"Really?" said Jeannine, in real awe.

"Really," he said. Score one. That radiant look of gratitude. Maybe she'll react the same way when he tells her he can ski. In this loveliest and neatest of social interactions, she admires him, he's pleased with her admiration, this pleasure lends him warmth and style, he relaxes, he genuinely likes Jeannine; Jeannine sees this and something stirs, something hopes afresh. Is he The One?

Can he Change Her Life? (Do you know what you want? No. Then don't complain.)

Fleeing from the unspeakableness of her own wishes-for what happens when you find out you want something that doesn't exist?-Jeannine lands in the lap of the possible. A drowning woman, she takes X's willing, merman hands; maybe it's wanting to get married, maybe she's just waited too long. There's love; there's joy-in marriage, and you must take your chances as they come. They say life without love does strange things to you; maybe you begin to doubt love's existence.

I shouted at her and beat her on the back and on the head; oh I was an enraged and evil spirit there in the theatre lobby, but she continued holding poor X by the hands-little did he know what hopes hung on him as she continued (I say) to hold on to his hands and look into his flattered eyes. Little did she know that he was a water-dweller and would drown her. Little did she know that there was, attached to his back, a drowning machine issued him in his teens along with his pipe and his tweeds and his ambition and his profession and his father's mannerisms. Somewhere is The One. The solution. Fulfillment. Fulfilled women.

Filled full. My Prince. Come. Come away, Death. She stumbles into her Mommy's shoes, little girl playing house. I could kick her. And X thinks, poor, deceived bastard, that it's a tribute to him, of all people-as if he had anything to do with it! (I still don't know whom she saw or thought she saw in the mirror. Was it Janet? Me?) I want to get married.

Men succeed. Women get married.

Men fail. Women get married.

Men enter monasteries. Women get married.

Men start wars. Women get married.

Men stop them. Women get married.

Dull, dull. (see below)

Jeannine came around to her brother's house the next morning, just for fun. She had set her hair and was wearing a swanky scarf over the curlers. Both Mrs.

Dadier and Jeannine know that there's nothing in a breakfast nook to make it intrinsically interesting for thirty years; nonetheless Jeannine giggles and twirls the drinking straw in her breakfast cocoa fancifully this way and that.

It's the kind of straw that has a pleated section in the middle like the bellows of a concertina.

"I always liked these when I was a little girl," Jeannine says.

"Oh my yes, didn't you," says Mrs. Dadier, who is sitting with her second cup of coffee before attacking the dishes.

Jeannine gives way to a fit of hysterics.

"Do you remember-?" she cries. "And do you remember-!"

"Heavens, yes," says Mrs. Dadier. "Don't I, though."

They sit, saying nothing.

"Did Frank call?" This is Mrs. Dadier, carefully keeping her voice neutral because she knows how Jeannine hates interference in her own affairs. Jeannine makes a face and then laughs again. "Oh, give him time, Mother," she says. "It's only ten o'clock." She seems to see the funny side of it more than Mrs. Dadier does. "Bro," says the latter, "was up at five and Eileen and I got up at eight.

I know this is your vacation, Jeannine, but in the country-"

"I did get up at eight," says Jeannine, aggrieved. (She's lying.) "I did. I walked around the lake. I don't know why you keep telling me how late I get up; that may have been true a long time ago but it's certainly not true now, and I resent your saying so." The sun has gone in again. When Bud isn't around, there's Jeannie to watch out for, Mrs. Dadier tries to anticipate her wishes and not disturb her.

"Well, I keep forgetting," says Mrs. Dadier. "Your silly old mother! Bud says I wouldn't remember my head if it wasn't screwed on." It doesn't work. Jeannine, slightly sulky, attacks her toast and jam, cramming a piece into her mouth cater-cornered. Jam drops on the table. Jeannine, implacably convicted of getting up late, is taking it out on the table-cloth. Getting up late is wallowing in sin. It's unforgivable. It's improper. Mrs. Dadier, with the misplaced courage of the doomed, chooses to ignore the jam stains and get on with the really important question, viz., is Jeannine going to have a kitchenette of her own (although it will really belong to someone else, won't it) and is she going to be made to get up early, i. e., Get Married. Mrs. Dadier says very carefully and placatingly: "Darling, have you ever had any thoughts about-" but this morning, instead of flinging off in a rage, her daughter kisses her on the top of the head and announces, "I'm going to do the dishes."

"Oh, no," says Mrs. Dadier deprecatingly; "My goodness, don't. I don't mind."

Jeannine winks at her. She feels virtuous (because of the dishes) and daring (because of something else). "Going to make a phone call," she says, sauntering into the living room. Not doing the dishes. She sits herself down in the rattan chair and twirls the pencil her mother always keeps by the telephone pad. She draws flowers on the pad and the profiles of girls whose eyes are nonetheless in full-face. Should she call X? Should she wait for X to call her? When he calls, should she be effusive or reserved? Comradely or distant? Should she tell X about Cal? If he asks her out for tonight, should she refuse? Where will she go if she does? She can't possibly call him, of course. But suppose she rings up Mrs. Dadier's friend with a message? My mother asked me to tell you…

Jeannine's hand is actually on the telephone receiver when she notices that the hand is shaking: a sportswoman's eagerness for the chase. She laughs under her breath. She picks up the phone, trembling with eagerness, and dials X's number; it's happening at last. Everything is going well. Jeannine has almost in her hand the brass ring which will entitle her to everything worthwhile in life.

It's only a question of time before X decides; surely she can keep him at arm's length until then, keep him fascinated; there's so much time you can take up with will-she-won't-she, so that hardly anything else has to be settled at all.

She feels something for him, she really does. She wonders when the reality of it begins to hit you. Off in telephone never-never-land someone picks up the receiver, interrupting the last ring, footsteps approach and recede, someone is clearing their throat into the mouthpiece.

"Hello?" (It's his mother.) Jeannine glibly repeats the fake message she has practiced in her head; X's mother says, "Here's Frank. Frank, it's Jeannine Dadier." Horror. More footsteps.

"Hello?" says X.

"Oh my, it's you; I didn't know you were there," says Jeannine.

"Hey!" says X, pleased. This is even more than she has a right to expect, according to the rules.

"Oh, I just called to tell your mother something," says Jeannine, drawing irritable, jagged lines across her doodles on the telephone pad. She keeps trying to think of the night before, but all she can remember is Bud playing with his youngest daughter, the only time she's ever seen her brother get foolish. He bounces her on his knee and gets red in the face, swinging her about his head while she screams with delight. "Silly Sally went to town! Silly Sally flew a-r-o-o-und!" Eileen usually rescues the baby on the grounds that she's getting too excited. For some reason this whole memory causes Jeannine great pain and she can hardly keep her mind on what she's saying.

"I thought you'd already gone," says Jeannine hastily. He's going on and on about something or other, the cost of renting boats on the lake or would she like to play tennis.