“The play…the play. I’ve had fearful luck, and the theater has changed so much since the twenties, I don’t know. But Gaskin called from New York last week and he’s interested, more than mere interest, although he’s not wild for the third act. He may be right, but I can’t abide this moving around of ideas like so much furniture to appeal to an idiot audience. Oh, your old man and I, we were as young as you once. When we first met, we hated each other, circled each other like warring cats, then we became the dearest of friends until I came out here and, well, really, it was before that, when the marrying started. He was sore at me for coming to the Coast, said I was on the road to ruin. It only goes on and on and on…But if this play works, I’ll take the whole tribe back east, away from here where we live like mad gypsies—”

“But why do you stay anyway? If you hate it so?”

He laughed shortly. “I’ll be damned! And why the hell shouldn’t I? I suppose it won’t cut any ice with you, but I’ve got that pack of children to take care of…Why, I hate the silly brutal place. I’m only happy when it rains…Nobody brings you to work, you know, you bring yourself to work. Let me tell you, your old man was the bigger fool! Bea demanded the soul out of his body—she ran him ragged so he turned out art layouts for the Macfadden magazines, for those beautiful stories about girls named Tanya from Cornflakes, Nebraska, who get knocked up by gray-haired cads—filthy stories! Yes! He did that to keep Bea in twenty-five-dollar shoes and it was life’s blood to her, his life’s blood, but you know her, lass, you know her…”

“But what about you?”

“Never mind about me!” he cried. “I pay my damned dues.”

“I don’t really remember her,” Annie said, placatingly. “Just her eyes…”

“Her eyes,” he echoed. “Extraordinary, like a wild animal’s.”

“She didn’t like anyone to be sick,” Annie said absently.

“No. She hated that,” he agreed. “She hated all helplessness.”

“I just remembered a time when I told Tony—”

“You call him Tony?”

“Yes. Tony. I told him I had a toothache. She was there, pacing around the room with a drink in her hand. She said she’d take care of my toothache. Well, she lifted me up—I must of been six or so—and dropped me into a rumble seat of some car they had at the time. She drove up the Storm King Highway along the Hudson River, I could see her through the back window, bent over the wheel like a demon. I thought the seat would close over me.”

“They lock into place.”