She took a deep breath, and it was all shivery when she let it out, staggered and stuttery. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry. I should have just come out and said it, instead of behaving like an a.s.s tonight."

Now at last came the tears. A nearby church bell gonged once, just once. It was one o'clock in the morning on a dark, desolate Sunday. Anybody in their right mind would have been home in bed, under the covers, but Doris and I stood there as if we meant to stay put until the sun rose. We should have had gloves and hats. We should have had scarves. We should have never met.

Doris held her arms out toward me, this complicated, tortured person with private pains of her own. What did I know about her? Her broken-English parents died when she'd begun her college studies, never appreciating her pa.s.sion for higher education. She w.a.n.gled a grant here, a scholarship there to make her way through with the rich kids. She coc.o.o.ned herself within a fortress of books that would protect her from the cruel, ignorant world outside.

And I'd sneaked inside that fortress, not in a Trojan horse but in a Trojan condom. Now, at last, we had reached the final conflict. She took a step closer, arms still outstretched.

"Please hold me, Samuel."

I did as I was told. We held on to each other tightly, in what felt like the last embrace we would ever share. A crosstown bus stopped at the corner where we stood. The driver opened the doors for us, but I waved him off, and he seemed disappointed. He was all alone in that big double bus as he made his way emptily toward Central Park West.

Doris clung to me like a barnacle. I'd have to figure out my next move when she broke the embrace. Would we part forever right there, at the corner of Seventy-ninth and Broadway? Was I carrying the keys to my own apartment, or were they back at Doris's place, hanging on the hook beside the refrigerator? It would be awkward, going back with her now to get my keys, but then I realized that I'd have to go back there anyway to pick up my stuff-toothbrush, underwear, books. Maybe it would be better to do it this way, in one fell swoop. Everything I had would fit into a plastic supermarket shopping bag, no problem. By the time the sun rose, the break would be complete, with no need to see each other ever again.

I wanted to get moving toward whatever bleak and empty future awaited me, but I couldn't do that until Doris broke the embrace, and that wasn't happening. The snow was acc.u.mulating by this time, more than just a dusting. My hands hurt and my ears throbbed from the cold, but still Doris hung on, and then I felt her face move toward my ear in what I thought would be a farewell kiss on the cheek.

"Samuel," she breathed.

"Yeah, Doris?"

"I'm pregnant."

She said it flatly, matter-of-factly, like a government worker announcing the results of a lab test. I stared at her face and thought it seemed a little puffier than usual, a hormonal change brought about by developing life, the wiggle of the minnow within.

What could I say? I wasn't even sure I knew how to use language anymore. My entire vocabulary had been blown away by this news. Gradually the words reached my mouth, struggling like shipwreck survivors wading toward a beach. "How...far along are you?"

"About three months."

"Doris..."

I pa.s.sed out right there on the corner. I don't know how she did it, but Doris hailed a cab, loaded me like luggage, and brought me to her place, where a couple of gallons of coffee brought me around to the reality of a scenario I'd never even imagined.

How could this have happened? A hole in the condom? A hole in the diaphragm? A hole in my head that got me into this fix in the first place?

"I'm keeping it," Doris announced. "No matter what you say, I'm keeping it."

"I didn't say anything!"

"But you're hoping I miscarry, aren't you?"

"Doris, for Christ's sake."

"I don't expect you to marry me."

This was something I hadn't even considered.

"Do you want want to get married?" I ventured. to get married?" I ventured.

"Oh yes. I'm just dying dying to spend the rest of my life with a man who wants to be alone." to spend the rest of my life with a man who wants to be alone."

"Hey, Doris, come on. You like being alone, too."

"Do you have any feelings for me at all? all?"

"Of course I do!" I replied, not daring to ask her the same question.

She stared at me long and hard before saying, "Your medical plan is better than mine. It'd fill in the gaps mine doesn't cover."

It was a wedding proposal, admittedly a tough one to put to music, but there it was. I swallowed, nodded, sighed. "Let's do it, then, Doris."

"All right, we'll do it."

No rings, no getting down on one knee, no proclamations of love. There's more emotion at a driver's license renewal than there was on the night Doris and I decided to make it legal.

I married her, and she married me right back. It was a City Hall lunch break ceremony, a get-your-a.s.s-on-my-superior-medical-plan-before-the-water-breaks ceremony. We didn't have a honeymoon. On our wedding night we sat in bed eating General Tso's chicken and vegetable lo mein while Doris read a biography of Octavio Paz and I watched Animal House. Animal House.

Our marriage was under way.

Having never given any thought to being a husband or a father, I found it a little jarring to suddenly become the first thing and have the second thing looming.

I gave up my place and moved into hers, pretending not to hate cats. As I said, her parents were long dead, so at least I wouldn't be dealing with in-laws. If I was spooked by the idea of being married, I don't remember it. I'd probably have felt spooked if I'd married Doris and she wasn't wasn't pregnant. I embraced the concept that I had no choice. It was as if I'd been drafted, and there was an odd n.o.bility in the fact that I wasn't dodging the draft to avoid the war of holy matrimony. pregnant. I embraced the concept that I had no choice. It was as if I'd been drafted, and there was an odd n.o.bility in the fact that I wasn't dodging the draft to avoid the war of holy matrimony.

I sold the situation to myself. You ignore the sinking sensation in your heart and tell yourself that something is meant to be, something far bigger than either of the people involved in it. You tell yourself this is G.o.d's way of putting you on the right path, even if you don't believe in G.o.d, even if you don't believe in paths. Even Doris seemed to feel this way, and she, like so many of her academic brethren, was an agnostic.

I believed in G.o.d, all right, yet there were times when He really p.i.s.sed me off.

But I liked Him fine the day my son was born. Ten fingers, ten toes, and a loud, l.u.s.ty yell to announce his arrival into this Vale of Tears. Papoosed into a soft, snug blue blanket, Jacob looked both serene and annoyed, as if he were glad to be here despite the rocky nightlong voyage through his mother's birth ca.n.a.l. The nurse handed him to me, all seven pounds and twelve ounces of him, and this, I knew, was the Weight of the World I'd been hearing about all my life, cradled right there in my arms. There was a voice in my head, and it was my own voice, speaking six words of advice, or maybe it was a command: you cannot be an a.s.shole anymore. you cannot be an a.s.shole anymore.

I did my best to heed those words. I'd like to think I still do, but I also like to think that I have a decent singing voice, despite the pained looks on people's faces on those rare drunken occasions when I break into song.

I wanted to get out of the city, or anyway, I thought I did. I had this idea of getting a house in upstate New York, with a big backyard and a rope swing for my son, and maybe a stream nearby for fishing. Jake would go to the local public school, and I'd work for the local newspaper, writing about early frosts and backyard bear sightings.

Doris wouldn't hear of it. At this point she was teaching just two days a week, so she could actually have commuted from this mythological country town, but she wouldn't even discuss the idea. We were staying in the city-case closed. In hindsight, Doris was right. Divorces are easier in cities, and Doris probably knew ours was coming even before I did.

In a lot of ways parenthood was easier for Doris and me because we weren't in love, so we didn't have to keep the flame of a relationship burning while we attended to our parental duties. We were two adults faced with the task of raising a child, or at least keeping him alive while he was in our care. I may never have been much of a husband, but I was always an excellent soldier.

I got up in the middle of the night to feed Jake, hold him, rock him. I changed his diapers at least as often as Doris did, and I was always happy to take him around the neighborhood in his stroller. Jake had a wide-open face and a sunburst of a smile he shined on anyone who looked at him. It always amazed me that two such contrary people could produce a child like that, a child who seemed to exist in a state of delight simply because he was alive. And it was amazing for me to see people smiling back at Jake as we moved up and down Broadway, hard-a.s.s New Yorkers whose days were made better by the sight of this joyous kid.

Later on I did playgrounds. At that time I was working a night shift and didn't have to report to the newspaper until 2:00 p.m., so the mornings belonged to Jake and me. I'd be sitting on the bench with mothers and nannies, watching my two-year-old son navigate the incredibly perilous waters of the New York City playground.

It was a long fall from the monkey bars, there was always some semi-psychotic toddler who threw sand in kids' faces, and those swings! swings! My My G.o.d! G.o.d! How many times had Jake merrily wandered into the path of the swings only to have me yank him out of harm's way just a heartbeat before disaster? How many times had Jake merrily wandered into the path of the swings only to have me yank him out of harm's way just a heartbeat before disaster?

For that matter, how many strangers' kids had I saved from certain concussions, and who the h.e.l.l was supposed to be watching them?! them?!

I was popular with the young mothers. They weren't used to the sight of a man who really knew the drill at a playground, and probably took me to be an unemployed loser with a deeply nurturing soul and a wife with a good job.

I learned more about females on the playground bench than I'd ever learned on bar stools. The way they spoke here was both matter-of-fact and s.e.xy. One young mother in particular confided in me quite often. She had a toddling daughter and an infant son, and was in the middle of telling me about the trouble she and her husband were having with a downstairs neighbor's late-night loud music when she suddenly reached inside her blouse and pulled out a breast to suckle the boy.

She never broke stride in the telling of the tale, but there was so much blood pounding in my head that the rest of her story was inaudible to me. I just couldn't believe it-a beautiful, perfect young breast out there in the full light of morning. Not a hint of an effort to shield it from view as she plugged it into the greedy boy's mouth.

I managed to wrench my eyes from the sight of it as she carried on with her story, talking to me as if I were her best friend in the universe, and suddenly I realized that what I'd been hearing for years was true. You can buy them drinks, you can buy them cars, you can buy them houses, you can buy them the world, world, but it's all bulls.h.i.t. Just listen to a woman. That's really all they ask, at least until it's time to get a car and a house. but it's all bulls.h.i.t. Just listen to a woman. That's really all they ask, at least until it's time to get a car and a house.

Right there on that bench, I suddenly fell into a deep funk, and it took me a minute to figure out why. It was because I suspected that the only way I was ever going to see any woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s (besides Doris's) was here on the playground, at feeding time. I was missing out-and worse, what I wanted was just inches from my mouth.

So close, and yet so far. It was all just a matter of time, and it broke my heart to look at my happy son up there on the swings, knowing that one day, he was going to be hit by the night train of divorce. No way to avoid it, unless Doris died, or I died.

I knew Doris wasn't going to die. The average academic lives longer than a Galapagos turtle, and she was no exception. If anyone was going to die, it was me.

Lots of newspapermen keel over before they hit the big five-oh, but you can't count on it. My health had always been good, and there was no sign of that changing. Of course, I could kill myself, but what would be a worse thing for Jake to live with-divorce, or a father who did himself in?

Clearly, there was only one way this was going to shake out. The clock was ticking for Doris and me. Someday that gleeful little boy was going to live through a divorce.

He doesn't suspect it yet, though. Just look at him, pumping his legs as he soars higher and higher!

"I'm going to the moon!" he shrieks to n.o.body in particular, and it doesn't matter if n.o.body believes it, because in his mind, Jake is already there.

Oh, Christ. What a beautiful child he is, and just look at his pathetic father, sitting on the bench all hunched over, as if he's on a bar stool at last call! Doesn't he know how lucky he is to have a boy like that? And who could believe that just minutes ago, the father of such a beautiful, gleeful boy could have been entertaining thoughts of suicide?

CHAPTER EIGHT.

When Jake composes himself we leave the Starbucks and start walking west. It's clear to me that he's in no mood to board a bus, that he wants to walk all the way to my place, and that's fine by me. It's a beautiful evening, with just a taste of autumn in the air. The sun is low and orange as we walk toward it through the hills and valleys of Central Park.

"You okay, Jake?"

"Not bad," he says. "That thing with Sarah was hanging over my head, and now I've cleared the deck. I'm through with that school, and I'm through with her."

"Good way to look at it."

"It's hard to trust a woman, isn't it, Dad?"

"It's hard to trust anybody. anybody."

"Did you ever trust anybody?"

"Not with anything that really counted."

"Did you trust Mom?"

Bull's-eye. "Well, sure."

Jake chuckles. "That wasn't very convincing, Dad."

"What do you want me to say?"

"How about the truth?"

"I trusted your mother with matters pertaining to your welfare."

Jake laughs out loud. "Jesus, Dad, have you been attending law school? What an answer!"

"Jake. Just ask what you really really want to ask, all right?" want to ask, all right?"

He stops walking, catches my elbow. "Did you ever love my mother?"

There's no way around this one. The truth will hurt, but a lie will kill him, and I want my son to live.

"No, Jake, I didn't," I say. "I'm sorry."

I feel as if I've just confessed to a murder, the murder of my son's spirit, but he's not crying, or even breathing hard. He's just nodding, as if to confirm his own thoughts. He releases my elbow and we resume walking.

"Funny," he says, "I found your wedding license in one of Mom's drawers a few weeks ago."

"You looked through her drawers?"

"I checked the date," he says, ignoring my question. "Six months before I was born."

"That's right."

"So you got married because she was pregnant."

"Yes, Jake, that is exactly what happened. It's hardly a new thing in this world."

"It's new to me."

We walk in silence for a minute or so. I reach out for Jake's shoulder but chicken out at the last second, letting my hand hover a moment before dropping it and shoving it in my pocket. I'm afraid that my touch will be more than he can bear, now that he knows the truth about his parents' marriage.

"I'm sorry, Jake."

"It's okay."

"Are you stunned?"

"Actually, I would have been stunned to hear that you loved her."