“It’s not that. I’m just trying to think how to explain what an incredible situation the whole business was. First my folks picked us up at the airport and my mother ran up and kissed Laura, thinking she was Carlotta. When that got straightened out my mother started rushing around trying to get a wheelchair because she didn’t think anybody so pregnant ought to walk as far as the parking lot.”

He chuckled and took another cookie. I passed him the soda. He was clean and his clothes were clean. His old dungarees looked thin and soft without their usual tinge of dirt.

“Maybe you’ve heard, my mother is a little hysterical. If she’s out of bread twenty minutes before suppertime she cries. Well, we dropped Laura at a hotel and went home. My sister was there and all these neighbors started dropping in. Carlotta was tired so she went upstairs to sleep. It was funny seeing her in my old bed with its bucking bronco bedspread. I sat up late and ate bagels. Why is it that you can’t get bagels out here?”

“I don’t know?”

“Well, the first thing, we had to go see the rabbi. He is a very nice guy who’s been my parents’ rabbi since I can remember. They wanted him to marry us. My folks are kosher. We called him up and he invited us over for tea. He had a nice study. All dark wood and millions of books and an old brown globe and maps of the world three thousand years ago. So we sat in these leather chairs and drank tea with milk and sugar in it from these fine old cups that were made in Dresden before the war. He had a lot of beautiful things. I don’t know when the last time was that I had a saucer under my cup. You get away from things like that and they really seem strange when you run into them. The whole business of a saucer is so clever. It allows for human fallibility. It acknowledges that even a grown-up can spill his tea. Drinking from mugs is symptomatic of a whole different view of life, ‘I don’t care if I do spill my tea.’ Of course, the Orientals drink from little bowls and naturally assume that no civilized human being would be so careless as to spill a drop. They don’t, either.”

“So, the rabbi?”