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skepticism, the idea was loose in her mind,
rattling around like clicking marbles, causing her to look at Nat in some new
way. She watched him snoring in his chair and could not conceive of such a
thing.
    He wasn't exactly Cary Grant himself, with his bald pate,
pale skin and hawklike nose, although she once had thought him very attractive.
    Besides, he was rarely out of her sight. Except for the
twice-a-month meetings of his Veterans' group, he was always home at the
regular time, tired, a bit-forlorn, but home. Of course, there was the
once-a-month union meetings but those, too, were part of the regular routine.
Mildred was crazy she decided. My Nat, a philanderer? It was an absurdity. Yet
the idea persisted.
    Finally, one night in bed, she became mildly aggressive,
moving toward his sleeping body and attempting a furtive caress. It was, of
course, contrary to all the tenets of her upbringing. A woman waits. A woman
submits. Nat merely gulped, shrugged her away and continued his snoring.
    "He rejected me," she told Mildred the next day,
having been up the rest of the night, turning a bleak future over in her mind.
    "I think you got trouble, Sarah," Mildred
responded, the hint of dire foreboding in her tone. She crossed her fat arms
over her ample bosoms, clucked her tongue, and shook her head from side to
side. Nothing more needed to be said. Sarah was an object of pity.
    "So what should I do?" She felt the tears well in
her eyes, and Mildred's bulk swam in the mist.
    "Talk. You got a tongue," Mildred scolded, her
disgust at Sarah's passivity and helplessness unmistakable.
    "And suppose it's true?"
    "You'll cross that bridge when you come to it."
    That night after she had finished the dishes and her son
sat down at the table to do his homework, she went into the living room and
shook Nat awake. Startled, he opened his eyes and looked at her, first with
annoyance.
    She must have seemed compelling, because his attitude
quickly changed to alertness.
    "I want to talk to you, Nat," she said, standing
over him, rubbing her moist hands along the sides of her flowered housedress, stained
with the recent soap suds.
    "Now?"
    "Now."
    "So talk."
    "What's going on?" She felt her courage leaving
her as she assessed what she thought was guilt in his response. Maybe she
should leave it alone, she thought, but the image of Mildred and her remembered
sternness persisted. He didn't answer and turned his eyes to the ceiling in an
attitude of exasperation.
    "I'm pooped. I worked hard all day. Goldstein was a
son-of-a-bitch. The patterns were two inches off. I don't need this
aggravation." It seemed an overreaction at first. After all, no
accusations had, as yet, been made.
    "Something's going on," Sarah probed, wishing
Mildred could see her, feeling her strength gather.
    "There's nothing going on." He had answered too
swiftly, she thought. Then he paused, looked quizzical. "What should be
going on?"
    "You know." She imagined her gaze was
intimidating, the rebuke forbidding but clear.
    "What do I know?"
    "You think I'm stupid, huh Nat? Dumb stupid Sarah.
That's what you think." Her hands were on her hips."Well, I got
eyes." She pointed to her eyes. "I got ears." She pointed to her
ears. "I got instincts." She pointed to her head. Then she drove her
finger into his chest.
    "You think you're fooling me?"
    The finger pressed hard into his chest and he winced.
"Whaddymean fooling?" He was being defensive now, and she suspected
now that he was hiding something. "A woman knows," she said. It was
Mildred's line, almost Mildred's voice.
    He pushed her finger away and stood up, pacing the floor,
moving his fingers through his hair. She recognized the gesture. My God, I
think Mildred was right, she thought, her heart sinking. It had gone too far.
She watched him pacing the floor.
    "All right," he said finally. "So it's
true."
    "Its true?"
    She could not reconcile his admission to her expectations.
She was prepared for a denial. It wasn't possible. She felt