The marriage

By Ann Bannon

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Title: The marriage

Author: Ann Bannon

Release date: May 29, 2026 [eBook #78780]

Language: English

Original publication: Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1960

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78780

Credits: Adam Buchbinder, Jens Sadowski, the San Francisco History Center and James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARRIAGE ***

It should have been the happiest night of their lives—because of
Page’s new job and the baby Sunny was expecting. But then the
long distance phone call had come....

Sunny sat in tense silence, holding herself together by sheer
force of will. Page stood motionless, his back to her, his head
bowed.

“Page?” she whispered. “What is it, darling? Did your step-father
tell you who you really are?”

“He told me,” Page said bitterly. He turned to his wife and saw
the fear on her face. “He told me you and I are through, Sunny.
It’s the same as if we’d never been married at all.”

THAT WAS WHEN THE TERROR BEGAN—THE NIGHT THE WORLD FELL APART AND
TURNED TWO LOVERS INTO FRIGHTENED STRANGERS.

Other Original Gold Medal Books by Ann Bannon

ODD GIRL OUT
I AM A WOMAN
WOMEN IN THE SHADOWS
JOURNEY TO A WOMAN

The Gold Medal seal on this book means it is not a reprint. To
select an original book, look for the Gold Medal seal.

The Marriage

An Original Gold Medal Novel

by ANN BANNON

GOLD MEDAL BOOKS
Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn.

First Printing, December 1960

All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to
persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Jack Mann answered the phone with a yawn, as if he were expecting his
mother-in-law. But it was simply contented, end-of-the-day fatigue.

He picked up the receiver and smiled at his pretty young wife, Laura.
She was combing their daughter’s hair, getting her ready for bed. Betsy
was a lovely child, delicately blond and appealing, like her mother.

It was a still, soft evening, early summer in Chicago, and pleasant
weather.

“Hello?” Jack said into the phone, coming down from the yawn with a
comfortable sigh.

“Hello? May I speak to Jack Mann, please?”

“Speaking.”

It was a male voice and unfamiliar to Jack.

“Mr. Mann, my name is Winkler.” The voice was cultured, a little shy.
“Some friends of yours asked me to call....”

Oh God, Jack thought. He’s visiting town and wants a free sack. Or
worse, a free girl.

Laura Mann looked up to see her husband’s comical dismay. “Who is it?”
she whispered.

Jack shrugged. “What friends?” he asked.

“The Pringles. Sunny and Page,” Winkler said.

Jack Mann came to astonished attention. “Page Pringle?” he said, and
Laura’s face, too, became tense with interest. She forgot Betsy’s hair
and watched Jack.

“Is he all right?” Jack asked. “Where is he?”

“Yes, he’s fine,” said Winkler. “I talked with him just two days ago. He
says you were roommates at the University of Illinois for a year.”

“That’s right. He signed up for my math course, and when I passed him he
offered me a bunk. We ended up good friends. But ...” Jack’s face
wrinkled into a mass of worried lines. “I’m surprised to hear he
mentioned me to you, after the set-to we had last time we met. My wife
and I have been damn worried about him—and Sunny.”

“They’re out in California, in Barstow. On a honeymoon, they said,”
Winkler told him. “Should be back here in Chicago in a week.”

Jack, listening to the strange voice, felt himself getting careful and
suspicious. Who the hell was Winkler? Sunny and Page Pringle were Jack’s
friends, arguments or no, and there was a lot about their lives and
their marriage that a stranger would have been stunned speechless to
learn.

It was the most curious marriage in all Jack’s wide knowledge: shocking,
illegal, passionately faithful, even wildly wonderful at times. Some
miracle had held it together, but there was no way of telling for how
much longer. It seemed to Jack, whenever he saw Page and Sunny, that the
bonds of their love were about to snap and send them spinning apart for
the rest of their lives.

“Who are you, Mr. Winkler?” Jack asked frankly.

But Winkler, like Jack, became wary in his turn. “I live here in
Chicago,” he said. “I work here, and....”

“And?” Jack prompted.

“Mr. Mann, this is pretty forward of me, but I wonder if I could meet
you? If you’d care to have dinner with me?”

“Just a minute,” Jack said, covering the receiver. “Some guy who says he
knows the Pringles and they told him to look us up,” he whispered to
Laura.

“Well, ask him to dinner with us tomorrow,” she said. Husband and wife
gazed uncertainly at each other for a moment. Winkler could be a
blackmailer, a detective or a guy with a grudge, as well as a friend. At
last Laura made up her mind for both of them. “If it’s about Page and
Sunny Pringle, I want to hear it,” she said.

So Jack invited him.

* * * * *

Winkler’s cautious voice sounded almost relieved. “Thanks, Mr. Mann;
I’ll be there,” he said.

Jack hung up, giving Laura a wry grin. “Well, now we’ve done it,” he
said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Who the hell could he be?” He
walked toward Laura, catching Betsy on the way and hoisting her into his
arms.

“Didn’t he give you a clue?” Laura’s lips were parted with curiosity.

“Just that he met the Pringles in Barstow, California.” He sat down and
released his daughter, who scampered out of the room.

“Damn it, honey, do you suppose those two kids worked it out?” Jack
said. “Went back together in spite of everything?”

“It doesn’t sound like Page,” Laura answered. “But still, the way he
loves that girl is something. It seems to be a case of head against
heart. Only I always thought Page was two-thirds head.”

“He thought so too, till he fell for Sunny,” Jack said, lighting a
cigarette. “I never saw a kid so much in love. And being married to her
only made it better. Gosh, life is goofy. You’d have thought that was
the world’s ideal marriage. Two handsome, intelligent people, madly in
love, charming, ambitious, happy. They couldn’t miss.”

“That just made it tougher for them when everything suddenly went to
hell,” Laura said.

“Yeah. They didn’t know about each other when they married. At least we
knew about us, honey. We knew the worst. Maybe we figured we couldn’t
last and when we did, it came as a wonderful surprise.” They smiled at
each other.

“Here we are, safe and comfortable and indecently happy,” Jack went on.
“If I could just teach you to squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.”
She laughed.

“Couple of queers,” he said, speaking the word gently, without malice.
“And we made it. The Pringles barely had seven months before the sky
fell on them.”

Laura shook her head with pity. “I still think they could make it work,”
she said. “They have a tough thing to live with, but Sunny’s ready to
try. If Page could only—”

“Page is the problem child. He always was,” Jack said.

“Problem? Or child?”

“A little of both. And in a crisis, a lot of both,” he said.

“Maybe this thing will force him to grow up,” Laura said.

“Maybe. If he has the guts to go back and live with Sunny.”

“Lord, she’s beautiful,” Laura remembered. “I don’t see how he can keep
his hands off her.”

“Hang on, doll,” Jack laughed. “Just because _you_ can’t—”

“I never touched her!” she protested indignantly. But his doubtful grin
made her add, “Well, not like you think, darling. I never made a pass at
her. You know, the kind you make when you feel like bed.”

“You never felt like bed with Sunny Pringle?” Jack teased. “Come on,
honey, don’t put me on.”

Laura pulled her poise around her like a shawl. “Sunny’s a wonderful
girl,” she said. “She is also the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life.
And to make it all perfect, she’s in love with her husband.” She spoke
ruefully enough to make him chuckle again. He couldn’t help kidding this
wife he treasured, but he did it with obvious love and she never
resented it. Their relationship was odd, but satisfying to them.

“I just held her,” Laura admitted. “I comforted her when she hit the
dumps. I even kissed her hair. Like a sister. You show me a sister who
could be any more proper than I was!”

“I’ll show you a sister who’d have kissed more than her hair, that’s for
damn sure,” he said.

“Jack, you talk like a jealous husband.”

“Which I am,” he said softly.

She relented and went over to his chair, going behind to massage his
shoulders. He relaxed with a sigh.

“I know you are,” she said. “You’re never noisy about it, but it hurts
you to see me with a woman. Jack darling, sometimes I think you ought to
find somebody, too. Just for now and then, for a release. You wouldn’t
feel so possessive about me, then. It’d make you happier.”

“I’m as happy as I can stand to be,” he said, caressing her hands. “I
have you and Betsy. And I’m through horsing around with pretty boys
forever. When you hit forty you look too silly chasing the teen-agers.
All I want now is my family.”

She smiled down at the top of his brush cut.

“And if I have to be a little jealous ... well, what the hell. It’s a
small price.”

She gave his head a fond shove, dislodging his heavy tortoise-shell
glasses. “Okay, have it your way,” she said. “Just explain one thing to
me. How come two inverts like us can make a marriage work, and two
normal people like Page and Sunny can’t?”

“If I could explain that, I’d write a book.”

Laura was a lesbian. But like all lesbians, she couldn’t escape her
femininity. She loved Jack Mann in every way but one, and she would
never leave him. Her love had given her the courage to bear him their
child. She admired his mind, enjoyed his company, and needed him. No
other man would ever touch her.

Jack gave her her head with the women she wanted, but she never abused
his confidence, nor exposed him and Betsy to her occasional crushes.
That part of her life was completely separate from her home.

For Laura and Jack Mann, home, love, and marriage were inviolate. Their
life together hadn’t been easy to build, and they were proud of it. It
made the Pringles’ crack-up all the more sad and dramatic to them.

“If you and I had found out about ourselves what Page and Sunny found
out—so suddenly—_after_ they were married,” Jack mused. “Honey, I’m not
so sure I could have taken it any better than Page did. It was that
bad.” He ditched his cigarette in an ashtray by the chair.

“Did you ever know anybody named Winkler?” she asked him.

“I will tomorrow night,” he said.

“What does he want to tell us? That Page and Sunny are going to stick it
out?” Laura said.

“Think it over,” Jack said. “If he can tell us that, he knows the whole
damn crazy story.”

“He couldn’t!” she cried. “Almost nobody knows.”

“If he doesn’t, I’ll bet my last dollar he wants us to tell _him_,” Jack
said. “And that gives me an idea.”

“An idea who he is?” she said.

But he only winked at her.

Winkler, tall and reserved, inclined his silver head and listened,
absorbed, while Jack talked. He was kind and friendly, almost
ceremoniously polite.

The Manns had greeted him earlier in the evening with misgivings. But he
seemed more afraid of them than they of him, and it made them anxious to
reassure him. Jack was naturally gregarious, Winkler naturally shy, so
it was inevitable that Jack should take over the conversation. He spoke
of Page and Sunny Pringle, answering Winkler’s questions about the safe,
innocent side of their lives.

“Page was a good-looking boy,” Jack said. “Over six feet, blond,
clean-cut. It’s a lucky thing, too, considering how he met Sunny.”

Laura kicked him under the table, the way she did when he spoke too
warmly of other men, and poured Winkler some more coffee to distract
him.

“He seemed very intelligent,” Winkler told Jack. “It’s hard for a
stranger to judge, though, and I only talked with him for a little while
in the restaurant where we met. He seemed to need somebody to talk to
and I was there. Later he said he wanted you to know that the things you
told him during your argument were beginning to make sense now. He said
you’d know what he meant.”

Jack nodded. “Where did you meet?” he asked.

“It was a little hash house in Barstow. On Route 66. He was with the
loveliest girl I ever saw. His wife?”

“Sunny,” Laura said.

“I’m surprised he asked you to come here,” Jack said. “I didn’t think he
had much respect for me after that fight.” Laura gave him a warning
frown, and he got up to get the Cointreau and liqueur glasses. While he
poured, Winkler asked awkwardly, “Why was it a good thing Page was so
handsome when he met Sunny? Didn’t she like a plain face?”

“It wasn’t the face,” Jack said. “It was the rest of him. He was stark
naked.”

Winkler blanched a little. He had all the earmarks of a lawful upright
man; a good man, but one with ordinary tastes and ordinary morals.

“Could I hear the story?” he said. “I asked for it, and I won’t condemn
it.”

“It’s pretty rough, Mr. Winkler,” Jack said candidly. “And we don’t know
you. I wouldn’t want the Pringles hurt.”

“They never will be, not by me,” Winkler said with a strange intensity
that impressed Jack and Laura. Laura tried to shoot her spouse a strong
“no” look, but Winkler had already persuaded him. She saw it coming and
she was right. Jack would tell him, even though he was a stranger.

Or perhaps Jack, shrewd and intuitive with people, saw what Laura
missed: that Winkler had known Page and Sunny somewhere before and that
his feelings for them were warmer and deeper than he admitted.

* * * * *

The way Page met Sunny was simple and slightly shocking. She was a
fair-haired, spirited girl with a lovely face. She was a college
freshman and hadn’t learned to handle her emotions yet, but she had the
willow-limbed grace and softness that men admire, and enormous charm.
Her eyes were a double-take true green, and she had been “Sunny” ever
since the first pubescent boy had noticed that kindling smile of hers.

It was mid-October, an Indian summer afternoon, smoky and golden and
warm enough to work up a sweat. Sunny was playing baseball at Lake o’
the Woods with her sorority, fielding badly but enthusiastically.

Toward the end of the game she plunged through the underbrush at the
edge of the field, chasing the ball, and there was Page. He was standing
on the strip of beach bordering the lake, laughing and drying himself
roughly with his flannel shirt. He was bare as a winter tree and he saw
Sunny at the same moment she saw him. There was a startled silence and
then the friend with Page, who was Jack Mann, his roommate, said, “See
you later, children. You won’t be wanting a chaperone.”

Page threw his shirt on the ground and stared at Sunny. “Come on in,” he
said softly. “The water’s fine.”

Sunny threw him an enchanting smile. “I lost my ball,” she said,
embarrassed but fascinated.

Jack spotted it as he retreated from the scene and tossed it to Page.
Page held it out, daring her to come and get it. And Sunny, with her
heart beating hard and making her breathless, walked up to him and held
out a bold hand. He dropped the ball into it, while she looked him up
and down to show off her sophistication. But she discovered, with a
bright blush, that she hadn’t any.

He laughed and she turned and ran, clutching the ball. But at the bushes
she looked back. “You’re beautiful,” she cried. He kept laughing,
watching her until she disappeared through the bushes and back to her
game.

They met once again that day, when Page and Jack walked past her group
on the way to Page’s ramshackle runabout. Jack climbed in while Page
approached Sunny, who was cooking a wiener to death while she kept her
eyes on him.

“I’m Page Pringle,” he said.

“How do you do?” Sunny answered solemnly. “I’m Sunny Rotheli.”

They smiled at each other. “Your hot dog is burning up,” he remarked.

She snatched her stick out of the fire and flipped the dog over her head
into the leaves. “Oh!” she said.

He touched her fair face with his hand. “I’ll call you, Rotheli,” he
said.

“You do that, Pringle,” she said, half irked and half infatuated.

Page gave Jack a crazy ride back to town.

* * * * *

They got off to such a fine start that it seemed like a pre-destined
romance, if there are such things. They made a perfect couple, in a
wonderful old-fashioned way, complementing each other. They even looked
perfect: two blond heads, two pairs of green eyes, two quick smiles.

“You look like an old married couple,” Jack commented.

“What do you know about old married couples?” Page said.

But Jack, who was a good bit older than his undergraduate friend,
insisted it was true. Page and Sunny took to each other in a way that
seemed almost chemical, adopting each other’s gestures and expressions
with a sort of passionate admiration. For those first few months the
affair was fast and thrilling, even slightly delirious.

* * * * *

Their first date was a careful game of hints and titillations and sudden
sweet impressions. He liked her voice, the firm lines of her body, her
warmth. They would both have preferred to sit and look at each other
without speaking, but they felt the necessity to impress each other with
talk and were afraid to be quiet—until late in the evening when silence
unexplainably became possible ... and lovely, and intimate.

They were sitting in Page’s car—“Bucephalus,” he called it, the rumbling
warhorse. The cold autumn air touched them through a score of cracks in
the doors and windows and made them pull closer together for warmth.
Page put his arms around her and blessed the weather.

“You feel so sweet,” he told her.

“I’m not sweet,” she objected. “That’s for little girls.”

“How old are you, little girl?”

“Eighteen.”

“That’s pretty old.”

She sighed. “All right, seventeen, but only for six more weeks. And I
know my way around, which I would have thought you’d notice. How old are
you?”

“Twenty-eight. I’m a vet. Korea.” He kissed her neck, rubbing a hand in
her bright hair, and then pulled away slightly to see her face. She was
serious about “sweetness” being for children. But she had it, and in
spite of her best efforts it showed.

Page could just begin to glimpse it as he held her in his arms and felt
her pulsing against him in the dark. That was when the welcome silence
fell, and neither of them worried about it. It was good to sit there and
just hold each other, feeling each other’s breath or the tickle of a
moving eyelash. So good that Page felt a curious sense of foreboding
when Sunny’s closeness began to excite him. He almost wished it wouldn’t
happen; not this fast, anyway. He held her tenderly, trying to control
it, and wondered why in the name of reason he should feel a singing in
his head over this pretty girl, superficially like so many other pretty
girls he had known.

I want her to be perfect, he thought. I’m afraid she’ll disappoint me.
Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m afraid I’m not good enough for her, good
enough at love to satisfy her. And having challenged himself on a very
touchy point, he kissed her ardently.

She reacted with a moan of pleasure that told him she had been
restlessly waiting for it. It was almost too much. She went after his
mouth like a bounty-hunter on a hot trail and he said, “Hey! Slow down,
honey. Don’t rush it.”

Her face had a familiar determination and he asked, “Sunny, are you a
virgin?”

“Heavens, no!” She was insulted. But she stopped pulling on his collar
and trying to kiss him.

He let her discomfiture build a moment and then lifted her face and
said, “It’s all right. I don’t mind. It’s a nice change.”

“You think I’m lying!” she exclaimed. “Page, I’m _not_ a virgin. Oh, I’m
not trying to brag, I think that’s crude. But you have a right to know
the truth.”

“Then tell me the truth.” He said it gently, smiling, and offending her
again with his fatherly attitude.

But the feel of his big arms around her softened her up a little.
“Well,” she said reluctantly. “I’ve done everything else _but_.” She
could feel him laughing silently at her and with an angry jerk she
started to get out of the car. But he pulled her back.

“No, honey, don’t be mad. I didn’t mean to laugh.” But he was still
laughing.

She struggled for possession of her hands, to give him a good whack, but
he wouldn’t give them up. And suddenly, to her dismay, she felt a strong
erotic spasm in response to his superior strength. At once she
stiffened. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of exciting her, not
when he didn’t play fair. In a small voice she asked, “How did you know
I’m a virgin?”

“You laid it on too thick, Sunny.”

“Laid what on?”

“The sophistication bit.”

For a moment she thought she might cry with humiliation. And then
laughter spilled over in her and saved her. “I must look like an idiot,”
she said, embracing him again.

“There’s so much about you I don’t know,” Page said. “I want to know
everything.”

“I’m not at all exciting,” she said naïvely.

“The hell you aren’t.” She could tell from the way he was breathing that
she had said the wrong thing again.

“Well, my _life_ isn’t exciting,” she corrected herself.

“It is now,” he said and she felt his firm, cool hand slip under her
sweater. Beneath his strong fingers she felt a melting delight and
suddenly the famous riddle of life seemed dazzlingly clear.

She yielded to him just to see what it was all about. And the brief
surrender became permanent, a lifetime commitment.

He pushed her head back on the car seat, kissing her, catching her hands
again and making them do strange things in strange places. She gave up
trying to stop him then, from that night forward. The feel of his hard
male body moving against her brought her to life all over and made her
need him terribly; need things she had never even tried before.

It was Page who restrained her; Page who made her hands do what her body
was aching to do instead until she began to cry with frustration. It had
been an electric shock to her that she could feel like this about a man;
about _this_ man; and she couldn’t be content with going only halfway.

“Page, please,” she begged, but they had petted too ardently; it was too
late. He collapsed beside her, answering her with sleepy kisses. When he
came to himself somewhat, he wiped her wet cheeks with his fingers.

“Sunny?” he whispered, surprised. “Did I hurt you?”

“I wish you _had_,” she said.

“Darling, I couldn’t. Not like this. When it happens I want it to be
right: a beautiful thing in a beautiful place. You deserve that. I’m no
animal.”

“It should have been tonight,” she said, quivering.

“No.” He amazed himself. With any other girl he would have demanded it,
but he didn’t want it that way with Sunny.

“You think I’m a born whore, don’t you?” she said tearfully.

“A born angel is more like it,” he said, holding her tightly. They both
felt reckless and strange, loath to leave each other but faced with a
curfew. Almost strangers and almost lovers, they looked at each other by
the light of the street lamp outside, and said simultaneously, “I love
you.” The coincidence of it startled them.

Page buried his face in her shoulder. “And I don’t even know you,” he
marveled.

“You will,” she promised happily. “After we’re married.”

“I don’t know what made me say it,” Page said, crushing his cigarette in
an ashtray and walking nervously around his room. “We said it together.
‘I love you.’ It was the damnedest thing.” He clapped his hands against
his sides and let himself fall on the couch next to Jack Mann. “Help me
out, Jackson,” he said. “I don’t want a passionate romance with a
freshman virgin.”

“You have something against freshmen?” Jack said.

“Well, I’m not in love with her, for one thing. I just said I was. You
know, the moon and the rest of it. She smelled so nice.”

“I never saw you in such a hurry to back out of an affair before. No
matter _how_ she smelled.”

“I never worried about an affair before.”

“It’s obvious you’re nuts about the girl,” Jack said.

“The hell!” Page snapped. “She wants to get married.”

“Good for her.”

“You louse!”

“Hang on to her, boy,” Jack advised. “She’s a rare one.”

Page got up and paced around again. “Well, what do you do if you’re in
love with a girl but you don’t want to marry her?” he asked.

Jack shrugged. “Live with her?”

Page grimaced and gave up.

* * * * *

But if Page complained, he was also intrigued with the idea of letting
himself get hooked. He didn’t want to be married, it was true. But he
didn’t want to be in love either, and that was already a lost cause.

Jack was not fooled. He was a sharp student of humanity. He had to be:
it was part of his self-defense. Any man who feels for other men what
Jack Mann felt has to guard himself carefully. He watches his tongue,
which might slip; his hands, which might wander; his wisecracks and
lies, and guards his feelings with a tough sense of humor.

The virtue of Jack’s abnormality was that he understood people
instinctively. He knew Page, and nothing Page could say would hide from
Jack his love for Sunny.

* * * * *

By the following spring, Sunny Rotheli was no longer a virgin. But it
had all been accomplished in a beautiful place at a beautiful time: a
starry evening, a rich, perfumed hotel room, a dime-store diamond. Sunny
had felt a wistful nostalgia for the drafty auto and the cold October
moon, but it couldn’t be helped. She had enough sense to realize she was
special to him and that he would not take her there where he had made
love to so many other girls.

Their infatuation did not abate, although Page kept hoping the thing
would burn itself out from sheer overheating.

As for Sunny, all that mattered now was to get Page to propose. She
tried everything: teasing, threats, even subversion. She complained to
Jack and tried to promote sabotage from behind the lines.

But while Page would admit to any poetic excess of passion, he wouldn’t
propose marriage.

“Live with me, then,” Sunny said mournfully.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” he protested.

“You aren’t asking me, you worm!” she said. “I’m asking you.”

“Somebody has to protect you from yourself,” he said. But the truth was
he had promised himself a year or two of travel after college. He had
seen Korea in the Marines and it wasn’t his idea of a pleasure cruise.
Now he dreamed of Europe.

He had a little money and a lot of wanderlust saved up. He was sure he
could write, and he was going to prove it in a Paris garret, find a rich
older woman to keep him, become noticed and influential, and come home
to claim Sunny in triumph.

Actually, beyond the daydreams, he didn’t know what he wanted to do,
except give himself a champagne playtime before he settled down to the
beans-and-gravy of earning a living. He meant to earn the living with
his typewriter, with words. And he might even take Sunny at her word:
make her his mistress and dispense with the marriage bit.

But as Jack kept telling him, Sunny was the kind of girl you marry and
consider yourself damn lucky to have caught. She would make a poor and
moody mistress but a sensual and loving wife. She needed security with
one man. After that she’d be all loving and giving, like Sunday’s child.

“What do you know about women?” Page would blow off at Jack when they
discussed it.

“I like ’em,” Jack said with a cynical amusement he couldn’t share with
Page. Loneliness was the abiding condition of Jack’s life. It was the
reason a close friendship like the one with Page meant so much to him.

“I like them too. But that doesn’t mean I understand them!” Page said.

“Hell, you don’t like them. You just love them.”

“I like Sunny,” Page restored.

“Oh, Sunny. She’s the one you’re going to marry. That’s the one woman a
man has got to like as well as love,” Jack said.

“Thanks, Dorothy Dix. Why don’t you write a column on the subject? You’d
make a mint.”

“Damn right I would,” Jack said. “I’d have every old maid in the country
sending me sachets.”

“Including Sunny Rotheli,” Page said.

“She won’t be an old maid. If you turn her down like the ass you are,
somebody else will grab her fast.”

“I’ll be through school in June, and by God, I’m taking off,” Page said,
gazing out the window. “I’ve planned it for two years. Once you’re
married, you’re stuck with furniture and drooling babies and a jealous
wife. And eight hours of brown-nosing a day to support the whole ugly
mess. No thanks, man. Not for me.”

“Not even with Sunny?”

“Not for a while.”

* * * * *

“He meant it, too,” Jack told Winkler. “Came June that year and he
promised Sunny he’d be around all summer. She lived in one of the
Chicago suburbs, Hillsburg—west, on the Burlington line.”

Winkler was motionless listening to this story that had started out like
so many classic college romances and had turned slowly into something so
frighteningly different. He was fascinated and repelled at the same time
by the brilliant little man talking to him. Jack was too calmly frank
about himself; so frank he confounded Winkler, who found that he had
become the helpless audience of a sort of modern ancient mariner.

“So Page went back on his promise, and didn’t see Sunny?” Winkler asked
when Jack paused for a drink.

“He took off for Europe,” Jack said. “He was afraid if he saw her once
more he wouldn’t go. It was then or never. But the poor guy outfoxed
himself. He was even unhappier over there than Sunny was back here.”

“What did Sunny do?” Winkler said.

“What could she do? Went back to school for two more years. She didn’t
see him again until the summer before her last year in college. I had
gone to New York by that time, but they told me about it later. Page had
just started to work for the Chicago _Tribune_. Decided to use his
writing ability in journalism.”

“Was Sunny still in love with him?” Winkler asked.

“Yes. Oh, she got engaged to some hometown guy, and she might have
married him. It shook Page up to find that ring on her finger. He
proposed to her on the spot ... gave her such a rush she couldn’t turn
him down. But when she said yes, neither of them suspected their
marriage would end up the horrifying mistake it did.”

It was Sunny who noticed Page’s car first, parked in her family’s back
yard. Nobody but Page would drive a crumbling runabout like that one.

“Page Pringle!” she exclaimed.

“Who’s that?” her father asked, pulling his car in beside Page’s heap.

“The _grande passion_ of two years ago,” said his wife.

They found him in the kitchen. The thermostat in the refrigerator had
gone haywire and, finding all the food frozen, Page had started out to
fix it. Sunny’s little brother, Chuckie, gave him admiring help. Page
had gotten sidetracked and carved six bloody half moons out of an icy
tomato for Chuckie when Sunny and her parents caught him.

The motor in the refrigerator droned on in the background. He had
forgotten to turn it off and it was working gamely to chill the whole
kitchen. Page and Sunny looked at each other, afraid and relieved,
intensely affected by the sight of each other.

“I was just fixing the ice box,” Page said clumsily. It was a
declaration of love. He hated his shuffling embarrassment, but she
caught his hands and saved him.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Cripes,” said Chuckie with the traditional disgust of the young for
romance. “Show me about the tomato, Page.”

“Meet my family,” Sunny said, and introduced them. He turned willingly
to shake hands, welcoming the chore he used to think of as the first
step down the aisle.

Because this time he was sure; this time it was for keeps. He had been
around the world now, and the world had only one Sunny. He was certain,
with the confidence of his youth and their mutual passion, that she was
still his. He had the pressure of her hands and the look in her eyes to
prove it.

Lord, he thought, I want her right now. He stared overlong until Ben
Rotheli, her father, cleared his throat and offered him a beer. They
went into the living room with Chuckie trailing behind, his hands full
of melting tomato chunks.

Page couldn’t keep still. “Sunny, you look wonderful. Just great,” he
said impulsively and interrupted Ben’s description of a double play.
Rotheli laughed and so did Sunny.

“I’m not very subtle, am I?” Page grinned, turning red.

“Everything in the refrigerator is ruined,” June Rotheli announced,
coming in from the kitchen.

“Oh, my God, it’s all my fault.” Page got up.

They brushed it off good-naturedly but he insisted on taking them out to
dinner. “Let me get back in your good graces,” he said eagerly, and they
smiled at him and liked him. Page could hear echoes of Sunny’s laugh in
her mother’s and it made him like June Rotheli immensely.

Chuckie got a good start on a case of hero-worship that night. Anybody
who could saw a frozen tomato apart and spoil all the food in the
refrigerator and take the whole family out to dinner in one day was a
very superior man.

They went home to Hillsburg after dinner and sat on the front porch for
a while. Page had been prepared to tolerate his future in-laws. Instead,
he liked them.

He put his arm around Sunny, coasting on the porch swing, and fed her
peanuts. Chuckie sat at his feet, infatuated as small boys often are.
Page noticed how fond of his son Ben Rotheli seemed. Not that a man
doesn’t take special pride in a son, but this was a relationship close
and warm beyond the usual. Often, as he talked, Ben’s hand came in touch
with his son’s shoulder as if to say: “This is my boy, my brains, my
bones, my immortality.” It wasn’t the easiest attitude for a small son
to bear, though Chuckie took it pretty well in stride.

When the phone rang Chuckie jumped up to get it. But it was for Sunny.
He came back to the porch to call her and his face wore an impish grin.
“It’s Ralph,” he said.

“Bed for you, mister,” Ben Rotheli told him as Sunny went in.

“I’ll be over tomorrow, Chuckie,” Page said.

“We’ll have to go somewhere else,” Chuckie said. “Ralph will be here.
Maybe we could go fishing.”

“Maybe we could throw Ralph in the lake,” Page said.

Chuckie laughed and Ben and June shooed him in the house, following him
in a tactful move that left the porch to Page.

When Sunny came back, they were alone with the fireflies and the sounds
of a summer night. Alone with two years of love to catch up on.

“I like your family, honey. I didn’t think I would,” he said. “Your dad
is awfully fond of Chuckie, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Sunny plucked at a loose thread on her skirt and Page admired her
passionately in silence, his hands moving carefully on her arms. “We’re
a mixed-up family,” she added.

“Does it make you jealous? Girls are supposed to be jealous of their
fathers.”

“No.” She laughed. “I understand why, you see. Dad and Mom lost a baby:
their first. A son. He would have been quite a bit older than me. So
when Chuckie came, years later, he seemed like a second chance.”

“Did the first one die at birth?” Page kissed her neck.

“He lived a little while, but they lost him at about three weeks.”

“How did he die?” Page didn’t care especially about it but he was afraid
to blurt violently, “Darling, marry me!” the way he wanted to. It might
scare her off.

“I never knew how it happened,” she said of her lost brother. “They
never come out and say he died; it’s as if the words would hurt too
much. So I’ve gotten the habit of saying they _lost_ him.

“Mother can’t talk about it at all. She was sick before he came, and,
afterwards she had a nervous breakdown. Cracked up completely. She
couldn’t even leave the hospital for almost a year, and it was ten years
before the doctor let her try again. She got me.”

“Must have been rough,” Page said. “Darling, you smell like roses.”

“It was. They named him Roger. It’s too bad they gave him a name—makes
him seem too much like a real person.”

“Were they sorry you were a girl? What kind of perfume is that?”

“No. Mother came back to life and nearly spoiled me ... Chanel Number
Five.”

“Why didn’t they name Chuckie ‘Roger’? Does Chanel smell like roses?”

“Because Mother was afraid of the name. No, you nut, it’s an aldehyde
scent. Strictly chemical. Your smeller’s confused.”

“Honey, I don’t care what it is, you smell like roses.” He turned her
head and kissed her forehead reverently, and then her cheeks and nose,
and then his lips parted over hers and he touched her soul with his
tongue. Her response was as hot and knowing and loving as he had
remembered, and he held on to her urgently.

“Sunny, Sunny,” he murmured. “You’re my whole life. I knew it back in
school but I wouldn’t admit it. Darling Sunny, thank God it’s not too
late. You haven’t changed. I was so afraid—”

“You!” she cried suddenly, giving him a hard shove. “You worm!”

He leaned back, startled, unwilling to release her. “I know I’ve been
gone a while—”

“Two whole years! And I was just getting over you, damn you!” she said,
throwing her arms up across her breasts and glaring at him.

“Tell me what an ass I am if it’ll help,” he said.

“What an ass _you_ are?” she said dismally. “_I’m_ the ass. Sitting here
like Heaven’s own fool and letting you—”

“Letting me what?”

She pushed his groping hands away again.

“Tell me; let me hold you. Oh God, Sunny ... Sunny....”

“I have a date with Ralph tomorrow,” she said curtly.

“I’ll drown him for you. Chuckie and I are going fishing. I’ll drown the
bastard.”

It made her laugh and the laughter took her over the line to tears. Not
too far from a mild hysteria, she held out her left hand to him. He
caught it gratefully and kissed it and his lips met full on a cold hard
stone. Surprised, he lifted his head and saw for the first time the grim
flash of a diamond. He looked at her.

“Ralph’s?” he said.

Sunny nodded. “And he’s such a nice guy,” she said tearfully. “Such a
good-natured, dependable, rich....” Her voice climbed.

“Okay, skip the torture treatment,” he said, still gripping her hand as
if it were keeping him from a fall over a cliff. “Somehow I thought—”

“I’d sit around on that fine little duff of mine you admire so much and
wait for you? Oh, Page, _did_ you?”

“I guess so.” He grasped her other hand to crush with the left one.
“Sunny, marry me. Marry me!” he said.

“Ask me, don’t tell me.”

He looked at her, hope dawning all over his face. She wasn’t shocked.
She wasn’t even surprised. If she hadn’t loved him so deeply she would
have laughed at him.

“Will you marry me?” he asked, softly and obediently.

“Not yet.”

It took Page several seconds to realize that she had said “Yes.”
Qualified, but still “Yes.” When he did, he yanked frantically on the
diamond ring, muttering, “Damn, damn, damn!”

“Are you trying to break my finger?” she said.

“No, just the ring. Sweetheart ...” he stopped long enough to ask ...
“when? Next week?”

“No, Page—”

“But my mind’s made up. I can’t wait any more.”

She listened open-mouthed, too overcome by his brazen love to throw her
two long years of lonely waiting at him. “I’m a fool to marry you at
all,” she said.

“You said yes, didn’t you?” he asked.

She looked away and he saw her tears then, shiny trails on her faultless
cheeks.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Would I say yes if I didn’t?” She spoke with shame. She had meant to
punish him when he came back—_if_ he came back. And here he was,
providentially dumped at her feet; hers to tease and torture till he
knew exactly what she had been through. And what was she doing? Falling
into his greedy arms like a good-hearted little whore.

“I just want to hear you say it,” Page said.

“I love you. That’ll be two bits,” she said bitterly. And suddenly, in
her words, he recognized what grief she had spent on him, what dragging
hours of regret.

“I can’t make it up to you, can I?” he asked, pulling her head down on
his shoulder to cry. “Darling, can you believe I’m as sorry about that
damn trip as you are? It didn’t prove a thing—except that I can’t live
without you, and maybe that makes it worth something. Please, baby,
please—tell me you love me.”

“Haven’t you humiliated me enough for one night?”

“I’m not trying to humiliate you, you lovely, lovely girl. I’m trying to
make you understand ... forgive me ... take me back.”

“The last time I saw you, you were driving away in that crazy car of
yours, shouting, ‘Next weekend, honey. Look for me.’ Well, I looked, all
right. That was a long weekend, Page. It lasted two years.”

“Do you hate me, Sunny?”

“Of course I hate you!... Darling ... darling....” She was crying still.
“I hated you enough to think I could marry Ralph. I _had_ to hate you.
It was either that or keep on loving you, and hating didn’t hurt as
much.” She sighed and blew her nose on a tissue. “Now my family wants me
to marry Ralph. They like him; they know him. But who is Page Pringle?
Just a guy who broke their daughter’s heart.”

“I thought they liked me. They were so nice to me tonight.”

“What else could they do?” she said and worried him.

“They’re wonderful people,” he said. “I want them on my side.”

“What about _your_ parents?” Sunny asked. “How do they feel about this?”

“They don’t know about it yet.”

“And I don’t know about _them_,” she said. “I get the feeling you don’t
want me to. I don’t think you even have a family. You just sprang full
blown out of a beer bottle one day, with a full head of foam. Tell me
about them.”

“When you tell me you love me.”

“I’ll tell you when I’m good and damn ready!” she flared, and he bent
her firmly against him and kissed her.

“You’ll tell me now,” he said. “Say it! Please say it.”

When she heard the pleading in his voice her self-righteousness
dissolved and she whispered, “I love you.”

“I love you, _Page_,” he told her.

“I love you, I—I—oh, God, Page, I _do_. Isn’t it awful?” She felt her
tears rush up again and cried impatiently, “What’s your mother like? A
fishwife with marcelled hair?”

He was kissing her, but she struggled free and clamped her arms over her
breasts again, turning her back to him.

“Come on,” she said, trembling. “Make with the family history. If I have
to return Ralph’s ring and take you instead, I want to know what I’m
getting.”

“You mean heredity and all that? I’m not an epileptic,” he groaned. “Or
a bleeder. Or a compulsive criminal.”

She was trying to zip her skirt shut while he talked and he was trying
to stop her. He won. She felt too undignified wrestling with him and
covered her bosom again instead. “Come on, darling. Job? Money?” she
said.

Exasperated, he sighed, “I’m writing. For the Trib. I’ll be the best
damn journalist in this country in a few years, and you’re going to be
my wife. And you’ll be glad I made you marry me. And you have the most
beautiful goddamn neck and you smell like roses and oh, honey, honey, I
can’t talk, don’t make me talk, all I want is—”

“Page Pringle, if you touch me there again I’ll put on a chastity belt
and give the key to Ralph!”

“Oh, that bloody bastard!”

“Page!” She turned to look at him with angry reproof, but burst out
laughing instead. Her arms loosened and he caught her up with an almost
bone-cracking strength that left her breathless for a moment.

She kept begging for information about his family, tormenting him by
talking in and over and around his kisses, but he had said his stubborn
last word on that or any other subject until one-thirty in the morning.

He was holding her then, protecting her from the cool air and treasuring
the closeness of her; bothered only by one question: the sort that dogs
a man in love.

“Sunny?” he said, too casually. “Did you ever—I mean—do this with
anybody else? I mean—it’s okay, you were engaged to Ralph, after all....
Not that I expected you to be faithful to me all this time while I was
roaming around.... But, well, I mean—_did_ you?”

She let him work his way through this painful speech and then she kissed
him gently and intimately and whispered, “You’ll never know, my own
darling worm. Never. Suffer, Page.” It was a time-honored female tactic
and it worked. He did suffer, and he never knew the truth.

Ralph was informed abruptly of his new status when he came for Sunny the
next day and found Page glaring at him over an afternoon beer like a
caveman.

Ben and June Rotheli were deeply concerned, but it was Sunny’s decision
and they stayed out of the fracas. Even so, had they guessed how fast
the wedding was coming up, they would have objected sooner.

They had to be grateful, at least, that Sunny had informed them of the
time and place. “I suppose that’s really something, these days,” Ben
said.

“And I’ve always dreamed of a white wedding for her,” June lamented.

Sunny tried to reassure them through several long nights of family
argument. “Dad’s been telling all my boyfriends for the last three years
he’d pay them a thousand bucks to elope with me,” she smiled. “So he
wouldn’t have to finance a big wedding.”

But not even Sunny wanted it done quite so fast. They were to be married
in Wheaton, the DuPage county seat, just as soon as the blood tests were
dry and the license legal. She was too much in love to resist, but she
was too sensible not to worry. It amazed her when her father, Ben,
unexpectedly announced to his wife, “What the hell, June. We got married
in a hurry, too. And it worked out.” Sunny threw her arms around him
gratefully while June raised martyred eyes to the ceiling.

Ben sounded confident, but he was wondering at himself. In the few short
days he had known Page he had begun to like him, respect him far more
than the run of Sunny’s beaux. Why? Because he loved Sunny so
whole-heartedly? Because he got along with Chuckie? Because he was
friendly and honest? Sure, all that. But something else, Ben thought.
Maybe he reminds me a little of myself at that age. Maybe that’s it.
There’s a bit of egotist in all of us. We can’t help liking the people
who like us, who are interested in the same things, who might even
resemble us.

June had to surrender. Everybody was on Sunny’s side, even Chuckie, and
the wedding came off as planned. Sunny wore a pale gold dress that
matched her hair, and Page found himself actually tremulous at the sight
of her.

“Why couldn’t your family come?” she asked him unhappily as they were
driving to Wheaton. “I wanted to meet them so badly. There won’t be
anyone there but us and my family.”

“I know. They sent you their love and all,” he said uncomfortably.

“And all,” she echoed with resentment.

“Mother is sick,” he told her.

“How sick?”

“Housebound. And Dad’s out of town. Couldn’t make it back.”

“For your wedding?” she said. “His only son?”

“Don’t make a fuss, honey. This is our wedding day,” he said. Moments
later, stopping for a red light, he bent to kiss her, but she wouldn’t
give him her lips.

“You’ll smudge me,” she said, prim and miffed.

But he was too happy to complain. “Sunny, sweetheart,” he said. “My
almost wife.” The line of cars began to honk behind them and he stepped
hard on the gas. The sudden acceleration made her laugh and dispelled
for a minute her secret doubts and fears.

* * * * *

The ceremony was quick and simple. June cried and Ben Rotheli, watching
from behind the couple, felt a strange aching loneliness for the son he
had lost so long ago: his first child, Roger. He couldn’t have explained
it, having known the child a mere three weeks. It had been hard for him
to shift his hopes to Chuckie; hard on Chuckie too, feeling so much
expected of him. Ben tried not to let it show.

Now, looking at the broad back and blond hair of his new son-in-law, Ben
felt a swell of affection. Perhaps, in a way, Page could take Roger’s
place. Roger would have been about this age, and Ben wanted to know Page
much better, wanted him to like him. And so he indulged in a pride and
fondness that were rather special.

* * * * *

Page was blissfully happy. He had been two years making up his mind to
this marriage and he had no misgivings. For Sunny, there were minutes of
quiet fear when she realized how little she actually knew of Page, how
much she was relying on their mutual love.

But they were short minutes, swallowed up in the sheer joy of being
married to the one man she had always loved and wanted above all others.

They took a small furnished apartment in Chicago. It was cramped and
plain, but they loved it. They went to the movies, bought modernistic
ashtrays, soaped each other and made love in the shower. It was all
wonderful, all so normal: pure sunshine and fun with no clouds of
calamity visible on the horizon.

The only thing that bothered Sunny was the mystery of Page’s parents.

“I guess they disapprove of me, hm?” she said once, needling him.

“How could they when they don’t even know you?” he said.

“Do they know _of_ me?”

“Certainly. They know I’m married.”

“You said they lived here in town. Can’t we drop in on them?”

“No,” he said quickly.

“Would they kick me out?” she asked.

“It isn’t that, honey. It’s just—”

“Just that they hate you? Or me, or us, or _something_.”

“They love me, they’re very proud of me. But my life with them is over,
now. I’m yours, not theirs. They’ve had me for the past thirty years.
The hell with them.”

Sunny was shocked at the way he spoke, but she was afraid to press him
further on the subject.

* * * * *

Page and Sunny spent only one month in Chicago, for Page was being
transferred to the _Tribune_’s New York office. They spent most of their
spare time packing and visiting the Rothelis. But finally, a few days
before their departure, Sunny demanded, “Let me meet your parents,
Page.” She felt it was then or never.

He looked up from the fried egg he had been tranquilly enjoying, his
breakfast obviously ruined. “No,” he said, and forked half a yolk into
his mouth.

“I’m their daughter-in-law, and I want to know them. They’re my family
now, too.”

He put down his fork and they argued, briefly but fiercely. Sunny forced
the issue. “All right!” Page shouted. “They’re just a pair of kindly
gray-haired squares and you’ll be bored to tears. But if we don’t go,
you’ll imagine all sorts of horror stories.”

“Now you’re being reasonable, darling,” she beamed. But when he sulked
at her she added, “Is it a feud between you, or something?”

“No,” he said. “We’ve just drifted apart. I feel badly about it. I’m not
what they thought I’d be when I grew up.”

“What did they think you’d be?”

“The President. What else?” He gave her a rueful grin.

They went over on a Sunday afternoon three days later. Page was nervous
and Sunny, taking her cue from him, started chewing her nails. She began
to realize how much she wanted the Pringles to like her, the way her
parents liked Page.

She followed Page into one of the modern glass-faced buildings on the
Outer Drive, north of the Loop, and took the elevator up. A maid showed
them into the Pringles’ spacious living room, which had a marble
fireplace and a huge picture window looking out on Lake Michigan. Sunny
had pictured a pair of gloomy hermits living in faded Victorian
gingerbread and speaking in whispers.

Instead, a vigorous, tall man, aging but with straight back and strong
shoulders, came into the room, smiling, and held out his hand to her.

“You must be Sunny,” he said as, speechless, she gave him her hand to
shake. “I’m Page’s father. I’ve been asking him to bring you over ever
since the wedding. I’m so pleased to meet you at last.”

Nonplussed, Sunny could barely say, “Thank you.”

Mr. Pringle mixed them cocktails, speaking easily as he did so. “You
must have been a lovely bride,” he told Sunny, serving her a martini.
“I’m sorry we had to miss it.”

“We missed _you_, Mr. Pringle,” Sunny said faintly.

Page had not spoken a word, not even a greeting, since they had entered
the apartment.

“Of course,” Mr. Pringle said. “But Page didn’t let us know in time. I
was in Canada on business when he wired me ... the day of the wedding.”
His eyes were on his son, who looked away.

“I see,” Sunny said softly, taking refuge in a sip of her drink. Anger,
resentment, and curiosity all boiled within her. It was as if Page were
deliberately trying to alienate them all.

Fifteen minutes later they went in to meet Mrs. Pringle, who was propped
up in bed, dressed in a pink mandarin bed jacket. She was a handsome
woman in her sixties, a perfect match for her husband, to judge by
appearances.

She held out a gracious hand to Sunny. “My dear, how lovely to meet you
at last. I must say, you’re just as beautiful as Page said you were.”

Charmed and astonished, Sunny stammered her thanks and sat down at the
bedside. She was utterly unsure of herself by now. But Mrs. Pringle did
most of the talking while Page stood at attention at the foot of her
bed, remote and cool.

“You will forgive us for not attending the wedding?” Mrs. Pringle
pleaded. She was rather formal, but in an anxious way that tried to
please, as if Page had warned her Sunny was a difficult person. “I
rarely leave this bed any more,” she apologized.

“I understand,” Sunny said warmly. “Page told us you were ill.”

“I see as much of life as I can from here,” Mrs. Pringle smiled. “Not
much, but enough to occupy me. I don’t mind being alone half as much as
most people would. You see, before we got Page, I was quite a loner, by
choice.”

“Before you ... _got_ Page?” Sunny repeated, confused.

“Yes. I guess it’s all in your nature. Some like solitude, some don’t.
Page was a great joy to us, though. He was just tiny when we got him. He
never knew any other family.”

Sunny’s mouth opened slightly. “He—didn’t tell me,” she whispered. She
had to force herself not to turn and stare at him.

“Oh!” Mrs. Pringle paused a moment, plainly afraid of offending her son.
But the fat was in the fire. She had taken it for granted that Page
would have told his wife so fundamental a fact about himself. “Well,
George and I always wanted a boy,” she said restrainedly. “That’s the
nice thing about adopting, you can choose your favorite.” She laughed, a
small flustered sound, and Sunny pitied her.

It was no crime to be adopted. What earthly reason did Page have for
keeping it secret?

“He was a very good baby,” Mrs. Pringle said nostalgically. “I wish we
could have gotten another. I would have liked a brother for Page. Are
you an only child, Sunny?”

“No. My brother Chuckie is eleven now. And my parents had another son,
before I was born, but I never knew him. He died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Well, we intended to adopt another before my health gave
way. But after that we couldn’t, so we’ve had to concentrate everything
on Page. I hope we haven’t spoiled him for you.”

“I like him the way he is,” she said. But her anger sparkled on the
surface of her words.

“I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon for New York,” Mrs. Pringle
added. “Will you write to us, Sunny? Page never will.”

“With pleasure, Mrs. Pringle.” Sunny could hardly keep her eyes off Page
now, and he stared sullenly out the bedroom window.

* * * * *

A half-hour later Sunny rode down in the elevator with her silent
husband, and not until they were in the car and on their way home did
she say, “All right, Page. I love you and I’m your loyal wife. But I
don’t like being lied to.”

He knew the storm was coming and he wanted to keep calm, explain things
temperately to her. He lighted two cigarettes, passing one to Sunny. “I
just can’t get along with them,” he said. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.”

“Well, Sunny, damn it, in the first place, I’ve always been sort of
ashamed of being adopted.”

“You’re nuts!” she said. “That attitude went out when Freud came in.
Some of the nicest people I know—”

“Sure, sure.”

“—are actually proud of it.”

“Will you let me tell you!” he said, suddenly so upset that she shut her
mouth and began to worry about his driving.

“You see, with most parents who adopt kids, it’s different. They tell
them about it, even before the kid understands what it means. He grows
up knowing everything. It’s nothing new, it doesn’t scare him, and he
comes to comprehend it gradually.

“But with me they waited till I was twelve years old, an only child,
brought up in a formal household, stiffly disciplined, afraid of his
mother and father. And then I found out the truth by accident. Otherwise
they never would have told me.” He spoke resentfully and made her feel
he might be at least partly justified.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“The family doctor let it out. The adoption had been arranged through
him instead of an agency because it was faster, and my parents trusted
him. So he knew about it from the start. Doc Blue....

“Well, I went in in the fall for a school check-up when I was twelve.
I’ve never known if he let it slip on purpose, I think he did. I think
he thought I had a right to know, and my Dad hadn’t told me.” Page
slowed up for a red light.

“He measured my height,” Page said, speaking uncomfortably. “I asked him
if he thought I’d be as tall as my father.... He’s six-two. And Doc Blue
just grabbed the opportunity. He said, ‘You can’t always tell, Page ...
unless you know a boy’s ancestry.’

“I started to fill him in on the Pringles. I was up to my ears with my
illustrious forebears. But the doc interrupted. He said, ‘I know your
Dad is proud of his family, but you ask him about it ... where you fit
in. I don’t think he’s told you everything.’”

“He stuck his neck out, didn’t he?” Sunny said.

“Yeah. But Dad had promised him at the time he adopted me that he’d tell
me the truth. So Doc Blue felt he had a duty to speak up. He thought I
should know.

“I went home and asked Dad ... and he told me, all right. And told Doc
Blue to go to hell. He’s never forgiven him, not to this day. Hates his
guts, though I have the feeling Mother would have relented after a few
years.” Page laughed unpleasantly. “You can’t mention Doc Blue’s name in
front of Dad. Poor Mother. Blue was always her favorite, and I know she
misses him. But she wouldn’t dare go near him without Dad’s approval,
and she’ll never get that.”

“Your father didn’t seem like such a tyrant.”

“He is, though. The kind women love to be dominated by,” Page said
candidly. “It wouldn’t show so much to you. He’s sixty-seven and you’re
only twenty. But when he was young he never had to chase the girls. They
chased him.”

Page spoke with secret admiration and Sunny sensed that in spite of his
resentment, he still had a lot of unadmitted love for the man. “But he
was absolutely faithful to Mother, and his principles and his family
heritage. Family meant more to him than Mother or me or his life. Than
anything!” Page took a corner on squealing wheels.

“Your father loves you, darling, he’s proud of you,” Sunny said. “It
shows in his face. And your mother, too. They said some fine things
about you, and they weren’t acting. You must have known that all these
years.”

He threw his cigarette out the window and his face was pale and tense.
“Sure they love me. They’re stuck with me. But the day I discovered I
wasn’t a born Pringle I spoiled it for them. As long as nobody knew but
them, they could damn near convince themselves I was really their flesh
and blood. But once _I_ was in on the secret—once I questioned my
identity, my Pringle ancestors—the illusion was wrecked.

“I had to be arrogantly sure of myself, a Pringle to my finger-tips. How
else could Dad turn me into a carbon of himself? And that’s what he
wanted a son for.”

“My father loves Chuckie a little that way,” Sunny said.

“A little. I know, I saw it. But not like Dad loved me. I was an
obsession. Besides, Chuckie is Ben’s own child. He sired him and he
loves him for himself. Not because he’ll give some kids the name Rotheli
some day.

“I tell you, Sunny, my parents spent many bitter years blaming each
other for not being able to have their own child. For having to settle
on some stranger’s issue to carry on their name. For sending me to Doc
Blue when he turned out to be a black-hearted traitor.”

“But they were so—”

“So charming, so nice! I know, God, I know. They’re even nice to me!
Their borrowed bastard, who exploded their selfish little daydream by
finding out he had alien blood in his veins.”

Sunny listened to him with an aching heart. “Did a family name really
mean all that to them?” she asked. “Couldn’t they go on loving you after
you knew? They certainly love you now.”

“I don’t know. I’ve made things pretty hard for them,” Page said. “I
hated the whole mess, I hated my ignorance. I hated being a nobody
without a name or a family.”

“_They_ were your family. You should have been grateful.”

“They were my room and board. I was their immortality. It wasn’t a fair
trade,” he retorted.

“Page, did it ever occur to you how they must have yearned for a child,
how they must have adored you when they got you? Maybe their motives
weren’t the purest, but nobody’s are. If they hurt you, you’ve gotten
back at them. Can’t you call it quits?”

“I was only a name to them. _Their_ name.”

“You’re more than that now. Surely even you can see that.” She turned to
face him as he pulled the car into their carport and turned off the
motor. “Darling, I’d hate to think, if _I_ ever wronged you somehow,
that you’d hold it against me the way you have against them. It scares
me.”

“You could never hurt me like that, sweetheart.”

“By mistake, by accident, I might,” she whispered.

“They took my childhood away from me. My name.” His voice was hard.

“What is your real name?”

“I don’t know.” His face was sad.

“Do they know?”

He sighed. “No. Doc Blue wouldn’t tell them. They gave him several
thousand bucks and a promise never to contact my real parents. He gave
the money to my real parents, and me to the Pringles. I was bought and
sold for hard cash, Sunny. And my own name got lost in the shuffle.”

“The Pringles couldn’t take your name away from you if they never had it
to give,” Sunny said. “They only had one name to give you—their own.”

“It hurts me to use it,” he said. “I’m a man without a past or a
heritage. I wish I had a real name to give you, Sunny. A real father to
know and love.”

“You have, if you weren’t so blind stubborn!” she cried.

“Anybody could have brought me up. I’d make just as good a Smith as a
Pringle.”

Sunny crushed her cigarette. “If Doctor Blue knows your name,” she said
thoughtfully, “why don’t you get it from him?”

“I’ve been trying to since the day he let the cat out of the bag,” Page
said, his hands limp on the rim of the steering wheel. “I’ve begged him,
offered him money, threatened him. Even broken into his office and gone
through his papers. _And_ been caught at it. He’s immovable, a
sickeningly honorable old son of a gun.”

“You know, you’re more fanatical on the subject of family than the
Pringles,” Sunny said. “Maybe they cured themselves by giving you the
disease.”

“Well, they exposed me to it long enough,” he said.

“You’re a grown man, Page!” she said. “Make your own name now, your own
place in the sun.” She was full of pity and love, and disappointment in
him. “A name is just a label, darling. It doesn’t matter half as much as
the man himself.”

“A name is a history, a home, everything,” he said unhappily.

“Maybe your real parents were sad, ugly people who couldn’t have done
half the things for you that the Pringles—”

“To hell with the Pringles! I’d rather love my own flesh and blood, no
matter who, than grow up a stranger in borrowed luxury. And I’ve been a
stranger there since I was twelve, Sunny.”

“You’ve made yourself a stranger,” she exclaimed. “You big dumb _nut_.
Page, I’m actually ashamed of you!”

He slammed his fists against the wheel and the horn barked accidentally,
startling her.

Jack and Laura were sitting with Mr. Winkler in the Manns’ living room
after dinner, while Jack narrated the story. “Page made himself unhappy,
it’s true,” Jack said. “The Pringles were ready for the peace pipe years
before he was. But they had made the cardinal mistake that adults can
make with kids. They made him feel, right or wrong, that they only loved
their name. Not him. They loved the idea of a son and heir, not the son
and heir himself.”

“Well, he and Sunny moved to New York, then,” Winkler said. “Were you
and Laura married?”

“Yes. They looked us up right away. Even took an apartment near us on
East Fifty-second. Sunny was upset about this thing when they first
arrived, but everything went so well for them that she soon relaxed.
Used to sit and gab with Laura. They hit it off right away.

“And Page was really happy. Always smiling. Loved his work, loved his
wife. And he was making ‘Pringle’ his own name at last. Nobody there
knew his family, so the name was more his own than it had ever been
before.

“He kept on with the Trib and did very well. When I look back, those
first months in New York seem like a sort of reprieve,” Jack said.

“Reprieve from what?” Winkler leaned forward on his elbows, hands
hanging between his knees.

“You’re a good audience, Mr. Winkler,” Jack grinned.

Winkler shrugged, suddenly shy again. “You’re a good talker,” he said.

“Well, around Christmas everything was going beautifully for them,” Jack
resumed. “We saw them then at a party we threw, and they were the
happiest couple there.

“But it wasn’t long after that this whole crazy tragedy blew up in their
faces. Hard to believe, but it sure as hell happened.”

Winkler’s cigarette burned forgotten in the ashtray beside him.

* * * * *

It was one of those red-and-green gatherings that stud the Christmas
season. Most of Jack’s guests were straight. He didn’t like to mix many
gay people into his parties. He had renounced the painful homosexual
adventures that used to fill his life before he got married, and it made
him feel socially clumsy and anxious when the old gay crowd turned up.

Besides, no one in his office crowd knew he was an invert, and he wanted
to keep it that way.

There were plenty of drinks, carols, and conviviality. Laura turned out
all but the Christmas lights and candles, and the rooms took on a
multi-colored jukebox glow.

* * * * *

Sunny, full of laughter, was the center of the carol singing. Her voice
was small but true, and pleasantly husky. She sat on the sofa, crowded
in by admirers, and sang “Santa Baby” and “The Christmas Song” to warm
applause. Page was enough of a bridegroom to get foolishly jealous.

She was too popular, too beautiful, with her radiant smile and the
smooth skin of her breasts showing down to the line of a daringly cut
dress.

“That thing is too damn low,” he growled, but she stuck her tongue out
at him and he either had to laugh or be laughed at.

It was a night for costumes. One of the guests was a well-pillowed Santa
Claus. One came dressed all in white bunny fur, just for the hell of it.
And later in the evening somebody climbed into a grass skirt Jack had
brought back from a trip to Hawaii, and favored them with a hula. He
made a lei of a Christmas wreath and rigged up a pair of glass ornament
breasts which generated a lot of hilarity.

Page, still grumping, muttered to Jack, “I hate that kind of stuff.”

“What stuff? Hulas?” Jack said. They were standing together by the wall
watching the performance.

“_Men_ doing hulas.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack said, laughing. “He’s not half bad. You’re just
mad because everybody wants to lay Sunny.”

Page lit a cigarette. He knew he was high and not very cogent. He
directed his anger at the dancer, who was enjoying his innocent
transvestitism as much as his audience.

“I don’t know why people think that’s so damn funny,” Page said. “He
probably gets a secret charge out of it.”

“Come on, old buddy, I’ll doctor your drink,” Jack said and led the way
to the kitchen. Page followed him on an off-balance course through the
swinging door.

“No more of that sweet junk,” he said, grimacing at the eggnog. “Gives
you a rotten hangover.” He handed Jack his glass and Jack handed it back
with a couple of inches of whiskey in it. Page tasted it critically and
then turned to his host. “You look uncommonly sober for this hour of the
night,” he said with disapproval.

“I am. I’m on the wagon.”

“What? Goddam. Are you sick?” Page said.

“Laura cured me,” Jack told him.

“Well, get that damn hula dancer on the wagon with you. Cure him and he
won’t make such a horse’s ass of himself at the next party.”

“Still worried about Sunny’s dress?” Jack said.

“Oh, the hell with Sunny’s dress. It’s _men_ in dresses I’m worried
about.” Page hiccoughed.

“Page, I didn’t know. Shall we dance?” Jack said, and laughed at him.

“Oh, shut up.” Page finished half his drink in one gulp.

Jack knew perfectly well that Page was straight. He was also tight, and
aggravated, and men in skirts were handy whipping boys. But it surprised
Jack that his old roommate could be so harsh on the subject.

“I’m no fairy,” Page declared, “but that pansy in the grass skirt—”

“—is married and has four kids,” Jack informed him.

“Lots of fags get married to fool their friends,” Page said.

“How would _you_ know?”

Page threw up his hands in a gesture of comical disgust. “I heard it
somewhere,” he said. “You don’t think I know anything about a lousy
queer first-hand, do you?”

It hurt Jack, but it was an old familiar pain; one he had long since
learned to tuck under his heart to heal at leisure. It joined a
battalion of old scars and his face showed no sign of it.

Jack understood better than he ever had how deep Page’s conformity went.
Page wasn’t worried about his masculinity; that had never been a problem
to him. He was worried about being different. He had been raised in a
conservative home where old-fashioned morals and conformity were prime
virtues. Then he suddenly found out the family he was supposed to honor
wasn’t his at all. The morals he respected included lying. And his
comfortable conformity had been painfully stripped from his back, like a
suit of clothes. He stood exposed, without a name or identity. At that
moment, conformity became very dear to him. He wanted to be like
everybody else with a family all his own.

As for the odd balls in this world, he had little but contempt for them.
And a small secret awe for the few who could be deliberately different
and still respect themselves.

But nobody had ever asked Page if he wanted to be different. Instead he
grew up a member of a minority group, in spite of himself. When he
thought of orphans and adopted children, he thought of the huge neglect
they suffered, the rare love, the vague pity of charitable ladies
fussing over them. And he classed all adopted children among the
orphans.

Jack watched him in silence a moment. “Next you’ll be telling me _I’m_
queer,” he said wryly.

Page laughed and clapped Jack on the back. “Okay, boy, you win. It’s
that eggnog I was drinking. I should know better.”

“I still say it was Sunny’s bosom that got you started,” Jack said. “If
Laura had a bosom like that I’d never complain about anything again, so
help me.”

* * * * *

Jack and Laura saw the Pringles often, especially after Jack learned he
was being transferred back to Chicago. It was a promotion to his home
office, and he felt he owed it to Laura and Betsy to go. But he hated to
leave New York. They gave him three months to make the move.

Sunny, homesick for Hillsburg and Chicago, spent a lot of hours with
Laura swapping information and feminine chatter.

“Go see Page’s family if you get a chance,” she pleaded. “They’d be so
happy to hear about us first-hand.”

“We will. Why doesn’t Page ever talk about them, Sunny?” Laura asked. “I
asked him about his father once and he said the strangest thing. He
said, ‘I don’t have a father.’ I told him everybody has a father and he
said, ‘Everybody but me.’ What does that mean?”

Sunny tried to explain it to her.

“I don’t get it. What does he want from them?” Laura said.

“He wants to turn back the clock thirty years and stay with the worms
who had him in the first place.”

Laura laughed. “_Were_ they worms?”

“Maybe not. But they’d have to go some to beat the Pringles. I’m hoping
Page will get over this when he has a son of his own.”

Laura, stooped over a suitcase, straightened up and stared at Sunny.
“Hey!” she said. “You’re not—?”

Sunny smiled. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody so soon,” she said. “I’m
not really sure yet. I just know, like you do.”

Laura came over and took her hands. The warm firm grasp gave her a quiet
shiver of delight—the kind Laura so often experienced in contact with
lovely women. “Sunny, I’m so happy for you,” she said. Up until that
moment Laura had both admired and feared Sunny a little. People so
beautiful sometimes inspire a sort of timidity in others, and Laura was
naturally shy. But now, with the sharing of this secret, Laura felt
close to her. She had the courage to touch Sunny, even to hold her.

“Does Page know yet?” she asked.

“No. He’ll go into orbit when he finds out,” Sunny laughed. “He’s been
after me since our wedding day to do this.”

“When will you tell him?”

“The minute I’m sure. I have to see a doctor first.”

“See Dr. Settick,” Laura said. “Richie Settick. He delivered Betsy and
he’s the greatest. I’ll give you his address.”

“I was going to ask you,” Sunny said, pleased. “I don’t know any doctors
here.”

Laura was thinking of Jack’s incredulous reaction to the news that Laura
was carrying their child. But for him, older and with a sexual
abnormality to fight, it had seemed like a real miracle. It gave him a
soaring feeling that a normal man, sure of his virility, would never
know.

Laura sat down on her bed next to Sunny and put her arms around her.
“You should have seen Jack’s face when I told him he was going to be a
father,” she said.

Sunny’s laugh brought her slim, smooth body even nearer Laura’s. What
Sunny thought she was doing there in Laura’s arms she didn’t say. But it
didn’t seem to alarm her. She submitted to a shy, sisterly kiss from
Laura—a kiss that scarcely mussed her shining hair—and then pulled away
with an easy motion and said, “Got any maternity clothes I can borrow?”

“Plenty,” Laura said, and the regret she felt at the lost contact did
not show in her voice.

She never did discover what Sunny thought of that indiscreet caress. She
was only grateful that it didn’t interrupt their friendship. Sunny was
one of the good things in life that Laura would never possess, and Laura
had the sense to see it early and keep the relationship platonic.
Sunny’s love was given for the rest of her life ... and given to a man.

Dr. Settick had been practicing in Manhattan for about six years. He was
in his thirties, stocky and good-looking, full of good-humor. He had
managed to avoid marriage, though some of his obstetrics patients made a
habit of proposing.

“Well,” he told Sunny, “if that’s not a baby in there, you’ll make
medical history.”

She hugged herself with a happy laugh. “Thank you, Doctor!”

“Don’t thank me. I had nothing to do with it, I’m sorry to say,” he told
her with a grin.

She went home that evening ready to tease Page frantic before she told
him the news. But when he got home he cut her off with big news of his
own.

“Sunny, don’t say a word!” he said as he came in the door. “Guess what?”

“That was my line,” she said as he carried her into the bedroom and
lowered her into the pillows. “You couldn’t have been promoted again?
Back to Chicago?”

He fell on top of her, laughing. “Better!” She began to squirm under his
weight and to wonder if it would hurt the baby. “They want me to write
my own column.”

She stopped wiggling. “Darling! The Trib?” she cried.

“No, the _Sunday Magazine_. Almost two million circulation. Imagine,
honey—a magazine. I get a byline and my picture, every damn week of the
year. One of their editors has been following my feature stuff and liked
it. We’re in New York a half year and this happens. I knew this was my
town. Goddam!”

“What will you write about?” she said.

“Whatever comes into my head. You, for example. You inspire me.” He
gathered her in his arms and kissed her triumphantly. “Oh, baby,” he
murmured. “If it weren’t for you, I’d never have gotten this. Or if I
had, it wouldn’t have meant anything. Nobody in the world matters to me
but you. You make everything so right, Sunny. I’ll write every word for
you. That way I know it’ll be good.”

She felt a few tears coming on; the kind that take a smile beyond its
natural borders.

“You’re ashamed of me!” he exclaimed.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, making your wife cry,” she said,
laughing at the same time. “As a matter of fact, I had something to tell
you, but I don’t think I’d better. So much good news would be bad for
you.”

“Try me.” He got up and went into the kitchen. “How about a toast?
Scotch or whiskey?” he called.

“Scotch,” she answered, sitting up and feeling her abdomen with new
care.

“Honey, let’s call your family,” he said. “Your dad would love to know.
He’s been great to me, as if I were part of the family.”

“Well, you are, goofy,” Sunny said, leaning against the kitchen door and
accepting her drink from him.

“To us,” he said, lifting his glass. “My favorite people.” They clinked
glasses and drank, watching each other, too happy to feel sensible.

“Oh, honey,” he said, overcome with her beauty, her love for him. “Honey
baby, I love you so.” He pulled her tight to him and moved against her,
slowly, rhythmically, guiding her hand in an intimate caress.

She responded with pleasure; subjecting herself to his will with sensual
delight. And then, equally feminine, she took advantage of his mood to
whisper, “Let’s call your family, too.”

“Don’t spoil it,” he said softly.

“My father isn’t the only one who cares about you.”

“Nothing doing.” He dropped her hand. “Dad would take it for a peace
treaty.”

“He’s earned it.”

Page finished his drink, ignoring her. “Oh God, I forgot. You started to
tell me something. What was it, honey?”

She let herself be sidetracked, too excited to keep still. “Your
charming wife ...” she said seductively, and kissed his mouth.

“My charming wife,” he repeated, grabbing her again, “has been elected
Miss Dill Pickle in Pratfall, Indiana.”

“No.” She grinned at him. “I’m going to make you the happiest man in the
world next August.”

“What’s wrong with now?” Suddenly he stiffened. “What? _Sunny!_ My God!
Are you ... expecting?”

“Yes.” She glowed at him.

“Are you sure?” His voice dwindled to a whisper.

“Dr. Settick says so.”

“Who’s he?”

“My obstetrician. Laura recommended him.”

“He’d better be the best damn—”

“He is.”

“Oh, darling. This is too much.” He put his arms around her, so proud
and amazed that his voice cracked like an adolescent’s.

“If you weren’t such a good writer and such a good husband,” she told
him, “you’d never have gotten us into this mess.”

“Some mess,” he said ardently. It was a long time and a lot of gentle
kisses before either of them moved. “And it won’t be any poor little
unwanted bastard, either,” Page said. “This is the most wanted baby
anybody ever had. My child. My son. How can I wait till August?”

“Let’s call Hillsburg,” she said. “Just think, Chuckie will be an uncle
at the tender age of eleven. He’ll love that!”

“No, let’s not call tonight,” Page said. “Tomorrow you can tell the
whole world, but tonight I want just us to know.”

She was touched by the idea.

“If it’s a boy we’ll name it Ben,” he said. “Your dad will bust his
buttons.” He led her back toward the bed.

“Oh, it’s a girl, I can tell. And your dinner’s burning up on the stove.
We’ll name her Katherine and call her Kate.”

“The hell with dinner,” he said, easing her down on the bed. “And Kate
is too old-fashioned.”

He undressed her with hands that adored her lovely fresh body, her
fragrant curves and slopes, her warmth. He pressed his big hands
together side by side on her little belly, smothering it, and said in an
awed tone, “God. Think how tiny it is. How alive.”

She reached for him and pulled him down on top of her.

“Honey, no. I’m too heavy,” he protested anxiously, but she smiled and
silenced him with kisses.

* * * * *

They planned to call the Rothelis the next night at six, but chance
fouled their neat timing; chance or fate, heaven or hell—whatever
controls these things. This was the night for the sky to fall and
shatter their lives.

At five minutes to six, their phone rang. It was George Pringle, Page’s
step-father. Sunny came in from the kitchen and picked up the phone.
Page, looking at the paper, saw her look at him cautiously.

“My parents?” he guessed aloud. She nodded, speaking fond trivialities
into the receiver. He could tell she was worried about what he would say
to them.

What the hell, he thought. I’ll tell them the news. This is no night for
harsh words. Maybe Sunny’s right, it’s time to sign the treaty.

He surprised himself. He hadn’t planned any reconciliation. But he was
full of a new self-assurance, a gratitude that took in the whole world.
The Pringles’ call happened to come at a lucky time. He could talk to
his step-father man to man now, and he would.

He took the phone Sunny held out to him and whispered, “Don’t worry,
honey, I’ll be nice to him.”

But she shook her head. “Your father’s worried about something. He
didn’t call you just for a chat. He has too much pride for that.”

She was right. Page frowned at her as he spoke. “Dad?” he said in a
friendly voice.

The elder Pringle answered at once and the words seemed to tumble out of
him pell-mell, more breath than voice. “Page, my son, I have something
to tell you. You remember—”

“Sorry, Dad, I can’t hear you very well,” Page said, wondering if his
mother had taken a bad turn. “You sound like you have bad news.”

“Yes, I’m afraid—”

“Then let me give you our good news first. We were just going to call
you.”

“You were?” Pringle was frankly skeptical, and it made Page feel guilty.

“Two things,” Page said. “I’m going to do a column for the _Sunday
Magazine_. Got the offer yesterday. Byline, picture, and all.”

Silence. Page frowned again. “Dad? What do you think of that?”

“I’m delighted for you, Page,” his father said in a curiously weak
voice.

“Well, if that doesn’t get you, how about this: Sunny’s going to have a
baby! In August.” Another queer silence. “Dad, for God’s sake!” Page
said irritably. “Don’t you hear me?... Dad, are you there?” The
irritation verged suddenly on alarm.

“Yes, Page, I’m here. Are you _sure_ about Sunny?”

“Sure I’m sure. She saw the doc yesterday.... Well, _say_ something. Say
it’s great. Say you’re happy for us. Or aren’t you?”

“Page....”

“Dad, tell me, is something wrong?”

“My boy, I have to tell you this. I’d have given anything in my life to
spare you, especially now,” Pringle said. “But you must be told. I mean,
now that Sunny—”

“Told what?”

“Page, you’ve got to believe me—”

“Well, damn it, _tell_ me!” Page demanded.

Sunny felt a sharp foreboding, seeing the concern on Page’s face. She
sat down in an easy chair where she could follow the talk. Page began to
pale as he listened to his father.

“You remember Dr. Blue?” Pringle was saying.

“Sure I remember him,” Page said. And in a sudden sick flash, away in
the back of his frightened soul, he saw what was coming.

“Well, your mother wanted to see him again. She has for some time, as
you’ve guessed. She trusts him, and lately, with you gone and our life
so restricted, she wanted to patch things up a bit.” He related these
old problems awkwardly. “We talked it over and I decided if it would
cheer her up a little, it was worth calling him in. Let bygones be
bygone. I’m not a man to carry a grudge to my grave.”

“Yes,” Page said, seized by a wish to hang up, to stem the stream of
words.

“He was glad to hear from us,” Pringle went on, “and he came to see your
mother yesterday. They had a lot to talk about. They talked mostly about
you, Page. Mother told him you were married now. To Sunny Rotheli....”

“Oh.” His tongue felt sticky dry. “Well, I’ll bet he was glad to hear
I’ve settled down. He had me figured for a burglar when he caught me in
his office that time.”

“Page,” his step-father said in a trembling voice. “There’s no way to
break this to you gently. I—I....”

“Dad ... did he tell you who I am? Do you know who I am, Dad?” That had
to be it. Page felt himself shaking, and Sunny, watching him, shook too.
Her hands were knotted in her skirt, soaking the cloth with her
perspiration.

Pringle cleared his throat. “You are Sunny’s brother,” he said.

Four words. They shot across the wires like electric darts and paralyzed
Page. He stood gripping the phone, staring stupidly at the floor, unable
to make sense. “I’m what?” he said faintly at last.

“You are Sunny’s brother. You are a Rotheli. You were christened Roger
Rotheli. Page, do you understand me? Sunny is your _sister_.”

Page went dead white. His jaw slackened and he turned slowly to stare at
Sunny. “That’s impossible,” he whispered.

“It seems the Rothelis had a boy,” Pringle said, “some years before they
had Sunny. I guess you know that. Sunny even mentioned it to your mother
and me. They had a little boy named Roger. He came just nine months
after they were married. It was in the Depression, and Ben Rotheli was
out of work. June was very sick, frail and emotionally upset all through
the pregnancy. They hadn’t planned to start a family for several years.
But the thing happened anyway and that, on top of their money worries
and her bad health, nearly finished her.

“She had a drastic mental breakdown. Didn’t even know her husband for a
while, and when he brought the baby in to show her, she tried to throw
it at him. She thought it was a doll. When he swore it was hers she
became hysterical and accused him of lying. She said it couldn’t be hers
because she’d never had a baby and anyway she hated babies and that one
most of all. Ben tried to show her the baby’s eyes, because they looked
so much like hers, but she wouldn’t listen.” He paused. “That was you,
Page.

“Ben wanted to keep you. He tried to figure out a way. But he didn’t
have a dime, and he couldn’t stay home and care for you while he was out
job-hunting. June was too sick even to know her own baby, much less love
him or tend him. Every penny Rotheli could borrow went to pay hospital
bills. He didn’t even have enough to feed himself more than a couple of
cans of beans every other day. The baby had to be farmed out to a
welfare agency the first few weeks.... Page? Do you hear me?”

“I hear....”

“Well, at the time this happened, Ben was living in a tiny basement
apartment just off North Clark Street, not far from where we were. Dr.
Blue had delivered you and he was taking care of June. It looked
doubtful that June would ever recover her reason. As you know, Dr. Blue
had been our family doctor for years, and he knew how much we wanted a
son. Of course we didn’t know the Rothelis or anything about them then.
We’ve still never met them, or known your real name till now. But when
you were born, Dr. Blue came to us. He had talked it out with Ben, and
promised him you’d have as loving and kind parents in us as it was
possible to find.

“We wanted a boy desperately, and we were willing to pay generously for
him. And Ben was just as desperate to find good loving care for you in a
private home. That came first with him. But he was also hopelessly in
debt. I think if there’d been the least chance June might have come out
of it and been able to raise you herself, Ben wouldn’t have signed the
adoption papers. But you couldn’t speak the word ‘baby’ in her hearing.
It was that serious. And he was afraid she would end up a charity case
in the city hospital psycho ward—practically a guarantee she’d never
recover. Her condition looked permanent.

“Well, there we were with several thousand dollars in our hands to pay
up all his bills. All June’s hospital bills and drugs and doctor’s fees
until she was completely recovered. To us it was a small price in
exchange for the son we wanted, and the money would never be missed. To
Rotheli, it was a hand up out of the hellhole. He sacrificed the baby he
didn’t know for the wife he loved.

“Dr. Blue drew up an agreement. In addition to the financial
arrangements, both sides agreed never to try to contact or know each
other. The doctor refused to help us until we all signed it.

“June was sick for almost two years, and in and out of the hospital
after that for the next four and a half. You were in second grade by the
time your mother was a well woman, Page; by the time she could have
cared for you herself.”

There was a long silence between adopted son and step-father. Finally
Pringle spoke again in a voice weary and near to breaking. “My dear
son,” he said. “I know how you must feel—how impossible this seems. It
just couldn’t have happened—”

“But it did, thanks to you,” Page broke in irrationally, pressing a hand
over his mouth to crush the sobs. He had not wept since he had first
learned of his adoption so many years ago.

“All the records tally,” Pringle said. “We checked them immediately, of
course, over and over. There’s no way out of it.”

“No way. You’ve ruined our lives. You ruined mine years ago and how
you’ve ruined _ours_,” Page cried out so bitterly that Sunny shuddered,
hugging herself with fear.

“My boy, would you rather I hadn’t told you?” Pringle was shaken with
grief, fully as much as Page, but Page was too stricken to realize it.

“I’m _not_ your boy!” he said fiercely. “Oh, God! Nothing makes sense
any more. I suppose you’ve told the Rothelis.”

“No one knows but us and Dr. Blue,” Pringle assured him. “If I had known
Sunny was pregnant....” He stopped, uncertain himself what he would have
done.

“You would have told me just the same,” Page said.

“It’s imperative that you separate now,” Pringle said. “You aren’t
blaming us for this, are you, Page? You can’t imagine how we’ve suffered
over it. I would have gone through hell to spare you.”

“Why didn’t you, then!” Page was incapable of logic. “You didn’t have to
adopt me.”

“Perhaps you hate me now,” Pringle said sorrowfully. “But later you’ll
understand Page, there are urgent things to settle. If Sunny is really
pregnant, she must get an abortion.”

“Now you want me to murder my own child!” Page cried.

“Page! Stop it!” Sunny said, horrified.

“Your child is the product of incest,” his step-father said, and the
word tolled in Page’s ear like a death-knell. “I’m certain Dr. Blue will
help us. He has to share the responsibility for this thing. Get Sunny on
the earliest possible flight to Chicago, and—”

“Haven’t you done enough?” Page said. “Every time I come near you
something rotten happens. This is the end. You just let _me_ figure this
out!”

“Page, wait! Listen to me!” Pringle said, but Page slammed the phone
down and pulled the cord out of the wall. He flung it into a corner
where it landed with an ugly clatter.

Sunny waited in tense silence in the chair, holding herself together by
sheer force of will.

Page stood motionless in the middle of the room with his back to her,
his head in his hands. “Page?” she whispered, afraid her voice might
unhinge him. “Who are you, darling? Did your father tell you?”

He turned and walked into the bedroom. She followed to find him pulling
open his dresser drawers and throwing clothes on the bed. Sunny took his
arms and made him look at her. Her face made him cry again, briefly and
harshly: her beautiful, sensitive face. Suddenly he caught her to him,
holding her in arms made powerful with misery.

“Page, you must tell me. You always wanted to know who you are. Was it
so awful?” She spoke to him soothingly as his mother might have.

Instead of explaining he picked her up and put her one last time on the
bed, meaning to leave her. But he gazed down at her and found he
couldn’t move. He had been so warm and ready for love, so enchanted with
her before the call came and blasted his life. It was beyond his courage
to tell her and then walk out and leave her forever.

Instead he sat down and tried to open his mouth and declare that he was
her brother. _Roger Rotheli._ That the father-in-law he loved and
admired was his own father. His tongue refused to move.

He sat there beside his wife and felt the utmost love he had ever felt
for her, and the deepest despair. He leaned down and kissed her brow,
afraid of her sweet mouth. And abruptly, to his helpless dismay, was
consumed with a raging desire for her.

_Just once, before she learns the truth_, he told himself in anguish.
And without a word he took her. For Sunny, his sudden furious
love-making was a nightmare. His hands that had been so gentle were
hard, his lips bruised her, his tears terrified her.

Weeping and tremulous, she gave herself and prayed that her tenderness,
her fright, her very flesh, would calm him, bring him back to sanity.
But when it was over he simply lay across her, a dead weight, and said
nothing.

Sunny held him tightly and murmured, “Page, my darling, whatever it is,
we have to face it together.” He turned his face away so she couldn’t
see it. “My darling, my love, nothing in this world can whip us as long
as we have each other,” she told him.

“One thing,” he said.

“Was your father a ... an evil man, Page? A criminal? Or sick?” She
spoke as she might have to an ailing child.

Page rose suddenly and began pulling his clothes together. “No,” he
said. He zipped up his pants and put his jacket on and started out of
the room, not daring to take time to collect his clothes. He felt he had
to leave at once or he would want her again. It was a nightmare.

“Page!” Sunny cried, running after him into the living room. “For the
sweet love of God, _tell_ me!” When he opened the front door and turned
to face her like a man taking permanent leave of his woman, she gave a
little scream. “Tell me,” she demanded.

“Sunny, I—I—”

“You what? Page, are you trying to destroy me? You _what_?”

She stood with fists clenched, eyes wild in a flushed face, only half
dressed.

“I’m your brother,” he said in a weird, strained voice.

Again a fateful silence struck the room. Page hesitated, waiting for her
to faint. He would catch her, put her on the sofa, and sneak out before
she regained her senses. It would be cowardly but easier. He dared not
stay under the same roof with her.

But she didn’t faint. She only stood gazing at him while her face, that
had been in the ruins of despair, slowly took shape again. A great wave
of trembling went through her and subsided. Like Page, she lost her
voice entirely for a minute ... an inherited trait they shared in
emotional moments. When it came back she said, “You are _Roger_? My
brother, Roger, who _died_?”

He nodded, ready to bolt. For a second they stared incredulously at each
other, as fascinated as they were appalled. Sunny absorbed it bravely,
better than he had.

“Page, shut the door and come here,” she said. Her voice was still
quavery but she showed no signs of fainting. The blood had left her face
and her eyes grew wide like green flowers above her white cheeks. But he
wouldn’t come near her.

“I can’t stay, Sunny,” he said.

“You can’t stay?” It didn’t make sense at first.

“I commit the foulest kind of sin every time I look at you,” he said.
“Now that we can’t ... I mean ... I want you terribly.”

“Page, are you absolutely _certain_? There’s no mistake?”

“Doc Blue told Mother when he learned your name. The records verify it.
Good old Doc Blue ... my evil spirit,” he said acidly.

Sunny sat down on the arm of the sofa and Page moved to leave again, but
she stopped him. “You can’t go!” she cried.

“I can’t stay, that’s for sure,” he said grimly.

“But where will you go?”

“The Manns’, I guess.”

“What will you tell them?”

“My God, that’s right.” He slapped his face with one hand. “I can’t tell
any of our friends.” The enormity of it hit him brutally and he drew the
hand over his grimacing face. “I guess I’ll have to get a hotel room
somewhere.”

“Page, darling,” Sunny said, in better control of herself now, “did it
ever occur to you that it’s too late for that? There’s no point in
leaving me now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m pregnant with your child. You can’t do any more harm. It’s all been
done. Does it matter then if we still make love?”

He was so shocked that he took a few steps toward her, his face screwed
up with the effort to understand her. “Are you trying to tell me we
should go on living together, as if this hadn’t happened?” he said. “Is
_that_ what you’re saying?”

Sunny was taken aback by his disgust. She looked down, unprepared for
this turn. “Darling, that baby was conceived in love and innocence,” she
said.

“We aren’t innocent any more, Sunny. Neither is our love.”

“I love you so much,” she said miserably.

“You’re in love with your brother,” he said, still stunned by it. “It’s
evil now.”

“Evil!” The word made her reel; she was frightened by his revulsion for
the situation. “I can’t be ashamed of my love for you, no matter what
you call it!” she flashed. “I won’t apologize for falling in love with
you!”

“We don’t have to apologize for it, we have to do something about it,”
he cried.

“What? Stop loving each other?”

“Separate,” he said miserably. “God, Sunny, I’ll never stop loving you.”

“Then stay with me.”

He threw out his hands at her. “You’re my _sister_, can’t you understand
that? I’ve found my name at last. I’m your brother, I’m a Rotheli.” Just
the thought of it shut him up for a second. “And you’re sitting there
suggesting that we go on as if we were normal, ordinary, wholesome
lovers! It’s unbelievable!”

All his ideals: normality, wholesomeness. How could he face the world
without them?

“Page, you talk about us as if we were diseased!” she shot back at him.
“Were we degenerates when we married, when we made love to each other?
Does just knowing it debauch us somehow?”

“Only if we stay together,” he said, “and keep on committing an act we
know now is criminal.”

“No!” she said with the ardor of a woman fighting for her love. “I’ll
never accept that, Page. I can’t believe a love like ours is anything
but good.”

“Well, now you _have_ to believe it,” he said. “It’s dirty and it’s
wrong, Sunny. The sooner you face it, the less grief this will bring us
both.” He seemed to be struggling to convince himself as much as her.

“The sooner I face what? The baby in my arms—your baby? How do I explain
him away? What shall I tell this ‘most wanted baby in the world’? Daddy
doesn’t exist, dear? Mother just stirred you up in a test tube?”

“Would you rather tell him his father is also his _uncle_?” Page
shouted.

“Does he _have_ to be told? Does anyone?”

“Things like this don’t stay secret forever, no matter how you try.
Suppose he’s born a monster. How will you explain that?”

Sunny put a frightened hand over her stomach. Like most people she had
only hazy ideas of what happened to children born of incestuous unions,
and all the ideas were gruesome.

“It will be beautiful,” she said, shaken but still brave. “It has to be,
to prove our love is right.”

“It will only prove we found out about ourselves too late,” he said
sorrowfully.

“It’ll be healthy and normal,” she said. “A sign—”

“Stop it, Sunny! There are no signs from heaven any more. All the
miracles happened long ago. There aren’t any left for us. Darling,
there’s only one way out.”

“What?” She was crying now, unable to control her face.

He tried to say it kindly, but the word itself was cruel. “An abortion.”
It was her turn to register shock and disbelief. “Dad said Doc Blue
might do it,” he added rigidly.

“Your _father_ said that?”

“In this case, he happens to be right.”

Sunny shook with resentment. “How can you think such a thing? This
innocent baby, this part of yourself you were so almighty proud of, and
you want to murder—”

“And you want to go on living with me. Me, your _brother_!” he shouted.
“And give birth to an imbecile—”

“Page, don’t!” she cried with all her strength. “Get out! Get out! Get
out!” She collapsed into the sofa, whimpering.

He stood in the door for a moment, watching her until she looked up to
see if he had gone. They gazed at each other, speechless with the size
of their despair and the size of their love.

“Don’t tell anyone. _Anyone_,” she pleaded.

He nodded and pulled the door shut behind him.

“And let me know where you are,” she called after him. “Page? Page!” But
the door was closed; he had left her and nothing indicated he had heard;
or, having heard, that he would keep in touch.

Sunny sat where she was until the cramps in her legs reminded her of the
hours that had passed. Like a hurt animal she roused and shook herself.
With all the care of other nights she performed her usual nightly
chores: bathed, brushed her teeth, curled her hair on trim tin rollers.
It comforted her, as if she could enter the bedroom when she finished
and find Page waiting for her.

To her surprise her hands moved, her heart beat, her mind functioned.
She looked at her face in the mirror and her features were still in
their places. She touched them to be sure.

For the first time she studied her face for signs of similarity to her
husband’s. She got his photograph from her dresser and, turning on both
dresser lamps, stood at the mirror full front, holding Page’s picture at
the level of her own face.

It was several minutes before it began to come clear: the tiny dents at
the sides of their noses, the sweep of the jawline, the full curve of
the underlip. But suddenly the likeness leaped at her, like a light
switched on in a basement, and made her wonder how they could have
missed it all this time, why their friends and family hadn’t caught it.
All those small subtle signs imploring recognition: those two mouths
that knew the feel of each other so well, those two pairs of green eyes
that looked at each other so often but saw, it now seemed, so very
little.

But the thing that astonished Sunny the most, hurt the most, was the
sudden total opposition of their views. Their faces might be alike,
their love painfully strong. But in their minds something terrible had
happened. He had taken one tack and she another, and the two were
irreconcilable.

Sunny’s first thought, when she was able to think, was to save their
marriage somehow. The morality of the thing was secondary; _everything_
was secondary to her love and her life with Page. They would worry about
morality after they agreed to stay together.

But to her tragic surprise, they didn’t agree. He saw things exactly in
reverse: morality dictated a separation. Their marriage was an offense
to society, to religion, to the law. Page couldn’t live with that and
keep his self-respect.

Sunny put Page’s neglected clothes back into his dresser drawers and
told herself he would have to come get them sooner or later. She would
see him then. In the meantime she would contrive a way to lure him back
to live with her, back where he belonged.

She knew he had adopted his step-father’s attitude. All the curses he
flung at Pringle on the phone didn’t change that. But she hoped
Pringle’s words would carry less weight with him in the long run than
her own.

In the next few days she spent a lot of time at the mirror with Page’s
photo in her hand. It gave her the same message every time: _You are
brother and sister. It’s true. You look alike and nobody saw it before
simply because nobody would have believed it._

Gazing at her guilty features she realized that Page would never be
persuaded of the morality of their marriage. She would have to win him
back on the strength of his love for her alone, and let the morality go
hang. She felt she would die without him.

* * * * *

Page did not come back for several days. She guessed he was holed up
somewhere, suffering as she was and uncertain what to do. She waited at
first with confidence, sure that he would need his things. He couldn’t
get them without seeing her and he couldn’t see her without wanting her;
that was her secret weapon. She didn’t leave the house.

But when three days had passed she began to get scared. Finally,
swallowing her pride, she called Jack Mann. “He isn’t home yet,” she
said, “and it’s past dinnertime. Have you heard from him?”

“No, honey, not for the past few days. I was going to call you, in fact.
His office says he’s home with the flu.”

“What?” she exclaimed. So Jack caught on at once that something was
wrong. It humiliated her, and yet relieved her that she could share some
bit of her troubles.

“I tried to get him for lunch yesterday,” Jack explained kindly. “Only
have a couple of weeks left before I go to Chicago, you know.” He
paused. “Want to talk about it, Sunny?” he asked.

She was not offended; only afraid to discuss it. “I guess I have the
bug, myself,” she said. “If you _do_ hear from him, Jack—”

“I’ll call you right away.” Again he waited, giving her an opening. His
instinct for people, for trouble, for people _in_ trouble, was too good.
There was no fooling him.

But she said, “Thanks, Jack,” and hung up quickly to avoid crying over
the phone.

She wondered, as she replaced the phone, if she had better call the
police. But she was afraid if they were called in, the whole fantastic
mess would come out in the papers. And if that happened it would destroy
Page.

In the middle of the morning’s anxious monotony she had an idea. Page
must have realized what she was up to, waiting there for him in that
neat little trap, ready to grab him when he came for his things.
Couldn’t he be watching the place, waiting till she went out for a
while? He could get in and grab his things then without having to face
her, and it would spare him the temptation he dreaded.

With the speed of new hope she got her coat and purse and left the
apartment. The cold air outside felt good to her. She glanced quickly up
and down the block, wondering if he saw her from the shadows of a
doorway. If he did he wouldn’t show himself.

Sunny walked toward the market on the corner where she bought her
groceries, bending her head slightly against the gray wind. Her eyes
were open wide, aching to see behind her. She spent six or seven minutes
in the shop. _That should give him time to get in_, she thought, and
went out without buying so much as a package of gum.

She ran back to her building with her heart struggling to break out of
her ribs all the way, and hurried into the warm entrance hall.

They met halfway on the stairs. Sunny was dashing up with her head down
and saw his feet first. Page stopped in his tracks, motionless with
surprise and indecision. “You got me after all,” he said at last, as if
she ought to move aside and let him pass to make up for it.

“Caught you like a thief,” she said to shame him.

“It won’t do any good, Sunny,” he said brusquely, trying to shove past
her, but she threw frantic arms around him. And suddenly he dropped his
bundles and kissed her.

“I love you,” they said together, the way they had at the beginning of
their love. It made her cry and made him wild to escape the need that
swelled in him.

“Let me go,” he said, pulling her arms away, but he saw that if he left
her there on the stairs she would become hysterical. She was close to it
already. He hesitated a few seconds and then the shame caught up with
him. She would take him for a weakling.

He retrieved his belongings and took her elbow, mounting the stairs with
her. “This will only hurt both of us,” he said grimly. “But if you want
to talk about it....”

“Thank you, darling,” she said and let him unlock the door for her. She
went in ahead of him and saw at once a note he had propped on the phone
table. She started for it but he grasped her hand, letting his things
fall again.

“It’s just a note,” he said impatiently. “If I hadn’t taken time to
write the damn thing—”

“I wouldn’t have caught you red-handed,” she said. She freed her hand
and picked it up, ignoring his plea not to read it. It said, “I love you
desperately. I will always love you, only you. Sunny, there will never
be anyone else. Page.”

When she looked at him again through wet eyes, he was gazing at the
floor. “It’s not as if you didn’t know it,” he said, embarrassed.

“I just like to be told,” she said.

“It’s against the law to tell you now,” he said. “Did you know that? Our
marriage is legally dead. If we went on living together we’d be
criminals.”

“Does that scare you so much? I’m willing to be a criminal, I’m willing
to be _anything_, if it means keeping you. But you’re not willing to do
that for me. You just want to sneak in and out of here with your clothes
before I catch you.”

“Don’t you wonder what living with a sickness like this all our lives
could do to us?” Page said earnestly. “It would be slow poison. All
you’re thinking about is right now. You want me and—and I want you.” He
stopped, trying to steady himself. “But suppose I gave in and we went
back together. Even if nobody ever found out it would destroy us,
Sunny—”

“Destroy _you_!”

“Knowing every time we touched each other, every time we kissed—”

“Page, I won’t have our love defiled, not even by you.”

“And what if somebody _did_ find out? Do you think they’d approve of it?

“Your parents won’t tell, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“My father would despise us if we stayed together.”

“Well, who is more important, your wife or your father?” she cried
spitefully. “You never seemed to give a damn for him before.” Seeing him
brace for a fight she softened suddenly, imploring him. “Darling, your
father wouldn’t despise us. He wouldn’t approve, it’s true, but if he
saw we meant it; saw how deep our love is.... He loves you too much to
risk breaking with you forever. And I have a woman’s feeling your mother
secretly wishes we’d stay together, no matter what. They love us, Page.”

“Sure they love us. That doesn’t make us right.”

“Oh, say the damn word!” she exclaimed, shaking her head till the blond
curls flew. “We’re both so scared of it we can’t pronounce it.... Well,
_say_ it, go on!” she taunted.

“Say what?” he muttered stubbornly.

“_Incest._ Incest, Incest, Incest!” she shouted. “That’s it, that’s the
one big fact in our lives. Let’s at least call it by its right name.”

“Let’s just get rid of it, end it,” he said.

“Page, you know you can’t leave me,” she said, approaching him. “Any
more than I can leave you.”

“All right,” he flared. “We’ll live here and raise that little idiot we
spawned. And someday, somehow, the news will leak out. Only by that time
I’ll have a name, a reputation. We’ll be well known. Our child will have
ears and he’ll understand things—at least I _hope_ he’ll understand
things—and either this gets plastered all over the papers or somebody
gets smart and blackmails us. We lose our sanity either way. We’re
helpless, completely trapped.” He stopped, out of breath.

“I’ll take that chance,” she said. “For you.”

“You will now, but not ten years from now. How would you like your child
to have to face it with us? Sunny, there are things you can face by
yourself, but not with a child to protect.”

It was true. She felt the uprush of unwanted tears and cursed softly to
herself. “We might never have to face it. We could move.”

“Where? The moon? You can’t escape yourself, anyway. You take yourself
with you wherever you go—and your secrets and your shames. We’d have to
look at each other every day, every night in bed, and know....” He gazed
at her quietly for a minute, with his love, terrible and sharp in his
heart, making him weak. “Sunny? Are you afraid to have an abortion?” he
asked.

_Sacrifice the baby_, he was begging her, _and maybe we can live
together. If it’s just you and me with no kids to suffer with us._

She understood. “Yes, I’m afraid,” she said truthfully. “But not so much
of the pain as—” She gave a little sob. “I love this baby, Page.”

“You’d rather have the baby than me, is that it?” he said roughly.

“I’d rather have you both,” she wept. “We belong together, Page.”

“Not in the eyes of the law.”

“The law can go to hell!”

“Swearing won’t change it. Why do you suppose incest is forbidden?” he
asked. “Because brothers and sisters are falling all over each other
trying to get hitched? No, Sunny, no. It’s to protect children, preserve
the race. Did you ever hear of inbreeding? It happens to dogs and cows.
They get nervous and weak. They get stupid. They bleed. It happened to
the great royal families in Europe. What was it? Inbreeding. _Incest._”

“But that took generations,” Sunny protested. “That doesn’t happen the
first time.”

“It can,” he said with the certainty of a man who isn’t sure of his
facts; only his prejudices. “I knew a brother and sister who were the
children of first cousins. What do you think they were like?”

“Both gargoyles, of course,” she fumed.

“He was completely hairless from the day he was born. He didn’t have a
hair on his body—not on his head or his chest or his genitals. Not one
lousy eyelash did that guy have. He looked like polished plastic.”

“You can live with a thing like that,” she whispered.

“And his sister,” Page went on, “was a hopeless cripple from the waist
down. Her legs never carried her one inch in her life. They were just a
detour for her blood. They hung from her hips like sacks of water, and
you’d have sworn there wasn’t a bone in either one. She went everywhere
in a wheel chair. Her brother pushed her.”

“It might have been an accident or an illness,” she protested, trying to
hide the anxiety he had roused in her.

Page lighted a cigarette from the one that was burning out. “Their
parents were cousins. That’s the only explanation,” he said. “Cousins,
Sunny. We’re brother and sister.”

She covered her face with her hands and cried. It tore him nearly to
pieces to watch her. He had dramatized it for her, tortured her with it,
in the hope that she would agree to the abortion. He felt it was the
only chance for them to stay together. But it didn’t work.

“Maybe Dr. Blue was wrong,” she said pathetically.

He reached her in one big step and took her hard by the shoulders.
“Maybe our eyes aren’t the same color and our hair isn’t blond and our
noses and our ears and our mouths—” He faltered. “That mouth of yours,
that mouth I love so unspeakably much,” he said, helpless with her
closeness “... is my own mouth.” His voice separated each awful word.
Sunny covered her lips with her hands as if they were court evidence of
guilt. “It’s so obvious,” he said, studying her face, lifting his
fingers to touch it. “God, why couldn’t we have seen it and saved
ourselves before we fell in love? I’ve spent hours in front of the damn
mirror. And the more I look at myself, the more I see you.

“I saw my face for the first time three days ago, Sunny. My face: _your_
face. The same!” It was a cry of despair. She bent her head like a
little girl being blamed for something she can’t understand. But he
raised it again till he could see every feature.

“Oh, my darling,” he said, wiping ineffectually at her tears. “Oh, my
love, my wife, my—my sister.”

He caught her in a crushing embrace, hiding his face in her soft neck,
and she felt him shake with sobs that only a strangling repressive
effort kept silent. He released her abruptly and turned, picking up his
bags and hurrying toward the door. Sunny rushed after him, catching at
his sleeve.

“Page, where are you staying?”

“I’ll get in touch with you,” he answered.

“I’ll die if I don’t know. Page!” she begged.

“Sunny, I have to be alone a little while. Can’t you see that? I’ll call
you, darling.” He struggled toward the door, afraid to prolong the stay.
He would succumb to her and betray them both, and end up hating her for
it. To make love to Sunny now was to make her filthy as well as himself.
His love was turned to lust since his wife had turned into his sister.
Those were his feelings, a Pringle’s feelings, and he couldn’t escape
them. Physical love with Sunny would be wrong and he despised himself
for wanting it so constantly.

He pushed her firmly away and reached the door. She stood where she was,
momentarily defeated, crying and heart-sick. Page was too moved, too in
love and too worried, to leave her without another word. He said, almost
hoping she wouldn’t hear, “Maybe if you got an abortion ... we could—”

She straightened up and said with a fierce pride that surprised him,
“Never!”

He shut the door quietly behind him.

* * * * *

Sunny waited another couple of days alone in the apartment, afraid to go
out and leave the reinstalled phone untended. But Page, in spite of his
promise, didn’t call.

Sunny phoned his office at the _Sunday Magazine_ twice, but they told
her politely that Mr. Pringle was out covering a story, and gave her her
own number to call.

He thinks if we just don’t see each other or hear each other, the
problem will disappear, she thought angrily. For the first time since
she had known him she was tempted to question Page’s courage. Not his
physical courage; he had been in Korea, and his record was good. It was
his moral courage she wondered about.

Sunny called Jack again. She knew her call would advertise serious
trouble between her and Page, but he was their closest friend and she
trusted him. “I don’t know where he is,” she admitted to him.

“Well, I don’t know where he’s living, but I do know he’s in his office
part-time. We talked yesterday about getting together for a drink.”

“They keep telling me he isn’t there,” she said.

“He probably isn’t. He’s out a lot on interviews. Why don’t you go down
there, if it’s that urgent?”

“He’d kill me,” she said.

“The hell with him,” Jack retorted. “If he hurts you, I’ll break his
head. It’s worth a try, Sunny. If it doesn’t work, let me know. I’ll try
to work something out.”

She thanked him and hung up somewhat reassured. It made sense for Page
to hold tight to his job. He needed work right now, all the more since
he had given up his wife. Sunny wished sourly that she had a similar
crutch to lean on.

* * * * *

She took Jack’s advice and went to the midtown offices of the _Sunday
Magazine_, but it was all for nothing. She wasn’t admitted to see him
and had to leave, frustrated and furious. But Page suffered over it,
too. He was angry that she should have tried to approach him in public
and make a display of their trouble, especially here where he had a new
job and had to establish his worth. But not all the wrath he could
muster over her dangerous foolishness helped him forget that he had
turned her out; embarrassed and hurt her. He ached with regret over it,
wanting to rush home and hold her and beg her to forgive him.

He stood in his small private office, looking out the window at the
complex geometry of the city. The street thirty-two stories below looked
so inviting that he let himself wonder how it would feel to jump. But
anything was better than suicide, any act less final than death.

Page fell into his swivel chair and wept all over his bright,
self-confident new column. For the first time he really wanted to
change; try to accept the thing for Sunny’s sake, but he couldn’t do it.
Not yet. It still seemed too much like a weak surrender to him. Sunny
would have to wait and let him come to her. For when she approached him,
and worst of all, in public, he panicked. It was partly the
uncontrollable sex thing, partly moral confusion, partly painful love.

Jack and Laura were packed and Jack had located a temporary apartment
for them in Chicago. Their New York place was almost empty. The moving
van would pick up the remaining things in the morning.

Jack had talked Page into a last night’s outing. “You can’t let me go
without a send-off, old buddy,” he said. Privately, he hoped he could
help with whatever was troubling the young Pringles. It was probably a
typical newlywed complaint, but Jack pretended at first that he didn’t
know anything was amiss.

He met Page at a quiet little bar in Jack’s neighborhood. Both of them
were early. Jack was surprised at Page’s appearance. He was wearing the
right sort of clothes: the style-conscious young-executive sort. His
shirt was hand-tailored, his shoes were new. And yet he looked neglected
and unpressed.

“You look like I did when I was drinking myself to death,” Jack said
humorously.

“How?” Page said, anxious to get the first drink down and the second one
ordered.

“Seedy,” Jack told him.

“Thanks.” Page gulped over the hot whiskey.

Jack ordered a glass of milk and Page’s eyebrows soared, “Jesus, are you
still on the wagon?” he croaked, clearing his burning throat.

“More or less. Mostly more,” Jack grinned.

“Jack! You’re my friend. Get _drunk_ with me, for God’s sake.” He looked
so dismayed, with his face in lines and a button loose and his eyes lost
and troubled, that Jack, against his better judgment, ordered a shot of
Scotch.

“I do this out of sheer misguided brotherly love,” he told Page. “Laura
will probably divorce me when she finds out, but if it’s that
serious....”

“It’s _that_ serious.”

Jack waited for him to pick up the cue and tell him his problems. He
knew how to listen sympathetically to people, because he cared about
them. He was really interested, even in the dreariest dilemmas.

“I can’t talk about it,” Page said, putting the second drink away and
signaling for the third.

“Well then, what the hell am I doing sitting here getting drunk with
you?” Jack demanded to know.

“Shut up and drink,” Page said solemnly.

“It’ll take all night to get drunk on this stuff,” Jack said. “You could
down ten shots in a row and be sober as a pole. Why don’t we go up to my
place?”

“And slobber over your lovely wife?” Page objected.

“She isn’t home,” Jack said. She was, in fact, down in the Village
saying good-by to a few close friends.

“She isn’t? Let’s go.” The drinks seemed slightly stronger to Page than
Jack’s description—perhaps because he took down four or five in less
than ten minutes and they landed in an empty stomach.

Jack eyed him critically. “Can you stand up?” he kidded.

“Certainly, if you promise not to watch.”

They headed outside and the fresh air steadied Page. He was glad to go
with Jack. He had no wish to display his misery in a public bar. At the
same time he yearned to get high, to relax with an old friend who
wouldn’t judge him; muddle himself up and think about something besides
Sunny Pringle, his wife who was not his wife: his beautiful, bewitching,
seductive, adorable sister. But the liquor was just so much acid eating
up his little tin inhibitions. The higher he got the more he thought of
her; the more tempted he was to confess himself for the sake of the
comfort Jack would give him.

* * * * *

The Manns’s apartment was bare except for packing boxes full of books
and the built-in kitchen appliances. Jack and Page settled, with two
glasses and a bottle, in the kitchen.

Page wouldn’t talk about the thing for a while. He had given himself
strict orders, while he was still sober, not to mention it at all, not
even to this oldest and best of his friends. Not that Jack would ever
use it against him. But having revealed the thing once he might do it
again, and the more people who knew, the shakier Page’s future.

But as the evening wore on and the level in the whiskey bottle sank, the
urge for admission came over him again. It had all been stopped up
inside him for the past lonely, worried weeks. He wanted another
viewpoint, help, somebody to tell him what to do. Above all, he needed
someone to tell him he was right.

Jack was almost too easy to talk to. If you were sad he cheered you up,
if you were wrong he righted you, if you were happy he lived it up with
you. He was the one who had seen, even before Page himself, what a rare
and wonderful girl Sunny was.

Page put a friendly arm around him. “Jack, what would I do without you?”
he said in an unusual show of affection, brought on by straight Scotch.

“Why, you’d go straight to hell, old buddy. What else?” Jack grinned.
“Fill your glass?”

Page handed it over. “What did you say was the name of that drink?” he
asked, aware that his tongue was stumbling around in his mouth, like a
mole lost in the daylight.

“‘Jack’s Damnedest,’” Jack said. “Never fails.”

“What’s in it?” Page studied the glass suspiciously.

“Ten parts whiskey,” Jack said.

“Ten parts whiskey to _what_?”

“To your health.”

Page smelled it doubtfully.

“Man, you don’t smell the stuff, you _drink_ it,” Jack said.

Page drank. “You know, sometimes I feel like I can tell you just about
anything,” he said. “Women don’t understand some things.”

“Well, let’s have it,” Jack said. “No, wait, let me guess. Sunny can’t
cook?”

“Oh, hell, she can cook anything.” Page made a sweeping gesture and
tumbled an ice tray to the floor.

“She squeezes the toothpaste from the top and you squeeze from the
bottom? That’s Laura’s specialty. Ought to be worth a trip to Reno.”

Page wrapped both hands around his glass. “Guess again, Counselor.”

“Well, there’s only one other problem we haven’t examined. You don’t get
along in bed?”

Page found himself laughing, knowing it was the liquor that tickled him,
and trying to stop. Jack slapped him on the back.

“Maybe you’d better tell me,” Jack said. “I’m not doing so well.”

“I only wish it were all as simple as sex,” Page sighed.

“Simple be damned. That’s an art.”

Page finished the drink and stared slowly up the wall behind Jack’s
head, unable to look squarely at him. He felt the words coming up in his
throat, and he had nothing left to fight them with. It was wrong, it was
grossly unfair to Sunny. And yet he felt safe with Jack, who had had an
earful of Page’s escapades over the years and never betrayed him.

Page was so bewildered that his thinking apparatus had ground to a halt.
The whiskey made it a cinch to surrender. He needed help and Jack was
there to give it.

“I don’t know how to say it,” he began. “It’s so ugly. So humiliating
and queer. It’s impossible, Jack, no kidding. But it really happened.”

Jack stared at this odd introduction. “The whole world’s a little queer,
Page,” he reassured him. But he was thinking, Jesus don’t tell me
Sunny’s gay. He knew Page wasn’t but he was never as sharp about the
girls.

“Help me,” Page said. “I’ve got to tell somebody.”

“Is it about Sunny?” Jack asked.

“About both of us. You see, we ... we’re....” Page looked at him very
hard and suddenly lost his nerve. “I’m adopted,” he told his shoes,
retreating.

“So?”

The liquor whirled in Page’s head and his heart ached and he knew, as
well as he knew his real name, that Sunny was thinking of him at that
moment.

“So Sunny is my sister.” He had to force the words out and his voice
boomed unnaturally from the effort.

Jack was stunned almost the way Page himself had been when he first
heard it. But before he could answer, offer his sympathy, Page bent his
head into his hands and sobbed, knocking over the whiskey glass at his
feet. A lone ice cube skidded out.

Jack left him alone for several minutes before he put a tentative hand
on his shoulder. “Your _sister_?” he echoed. “Are you sure?”

“You think I’m kidding? About a thing like this?” Page stood up like a
shot to dramatize his words, stood there wavering, trying to stabilize
himself.

“You, of all people,” Jack said, dazed.

“Why do you say it that way?” He flushed the truth out of Jack, who was
too shaken up for white lies.

“You hate everything like this, everything that isn’t normal and
ordinary,” Jack said. “This must have been unbearable. My God.”

Page was offended. “I don’t like abnormality, no,” he declared still
trying to balance himself.

“Sit down, boy, sit down,” Jack said, giving Page’s hand a tug and
toppling him back onto his packing box. “And I suppose you think this is
completely abnormal?”

“Well, what do _you_ think it is? Clean, wholesome fun?” Page demanded.

Jack got up and filled their glasses again. “I guess I just think it’s
an accident,” he said. “You can’t very well blame anybody for it.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Page answered. “Oh, don’t misunderstand
me, I know nobody planned to marry us off knowing we were brother and
sister. But it could have been avoided, if my real parents had kept me.
If the doctor had told Dad who I was. If my step-parents had kept it to
themselves when they found out.”

“That wouldn’t have been strictly moral, would it?”

“No. But at least I wouldn’t have had to—” Page stopped, ashamed, and
let Jack finish for him. “You wouldn’t have had to face it,” Jack said,
sitting down with their fresh drinks. “I guess there’s something in
that.”

“Remember when Sunny and I were going together in college? You used to
tell us we were like an old married couple. We even looked alike.” Page
laughed sadly.

“I remember. But I never thought....” Jack put his drink down between
his feet. “You know something, Page? I think you and Sunny could make a
go of it ... provided you keep quiet about it.”

“That wouldn’t be strictly moral, Jackson,” Page said, throwing Jack’s
words back at him.

“I’m not so sure this is any time to be moral,” Jack said, rolling some
whiskey thoughtfully around in his mouth.

“You can’t be moral on a part-time basis. It’s a condition, like being
alive,” Page objected. “You have principles to live by. You can’t chuck
them overboard at the first crisis.”

“Some things are more important than principles, old buddy.”

“If you’re talking about love, you’re wrong. Love has to be moral too,
Jack.”

“Love has its own morality, doesn’t it?”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means you and Sunny have to work something out so you can go
on living together. Because you love each other too much to live apart.”

“That thing would eat us alive, Jack.”

“I doubt it.”

Jack’s calm, rational attitude angered Page. “You make it sound like a
little misunderstanding between friends,” he said. “Some trifle we can
just smooth over if we give it the old college try.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Jack said. “I guess I don’t shock so easily, Page.
I’m used to odd balls in my life.” It was as close as Jack had ever come
to revealing his homosexuality to Page.

He got up and went to the book-loaded cartons in the living room. Page
could hear him pottering around, skimming pages.

“I want to read you something,” Jack called. “Just remembered it. Ever
hear of Lord Byron?”

“Sure. English 231. The girls called him Gorgeous George.”

Jack found his book and blew dust off the top. He brought it back to the
kitchen and sat down by Page again. “Lord Byron was in love with a lady
named Augusta Leigh,” Jack said.

“So what?”

“So he wrote her a very beautiful poem.”

“Spare me the literature,” Page said.

“I’ll just read you a couple of lines. Listen.” He marked the words with
his finger and read: “‘For thee, my own sweet sister—’”

“_Whose_ sister?” Page flared.

“Byron’s. Augusta.”

“He was in love with his sister?”

“Didn’t they teach you anything in English 231, old buddy?”

“Well, I don’t want to hear about Byron’s troubles,” Page grumbled.
“He’s dead.”

Jack ignored him. “‘For thee, my own sweet sister,/ In thy heart/ I know
myself secure, as thou in mine;/ We were and are beings who never each
other can resign.’”

Page hiccoughed. “The poor broad was in love with him, too?”

“‘It is the same, together or apart,/ From life’s commencement to its
slow decline/ We are entwined—’”

“Jack, for God’s sake, this is very painful—”

“‘—Let death come slow or fast,/ The tie which bound the first endures
the last.’”

“Oh, Jesus! You mean they were stuck with each other?”

“Well, they weren’t married, but they always loved each other,” Jack
said, closing the book. “They settled for making love whenever they
could. And they had a daughter.”

“An idiot?”

“Now where in hell did you get that medieval idea?” Jack said.

“_Was_ she an idiot?”

“No, she was a normal girl. Why, Page? Is Sunny pregnant?”

Page nodded.

After a moment Jack said quietly, “I should think you’d have to stay
with her now.”

“Jack, if Laura were your honest-to-God sister, what would you do?”

“I don’t know,” Jack admitted. “But I wouldn’t let her go.”

“You’d keep her? As your wife?”

“Not as my cook and bottle washer, that’s for sure.”

“You’re as bad as Sunny,” Page complained. “You two would make a lovely
pair.”

“I’ve always thought so,” Jack said sardonically.

Page stood up again. “Knock it off,” he said, and took a swipe at Jack
that nearly staggered Page back to the floor. Jack lowered him onto his
packing box again and Page tried to control himself. “Forgive me, Jack,
I didn’t mean it,” he said, humiliated. “It’s the whiskey.”

“Forget it.”

“No, I want you to know,” Page protested with drunken urgency. “I’m sick
of myself. I can hardly bear to think of it. I know we were innocent
when we got married. But that only makes it seem worse. More sinister,
more tragic. We were so damn happy. And now—the contrast is torture. I
can’t have her back and just because I can’t, I want her so much I get
crazy with it. Did you ever want anybody that much?” He was clutching
Jack’s lapels, talking straight into his face.

“Yes, I did,” Jack said without flinching. But he didn’t describe the
kind of love that tore him up that way.

“No, you didn’t, you couldn’t have. Nobody ever did.”

“You mean,” Jack said, “nobody ever suffered as much as you did. Or as
long or as hard.”

But Page was too drunk and too desolate to hear the parody of self-pity
in Jack’s voice. “That’s it,” he said. “And to have to think of yourself
as—as good as queer, on top of everything else—”

“Oh, nuts,” Jack said. “No one knows about it but you and Sunny.”

“And the doc, and my step-parents. And now _you_,” Page said, suddenly
resenting Jack. “And for every one of us who knows, I get sick to my
stomach.”

“You mean if nobody knew you’d feel swell about it?”

“That’s not what I mean!”

“You’re so damn mixed-up right now you don’t make sense,” Jack said,
speaking steadily with firm hands on Page’s shoulders that helped to
quiet him. “Am I right?”

“I guess.” Page said.

“Just because a man is different from the rest doesn’t make him
contemptible, Page,” Jack said.

“Just miserable.”

“Depends on how strong he is. How much of a man. These things happen to
people and they have to learn to live with them. The better they face
them, the stronger and finer they are in the end.”

“You mean, live with incest and be healthy,” Page said.

“I mean live with Sunny and be _happy_. And let the rest go to hell. You
don’t need to climb on a soapbox in Bughouse Square and explain that
your wife is also your sister. You don’t have to get yourself punished
in public to make your marriage permissible. You’ll only lose everything
that way,” Jack told him. “Some things have to be kept secret if you
want to make it in this world.”

“You’re telling me to do what Sunny wants me to do: keep it quiet and go
on as if it hadn’t happened.”

“Keep it quiet, yes, but for God’s sake, don’t go on as if it hadn’t
happened. Face it. Between yourselves. Adjust to it the best you can and
don’t let it defeat you.”

“Jack,” Page said uncertainly. “How can you respect me, knowing about
it?”

“Am I talking as if I didn’t?”

“No, but—”

“Page, listen. Learn something about charity. You respect me, don’t
you?”

“You know how much I think of you, Jack. I couldn’t sit here and tell
this to anyone else in the world.”

“Well, would it make a difference to you if Laura were my sister and we
were still married? Would you shove my teeth down my throat and turn me
over to the cops if you found out such a thing about me?”

“I can’t say I’d admire you for it,” Page said. “But I wouldn’t meddle,
if you wanted things that way. But hell, Jack, there’s nothing wrong
with you. You can’t possibly know how it feels—”

“I know exactly how it feels. What if I told you I’ve been as misfit and
miserable with my problems as you ever were with yours?”

“My God, Laura isn’t—” Page began.

But Jack stopped him with a wry smile. “No, she’s not my sister. It’s
me. I’m gay, Page.” He hadn’t planned to say it, but when it came out,
it came simply and generously. It was a brave risk to speak like that to
Page Pringle, who couldn’t watch a man do a hula in fun without
condemning him. It might cost Jack a valued friendship. But he was
hoping it would comfort Page instead; show him with a shock that you
could be different from the pack and survive. Better than that: live a
good life, love a good wife, and enjoy the respect you deserved.

“Gay?” Page repeated doubtfully. “You mean ... a homo?” The word tasted
even worse to him than ‘incest’. It smacked of pretty boys cruising the
streets in ridiculously tight pants.

Jack nodded, letting his hands fall away from Page’s shoulders. In
almost the same gesture Page released Jack with a shudder and they sat
looking at each other. Page was acutely embarrassed. Self-conscious and
clumsy and drunk, he fumbled for a way out. “Well, that must make things
dull for Laura,” he said, forgetting even that Jack and Laura had a
child. Jack didn’t smile.

After a few minutes of mortified silence Page stood up, steadying
himself with a hand on the kitchen counter. “I’d better go,” he said,
afraid to say more. The thing revolted him and yet he was ashamed to
feel that way. He wasn’t too drunk or too callous to realize what a
sacrifice Jack had made for him. And yet he felt remorse that Jack had
thought it necessary.

Jack rose and followed him, handing him his cigarettes and coat as he
reached the front door.

“I’m sorry you told me, Jack,” Page said quietly.

“I can see that.”

“Sort of ironical, isn’t it?” Page said, not sure if he were joking or
trying to hurt his friend.

“What’s ironical?”

“Your name. Mann.” Page began to laugh against his will.

“Laura doesn’t think so,” Jack answered. He had himself under tight
control. But he knew now he had forfeited Page’s friendship. Tired and
profoundly disappointed, he felt a sudden pity and scorn for Page; pity
and regret for himself.

“I should have known you couldn’t grow and learn a little,” he told
Page. “You can’t see any parallel between us. You can’t see how my
problem lets me understand yours. You only see that I’m queer—your word,
by the way. And suddenly I’m not like you any more and you want to wipe
me off like so much mud on your hands.

“Well, go on. I only wish to God Sunny had gotten the man she deserves
and not her chicken brother.”

Page paused in the doorway, insulted and shocked. “You hate me for
having the strength to leave her, to do what I know is right,” he said.
“You hate me because I’m a normal male. And if I weren’t so drunk—”

“Yeah, well, you _are_ that drunk, Brother Pringle. Go home and sober
up.”

Page lunged at him but Jack ducked, grabbed Page, spun him out the door,
and let him blunder noisily into the wall across the corridor. Page
stood there dizzily, searching for his equilibrium like a man trying to
find his shadow; turning around and around with increasing frustration.

Jack shut the door and leaned against it, exhausted. He felt like
crying, the way he had when he was a kid and too small to defend
himself. He had learned a lot about fighting since then. But when
something like this happened, he felt vulnerable, as if he and not Page
had had the worst of it.

“Now you know why we haven’t seen each other since then,” Jack said
quietly to his guest, Mr. Winkler. Repeating the story had been almost
like reliving it; Jack felt tired and used. He poured himself another
drink. “It’s funny how you don’t suspect so much prejudice, so much
contempt, in somebody you know that well,” he said.

“Well, maybe his confusion was the Pringles’ fault,” Winkler suggested,
staring thoughtfully at the floor. He added diffidently, “Then again,
maybe there was some sense in his father’s ideas.”

“Sure there was. Quite a lot. Page wouldn’t have swallowed anything
vicious or stupid,” Jack said. “Do you know the Pringles, Mr. Winkler?”
He looked at his visitor curiously.

“Me? No, no,” Winkler said. “I suppose, being older, I can’t help
sympathizing with them a little.” He cleared his throat. “You lost track
of Page and Sunny after that?”

“No. Sunny began to write to Laura. She didn’t have anybody else. She
was madder than hell at Page when she found out he’d told me everything.
But she trusted us enough to get over it eventually.”

“I’m glad she did,” Winkler said. “I was afraid I’d miss part of the
story.”

* * * * *

On their own, Page and Sunny began to read books on incest. Page took
the ones on law and medicine; Sunny, all the history and mythology and
psychology she could find. They both dug out what they were looking for
and ignored the rest.

Page wanted to damn incest medically and legally. Sunny wanted to
whitewash and glamorize it. And the books, which reflected the world’s
confusion on the subject, gave them both ammunition.

What is incest? Why is it so wrong? Why are there strict laws against
it? _Because_, said Sunny’s books, _it’s so alluring. If the laws
weren’t strict, everybody and his brother—literally—would be taking it
up. The boy with his beloved mother, the girl with a father she
worships, the brother and sister sharing the same bed too long or
discovering each other erotically in some kind of emotional crisis._

There have to be laws against it, Sunny concluded, or we’d have an
epidemic.

She read about the ancient Ptolemies, fabled kings and successors of
Alexander the Great, who practiced incest for three hundred years and
produced a defiantly healthy line to the end.

She read about Cesare Borgia, who fell madly in love with his luscious
sister Lucrezia, and who arranged the plot by which her husband, the
Duke of Besaglia, was strangled.

She read of strange customs in the Melanesian Islands where sisters
turned away and covered their faces at the approach of their brothers,
so powerful was the forbidden attraction between them.

She read about the gold-encrusted Pharaohs, children of the Sun, who
married their sisters to preserve the purity of royal blood. And she saw
that after several thousand years of inbreeding they were still
producing tough healthy children. Even Cleopatra, the symbol of
seductive femininity, married her brother. And the poetry of love in
Egypt still uses the words ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’ to mean ‘Lover’ and
‘Beloved.’

* * * * *

Sunny ignored the bloodshed and bitterness and rigid strictures against
incest that spotted these narratives. They were in the sections she
skipped: the austere laws of Leviticus in the Bible, the tales of crop
failure and calamity ascribed to incest in ancient Greece, the awful
tragedy of Oedipus.

The thing that confused her most was not in the books. It was a small,
almost artificially forced feeling, that she adored her husband even
more because he was her brother. Perhaps she had to feel that way or
lose her mind.

Sunny continued to see her doctor for regular check-ups. Finally,
burning with curiosity, she asked, “Doctor Settick, what happens if two
people, say two first cousins, get married and have children?”

He screwed his handsome young face into a laugh. “Whatever put that in
your head?” he asked. When he looked at her that way she wished she were
in the hands of an older, more businesslike doctor. But she liked
Settick. She laughed a lot in his office, and it was the only place
where she did.

She blushed at his question. “I read about it once,” she said. “When
you’re pregnant you read all sorts of goofy books. If a brother and
sister had a baby together would it—would it—”

“Would it what?”

“Would it be an idiot? A monster?”

“Not necessarily,” he said.

She tried to look casual, not relieved. “Oh,” she said, hoping he would
go on. He did, crossing his arms over his chest while she looked
demurely at the white sheet that covered her.

“When two people that closely related have children, however,” he said,
“the children are likely to have their parents’ strengths and weaknesses
magnified.”

“How does it work?”

“Well, if you have bad eyes and your husband, who is also your
brother”—he smiled interestedly at her—“also has bad eyes, your child is
going to have a terrible pair of eyes. On the other hand, if you both
have good vision, he’ll probably see like a hawk.”

“That sounds normal.”

“Almost. Incest just seems to exaggerate the parents’ characteristics in
the children.”

“If you were both healthy, then, your children would be, too?”

“Very likely.” There was a small line of intrigue between his eyes. “Why
all the questions?”

“Oh, my husband was telling me about a family he knew where the parents
were first cousins. And their kids were crippled and bald.”

“You tell him it was probably some other complication than
consanguinity,” said Settick. “That might have intensified the trouble,
but it probably didn’t cause it unless there had been a lot of close
inter-marriage over several generations. Why hell,” he said, “my own
brother fell madly in love with our first cousin once.”

“He did?”

“Sure. Fortunately he was only thirteen at the time. He got over it.
Still, it wouldn’t have been such a catastrophe if he hadn’t. From the
standpoint of having kids, anyway. But he got smart and put off
marriage. Didn’t get hooked till he was thirty-two.”

“That’s kind of old,” Sunny said.

“Couldn’t be helped. The damn fool went through medical school. And
dragged me after him. Takes quite a while, you know, particularly if you
specialize.”

Sunny chuckled with him. He had reassured her and she went home from the
examination feeling better.

* * * * *

But Sunny had not reassured her doctor. Richie Settick had a couple of
favorite patients, and one of them was Sunny Pringle. It was not the
incest talk that bothered him. He dismissed that as vagrant curiosity
inspired by her reading. His patients came up with all manner of
moon-shot questions. He had learned to answer with a straight face, even
when they brought him their horoscopes and ordered their babies
delivered on a propitious day.

What troubled him about Sunny was that she was actually losing weight.
Although the foetus continued to grow and Sunny didn’t complain, she was
obviously worried and unhappy. And she was getting visibly thin.

“At the rate you’re going,” he informed her the next time she came, “you
won’t need to bother with maternity clothes till the last week.”

“Oh, I’ll wear them anyway. Makes me feel motherly,” she said. “Besides,
I’ll look like I’ve swallowed a watermelon the next time you see me.”

But she didn’t. When she came back her face and limbs were thinner
still, her waist still small.

“You look too sexy to be as far along as you are,” he told her
critically. “In five months of pregnancy you’ve lost two pounds. What
are you trying to do, disappear?”

“Will it hurt the baby?” she asked anxiously. “I can’t work up an
appetite.”

“Nuts,” he clucked at her. “I don’t see how you could be getting the
minimum healthy diet. And I don’t mean just vitamin pills.”

“Dr. Settick,” she said seriously, “if anything happens to this baby,
I’d want to die. But when I force myself to eat I upchuck.”

“What’s all this dying talk?” he broke in. “That’s no way to carry on,
Sunny. Nothing’s going to happen to the baby. That’s number one. But if
anything did, there’s nothing in God’s world to prevent you from having
a whole passel of kids if you want them.”

“Yes there is,” she said quietly. The last few empty months in the
apartment had made her desperate to talk to somebody, the way Page had
been desperate when he confessed to Jack Mann. She didn’t want to open
her soul to Dr. Settick. But he stood there waiting for some
explanation; compassionate and friendly and with the sort of frank,
good-featured face Sunny fell for. So she said in an unsure voice, “My
husband doesn’t want any more children.”

“Can’t stand them, hm?”

“No.” She looked away, already sorry she had spoken. But the doctor came
over to her and touched her gently. “Any time you want more you just
come and see me,” he said. The words were insolent but Settick wasn’t.
His tone was quite respectful. “You can always tell him it was an
accident,” he added.

Sunny didn’t know whether to laugh or lose her temper. She turned
scarlet and couldn’t look at him. “I love him,” she said.

“He’s making you unhappy, isn’t he?” Dr. Settick stood where he was,
taken with the daffodil lights in her hair, the trembling of her
finely-sculptured mouth.

“It’s something neither of us can help,” Sunny said, squirming with the
intimacy of the situation.

“I’ll tell you something,” Settick offered. “The beautiful Mrs. Pringle
is hurting her baby’s health by hurting her own. And if Mr. Pringle is
to blame, I’ll talk to him myself. I’d rather flatten him out on the
floor, but I’ll _talk_ to him, I promise.”

“There’s nothing you can say that would help,” she said. “He won’t
come.”

“With a wife like you?” He took the sexual implication of the phrase,
and again she didn’t know how to handle him. His hand touched her
breasts and it was no neat medical gesture. Sunny brushed it quickly
away.

“Hey,” she said. “None of that. I told you, I love the guy.”

“Okay, you love him,” Settick said, turning away from her with a sigh.
“These things happen. Wives do love their husbands, although to hear
some of my patients talk you’d never believe it. You know something,
Sunny? You’re all backwards. You not only love your husband, you
actually want more children. Do you know how many women come in here day
after day telling me what slobs they’re stuck with and how many
screaming brats they’ve got at home? They hate being mothers, they hate
being wives. God, it’s enough to keep a man single for the rest of his
life.”

She smiled at him. “They’d probably all stay right where they are if you
gave them a choice.”

He shook his head with a laugh. “What makes you such an optimist?” he
said.

“I have to be. It’s all I’ve got.” For a moment she was afraid she would
lose control and cry in front of him. But she found a measure of dignity
by staring carefully at the large stethoscope through which mothers were
allowed to listen to their growing baby’s heartbeats. She had heard her
baby’s heart not ten minutes ago. It sounded like the rapid tapping of a
metronome in the next room, and it moved her unspeakably.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s the matter, Sunny,” the doctor urged. “I
didn’t mean to get fresh just now. Forget it, will you? That’s the price
you pay for being so damn beautiful.” He smiled disarmingly.

“It’s okay,” she said, letting him persuade her that he meant no
offense.

“You’re worried and you’re not eating right,” he said briskly. “I’m
going to put you on a diet, to gain, and some tranquilizers.”

She protested but he wrote a prescription for her. “It’s for the baby,”
he said. “You don’t have to live on them.”

Sunny got off the examination table, holding her sheets around her.

“Are you getting a divorce by any chance?” Settick asked, unable to
resist.

“We don’t need to,” she said cryptically.

He surprised himself by recalling at that moment the questions on incest
one of his patients—was it Sunny?—had put to him: just a fleeting notion
that crossed his mind and left it the moment he saw her out the door.

* * * * *

Sunny’s letters to Laura and her talks with Dr. Settick were her only
relief from solitude. Laura was the sole person she could tell
everything to. Her notes were restrained at first, but Laura’s warmth
and concern shone through her answers and gave Sunny the courage to be
honest.

“It takes two to dissolve a marriage, just as it takes two to make one,”
Laura wrote. “So Page can’t call it quits by himself, whatever the
heartless law books say. Fight for him. He’s worth it. Or at least he
_will_ be when he grows up and realizes life is more important than
arbitrary rules.”

Sunny reread the letter a dozen times. And from then on her own letters
were graphic charts of her heart and mind. She described the long gray
days that not even a sweet spring breeze could brighten. And the nights,
infamous in the poems of separated lovers, and hourglass-endless.

“I like being mad at Page,” she wrote Laura. “It gives me energy—keeps
my pride alive. I think how mean I’ll be when he comes home. And when he
begs me to take him back—oh, how tender and passionate! I have only one
fear, Laura—that he’ll never come. The longer he waits, the more I
wonder. Maybe I’ll have to start crawling again after all.”

Sunny took Laura’s sympathy with gratitude, with greed, but it didn’t
replace her husband. And it was all Laura could give her.

* * * * *

Page’s _Sunday Magazine_ column was getting noticed. It was funny, a
little rough and overstated, but clever. Sunny loved it. It surprised
her and made her laugh—and then weep because he hadn’t shared it with
her before he shared it with the public.

She cut out the columns, pasting them in a scrapbook. The best she taped
to her mirror to memorize:

“It’s like a gold yoyo,” he said of a modern canvas. “If you want it
you’ll pay anything for it. If you don’t, nothing is too damn much.”

He quoted a famous movie producer signing a witless young lovely for a
new film: “Never mind about the lines. Just be sure to bring your face
along.”

Sunny yearned with a choking envy to share all this with him: the
excitement he felt as his name gained currency, the pleasure of turning
out quotable prose, the odd thrill of having your words read by people
you would never know. To be denied her part in his blossoming career was
one of her worst burdens.

One morning, after reading his newest column, she suddenly chucked her
pride and wrote him a fan letter:

Dear Mr. Pringle,
If a lady is single
And wants you to chase her,
Adore and embrace her,
Should she ...
Be sexy and clever?
Or wait here forever?
Your columns are funny.
I hate you.

Love,
Sunny

She mailed it on a Monday morning in April. Tuesday was the first of
May, and it was the day Page called her after nearly three dismal months
of silence.

When the phone rang she ran to it from the kitchen as if she had been
expecting it. With trembling hands she lifted the receiver. It might be
Dr. Settick, after all. He had called her several times and once ended
up asking her to dinner.

“Hello?” she said.

“Sunny?” It was Page. His voice sounded a little unsure, but there was
no mistaking it.

“Oh, Page!” She pressed a hand over her mouth for a second and then said
weakly, “How are you?”

“I’m miserable,” he said. “How are you?”

“Oh, darling!” Her heart kicked joyfully. “Are you really miserable?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes; God, I can hardly stand it. Did you get my poem?”

“Honey, it was beautiful. It was immortal,” he said.

“Page, can we meet somewhere? I mean—”

“Yes,” he said and she knew at once he had been thinking about it hard.
He wanted to see her so much that he knew an argument would end up in
his ignominious surrender. “Can you have dinner with me tonight?” he
said.

“Can I!” she cried. “_Beg_ me, darling.”

“Please, baby. Please.... I have your poem in my pocket. Any girl who
can write such deathless verse deserves a filet mignon,” he said.

“Oh, you wonderful idiot. Darling, when will you pick me up?”

“Sunny, maybe I’d better meet you,” he hedged. He knew what would happen
to him if he got caught in that apartment again. Sunny knew too and she
couldn’t give up without trying.

“I’ve fixed the place up so nicely,” she said. “You won’t know it. I
want you to see the new curtains and—”

“No,” he said anxiously, and she was afraid of scaring him off. She gave
in with the hope that when they were physically close she could move him
better than she could on the phone. All she asked was the chance.

“Where are you staying?” she said.

“Let’s not get into that.”

“I’m not going to storm the gates, Page. I really need to now. What if
the baby comes and I have to contact you?”

“You can always call the office,” he said.

“Sure, and get told off again,” she reminded him. “Page, it might be an
emergency. I’m completely alone in this city. The only friends I had
were your friends and I never see any of them. And Jack and Laura are
gone now. About the only human being I see who gives a damn about me is
Dr. Settick.”

“How much of a damn?” he said, feeling an upswell of jealousy that
suddenly made him determined. “All right,” he went on, “but Sunny, play
fair. Promise me you won’t call unless it’s really urgent.” Somewhere in
the back of his mind was the unacknowledged thought that he secretly
wanted her to come; but he sternly ignored it.

“I promise,” she said. You can’t go to hell for breaking one lousy
promise, she reasoned.

“I’m on East Thirty-second Street,” he said with misgivings, and gave
her the number and the phone. If she ever showed up, his conscience
would blast him.

Sunny wrote it down on the phone pad with a sense of triumph.

They agreed to meet at a small restaurant on Tenth Avenue.

* * * * *

But Sunny had other plans. She knew Page would blow his top if he found
her in his rooms that very day. But she was as sure as love could make
her that his anger would die a quick death.

She heard the tremor of love and long denial in his voice. If it was so
desperately hard for her, a woman, to forbid herself the love she
needed, how difficult mustn’t it be for a man? A young vigorous
passionate man who adored his wife?

He’ll never resist, she told herself, laughing aloud with anticipation.
She made herself stunningly beautiful. She took pains she rarely
bothered with and hardly needed. But it made her feel irresistible to
know there was a sheen of exotic color over her eyes, an underfilm of
silver witchery on her lips, a fragrant mist in her swinging yellow
hair.

She was still slim enough to look chic in a small-waisted dress. It had
a full, soft skirt that hid her six-month stomach. She put on her
four-inch heels, her sequined cocktail hat, black gloves and purse, and
checked herself out in the mirror, ticking off each feature like a
C.P.A. going over his books. Her glamorous reflection surprised her.

She looked older, beautiful in an experienced way. It was not just the
makeup. It had something to do with the past three months of solitary
introspection and yearning. She was full of the new things she had
learned from the books, the new life she felt within her, and the new
depths and shadows her heart had explored. They changed her face. She
was no little girl any more. She was a lovely woman.

Sunny left her apartment early, hailed a taxi, and gave Page’s address
to the driver in a confident voice. When she got out in front of the new
apartment building, it was forty minutes before their date. She decided
he was probably taking his shower.

Inside the front door she found his mail box with a button beneath the
name. There was a small speaker and she knew he might ask through it who
was there.

_Well, the worst he can do is make me wait down here till he’s ready_,
she thought. Still, how much better to get a foot in the door. He’d
never be able to resist that foot—not when it was followed by her slim,
silky leg. So she boldly pushed the buzzer. A wave of goose bumps fanned
over her back and neck while she waited.

In a moment the speaker came on. To Sunny’s amazement, a feminine voice
answered. Sunny looked to see if she had pushed the right button. She
had. The voice repeated, “Who’s there?”

“The florist,” Sunny said. “I have a corsage Mr. Pringle ordered.”

“Oh. Okay.” The speaker went off and a buzz sounded. Sunny went inside
and up a flight of stairs. On the second floor she found his door to the
left of the landing. It opened before she could knock.

Sunny found herself facing a valentine-pretty girl, very young, very
efficient looking, with her hands full of typed copy. The girl stared at
Sunny, fully as startled as her visitor. After an anxious pause she
said, “Was Mr. Pringle expecting you?”

“Apparently not,” Sunny said coolly. “May I come in?”

The girl hesitated briefly and then stepped aside. “Please,” she said.
“I—I should explain, I was just here to bring Mr. Pringle some notes I
took for him at the library. He doesn’t have time to do all his own
research, so I—”

“Oh, you don’t have to explain,” Sunny said with dangerous charm. “I
understand perfectly.” She looked sharply at the flustered girl who
lowered her eyes in confusion. “Of course you’re his secretary.”

“Yes. I’m Pat Burridge. I—hope you won’t jump to conclusions,” she said
with a clumsy laugh.

“Why not?” Sunny said.

“Oh, but really, it’s not what you think!” Pat cried, wide-eyed and
innocent as milk. But there were a few sour curds floating around. She
was ready to defend herself and fast if Sunny didn’t ease up. And she
was impatient to know who Sunny was. Sunny made her wait.

“What do you think I think, Miss Burridge?” Sunny said. “That you’re
sleeping with him?”

“How dare you!” the girl exclaimed.

“Well, Mr. Pringle and I have been having a little affair ourselves for
some time now,” Sunny said, pulling off her gloves. “I’m not surprised
he’s getting tired of me.” She gave Pat a critical going-over that made
the secretary frantic.

“Whoever you are, you have no right to talk to me that way!” she cried.

“Oh, hell, if you’re going to be a bitch, be a good honest bitch,” Sunny
said. The shock of the situation had frozen the fury in her veins and
given her a sardonic composure that staggered Miss Burridge.

“If you think I’m having _relations_ with Mr. Pringle,” the girl panted,
“it might just interest you to know that I’m engaged to a very nice
man.”

“Poor man. This will come as something of a shock, won’t it?”

“And I happen to be a virgin!” Pat declared.

“Fancy!” Sunny said, sauntering across the room. “All hail to the last
member of a vanishing race.”

“You have a filthy mind!” Pat said.

“And you have a filthy habit: sleeping with a married man.”

“Evidently I’m not the only one,” Pat snapped.

“Ah, but there’s a difference. I’m a married _woman_.”

“Besides,” Pat went on with noisy outrage, “Mr. Pringle is _not_ a
married man.”

“_Really?_” Sunny said with genuine astonishment. “Did he tell you
that?”

“He certainly did. His divorced wife calls him on the office phone all
the time but he has me tell her he’s out.” She evidently considered a
divorced man even less attached than a bachelor.

“Well!” Sunny said with sugary sarcasm. “I guess that makes it all right
for you to sleep with him, then, as long as your fiance doesn’t find out
what his bride-to-be does in her spare time.”

Abruptly Page burst into the room behind Pat, who turned around with a
gasp.

“Page, darling!” Sunny said, beautiful in her anger.

Page’s face fell. “Oh, God,” he said. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Which one of us are you referring to, darling? Well? Go on, introduce
us.”

He looked distractedly from one to the other, caught between two
fighting females; a nightmare for any man. “Miss Burridge,” he said
resolutely. “My wife, Mrs. Pringle.”

Pat Burridge’s expression changed from anger through shock to
mortification. “Mrs. Pringle?” she repeated to him. “But you said—”

“Never mind what I said!”

“How do you do, Miss Burridge?” Sunny said with savage courtesy.

“I’d better go,” Pat said. “Here’s your key, Mr. Pringle.” She stopped,
raising a hand to her mouth. “Oh! I mean—Well, he only gives it to me so
I can bring him the notes when he’s not home!” she cried, and ran
weeping out the front door.

The Pringles were so mad at each other that neither of them could talk
for a few seconds. Finally Page said, determinedly calm, “You promised
me you wouldn’t come here. Your promises aren’t worth a damn, are they?”

“It’s forbidden for your wife to come here; only your secretary is
allowed,” she shot back.

“For your information, Pat Burridge comes over here nearly every
afternoon about this time with a bunch of research notes I’ve assigned
to her. She puts them on the desk and leaves,” he said.

“After she warms up the bed.”

“She doesn’t go near the damn bed!”

“Oh, an experimenter. She likes the couch in the living room.”

“Sunny, cut it out. Pat is a nice decent kid, but I’m not sleeping with
her.” He glared at her over the back of a chair upon which he was
leaning stiff-armed.

“Why not, darling? You could climb in bed with her and still feel nice
and clean. After all, _she’s_ not your sister.”

Surprised at her, he answered, “I could, but I don’t.”

“I suppose she means more to you than your own wife!” Sunny cried
unhappily.

“How many times do you have to be told, Sunny? You’re _not_ my wife.”

“Then don’t introduce me as Mrs. Pringle. It might confuse people.”

“That was a slip of the tongue.” His anger blew itself out suddenly.
“Sunny, for the love of God, how could I make love to any other woman
while you’re alive? Do we have to shout at each other? This is our first
meeting in three months. Darling ... my love, my wife—”

“You just got through hollering that I’m _not_ your wife,” she wept.
“Make up your mind before I lose mine, will you?”

Page dropped his head in his hands to compose himself and then lifted it
to look at her. “I’m going to read you something,” he said, going to his
desk, “from an outline of American law.” He picked up a big black
leather-bound book with torn matchbook covers marking various pages, and
turned to an underlined passage.

“‘Where the parties to the marriage are closely related,’” he read her,
“‘—such as brother and sister or ancestor and descendant—the marriage is
void.’ _Void_, Sunny. ‘And a decree of annulment should be and
apparently is unnecessary.’” He shut the book and dropped it on the desk
with a bang, looking at her.

“What does it mean?” she said.

“It means we aren’t married. And there isn’t a damn thing we can do
about it even if we want to. We are automatically un-married, because
our marriage was never valid in the first place.”

“There _is_ something we can do about it,” Sunny said, trembling.

“What?” His face and voice were weary but, like her, in his heart he
kept hoping ... hoping for nothing less than a revolution in Heaven’s
laws and Earth’s traditions.

“Keep it a secret,” she said. “What the law doesn’t know the law can’t
very well change.”

He sat down heavily in his desk chair and said, “the law has eyes and
ears, Sunny. We might get away with it for a while, but—”

“I’d rather have that little while than nothing at all.”

He put his head down on his crossed arms for a minute and the sight of
him like that, near despair, twisted her heart. “Oh, Page,” she
whispered, afraid to touch him. She folded into the chair he had been
leaning on moments ago. “Can’t we live with it? Can’t we even try? Do we
have to be so damn tragically moral?”

“I’ve been reading,” he began, but she interrupted:

“So have I.”

“Have you read Freud?”

“A little,” she said.

“Have you any idea what a childish, immature, emotionally crippling sort
of thing incest is?”

“Page, we didn’t commit incest! It _happened_ to us!” she said
passionately. “We had no idea we were brother and sister. We chose each
other as normally and innocently as other husbands and wives.”

“_Did_ we, Sunny?” He spoke softly, looking away from her. It frightened
her.

“What on earth do you mean?” she said indignantly.

“I mean, isn’t it just possible that we recognized each other
subconsciously? People fall in love with the people who remind them of
themselves, Sunny. Couldn’t we have fallen in love and refused to admit
the awful truth we were half-aware of? Tried to hide and deny it so we
could get married with a clear conscience?”

“No!” she said appalled.

“Isn’t it possible that what we fell in love with and desired in each
other was our own selves, without ever permitting ourselves to realize
it? If we did that, we’re as guilty as anybody else who ever committed
incest.”

“We didn’t do it,” she protested. “Page, we don’t look _that_ much
alike.”

“Oh, don’t we, though!” he said, rising quickly and grabbing her hand.
“Look at my eyes. My hair.” He took a handful of hers and held it out so
her eyes could compare. “Same color, same texture, same everything,” he
said.

“A lot of people have hair like that. There aren’t that many kinds of
hair!” she said.

“Look, Sunny, even our hands,” he said, and though his was heavier and
hairier, the basic bone structure was the same.

But Sunny was incapable of hating their similarities. She lifted his
hand to her mouth and kissed it and suddenly he leaned over her, almost
tumbled into the chair with her, and kissed her mouth hard.

Before they knew it, they were making love in the chair. It was awful;
agonized, furtive, rushed. The chair tipped precariously. They hurt each
other, half on purpose. And yet, in spite of that, it was beautiful.
They gripped each other with hands like traps. They kissed each other
everywhere, desperate to leave a touch of love all over each other.

Sunny clung to him ecstatically, sobbing his name when he freed her
mouth for a second. He felt himself losing control, and the harder he
tried to fight free the more deeply entangled he became.

“Sunny, no,” he pleaded at the very moment that he was tearing the
buttons off her dress in a fever to touch her warm satin skin. “Oh, dear
God, stop me,” he muttered, kissing her all the while so that she
couldn’t answer him.

He wanted to punish her for making him do the terrible thing he had
resisted so long. He took a bite in her delicate shoulder that made her
sob with startled pain. His hands twisted the shining flesh of her back
and his lips bruised her full sweet breasts.

Sunny knew why he was doing it and at first she didn’t try to stop him,
hoping it might ease him. But it got too bad. She finally combed his
cheeks with her nails in self-defense and shocked him into gentleness.
After that they made love, as much love as blood and breath would bear,
until they were utterly worn out. Only sheer exhaustion stopped them.

* * * * *

The chill air woke them. Page got up and fetched a down comforter from
his bedroom and wrapped her in it, giving her a cigarette while he fixed
them a drink.

He had put on his bathrobe. His actions, as he poured the drinks, were
almost normal. But his grim-lipped silence belied them.

There was a mournful quiet, broken only by the rustle and crack of the
liquor flowing over the ice cubes. He walked over to her, handed her a
glass, and sat down on the rug beside her. They leaned back against the
sofa and drank. Page put an arm around her.

“Page,” she said. “Do you really think we can live apart when we love
each other like this?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted finally, and she wondered if it were the
first break in his armor of rectitude.

“Tell me you don’t want me, darling,” she teased.

“I can’t,” he said softly.

“Tell me you want me more every time we make love. Tell me that pretty
soon you won’t be able to resist me at all any more. Tell me we can try
living together again ... just for a while.”

He inspected his drink. “How do you feel right now?” he asked her.
“After we’ve made love. Tell the truth.”

“I’d be unbearably happy if I weren’t so afraid it will be the last
time,” she said.

“Is that all? No shame? No regret? No wonder, even, that maybe it’s
wrong?” He looked at her.

“No,” she said, sniffling. “I’m too glad to be back in your arms to care
about the rest.”

“Suppose,” he said, his voice still low, “that your father—_our_
father—went a little crazy and forced you to go to bed with him. I mean,
made love to you. Would you feel anything then?”

“Don’t you ever speak like that again,” she said rigidly.

“It’s exactly the same thing,” he said.

“It is _not_ the same thing! I grew up in my father’s house, I knew all
along he was my father. I could never let him touch me that way. He
could never _want_ to.”

“You’re saying the only difference between him and me is, you knew all
along who he was. If you and I had always known we were brother and
sister, you couldn’t let _me_ touch you, either,” he said. And he was
right.

Sunny groaned and hung her head. “Darling, I’m not much for logic,” she
said at last. “All I know is I’m miserably in love with you and I don’t
care _who_ you are.” Her voice rose, becoming stubborn.

He looked so unhappy that she set her drink down and took his face in
her hands, trying to kiss some cheer into him. But he stopped her. So
she stayed where she was, kneeling in front of him, afraid to look at
him again. In silence she began a tormented debate with herself,
deciding at length to make one final try; one ultimate sacrifice.

“Page?” she said unsteadily.

“Hm?” He fingered the slim knee winking out of her blanket at him.

“If I don’t have this baby—could we—would you live with me?”

He looked slowly up at her green eyes that glittered with tears and took
her hands. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re too
far along now. If you’d been willing three months ago....”

“I wanted the baby so much,” she whispered. “But I’d do anything to have
you back, darling. I almost wish I could tear it out now—” She stopped,
feeling the baby kick. It made her sick. Grasping one of his hands, she
put it on her abdomen and held it there fiercely, over his protests,
until he felt the solid thump of a small foot under it. He looked up at
her, astonished. At that moment, for the first time, his child became
real to him: a human being with a beating heart and moving limbs.

He got up and walked to the other side of the room and she could tell
from the inclination of his head that he was deeply disturbed.

“Can we live together if I destroy this child?” she asked.

“This child,” he repeated in a daze. “Our child. My son.”

“If it’s between you and the baby, I choose you,” she said, trembling
uncontrollably. “I don’t know how I’d get rid of it now, I don’t know if
it would kill me just to try. But I’m willing.”

“No, Sunny,” he said firmly.

“You thought it was a good idea not so long ago,” she reminded him. “You
said—”

“I know what I said. It was barbarous!”

“You asked me to get an abortion and I didn’t think I could. But I
hadn’t been living without you for three months then. I think I could do
it now.”

“I won’t let you do it now and don’t ever bring it up again,” he said.

“Well then, can we live together anyway, even if I have the baby?” she
implored him.

“No we can’t, Sunny!” he cried, throwing out his arms for understanding.
“I wish that poor little kid had never been conceived but I’m not going
to _murder_ it,” he added. “The night I found out about us I was half
mad with grief and that baby seemed like the crowning blow. But it
wasn’t a person, then, honey. It was just a mess of proliferating cells.
Now it’s a baby. You can’t go around murdering babies. Go ahead and
_have_ it.”

“Thanks a lot! You’re too generous, Page,” she said. “You get me
pregnant and then graciously _allow_ me to have the damn baby. And just
how shall I support this creature, now that I’m permitted the joys of an
illegitimate birth, labor pains, no money in the bank, no husband in my
bed, no father for my child? Shall I feed it pipe dreams and dress it in
lullabies? Shall I wrap Junior in an old rag and pass the tin cup around
to my neighbors?”

“Good God, Sunny, there’s money in the bank,” he said.

“I’ve been spending some these past few months, you know,” she said.
“There’s the rent. And I can’t seem to stop eating—not entirely, anyway.
Oh, and the doctor bills. And I’ve seen at least two movies.”

“Well, God damn it, I know you’ve spent money. I’m _making_ money and
every cent I don’t need is in your bank account.”

“It is?”

“Don’t you ever read the balance sheet they send you?” he demanded,
insulted that she should have thought he would let her starve.

“No. I can’t understand it,” she said. “I didn’t know if it was the top
figure or the bottom one.”

“Oh, God,” he murmured, almost laughing with exasperation. “Sunny, did
you think I’d send you to the poor house?”

“I didn’t know. I don’t know you at all any more, Page.” She got up from
the floor and walked across the room to where he stood with his back to
her, putting her hands lightly on his hips.

“I always thought we were so much alike before we got married, darling.
And I don’t mean our faces, either. I mean in the way we thought, the
way we looked at life.

“Remember when we met? I ran out of the bushes and there you were,
standing by the lake, completely bare. Anybody else would have covered
himself up and acted like a silly fool. I kept waiting for you to make
an ass of yourself. But you just stood there and kidded me and let me
look at you and didn’t seem to mind at all that your clothes were piled
up under a tree twenty feet away.

“Page, I never was so excited, so scared, so thrilled, in my life. The
way you looked at me, the way you stood there, seemed to sum up your
whole attitude toward life—and mine. You were bold, you were amused with
me and with yourself. You were so wonderful to look at. And you weren’t
ashamed. All I could think of from that day on was, ‘That’s the kind of
man I could adore and live with and take care of for the rest of my
life.’

“You made me feel so womanly, Page. So feminine and passionate. I always
liked boys and I’d had my share of crushes. But I’d never felt like that
before till I met you.”

“I know, baby, I know,” he said softly. “It was wonderful. But hell, it
was normal, sweetheart. Moral.” He paused, trying to keep himself
controlled, pulling her arms around him as he continued. “God, you were
gorgeous. I couldn’t quite believe you. When you suddenly burst in on me
I was too surprised to move. And when I could, I was afraid I’d lose you
if I did. So I stood there and kidded you to make you stay. To make you
look at me as long as possible.”

“There was never anything Puritanical about our romance,” she said. “A
lot of people say we went too far.”

“I’m no Puritan, honey,” he protested. “We were two unrelated kids as
far as we knew. If two people are clean and decent and really in love,
then what they do with their bodies is only an expression of their love.
No sin, certainly. But there are some things I won’t and can’t do,
things that offend me morally.”

“You break down and do them, though,” Sunny said. “You hypocrite. And
don’t you call me a moral offense.”

“Do you have to twist everything I say? Don’t you know—”

“I know we used to agree on everything!” she wailed. “Now we can’t agree
on anything at all.”

“That’s because everything in our lives resolves around the central fact
of incest.”

She reclaimed her arms and moved away from him, the old despair fighting
up in her again. “No, it’s not just that,” she said. “You’ve changed,
Page. You’re a different man from the one I married. You even had a bad
argument with Jack Mann, your best friend, because he tried to put in a
good word for me.”

“I suppose Laura told you,” he said angrily. “Well, Laura’s all wet.
Sure, he put in a good word for you. I expected him to. But that’s not
why I broke off with him.”

“You broke off with him because you couldn’t take the truth!” She cried.
“You broke your promise to me and told him our secret, and when he told
you what a twerp you are, you went to pieces.”

Across the length of the small room they looked at each other as if the
Grand Canyon, narrower but just as deep, yawned between them.

“That had nothing to do with it,” Page said. “I dropped him because he’s
a damn fairy!”

Sunny was too startled to answer him for a moment. When she finally did
it was with a dour laugh. “Page, I really think you’re dotty,” she said.
“Jack Mann is about as much of a fairy as you are. And I’m here to state
you aren’t.”

“He told me so himself,” Page said. “He was trying to make me
understand, as he put it, that abnormality can be fun.”

“Like hell he was,” Sunny flashed. “He was probably trying to get it
through that thick skull of yours that you can live with abnormality.
You don’t have to turn tail and run.”

“Don’t you listen when I tell you something?” Page shouted. “He’s
_queer_, Sunny!”

“Well, what do you want me to do, write to my Congressman? Besides,
there are all kinds of homosexuals. You don’t have to put on lipstick
and skirts and flirt in the streets. If Jack is a homosexual, that’s his
business. If we’re incestuous, that’s ours!”

“I might have known you’d react like this,” he said harshly.

“Jack Mann is a good friend of mine,” she cried with feeling, “and I
wouldn’t care if he were an ape in the zoo; it’s all the same to me. I
like him and I’m grateful for his friendship. If it weren’t for Jack, I
would have been even more miserable than I am.”

Page picked up his forgotten drink and finished it, as if the only way
to deal with such idiocy was to get drunk.

She marched up to him as he smacked the glass down on his desk. “You
listen to me, Page Pringle,” she said. “I’m ashamed of you.”

“You’re what? You’re ashamed of _me_!” he said in disbelief.

“I’m ashamed of the way you treated Jack. You weren’t afraid to be his
friend when you thought he was normal. You would never have guessed, and
he didn’t have to tell you. Don’t you suppose it hurt him to speak the
truth? And why did he do it? Because he’s a true friend. Because you
matter to him.”

“I’ll bet I do!”

“And I don’t mean _that_ way!” she broke in. “Did he ever lay a finger
on you?”

“I’d have tied him in knots if he had.”

“You’re a damn coward, Page. You’re afraid of Jack because he’s more of
a man than you are.”

He stared at her open-mouthed, his face going scarlet.

“He has guts. I mean that, Page. He had the courage to tell you a
terrible secret, to risk losing your affection and respect—which by the
way he did—because he had faith in you. He wanted to help. His mistake
was that you weren’t worth it.”

“Sunny, that man is a degenerate—”

“And you’re a rotten coward!” she said with bitter tears. “I know what
Jack is, and it isn’t degenerate. If you had his courage, you’d be a
better man.”

“You mean I’d be in your bed. Like the coward I am _not_,” he said,
slamming a heavy fist down on the desk and making his whiskey glass
jump.

“You are a coward, Page, because you can’t face this thing,” she said,
calmer now but still crying. “Because from the very night you found out
you were my brother you’ve been running away from me. You ran out that
night and you’ve been running like a frightened hare ever since.”

“I have the courage to see this marriage has to end,” he said, shaking
with rage. “Hopelessly as I love you, I have the courage to admit that
our life together would be one long nightmare and our baby’s life would
be ruined by it.”

“You’d see to that, wouldn’t you?”

“The hardest thing I ever did was leave you, Sunny. If that’s being a
coward, all right, I’m a coward. I love you, I never loved anybody like
I love you, but—”

He stopped, too broken up to talk. “But it’s over,” he said hoarsely at
last. “If you think a coward could face that, you’re wrong. _You’re_ the
coward, Sunny, as long as we’re pointing fingers. You’re the one who’s
clinging to rosy dreams.”

“Page, you think if you look the other way and keep your front door
locked this whole mess will clean itself up. God, I wish I had the
strength to slug you! That law book you read me: ‘We don’t have to do
anything, we’re automatically un-married.’ How nice for you. That’s a
coward’s way out, Page, and that’s what you are. _Coward!_” She
shrieked.

His eyes took on a hot shine and she could see the muscles working under
the skin of his face. “You come with me,” he said. “I want to show you
something.” He was perilously angry and Sunny’s temper vanished suddenly
in wave of fear. He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her roughly
after him into his small kitchen. Sunny scrambled after him, afraid he
would crack her wrist. She had never seen him like this before, and yet
it was a strangely familiar expression he wore. She gasped when she
recognized it: it was the look her father, Ben Rotheli, wore one time
when a local business rival tried to ruin him by impugning June’s
virtue. It was a look of uncontrollable fury.

Page released her by the sink and went to a drawer in one of the
cupboards. She stood silent and shaking while he pulled the drawer open
and fumbled in it. But when he took out a chef’s knife, heavy-handled
and with a massive blade of spotted steel, she gave a little scream.

“Now who’s a coward?” he said, glaring at her, waving the blade slowly
back and forth under her face.

Sunny stood white and still in front of him. “Go ahead, operate,” she
whispered. “You never wanted the baby, anyway.” There was almost more
contempt than fear in her voice.

“Not on you,” he said and his voice went deathly quiet, like hers. Sunny
dared to look at his face then. “If I hurt you you’d have a good reason
for calling me a coward,” he said. “And you’d be right.”

Her eyes went huge with alarm then. “Page, don’t hurt yourself,” she
begged. “I didn’t mean it. Page!”

“Sure you meant it.” He was temporarily demented with wrath and
humiliation, and before she could stop him he put his left hand down on
the drainboard of the sink, palm up and with the fingers spread, and
struck a terrible blow to the little finger. Sunny shut her eyes.

There was an awful silence. Page dropped the knife with a nerve-scraping
clatter into the sink and lifted his hand. Slowly Sunny opened her eyes
and looked at it. The finger clung to its place by a forlorn thread of
skin, hanging horribly backwards and upside-down against the back of his
hand and bleeding heavily. He picked up the knife again and sawed it
free and threw it at her feet.

Sunny had covered her mouth with both hands in an effort to stifle her
shock. Now she stooped as if in a dream and recaptured the severed
finger. A strange sort of calm enveloped them both as she straightened
up. Having touched the awful thing, so lately living, her horror left
her. She was almost drowned in a well of love and pity.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she wept softly. “You fool. You big baby.”
His disembodied finger vanished within her clenched hand. She stared at
the tiny red rivers seeping through the cracks of her own fingers and
blending with her tears.

“Yes, I did,” he said, holding his left hand up carefully to stem the
copious blood flow. The pain was only half-real to him. The whole
action, in fact, seemed dreamlike. “It was worth it. I can tell by your
eyes. I’m not a coward, Sunny.”

“I didn’t mean this way, darling,” she said. “You’re the bravest man in
the world. I meant—the _other_ way. Morally.”

“You mean I did all this for nothing?”

She shook her head. “Page, if you offered me the world on a string it
wouldn’t mean half to me what this poor bloody finger means,” she wept.
“Darling, what a stupid, gruesome, _brave_ thing to do. Page ... I love
you more than I can bear. Forgive me.”

And she went to him and kissed him and his gory hand. They stood
together with their arms around each other; damp and discolored with
blood and tears; too stunned to talk any more.

“You know, Laura, I don’t think either of us really knew what courage
meant that day,” Sunny wrote to Laura Mann. “We were a couple of little
kids lost in the dark, each one hanging on to the other, near dead with
fright and both shouting how brave we were. To Page, courage was the
strength to do what he thought was right. To me, courage was the guts to
do what I knew damn well was wrong. (By conventional standards, at
least). We were at opposite ends of the pole, too proud to meet
halfway.”

* * * * *

Sunny left Page’s apartment that night with Page asleep from the effects
of a sedative the doctor had given him. She went home in a taxi. There
had been no verbal understanding between her and Page. It seemed as
though the more they talked about their problem, the farther they drew
apart. They traveled away from each other on the wings of their own
words.

But when they kissed or clasped hands or stood and shared a lingering
look, words were unnecessary. They had made love this time, they had
been so close to one another that Sunny began to hope the future wasn’t
all black.

Page had told her with his hands, his eyes, his mouth, how much she was
cherished. No matter how wrong and painful and misunderstood their
speeches were, they never misunderstood each other’s kisses.

She spent the next few days expecting him to call her, and when nearly a
week went by and he didn’t, she was gravely hurt.

What does he expect me to do, make all the advances? she wondered. I’ve
swallowed my pride. Let him swallow his this time.

* * * * *

It was in a downcast mood that Sunny went to Dr. Settick for her
six-month check-up. She sat in the examination room, staring at the
white gown that covered her and trying not to think of Page. She hardly
heard the doctor enter.

He walked around in front of her, pulled her chart out of a folder, and
checked her weight without a word of greeting. Total gain for six
months: two pounds. He noted it, still silent, and turned to look her
over.

It was so unlike him to keep quiet that she glanced up at him. “Am I all
right?” she asked anxiously.

“I don’t know,” he said, straightening up. “_Are_ you all right? You
tell me.”

“I _feel_ all right,” she said.

“How does your husband feel?” He eyed her closely.

“He had a slight accident last week,” she answered. “I imagine he’s
still pretty uncomfortable.”

“Oh? You wrung his neck, I hope. Sunny, you’re badly underweight. The
baby seems to be all right. His heart is strong and he’s growing. But
frankly, you worry me. The first time I saw you in here you were smiles
all over, just like your name. And when I told you you were going to be
a mother you nearly floated out of here. Now you’re moody, gloomy,
listless....” He sighed. “I’m the last guy to make predictions, but I
don’t like what your husband’s been doing to your state of mind.”

“It couldn’t be helped,” she said shyly.

“Well, something had better be done about it,” Settick said, “if you
want me to take responsibility for delivering that baby in good
condition.”

“Is it that bad?”

“It could be. It depends on how much pressure you’re under and how
strong you are to resist it. This is your first baby and there’s no way
of telling.”

“What can I do?” she asked. “If anything happens to my child—”

“Do you ever see your husband?” the doctor asked.

“Now and then.”

“Does it upset you a lot?”

“I guess it does,” she admitted with restraint.

“Then you shouldn’t see him at all,” Settick told her. “I mean that,
Sunny. You’re in no shape to fight and argue and whatever the hell else
you do with the guy. I’m telling you honestly: forget him till after the
baby comes. Don’t call him and don’t let him in. Tell him it’s doctor’s
orders and if he gives you a bad time tell him to call me. I think I
have good medical grounds for asking you to do this.” He stepped closer
to her, though there was a careful lack of intimacy in his manner.

“Sunny, you’re such a damn sweet girl,” he said. He leaned his weight on
the examination table behind her, his eyes averted. “You ought to be the
way you were the day I met you, and instead you’re coasting downhill.
There’s nothing physically wrong, nothing I can prescribe any more pills
for. But it’s obvious your husband’s making you miserable, and if he
doesn’t quit it’s my professional opinion he may injure this child
you’re carrying. Or you. I don’t know how I can make it any stronger.”

“I don’t know if I _can_ stop seeing him,” Sunny said.

“Well, okay, it’s your choice,” Settick said, shrugging. “You can choose
between husband and baby. At the moment, I think baby comes first. You
can square things up with your husband later.”

Sunny breathed deeply and fought her tears. To make it easier for her,
Dr. Settick pretended not to notice and re-aligned the papers in her
file.

“If I can’t see him at all, I think I’d better get out of the city,” she
said when her nerves steadied. “Because if I’m still here and he’s still
here, I’ll see him, Doctor.”

Settick folded his arms on his chest, and shook his head at her.
“Brother,” he said. “You sure are a case. The guy makes you sick and you
adore him for it. If you love each other so much why aren’t you happy?
It doesn’t make sense.”

“I guess it doesn’t,” she agreed.

“I don’t mean to pry,” he added. “But if you have to move out of New
York, move quickly. I suggest California.”

“Why California? It’s so far away.”

“That’s exactly why,” he said. “Ever been there?”

“No.”

“That makes it even better. He won’t suspect it. He’ll think you went
home to Mama. And when he finds out otherwise, he won’t know where to
look. My brother Brian lives in Los Angeles,” he went on. “I told you
about him. He’s an obstetrician too. I want to keep close track of you,
Sunny, and give you the best medical care. Brian is the best ... Could
you finance the trip?”

“I think so, Page puts money in the bank every month.”

“Wait till the last minute and then close out the account. You’ll like
the coast,” he added reassuringly. “Brian’s wife will show you around.”

Sunny couldn’t help being touched and grateful for his concern. “I’d
only do this for the baby,” she said. “I don’t care about myself.”

“What happens to you happens to Junior. Think of it that way.”

“All right, then.” She had made a momentous decision; now she felt
tired. After a minute she became conscious of the silence and glanced up
at him. “May I go now?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, but there was an avalanche of words piled up and waiting
behind that ‘yes’ for some gesture of Sunny’s to release them. “I’ll
call you when I’ve made the arrangements,” he said. “You can go home and
pack.”

“Thank you.” She paused. “If I weren’t so tired I wouldn’t let you talk
me into this, you know.”

“That’s the first time I’ve been glad to see you tired,” he grinned.

She smiled, letting him help her down from the table, and found herself
standing right in front of him, suggestively close. Oddly immobile,
whether from weariness or a desire to be comforted she never knew, she
stood there until she felt his arms go around her. She had known they
would, and her behavior actually encouraged it. She even knew he would
kiss her, and she didn’t want his kiss. But she wanted to be held; she
wanted to be caressed and reassured by a man’s gentle strength, and she
was willing to pay for it.

It was a chaste kiss: the kind a man gives a woman he reveres; a woman
he can’t have and yet can’t give up. It surprised Sunny, who thought the
young doctor would make the most of this chance to rouse her sexually.
But he seemed to know that such a move could only repel her then.
Instead he touched her lips lightly with his and kissed her forehead.
And then he wrapped her in the strong embrace she yearned for and rocked
her tenderly.

He was so kind, so careful to control his fascination with her lest he
offend her, that he won her over. She clung to him and let herself cry
into his starchy clean coat.

“Sunny,” he said, afraid of breaking the spell but more afraid he’d
never talk to her again. “I have no right to say this, but—”

“Don’t then, please,” she pleaded.

“Let me. Just listen for one minute. I have no claim on you. You belong
to another man. You love him. For some reason he sees fit to torment
you—”

“You’re being unfair!”

“Okay, I’m unfair. I don’t know all the facts.” He held her closer. “But
I do know you’re bitterly unhappy because of him and you’re making
yourself sick over it. Every time I see you I want to take you in my
arms and brush away the tears and make you smile. Sunny, I haven’t been
very subtle about this. I guess it’s no secret that ever since you’ve
been coming here I—I’ve had a special interest in you.”

“Dr. Settick—”

“My name is Richie,” he said gently. “Let me finish. For want of a
better word let me say I’m infatuated with you. If you weren’t married
I’d call it something much stronger. I’d want you for my own.”

“Richie, I didn’t mean to start this,” she said, pressing away from him.
But he held her firmly.

“Just one last thing,” he said. “I know I can’t have you. But please let
me help you. I can’t tell you what it would mean to me to see you safely
through this pregnancy. If I thought we could get away with it I’d
certainly keep you here where I can watch over you myself. The next best
thing is to put you in Brian’s care. And when the baby’s due I’m coming
out there to deliver it. I want you to promise me—”

“I can’t ask you to drop everything and—”

“You don’t have to ask me, I _want_ to do it.” He looked down at her and
she could see in his serious clean-featured face that he meant it. “I’ve
been planning a couple of weeks off later in the summer anyway. I’ll be
in close touch with Brian. And I want you to write me, too. Sunny, let
me do this. Don’t be embarrassed by my feelings for you. Don’t even
think about them. I’m a good doctor, and I’ll take good care of you.
Please. It’s all of you I can ever have.”

The rush of words stopped. Sunny was tempted simply to resign her will
and be cared for. She needed it so much and he wanted so much to do it.
Was it wrong to accept his help, just because he loved her? He was a
doctor, he was trained to care for people.

“Richie,” she said awkwardly, “I’m grateful to you—”

“Then don’t turn me down.”

“I ... I can’t turn you down. I need you too much. But you mustn’t
expect me to leave my husband. I can never thank you enough for what
you’re doing for me, only—”

“I’ll never take advantage of you, Sunny.”

She smiled at him then. “You make me feel terribly selfish,” she said.

“I’m the selfish one.”

She put a hand on his arm. “I want you to know about Page. It’s never
been a question of love between us, Richie. That’s the only thing we’ve
been sure of in all this mess.” She remembered suddenly that she was
clad in a loose gown with nothing underneath it. He brought it to her
attention inadvertently, being extremely close to her as he was. With a
deep blush she said, “I’d better dress.”

“Sunny, have dinner with me tonight?”

It would be nice to have some company, some laughter. She relented
without a struggle. “All right, if you’ll let me cook it for you,” she
said. “I haven’t cooked a meal for a man in months. Seven o’clock?”

“You’ve got a deal,” he said with a grin.

* * * * *

She got a roast on the way home and some squash and fresh broccoli—the
sort of things that take a little doing when they’re spiced and wined
and buttered right, things women never fix for themselves. It felt good
to be busy in the kitchen, even though the bother wasn’t for Page.

She wondered once, briefly, if Page would choose that evening to come
over. He’d blow a fuse, she thought. But it was too late to change
things: already quarter to seven.

Richie arrived ten minutes later, with a spray of yellow roses and a
bottle of champagne under his arm. “I thought as long as we were doing
it, we might as well do it right,” he said handing them to her. He
looked very handsome in his dark suit. He was fair, like Page, but
heavier set and shorter. His features were fuller, more emphatic than
Page’s: one might say a little coarser, though coarse only by
comparison. He was a sensitive, intelligent man, and he was pleasant
company that evening.

The champagne eased Sunny’s apprehensions about Page and she relaxed and
enjoyed herself. Richie talked about himself at her insistence, telling
her about the medical school he had attended and why he had specialized
in obstetrics. “I just like women and babies, I guess,” he laughed. “Not
a very scientific reason.”

She laughed with him and listened with interest, and he found himself
growing expansive with her attention on him and the champagne in him.

“It’s a pleasure to talk like this,” he told her when the dinner was
over and they were drinking their coffee with Page’s prize Drambuie. “I
spend so damn much time every day listening.”

“That’s why you’re so popular,” she said.

“You think so?” he chuckled. “I used to have an old professor who
insisted the bedside manner was half the cure. Any time you want to let
me practice it on you, I’d be delighted.”

The time went much too fast. Sunny was surprised and disappointed when
Richie got up to go a few minutes past eleven.

“I’m afraid I kept you too long,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you really?”

“No,” she admitted with a little smile. “I’d keep you longer if I
could.” But when he reached toward her she added quickly: “But just to
talk. Nobody else can make me smile these days.”

He let his hands fall back. “When you take up medicine you give up
normal hours for the rest of your life,” he said. “You have to sleep
wherever you can and whenever you get the chance.”

She saw him to the door, getting his coat from the hall closet. There
was a clumsy little silence after he had put it on and stood there in
front of her, hesitating. She hoped, suddenly self-conscious, that he
would not try to kiss her.

But he only said, “Thank you, Sunny, for a beautiful evening. Everything
was perfect. Especially you.”

She surprised herself and him both by kissing his cheek, a swift, soft,
tip-toed peck. “That’s for taking such good care of me,” she said.

He couldn’t help kissing her then, and she wondered, while he held her,
what might have happened to her life if she had met him before she met
Page. It was idle conjecture, really; she loved Page with her whole
heart. But Richie Settick was a fine man; strong, intelligent,
attractive. And while he respected her feelings for her husband, he was
not sorry she admired himself and liked him and needed him. He would do
nothing to discourage her.

He squeezed her one last time. “I’ll call you tomorrow, after I’ve
talked to Brian,” he said, gave her one long look, and left.

* * * * *

Richie’s call came just five minutes after unpredictable Page had walked
in on his wife, and Sunny was so flustered on the phone, trying to warn
Richie without making Page suspicious, that Richie finally caught on.

“Is your husband there?”

“Extremely!” she said and he muttered, “Oh, God. Well, I’d better call
you back.”

“No, I’ll call you,” she said, afraid he might call again before Page
left. Or perhaps Page had no intention of leaving. She couldn’t guess
what he had come for.

Sunny hung up and followed Page into the kitchen, where he had gone
while she was on the phone. She found him with his head in the
refrigerator, sampling the previous night’s leftovers.

“Boy,” he mumbled through a full mouth. “Good, honey.” He waved a piece
of roast beef at her.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” she said, half-joking,
half-dismayed.

“No.” He glanced at her almost bashfully, and turned away, finding a
knife in the kitchen drawer to cut the meat. The sight of him with a
blade in his hand made her gasp.

“It’s all right,” he said hastily. “I just want something to eat. I
always thought I married a crackerjack cook.” He gave her a smile that
seemed more like a cover-up for something else. He was too casual, too
much the sophisticated spouse calling on his estranged wife to chat. She
half-expected a polite inquiry on the health of her lovers.

“How is your hand, darling?” she asked. The wound was one week old.

“Okay,” he said.

“I’ll bet it hurts a lot,” she said. “What did you do with the finger,
Page?”

He blinked, humiliated by the discussion. “Threw it in the garbage,” he
said briefly.

“But it was a part of you,” she protested. “I know it sounds silly,
but—”

“It certainly does,” he said, refusing to look at her and eating a chunk
of beef. “What would I do with the thing? Pickle it?”

“I guess not,” she admitted. She put a cautious hand on his shoulder.
“Page? Why are you here?”

“To see you.”

“Don’t be so damn matter-of-fact about it,” she cried. “This is the
first time you’ve come to see me since this thing happened. Page, put
that meat down and _talk_ to me.” She snatched it from him and
re-wrapped it in aluminum foil.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What did you come for?” She faced him with her hands folded over her
bosom and he knew he would have to do battle to get them down again. She
wasn’t going to give him any help.

He made a fuss over his sticky hands and spent some minutes cleaning
them up.

“How are you feeling?” he said lamely. “I mean, what does the doctor
say? I mean you scared me last week. You were so thin and white. You
looked so beautiful, honey, but too damn skinny. Are you all right?”

He delivered this halting speech, full of love and embarrassment,
without looking at her. She decided not to answer till he looked at her.
Eventually, in the ensuing silence, he had to.

“Darling?” he questioned softly. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not.”

He paled. He blushed easily when he was self-conscious and conversely
went white with alarm. Sunny’s reactions were identical, and it touched
her to see the trait in Page, even though it was another physical proof
of their blood tie. “Are you really sick or are you trying to scare me?”
he said.

“I’m really almost sick. Dr. Settick says I have to get out of New York
for a while. He doesn’t want me to see you any more.”

She hadn’t stopped to think that her words would be antagonistic. She
meant to spite him and instead infuriated him.

“You tell that bastard he can take a flying jump at the moon!” he
exploded. “Who is he to tell you if you can see your own husband?”

“My _ex_-husband,” she reminded him. “Be consistent, Page. He said it
because I get so upset he’s afraid it will affect the baby’s health. And
mine. He said if my depression lasts he can’t answer for the baby’s safe
delivery. He said it would be on your conscience.”

She hadn’t intended to tell him that. She meant to slip away on her trip
and leave him a reassuring note. No recriminations. But the way he
gnawed on that roast beef, maligned Richie, avoided her, with such a
show of casual sophistication, incensed her. She knew he was trying to
hide his love, to prevent a burst of uncontrollable desire for her. But
it made her want to tear down his cool self-righteousness.

“Page, I wish I could make you come to me on your knees,” she cried. “I
wish I could make you feel what I feel when I crawl to you and beg you
to kiss me and need me and—” She broke down and cried.

Watching her, his anger melted. “Don’t go away,” he began. “Please,
Sunny. I couldn’t live in this town if you weren’t here. Just knowing I
can see you if I have to—”

“If you have to!” she shouted. “That’s too big an ‘if,’ Page. Either
live with me as my husband or consider the annulment official and leave
me forever. Make up your mind.”

“Darling, I can’t. Don’t force me—”

“Well, which is better?” she asked brokenly through her tears. “This
piecemeal love-making? This frantic once-a-month stuff that exhausts us
both? Or making up our minds we have to have each other anyway, and so
living together? Page, I can’t take this and neither can you.

“You say it’s wrong for us to sleep together because we’re brother and
sister. Well, why do we do it, then? Why don’t we say good-by and get it
over with? This installment-plan passion is just as immoral as living
together and a lot more agonizing. You say you have principles. All
right, stick to them!”

She finished with a small cry of dismay. She had delivered an ultimatum
to him by mistake. All the pent-up wrath of the preceding months boiled
out of her and she couldn’t stop it.

“That doctor’s been brainwashing you!” he said.

“He’s been telling me the truth.”

“He’s trying to turn you against me! And he’s probably in love with
you.”

“Yes, he is!” she fired back with vindictive pride.

“Oh, God!” he cried. “And I suppose you’ve invited him over here—to _my_
apartment—”

“_My_ apartment,” she corrected him. “You forfeited your right to it
months ago.”

“I suppose that roast beef was for him.”

“You don’t think I’d cook all that for myself, do you?” she said in a
voice made unsteady with tears. “He’s a lot better company than you are,
too.”

“Don’t you leave this city,” he warned. “I’ll have that bone-picker
jailed for alienation of affections!”

“Can you sue if the affections belong to your mistress, not your wife?
Since we’re getting technical, let me remind you as you keep reminding
me: we’re not married. And I’m no more sleeping with Richie Settick than
you are with your secretary.”

They stared at each other. Page dared not relent for fear of crushing
her in his arms and forgiving her everything, even the things she only
did in his imagination—and those were the worst of the lot.

“You think I let him make love to me, don’t you?” she said.

“No,” he said and the admission surprised her almost as the sudden quiet
of his voice. The starch in him washed out suddenly.

He went to her, hesitant and ashamed of his outburst, expecting the
frigid reception he deserved. But she moved toward him and he caught
her, holding her tightly as if he meant to keep her there forever.

“Every time I shout at you I get myself in trouble,” he said unhappily.
“I’m so damn jealous I’m acting like a five-year-old. If I can’t have
you I don’t want anyone else to. But you see Settick too much and you
like him too much. No wonder he’s in love with you. He’d have to be
blind not to be. And he’s too damn available.”

“But darling, the man I want is so _un_available.”

He kissed her mouth, long and tenderly. She only said one word when he
released her: “Stay.”

But he wasn’t ready; not yet. He was thinking, he was suffering, he was
even softening. But it was still beyond his courage to commit himself.

He left her moments later. Sunny didn’t beg, she didn’t cry. She sensed
a new attitude in him, a new gentleness, and she didn’t want to frighten
it off. He was trying to control the emotions that had mastered him so
often in the past, and, for the first time, he was taking a cautious
look at her side of things.

An hour later she called Richie Settick back on the phone.

“You have a reservation on a jet flight to Los Angeles for Thursday,
honey,” he told her. “Tessa, Brian’s wife, will pick you up at
International Airport. She’ll have an apartment for you, too; something
small, near Brian’s office. They wanted to take you in themselves, but I
told them no. They have four little kids and it’s a madhouse.”

“Thanks a million, Richie,” she said. “I’d better let my parents know
where I am.”

“Wait till you get out there,” he said. “And don’t let them tell Page.”

“I’ll say it’s a trial separation,” she said. “They don’t even know I’m
pregnant and they’re awfully fond of Page. They’d be heart-sick if they
thought we were breaking up.”

“This won’t be half as bad as you think, Sunny,” he comforted her. “I’ll
drive you out to Idlewild Thursday.”

“Thanks, Richie.”

“Now get yourself packed and get your money from the bank,” he said.
“And don’t do it all at once and wear yourself out. That baby’s still
got almost three months to go, and we don’t want him coming early. Might
louse up my vacation.”

She obeyed him; she was too tired to argue. Richie was efficient and
strong and he simply took over, helping her pack, running last-minute
errands for her, getting things in order. She told him about Page’s
visit.

“And you told him you were leaving? You shouldn’t have done that,
Sunny.”

“I don’t know why I did, except that he made me so angry. I wanted to
see him really afraid of losing me.”

“But my God, he’ll be after you all the time,” Richie said. “I’m
surprised he hasn’t barged in already.”

“Not that boy,” she said with weary sarcasm. “I told Page I was leaving,
yes,” she added. “But not when or where. I’ve stuck it out all these
months and he just figures I won’t leave now. And I wouldn’t, except for
the baby.”

She sat down glumly on a suitcase. “Maybe I ought to stay,” she
whispered, almost to herself. “He really tried to understand a little.”

“A little isn’t enough. Now forget it. Don’t think about him,” Richie
ordered her. “Think about that instead.” He indicated her small belly.

“I don’t see how there’s room for a _mouse_ in there,” she mourned,
looking down at herself, “let alone a baby.”

“Some of the smallest girls have the biggest babies,” he said.

“But they stick out, don’t they?” She lifted her sad face for his
reassuring reply and he kissed it instead. She murmured wryly, “Enter
Page, twirling mustache. Sunny screams. Gallant doctor draws pistol and
defends virtue of wronged damsel. Duel follows. Everybody drops dead.
Justice is served. Fanfare. End of story.” She glanced at Settick.
“Maybe we’d all be better off dead,” she said.

“The hell with that noise,” he retorted cheerfully. “Nobody’s better off
dead.”

“Not even the screwballs? The queers and the criminals?”

“Not even them. Not in my book.” He was kneeling with one leg on her
other bag, forcing it shut. “There’s always a chance the square peg will
find a square hole.”

“How about the people who make love to corpses? Or their own sex? Or
their own brother?”

There was a small bemused pause. “You have a morbid imagination, honey,”
he said, smiling.

“You mean you condone all those things?” she said, feeling an almost
compulsive need to talk about it. “Murder? And sodomy? And—incest?”

“No,” he said calmly. “I don’t condone. And I don’t condemn. I try to
correct. I had a patient a few months ago—can’t remember which one, they
all ask questions—who wanted to know about incest.” His look made her
heart skip.

“What did you tell her? Sure, go ahead? Incest is better than nothing?”

“No. She wasn’t committing it, she was asking about it,” he said.

“How do you know?” Sunny felt as if she were playing dangerously near
the cliff of confession: one slip and over she’d go. Or was confession
unnecessary? Had he already guessed? She didn’t think so, because she
felt he would have asked her about it if he had.

“Well, come to think of it, I don’t know whether she was or not,” he
answered. “Stranger things have happened.... There you are, all packed.
We have three hours to get the plane.”

“What did you tell her, Richie?”

“About the incest? She wondered if it would affect the children. Why?”

“Maybe it was her own baby she was worried about.”

“Maybe it was.” He stared at her. “My God, maybe it was. Why am I so
dense about these things? Damn. Takes a woman to see through another
woman, I guess.” He kept staring at her and she had the sudden
premonition that he would remember at any second.

She got up lightly. She was sweating nervously and longed for him to
drop the subject. He did, at once, almost as if he knew it embarrassed
her. If she had trusted herself she would have dismissed it with one
last silly crack, to throw him off. But her composure was riskily thin
and she was afraid it showed.

Just don’t let him put two and two together, she prayed.

* * * * *

He drove her out to the airport. They didn’t talk much until they got
there and checked her bags and went to have a drink.

“Do you really want me to have a martini?” she said.

“Sure. One won’t hurt you. Might do you some good.”

When their drinks came, Sunny said, “Richie, Page will find out I’ve
gone sooner or later. I didn’t leave any note or address, but he knows
your name. And it won’t take him long to find you, once he knows I’m not
in New York. It might be tomorrow or a month from tomorrow, I don’t
know. But I do know he’ll think it’s all your fault.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sunny. I can handle him. If he really loves you,
I’ll use his love to convince him. After all, you aren’t leaving
forever. Once the baby is safely delivered and you’ve got your health
back, there’s no reason why you can’t see him again. He wouldn’t hurt
you, would he? Physically?”

She shook her head. “I feel as if I’m dreaming,” she said. “This place,
those big planes roaring out there. I’ve never even flown before. Did I
tell you that?”

“It doesn’t scare you, does it?” he asked.

“No. I feel sort of numb. I’m glad; I don’t know if I could go through
with it otherwise.”

He took her to the gate and handed her ticket to her. She turned to
thank him, with the wind whipping her hair, and found herself crying.
Richie put his arms around her and held her so hard she thought he meant
to crack her ribs. But she returned the embrace without protest. At last
she lifted her head and said, “Thank you.” It was all she had composure
for, but he could see in her face how much she meant it.

“I wish I were free to tell you how much I love you,” he said.

But she put a restraining finger on his lips and gave him a warning
smile. “When you see my frantic husband—and he’ll be pretty frantic,
believe me,” she said, “—will you please tell him for me that I love him
... very much?”

“I’ll tell him,” he said, as if to atone for his declaration of a moment
before. “And remember, Sunny, no matter what happens, I’m going to
deliver that baby. I’ll see you in a couple of months. Take care.”

Sunny smiled. She went through the gate and walked to the plane, up the
ramp, and inside.

Settick stood and watched her disappear, then found her when she took
her seat by a window toward the back, and stood with his hat in his
hand, waving and cursing silently the name of Page Pringle, until she
vanished in the clouds.

“So you finally lost track of them, then?” Mr. Winkler asked Jack
disappointedly, accepting a sandwich from Laura. It was after three A.M.
In a little while the summer streets of Chicago would be light again and
hot with the June warmth that had scarcely abated in the dark hours.

“No,” Jack said. “The Rothelis called us and filled us in a couple of
weeks ago. They were trying to find the Pringles to tell them where
Sunny was. June thought we’d have their phone number. She told us Sunny
was in Los Angeles. She thought Page and Sunny were headed for a divorce
and she was pretty worried.”

“Then she still didn’t know the truth? I mean, that Page was their lost
son, Roger?”

“No. She told us all she knew and we guessed at the rest.”

Winkler’s face was tired but no less interested. The sandwich revived
his energy and he listened carefully, like a student at a lecture who
would write a paper on the subject as soon as he got home.

And Jack, by this time, was speaking to him with the familiarity of long
acquaintance; long only in hours, but deep in perception. Jack now knew
who Winkler was. It made him feel safer and easier in relating the
story.

* * * * *

Page brooded silently for four days in New York until he could stand it
no more. His jealousy was full-blown; his loneliness made all the days
seem gray.

He stood in the middle of his living room, trying to ignore the phone.
At last he grabbed it with a sort of sideswipe, pretending he wasn’t
quite aware of what he was doing and that would make it all right to
call her, just as it’s all right to do outrageous things in your dreams
because it isn’t the real you doing them.

He dialed her number, rehearsing his speech. It shocked him severely
when the operator broke in after a couple of rings to ask what number he
was calling. He told her.

“That number has been disconnected, sir,” she said.

He hung up without answering, standing perfectly still and saying to
himself, She did it because she doesn’t want to hear from me. She did it
because she wants me to think she doesn’t have enough money in the bank.
She’s only trying to scare me.

And Page was frightened. He rushed downstairs and hailed a cab, driving
over to her apartment with his heart pounding in his throat. Her windows
were dark, though it was nearly eight o’clock. Perhaps she was at a
movie. Or out with the doctor.

The small entrance hall was faintly lighted and he went up the stairs to
her rooms with noisy carelessness. He still had a key and put it to the
lock. But it didn’t fit. _That’s going too far!_ he thought angrily.

Chagrined, he shuffled down to the basement in search of the janitor,
whose room was behind the furnace.

“Hello, Mr. Pringle,” the janitor said amiably, opening his door.

“Hi. Say, I seem to have lost my key,” Page said, hoping his
embarrassment didn’t show. “Could you let me in my wife’s apartment?”

“That lock’s been changed, boy.” The janitor gave him a curious stare.
“And anyways, she ain’t there.”

Page felt like hitting him. “Where is she?” he asked.

“How should I know? Just left, without no address.”

“Did she go—alone?”

“Had some young fella to help her. Blond, like you, but not so tall.
Seemed to think a lot of her.” He smiled the lecherous grin of the aged
and impotent.

“Settick!” Page said.

He turned and ran up the stairs with the janitor’s evil laughter
floating after him. He raced to the nearest drug-store with a phone
booth. In a moment he had Dr. Richard Settick’s home address in his
pocket, and in another moment he was in a taxi on the way there.

It was about eight-thirty when Richie Settick answered the ring at his
door. He opened it with a wide friendly sweep, the way he usually did,
and froze. He was confronted with a strange tense man whose face was
bafflingly familiar.

Page was holding himself together by a strict effort of will, as if he
feared letting go and blowing to bits in front of this rival. For a
moment Settick thought he had a crackpot on his hands.

“What do you want?” he said.

“My wife.”

And Richie knew immediately who he was facing. Whatever else he knew, or
guessed, he didn’t say. Page was trembling, and the little twitch around
his eyes gave warning of the rumbling violence inside him.

“Come in, Page,” Richie said, and such was Page’s emotional state that
he never stopped to wonder how Richie recognized him without having seen
him before. Richie, on his guard, stepped aside to let Page pass. He had
expected a noisy, threatening bully. Instead Sunny’s husband was stiff
and silent.

“Where is my wife?” Page said.

“She’s on a little trip,” Richie told him. “Sit down, Page.”

“I want Sunny,” Page warned, ignoring Settick’s invitation with a
darkening face.

“I had to send her away.”

“Don’t you understand English? Where is my wife?” Page was shaking
visibly. Richie judged, being smaller and not having the advantage of
anger, that he’d get a shellacking unless he betrayed Sunny. So it took
some courage for him to declare, “I can’t tell you where she is. If you
find her she’ll have that baby on the spot. It might kill her, Page. And
not many babies survive such a premature birth, either.”

“No one can say that for sure. You’re trying to bluff me,” Page said in
a strong, urgent voice in spite of his shaking. He had pride, like
Sunny, and he would not let himself come apart in front of this man she
admired. Settick was calm and forceful, well-informed, a man to respect.
Page could appreciate it without liking it. He was ready to hate this
man who had persuaded Page’s wife to leave him. But he knew Sunny would
not listen to an ordinary man. Accordingly, in spite of his bitterness,
he was curious, and he felt no contempt for Settick.

“I’m a doctor. I know when a pregnant girl is in trouble,” Richie told
him. “If Sunny loses that baby you’ll have yourself to blame, not just
for the baby’s death but for what happens to Sunny because of it. And
it’ll be rough, I can promise you that.”

Page watched him, suddenly recalling his mother, June Rotheli, and
Pringle’s story of how she had tragically lost her mind when he, Roger,
was born. Sunny might do that if she lost her child. She was a lot like
her mother. The thought made him weigh Settick’s words.

Richie watched his face work around these ideas, wondering what it was
that made him wince, hoping his own words had made some sense.

“You don’t want to kill that baby, do you?” Richie said.

“I just want Sunny,” Page said, astounded to feel himself retreating a
little. Richie felt it too and began to think Page wouldn’t spread him
around the living room.

“Then give her another few months,” Richie pleaded quietly. “Till the
child is born and you know they’re both okay. She loves you, Page, she
didn’t want to go. I insisted because every time she saw you she came
all unglued. You weren’t living with her, anyway. You rarely saw her.”

“And I suppose she told you _why_, you—conniving bastard!”

“No, she didn’t. She just said it couldn’t be helped and you loved each
other in spite of it.” Richie lighted a cigarette and continued
seriously, “She talked to me quite a lot, though, when she came in for
her examinations. I don’t think she has many problems I don’t know
about—or couldn’t figure out. Would it help you any to know, Page, that
I think....” He paused, then proceeded cautiously, “... I think this
baby will be normal?” He waited, ready for a wild reaction from Page.

But Page deliberately misunderstood him. “Of course it’ll be normal,” he
said quickly. “She hasn’t starved herself _that_ much.” He covered his
face with his hands for a moment as if he were afraid to comprehend
Richie’s full meaning, as if his hands could hide his thoughts from the
doctor. When he dropped them he said, “I’ll ask you once more: Where is
she?”

“If I told you you’d go straight to her.”

“Do you know what this is doing to me?” Page said roughly.

“You’re not pregnant. She is.”

“I have to know! God Almighty, are you trying to drive me nuts?” He
reached the doctor with one giant step, pulling him up by the lapels and
shaking him.

Richie looked him straight in the face. “No.”

Page gave him a stout shove that sent him walloping into his door. But
Richie caught him on the rebound, plowing a fist into Page’s solar
plexus. Page hit the floor on his knees, struggling loudly for breath
while Richie watched, unwilling to press his advantage.

When Page could talk he mumbled furiously, “You’re in love with her. You
wouldn’t do this otherwise. Damn you! Probably going to meet her
somewhere.”

Richie said nothing. When Page recovered he helped him to his feet and
pulled him to the front door. “She’ll be back as soon as she’s had the
baby,” he said.

“I’ll find her,” Page swore, pushing the tumbled hair off his forehead.
“If you think I’m going to wait two or three months for my wife, you’re
crazy.”

“You’re the crazy one,” Richie answered. “And you know it well enough to
be ashamed of yourself right now.”

For the second time in the past few days, the fight went out of Page. He
loved Sunny and he had to find her. Richie loved her and he had to hide
her. Page understood that suddenly and understanding made him quieter,
less desperate.

He looked at Settick with the clear green eyes so much like his
sister’s, and experienced an irritated gratitude toward this man who had
cared for her.

“If I’d been with her all this time, she wouldn’t have had to turn to
you,” he said, almost to himself. He wondered how he could admit this
without feeling cowardly about it, or humiliated.

“I wish I could hate you for what you’ve done,” he said frankly to
Richie. “I wish I didn’t understand why you did it. I could break your
head then with a clear conscience.” He smiled tentatively. “You think
I’m a dangerous character, don’t you?”

“You were, a minute ago.” And seeing Page collect his wits, control
himself, made an impression on Richie. For the first time since his
arrival, the doctor saw what Page could be like when he had himself in
hand, and it made him jealous; not of a shadow or a name on Sunny’s
lips; but jealous of this flesh-and-blood man facing him now and showing
signs of civilized intelligence at last.

“Does it make any difference if I say I had to avoid her? And it hurt me
as much as Sunny?” Page shot Settick a glance. “Will you tell me where
she is if I give you my word not to frighten her?”

Richie shook his head. “All you have to do is be there, and she’s
frightened,” he said. “I can’t take the chance. She isn’t that strong.”

“I keep my word, Settick,” Page said. It was as close as he could bring
himself to pleading.

“Give her these months, Page. Give her her child safe and sound. After
that, she’s all yours.”

And Page saw that until then, she was all Richie’s; not in any
adulterous sense, but in the sense of safe-keeping. More argument with
the young doctor would gain him nothing.

He left, wondering at his own self-control and perception. Richie
wondered, too, if Sunny hadn’t exaggerated her husband’s difficult
temper. Both men felt a grudging esteem for each other and in different
circumstances they would very likely have been friends.

For Page, in the trial of soul-searching and steadfast love, found
himself changing for the better. He was not yet quite a man, but no one
could call him a temperamental college boy any more, either.

He went home and placed a call to the Rothelis, fingering the library
notes Pat had left on his desk that afternoon. Deliberately, he dumped
the notes into the wastebasket. It would be a while before he wrote
anything more.

Ben answered. It was the first time Page had heard his voice since he
knew Ben was his father, and he listened with new attention, hearing
echoes of his own voice in it.

“Page! Good to hear from you,” Ben said, and Page felt a melancholy
fondness for him. He had been so resentful against the Rothelis in the
months since he had known the truth that it surprised him to feel love
for them now.

“Ben,” he said, anxiety making him brusque. “I’m looking for Sunny. Is
she with you?”

“Looking for Sunny?” Ben said, his tone sharpening. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she left me. I mean—” He couldn’t describe the reasons for their
separation. He couldn’t blurt out to Ben, _You’re my father_! There was
no adequate explanation but the forbidden one. “We quarreled,” he
mumbled.

“What about?” Ben said dubiously.

“I can’t explain it now. Is she there?”

“What makes you think she’d be here?”

“I don’t know. Don’t girls usually go home to their mothers when they
fight with their husbands?”

“Sunny wouldn’t pull a trick like that,” Rotheli answered, fully alarmed
now. “She’s not that kind!” He seemed to be trying to convince them
both.

“Well, she’s not in New York. And if she’s not with you, I—oh God, I
don’t know where to look.”

“She’s all right, isn’t she? She isn’t sick?” Ben asked.

“No, but she’s pretty damn pregnant,” Page said.

“She’s _what_?” Ben Rotheli shouted over the phone.

And Page remembered too late that Ben hadn’t known. Sunny made Page
promise not to tell anyone until their problem was settled.

“Page, is my daughter pregnant?” Rotheli demanded. His anger snapped
over the wires and Page heard June cry out in the background.

“Yes, Ben,” he admitted. “You know how women are when they’re that way,”
he pleaded. “They change, they aren’t themselves. I never dreamed she’d
... Ben, don’t be too hard on me.” He didn’t want to antagonize this
father of his who didn’t know he was talking to his own son.

Ben remembered how June had been when she was carrying her own children
and he relented a little. But his voice was still cold when he said,
“Well, we’ve got to find her, fast. You get in touch with the police
there, and I’ll—”

“The police? Oh God no!” Page broke in, thinking what would happen if
publicity brought the truth out.

“God damn it, Page, you do as I tell you!” Rotheli ordered him. “If
you’re not going to get the cops to find your wife, I’ll get them to
find my _daughter_!”

“All right, all right,” Page said, deferring like a dutiful son, but
only to quiet Ben. He would find Sunny himself, without any help from
the police. “And Ben—if you hear from her, call me right away. I’ll do
the same.”

They ended the conversation on that agreement and Page spent a sleepless
night, waiting for daylight and another chance at Settick. He sat on his
bed and smoked, studying maps, trying to put himself in Sunny’s shoes.
She hadn’t gone home. Was she across the river in New Jersey? Or across
the continent?

* * * * *

He set out early after the doctor, only to discover that Settick made
his hospital rounds in the morning and wasn’t in his office. Page would
have to come back at one o’clock and sit in the waiting room, a lone
buck in a forest of pregnant girls.

No thanks, he thought. And suddenly he began to wonder if Ben had been
lying to him. After all, Sunny had doctor’s orders not to let Page know
where she was. Suppose she had been there at Ben’s elbow, full of
stories about the baby dying, scaring Ben into lying? She would have
made a convincing actor out of a wooden Indian.

Abruptly, Page changed his plans and called the airport. There was
nothing available immediately but they promised him the first
cancellation to Chicago. Restless and worried, aware of his loneliness
like a chronic pain, he packed and went out to wait for a plane. Six
hours later he got a place. He never thought to call the _Sunday
Magazine_ until he was airborne and then dismissed it with a silent
curse.

He timed his arrival in Hillsburg for nine o’clock the next morning,
when Ben would be gone for the day. If Sunny was there it would be a lot
easier to abduct her from her mother than her father.

He drove up and parked his rented car in the Rotheli’s back driveway.
There was no sound, no signal to warn June, who was washing dishes in
the kitchen, that he was coming. She saw him standing in the doorway and
gave a small shriek. A cup hit the sink and shattered.

Page smiled at her, but his eyes searched the room, looking for traces
of Sunny.

“Hello, June,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” At the sound of
his voice she began to cry. “It’s all right,” he said, dismayed at
having to comfort her.

“Page!” she exclaimed at last.

He took her into bashful arms and hugged her.

“Is she here? I thought she might have asked you not to tell me,” he
said, unable to postpone the question.

“I’m so glad to see you,” June wept, making him wait anyway for the
answer. “You terrified us when you called.”

“But Sunny ... is she—”

“No, she isn’t with us.”

His face fell. He looked so completely whipped that she put her hands
against his cheeks, a little caress of Sunny’s that touched him. “I
probably shouldn’t tell you ... but we got a telegram from her late last
night. She’s fine.”

“Thank God!” He leaned heavily against the wall, pulling June with him.
It was all happening too fast. His heart labored like a bellows.

“We tried to call you right away, but you weren’t home,” June said. “And
your office this morning said they didn’t know where you were either. So
then we began to worry about _you_.” She laughed with relief, a laugh
like Sunny’s that made Page ache. He had never before realized how alike
they were.

“Where is she?” he said.

“I can’t tell you,” June said, looking away.

“Now don’t _you_ pull that on me!” he protested. “June, she’s my wife. I
adore her. I’m going insane without her,” he cried passionately.

June had thought she could tell him everything over the phone. Instead
here he was, sweating and desperate, in her own kitchen. His eyes were
on her like two green lights, and he clutched her arms with his hands.

She wanted to tell him. She couldn’t help it. She felt the same
attraction to him that Ben had when they met. But Sunny’s wire was
explicit: “Don’t give Page my address. Very important.”

“She said not to tell you, Page,” June apologized.

“Of course she did, she’s _mad_ at me,” he said, using any argument he
could to soften her up. “June, I’ll die without that girl. I can’t help
it if I sound melodramatic. All I ask is a chance to talk to her, to
explain. How can I when I don’t even know where she is?”

It sounded so logical. June was sentimental and loving, and she wavered.
Page implored her to give him the address. She heard the pain and the
love in his voice and wished Ben were there to handle him instead.

How could two people patch up a marriage if they were a country apart?
she asked herself. Besides, Sunny was pregnant now. June knew how that
went, how miserable you felt, how irritable and unreasonable. And how
terribly you needed your husband.

She thought of her own suffering when Roger was due and how hard she had
leaned on Ben then, calling him names and abusing him. But he had been
strong and patient, and her gratitude had never faded.

She was sure Sunny was being stubborn and silly. Whatever the quarrel,
it didn’t merit a divorce. And yet Sunny was setting up residence in
another state. June knew how the young Pringles loved each other and she
finally broke in on Page’s disjointed tirade.

“Ben will kill me when he finds out,” she said uncertainly, “but I think
Sunny needs you as much as I once needed him.”

Page waited, afraid to speak for fear she would change her mind. At last
she pointed to the telegram in a letter holder on the kitchen table.
Page sprang across the room and grabbed it, scribbling Sunny’s address
on a paper napkin: 4225 Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California.

“Los _Angeles_! What’s in Los Angeles?” he said.

“Sunny.” June smiled.

“My God, the Coast.” He stashed his astonishment in a pocket with her
address. “June, you’re a saint!” He gave her a violent hug and dashed
out. June ran after him, startled at his odd behavior.

“Page, wait! Where are you going?” she called.

“To get my wife.”

“But you haven’t been here ten minutes. Ben will want to see you. What
shall I tell him?”

But Page was already backing out. He waved at her and turned down the
drive.

* * * * *

June went back in the house and called Jack and Laura Mann. She hadn’t
met them but she’d heard Page mention them and knew them second-hand
through Sunny’s letters. She told the Manns where Sunny was and Page was
headed, and they gave her the Pringles’ phone number.

June introduced herself to George Pringle in a friendly voice, assuring
him that Sunny was fine and Page would soon be with her. “And they’re
expecting a baby!” she said cheerfully. “I’m sure they won’t mind if I
tell you.” But she was surprised when her news seemed to aggravate him.

“What’s she doing in California?” Pringle said, in a voice sharp enough
to hurt June’s feelings.

“They quarreled,” she said.

“What about?”

“Sunny didn’t say. But she’s acting foolish. She wouldn’t even give Page
her address—”

“But _you_ did? Aren’t you interfering a bit, Mrs. Rotheli?”

“Mr. Pringle, I didn’t have to call and tell you any of this,” June
replied. “And if you’re going to be unpleasant—”

“Forgive me,” he said hastily. “You must understand that I’m worried.”

“I don’t think you need to be. They’re in love and they’ll work it out.
It’s hard for a man to comprehend what a girl feels like when she’s
pregnant. She doesn’t believe it now, but her husband is the best
medicine for her.”

Pringle understood from the conversation that the Rothelis had no idea
Page was their son. “Mrs. Rotheli, I think this is more serious than you
realize,” Pringle began, but he couldn’t tell her the rest of it. It
would have been brutal, unforgivably impersonal, over the phone.

But he felt something had better be done about it at once. It was his
plain moral obligation to protect Page and Sunny from themselves. If he
could do it only by following them to Los Angeles, that is what he would
do.

He thanked June and hung up, calling O’Hare Field for jet reservations
the moment his line was clear.

“I’m going out there tonight,” he told his wife moments later. “I’m
certain Sunny went there to escape Page and I can’t understand why he
doesn’t take this God-given chance to let her go. I know how much he
loves her. Lord knows it isn’t easy for the boy. But she’s done all a
woman can to help him, and he knows how evil this relationship is.”

“George,” his wife said mildly, “stay home.”

“What?” He stared at her. They so rarely disagreed on anything that it
shocked him to hear her object. “Somebody has to help them, Lucia. They
haven’t strength to help themselves.”

“Don’t you think they have more strength at their age than you have at
yours?”

He left his packing momentarily to explain, “It’s not a question of
physical vigor, my dear.”

“George, I’ve thought about this till my head ached.”

“Of course you did. We agreed long ago their marriage wasn’t valid.”

“_We_ agreed. You and I. _They_ didn’t.”

“They are very young, very much in love,” he said formally. “You have to
remember what that feels like, Lucia dear.”

“I remember,” she murmured. “Do you?”

“Why certainly. Only for a woman, it’s different. They’re not as
reasonable as a man. They have a weaker sense of honor and morality.”

“I am an honorable and moral woman, George,” Lucia said with great
dignity, “and I believe Sunny is, too. She deserves a chance to keep
Page if she can win him away from your stuffy principles.” She stopped,
amazed at herself.

Pringle dropped a handful of underclothes and marched to her bedside to
stamp out the anarchy. “Lucia, do you feel well?” he said, restrained
but not unkind. She began to cry and he added gently, “My dear, I love
both of those children. I’d give my soul to change things, but I can’t.
They have to be separated. They are _not_ husband and wife, they are
brother and sister. Once you understand that, you see at once what must
be done.”

“I can’t believe she meant to leave Page forever,” Lucia said. “I can’t
believe it’s right for us to meddle. They don’t want your help, George.”

“They need it. It’s my moral duty—”

“It’s your moral duty to mind your own affairs!” she cried with the
courage of conviction.

“My son _is_ my affair!” he declared.

“Perhaps they can build a life together, but not if you insist they’re
doing something dirty and terrible. Page can’t take that and you know
it.”

“That’s why I’m doing it,” he said determinedly. He looked at her clear
bright eyes and flushed cheeks; her anger gave her the look of youth he
had almost forgotten. He was inexpressibly shocked at her.

“I lie here alone in this bed day after day,” Lucia said, unable to
return his gaze, “and I think about that boy I love so much: how we
alienated him with our stingy love, our cold, correct home, our speeches
about the grand old name of Pringle.” She caught her breath. “And then I
think what it did to him when we called and told him about Sunny. I
don’t know what’s right and wrong any more, George. I only know in spite
of my love I’ve lost my son. I wouldn’t care if Sunny were his own
mother, I’d want him to have her.”

Pringle finished packing, silent with heavy disapproval. “You’ll come to
your senses in a day or two, and see that I’m right,” he said finally.
“Have Edna call my office and tell them I probably won’t be back until
Monday.” He kissed her cheek. But she was weeping and desolate, and
because he loved and needed her, he sat down on her bed and held her in
his arms. “You’re overwrought, darling Lucia,” he said tenderly. “I’ll
call Dr. Blue.”

“No. No more pills. George, it would almost make me well again if you’d
stay home and let _them_ patch it up.”

He put his hand on her forehead. “You’ll feel better after you rest,” he
said, lowering her into the pillows. He tried to believe that it was
merely a little fever, an excess of anxiety, that prompted her words. To
think otherwise was to admit he didn’t know his own wife after
thirty-four years. And that was preposterous.

He kissed her once again and walked softly out of the room with his
suitcase.

“That was about ten days ago,” Jack told Mr. Winkler. “The next thing we
knew, you were on the phone to tell us you’d seen Sunny and Page in
California and Page was having a change of heart.”

“They were driving back to Chicago,” Winkler said. “They ought to be
here in a week or so. I suppose they’re trying to figure out how to
break it to the Rothelis when they get here.” He shook his head.
“Amazing story, isn’t it? The adoption and all. Hard to believe, even
when you know it happened. It sounds like the kind of crazy switch you’d
find in a Gilbert and Sullivan plot, only this one isn’t comical.”

They all sat quietly for a moment: Jack studying his guest; Winkler
looking at the floor as if the weird story had shaken his composure; and
Laura watching the two men in silence.

“Do you think they’ll ever forgive the elder Pringles?” Winkler asked,
his eyes moving slowly up to Jack’s face.

“If the Pringles will let them,” Jack answered.

“I hope it works out,” Winkler said. “You see, I have a son just about
Page’s age. I’ve been thinking while you were telling the story what it
would do to me to lose his respect, his love. It must be hell for
Pringle.” He spoke with paternal compassion.

“I don’t doubt it,” Jack said with a nod.

The clock sounded the half-hour. It was five-thirty in the morning, and
the chime brought Winkler to his feet.

“I have to go,” he said. “I shouldn’t have kept you youngsters up all
night.”

“Our pleasure, Mr. Winkler,” Jack said. “We enjoyed it.”

“If you hear from Sunny and Page again, I’d like to know whether they’re
all right,” Winkler said.

“We’ll give you a call,” Jack offered.

“You ... might have trouble reaching me. Page said he’d contact you at
the end of the week. Can I call you then?”

“Sure,” Jack said, smiling at the dodge.

At the front door Winkler turned. “Thanks for the dinner, Laura,” he
said.

“I’m glad you liked it,” she answered, standing beside Jack.

Winkler hesitated. “Do you think,” he said, “that Page ever really loved
his step-father?”

“I think he still does, very much,” Jack said. “It’s just a question of
pride now. It’s hard to admit you’ve been wrong. And Pringle’s in line
for a few apologies of his own. He shouldn’t have followed them to L.
A.”

“I guess not. He must have had had the best intentions, but ... the road
to hell, and all that. Well!” He brought himself up straight and back to
reality. “Thank you again. And good night.”

* * * * *

“He’s a funny old guy,” Jack said.

“Probably a lot like Mr. Pringle,” Laura agreed. “Aristocratic, high
principles, and all. But Jack, you shouldn’t have told him—”

“But, darling, I wanted to,” he said, turning around and taking her in
his arms. Jack and Laura were about the same height, but he always made
her feel small and feminine. In spite of her own odd nature, she loved
him. He was her home, her refuge. And his love was her security. Through
Jack she could understand Sunny’s need for Page.

“I’m afraid someday you’ll hurt Betsy,” Laura chided. “You don’t _have_
to tell people you’re gay.”

“I had to make Winkler understand,” he said. “It was part of the story.”

“It shocked him, though.”

“He’ll recover.” He kissed her forehead, in a gesture as intimate as
things normally got between them, and said, “Come on. We can squeeze in
a nap before Betsy wakes up.”

* * * * *

Jack was expecting Page’s call, but not the very next day. He was
startled to hear the familiar voice saying, “Jack, how are you? This is
Page Pringle.”

“How are you, old buddy?” Jack answered with a calm he didn’t feel.

Abashed, Page said, “Did you know we were in Chicago?”

“We knew you were coming,” Jack said. “Talked to June. How are you?”

“Okay, thanks. We flew back.” Page, who didn’t deserve Jack’s
friendliness, was grateful and surprised. He talked a little too fast to
cover his emotions. “We damn near didn’t make it, though. Got lost. On
the high desert.” His voice was suddenly terribly tired.

“My God,” Jack said. “Are you all right? Sunny—”

“I am, but Sunny’s over at Wesley Memorial Hospital. She’s in labor.
It’s a miracle that baby didn’t come out there on the sand.”

“It’s premature, isn’t it?” Jack said. Laura was hovering anxiously over
him now.

“About nine weeks. Sunny’s doctor just flew in from New York. He knows
the case and she wanted him here for the delivery. They say he’s a damn
good man.”

“Settick?”

“You know him?” Page said.

“Sure. He delivered Betsy.”

“That’s right, I’d forgotten.” Page couldn’t say more without making
some kind of apology, however clumsy. “Jack ... I want to tell you—”

“Forget it, boy.”

“No, let me say it. I can’t look you in the eye till I say I’m sorry.
You said a mouthful that night, and I behaved like an ass. I guess
because you were telling me the truth and the truth was so damn painful.
Like sandpapering a sunburn. And I know all about sunburns now.

“Jack, I didn’t straighten out until Sunny and I got lost and came to
grips with the truth for the first time. You saw it before anybody else.
Whatever I said that night, please don’t hold it against me. I’m not the
same guy any more.”

“You’re forgiven,” Jack said. “Where are you?”

“At the hospital. I want to stay as close to Sunny as I can.”

“She’s still in labor?”

“Yeah. Pretty rough.”

“Want some company?” Jack said.

“Sure do.”

“I’ll be over in half an hour. With cigarettes.”

“Good boy, Jack. Thanks.”

“I’m coming too,” Laura said as Jack hung up the phone.

“Honey, it’s turning into a damn convention. The Rothelis are with him
and I expect the Pringles will show up later.”

“This baby meant the world to Sunny, Jack,” Laura said. “If anything
happens to it.... Well, June went to pieces over her first, and she
might do Sunny more harm than good. I want to be there just in case.”
Laura’s affection for Sunny had an undoubted erotic tinge. But at that
moment she didn’t even consider it. Her concern was quite selfless. Jack
saw there was no arguing with her and surrendered good-naturedly.

They drove over to Wesley Memorial Hospital, taking a carton of
cigarettes, apples, a pint of scotch, and a plastic pacifier for the
baby.

“Nine weeks early,” Laura mused. “That’s not too bad, you know. Betsy
was four weeks early and she was almost six pounds.”

“Yes, but you didn’t quit eating. And you weren’t lost on the desert,
either.”

She fell silent, wondering about it.

They parked their red Volkswagen two blocks away and walked to the
hospital, taking the elevator up to the maternity waiting room. They saw
Page first, talking to a handsome middle-aged couple that Laura knew at
once must be the Rothelis.

They approached with caution. Page hadn’t warned them whether the
Rothelis knew yet who he was and it seemed highly unlikely that they
did. Page was badly sunburned, the skin still red across his nose and
cheekbones; it had been cruel exposure for his fair skin, and it must
have been as bad for Sunny’s.

Page and Ben Rotheli stood up and Page gripped Jack’s hand hard with
emotion. Jack was absorbed for a moment in matching the features of
father and son. The resemblance was subtle. If you knew about them, you
saw it. If you didn’t know, and weren’t looking for it, it would escape
you.

“June ... the baby?” Laura said.

“Not yet,” June said, shaking her head. The strain of the wait showed in
her eyes. Impulsively Laura put a warm hand on June’s and squeezed it,
thinking how hard June must be trying to control herself now, for
everyone’s sake.

“It’ll be all right,” Laura said. “My little girl came early, too.”

“Did she?” June said eagerly, and they launched into comforting
woman-talk.

“She’s been in true labor about ten hours,” Page told Jack. “She’s
pretty weak after two days on that damn sand. It’s incredible how many
pints of water you lose in that heat.”

“I believe it.”

“The pains started then, actually,” Page said. “But it was false labor.”

“How’s it going now?” Jack asked.

“Settick says she’s got a lot of natural stamina. The baby’s alive. They
can hear its heartbeat. They’re giving Sunny injections of saline
solution to speed things along.”

“Thank God for Dr. Settick,” Rotheli said with feeling. “He took right
over when he got here. One of the other doctors told us he was doing a
brilliant job. If anyone can bring her and the baby through, he can.”

Page nodded agreement without a show of jealousy. His opinion of the
young obstetrician had been drastically revised when he understood that
Sunny’s life might be in his hands.

“She’s got to be all right,” he told Jack. “The baby comes second.”

“You can always have more kids, Page, but you’ve only got one Sunny,”
Ben said gently, putting a hand on Page’s shoulder. Jack realized then
that Ben and June still did not know that Page was Roger Rotheli.

“June, I’m going down for a sandwich,” Ben told his wife after a minute.
“Can I bring you anything? We haven’t eaten since we got here eight
hours ago,” he said to the Manns.

“Go along with him, June,” Page said. “We’ll get you right away if
there’s any news.”

Reluctantly, June let herself be persuaded, largely because Ben seemed
to need her company. She had no appetite herself. She was so tired, her
face so like Sunny’s, that Page, watching her walk out, felt a great
warmth for her.

He sat with the Manns in silence for a minute.

“Have a cigarette,” Jack said finally, offering Page the carton. “It’ll
calm your nerves.”

“Thanks.” Page opened a fresh pack and lighted one. “What I really need
is a wake-up-and-swing pill,” he chuckled. “After that desert vacation
and this baby business, all I want to do is lie down on the floor and
sleep for a week.”

“The Rothelis don’t know who you are yet, do they?” said Laura.

“No.” He sighed a cloud of fresh smoke. “I can’t even think about that
now. Not till Sunny’s out of danger.”

“I thought we’d see the Pringles here,” Jack said.

“I didn’t call them. They don’t know we’re back, and Mother’s
bedridden.”

“Still quarreling?”

“Oh, that’s not it. You see, they haven’t met the Rothelis, and this
seemed like a lousy time for it, with all of us so worried. It’d drive
me nuts to have them on my neck.”

Jack bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “How the hell did
you get lost in the desert?” he asked.

Page told him in a voice that was grim.

* * * * *

He had arrived out in Los Angeles in the early evening and driven a
rented car to Los Feliz Avenue. Sunny’s apartment was one of the scores
lined up in neatly landscaped rows on the big avenue. He picked out her
number behind a waving palm frond, and then had to spend twenty minutes
finding a parking spot.

Her rooms were on the ground floor in the back, surrounded with freshly
watered orange day lilies, their leaves weighted with water diamonds. It
was a perfect setting for her.

Page knocked on her door and waited several minutes. He could hear her
walk across the room finally and stop by the door.

“Who is it?” she said and her voice struck joy and relief into his
heart. But he was afraid to answer for fear she would keep the door
locked. Then what could he do—break in a window?

“Brian?” she said, sounding more alert this time.

Page had no way of knowing Richie Settick’s brother’s name. He only knew
Sunny seemed to be expecting a man and his sudden anger triggered the
voice out of his throat. “Sunny? It’s me, darling. Page.” Silence. “Let
me in.” Again, silence. “Sunny, can’t you hear me? Darling, let me in.”

Very slowly the door opened. Sunny’s face, heart-catchingly lovely,
gazed out. They studied each other warily. She put a protective hand
over her stomach, Richie’s warning ringing in her ears.

“How did you find me?” she said and he saw the alarm in her big eyes.

“Your mother,” he said softly.

She appeared shocked at this, but she didn’t question it. “What do you
want?” she asked.

“I want you,” he whispered.

“Dr. Settick said—”

“I know what he said. I talked to him.”

“Did you hurt him?”

“No. He gave as good as he got. He’s a good man, damn him. Sunny, please
come back with me.”

“To live with you?” She looked at him with yearning, resenting his
intrusion, his threat to her child, yet knowing that if he wanted her
back as his _wife_, she would go.

“Can we talk about it?” Page said.

“That’s all we’ve done. It hasn’t helped much.”

“We’ve only shouted at each other,” he said. “Sunny, don’t make me stand
out here in the dark. Anybody could hear us. I feel like a damn Fuller
Brush man.”

“You stay right where you are and tell me what you want from me, Page.”

“I want to take you on a honeymoon,” he said, coming closer to keep it
private. “We’ve never had one. I thought we could take our time and see
the West and ... maybe settle this thing.” He hadn’t known when she
opened that door what he would say to her. But suddenly he had found the
words.

“And fall smack into the same old ugly rut when we got back,” she said.
“I sit at home for months while you make up your mind you can’t live
without me. Then we meet for a few agonizing hours and yell and hurt
each other and make dreadful, guilty love because your real name is
Roger Rotheli. And then home I go to sit and weep for another few
months. Or have a miscarriage.” Her voice rose and he hushed her with a
worried stare.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she finished more quietly.

Abruptly he pushed his way in, moving so fast she hadn’t time to thrust
the door between them. He took her in his arms and kissed her. For all
his strength and passion, he seemed like a child begging her to make up
his mind for him.

She returned his kisses helplessly. “Page,” she murmured while he hugged
her and he shuddered at the tears in her voice. “I will not tell you
what you should do.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Not with words,” she conceded. “You’re asking another way. But darling,
you have to face this alone. I’ve made up my mind; now you make up
yours. Either you take me back or you leave me. You can’t have it both
ways.”

“Help me,” he whispered into her shoulder, admitting his dilemma at
last. “I can’t live like this. I’m so lost, Sunny. It all seems clear to
Dad. And it seems just as clear to you. Only you’re on opposite sides of
the fence, you two. I’m at dead center and you’re both pulling on me
till I’m coming apart at the seams. I can’t move one way or the other.”

“Climb off the fence, Page,” she pleaded.

“Say you love me,” he said, searching for comfort, trying to forget
everything but Sunny’s presence.

She stroked his head and let her random tears fall unchecked. “You’ve
known that all along, and it just makes things worse.”

“Just say it, Sunny. My darling, darling Sunny. Please.”

“I love you,” she said. “I love you, _Roger_.”

She shocked him rigid. He stared at her to see if she meant to hurt him.
She was bravely serious.

“Good night, my darling brother,” she said, and closed the door softly
in his astonished face.

* * * * *

Neither of them slept. Page, stripped of his pride and wavering between
two identities, sat down shamelessly on Sunny’s door mat and spent the
night watching the stars.

He wanted to be up there where there were no riddles, no flesh and
breath, no incest. Nothing but the fire-punctured dark; nothing but the
flow of Infinity.

Our love will last in spite of everything, he thought. The only question
is, will it hurt more if we’re together or apart?

But he already knew the answer. He couldn’t fool himself any longer. The
real question was the one she threw at him as she shut the door: was her
brother brave enough to live with her? Take his sister for his wife?
Could he survive the horror and scorn they might have to face? Conquer
his fear and make her the strong, loving husband she needed?

He let it spin around in his head, a crazy carousel that had no starting
place and no stopping; just endless indecision.

* * * * *

Sunny lay on her bed and watched the moonlight slide across her ceiling.
Perhaps, being a woman, her decision was easier than his. Her love was
her life. It didn’t matter whether she was Page’s sister or not. Alone,
she didn’t know who she was. With Page she did know and she was
unafraid.

Her heart dilated with love and pity for him. But if I make this
decision for him I’ll be open to a lifetime of blame, she thought.
Whatever goes wrong with us he can blame on me. No, if there’s any
fault-finding, we’ll have to share it.

But she went cold at the thought that he might leave her again, whipped
by his fears.

Sunny didn’t realize that Page had spent the night only fifteen feet
from her bed until she heard him talking in the morning. His voice came
clearly through her front door. She dropped her toothbrush and ran to
let him in.

The door opened on Page and George Pringle, and it wasn’t any happy chat
they were having. They fell silent at the sight of her, as, she looked
from one to the other in surprise, convinced that Pringle must have come
along to prod Page into saying good-by to her.

“Won’t you come in?” she said frostily. “I might have known Page would
want to face his wife with a chaperone.”

Mr. Pringle got the point: Sunny had not left Page out of any noble
desire to end their illegal marriage. Silently he ushered Page inside
ahead of him, taking off his hat as he followed. Sunny shut the door and
turned to face them, arms folded and eyes contemptuous.

“I didn’t expect this,” she said. “Page has always been brave enough to
come calling by himself until now.”

“Sunny!” Page flared.

“Page had no idea I was coming,” Pringle said.

“Really?” Sunny said sarcastically. “Well, you seem to have timed it
perfectly. Congratulations. I suppose you also got my address from my
mother?”

“Don’t misunderstand, Sunny,” Pringle said. “Your mother loves you, and
she’s very worried about you. I couldn’t tell her the truth.”

“You’re too generous, Mr. Pringle.”

“I know I’ve lost your affection because of this thing,” Pringle said
regretfully. “And it grieves me. I’ll tell you the truth, though it has
given me a great deal of pain. Lucia feels as you do, my dear: that you
and Page should—should live together as man and wife.” His gaze dropped.
It humiliated him to admit this, yet it might win him her goodwill.

“Mother said that?” Page asked, disbelieving.

“Yes. I was most unhappy, as you must realize. But I felt I had to come
here, in spite of her objections, when I learned that Page had followed
you, Sunny. I felt that I had a duty to help you two.”

“You have a duty to leave us alone. We don’t need your help!” Sunny
declared. “We just need each other.” Pringle at that moment was her
worst enemy. “I know exactly what you want to tell us, as if it weren’t
already branded on our brains: We are _brother_ and _sister_.” She gave
the words a hard punch that made them almost unbearable to hear, and
suddenly found herself weeping.

Pringle stood alone in the center of the room, embarrassed, unsure, full
of smothered love. He didn’t know how to proceed. He only knew he cared
enormously for his “children” and he thought he was morally right. “I
love you both,” he said hesitantly, trying to reach them.

“Then have mercy on us!” Sunny said.

“But I’m afraid you’ll end up together again.”

“We haven’t made any decision yet,” Page said.

“You coward!” Sunny shot at him, forgetting for a second what havoc that
word had wreaked the last time she used it. Her eyes darted to his
mutilated left hand. Quickly he made a fist of it.

“Do you really think you can keep each other and live normal lives?”
Pringle said incredulously.

“I can’t think at all, God damn it,” Page said. “I’m paralyzed until you
get out of here!”

Pringle hesitated a moment and then went to the door. “All right,” he
said. “But if you can’t separate on your own, I warn you I’ll do all I
can to separate you myself.”

The three of them looked at each other for a second. “The hell of it
is,” Sunny said to Pringle through her tears, “you really do love us. I
believe that.”

“My children, I love you very much,” he said gratefully. “That’s why I’m
here.”

They watched him turn and go in silence. Sunny had always been fond of
her father-in-law, since their first warm meeting, and she regretted the
hard words she had spoken. Yet she had had to say them.

For several moments after Pringle departed, Page and Sunny did not
speak. Sunny was too proud and hurt to start begging again and Page was
still too mixed up to declare himself. But Pringle had stated the
challenge for them now, and a decision had to be taken.

They were afraid of losing the fragile tie Pringle’s presence had bound
between them, and suddenly they spoke each other’s names at the same
instant.

“We seem to have a talent for that,” Page said, smiling. He went to her
and touched her hair. “Come with me, Sunny,” he said fondly.

“Right now? Without knowing where we’re going or how we’ll end up or—”

“How can we know that now, darling? We’ll figure it out while we’re
traveling. We’ll get to know each other all over again.”

She had sworn she wouldn’t go back to him until he made it formal and
final that she was his wife for the rest of their lives. But, like her
mother, she was made to yield. She still hoped she could bring him
around as long as she was physically close to him.

He saw her indecision and clasped her tightly to him. “Sunny, it’s the
only way. We can’t leave the thing hung up.”

And she began to understand what he wanted: a chance to test himself and
his temper and his nerves; to test his love in different places with
different people; to see how he and Sunny made it together, confined
with each other in a motel room or a car twenty-four hours a day. Maybe
it would work. If it convinced Page he could take it, Sunny was willing
to try it.

“All right,” she said finally. “But if this doesn’t do it—”

He interrupted her with a kiss. She could feel him fighting himself,
trying to keep things fraternal. But they went radically out of bounds
in a matter of seconds. His mouth opened on hers and he began to rock
her with his hips. He tried once more to stop, burying his face against
her neck and shuddering with the effort. Then she heard him murmur
helplessly, “Oh, the hell with it.”

“That’s the spirit, darling,” she whispered, laughing softly. “After
all, if it’s going to be a honeymoon....”

Page swung her up in his arms and carried her to the unmade bed. He
stretched out with her, and the weight of his big body made her groan
with pleasure.

“Oh, God!” he exclaimed, moving over. “The baby!”

“Baby wants more,” she told him, green eyes twinkling. Reassured, he
embraced her again. “Mmmm,” he whispered. “Pepsodent.”

Sunny laughed again and hugged him in a spasm of pure joy. When he began
that silly intimate teasing that always led to love, she knew what he
was feeling and she was temporarily sure of the world.

* * * * *

“We’ll have to call Mom and Dad,” Sunny said later.

Page looked up from the map he was examining. “They’ll only worry,” he
said. “Let them think we’re still out here till we show up in
Hillsburg.” He tickled her beautiful face. “When are we going to tell
them about me, honey?” he asked.

Sunny looked at the ceiling, bristling all over with alarm. “Never, I
hope,” she said with forced calm.

“Is that fair? I’m their own child, their first-born son.”

“It would kill them,” Sunny said. “Page, believe me, they couldn’t love
you more if they did know ... and the knowledge might destroy Mother.”

“On the other hand, it might make her very happy,” he said. “Women are
peculiar creatures. I can’t help it, darling, I think they ought to
know. My step-parents know. Don’t my real parents deserve the truth at
least as much?”

“Not when it’s so painful.”

“You’re exaggerating,” he said flatly, and she saw that he was not going
to give in. But thanks to Richie Settick, he was afraid to press the
argument. Instead he would file it away and fetch it out to fluster her
with in a day or two.

He folded the map and said, “Let’s get going, honey. I’ll help you
pack.”

She obeyed him docilely, glad it was Page giving the orders now and not
Settick. “Poor Richie will worry himself sick when he finds out I’m
gone,” she said. “So will Brian. That’s his brother, darling. The doctor
I’m seeing out here.”

“Well, let them worry,” Page said with heartless satisfaction. “Damn
country is infested with Setticks and they don’t care how I worry.”

Sunny made him call Hillsburg before they left. She told the Rothelis
they would be in Los Angeles another couple of weeks, and allowed June
to think they were reconciled.

It was a good day to start a trip: clear and fair and warm. They drove
east on the San Bernardino freeway. Page wasn’t used to the recklessness
of Los Angeles’ drivers, and he wasted some breath swearing at them.

They got off on Route 66 in the town of San Bernardino and traveled
north over the Cajon Pass toward the beautiful high desert country.
Sunny loved the great green mountains and blue vistas, the flat white
tape of highway pasted over the hills, the cactus and the Joshua trees.

By late afternoon they were near Apple Valley on the desert,
thirty-five-hundred feet above sea level. The air was brittle-clear and
cooling fast as the sun descended. Apple Valley was five miles off the
main road, and they turned in to spend the night.

They got a room and had dinner at the Apple Valley Inn.

“I haven’t eaten so much in months,” she laughed. Page clasped her hand
across the table and smiled at her.

“And Settick told me the mere sight of me would give you a miscarriage,”
he snorted.

“It nearly did,” she said, sobering.

“Did I make up for it?” he asked, and she nodded. They were serenaded
during dessert by an ambulant trio who took them for newlyweds until
they spotted Sunny’s maternity dress. Their embarrassment sent her into
gales of laughter.

Later they walked around the hotel grounds, hand in hand in the
starlight. And then went to bed and made love and slept like winter
squirrels until ten the next morning.

They decided to skip breakfast and drive a while before they ate. It was
clear and warm with the promise of real heat by noon. They went only
thirty-five miles before Sunny announced she was starving.

“You see? I’m a good influence on your appetite,” Page said.

They stopped at the next place they saw: a little hamburger joint
outside the town of Barstow. Sunny ordered two hamburgers and a beer.

“Shouldn’t you be drinking milk?” Page said.

“Not when there’s beer around. I’ll drink a quart of milk for lunch, I
promise.”

“You’re happy, aren’t you, honey?” he said, smiling at her.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” she grinned.

* * * * *

Their breakfast was almost gone when George Pringle came in. He made his
way toward their table, watching them with worried eyes. Sunny gasped
when she saw him, awed by his determination.

“Sit down, Page,” she told her angry husband, who was half out of his
seat, “or I swear to God I’ll have this baby right now. In your lap.”

He sat down.

Pringle hesitated a second and then sat next to Sunny.

“Children,” he began, but Page interrupted.

“We are not children,” he said sharply. “If you’d ever get that into
your head it’d solve half our problems.”

“I thought I’d lost you for a while when you turned off 66,” Pringle
said, avoiding for the moment the urgent subject that brought him there.

Sunny put a hand on his arm. “Mr. Pringle, we won’t go through this
again with you,” she said. To her surprise, instead of arguing he put
his head in his hands in a gesture Page had made familiar to her. It
dramatized the profound influence Pringle had had on his unruly
step-son.

“I couldn’t let you get away without trying once more to make you see
reason,” he sighed, looking up.

“You just make me see red,” Page retorted.

“There’s no need for cruelty, Page,” his father said.

“Cruelty?” Page said skeptically.

But Pringle meant it and his face showed it. He looked for the first
time like an old man. Page felt a guilty shock to realize he was not the
only one who was suffering. He had never let himself think of George
Pringle as a vulnerable human being like himself. He cherished the
mental image of a cold, correct, remote man. It was an image Page had
formed in his early childhood and one that had long since ceased to bear
any resemblance to his step-father. It had suited Page to think he could
lash out at Pringle without hurting him. Now the hurt was vividly
visible and Page had a good long look at it. His shame and surprise
quieted him.

“Do something for me, Dad,” he asked. “Go back to Los Angeles and take
the next plane home, before we end up enemies. We’ll call you when we
get back and let you know what we’ve decided.” The affection he had
always felt for Pringle was reasserting itself for the first time in
many years, at this odd time and place. It shook Pringle up and moved
him to surrender. Perhaps if he yielded now he could salvage that love
Page still felt in spite of everything. Perhaps it was worth more than
the strict morality he was trying to force on the younger man. Pringle
trembled inwardly with self-rebuke. He was becoming as soft and
sentimental as Lucia! But he couldn’t stop himself.

“All right, Page, if it has to be that way,” he said with misgivings. He
seemed too tired, too irresolute, to keep battling with them. There was
nothing more he could do and he even sensed that he might drive them
back together if they teamed up against him in their resentment of his
meddling. He left them at last, proud and silent but with a noticeable
slump in his back.

* * * * *

“So he left you in peace?” Jack asked Page. “Have an apple.”

“It was screwy, you know?” Page said as he took the fruit. “I thought I
hated him. The more he followed us the madder I got. But suddenly, in
Barstow, everything changed. I felt sorry for him. And that made it
possible for me to love him again. All of a sudden he was a human being
like the rest of us, and miserable over my unhappiness ... trying so
hard to save us both, as he saw it. And he stood to lose even the little
love I still felt for him. It was a brave thing he did. A little stupid
but brave. I didn’t know that before.” He took a bite from the red
winesap in his hand.

“When Dad caught up with us, another crazy thing happened. I felt closer
to Sunny; more like a husband and less like a brother.”

“Why haven’t you told the Rothelis who you are, Page?” Laura asked,
huddling close to the men so the strangers in the waiting room couldn’t
eavesdrop.

“I will when Sunny’s all right,” Page said. “They should know the
truth.” His jaw hardened and he stopped chewing his apple.

“You’re right,” Jack said shrewdly. “That’s the way to get even with
them.”

“Get _even_? That’s a lousy way to put it.”

“Why, hell, man, they gave you away when you were a baby, didn’t they?”
Jack said, and Laura understood at once what he was trying to do. “They
made you suffer, didn’t they? All these years you’ve been miserable
because you didn’t know who you were. And what were they doing? Living
comfortably and forgetting all about poor little Roger. What the hell,
they have Chuckie now.”

“Jack, that’s a pretty rotten attitude,” Page said stiffly. He didn’t
recognize his own undressed desire for vengeance. He had always hidden
it under the robes of justice and retribution, and it had looked so
noble. Now it was parading in Jack’s words like a heartless whore on a
streetcorner.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable attitude,” Jack said with mock chagrin.
“They ought to know what they did to you. They ought to suffer a little
themselves. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“Well, they _did_ suffer,” Page said uncertainly.

“But that was years ago!”

“Jack, you’re making it sound like—”

“No news yet!” Laura broke in, in an over-bright voice, and Page shut up
as June and Ben rejoined them. They sat down next to their tense son,
who glowered in silence at his old roommate. Jack, afraid Page in this
temper would blurt out the truth, suggested the two of them go out for a
drink. It was a chance to patch things up again before they got out of
hand.

Page refused at once, but everybody insisted.

“Go over to Jocko’s, why don’t you?” Laura said. “It’s only a block
away. I’ll call if anything happens.”

Jack hauled Page, resisting nervously, down the main hall.

“God damn it, Jack, they’ll come to get me and I won’t be here,” he
said. “They’ll have to tell Sunny I’m out getting swacked with a
drinking buddy. What will she think?”

“She’ll think old Jack did the right thing and got you out of
everybody’s hair for half an hour,” Jack grinned.

* * * * *

It was late afternoon, pearly light and mild. Jack hustled his charge
along for a block and turned him into Jocko’s. He ordered two double dry
martinis and after a circumspect silence, put a hand on Page’s shoulder.
“Take it easy boy,” he said. “I had no business being so rough on you
then. You’ve got enough on your mind.”

Page, in his befogged state, had forgotten his gripe. “What? Oh, sure,”
he said, lighting a cigarette and singeing a finger in the process.
“God,” he murmured. “She’s got to be all right.”

“Women are a lot tougher than they look,” Jack said kindly.

Page wiped his sweaty forehead with a damp handkerchief and made Jack
chuckle. “If there ever was a nervous young father, Page, you’re it,” he
said.

“If there ever was a father with good _reason_ to be nervous, I’m it
too,” Page countered.

When the drinks came he emptied half his glass. Jack watched him a
moment and said, “I have something on my mind that I probably should
have told you sooner. Only things have been so unsettled—”

“I’m too far gone for confessions right now,” Page said.

“You ought to know this, though,” Jack insisted. “I met your
step-father.”

“You did?” Page turned to look at him with an interested stare. “How did
that happen? Did you call him up?”

“No, he called me. In fact he came over and had dinner with us.”

“He did? For God’s sake,” Page said. “How did he know who you were?”

“I didn’t ask him. The Rothelis, or maybe you mentioned us.”

“What did he want?” Page asked.

“Do you know anybody named Winkler?”

“Winkler? No. What is this, Jack?”

“Think hard. Anybody?”

“Some remote cousins of Mother’s have that name, I think. But I don’t
know them personally.”

That was enough for Jack. He ran a wet finger around the edge of his
martini glass until it sang.

“Your father told us his name was Winkler,” Jack said. “I wondered where
he picked up the name. He stayed till five in the morning.”

Page frowned. “What the hell did he do that for?”

“I guess he wanted us to reassure him. He’d just gotten back from
California and he felt as if he’d failed with you. He wanted to know
your whole story from A to Z, as if he’d never heard it. He wanted to
know if you’d leave Sunny, and if you’d forgive him for interfering the
way he did.”

“He asked you all that?”

“Not directly. He didn’t want us to know who he was. Just said he had
run into you in Barstow and thought you were a nice young couple. And
you told him to look us up.”

“The old son of a gun,” Page said, shaking his head with amazement. “He
must have been damn worried to do such a thing. It’s not like him.”

“I didn’t think so,” Jack smiled. “I hadn’t been talking very long
before I got the picture. He carried it off pretty well, but when he
asked questions you could tell the main thing he cared about was how a
father and son should get along. And whether a moral man could tolerate
incest.”

“How did he take it?”

“Well, some of it hurt, all right. But he showed guts. He heard me out.
Now and then, when it got bad, he asked the things he had to know, but
he didn’t condemn you. Or me, either.”

“Did he tell you who he was before he left?”

“No. He got a bit flustered. Wouldn’t let me call him for fear I’d find
out his real name. I’m still supposed to think he’s ‘Mr. Winkler’. Laura
never did catch on, by the way. Shall I tell her?”

“If you want to. I trust you two.”

“You don’t feel bitter about him now, do you?” Jack said.

“Not any more. There was so much love for us in all his bungling. Maybe
it’s a good thing in a way that he did it. It made me realize how much I
mean to him after all these years.”

“Why don’t you call him? He doesn’t even know you’re back,” Jack said.

“Sure,” Page said, looking at Jack as if it had just occurred to him. He
left his bar stool and went to the pay phone in the back of the bar.

When he returned Jack had ordered another round.

“He was pretty relieved,” Page reported. “So was Mother. I don’t know
what you said to him, Jackson, but I don’t think he feels as bad about
things as he did. He may never approve of us—Sunny said that once—but I
don’t think he’ll fight it any more.”

“Good.”

“And I called the hospital,” Page said. “It’s still going on. Ben says
they haven’t heard any more.”

“Well, bottoms up,” Jack said judiciously. “We’ll finish this one and
head back. You can tell me what happened on the desert.”

“You in a mood for horror stories?” Page said with an ironic grin.

Pringle’s unexpected visit in Barstow had taken the sparkle out of the
beautiful morning. Suddenly Page and Sunny noticed it was very hot and
dry. They didn’t talk about Pringle, with a tacit understanding that it
would only have led to lower spirits and perhaps a fight.

“Come on,” Page said, leading her out to the rented dark blue Ford. He
backed out toward the highway.

“Let’s do something fun,” Sunny said. “Let’s go see something
interesting.”

“What’s to see, sweetheart?”

She had taken a travel guide map from the glove compartment and was
studying the territory. They drove along while Sunny mentioned various
oddities marked on the map; old mines, great dry lakes, craters. Page
dismissed them all as tourist traps.

“Darling, let’s get off this dreary highway and see _something_,” Sunny
pleaded. “This is supposed to be a honeymoon. Don’t let your father ruin
this, too.”

“Okay, honey, you win,” he said half-heartedly. “What’s the next stop on
the map?”

“Amboy Crater,” she said. “And Bristol Dry Lake.” He made a face.

“Well, it says ‘Point of Interest’ on the map,” she said.

With a sigh he turned south off Route 66 at Amboy, a scarcely noticeable
desert town, and went a mile or two to the crater. Sunny made him stop
so she could get out and look.

The crater loomed, black and ancient, in a plateau of iron-hard rock,
all of it weather-cracked, split, and dried like a diseased sea. It
spread out for miles, rising about six feet above the desert floor, and
all around the edges dead black fingers of lava rock probed the sand.

“Just think, it came out of that crater once, like the sea in hell,”
Sunny said, awed.

“Gives me the creeps,” Page told her. “Come on, let’s find something
cheerful.”

“How about the Dry Lake? It’s only half a mile further,” she said.

It was not much to see. Not as dramatic and eerie as the old crater.
Just miles of flat, dry, hard-baked mud. They got off the road and drove
around on it for a while.

“Make a good race-track,” Page commented. “Gosh, it’s big.”

“Only about eight miles long on the map,” Sunny said. But when she
looked up it seemed as if they were completely surrounded by cracked
mud. It was all one could see in four directions, except way out in the
crystal distance where the violet mountains rose.

“I wonder if anything lives out here?” Sunny asked.

“Nothing with any sense,” he said. “Had enough?” And he turned the car
around.

“Where are our tracks?” Sunny said, peering over the hood.

“You don’t make tracks on this stuff, it’s like so much cement.”

They drove a little farther. “We’re kind of low on gas, aren’t we?”
Sunny said, glancing at the meter.

“It’s not far, honey, just a couple of miles. We’ll make it.”

“We ought to be back on that road by now. I’m afraid we’ve gone past
it,” Sunny fretted.

Page had not realized how low the gas was, as a matter of fact,
preoccupied as he was with his father. Sunny fell silent, trusting him.
But ten minutes later Page began to notice that the terrain looked
different. It was not as smooth as the lake bed. Rocks and clumps of
tough weeds studded the ground. He figured he had enough gas for another
ten or twelve miles, and glanced at Sunny beside him in the front seat.
She was sweating freely, but she didn’t look frightened.

Suddenly a sharp report jolted the front of the car. Page stopped as
fast as he could and leaped out to see the damage. He looked under the
hood and abruptly fell to his knees at the side of the car, trying to
wrench a hub cap off. Sunny heard him banging and leaned out his window.
“Can I help?” she said.

“The keys!” He grabbed them from her hand and opened the trunk, coming
forward quickly with a lug wrench. But he was too late.

Mystified, Sunny said, “What’s the matter, darling?”

“It’s all right,” he said, but his face was worried.

He sat down in the driver’s seat, trying to wipe the wrinkles off his
forehead. “Damnedest thing. I guess we hit a loose rock. Bounced up and
struck the fan and bent one of the blades.”

“Is that bad?”

“I’m afraid so, honey. The blade sheared the radiator tubing. We’ve lost
all our water. I was hoping to catch some of it in the hub cap.”

“What can we do?” She was more scared than she wanted him to know. The
desert is haunted with ghastly tales of the uninformed and unprepared.

“I guess we can drive a way without it,” Page said. “We can’t be more
than half a mile from that road.” And yet he knew that at some point
they had driven out of the lake, and God only knew where they were now.
He prayed they weren’t going around in a fatal, sandy circle.

Resolutely he started up again. There was no road, no sign, no hut, no
human being. Nothing but bigger rocks and softer sand.

The sand, in fact, was becoming treacherous to drive on. Inevitably, the
car gave a mushy jolt and began to slow down.

“Is the gas gone?” Sunny said.

“No. Damn sand,” he muttered. As he spoke the car sank to a standstill.
Page gunned the motor a few times and cut it off. “No sense wasting
what’s left,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Darling,
don’t be afraid. We’re so close to civilization, we can’t go too far
wrong.”

“We _were_ close,” she said.

He squeezed her knee and then got out. “You stay there and try not to
sweat,” he told her. “I never let my pregnant wives pull the plow.”

But his cheerful mood faded rapidly. He labored in the unblinking sun
for almost two hours, digging tracks under the wheels, shoving while
Sunny tried to back out, creating traction out of bath towels and
deflated tires.

“Worse than shoveling maple syrup,” he gasped to Sunny, tearing the
shirt off his hot back. The air he was inhaling so hard felt like steam
in his lungs. By the time they got out of the hole he was trembling with
heat and fatigue.

“Move over, sweetheart, let’s get out of here,” he said, sliding into
the driver’s seat.

“On half a gallon of gas?” she said. “Besides, all the sand looks the
same. You can’t tell the soft from the hard.”

“We’ll try another direction,” he said, heading in what he judged was a
northerly route. “I think this will have us back on 66 in no time.” He
could sense that she wanted to believe him, and he fell silent, afraid
anything more he might say would only scare her. He felt his limbs
quaking and his heart working overtime, and he didn’t know what he would
do if they got stuck again.

“You’re awfully tired, darling, I can tell,” Sunny said softly.

“I’m not in shape for pushing cars across the desert,” he cracked. He
was painfully thirsty. She must be, too.

The ground became progressively rougher, with big outcroppings of rock
here and there. Through them Page threaded a cautious trail. Sunny
studied the map.

“It shows rocks for a hundred miles in all directions,” she said. “We
could be just about anywhere.”

“That’s a big help.”

“I thought you said we were going back to 66,” she said.

“Well, I think we are, sweetheart. But I’m not sure.”

“Oh, Page,” she whispered and he took her hand and held it hard, trying
to encourage her. “At least the sun’s going down,” she said bravely. “It
won’t be so hot.”

Then the engine coughed and there was a grinding wrench along the
underside of the car. Page stopped and opened the door in almost the
same motion. He dropped to his knees in the sand and slid under the
motor to see what had happened. Moments later he emerged, dusty and
splattered. Sunny didn’t dare ask him what he had found.

“Well, we’ve run over a goddam rock,” he said angrily. “There’re so many
after a while you just don’t notice them.”

“It can’t be too bad,” she said hopefully.

“No. It just pierced the crankcase housing, that’s all.”

“Can you fix it?” Her voice was small and scared.

“All the oil has poured out. Also, the motor’s had it, without water.
I’m afraid this buggy is finished,” he said. He spoke matter-of-factly,
but for the first time since he realized they were lost, he was
genuinely frightened.

Wearily he climbed up on the seat beside her. “We shouldn’t have rented
this car, we should have bought it,” he said. “At least we could collect
the insurance.”

She burst into tears. “Page,” she wept, and he took her in his arms.
“What will we do?”

“Rest. And save our strength. Did we bring anything to eat? Or drink?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Not one crumb. And I even thought of asking you to
pick up a six-pack of beer in that lunch place.”

They thought about the cold wet beer for a moment and then he said with
a vigor he didn’t feel, “In the morning I’m going to try to walk back.”

“And leave me here in this wilderness?” she cried, terrified. “Darling,
you’ll get lost. We might be fifty miles from the road.” She clung to
him in a panic, but he only held her, unwilling to give up the idea.

Hungry, thirsty, exhausted, they huddled together in the car while the
vast world of hot rocks and sand around them began to cool.

“Let’s try to sleep,” he said. “Here, honey, get in the back seat and
lie down. You can use that blanket in your bag.”

“I’d rather have an air conditioner,” she said. “What about you,
darling? Where will you sleep?”

“Under the car, I guess,” he said, covering her.

“Aren’t there snakes?” she asked.

“If there are, they’re cooked.” He took her hand. “I’ll be all right,
sweetheart. You go to sleep.”

She lay in the uncomfortably short back seat and tried to rest, while
Page sat up for a while, wondering how to get them out of there. His
overpowering worry was Sunny. How well could she bear up under that
deadly sun?

Before he crawled under the car to sleep he leaned into the back seat
and kissed her face tenderly. “Darling,” he whispered. “My love. Sleep
tight.”

* * * * *

At the first sign of light Page sat up to watch the dawn. It was warm,
with the temperature near ninety. The sun came out early, climbing up
the sides of the distant hills. It surprised Page when he first saw the
brightening sky. He had expected the sun from another direction. Sunny
awoke in time to see his consternation.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“The sun ... the damn thing does come up in the east, doesn’t it?”

“Ordinarily.” She stared at him.

“Then we’re headed west,” he said. “_Not_ north. Back to L. A. God! If
we keep on going pretty soon we’ll reach the ocean.”

“Or a lemonade stand,” she said wistfully.

He smiled at her. “You’re a good girl, Sunny,” he said. He spoke with
such love that she bent and kissed his hair as he sat on the ground. His
neck was scarlet and throbbing hot.

“Page, you got burned yesterday,” she said with concern.

“Not bad,” he lied. But his scalded skin had been robbed of water and
oil, and from neck to waist he was a painful red.

Sunny lifted her head and gazed around the sand. “What are we going to
do?” she asked.

“We’re going to get out of this damn oven,” he said, thumping the rear
fender as he shoved himself to his feet. “Before it bakes us to a turn.”

She climbed out and shook herself carefully.

“How do you feel?” He was hyper-conscious of her condition.

“I’m all right, darling,” she said. She couldn’t start the day by
telling him how thirsty and faint she was. She felt a kick in her
abdomen and was momentarily overwhelmed with an uprush of love and
anguish for the poor little creature she was carrying. Her fate was his.
She would want to die if the baby didn’t live.

Page took her hand and led her to an outcropping of rock some forty
yards from the car. The short walk made her tired. He settled her there,
spreading the electric blanket under her to keep her off the sand, and
sat down beside her.

“We ought to have some shade here for most of the morning,” he said,
squinting at the high-rising rock. “In the afternoon we can move around
to the other side.”

“What do we do at noon?” she said.

“We fry,” he answered briefly. He scanned the area with tightly narrowed
eyes, standing up to look around. He couldn’t sit there on that sand and
wait for the world to come rescue him. He had to do something.

In less than an hour they heard the buzz of a plane.

“God damn! Of course! I should have thought of that,” he cried, running
back to the car. He wrenched the rear view mirror off its bracket and
jumped out, holding the mirror toward the sun. A series of bright
flashes resulted, but the plane, cruising over twenty thousand feet in
that mountainous country, proceeded eastward indifferently.

Sunny discovered a package of gum in her purse and when Page came
dejectedly back with the mirror, she shared it with him. It took them
some time to soften it in their dry mouths, but the sugar tasted
wonderful. Page took only one stick.

Sunny saved the rest. “Three sticks of Doublemint,” she said. “All our
worldly goods. It makes me feel like crying.” The tears began to fall,
and Page put his arms around her.

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, ashamed of herself. “I guess it was
seeing that plane. Those people up there, so cool and comfortable.
Eating a big breakfast and looking out the window at all the damn
rocks.”

“There must be a lot of air traffic around here,” Page said. “Hell, the
big army bases, the commercial flights, private parties. I’m going to
pile up a mess of stuff in that clear space in front of the car and the
next time one goes over I’ll light it. Maybe it’ll fire up bright enough
to catch somebody’s eye. I’ll have to use your clothes, honey. Okay?”

“Anything,” she said. She leaned back weakly against the rock shelf. It
was hot in the shadow, the temperature rising steadily through the
nineties. She looked at her watch: not quite nine A.M. Where will we be
when it’s nine in the evening? she wondered. Oh, God, please save us.
All three of us.

Page spent the next hour building a pyre out of their suitcases, their
clothes, and a spare tire from the trunk. Afterward he found the towels
he had used to get the wheels out of the sand and made an S with them.
He walked over to Sunny and squatted beside her, wiping his sweaty face
with a grimy cloth. “Sunny, I need the blanket,” he said.

“What for?” she asked, rolling off it without protest.

“I’m making an S O S in the sand over there. If they see the fire,
they’ll come low enough to read the letters.”

He took out the pen knife he carried in his change pocket and, with
Sunny’s help, cut the blanket into several strips. Sunny held it taut
while Page sawed through the material.

“That should do it,” Page said a half-hour later, gathering up the long
wool streamers and heading for the S made of towels. Sunny started to
follow him but a sudden hard cramp sent her back to the ground.

For fifteen minutes, while Page worked on the distress signal she sat
motionless, paralyzed with the pain. Her instinct recognized it. She had
never had a baby before, but she knew that she had just had a labor
pain.

She leaned against the rock, grateful for the shade, and told herself,
_I will be calm_, over and over. Maybe it will go away. The books talk
about false labor. I’ll sit here and take it easy.... If that little
mite comes out here, it won’t live five minutes.

It didn’t occur to her that she wouldn’t, either. Her whole being
revolved around that baby. Sunny had a lot of sense and a great desire
to save her child. She forced herself to lie down on the sand and remain
quiet. Time passed, one straggling second at a time, but the cramp did
not repeat itself.

When Page came back she told him nothing.

“That’s it, darling,” he said. “Save yourself.”

“You, too,” she murmured. “Lie down, Page.”

He sat instead. They were both stunned with the sky-rocketing heat.

“How hot do you think it is?” Sunny asked. Little streams of sweat were
trickling into her ears and down her breasts and arms.

“Seems hotter if you talk about it.” He scanned the shiny blue sky,
shading his eyes with his left hand.

Page estimated it was well over a hundred degrees by then, but didn’t
tell her so. “There might be some moisture left in the radiator,” he
said. “Give me your hanky, I’ll soak it up.”

“If there is, it’ll be hot enough to brew coffee,” she said.

Page left her briefly. The heat pierced the soles of his shoes and
traveled up his legs like shock waves, and the sun felt hot enough to
melt his hair. He returned on shaky limbs with a pitiful small dampness.
“Suck on it,” he told Sunny. “It’s all there was.” He stroked her
cracking lips with it. They had not eaten or drunk now for twenty-four
hours.

Sunny would have insisted on sharing the moisture with him had it not
been for that cramp. Now she felt an obligation to be selfish.

Shortly another plane began to drone toward them. Sunny sat halfway up,
searching the sky.

“There it is,” she said. “Quick, light the fire.”

“Too high,” he said, shaking his head. “Probably a jet.”

Sunny lay down as the plane passed, too faint to lower herself
carefully. Page watched her drop back with worried eyes. He knelt and
wiped her forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. The rising heat made
her face pink, but it was not a healthy color.

“I might find a little water in these rocks somewhere,” he said. “There
are mineral springs in the desert sometimes.”

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, frightened. Her worst fear was to die
abandoned on the sand.

“I’ll just go a short way and whistle so you’ll know where I am,” he
promised. “Darling, I’ve got to try something. You need that water. It
isn’t ten-thirty yet.” He didn’t need to remind her of her empty stomach
or the dry fuzz forming on her tongue.

After a tired struggle with herself she said, “Keep whistling.”

“I will.” He kissed her, bending over her with his hands planted in the
sand. His burned lips scratched her skin lightly. Then he got up and
walked. In twelve minutes he was back.

“God. It’s a furnace out there,” he said.

“Find anything?”

“A few scraggly cactus plants. I tried one. Tasted like rotten vinegar.”
He stretched out beside her in the narrow margin of shadow they had left
as the sun sailed up the sky toward high noon.

Page made seven or eight trips altogether, whistling to comfort her. But
he came back from the last search staggering from the furious heat. He
looked at the yellow world prostrate under the sun, the savage sun that
plainly meant to murder them. And he hated it illogically as though it
had a human conscience.

Sunny was sitting up, huddled against the last few planes of shady rock.
Already sunlight was slanting down the steep western slope and on the
east there was no shadow at all.

Noon. The sun’s hour of hours.

Page dropped to his knees, panting. One swallow of water and he thought
he could move mountains. He couldn’t leave Sunny here in the blaze of
the hammering heat. Her eyes were clenched shut and her face was taut.

“Darling,” he said from a sandy throat.

“No water?” she whispered.

He shook his head, taking her in his arms. She half-collapsed against
him. “I’m so thirsty,” she admitted out of her weakness.

“Where’s that gum?” He fumbled in the purse and pulled out a stick.
“Here, honey. It’s not wet but there’s a little sugar in it.”

“I’m so dry,” she murmured.

“Try. Come on.” She worked on it for some minutes and finally it began
to yield. It tasted pathetically good. She chewed all the sweetness out
of it and then swallowed the whole lump. Perhaps the hunger pangs could
be fooled for a minute.

“I’m going to take you back to the car and we’ll lie underneath it, till
we’ve got more shade here,” he said.

She let him pull her unsteadily to her feet. He started out, guiding her
slowly and carefully. But about halfway to the car she suddenly folded
in the middle. He caught her and carried her the rest of the way, laying
her on the sand when he got there and pushing her under the car. Then he
slid in beside her.

Page put a hand on Sunny’s leg, close beside his, but their mutual heat
was unbearable and he had to remove it. The pulsing air swirled and
waved up from the desert floor, liquid orange with heat. It crushed
their chests and stuffed their burning noses and drained the vital
fluids from their flesh.

Another plane went over. Page scrambled out to look.

“It’s pretty low,” he called, and ran over to the bonfire site, lighting
the inflammable clothes first. They caught at once and Page stepped
back. It seemed insane to add even this small heat to the radiant
desert, but it couldn’t be helped.

The plane was small, probably private, and not impossibly high. An alert
pair of eyes, studying the desert floor, might catch that fluttering
light.

But it was only a matter of minutes before Page realized they hadn’t
seen. They were going on.

He watched them go, fighting off despair. The fire had reached its peak.
There was no way to save it now for another try. He stood with his head
in his hands—the Pringle gesture Sunny knew so well—and tried to compose
himself for her sake. He had been in tight places before, but always by
himself, and always with a way out.

He crawled under the car again. “It’s two-thirty,” he told her at last.
“When the sun gets a little lower I’ll take you back to the rock. Could
you chew another piece of gum?”

“No,” she whispered.

He didn’t press her, but he was afraid her mouth would be so dry that
even the tiny jot of sugar in the gum would be inaccessible to her
before long: so much powder on her tongue.

“We might as well go now,” he said.

Carefully, he dragged Sunny after him, out from under the car, and saw
at once that she was dangerously weak. There was no possibility of her
walking back to the shade of the rock. The safest way to move her was to
pull her, and Page fashioned a cloth sled out of the blanket strips in
his S O S. He laid her on it tenderly and towed her as fast as he could
force himself to move over the sand to the rock.

He fell down beside her in exhaustion and slept for a while. When he
awoke it seemed as if centuries had passed. He lifted his head, only to
feel an alarming dizziness come over him. He lowered it at once and a
few minutes later tried again. It was better this time. It was still
daylight, still stupefyingly hot. Five minutes after three. The terrible
sun stuck jealously in the sky.

The rock Page leaned against rose twelve or thirteen feet from the
ground. It was a bad shape for climbing, but new hope made him get up
and try.

The thing had a number of sheer walls and a couple of rough ones, with
few spots for secure footing or handholds. Page chose the best side and
started doggedly up.

It seemed to the eyes like a short way to the top, but to his limbs and
lungs it was a taxing struggle all the way. Page fell back twice before
he collapsed on the sharp summit. The burning stone cut his midriff.
Quickly he lifted himself up for a look, dizzy again with the climb and
the endless blasting heat. He straddled the thin ridge and looked
around.

Rocks and sand ... rocks and sand ... black rocks and yellow sand....
The car, the broken S O S, the pile of useless ashes where the fire had
been. It didn’t look promising.

He climbed down, letting himself fall most of the way into the soft
sand. Sunny was a strange flushed color, breathing noisily, lying quite
still. He thought of Richie Settick. Perhaps Sunny was weaker than Page
wanted to believe. He needed to hear her voice.

“It’s after four now,” he said. “Sun’ll go down soon.”

Her lips began to work and he leaned very close to hear her. “This is
hell,” she said with the merest flutter of breath behind her words. “The
sun never sets in hell. You have to look at your mistakes in broad
daylight for the rest of eternity. You have to burn straight through
until you’re pure.”

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said. “Sunny, do you hear me?”

“It’s too late,” she moaned.

“My God, darling, what do you mean? We’re alive, aren’t we?”

“It doesn’t matter, Page,” she said. He had to read her lips to grasp
her meaning. She made almost no sound. “The baby....” She put a hand
across her stomach. “I think it’s ... dead.”

He was stricken silent. After a tortured pause he said, “How do you
know?”

“Doesn’t move.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s dead. Sunny, I won’t let you give up. Sunny,
Sunny, I love you so,” he said. “Darling, this isn’t any supernatural
punishment we’re going through. If I weren’t such a stupid jerk we
wouldn’t be here, and I’m going to do something about it.” She smiled
wanly and tried to quiet him but he said, “No, I have to tell you now,”
and she knew he meant there might not be another chance. So she listened
in silence.

“Sunny, there isn’t any right or wrong any more,” he said. “There’s only
life. And love. To live is right, to die is wrong. Nothing else makes
sense. There is no logic but love. No morality but survival.”

He kissed her captive hand and spoke again with his mouth moving against
her skin. “Darling, all I understood these past few months was that you
were my _sister_. When I knew that, it was as if you stopped existing as
a wife. You were my own flesh and blood and everything else came second:
love, happiness, the baby—everything. But I was wrong, Sunny. And I
damned near ruined both our lives.”

She was so moved and heartened to hear him talk this way that she found
herself almost willing to hope again for a miracle. Her eyes, green
drops in her tired face, remained fastened on him.

“Now that I know where I was wrong, the rest falls into place,” he said,
putting his head down in the sand next to hers. “... I climbed the rock
here,” he told her. “But everything looks the same. Just a few more
rocks to the north. That’s the only—” He stopped talking, feeling a jerk
of pressure in her hand. “What, honey?”

“66—is north,” she whispered.

“Yeah, but how far? A day’s walk? Two days? I can’t leave you that
long,” he said.

“You must have seen the lava bed ... the black rocks....”

“No, the bed looks like a big strip of dusty tar. This was just more
stones.”

“But the stones—get thicker—near the bed. The crater—”

“Sunny, we’ve left that lava bed maybe thirty or forty miles behind us.”

“Check the map. There’s another bed,” she panted.

“Another one?” He came to life, lurched to his feet, and weaved back to
the car. The map was still on the front seat. Page opened it, moving and
seeing somewhat like a drunk. His eyes were unfocussed for a moment, but
he finally found Amboy Crater where they had turned off the big highway.
He ran a finger slowly in a westerly direction, the way they must have
taken. The terrain was represented as rugged and rocky. And sure enough,
maybe thirty-five miles from Amboy, lay another lava bed: a long thin
one with its own crater, which intersected Route 66.

“My God, we must have crossed right over it. I never even saw it,” he
said to himself. If that mass of black rocks to the north was really it,
they might be as close as three or four miles to 66. Or as far as ten
miles. Either way, it seemed suddenly possible to reach it.

Page looked up at the sky. The sun was sliding down the western side
toward the blue peaks. He judged the temperature to be still well over a
hundred degrees. In another two hours, without the pitiless sun up
there, he might be able to start walking—if that was in fact the lava
bed ahead. But in the fast-falling desert dark he might also lose his
way, and lose Sunny too.

He stared northward, balancing his chances. We can’t live through
another day, he thought. I have to do it now, while I can still see.

“I’m going up to the highway,” he said in her ear. “You were right, that
bed can’t be far. I’m starting now, so we can get you out of here this
evening. You can’t take any more sun tomorrow. Do you understand?
Sweetheart, don’t be afraid. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Go,” she murmured, unprotesting. “I’m in labor.”

Page couldn’t disguise the shock and alarm on his face. “Dear God! I
can’t leave you now. You can’t have that baby alone, Sunny.”

“Pains ... still far apart,” she said laboriously. “Won’t be for a while
... hours, maybe. Phone Settick.” It hurt to talk; she was afraid of
triggering another cramp.

“I’ll get an ambulance and call the doctor,” he said, recovering himself
a little. “There must be a good hospital in Barstow. You’re going to be
all right, darling.” He kissed her mouth. “When we get out of here—I’ll
never leave you again,” he whispered.

She watched him rise, tying her white handkerchief around his neck. He
set out after one last look at her, wrapping a towel around his head
like a turban.

Page walked, as nearly as he could judge, straight north. He thought of
nothing but Sunny ... Sunny, his wife ... alone and sick and terrified
in the small shade of a rock. He thought of the pains she was
experiencing, and the baby.

Every fifty yards or so he turned back to look at her big brown rock.
The car soon disappeared from view, and little by little the rock sank
with it. Ahead he searched for the low black shelf that would mark the
border of the lava bed.

He stumbled forwards in this manner, half afraid his heart would
collapse like punctured plastic beneath his ribs. It was about seven
o’clock, with the sun nearly hidden at last behind the hills, when he
saw the headlights of a car.

Page stood blinking at them in a near-stupor. At first he thought he was
gazing at a mirage. They seemed to be coming right toward him, though
they were still far away. But abruptly they swerved and headed east.

“No! No!” he croaked. “Over here!” For a sickening instant he thought
his first and last real hope had evaporated. But another pair of
headlights materialized about where the first had, followed by several
more in quick succession. And then some coming from the east and
traveling west.

“The road!” He fell on his knees and wept. And suddenly lifted a
bewildered head. Where was the lava bed? He rose shakily to his feet and
turned around twice before he saw the black table to the east.

It must be the second bed, all right. We came back so far we overshot
it, he thought.

He ran forward to the highway, dropping the towel as he went. It had
only taken him, weak and lost as he was, three hours to reach the road.
Sunny couldn’t be far behind him at that rate.

“The car that finally stopped was a beat-up ’34 Chevy,” Page told Jack
in the cool softly-lighted bar. “Had an old desert rat in it named
Norcross. He took charge. Fed me sandwiches and tea from his food box.
Stopped some guy in a station wagon and sent him back to Barstow for an
ambulance.

“He knew that desert like his own hand. Drove in on a dirt road just
east of the lava bed—the one I was looking for and missed—and found
Sunny in forty minutes. She drank a quart of that tea. He made her take
it in small doses. I swear I wonder what would have happened if we
hadn’t gotten to her so fast.” His face was drawn as he thought of it.

“It was a miracle, and that’s the word for it. Norcross drove us back to
66 and the ambulance picked us up there a few minutes later.”

“How did you get Settick so fast?” Jack asked.

“We got Brian first. The guy who got the ambulance for us called him in
L. A. He got out to Barstow in a private plane. But by the time he
arrived Sunny’s pains had remitted. She wanted to come back to Chicago
and have the baby, and you couldn’t talk to her about it. I never saw a
girl so set on anything in my life. There weren’t any other symptoms yet
and she swore she’d make it back. Brian was against it at first but she
told him she wanted her mother. And she wanted Richie to deliver the
baby. She promised him, or something, and she was convinced if he didn’t
she’d lose the baby. He could never have made it all the way to Barstow
but Brian called him in New York and they arranged to have him leave
that night for Chicago.

“I think the worst fear Sunny had was that the baby would die. That was
why she wanted June, and no other doctor but Richie. Brian said it might
make the difference as to how well she pulled through it herself, so we
hired a hospital plane and flew back here last night. Richie was waiting
for us.”

“Turned out to be an expensive honeymoon, didn’t it?” Jack said.

“You said it,” Page agreed. “But if she makes it, it’ll be worth every
damn penny. Come on, boy, it’s been over thirty minutes. I want to get
back.”

Jack slid off the bar stool and they walked out into the early evening
together. “So you brought her straight to the hospital then?” he asked.

“Yes, and called the Rothelis. They came in about five this morning.”

“You still think you’re going to tell them who you are?”

“Let’s not get started on that again, Jackson. You’re too good a friend.
I don’t want to lose you twice.” He walked in silence for half a block
and then he added, “It’s not as selfish as you think. I mean, they’ve
been looking for me all these years, too, just the way I’ve been looking
for them.”

“And here you are, a member of the family twice over. What a handy
arrangement.”

“Spare me the humor,” Page said.

“Sorry.”

“It’s my decision, that’s all. Not yours.”

“Yours and Sunny’s,” Jack said. “Is Brian Settick still here?” he asked
while they waited for the elevator.

“No. He delivered us safely to Richie and flew back. It was damn nice of
him to come all that way with us.”

“What about Richie?” Jack said as they entered the elevator.

“This is his vacation. A little earlier than he planned, but....” They
looked at each other. “I know,” Page said quietly. “He’s in love with
her. But he’s in there saving her life and maybe my child’s. I can’t
feel too bad about the guy.”

Jack smiled at him with a new respect.

They went directly to the maternity waiting room where Ben and June and
Laura greeted them.

“Still no news?” Page said, disappointed.

“Not yet,” June said. “One young man came in ten minutes ago to say it
wouldn’t be long, and everything’s still all right.”

Page sat down wearily next to Laura. Jack stood by the door for a minute
and finally said, “I can’t stand the suspense. I’m going to mosey around
a while.”

They hardly paid him any attention.

Jack went out with an idea of getting the truth on Sunny’s condition. It
was possible that the nurses and others were trying to soften things for
her relatives. He looked around the halls, joshed with the nurses at the
central desk, and tried to pump them for information. But they were
evasive.

* * * * *

After fifteen minutes he decided it was no use and started back toward
the waiting room. He was nearing the door when he saw a young man, blond
and stocky, pulling a white surgical cap from his head as he hurried
toward the room from the opposite direction. Jack stopped him at the
door.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Dr. Settick?”

“Yes,” Settick said impatiently, reaching for the door. Jack caught his
arm.

“I’m Jack Mann. Laura’s husband. You delivered our daughter, Betsy.
Remember?”

Settick looked up at him then. “For God’s sake,” he said with a tired
smile, and gripped Jack’s hand. “I sure do remember. What are you doing
here?”

“Came to hold a friend’s hand,” Jack said with a smile.

“Well, how are you? How’s Betsy? She must be quite a young lady by now.”

“Sure is—and we’re all fine.”

“Jack can you hold on a minute?” Settick said. “I have a difficult case
here and I want to tell her family—”

“Sunny Pringle?” Jack interrupted.

Richie, about to enter the waiting room, turned again to gaze at Jack.
“You know her?” he said, surprised.

“That’s why I’m here. Page is an old buddy of mine.”

The doctor rubbed his forehead, frowning, and his expression alarmed
Jack. “No kidding,” Richie said. “Maybe you’d like to give them the
news, then. I’m pretty beat.”

“Sure,” Jack said. “How’s Sunny?”

He watched Settick’s face and experienced abrupt relief when he smiled
again.

“She’s exhausted, but she’s okay,” Richie said.

Jack hesitated. “A million thanks, doc,” he said at last. “I speak for
her family, too, especially Page.... Then I guess the baby came?”

“Yes, it came.” He spoke quietly, obviously holding himself in.

“No go?” Jack asked, almost afraid to know.

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Richie said. “There’s some hope. Quite a bit,
in fact. It’s pretty small, only three and a half pounds, and
dehydrated, but we’re going to keep a twenty-four hour watch. You know,
Sunny’s had problems all through this pregnancy....” He hesitated, not
sure how much Jack knew.

But Jack nodded. “I know all about it,” he said.

Richie gave him a fleeting glance of surprise. “Well, _that_, and its
coming so early.... I wouldn’t want to say anything for sure.”

“Boy or girl?”

“A boy. I think she wanted a boy. She never said so, but when I told her
I wish you could have seen the look on her face. She looked the way she
did the day I told her she was expecting.” He smiled to himself, and
Jack understood. That was one fine intimate moment Settick had shared
with Sunny; probably the last. And it had happened while he was
delivering another man’s child to her.

Jack felt a strong sympathy for him. Settick had no way of knowing that
Jack knew his feelings for his favorite patient. And Jack had no
intention of humiliating him with the knowledge. But the sympathy
communicated itself to Settick and he opened up a little.

“He isn’t deformed?” Jack asked.

“No, he’s perfect. Just so damn tiny, and I don’t know how strong he is.
Any little kid who can live through that desert and a premature birth
must be pretty tough, though. We can’t feed him for a little while yet—I
don’t think he could take it. But I want to get him started on water as
soon as I can. He needs the fluids badly.”

A little silence fell and Jack took advantage of it to press a question
that had made him apprehensive for many months. “Doc,” he said, speaking
cautiously. Richie, lost in himself, looked up. “What do you think—about
talking to Page and Sunny?” Jack said. “It’s a hard thing to ask you,
but somebody’s got to and they’ve had an earful from me.”

“Talking to them? What about?” Richie said.

“You know what about,” Jack said simply. “I wouldn’t ask you otherwise.”
He saw from Richie’s face that he understood and was on his guard. All
the doctor had to go on was Jack’s word that he was Page’s friend.

Jack pulled him to the wall out of the stream of corridor traffic, and
spoke with hasty urgency.

“The incest, Doc,” he said. “Let’s not beat around the bush. Page was
the one who fought it, the one who feared an abnormal child and all the
rest. If you’d give them just five minutes—”

“They’d resent it,” Settick objected. “I’ve stuck my nose too far into
their business as it is.”

“One more inch,” Jack said.

“He wouldn’t leave her now, would he?” Richie said. “With the baby and
all?”

“What if they lose the baby? Somebody’s got to get to him before that,
if it happens.”

“But he’s jealous of me. I mean—” He stopped himself, but Jack shook his
head.

“You’d be surprised what a big boy he’s getting to be,” he said with a
grin. “He can take it. Do this for them, Doc. Sunny would always
remember it.”

Richie turned away for a minute of self-argument. “Would it save the
marriage?” he said. “Because that’s the only justification for it. Sunny
doesn’t know I know about her and Page. And I tried to tell Page once,
but he didn’t catch on.”

“It might be the only thing that could put Page on the right track
permanently,” Jack said.

Another pause, this one briefer, and Settick said, “Okay. I’ll do it for
Sunny.”

Jack clapped him on the back.

“You don’t mind telling her family about the baby?” Settick said.

“Not a bit.”

“Thanks. Tell them they can see her for a minute when she gets to her
room. I wouldn’t let them ordinarily till she’s rested, but she needs
her mother. And Page. The baby’s in the nursery if you’d like a look.”
He started to walk away, but Jack called him.

“Richie,” he said. “I’m glad you got here in time. Page said Sunny was
determined to get back here for you.”

“I’m pretty glad myself,” Settick said. And then he turned and walked
off down the hall.

* * * * *

Jack entered the waiting room, walked over and sat down, and looked at
everyone. Page was brooding in silence, the others conversing quietly.

“It’s a boy,” Jack said. They all looked up slowly and suddenly June
gave a gasp and clutched Jack’s arm.

“What?” Page cried as the words registered in his head. Jack smiled.
“It’s a boy. Sunny’s fine.”

“And the baby?” they all asked together.

“He’s very small,” Jack said. “Three and half pounds and Settick says
he’s had a hard time of it. But he’s perfectly formed and he has a
chance. He’s in the nursery now.”

“Oh, my God,” Page said. A heavy pulse was visible in his throat. June
cried freely and so did Laura. Rotheli was speechless with joy and
relief.

“I ran into the doctor in the hall,” Jack explained. “He was beat to the
bricks. Told me to tell you the good news.”

“Can I see Sunny now?” Page said, springing up and heading for the door.

“Calm down, old buddy,” Jack said, chuckling. “What would she do with a
nervous nitwit like you in her room? The nurse’ll come get you when it’s
time. Relax boy, she’s okay.”

They filed up to look through the nursery windows.

“Look at all the babies,” Jack said. “Makes you realize what they mean
by ‘population explosion.’”

Laura shushed him and they walked along looking for name-tags on the
plastic bassinets.

“Here he is!” Rotheli exclaimed. He had gone off to investigate on his
own, and called them from the end of a corridor where he was looking
through the glass into a special room for the premature babies. Page
rushed up, followed by the others.

“Lord,” he said, astonished by the impossibly small baby in the
incubator. “Is that all?”

“Is that _all_?” June cried, amused and dismayed both, as Laura and Jack
joined them.

“He’s so wrinkled. He looks like the map of Asia,” Page said.

“He’s absolutely beautiful,” June whispered.

“He’s absolutely bare, too,” Page said. “What’s the matter with these
damn nurses? The poor kid will freeze to death.”

“He’s in an incubator,” Laura said with a smile. “It’s body temperature
in there.”

“Well, doesn’t he need diapers like the rest of them?” Page asked.

“After two days on the desert?” Jack grinned.

“He’s too little to stand dressing yet,” Laura said gently. “He’s okay,
new papa. They know better in there what to do with him than you do.”

A young nurse came in and hung a card reading: “Baby Boy Pringle” on the
end of the incubator, and then, seeing the crowd outside the window, she
smiled at them. Jack pointed at Page, who went red with the first flush
of fatherly pride.

“Hey,” he said, turning curiously to Rotheli. “She just put that sign
up. How did you know it was our baby?”

“He looks—well, a little like both of you. God, I remember when I first
saw Roger,” Rotheli said nostalgically. “I must have told you about
Roger, Page. He was our first. We lost him.” His eyes were fixed on his
grandson with a wonderful expression.

Page stared at him. “Was—Roger that little?” He had been going to say,
Was _I_ that little? The near miss made him shaky.

“Not _that_ little, but he was small, and had those same eyes....”

“The most beautiful eyes,” June whispered, surprising them all with this
recollection salvaged from sickness. Page watched her, fascinated, the
way children are, to hear his own mother speak of him with such love in
her voice. He cherished every word and never afterward forgot it. “You
watch,” June said. “This one will have eyes like that when he gets them
open. Great big dark blue eyes that dominate his whole face. Like two
plums pressed in a cookie. So bright and sweet.”

Page wanted to embrace her. Here he was, a man and a father, with the
living proof of his virility in that bassinet, and he wanted to put his
arms around June and selfishly tell her everything and be mothered.
There was nothing of revenge left in his feelings at all. But he
responded to Jack’s tug on his sleeve and got hold of himself. Jack had
been keeping an eye on him and he could see what was building up.

Page looked back at his infant son: so small and homely, face screwed
up, chest working, small fists clenched tightly. He felt love and hope
and fierce anxiety all at once.

“I have to see Sunny,” he said. “I _have_ to.”

“You think you’re tired,” Jack reminded him. “Let the poor girl catch
her breath.”

Moments later a nurse came to fetch Page. But when the others tried to
tag along she held up a hand to stop them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Usually we only let the fathers in. Dr.
Settick wants to see them together for a minute. Mr. and Mrs. Rotheli?”

Ben nodded at her.

“I’ll come for you when the doctor is ready. Your daughter is anxious to
see you. She’s been through quite a lot, you know. I don’t know how long
you’ll be able to spend with her today. Mr. Pringle, you come with me.”

She went off with a starchy rustle and Page rushed after her. Jack
called after him, “Keep in touch, boy!” but Page was too distracted to
hear.

June turned and told Jack, “I’ll tell him for you.”

Page went directly to Sunny’s bed. He leaned over her, pausing for a
moment to look at her and reassure himself, and then kissed her very
gently. He didn’t even notice Richie Settick in a corner of the room.

“Darling, you’re wonderful,” he whispered. “I’m so proud of you.”

She was weak and quiet beneath her falsely healthy sunburn, but
profoundly happy. She knew the whole truth about the baby’s chances, but
she knew the scope of Richie’s ability, too, and her hopes were strong.

“Did you see him?” she asked. “How does he look? Is he in an incubator?”

“Yes. He looks like the future president of the United States,” Page
laughed. He kissed her again while she smiled at him and would have kept
on kissing her, but Richie cleared his throat and Page looked up
suddenly.

“Sorry to butt in,” Richie said.

Page turned to face him. “Don’t apologize,” he said quickly. “That’s my
department.” He held out his hand.

Richie came over to take it but added uncomfortably, “I have one more
thing to say to you. You may not feel so apologetic afterwards.”

“You’ve earned the right to speak your mind,” Page told him. “Shoot.”

Sunny stiffened a little. She hadn’t expected any speeches from Richie
and for a dread moment she imagined him confessing his love for her. She
watched him anxiously.

“I wanted to say this to you now,” Richie said, “before I have to leave.
Before we know for sure how things will turn out for the baby, and all.”

“Say what?” Page said. Sunny tried to interrupt but Settick silenced
them both with a wave of his hand.

“This isn’t easy for me—or for you,” he said self-consciously. “But I—oh
hell, I don’t want to sound like a pompous idiot. I just want you to
know that I—I understand what the problem is between you two.”

He stopped a moment and looked at their faces, both turned toward him
with amazed attention. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you
together,” he went on quietly. “You look a lot alike.”

Sunny’s mouth dropped open and Page made a sudden move as if to break in
on the doctor. But something in Settick’s expression stopped them and
they let him finish.

“I don’t know whether it’ll make any difference to you—what I’m going to
say,” he continued. “I figured the whole thing out months ago, Sunny.
The incest thing. It wasn’t your fault I did. You were too unhappy to
keep secrets very well.

“Page—if you’ll forgive me—there’s only one thing wrong with your wife.
And I don’t mean the fact that she’s your sister.” The Pringles stared
at him. “I mean the fact that she’s afraid of losing you. If she knew
your marriage was secure for the rest of your lives, she’d be a well
woman right now.

“I know why you objected to the marriage, Page, and I respect your
reasons. God knows I’m not passing judgment. I only want to make you
see, if I can, that the reasons don’t stand up any more. Sunny’s life is
at stake, and maybe your sanity. Don’t worry about the baby. I’m going
to watch that child day and night if I have to stay here a month.
Whatever happens, I can assure you of this much: there’s not a damn
thing wrong with his heredity. If he makes it he’ll be strong and sane
and healthy.”

There was a little silence while Richie girded himself for the last and
toughest thing to say. Sunny and Page waited intuitively for him to go
on. Settick walked to the door and put his hand on the knob. At last he
turned back and added, “I can’t tell you to go back together. I can only
ask you to, and recommend it ... not as a ‘professional man,’ but as a
friend.”

He smiled a little. “For God’s sake, Page, don’t let her go. Don’t ever
let her go.”

The two men looked hard at each other and then Richie left them alone
together.

Jack and Laura were permitted to see Sunny in the evening. It wasn’t the
usual hospital procedure, but Sunny wasn’t the usual hospital case, and
Settick had arranged a few privileges for her. Anything that would keep
her spirits high was granted, and the Manns were near the top of her
list.

When they arrived, she had just wakened from a long nap and was talking
intimately to Page. She looked beautiful in spite of the harsh burn on
her face when she turned to greet them, and Laura felt a catch in her
throat as she bent to kiss Sunny’s cheek.

Sunny took her hands with affection and thanked Jack for nursing Page
through the delivery.

“You look great, honey,” Jack said. “And so does the baby.”

“Does he?” She beamed. “They won’t let me see him till tomorrow. He
can’t be moved tonight and I can’t get out of bed.”

Jack and Laura obligingly launched into friendly praises of little
Pringle, talking with the comfortable closeness of long acquaintance,
until Jack finally said, “I can’t wait any longer, Page. I have to ask.
What did you do about the Rothelis? Did you tell them who you are?”

It was Sunny who answered him. “When they came in this afternoon they
were so happy, so relieved,” she said.

* * * * *

Her parents had chatted with her and Page for a little while. Sunny was
tired but full of Demerol, a synthetic derivative of morphine, that made
her unnaturally talkative. Her parents didn’t keep her long—just enough
to reassure themselves she was all right. Before they left, Ben asked
what they planned to name the baby.

Sunny and Page drew a blank. They hadn’t talked about it since the happy
night Sunny revealed her pregnancy to Page and he suggested calling the
child Ben, after her father. After that they dropped the subject as if
to mention it was to put a hex on the child.

Sunny, thinking fast, said, “‘Baby Boy Pringle,’ just like on the card,”
and they laughed. But Page broke in and took over.

“We’re going to call him Roger, Ben,” he said.

And the laughter stopped abruptly. Ben looked at his son-in-law with
disbelief at first and then a slow grateful smile spread over his face.
He put his arms around Page and gave him a bearhug that made Page groan
and chuckle all at once.

“My God!” Ben exclaimed, savoring it at last. “It’ll be like a chance to
watch our own Roger grow up. You have no idea how much they look alike.
Page, you didn’t do this just for us? You don’t have to bribe us to
babysit, you know.”

“I did it for all of us, Ben,” Page said.

And Ben, oppressed suddenly with the memory of his first son, went to
Sunny’s bedside. “I want you to understand something, honey,” he told
his daughter. “There’s something your mother and I never told you. Right
now, with everything happening the way it is—I feel as if you ought to
know. It’s about our Roger. You see, he—didn’t die when he was a baby.
We had to give him out for adoption.”

He threw June a hasty glance to see how she was taking it, but she
nodded at him to go on.

Sunny, taken aback at the confession and wanting to make it easier for
her father, said at once, “I know, Dad.” And bit her lip, realizing too
late that in his view, she couldn’t possibly know.

“You know?” he repeated, shocked.

“I mean—you never said he _died_, Dad. You only said you _lost_ him.
Never in all these years did you tell us he died. Chuckie and I figured
out years ago that something else might have happened to him.”

Ben stood gazing irresolutely at her for a minute until June said, “It
was done through our doctor. He gave Roger to a fine family. A man and
his wife who’d wanted a son for years and could never have one of their
own. We never knew them, but the doctor told us they were wonderful
generous people and they’d bring him up with love. That was the most
important thing.”

“Yes, of course,” Sunny said softly. She was afraid she would start
crying if she said any more.

“We had to do it, Sunny,” Ben said. “Your mother—”

“I know, Dad.”

“It was the only tragic mistake I think we ever made in our marriage,”
Ben went on. “We’ll never stop wondering where he went, what happened to
him. But in a way I think it’s just as well we don’t know. He might not
want to know us, he might resent us, he might even disappoint us. I wish
him much happiness, wherever he is. But now that we have Page in the
family....” He smiled at him. “We’ve got a son.”

For a moment Sunny felt the shattering confession close to the surface,
and she watched Page tensely, holding her breath. But Page had seen his
parents looking at his own son a little while before, and he knew he was
as close to them as he would ever be. The desire to confront them with
the truth had dissipated when they were confronted instead with his
child. He would never tell them now.

* * * * *

“Then they never really lost Roger at all,” Laura said softly. “I’m so
glad, Sunny. So awfully glad.”

“Have the Pringles seen the baby yet?” Jack asked.

“June and Ben are going over to their place tomorrow for lunch. It’ll be
their first meeting,” Page told him. “Looks like you called things
right, Jackson.”

Jack ignored the compliment. “Are you planning to go back to New York
one of these days?” he said.

“Damn right,” Page said. “I don’t know what the _Sunday Magazine_ will
want to do about me. But I know what _I_ want to do: stay in that town
and write.”

“Alone?” Jack said, glancing at Sunny.

“Are you kidding? With three mouths to feed instead of two?”

And Sunny laughed at him the way she used to when Page was courting her,
and kissed his hand.

* * * * *

“What if they lose little Roger?” Laura asked Jack going down in the
elevator at the close of visiting hours.

“They won’t, if sheer love can keep him alive,” Jack said. “If not ...
it’ll be bad, but they’ll have each other. And I have the feeling Page
is willing now to have more children, whatever happens.”

“Do you think they’ll be happy?”

“Do you doubt it?” he said.

“Page is a funny guy, Jack. He never actually said she was his wife now,
in so many words. And a scandal could still hurt him.”

“Could hurt anybody, sweetie,” Jack said, putting a hand on her neck and
tickling it lightly. “But not half as much as a divorce. I think they
could face a scandal all right, if they ever had to.”

Laura turned to smile at him. “Well, they’ll never have to on my
account,” she said. “No one will ever get that story out of _me_.”

He knew she was scolding him gently and he said, “You mean ‘Mr.
Winkler’? He was Page’s step-father, honey—George Pringle.”

Her mouth fell open and he hugged her as the elevator door opened on the
ground floor, laughing at her surprise.

“The elder Pringles are not fools, after all,” he said. “And neither are
the younger Pringles. They’ll make it.”

THE END
of an Original Gold Medal Novel by
Ann Bannon

Blood of the Grape

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Transcriber’s Notes

The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
and punctuation errors as well as variations in hyphenation were
silently amended. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

[p. 33]:
... huge picture window looking out on Lake Michigan. Sunny ...
... a huge picture window looking out on Lake Michigan. Sunny ...

[p. 67]:
... “You rather have the baby than me, is that it?” he said ...
... “You’d rather have the baby than me, is that it?” he
said ...

[p. 75]:
... and earful of Page’s escapades over the years and never ...
... an earful of Page’s escapades over the years and never ...

[p. 80]:
... “Am it talking as if I didn’t?” ...
... “Am I talking as if I didn’t?” ...

[p. 89]:
... restrained at first, but Laura’s warmth and concern shined ...
... restrained at first, but Laura’s warmth and concern shone ...

[p. 105]:
... him because he’s damn fairy!” ...
... him because he’s a damn fairy!” ...

[p. 148]:
... he ushered Page inside ahead of him, talking off his hat ...
... he ushered Page inside ahead of him, taking off his hat ...

[p. 167]:
... thumping the rear fender as he shoved to his feet. “Before ...
... thumping the rear fender as he shoved himself to his feet.
“Before ...

[p. 171]:
... He shook his head, talking her in his arms. She
half-collapsed ...
... He shook his head, taking her in his arms. She half-collapsed ...

[p. 171]:
... underneath it, till we’ve got more share here,” he said. ...
... underneath it, till we’ve got more shade here,” he said. ...

[p. 178]:
... “You still think you’re going to tell them you are?” ...
... “You still think you’re going to tell them who you
are?” ...

[p. 181]:
... “You know what about,” Jack simply. “I wouldn’t ...
... “You know what about,” Jack said simply. “I wouldn’t ...

[p. 190]:
... Vin Packer ...
... Ann Bannon ...

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