“I never shopped for a daughter-in-law before,” Jerry’s father said. Jerry hadn’t thought of it that way, but his old man was right.

Jerry had a couple of weeks off between quarters. Christmas and New Year’s fell on Wednesdays. Anna’s company, in its infinite generosity, didn’t even give the people who worked there Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. She called down curses on the CEO’s head that would have made Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep blanch but didn’t faze the businessman one bit.

Christmas Day was at Anna’s folks. They had a big real tree, which to Jerry smelled like an overgrown pine air freshener. They also had two large dogs, who sniffed him even more suspiciously than usual. Maybe they could smell that he was Jewish, and didn’t like it. Or maybe they noticed he had cat hair on his clothes … although Anna did, too, and they fawned all over her.

Charlie McGowan handed Jerry a Miller. He dutifully drank it, even if it tasted thin and sour to him. They all exchanged presents. Everyone exclaimed and made the right thank-you noises. Jerry suspected at least as much hypocrisy as gratitude was on display. He didn’t say anything about it. Little by little, as he got older, he was learning to stick his foot in his mouth less often, anyhow. He knew what Christmas spirit was supposed to be.

He didn’t say much on the ride back to the apartment, either. “You didn’t have a good time,” Anna said when they were almost there.

“Did you?”

That made her pause. She prided herself on being relentlessly honest. At last, she answered, “They were trying their hardest.”

“I know they were.” That was part of the problem; the older McGowans’ best wasn’t real good. There was one more thing Jerry didn’t say.

Anna sighed. “They’re my parents. They love me the best way they know how. I love them, too, or I try. They’re just…”

He was driving. He took his right hand off the wheel for a moment to set it on her shoulder. Then he gave his full attention back to the road. All in the Family bubbled up in his mind, as it often did when he spent time with Anna’s folks. It was the most popular show in the country, but he and Anna hardly ever watched it. They didn’t need to. They lived it.

And it came to pass that 1974 gave way to 1975, and fall quarter to winter quarter: world without end, amen. Fantastic bought Jerry’s story about the skeleton in seaboots. “That’s four sales now!” he said when the acceptance letter came instead of the manila envelope. “Maybe I really can make this work!”

“All put together, how much have you got paid for them?” she asked.

He did some mental arithmetic. “Uh, a little more than eight hundred dollars.”