A few weeks later, during which Jack asked me to lunch and dinner a number of times and I refused, I found I was pregnant. The next time he invited me to lunch I accepted and told him about my condition. He offered to marry me and after three martinis I accepted.

There just wasn’t any other answer, since an abortion was out of the question. I just couldn’t forget my Catholic upbringing that much, or my ethical convictions either. And I wasn’t about to go home to Hartford to my widowed mother, who was a pillar of her parish church and a great one, besides, for the old “I told you so” about the evils of the big city.

On the positive side, Jack was presentable, if not exactly handsome. He made good money and was on his way to making more, according to rest­room gossip. Of course he was as dull as a rusted butter knife, with few interests other than his work. He did have a certain competence as a copywriter, and an even greater one as an administrator, which Marks and Chapman soon recognized.

And so we were married and Duff was born seven months later. I used to wonder if he would someday find out the date of our wedding and compare it with his birth date. On the other hand, I suppose such things don’t matter to kids nowadays.

I tried to be a good wife, but I don’t think I ever reached the level of Jack’s hopes or even his expectations. I never cheated on him (maybe because no one attractive ever asked me) but I ignored him a lot. We never quarreled much, but we were never very friendly either. Then after his first heart attack, I began to feel guilty about it. I suppose that was the main reason I went along with the idea of the trip and then staying at the farm.

I was feeling particularly guilty that night as I drove to Mrs. Reddy’s. One additional thing that was nagging me was the fact that I had intended to leave a lamp lit at the bottom of the stairs and was too lazy to get up and attend to it when I remembered it later in bed. I confessed that to Franny.

“If anyone should be blamed it ought to be Duff,” she said. “If he hadn’t started yelling, the thing would never have happened.”

“He was dreaming. He couldn’t help it.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone dreaming while walking around.”

“Wasn’t he in bed?”

“Lord, no. He wasn’t even in his bedroom. He was in that big storage room where all the junk is, or at least that’s where he was coming from when I saw him.”

“He was walking in his sleep then.”