For supper she fried up some ham and boiled a few small potatoes, which was the last of their food, aside from what they’d saved for breakfast tomorrow. He tried the radio, but on every station it was the news, something the Soviets were doing. Always there was something about the Soviets. Korea, outer space, the threat of nuclear war. He tended to avoid the news. He put on a Glenn Miller record instead, the best thing he could find in Uncle George’s collection, and sat down to say grace.

“I’ll say it,” Effie said. “You don’t put enough feeling into it.”

“You want me to say it like Uncle Carswall?”

“God no, we don’t need a sermon. It’s just—you have to mean what you say. You have to be conscious of it.”

“It’s grace,” Henry said. “It’s ‘Good bread, good meat; good Lord, let’s eat.’”

But she insisted, and Henry said fine, clasped his hands together, and closed his eyes. “Dear Lord,” she said, “thank you for this food we are about to receive, and thank you for this week that Henry and I have shared together, which is the first week of our marriage.”

He opened his eyes. “Today is our one-week anniversary.”

She smiled at him. “Don’t interrupt me.” He closed his eyes again, and she continued: “Thank you for this week, dear Lord, and thank you for bringing us together, and for sending me such a fine and thoughtful husband, who I know will be a support to his family. Please bless us, dear Lord, with healthy children, and be with us as we raise them to be good and sensible people. Bless us with wealth and happiness, dear Lord, inasmuch as you see fit, and please forgive us for all our sins, for we try to be good, and we ask in your name—amen.”

How he loved her. He took up his fork and knife and told her that was very nice.

“You just have to say things you mean,” she said.

Effie went up to bed early. Henry poured himself some of Uncle George’s scotch and went out onto the front porch, feeling aroused. It wasn’t yet nine. Down at Clara’s the windows were aglow, and the sky overhead was full of trembling stars. Over there, the night would just be beginning.

Sometime later, when he’d begun to doze off, the sound of breaking glass startled him. It had come from Clara’s. He sat up to look, but couldn’t see anything. Now a car door slammed, an engine started, the red glow of taillights appeared. Then the car swung out of the drive, skidded to a stop, accelerated around the corner, and was gone.

It had been the Rolls-Royce. He’d seen it in a flash, under the streetlights on Madison.

Soon the downstairs lights went out, and a light in a window upstairs appeared. Henry looked at it for a long time until it too went out, and all the house was dark.