“Oh, sex,” Cliff said with a smile as if they had been talking about nothing more serious than the weather. “Well, I guess sex has its place, but I never thought of it much. Jeepers, you don’t have time. Anyways, isn’t it the same everywhere?”

X

X

Ethel Grandin arrived home just after supper. The children were already in bed but her father and mother were still at the table. They were not talking. It had become habit with them by now to spend hours on end together without conversation. When Ethel walked in, their simultaneous thought was: What are you doing here?

Ethel avoided their look. “I suppose,” she said, “I should have let you know.”

“What’s the matter?” her mother said.

“Nothing.”

“But—what about John? What are we supposed to— What will people think?”

“I don’t give a damn what people think,” Ethel said, turning away. “Don’t I count for something?”

“And don’t we?” her mother said. “Don’t we have a right to know if—if anything’s wrong?”

“We didn’t have a quarrel, if that’s what you mean. John’s going back to New York and I came home. We didn’t happen to care for Sconset or Nantucket: that’s all there is to it.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Mrs. Cameron said.

“No thanks.”

“Really, Ethel, you don’t look yourself at all.”

“I’m not myself!” she said, and hurried from the room.

While she was unpacking in her bedroom, her mother came in.

“I know it’s none of my business,” Mrs. Cameron said, “but I want to know what happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Then what are you doing back so soon?”

“I told you nothing happened! There’s nothing more to say, Mother.”

“It couldn’t have been very nice for your husband to cut short your vacation like this.”

“It wasn’t very nice for me either! Now please . . .”

Exasperated, her mother went back downstairs.

After Ethel was undressed, she went to the bathroom across the hall. She opened the medicine cabinet to find some toothpaste, and the first thing her eye lighted on, placed well forward on one of the glass shelves, was a bottle of nitric acid. She did not remember having seen it there before. Thoroughly frightened, she stared at the bottle. Then, scarcely knowing what she was doing, she stepped into the hall and called her mother from below.

“Mother!”

“Yes?”

“What’s that bottle of nitric acid doing in the bathroom?”

“Why, nothing. I was cleaning some gloves.”

“That’s no place to leave it! The children—”

“Really, Ethel, there’s only one bathroom in the house.” Her mother came part way up the stairs. “Ethel Grandin, what on earth’s the matter with you?”