"Good G.o.d no," he mumbled from inside his atlas. "Would kill the tone. Here's a town named Cheatyourboss. Believe it or not."

"What country?"

"California."

"Oh you."

"Word of honor. Population two-hundred-and-sixty-three."

"Two-hundred-and-sixty-four," I suggested, "now that McGovern's out there."

"That's what Enoch meant. Don't abet the man," she admonished me, pleased that I was trying to: but Enoch was oblivious. "Anyhow I was telling you-early this evening I sent out to this shop for some hats and well, they brought a pile of them and I picked this Mother Mary one and just then who should walk in with the milliners walking out but this same Western Union boy! Not a third one I said-"

"Not a third one," I interrupted, and took it from her: IN FRISCO IN THE FALL.

THEY HAVE NO RATS AT ALL.

EXCEPT ON TWO LEGS.

"This one is really very good," my mother said. "I may decide to let him go ahead and print it when he gets back. If there's room. Of course that business about counting the syllables is such a bother it's hardly worth it."

"Then don't count them," Enoch said, momentarily emerging.

"Silly! If you don't count them how can you tell it's a haiku?-What have you got there?" she demanded out of the middle of her triumph: she was watching me dip into the pocket of my skirt.

"Do you have room for this? It's a present from Mrs. Karp."

"Mrs. Karp? Euphoria Karp? What a coincidence! I mean here we are talking about verse forms, and in you march with, with a-"

"Placebo," I said, surrendering it.

"Imagine." She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the page and marveled. "How in the world did you get mixed up with her?"

"Her husband's going to Russia to see about getting you royalties," I provided, "with a delegation. The humor's for Bushelbasket, none of the harpies would have it, so she's giving it to you. It's supposed to be humor."

"Those gangsters," my mother muttered, but this was merely automatic; having made her obeisance to justice, she was free to resume her astonishment. "Certainly her verse is humorous, it's known to be humorous. What is it," she said, examining the placebo's contours, "a suppository?"

I recited: "William says not to worry, Karp will do what he can."

"You met her at William's place? Karp too? What were you doing over there in the middle of a business conference?" Under the eyelid of her cowl my mother's eyelids blinked suspiciousness.

"It wasn't business, it was a party."

"What was Karp doing at that boy's party?"

"He came a day early," I said, not very diligently searching after Mrs. Karp's story. "No, a day late I think it was."

"A day late for what?" my mother said sharply.

"That Russian thing. Making them give in on your royalties. William asked him to come yesterday and he couldn't. They had to stay over in Cambridge for Mrs. Karp's play."

"I know that type. They pretend to be your closest friends when they know you need them for something, and then they impose. William should have made him cool his heels," she said. "It's rude to show up when you're not wanted."

"I bet that'll be the Kremlin's view of it exactly," I agreed.

"Smarty, you know perfectly well what I'm talking about, I'm talking about you. You shouldn't go where you haven't been invited. Were you invited?" she probed again, not out of forgetfulness; she distrusted.

"No."

"No," she echoed with the satisfaction of bitterness. "So?"

"I was expected," I said, which shocked me: not for its peculiar sidewise truth, but for the tremor which, for the second time that day, my voice was unfurling like a signal in my back.

"You were expected all right. You were expected to stay home and not go where you weren't asked. How many chances do you think those boys-"

But Enoch's speculative eye had joined us. He brushed his book from his thighs and came to stand beside my mother, his thumb stabbed into the thick core of his cheek. "You were expected?"

"Yes. Sort of."

"William's boy expected you?"

"The whole thing was a surprise," my mother broke in, insisting. "Weren't you listening? William's boy wasn't expecting anyone."

"Then William," Enoch pursued. "William expected you." He was soft and quick, concentrating, like a man pulling away the skin of a delicate scaleless fish.

"He wasn't surprised to see me," I said. "He told me that."

"Not the same thing," my mother drew out of herself, slow with scorn. "Bad manners from her wouldn't surprise a demon out of h.e.l.l."

"So you were expected," Enoch concluded. "Let it stand at that. But not necessarily today?"

"Not necessarily."

"And not necessarily this month?"

"No."

"And not necessarily this year?"

"No," I said.

"What is this?" my mother leaped in. "Cabbalah? A Zen catechism?" She was viewing me disgustedly. "As if it wasn't enough to embarra.s.s yourself in front of those boys by running after them, you had to go break up a very important, possibly valuable, legal conference that might decide my entire future with the Soviet Union!-You can't deny you injected yourself right into the middle of it? You know how polite William is, if he saw you there he'd take you right over to him no matter what he was dealing with at the moment, he'd simply break it up then and there-"

I defended myself: "But they were halfway through when I got there-"

"Halfway through! Those gangsters! Halfway won't get me my royalties, will it?"

"Allegra," Enoch said.

"Are you listening to her? Are you listening? Halfway she says!"

"I think it was the whole way."

"What?"

"Take off that idiotic visor, helmet, whatever it is, that piece of stupidity," he commanded her; his gentleness was not protective. He chose not to disclose the sources of his reasoning, yet he continued to reason, and this made him seem dangerous even without provocation. To me he said: "What did you go there for?"

"What do you think she went there for?" my mother intervened. "To humiliate herself and grab trouble! Those boys wouldn't look at her the first time, and then at least I had her dressed, and will you just please observe her now, that awful skirt with pockets, all ribbed up like she's been on horseback the whole day in it, now she's after those boys! She heard those boys were over there, that's why she went. Those law students, perfectly acceptable boys-"

"I didn't go on account of the boys," I said.

"She didn't go on account of the boys," Enoch said. His repet.i.tion of this, his tone very simple and in spite of simplicity reverberating with ominousness, brought a glimmer of bewilderment into my mother's mouth; a startled bubble blew itself up at the delta of lips and cheek. "Take off that headgear, will you? You're got up for a duel-I told you before I won't be your second in this, no matter what."

"But we're going out in a minute-" All the same she complied, pulling off the connected segments of her hat like a sausage moulting; meanwhile directed erratic disputations at me. "I don't know why you're so complacent, I'll bet you're not even packed properly; leaving tomorrow and disappears the day before and not even packed-"

But here, perhaps because by yielding to my stepfather she showed herself vulnerable, exposed to dread-her scalp obvious in patches through insufficient hair had a piteous spark, like a candle by day-I slid out the thin point of my accusation: "But there wasn't a divorce-"

Her look, coming to take me slow-motion, emptied itself en route. "Oh, is that it? Is that it? What everything's about?"

"Because you were never married," I completed it, and waited to feel the blow I had cast against my own frailty subside.

But she held on; she was all skilful deflection; or else all opacity. "Well we were married at first. We had a honeymoon and everything. And just because William likes to keep up a, a relationship, it doesn't mean he doesn't feel just as divorced as I do. It's a funny time of the night to want to start a discussion about William," she said, striding off to stand behind Enoch's chair as though the back of his head had answers written on it, which she was even now consulting. "I don't deny it's a subject, the way he sort of can't let go, let go of me I mean-I suppose you b.u.mped into it over there today? Well look, it doesn't bother me, I'm not the one it really kills, and it's not that we're not on speaking terms either, nothing deliberate like that-I'm talking about Sarah Jean-it's just a kind of accident, really, we simply haven't managed to meet in all these years ... who brought it up?"

"William's son," I said, amazed that her obtuseness-wilful or genuine-should hit on a fact so squarely.

"That boy tries so hard not to be like his father. It's why he's never shown any interest in you: you represent me," she brought out: she had a trace of Enoch's manner, half abstraction, half mockery. "Look, do you want something explained? About how a honeymoon stops being a honeymoon? Well I know, I mean it's absurd at your age: but Enoch, she's always been backward, not mentally speaking, socially I mean, always since she was little. You'd know that without my saying so if you'd ever paid any attention. -Because if it isn't s.e.x relations you want to hash over, right in the shank of the evening, really we ought to get started-"

"Allegra, you're perfectly stupid," said her husband.

"Am I? Am I?" A power entered her voice. "I'm willing to talk to her, or haven't you noticed? If I'm so stupid why don't you talk to her for a change?"

"It appears not to be necessary," he said mildly.

"n.o.body has to talk to me," I said.

"Then what sort of an issue are you trying to raise? d.a.m.n it, she disappears the whole day, she barges into somebody's private engagement party, she ruins the Soviet Union for me-those gangsters, and then out of the blue she brings up William and brings him up and up-"

"n.o.body has to talk to me."

"Then what in G.o.d's name is it all about? What's the issue?"

"William said issue," I said.

"What?"

"William said issue. He said issue to me."

"Come to the point, will you?" she directed, loud with anxiety, and dropped her forearms over Enoch's shoulders. They came on him with a roughness, pressing down as though she could smother scorn with the weight of her wrist-bones, hooped gaudily with a twist of bracelets scribbled there like a spring. She had turned her sleevelessness into a foliage of chatter and glister fit for the vermin of photographers, implying racket, implying improbable volitions, implying scandal. "Is there a point here? Come to the point, can't you?"

"He said issue and I said illegitimate issue."

My mother released her hold and jangled her hands fearfully around the paleness of Enoch's intimately-scrolled ears. "What in the name of Christ Jesus is she talking about?"

"Me," I said. "Me me me."

"She's been told," Enoch said.

"I'm talking about me," I said.

"Pig! You you you. That's all you ever think of. Little selfish pig," my mother brought out: she walked round and round her bed.

"Wrong animal," Enoch said. "The plaint to the slaughterer. Though no pig. Ram. The ram demands to know why he, also G.o.d's own creature, is less worthy than Isaac. Everybody worries over Isaac, and then the ram subst.i.tutes under the knife, and n.o.body cares. A subject the Commentaries leave unexplored."

"I don't leave it unexplored," my mother said raspingly. "Don't give me rams, I'll ram rams down you! I want to hear things in plain English! Who told her what? n.o.body told her anything! There's nothing to tell, it's all been kept down-"

"William told her," Enoch said, flattening the atlas from thigh to thigh, like a bridge; over it he flexed his fingers, fisting and stretching. Then with a subtlety: "Are you afraid?"

"Told her what? I'm not afraid. Told her what? You think I'm afraid? I'm not afraid, there's nothing to be afraid' of! Talk!" she ordered me.

"Tell what you've been told," Enoch said.

"It's not news."

"It's news that you've been told."

"What do I care? She knows it already," I protested.

"What what what!" my mother screamed. "Talk!"

"She's brought back a dirty word and that's all there is," Enoch responded; a series of hyphens composed longitudes in his lap.

"Pig! William said something? He didn't say! He didn't! He said something?"

"Allegra."

"He said something!"