“Last night,” she said, and she was making an effort too, trying to keep her voice even, “you weren’t in your room. I checked. It was one-thirty and I was worried, wondering where you were—”

“We were listening to records.”

“You were in bed with her.”

“What are you, spying on me?”

“I was worried,” she repeated. She could hear the blood whispering in her ears, a sound like the wind rushing across a barren plain. “And I heard the music, so I pushed open the door a crack and there you were, in bed with her. I don’t know if you realize how wrong that is at your age, I mean, what the consequences can be—”

“Consequences of what—listening to records? Records are bad for you now?”

“Don’t get wise with me. You know what I’m talking about.”

His face hardened. “No, I don’t—why don’t you explain it to me?”

She and Fitz had always been open with their son and they’d both sat him down when he turned eleven for the facts-of-life discussion—You can ask me anything, she told him, anything, because sex, human sexuality, is nothing to be ashamed of—and she’d thought that was that, the learning process initiated and all the rest to follow in its wake, adolescence, college, dating, marriage. Now she said, “Do you know anything about birth control—I mean, the first thing?”

He didn’t answer.

The breeze, the autumn breeze that had a foretaste of winter on it, rattled the windows and she could feel the draft on her legs, which meant the house was going to be like a refrigerator come December. “You’re too young for this,” she said. “It’s not just sex and the dangers of—well, you do know how girls get pregnant, don’t you?—but the emotions involved, the hormones you can’t even imagine making all these changes to your body. And your mind too. Ask your father. He knows. He’ll tell you.”

“Tell me what? You do it. You do it all the time. I saw you—” He’d pushed himself up now so that he was on the edge of the chair, poised there over his coiled legs, challenging her.

“Saw me what?”

“Kissing. Making out. With Ken, Charlie and who knows who else? Tim. Did you do it with Tim yet?” His voice had tightened till it was almost a snarl.

“That’s different,” she said, “we’re different.” One hand rose unconsciously to her hair to tamp it in place though it hadn’t come loose at all. “We’re adults. We’re all in this together, this experiment, you know that . . .”