"You're afraid of me, puddy poo, aren't you?" she taunted prankishly the next time we met at a party, and she did indeed — while my wife and her husband observed from different parts of the house — tweak my nose. "Isn't he, Mrs. Slocum?"

"I wish he were afraid of me," my wife yelled back.

"Call me Wednesday," I ordered her curtly. "And I'll show you how afraid I am."

"I'm at the Plaza," she said when she called.

"I think I've got the flu," I apologized with a snuffle.

"I thought you might, baby," she chirruped pleasantly, "so I brought along a list. And I do mean baby. You come on much better at parties. You're not the only fish in the sea."

I wish I had her on her knees again right here right now. Alongside Virginia. I've done it with my wife here in my study many times. My wife and I go on honeymoon sprees still, lashing all about the house and grounds in frothing spasms. We need liquor. We've done it in all the rooms by now except the children's and Derek's nurse's. We've done it in our attached garage at night when we did not want to risk waking up anybody inside, and we've done it outside in the darkness on soaking wet grass. (If we had a swimming pool, I'm sure we'd try it in there at least once.) We've done it on our redwood patio furniture. I whiff her dense perfume again (and turn around to look). Of course her husband knew. I wonder how he stood it. I know it vexes me almost beyond toleration — I could bang bricks against my head with both hands — to recall I was called puddy poo not long ago and tweaked on the nose in public by someone tasteless and vulgar like her and that my garters were the source of innane merriment to that uninteresting Ann Arbor dropout who wore denim jeans and jackets and never seemed clean. I do not want such people to enjoy even a moment's advantage over me. I wish I had them both magnetized on computer tape and could bring them back to start all over again. It would be the same. One would tweak my nose, the other would smile and quiz me presumptuously about my garters. I called her once two months later to make a date and had to call her again to break it. I did want to see her.

"This time it's true," I explained. "I have to be out of town. Let me call you when I get back."

She sounded unexcited both times, as though all the tittering had run out of her. She didn't seem to care.

"It's all right," she said. "You're okay. My looks are gone. I lost them overnight."

She and her husband split up, and both have moved away. The children were all at college. The house stands empty and no one knows if it's for sale. I suppose my wife and I will have to split up finally too when the children are away at college. I hope it doesn't have to happen sooner while I'm changing jobs at the company or while my daughter is still mired indecisively in adolescence and high school and my boy stands rooted numbly in terror of Forgione and rope climbing and gives no sure indication yet of whether he will make his way up or down. She has nothing to do.

"I have nothing to do."

She has nothing to do but align herself unpassionately with the new women liberationists (although all that blatant discussion about orgasm, masturbation, and female homosexuality makes her uneasy).

"That's only because," I inform her, "you've been conditioned to react that way by a male-dominated society."

She is not certain whether I am siding with her or not.

"Why should you," she wonders dejectedly, "have all the advantages?"

"Do I seem to you," I answer mildly, "a person with all the advantages?"

"You've got a job."

"Get a job."

She shakes her head with a soft snicker. "I don't want to work." (She does have a sense of humor.)

"Do you want more money?"

"It's not money. You always think it's money. I've got nothing to do."

"Have love affairs. Commit adultery."

"Is that what you want?"

"It's not what I want. I can give you more money, if it will make you happier. I'll be able to."

"That's not what I want. There isn't anything I can do."

"Cure cancer. Money isn't shit, you know."

"Please don't get mad at me tonight."

"Money is love, baby, and that's no shit. I'm not getting mad."

"I'm feeling so bad."

"Don't drink whiskey after wine, and maybe you won't feel so bad."

"I may be getting my period. You even look younger than I do. And that's not fair."

"You'll live longer. Women do."

"But I'll look older."

"What do you expect, if you live longer? At least you're alive."

"I was kidding," she says. "You don't even know when I'm kidding. It's getting harder and harder to talk to you."

My own good joke about Freud, money, and excrement went right by her, and I suppose I will have to leave her for something like that someday (she has never heard of Copernicus or Kierkegaard either, although she may have heard of Camus because he was killed in an expensive sports car), although I would not want to do it while my little boy still appears in such precarious need of me. (I am not sure he needs me at all.) I do not feel he'd last if I died suddenly or moved out. (He would not know what hit him if I were gone. My daughter's wish to steal our automobile may be a wholesome development: it gives her a goal to work toward.) When he grows up and gets away from me, I will get away from him. My daughter will be away too and there'll be only Derek, if we still have him. I wouldn't want to move away and stick my wife with a retarded child. Actually, I would like to stick her with Derek. She stuck me with him. (And he won't even be a child then.) But everyone would be on her side, unless I left her for another woman, which would change everything, because that would be romantic. I think I'd elope. There'd be lots of:

"Why did he leave his wife? They have a retarded child, don't they?"

"He fell in love with another girl and ran off with her."

"Oh."

But change that to:

"Why did he leave his wife with a retarded child?"

"He didn't want to be married anymore."

And there'd be plenty of:

"He was only thinking of himself, wasn't he?"

And:

"How selfish. That poor woman. He left her alone with a retarded child just because he didn't want to be married to her. What will the poor woman do?"

I can hear those choruses of opprobrium reverberating to the four comers of the company. Not that I'm much help to her now when it comes to him. I don't have the strength. I'd rather slink off or look away. Someone will have to make the decision for me: she will, without even realizing she is doing it, or a doctor will have to aid us with an unambiguous recommendation based on anything but our own selfishness. (Our conscience must be clear.)

"He'll be much better off there, safer. They have good ones now. It's best for all of you, the other children too. It hasn't been fair to them. You deserve a rest. You've both been marvelous. I know it will be hard to give him up."

Or an illness or accident will have to occur.

Till then, I'm powerless. (I don't have the guts even to want to talk about it. I've got no answers to the unspoken criticism I imagine I'll hear. I do not want to listen for the rest of my life to my wife's second thoughts. I could forgive myself in a second for putting him away. She would not forgive either of us.) I am not the pillar of support she wants. I keep my mouth shut and my sentiments suppressed, and I adamantly refuse to merge my feelings with hers. (I won't share my sorrows. I don't want her to have a part in them. They're all mine.) I wish I had no dependents. It does not make me feel important to know that people are dependent on me for many things. It's such a steady burden, and my resentment is larger each time I have to wait for her to stop crying and clinging to me and resume placing the silverware in the dishwasher or doing her isometric hip and thigh exercises. (I can't stand a woman who cries at anything but funerals. I feel used.)