BY TURNS HE was sad and angry that his brother didn’t like him and wouldn’t play with him. His brother made up sideshow chants about him: “Come see the dog-faced boy! He barks, he bites, he swallows flies.” One Christmas he resolved never to speak to his brother again and didn’t until the following Christmas, when at the urging of his parents he and his brother exchanged presents. Occasionally his brother defended him against a boy older than he but younger than his brother, and he was filled with pride and gratitude; but ordinarily his brother ignored him. He loved the comic pictures of elephants his brother drew and sometimes gave a week’s allowance for one. He coveted all his brother’s possessions and couldn’t resist bargaining for them. His brother always exacted a high price. Once his brother bought a new outfielder’s glove and sold him the old one for three dollars. The first time he took it out a boy offered him five dollars for it; he wanted to keep the glove but took the money so he could brag to his brother about the sharp deal he had made. By the time he and his wife knew one another well he couldn’t win a point from her. If she was losing an argument she would become silent and let him talk on without her resistance or agreement. Sometimes she would withdraw from him for no reason. “What did I do?” he would say. “If you don’t know I can’t help you,” she would answer. Often with his wife he felt the same angry breathlessness he had felt as a child talking with his brother and father. After writing a few short stories he realized he wanted to write in order to make one-time statements; if people disagreed with him they could address themselves to the statements: he would not have to repeat himself. Later he wondered if this motive limited his output. After years of trying to please his boss, the boss, as retirement approached, backed another man to take over. His anger woke him at night; he talked compulsively against the boss to strangers and later learned that at social gatherings people had put him on by mentioning the boss’s name and then stepping back to see him perform. The young woman he fell in love with had fits of anger. While still married she visited him one Christmas week to make cookies with him and suddenly shouted, “Don’t watch me, do it yourself!” He called her Cookie Monster for a few days thereafter, which helped him get over the incident. One morning when they were living together he pointed to her nipples, which showed through her dress with unusual prominence; she struck him on the face, and he felt like a naughty child. She is impelled to denigrate him in front of her friends, telling him that he is drunk and should go to bed, reciting demeaning anecdotes about him, correcting details in his stories. He tries being quiet, also expansive and entertaining; but at some time in the evening she always attacks him, after which she seems released. He no longer gets angry on these occasions, instead watches the reactions of guests, sometimes exchanging a quick smile with one of them. His mother shouts at her ceiling, “Shut up, up there!”, then explains that a child in the apartment above follows her from room to room to torment her. When he places phone calls for her, if the party doesn’t answer and he dials again she shouts, “That’s enough. We’ll stop that right now.” He remembers her as a placid person and wonders what these outbursts mean: are they repressed anger from her past; and if he lives long enough will contained feelings come from him like this? When his mother dies he will be less upset than his brother, who will lose his temper with him and the funeral director over details of the funeral. He will recall how upset he was at his father’s death, publicly pulling away from his wife when she tried to take his arm in a comforting gesture. He will realize that it is easier to lose the parent that favored one than the parent that didn’t.