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  Later that evening, the television off, Paul sits on the couch with Maria. Her head rests against his chest. His arm hangs over her shoulder. They have sat like this since the room began to darken. Neither has wanted to disturb the other, to get up and turn on a light. The open window next to the sofa flutters the thin curtains that hang over it. From the even way he is breathing, Maria thinks Paul is asleep.

  “Are you sleeping?” she whispers.

  Paul’s breathing stops, then starts again. “No.”

  “You never told me why you came home early today.”

  He lets out a long breath. “My three o’clock didn’t read the assignment, so I told them to go to the registrar and withdraw from school.”

  “Why?” Maria asks.

  “Sometimes the best way to get people’s attention is to exaggerate.”

  Maria thinks about exaggeration. Then she swallows. “I can’t tell you how much I want to get high.”

  “Let me give you a backrub.”

  “I don’t want a backrub.”

  “Have a glass of wine.”

  “I’m sick of wine.”

  “I’m sorry.” Paul doesn’t know what else to say.

  Her hand clutches his arm. The strength surprises him. “Are you sure having the baby is the right thing?”

  “Yes,” Paul says, too quickly. He isn’t sure.

  “I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, you know.”

  “I know.” His hand pats her hand. “It’s the right thing, Maria.” The hand squeezes her wrist. “Everything will be O.K.”

  She turns her head, trying in the darkness to look at him, but she can’t see any of the features of his face. She can only hear his even, reassuring voice as he begins to explain that even though an event seems likely it is never guaranteed to happen, that it’s useless to walk through life feeling depressed and powerless, that the birth of a baby is an affirmation, an act of great courage, faith, and hope. For all we know, Paul continues, when things look their very bleakest we’ll be visited by spaceships from a distant galaxy, and the alien life forms will help us solve all our problems. Maria scoffs at the idea, though it’s tempting to believe. Paul softly laughs and says it comes from a movie, a classic, The Night of the Living Dead. Maria doesn’t laugh at the joke. No, Paul says, it was The Day the Earth Stood Still, the best science-fiction movie ever made. Maria says she wishes the earth would stand still. It can’t, Paul says, suddenly serious. He tries to think of something else to say.

  “Sometimes when I come down here in the morning I still expect to see Bingo,” Maria says. Paul’s eyes dart in the darkness, looking for the dog. Maria sits up and faces him. She places her hands in his. “Why did she have to die?”

  Paul feels on safer ground now. He knows the answer to the question. “Free enterprise. We were ripped off. We were suckered. We live in a country where salesmen can dress up like doctors and lovable little puppy dogs can grow up allergic to life.”

  “And we’re not?” Maria says.

  Paul reaches for all the hopefulness he has to offer. “No,” he says. “Maria, we’re the luckiest people in the world. Look at us. We’re both alive and healthy. Our baby’s on its way. We have a house, work, food. Ninety-five percent of the world would give their arms and legs to have half of what we have.” Paul’s voice is high, speedy. “And maybe our baby will be the one who helps solve the world’s problems. Maybe not. But if the child ever asks me why we agreed for it to be born—” He hesitates. His eyes search the darkness for the answer. “I’ll say I thought having a chance to live was better than no chance, even if we live to see the world destroyed.”

  Maria laughs, terrified. “I can just see it. The bombs will be falling down around our heads and you’ll be explaining all of that to our baby.”

  “I’ll be digging a hole, Maria. I’ll wear the colander on my head. You and the baby bring the cans of beans. We’ll do what we can to survive.”

  “I’ll just stand in the backyard and hold my baby and weep.”

  “No, you won’t.” Paul shakes her shoulders. “We’ll struggle. We’re not cynics. We’ll march in the streets. We’ll influence opinion. We’ll do what we must to survive.” He takes her in his arms and holds her tightly.

  Maria feels his arms around her and relaxes, thinking about her coming baby. Choose us, she prays, because we’re not cynics. Choose us because Paul is so stubborn. Because I’ll hold you to my breast until I die. The idea of holding her child gives her comfort, and Maria imagines that at this moment a very special and wise and trusting soul chooses the body floating in the warm waters of her womb. She believes she can feel the soul as it enters her body. Yes. The child within her stirs. Tears of wonder fall from her eyes.

  Paul feels Maria’s tears and thinks she is despairing. “Please,” he says. “Let’s not think anymore. Maria, please.”

  She cries freely now, rejoicing.

  Paul goes on thinking. He gives full play to his doubts. Maybe this is the very worst moment to be alive, especially in America, the eye of the dragon, belly of the beast. Maybe this is the absolutely worst moment to have the audacity to give birth to an innocent. Maria’s shoulders shake with what Paul thinks is great sadness.

  He stares past her at the television squatting smugly in the corner of the room. Before the end comes, he thinks, everyone will see it, in living color, splashed across a hundred million TV screens. The multicolored maps, areas of greatest risk, perhaps even the warheads’ trajectories. Certainly the assurance that the war is winnable. Certainly the glib warnings to stay calm. Maria is filled with joy. I’ll make the colors so intense they’ll blind me, he thinks. I’ll turn up the volume until I grow deaf. He squeezes Maria so fiercely that she makes a squeak. Then I’ll open all the windows, and I’ll throw open the front door, and I’ll turn on the water in the bathroom and the kitchen, and I’ll flick on every light, turn on the stereo, the oven, the furnace, the air conditioner— Then I’ll wait in the backyard with Maria, with our baby. Paul’s nightmare stops. His hand reaches down and touches the swelling roundness of Maria’s belly. She is soft and warm, happy, in his arms. He feels the darkest despair he has ever known.

  The curtains over the open window next to them billow suddenly like an enormous cloud.

  My Father’s Laugh

  My name is Thaddeus Alexander Cooper III, but you can call me Thaddeus. I’m sitting here in Marsha’s bedroom looking out the window and writing this, and I’m wondering when it’s going to rain. I know that it will rain. That and the fact that I’m writing this to save my goddamn life are the only two things I’m certain of. So try to hear me out. And realize, as well, that I plan to milk this. For all that I can get. You’ve been warned. As my father, may his dear dead soul rest forever in peace, always used to say, “Move away from the window, lady, can’t you see I’m driving?” I ask that you give me room.

  My mother once told me, “Thaddeus, someday you’re going to meet someone who’s just a little bit bigger than you are and he’s going to kick in your ass.” She’d wave her big spoon at me and wipe her hands on her apron when she’d say that. Now that I think, she’s told me that countless times.

  But neither my father nor my mother, nor my Uncle Karl, nor Marsha, for that matter, has anything to do with this story. This story will be about the rain. You should know that my father is no longer with us; he pulled the cord and got off this bus blocks ago. That my mother is a maker of soup. I dislike soup. That my uncle is my uncle. That Marsha is a writer. These are the facts.

  I’ll tell you this: this is lie. You be my judge. I’m writing this to get into Marsha’s underpants. That’s the truth, my reader.

  Marsha is the kind of girl who likes—how shall I put it? Marsha likes the kind of boy who does things with seriousness, with direction, as she puts it, adding that the world already has more than its share of buffoons like me. Obviously, I disagree. Thaddeus Alexander Cooper III is no buffoon, and if you’d like to compare philosophies, Horatio
, I’ll tell you now that mine is the one that best enables me to survive. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? I pound these drab green dormitory walls and argue; I make suggestive comments and pray that Marsha will understand. I quote to her the wisdom of my father: “If you wanted to be let off in front of your house, my pretty, why the hell didn’t you take a taxi?” I hope you, reader, can catch my drift. “I’m not here delivering pizzas,” I tell her. “Marsha, you’ll get only what I have to give.”

  Which isn’t pizza, seriousness, or direction, though I do badly want to direct something between her legs. I know what I know; I have what I need. I am the son of my father, the son of a bus driver, the son of fixed routes and scheduled stops. I have what I need.

  With the exception of the story that will save me. That my dead father failed to leave me, and I’ve looked for it in soup bowls and not found it. My uncle offers me only the back of his hand. And Marsha? Marsha claims to be saving herself.

  “For what?” I ask.

  She shrugs. Her nipples brush against her blouse as she does this.

  “The world could end tomorrow,” I tell her.

  She shakes her silly head.

  And I shake mine. These students, you realize, haven’t yet learned how to live. Sometimes they make me feel like a wolf in their midst. I’m not a student, you see. I attend no classes. I pay no tuition. I don’t have an I.D.

  Though you’ve seen me around. I’m the guy who holds up the line trying to explain how I left my I.D. in my other pants. I’m the guy who sits in the frantic cafeteria during finals week sipping water and doing double acrostics. I’m the guy leaning against the tree on the first day of spring. I smile. I nod. I wink as you walk by.

  You too shake your head.

  But Marsha didn’t the night I met her, though I can’t be entirely certain since it happened over the phone. I have a friend named Stuart who has a friend named Jo who was Marsha’s roommate until very recently, and I first heard from them that Marsha was a wonderful and beautiful girl.

  “Introduce me,” I said.

  They said they would but didn’t. I realized they were a dead-end street. So I put my proverbial noodle in the sauce pan and waited one fine evening for Jo to leave the dormitory. Then I sauntered to the corner pay phone.

  “Hello,” I said, “is Jo there?”

  Marsha said no and asked if there was a message. I liked her voice and carefully explained that I had an exam the following day and was calling to see if Jo could take me to the dormitory library. Admission required a resident I.D. Marsha repeated that Jo was out. I thanked her for the information. Then Marsha sighed and offered to take me to the library herself.

  “No,” I said. “That would be too much to ask of a stranger.”

  “Well, it isn’t exactly like we’re strangers,” Marsha said. “We’re both friends of Jo. Do you have a name? My name is Marsha.”

  “My name is Thaddeus Alexander Cooper III, but you can call me Thaddeus.”

  “Hello, Thaddeus.”

  “Hello, Marsha.”

  “I can meet you down in the lobby in ten minutes if you’d like.”

  I said sure, then checked the coin return. At the dormitory I waited in the lounge. When a wonderful and beautiful girl appeared, looking about through a pair of thick-lensed glasses, I approached her and took her hand. She said, “Thaddeus?”

  “In the flesh,” I said. I flashed her my best smile.

  We walked upstairs. I watched her shapely legs take the steps two at a time. Outside the library she turned suddenly and said, “Thaddeus, where are your books?” I struck my forehead. “Where is my mind?” She laughed, and as I took her arm I suggested we go to the snack bar instead for some coffee.

  There Marsha told me she wanted to be a writer and that she would like her writing to change the world and make it a better place in which to have children. I told her I was a disgruntled economics major. I closely watched her face. I said economics was very mercenary. Then I hung my head and lowered my voice and confessed to be looking for something meaningful to do with my life. I think that was the clincher, the word “meaningful.” After I said it, Marsha sipped her tea with lemon and beamed.

  My reader, I am well aware that you sit somewhere wondering what will happen to Thaddeus when Marsha discovers what kind of fellow he really is. He is a rogue, you think. A manipulator, a liar, perhaps even a jerk. There he sits writing in her dormitory bedroom; he has designs on her hymen; he openly admits his deceit. Like my mother and my uncle you frown upon me, but understand my hand. Marsha knows that I’m not an economics major nor a student nor entirely honest, but since I have told her these things myself she has come to respect me. Reread that. Marsha respects, even admires, my honesty about my dishonesty. She says that is a start. To her I am a challenge. These lies are the basis of our relationship.

  You’re sitting here before me very quietly. Your eyes are open, so you must not be asleep. Do you have any questions? Am I making everything clear? I invite any and all questions. Just raise your hand and shout out.

  A dark woman in the back row asks what I look like.

  A fine question, miss. As you can see, I’m thin and youthful, fond of wearing black, and also extremely handsome, in a sensitive, tubercular, swashbuckling sort of way. Yes, the group kneeling in the aisle.

  I beg your pardon.

  No, Sisters, this isn’t a lecture on Hamlet.

  Who sold them tickets?

  A voluptuous young thing in a bikini asks what I do in my spare time.

  Miss, allow me a moment to think. I do so much, you realize. I ski and ride horses and scuba dive; I play rugby, baccarat, jai alai, mah-jongg, and ice hockey. I’m an avid reader of the classics, and I keep a macaw and several salt-water turtles in my home. I’m a lifetime subscriber to National Geographic, and I shoot big game whenever and wherever I can.

  The redhead tonguing the banana.

  “Thaddeus, why do you write?”

  My pet, I’ll quote for you my father. He said, “If you wanted a seat by the window, halfback, how come you’re standing here next to me in the aisle?” By this he meant that if you want something done you should do it yourself. My dear, and all of you millions of readers and listeners out there, I feel that in these times of economic strife and spiritual uneasiness there is a crying need for literature which will help lead us out of the wilderness and onto the paths that will make this world a decent place in which to have children. So I’m merely trying to do my bit, to carry my share of the load, and I hope, yes I sincerely do hope, that if each and every one of you who hears my voice could do just one nice thing today, then this old world will soon be a great place in which to have children.

  I trust you now recognize the extent of my integrity. Marsha, as you know, already has.

  “We’ve got to communicate,” I told her one evening.

  She asked me what I meant.

  “Well, Marsha,” I began, “we mean so much to me.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But we’ve been living a lie, Marsha,” I blurted.

  Then I sat her down and told her everything: how I am not a student, how I do not have a lakeside apartment but really live with my mother in the back of the tiny restaurant, how I do not have a job programming computers for the Coast Guard, how I have had to put up with the back of my uncle’s hand after my father died, how I am not a connoisseur of gourmet foods but have eaten my mother’s soup for more than half my life and still intensely dislike it. I hid my face as I spoke these words. I wrung my hands. I tried to gnash my teeth. Then I said: “Marsha, after all of this, surely you cannot like me anymore.”

  She began crying. I moved slowly toward her, comforting her, taking off her Coke-bottle glasses, brushing my hands against her breasts.

  “Thaddeus,” she said, “you can’t really mean that.”

  “Oh,” I said, “but I do.”

  “But you’re wrong,” she said, smiling. “I still like you. In fact, I li
ke you even more now that you’ve told me the truth.”

  “You cannot be serious,” I said.

  “Thaddeus, I am. Don’t you realize that it took far greater courage for you to have told me these things, and that you must be even more of a good and meaningful person to have been able to say them?”

  “Don’t compliment me,” I said sternly. “You deserve better than me.”

  “Oh no, Thaddeus. No, no.”

  I had her blouse off and was working on the zipper of her jeans when Jo had to come in with Stuart, which was fine with me. Let’s pretend we’re not here, Marsha, I whispered, but she quickly dressed and led me into the front room, saying hey everybody, let’s have a party, and I had an awful time.

  For weeks after that she pleaded with me to take her to my mother’s tiny restaurant. I finally consented, but I insisted we go in disguise. I told her it was better to test the waters before leaping. Marsha agreed that my idea had good intentions, but outside the restaurant she tore off my rubber eyeglasses with attached false nose and furry mustache and pushed me inside the door. As I picked myself up from the restaurant floor I shrugged and called out, “Guess who I brought home for soup, darling Mother?”

  Marsha liked my mother very much. She told me later that she could really empathize with the trauma of being a blue-collar woman living without the support of her husband and having no one, really, to lean on. I told her my mother leans on my uncle. I told her my uncle leans heavily on me. I told her the colors of collars have little to do with anything, that what is important is the bulge in the back pocket. I quoted to her the wisdom of my father: “Sorry, sweetheart, I can’t change anything over a five.”

  My mother fed Marsha more than soup. She ladled out the assessment that her son was a bum; then she peppered Marsha’s impressionable young mind with the idea that she could reform me. It was a challenge of sorts. Marsha chewed on it slowly, then swallowed and smiled, the stupid zeal of newfound direction shining from her eyes upon me like twin headlights.