“How’d you figure you’d know enough to raise them?” he asked, nodding toward the boys.

“Well, first, I knew I wanted children, but I didn’t know I’d get them. And second, I didn’t know I’d be doing it alone,” she said. “And I always had Jess. Do you see your family much?”

“I go to Denver whenever they’re all going to be at my mom and dad’s. They come here to ski, sometimes in large packs and sometimes in small groups. They’re pretty neat people. There’s one unique thing about my family. No one has ever had a girl. My mom had four boys, and my brothers had boys.”

Now, she thought. Tell him right now.

“Do you think much about what kind of life you want them to have?” he asked her.

“I think about it constantly. I’d like them to have the kind of life you had,” she said. Her voice was wistful and dreamy. “And maybe I’d give them just a smattering of what Jess and my dad gave me. I’m working on my own projects less so I can pay more attention to what they’re doing. Every day I realize how much of the natural instinct for parenting I lack. Like that business about fighting. I never would have thought of something like that.”

“They’re pretty good guys,” he said. “You must be doing something right. Want more?”

“You don’t ask an unmarried woman if she wants children, John. It could get you into trouble. She could think you’re discussing the future.”

“Okay, okay, unfair question. So, you’re working less. That was one of the things you said terrified you.”

“When I said that, it was true. I just didn’t know the reason. And the reason is simple—whenever I wasn’t very busy working on something challenging, I noticed how lonely I was and how everyone else had friends and things to do. Or seemed to. I began to change that before leaving Los Angeles. I was in a women’s group, did some volunteer work and generally learned how to make friends. Not the kind of friends you can only find hovering over microscopes and computer terminals, but friends who liked going to ball games, movies and the beach.

“The boys helped me do that. I met some of the other mothers in water-babies classes, tiny-tots gymnastics and finally preschool.”

“What would it be like for you to just be a housewife?” he asked.

She laughed at him. “Just a housewife? This is 1990, buster. Talk like that will get you drawn and quartered.”

“Okay, okay… What if you didn’t have a full-time job besides being a mother? What would that be like?”