What?” Rosanne wanted to know, looking at one and then the other.
“I knew it!” Sam cried. “Harriet, I told you she’s going to write a book about us. Remember?”
“I’m not writin’ a book,” Rosanne declared, stamping her foot. “But let me tell ya, if I was”—she poked Sam in the shoulder— “I wouldn’t waste it on the likes of you. I got a lot more interestin’ things to write about than you two spoonies.”
“Hear that, Harriet?” Sam said. “She says we’re too boring.”
“Then thank God for boring,” Harriet said to the skies above. She looked back at Rosanne, smiling. “Howard is a very good editor.”
“I thought so,” Rosanne said, starting to clear the dishes. “He’s gonna read a friend of mine’s book.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“Sam,” Harriet said, sipping her coffee, “I’m supposed to have a meeting this morning with Harrison.”
He nodded, but then, after hesitating a moment, said, “I wanted to talk some more about that job offer.”
“Aw, no,” Rosanne said, balancing the pile of dirty dishes, “you’re not gonna leave, are ya?”
Harriet reached out to touch Rosanne’s arm. “I’m only thinking about it, Rosanne, so please don’t mention it to Howard.”
“Naw, I won’t,” Rosanne promised, going out to the kitchen. “He’s down in the dumps enough as it is.”
“We all are,” Harriet sighed. “The place is a battlefield.”
Sam was sitting there, stirring his coffee. “How long do you have before you have to give them a decision?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A couple of weeks, I guess.” She looked at him. “Why?”
“Well,” Sam said, slowly putting his spoon down on the saucer, “I wish you could put it off for a little while.”
“Why?” she said again, clearly puzzled.
“Well, with summer coming—I don’t know,” he mumbled, shaking his head.
Harriet was frowning. “I don’t understand. On Sunday you were all for it. As I recall, your exact words were, ‘It’s time one of us took a risk—go for it.’”
He sighed, sitting back in his chair. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m not so sure you want to leave—”
“What are you talking about, Sam? Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said to you for the last year? It’s—”
Seven-year-old Samantha chose that moment to come in and announce a crisis concerning a missing blue sock.
“I’ll help you, honey,” Harriet said, rising from her chair. “Sam,” she added on her way by him, “I want to talk about this some more tonight.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Sam mumbled.
Harriet stopped in her tracks and turned around. Finally, her husband looked at her. She started to say something, stopped, squinted slightly, and then said, “We do have to talk, Sam. We do.”
“I don’t know where it is!” Samantha wailed from the hall.
“Did you hear me, Sam?”
He nodded, tossing his napkin on the table.
“Honey,” Harriet said, coming back to him.
“I know, I know,” he said, lifting the jacket of his suit from the back of the chair. “We’ll talk tonight.”
As Harriet went in one direction, Althea came in from the other. She avoided her father’s eyes, intending to pass him by, but he caught hold of her arm. “Hey,” he said, pulling her back to face him.
Althea was not going to cooperate.
“Look,” he said, tilting her chin up, “Althea, in a couple of years, you’re going to be able to do whatever you want. You can run for mayor of Southampton if you want to, and I won’t care. But for right now, while you’re in school, while you’re living here with us, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to pacify your old man.”
Althea rolled her eyes.
Very slowly, very deliberately, he said, “I love you, you know. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I don’t see how going to Southampton is going to hurt me,” Althea sulked.
Sam slid his arm around his daughter and made her walk him to the front door. “Look, I think it’s nice that your friends invited you, but I don’t think they understand—”
“Understand what?” Althea persisted, twisting away.
“That I don’t want anyone looking at my daughter like she’s a second-class citizen and, Althea, that’s what you’ll get out there.” He shook his head. “You know, you act as though your mother and I don’t know anything about how this world works. Well, let me tell you something, we didn’t get where we are by hanging out—” He raised his hand and then dropped it, shaking his head again. “Did it ever occur to you that there was a reason why we decided to raise you kids here and not in the suburbs?”
“‘Cause you work here.”
Sam closed his eyes and then, slowly, reopened them.
“You’re so uptight, Daddy,” Althea said, turning away. “You’re so uptight about everything.”
Sam looked at his daughter’s back and sighed. And then he left for work.
Sam regretted almost every decision they had made concerning how to bring up Althea. For one, they never should have enrolled her in the Gregory School. Yes, it was true, at the time Sam had been extremely proud that Althea had been accepted at one of the best private schools in the city. And yes, he had been very proud that he and Harriet had been able to send her there at a cost of nearly five thousand dollars a year.
And, actually, the Gregory School had been fine until Althea hit her teens. Looking back, Sam and Harriet wondered at their naiveté. After putting their daughter in a nearly all-white school, how had they expected Althea to maintain many black friends? The one black boy in her class Althea didn’t even like. (“He’s a jerk!” Althea had exclaimed, when her parents asked why she wasn’t going to the dance with him instead of John Schwartz. “Just because his father plays for the Jets, he thinks he’s God’s gift.”) And when they talked about pulling her out of Gregory, Althea’s counselor had made a very good point: Althea was happy there, and her grades and popularity showed it. And so the Wyatts had tried to compensate by pushing Althea into extracurricular activities—a plan that failed as well. (“I don’t want to go out for the team at the Y—I want to swim for Gregory!”)
Althea graduated from Gregory with a 3.8 average and the Wyatts were relieved when she expressed a desire to
