.

“we’ll let Aunt Nora do the cooking and Ralph and I and his mother and father will go out to a restaurant.”

      Mr. Meagher smashed his fist down on the table so that the dishes jumped. “Will you stop talking horse shit.”

      Florence pushed back her chair, stood up and walked out of the room. “Come back here,” the father roared. But the command went unheeded. She went up the stairs to her bedroom.

      Mr. Meagher got up. “Goddammit,” he said, “a man can’t have a meal in peace.” He clumped out through the kitchen and out the back door of the house.

      Jim was left alone at the table. He started to laugh.

      Florence leaned over the banister. “Where’s he gone?” she asked.

      “To Nora’s.”

      “Oh hell,” said Florence. “She’ll get mad now. What are you laughing at, anyway? Sometimes I think you’re crazy.”

      “The two dragons will have a fight in the backyard,” said Jim.

      Mr. Meagher crossed the backyard to a neighboring house where the Connollys lived. He found Nora Connolly, his sister, peeling potatoes in the kitchen. The glistening white spuds were all around her. A stout, large-breasted woman, she had a round, freckled face with a pug nose stuck incongruously in the middle of it. Her cotton stockings were knotted in ugly lumps above her knees, and she was wearing an old green housecoat. She asked, “Harry, what are you all upset about?”

      “Don’t cook tomorrow.” Realizing how loudly he had spoken, he softened his voice. “Florence wants to cook, so let her do the cooking.”

      Nora pursed her lips and said, “What do I want to be doing the cooking for if she wants to do it? Tell her go right ahead. The best of luck to her.”

      Mr. Meagher nodded his head, satisfied.

      “She doesn’t know the first thing about cooking a turkey,” said Nora, cutting a half inch into the meat of the potato. “And I was thinking she wanted to make an impression on the young man and his family, but she thinks she knows it all, so the best of luck to her.”

      “Good,” said Harry. “Where’s Arthur? He’s off again?”

      “Old Nora will be good enough for every other Sunday. Indeed ’n’ I don’t feel a bit bad about it. It will be a pleasure to just sit down and eat. That is, if we’re welcome at all.”

      “You’re welcome of course,” said Harry, annoyed.

      “I could have made good brown gravy with giblets in it, and potato dressing, and—.”

      “Enough of that. Where’s Arthur?”

      “Who knows where he is? Wherever there’s a bum in town with a nickel in his pocket looking for a carousing, that’s where he is.”

      “He hasn’t called?”

      “He wouldn’t remember the number if he could reach the phone.”

      “He’ll be in,” said Harry.

      “He always makes it home,” said Nora. “Tis God’s blessing for me.”

      “I have to finish my dinner,” said Harry.

      He went back to his own dining room and sat to the table again. Thinking Florence was up in her room—she was out of sight, looking out the window in the living room—he yelled up to the second story, “I told Nora you’d be doing the cooking, and she says that’s all right. So that’s the end of it. We’ll have no more of it.”

      Jim wanted to break out laughing at the incongruity of the father yelling upstairs to Florence when she was actually only eight feet away, but his father was in a dangerous mood, so he choked off the laugh. The two went on eating in silence. The father seemed to be lost in thought. At length he looked up and asked Jim, “Who is this Ralph?”

      Jim couldn’t hold it anymore. He burst out laughing. Florence bolted into the dining room and cried “Daddy!” in a shocked voice. “You don’t even know who he is?”

      “I thought you were in your room,” said Mr. Meagher, flustered.

      Florence said, “You know who he is. He’s the lawyer. You told me one night that you liked him.”

      “I know well enough who he is,” said the father.

      Jim was laughing like a fool.

      “What in hell are you laughing at?” the father demanded.

      Jim challenged him. “What does Ralph look like?”

      “Never mind what he looks like,” the father stormed.

      Florence was near tears again. “We’ve been steady for almost four months. I thought you liked him, Daddy. You know who he is, don’t you?”

      “Well, there’s a lot of them come in and out.”

      Florence charged on. “He’s the one who’s the assistant district attorney. Remember you said that was a good job for a fellow who was starting in law?”

      “Certainly I remember.”

      “He talks about you all the time, Daddy. In fact, he wants to go out and see you at the brewery.”

      Mr. Meagher had grown white in the face. But this time it wasn’t in anger. He pressed his hand against his midsection, and bent forward.

      “Are you all right?” Florence asked.

      He didn’t answer for a moment or two, then said, “Get me a glass of milk.”

      Florence got the glass of milk. Mr. Meagher took it and got up from the table. He sat down in the living room and switched on the television. A wrestling match was on. He watched the program in silence. He still had his hand pressed against his stomach. His face was drained of blood.

      Florence quietly cleared the dishes from the table.

      “I’ll go for the groceries,” said Jim.

      “Good,” said Florence. “Curley is minding them at the counter.”

      Chapter 2

      Jim found a beautiful afternoon outside. The sun had sunk only low enough to mellow the greens of the trees and the lawn. He looked over to the wooden-shingled house next door. There was a girl sitting on the porch, her feet propped against the railing, reading a book. It was Geraldine South, or Jill, as she was called. Her twin brother, Jack, was Jim’s classmate at Fordham.

      “Hey, Jill, you want to go for a ride?”

      “Sure.”

      He waited with a pleasant feeling of proprietorship as she came across the lawn.

      She climbed into the Meaghers’ car.

      “Well, hi,” she said. It seemed to Jim that the whole front seat was suddenly filled with bare leg. She had shorts on, and her bare legs had fine, subtle lines, not muscular at all. It took a moment for the shock and pleasure of it all to wear off. But then the accustomed ways of thinking took hold: after all, it was only Jill. She was wearing a sweater; it emphasized that, at nineteen, she was still as flat-chested as most of the girls were at fourteen. And no one had ever called her a beauty. She was so much Jack’s twin it hurt her appearance. They had the same Roman nose, which fitted into Jack’s face but was too large for hers.

      “What are you reading,” he asked, as they drove down Brush Avenue.

      “Pickwick Papers.” She held up the book.

      “You’re on a Dickens kick?”

      “He’s terrific,” she said.

      “He’s corny.”

      She turned sideways in the seat to face him, and doubled her legs under her. “How can you say that?”