“But now that you all live apart, surely you can see each other once in a while.”

“I don’t care to see any of them,” he said flatly.

“But weren’t any of you close to each other?”

“Too close; privacy was at a premium. When you’re scraping elbows at the dinner table and using the bathroom three at a time, you don’t want to spend your free time exchanging intimacies. You want to spend it alone.”

“Not all large families are like that, are they?”

“I guess not. But I’m not going to have a large family to find out.”

I remembered him saying: I hate it when people just breed. In a way, he was making the same statement again.

I said, “Are you sure my living with you isn’t disturbing your privacy?”

“You’re living here because I want you here. You’re my family now.”

“Am I?” I moved over and put my head on his shoulder. We lay still, saying nothing for several minutes. His chest rose, and he held his breath.

“Irene, would you marry me?”

I didn’t intend to keep him in suspense, but I wanted the words to linger.

“I mean,” he said, “would you think about marrying me?”

“No, I won’t think about it.” I pressed my mouth against his ear. “Just promise me we’ll make it soon.”

Gloria took the news standing up and with a look on her face that said: “I knew this would happen.” But all she said was “Congratulations”: from past experience, she had learned not to verbalize her thoughts about Frank and me.

We went to Cedar Run for Christmas and told my parents. My mother seemed genuinely pleased, while my father made a pretense of being pleased. From my recent experiences with Gloria, I was sensitive to being watched, and I felt my father watching me the more he pretended not to. I suspected he knew he had not been told everything, and I was not looking forward to the task. The night before Frank and I were to leave, I stayed up late and alone with my father to confess the rest.

“I’m taking a leave from the Ph.D. program,” I began.

“You mean you’re leaving the program.”

“I’m going to take education courses next term and practice-teach in the spring so I can get a job in the fall. In a couple of years, I’ll go back and get the degree.”

He was sitting in his recliner. He laid his head back and sighed. “I might have expected this.”

I bristled. Gloria had done her best to suggest my life was taking a downhill slide; I did not need the suggestion reinforced by my father. “It’s my life. Don’t you think I have the right to make a few decisions about what I want to do with it?”

“You have every right. I suppose I have no right to be disappointed. But I am. Was this Frank’s idea?”

“No, it wasn’t. In fact, he was against it at first.”