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have swallowed me, the sky would have crushed me.
    “Let me think about it, Papa. I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Now I’ll show you something else.”
    I followed him back to the road, wondering how I should break the news…For he had to be told about the house in Los Angeles. He should have been told long ago. Yet there had been no deliberate concealment. I had simply forgotten to mention it, no more and no less.
    We walked back to the house and I could feel his joy. He lit a brand-new fresh cigar and led me to the drawing board on the barrel under the fig tree. Here were the plans for the house he proposed to build on those acres.
    They were beautiful plans. A stone house it was, the stones free for gathering from a field not far away. There were three fireplaces, one in the kitchen, one in the livingroom, and one out of doors. It was a long L-shaped ran-cho, a one-story house with a tile roof.
    “Last a thousand years,” he said. “These are twelve-inch walls, full of steel tie rods.”
    “Fine, Papa.”
    “I’ll build it for nothing. You help me. I got my pension. I don’t want any more.”
    “Yes. Fine.”
    Yes, and yes, and yes. Until he had explained the last stone and beam, until he was very happy, sucking his cigar and drinking wine. Then the afternoon coolness drifted through from the green vineyard seas and he was sated with so much talking. He rolled up the drawings, put out his cigar, laid the butt in the crotch of the fig tree, and stretched out on the lawn swing. A great and wonderful peace shone on his face. No happier man lived on this earth. He closed his eyes and slept. Had he died at that moment, he would have gone straight to paradise.
    One thing about your Mama: nothing you do alarms her. If I had walked into the kitchen and told her that I had just slit Papa’s throat, she would have answered, “That’s too bad—where is he?”
    I found her at the table, shelling peas. It is so easy to talk to your Mama; even the things she doesn’t understand, she makes herself understand. Sitting there, I laid out the whole situation about the house in Los Angeles. No recriminations; she did not sigh, nor cluck her tongue, nor admonish me on what I should have done. She shelled peas and listened quietly as I told her why I had come to SanJuan, and how, under the circumstances, I was afraid to tell Papa I already owned a house.
    “I’ll tell him. Don’t you worry about it.”
    But I didn’t want to be around when she told him. “I’ll take a walk downtown.”
    “Don’t you worry.”
    I rose to leave. She stopped me. Something bothered her.
    “You and Joyce. Do you sleep American style?” She meant, did we sleep separately?
    “Now that she’s pregnant, we sleep American.”
    “What a shame. The baby won’t know you.”
    “We’ll get acquainted after he’s born.”
    “Sleep Italian style. You don’t understand about babies. It’s lonely down in the womb. He’s there, all by himself. He needs his father.”
    I didn’t want to discuss the matter with my mother. “I’ll be back at seven. You tell Papa everything as soon as he wakes up.”
    It was five blocks to downtown. I walked down familiar elm-shaded streets and through empty lots I had traversed since I was fourteen. That was the year we moved to San Juan, refugees from Colorado snow and hard times. I saw so many people I had known in the old days, and they all knew about the baby. My father had been everywhere these past weeks, spreading the news. From front porches they shouted their good wishes, asking of Joyce, for she was a native of San Juan; her parents were buried in the local graveyard. People stopped me on the street, pumped my hand, made schmaltzy jokes, and went away laughing. Fatherhood was a very impressive business in San Juan. I had a rare sense of importance. Down in LosAngeles they worried too, not about the wife and baby, but about your ability to pay hospital bills. Our friends were more shocked than pleased