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talent.” For once, he sounded angry with her, and she didn't like what he was saying.
    “I haven't ‘wasted’ fourteen years, Raoul. I have happy, healthy kids who are that way because I'm around to take them to school every day, and pick themup, and go to their Little League games, and cook them dinner. And if I'd gotten myself killed sometime in those fourteen years, you wouldn't be here to step into my shoes for me.”
    “No, that's a point,” he said, sounding calmer. “But they're old enough now. You could go back to work again, at least on something like this. They're not babies, for chrissake. I'm sure your husband would understand that.” Not after what he'd said the night before. She couldn't even imagine telling him she was going to Korea for a month. It was inconceivable in the context of their marriage.
    “I can't do it, Raoul, and you know it. All you're doing now is making me unhappy.” She sounded wistful as she said it.
    “Good. Then maybe you'll get going again one of these days. I'd be performing a service for the world if that was all I accomplished by calling.”
    “For the world maybe, although you flatter me. I was never that great. But you wouldn't be performing a service for my children.”
    “Lots of mothers work. They'd survive it.”
    “And if I didn't?” She had the example of her own father dying when she was fifteen. And no one could tell her that couldn't happen, particularly with the kind of stories she was known for doing. The one in Korea would have been tame in comparison to the work she'd done before she was married.
    “They'd survive it too,” he said sadly. “I won't send you on the really hot ones. This one in Korea is a little dicey, but it's not like sending you to Bosnia or something.”
    “I still can't do it, Raoul. I'm sorry.”
    “I know. I was crazy to call you, but I had to try. I'll find someone else. Don't worry about it.” He sounded discouraged.
    “Don't forget me completely,” she said sadly, feeling something she hadn't in years, over the assignment she had just turned down. She really wished she could do the story in Korea, and felt deprived that she had to turn it down. Not resentful, just bitterly disappointed. This was the kind of sacrifice she had been talking to Doug about the night before, and that he had discounted so completely. As though what she had done with her camera for all those years, and giving it up for him and the kids, meant nothing.
    “I will forget about you one of these days if you don't do something important again soon. You can't take pictures of Santa Claus forever.”
    “I might have to. Get me something closer to home, like the piece in Harlem.”
    “Stuff like that doesn't come around very often, and you know it. They let the staffers do it. They just wanted something more important out of that piece, and you got lucky.” And then, with a sigh, “I'll see what I can come up with. Just tell your kids to grow up a little faster.”
    And what about Doug? How fast was he going to “grow up,” if ever? From the sound of it the night before, he didn't really understand that her career had been important to her. “Thanks for thinking of me anyway. I hope you get someone terrific to do it.” She was worried now about the Korean babies.
    “I just got turned down by someone terrific. I'll call you again one of these days. And you owe me on the next one.”
    “Then make sure it doesn't require my presence at the top of a tree in Bali.”
    “I'll see what I can do, India. Take care of yourself.”
    “Thanks. You too,” and then as an afterthought, “I just remembered, I'll be in Cape Cod all summer. July and August. I think you have that number.”
    “I do. If you get any great sailboat pictures, call me. We'll sell them to Hallmark.” She had actually done that a couple of times, when the kids were really small. She'd been happy with it, and Raoul had been furious. As far as he was concerned, she was a serious