Consumer Reports and other magazines. Even stopped people at shopping centers who were getting in or out of their vans and asked them what they thought of this particular model. “How is it on gas? Is the middle row as easy as they say to take out?” “This is what I’ve come up with,” she said to him. “The Plymouth Voyager seems to be the one we should buy. It’s been making them the longest, handles like a smaller vehicle, and is the most fuel-efficient and trouble-free. And I know the dealership in the area that offers the lowest price and best warranty. If you’d like, we can buy one this weekend. Any particular color? Though I’ve been warned, for reasons not entirely clear to me — something to do with day and night and other drivers’ visibility — to stay away from the very dark and very light.” “You choose,” he said. “I’ll go along with anything you say.” “God, you’re being so agreeable about it, and have been from the start,” and he said “Well, while I sat on my fat ass, you did all the research and legwork, so it’s the least I can be. Maybe it’s the new me, though don’t bet on it.” The first house they bought. She said “I think the ideal place for us to live is Mount Washington. It has lots of trees and hills and open spaces and is just a fifteen-minute drive to work. It’s considered liberal politically, has almost an even mix of Jew and Gentile, and many educators and arts and crafts people have homes there. But what’s most important, and no doubt this is so because of some of the things I mentioned, it has the best elementary school in the city. The two disadvantages are that the middle and high school that serve that community aren’t very good. If they stay as bad as the test scores and graduation rates and some people I’ve spoken to say they are, then when Rosalind’s about six months away from entering middle school, we’ll put the house on the market and look for one in this very attractive area I’ve got my eye on in Baltimore County, a few miles north of Mount Washington. It’s less populated and more rustic, is close to 83 so takes only five minutes more to get to work, doesn’t have the same comfortable mix of Jew and Gentile and is almost uniformly white, which I don’t like, so it’s not as liberal politically. But the middle and high schools for it are supposed to be as good as any in the state, and it has a more than adequate elementary school for Maureen’s last three years in one and I hear it’s improving every year, so by the time we move there it could be as good as Mount Washington’s.” His teaching. She encouraged him to apply for a college teaching job that had opened up in Baltimore. He was interviewed, was offered the job but reluctant to give up his apartment and move down there without her. She said he had to have a full-time job if he eventually wanted to get married and have children, not that she was proposing to him, and there were very few well-paying creative writing teaching jobs in New York for writers with little recognition and no advanced degrees, no matter how many books and stories they’ve published. “Take the job. You don’t know how lucky you are they made you the offer. It’s a three-year contract, you can always leave in a year or two, but I wouldn’t advise you to unless it’s for a much better position. You don’t want to get a reputation in academia of breaking a contract for nothing else or something less. And I’ve checked the train schedules between Baltimore and New York. They run almost every hour and the fares aren’t that expensive because they’re subsidized by the government, so we can still be together every weekend. If you can arrange to hold only afternoon classes and none on Friday, we’ll have even longer weekends together, and from time to time I’ll drive or train down to you.” “All right, you convinced me, but what am I going to do not seeing you those four other days?” and she said “You’ll get your teaching work done, to free up your weekends with me, and write more.” St. John. She said at dinner — it was soon after his fall semester began—“When’s your spring break?” He said he didn’t know and she looked at the school calendar on the refrigerator and said “Good; March. Let’s spend a week of it on St. John.” “Where’s that?” and she said “The Caribbean; the Virgin Islands. I read a travel article in the Times about it. Rosalind will be a year and a half then, old enough to fly. For not too much money we can stay in a cabin at a campground on Cinnamon Bay. I’ll show you; the photos of it are gorgeous. But you have to promise you’ll try snorkeling. It’s one of my main reasons to go there; for me to get back to it and for you to start doing it, and I know you’ll love it.” “Sounds okay to me. Late winter in paradise? Seeing a place I’ve never been and learning something new? What could be better?” She arranged everything: flights, ferries, living arrangements. Morning after they got there she rented snorkeling equipment for herself, wanted to rent for him, but he said “Don’t; it’ll be a waste of money. I know I’ll never be able to breathe underwater through that tube.” “Practice in shallow water,” and he said “No. I’ll swallow water even there and choke.” Last day they were there she said “I’m going to make a threat I know I can’t carry out. We’re not leaving this island till you try to snorkel at least once.” He used her mask and tube, caught on to it quickly, snorkeled for about two hours and didn’t want to come out of the water. “All those little fishies; they really do swim in front and alongside of you. What a dope I was not to do it the first day.” “Oh, I’m so pleased you like it. To be honest with you, your sitting on the beach with Rosalind for five days and taking her back to the cabin for naps, gave me more time to snorkel and that made the vacation for me. But you should listen to me more. Sometimes I know better than you what will make you happy.” “From now on,” he said. “Just watch me.” The QE2. “Are you kidding? Who’s got that kind of money?” and she said “You’re not listening. I said we’d only go if we get standby. That’s half the regular fair and practically nothing for Rosalind but the crib rental and all-day nursery. All day, Martin. Think of the time we’d have to loll and laze around and even get some work in. We’ll know a few weeks before the Queen sails if we got it. They told me that at that time of the sailing season, east to west standby is almost a sure thing. By chance we don’t get it, we’ll fly British Airways, which I’ll also make reservations for. They’re run by the same company, so the deal is we won’t lose our deposit for whichever one we don’t use.” Or maybe she said there was some agreement between the two companies and they only had to pay for their plane tickets once they learned they didn’t get on the QE2. He knows she arranged it some way where it wouldn’t cost them any extra money. Anyway, they got it and loved the trip home. Great weather, smooth crossing, they both got work done — she, the galleys of a book she translated; he, the first and second drafts of a short story he wrote by hand in one of the ship’s quieter lounges and which turned into an enormous novel that took four years to write — lots of reading of books from the ship’s library, movies, wine was cheap, good food, and once they worked things out after a furious argument they came on board with—“You made me cry,” she said, “and hate you”; “Funny,” he said, “but I could never say that about you, but I know why you could to me”—more daytime lovemaking than usual. And every morning she was delighted and amused that they got an hour added to the day. Converting the cellar of their second house to a playroom. “You’re planning to break through the walls to make windows? Cover the dirt floor with cement and linoleum? You’re talking big money for something that isn’t necessary. Leave it as it is, just for storage. Each kid already has her own bedroom. What more do they need?” “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it all,” she said. “Contractor; builders. You won’t have to do anything but make sure we’ve enough money in the checking account to cover it. I’m also having the room heated and soundproofed. That way, if the kids want to have sleepovers for ten friends or play loud music downstairs, they can.” “Wouldn’t it be cheaper and simpler for us to limit their sleepovers to three to four girls in their bedrooms, and tell them that as a common courtesy, and also for them a lesson in civility, to keep the music volume relatively low?” and she said “No.” Rosalind’s baby photos. Gwen wanted a professional photographer to take them when Rosalind was around six months old. Six months seems right. She has little hair in the photos and by the time of her first birthday party, which Gwen and he took pictures of, she had hair halfway down her neck. A photography studio must have got their name and address from the hospital Rosalind was born in and mailed them the ad. “We get two large prints of the photo we like best, and six wallet-sized ones, all for forty dollars, and get to keep the contact sheet for ten dollars more. My folks would love to have one of the large prints and we’ll frame the other.” “I hate those professionally done photographs,” he said. “They always look fake, too perfect, with their phony backdrops and lighting, and the babies never look real. And you know they’ll give you the big sales pitch to buy more, and that you won’t be able to fight them off,” and she said “I promise I’ll hold the line to the least expensive package we sign up for. I’m not a patsy, you know. And it’ll be fun watching her interact with the camera.” It