki pants, her feet like wedges in the filthy running shoes. What boy would have been drawn sexually to Robin Cavanagh! Almost, Roger sensed an air of pride in her. You see, Daddy?

Somebody desires me even if you don't.

Then she turned to him, and spoke. Such words, Roger couldn't comprehend. "You, Dad. You're the one."

Seeing the sick stunned look in Roger's face, Robin laughed. Opened the car door again and climbed out, into the rain, leaving Roger staring after her. What was this? What was happening here? What had Robin said? Obscene, unspeakable! He would never forget, through his life. You, Dad. You're the one.

He'd begun to shake, his teeth chattered with cold. His daughter was accusing him of-what? Incest? Rape?

It wasn't possible. Yes, but it was possible.

His daughter's accusation, her hysteria. A fifteen-year-old's revenge.

Even if no one believed her! Lee Ann, for one, would never believe her.

Sick with dread, his knees nearly buckling under him, Roger climbed out of the car and followed Robin behind the building, through chill pelting rain around a corner, beneath an overhang, close by a dumpster over-flowing with trash. He could not have said, if he'd been questioned, where they were; what place this was. Robin was huddled against the stucco building, arms folded tightly across her breasts, her round childish face curdled with spite, yet with a kind of dark ecstatic glee. Rain had darkened her clothing, droplets ran down her cheeks like cartoon tears. When Roger moved to touch her, gently to cup his hand on the nape of her neck, Middle Age: A Romance *

she jerked from him like a nervous young horse. She laughed again, daringly. Slyly she said, "Hey, Dad: I'm not. I was just kidding."

Roger required a long moment to absorb this new fact.

"You're not-pregnant?"

"Whoever said that I was? God, Daddy: gross!"