The 158-Pound Marriage

In the child's dream there were howling dogs and a pig squealing under a car whose wheels 'had folded under itself,' she said, 'like the wheels on an airplane'. The pig was crushed, but not dead; the dogs were howling because the pig's squeals hurt their ears. Dorabella ran around and around the car, but there was nothing she could do for the pig. 'And then it was me who was under the car,' the child said, her voice trembling with the injustice of it. 'And it was my sound that I heard and was making the dogs howl.' She was punching my rump like dough, her little fists rolling her knuckles over me.

'Poor Fiordiligi,' Edith said.

'It's Dorabella, Mommy!' the child cried.

Edith turned on the light, 'Oh, Dorabella,' she said. 'What a terrible dream.'

'That's not Daddy's shirt, is it?' Dorabella asked, and I knew whose clothes she was staring at.

'Well, Daddy traded something for it,' Edith said. She was very quick; there wasn't a pause.

'What did he trade?' Dorabella asked, and I remember the silence.

Fiordiligi and Dorabella were the Winters' children, of course. My own children I hardly remember at all, and I used to know them quite well.

'What did he trade?' Dorabella asked again. I forget the children, but I remember that silence.

6

Who's on Top? Where's the Bottom?

ONCE, WHEN ALL of us were together, I looked at my boys and announced, 'Look at that Jack' (my older one, lean and lithe, with a face even prettier than Edith's). 'Look at his back; see the graceful bend to it? That isn't what they call "sway-backed", is it? He looks like a Renaissance print I once saw of an archer; he was bent like his bow. Jack is the delicate one. He likes music. I hope he'll be a painter.'

And Severin answered, 'If he ever develops any strength in his arms, he might be a 142-pounder.' Severin liked Bart, my younger boy. He was brick-shaped, and all he inherited from Utch was her breadth of cheek and her shortness. In fact, if we had known the Winters back then, I might have suspected Severin of engendering Bart because the boy's body was nearer to Severin's than to mine. And as to the source of Bart's genes which gave him a turtle's pain threshold, I could only guess. 'From Utch, of course,' said Severin. 'She had a pain threshold like a planarian's.' How did he know? What did he mean?

Jack was the older but the last one in the water; he was bigger, but in close combat Bart would sink his teeth into him and hold on. When Bart ran at a door, he ran at it as if the door would open for him. I winced to see the child move; a potential collision seemed to precede him like a prow. Neat, graceful Jack was curious, careful and shy. He woke up slowly. He said to me, 'Sometimes are you ever sad and feel like crying even when nothing bad has happened to you?' Yes, of course! He was my son; I knew him well. He could spend an hour brushing his teeth because of the mirror - looking at himself as if it would help him figure out a way to be.

But Bart was born a bludgeon, with the ankles and wrists and insensitive cheerfulness of the good peasants in the orchards of Eichbuchl. He woke up breathing deeply, bleating for his breakfast.

When we took the children to the city, Jack looked up, scanned rooftops, hunted for gargoyles, girls waving out windows, spirits in the sky. Bart scuffed along, looked in the gutters for what got dropped there.

Severin's girls dressed up for Jack, wrote him bawdy notes and said, 'Sit down, Jack, and let's play "What Can We Get You?"' They wrestled with Bart, playing with him as they would with a pet. Dorabella told Edith that she was going to marry Jack; Fiordiligi laughed and said, 'Then I'll be his mistress!'

'His mistress?' Edith said. 'You don't know what a mistress is.'

'Yes, I do,' said Fiordiligi. 'You get the presents.'

Severin said, 'That Bart, he's my boy. He's going to be a great cook; he'll eat anything.'

'He's built like a bookend,' I said, 'but not like a writer.'

'He's going to be at least a 177-pounder,' said Severin. 'Would you look at the chest on that kid!'

'He's got the sweetest temper,' Utch said. Bart was a boy only a mother and a wrestler could love.

'That Jack,' said Edith. 'He's going to kill more women than the plague.' I hoped he would be a good son and show some of them to me. His eyelashes were longer than Utch's and Edith's together.

'Why did you give your children such American names?' Edith asked Utch.

'They're simpler,' said Utch, 'and the boys like them. What kid in America wants a name like Helmut or Florian?'

'I love Italian names,' said Edith. 'After I called my first one Fiordiligi I had to call the second one Dorabella.'

'It was going to be Dante if it was a boy,' said Severin. 'But I'm glad they're girls. Boys are such selfish shits.' He was always trying to make the girls read. 'You've got to be smart,' he'd tell them, 'and you've got to be kind. But if you're kind without being smart, other people are going to make you miserable.'

'I love everything Italian,' said Edith.

'You've never been there,' Severin reminded her. And to us, 'Edith is most attracted to things that are unfamiliar to her.'