In fact, he holds out little hope of this happening. At age fifty-five, the ability to penetrate and explore has left him, perhaps only temporarily-he hopes so. Mainly, as he sees it, he’s forgotten how to pay attention, grown somehow incapacitated and lazy. At times he can’t believe his own laziness. He chides himself, his sins of omission. He is a man so lazy, so remiss, he couldn’t be bothered last spring to step into his own back yard for a glimpse of Halley’s Comet. Halley’s Comet won’t come again, not in his lifetime-he knows this perfectly well. Unforgivable. Incomprehensible. What is the matter with him?

Both he and Meg were in need of a vacation. The long hot summer of patriotic excess at home had left him with what seemed like a bad case of flu, with aching muscles and slow settling fevers. His head felt stuffed with mineral whiteness: too many fireworks, too many hours before a TV set regarding the costly clamor over “Lady Liberty”-the epithet drummed hard on the lining of his skull. Who are these buoyant children anyway, he asked himself, addressing the black windows of his living room, and by what power had they turned him peevish and dull and out of tune with his own instincts?

There were other problems too. The Sloans’ daughter Jenny had separated from her husband Kenneth for reasons not yet fully explained, and returned to the family home, bringing with her from Green Bay her two small children whose presence had unbalanced the house. Meg’s nerves flared up overnight, her old insomnia came back, her eyes grew dry and jittery. Mother and daughter under one roof-the old, old story, which neither of them would have credited, and each too tactful to overstep the other, each so protective of him, Roy (father, husband) that he was continually off-balance and awaiting an explosion that he doubted would ever come.

Then the idea of a vacation presented itself, getting away, the travel agent’s mystic croon-a brief respite. A trip, a holiday. Escape. And it seemed, after some initial dithering, the thing to do. September was the worst possible time of the year for Roy to get away, but arrangements could always be-and were—worked out, and he and Meg were free to go anywhere within reason; for some time now money has not really been a hindrance.