When we moved to Sutton I saw Tucker for the first time. He was just a baby then, about two years old, thin and very dark with a bloated stomach and a huge head. He’d sit in his playpen, surrounded by blocks. He’d stack them one by one into giant shapes. I remember once he’d built something even bigger than himself and had only one block left. He placed it on the very top and leaned back against the bars of the pen, looking at what he’d built, long and hard. Then he crawled back to it, balled up his fist and punched at it just once and destroyed it completely. He cut his hand doing it, but didn’t cry at all. You had the idea, the way he did it, that he wasn’t playing.

The war started and David was sent out to the West Coast. He never even left the United States. I know this must sound strange, but I was sorry about that. I wish he’d been sent somewhere into the real war, because it might have been better if he had been able to fire a gun and do something he thought was useful. He worked in an office in San Diego; it was like going to work, collecting rents, every day.

I hoped that maybe being away from home and me and the children would do him some good, but when he came back to us, he was even worse. When he was in the house he usually stayed in his study.

That’s when the loneliness started to get me. It wasn’t only that I was just realizing that my marriage was turning cold. I imagine I had known and accepted that. It was being in Sutton and feeling like an outsider. There wasn’t anyone I could talk to. I felt that everyone I turned to was a stranger, a Willson, and I was the only non-Willson. My children were Willsons, and besides I wanted to keep the situation from them as long as possible. They learned soon enough as it was. Even the Calibans were Willsons because they had been with the family so long. And I was a stranger in a house which was supposed to be my home.

So I did something I have been quite ashamed of until just recently.

When Dewey was young, he loved Tucker so very much that he insisted that Tucker sleep in his room. We moved a cot into the room and Tucker slept there every night. I would always tell them a story at bedtime.

This one time I had come through a very depressing day and after I’d tucked them in, I started my story: “Once there was a princess who—”

“Was she beautiful, Mama?” Dewey said. He was lying on his back.

“Sure she was beautiful. All princesses is beautiful.” Tucker looked at him and scowled. He was sitting up.