In the small slipping sound they make he hears their mixed liquids, imagines in the space of her belly a silver machine, spider-shaped, spun from the threads of their secretions, carefully spinning. This links them. He says, surrendering, “Oh cry. Do.” He pulls her down to him, puts their cheeks together, so their tears will mix.

Jill asks him, “Why are you crying?”

“Why are you?”

“Because the world is so shitty and I’m part of it.”

“Do you think there’s a better one?”

“There must be.”

“Well,” he considers, “why the hell not?”

By the time Nelson comes home, they have both taken baths, their clothes are on, the lights are on. Rabbit is watching the six-o’clock news (the round-up tally on summer riots, the week’s kill figures in Vietnam, the estimate of traffic accidents over the coming Labor Day weekend) and Jill is making lentil soup in the kitchen. Nelson spreads over the floor and furniture the unwrapped loot of his day with Janice: snappy new Jockey shorts, undershirts, stretch socks, two pairs of slacks, four sports shirts, a corduroy jacket, wide neckties, even cufflinks to go with a lavender dress shirt, not to mention new loafers and basketball sneakers.

Jill admires: “Groovy, groovier, grooviest. Nelson, I just pity those eighth-grade girls, they’ll be at your mercy.”

He looks at her anxiously. “You know it’s square. I didn’t want to, Mom made me. The stores were disgusting, all full of materialism.”

“What stores did she go to?” Rabbit asked. “How the hell did she pay for all this junk?”

“She opened charge accounts everywhere, Dad. She bought herself some clothes too, a really neat thing that looks like pajamas only it’s O.K. to wear to parties if you’re a woman, and stuff like that. And I got a suit, kind of grayey-green with checks, really cool, that we can pick up in a week when they make the alterations. Doesn’t it feel funny when they measure you?”

“Do you remember, who was the name on the accounts? Me or Springer?”

Jill for a joke has put on one of his new shirts and tied her hair in a tail behind with one of his wide new neckties. To show herself off she twirls. Nelson, entranced, can scarcely speak. At her mercy.

“The name on her driver’s license, Dad. Isn’t that the right one?”

“And the address here? All those bills are going to come here?”

“Whatever’s on the driver’s license, Dad. Don’t go heavy on me, I told her I just wanted blue jeans. And a Che Guevara sweatshirt, only there aren’t any in Brewer.”

Jill laughs. “Nelson, you’ll be the best-dressed radical at West Brewer Junior High. Harry, these neckties are silk!”

“So it’s war with that bitch.”

“Dad, don’t. It wasn’t my fault.”

“I know that. Forget it. You needed the clothes, you’re growing.”

“And Mom really looked neat in some of the dresses.”

He goes to the window, rather than continue to be heavy on the kid. He sees his own car, the faithful Falcon, slowly pull out. He sees for a second the shadow of Janice’s head, the way she sits at the wheel hunched over, you’d think she’d be more relaxed with cars, having grown up with them. She had been waiting, for what? For him to come out? Or was she just looking at the house, maybe to spot Jill? Or homesick. By a tug of tension in one cheek he recognizes himself as smiling, seeing that the flag decal is still on the back window, she hasn’t let Stavros scrape it off.