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It was wasteful too to fret so over'the children. (Who were no longer children anyhow-not even Daisy.) Consider, for instance, the cigarette papers that Maggie had found last spring on Daisy's bureau. She had picked them up while she was dusting and come running to Ira. "What'll we do? What are we going to do?" she had wailed. "Our daughter's smoking marijuana; this is one of the telltale clues they mention in that pamphlet that the school gives out." She'd got Ira all involved and distressed; that happened more often than he liked to admit. Together they had sat up far into the night, discussing ways of dealing with the problem. "Where did we go wrong?" Maggie cried, and Ira hugged her and said, "There now, dear heart. I promise you we'll see this thing through." All for nothing yet again, it turned out. Turned out the cigarette papers were for Daisy's flute. You slid them under the keys whenever they started sticking, Daisy explained offhandedly. She hadn't even bothered to take umbrage.

Ira had felt ridiculous. He'd felt he had spent something scarce and real-hard currency.

Then he thought of how a thief had once stolen Maggie's pocketbook, marched right into the kitchen where she was shelving groceries and stolen it off the counter as bold-faced as you please; and she took after him. She could have been killed! (The efficient, the streamlined thing to do was to shrug and decide she was better off without that pocketbook-had never cared for it anyhow, and surely could spare the few limp dollars in the billfold.) It was February and the sidewalks were sheets of glare ice, so running was impossible. Ira, returning from work, had been astonished to see a young boy shuffling toward him at a snail's pace with Maggie's red pocket-book dangling from his shoulder, and behind him Maggie herself came jogging along inch by inch with her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated on her footing. The two of them had resembled those mimes who can portray a speedy stride while making no progress at all. In fact, it had looked sort of comical, Ira reflected now. His lips twitched. He smiled.

"What," Maggie ordered.

"You ^vere crazy to go after that pocketbook thief," he told her.

"Honestly, Ira. How does your mind work?" Exactly the question he might have asked her.

"Anyhow, I did get it back," she said.

"Only by chance. What if he'd been armed? Or a little bigger? What if he hadn't panicked when he saw me?" "You know, come to think of it, I believe I dreamed about that boy just a couple of nights ago," Maggie said. "He was sitting in this kitchen that was kind of our kitchen and kind of not our kitchen, if you know what I mean. . . ." Ira wished she wouldn't keep telling her dreams. It made him feel fidgety and restless.

Maybe if he hadn't gotten married. Or at least had not had children. But that was too great a price to pay; even in his darkest moods he realized that. Well, if he had put his sister Dome in an institution, then-something state-run that wouldn't cost too much. And told his father, "I will no longer provide your support. Weak heart or not, take over this goddamn shop of yours and let me get on with my original plan if I can cast my mind back far enough to remember what it was." And made his other sister venture into the world to find employment. "You think we're not all scared?" he would ask her. "But we go out anyway and earn our keep, and so will you." But she would die of terror.

He used to lie in bed at night when he was a little boy and pretend he was seeing patients. His drawn-up knees were his desk and he'd look across his desk and ask, kindly, "What seems to be the trouble, Mrs. Brown?" At one point he had figured he might be an orthopedist, because bonesetting was so immediate. Like furniture repair, he had thought. He had imagined that the bone would make a clicking sound as it returned to its rightful place, and the patient's pain would vanish utterly in that very instant.

"Hoosegow," Maggie said.

"Pardon?" She scooped up her belongings and poured