Something Happened

"Selling."

"Selling what?" asks my boy.

"Selling selling."

For an instant, my boy is confused, almost stu

"Do you mean it?" probes my wife, studying me. She is still unsure whether to be pleased or not.

"I think so."

"Will you have to travel more than you have to travel now?"

"No. Probably less."

"Will you make more money?" my daughter asks.

"Yes. Maybe a lot more."

"Will we be rich?"

"No."

"Will we ever be rich?"

"No."

"I don't want you to travel more," my boy complains.

"I'm not going to travel more," I repeat for him, with a trace of a

"Are you going to start talking to yourself again?" my boy ca

"I wasn't talking to myself," I declare firmly.

"Yes, you were," my daughter murmurs.

"Like last year?" my boy persists.

"I was not talking to myself," I repeat loudly. "I was practicing a speech."

"You were practicing it to yourself," my boy points out.

"Will they let you make a speech this year?" my daughter asks. "At the company convention?"

"Oh, yes," I respond with a smile.

"A long speech?"

"Oh, yes, indeed. I imagine they might let me make a speech as long as I want to at the company convention this year."

"Will you be working for Andy Kagle?" my wife asks.

The question brings me to a halt.

"A little something like that," I stammer evasively.

(The fun goes out of my family guessing game, and now I am sorry that I started it.) I laugh nervously. "It isn't definite yet. And it's all a pretty long way off. Maybe I shouldn't even have mentioned it."

"I'm glad you'll be working for Andy Kagle," my wife asserts. "I don't like Green."

"I didn't say I'd be working for Kagle."

"I don't trust Green."

"Don't you listen?"

"Why are you snapping at me?"

"I don't want you to be a salesman," my daughter exclaims with unexpected emotion, almost in tears. "I don't want you to have to go around to other people's fathers and beg them to buy things from you."

"I'm not going to be a salesman," I protest impatiently. "Look, what's everybody talking about it so much for? I haven't got it yet. And I'm not even sure I'm going to take it."

"You don't have to shout at her," my wife says.

"I'm not shouting."

"Yes, you are," she says. "Don't you hear yourself?"

"I'm sorry I shouted."

"You don't have to snap at everybody, either."

"And I'm sorry I snapped."

My wife is right, this time. Without my realizing it, I have moved from optimistic conceit into a bad temper; and without my being conscious of it, my voice has risen with anger, and I have been shouting at them again. We are all silent at the table now. The children sit with their eyes lowered. They seem too fearful even to fidget. I am guilty. My forehead hurts me (with tension. Another headache is threatening). I am numb with shame. I feel so helpless and uncertain. I wish one of them would say something that would give me a clue, that would point the way I must follow toward an easy apology. (I feel lost.) But no one will speak.

I pounce upon an energetic idea. I whirl upon my son without warning, shoot my index finger out at him, and demand:

"Are you mad or glad?"

"Glad," he cries with laughter and delight, when he recognizes I am joking again and no longer irate.

I spin around toward my daughter and shoot my index ringer out at her.

"Are you mad or glad?" I demand with a grin.

"Oh, Daddy," she answers. "Whenever you make one of us unhappy, you always try to get out of it by behaving like a child."

"Oh, shit," I say quietly, stung by her rebuff.

"Must you say that in front of the children?" my wife asks.

"They say it in front of us," I retort. I turn to my daughter. "Say shit."

"Shit," she says.

"Say shit," I say to my son.

He is ready to start crying.

(I want to reach out instinctively to console and reassure him and rumple his soft, sandy hair. I am deeply fond of my boy, although I am not sure anymore how I feel about my daughter.)

"I'm sorry," I tell him quickly. (I have the shameful, shocking apprehension that if I did put my hand out to comfort him, he would cringe reflexively, as though afraid I were going to strike him. I recoil from that thought in pain.) I turn to my daughter. "I'm sorry," I say to her too, earnestly. "You're right, and I'm sorry. I do act like a child." Now it is my eyes that are down. "I think I want another drink," I explain apologetically, as I stand up. "I'm not going to eat anymore. You go on, though. I'll wait in the living room. I'm sorry."

They continue eating after I leave, their voices subdued.

I do such things to them, I know, even when I don't intend to. But I ca

"The sky is falling! They are dropping bombs! People are on fire! The world is over! It's coming to an end!"

And my wife will reply:

"You don't have to raise your voice to me."

What happened to us? Something did. I was a boy once, and she was a girl, and we were both new. Now we are man and woman, and nothing feels new any longer; everything feels old. I think we liked each other once. I think we used to have fun; at least, it seems that way now, although we were always struggling about one thing or another. I was always struggling to get her clothes off, and she was always struggling to keep them on. I remember things like that. I remember the many times I had to pull my wife's dress up and her panties down because she didn't like to make love outdoors, or even indoors if anyone else was even remotely in the vicinity: in the same house or apartment, in the next room (even at hotels! She would be petrified if she heard someone stirring in the adjoining room), in the next apartment, in the next house! I remember the way I'd unbutton her blouse almost anywhere to get at her bra and breasts. (Pale blue brassieres still do drive me crazy more than black; she used to wear them.) She was always afraid we'd be caught. I didn't care (although I might have cared if we'd ever been caught). I was always ripping open her slacks or tearing off her bathing suit or te