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his eyes to her” mother. Ah, so. For him, she didn’t count.
    “Jason teaches at the college,” Tobi said. “But we met jogging.”
    “At the reservoir,” Karen said, remembering her “vision.”
    “What?” Tobi looked at her, frowning.
    “You were jogging at the reservoir.”
    “You just met today?” her mother said.
    They were all talking at once. From above them, Jason laughed. “No,” Tobi said, “we didn’t just meet today. Where’d you get that idea?” They’d known each other quite a while, she said. “I’m in one of Jason’s classes.” But they only got to talking as people, not teacher-student, one day when they were both jogging. “Around the rose gardens,” she said. There went Karen’s vision.
    “So I guess it’s, oh,-two months now we’ve been seeing each other.”
    “Really,” her mother said. “Two months?” She didn’t like that. “That’s a long time, Tobi…” Her voice trailed off. Fill in the end of the sentence. … a long time for you to be seeing someone without your family knowing about it.
    “Mmm,” Tobi said, sitting down and peeling an orange.
    “How long have you been teaching, Jason?” her mother asked.
    “Ten years, Sylvia.”
    “Ah. And is that all you’ve ever done?” . She was fishing, wanting to know how old he was. Karen wondered the same thing. He looked nearly as old as her father; his neck was brown and crinkled.
    Jason put a cigarette between his lips—the original Marlboro man. “Mind if I smoke?” Surprise! That light boy voice again.
    Tobi got up, threw the orange peel into the garbage. “Mom’s a smokestack, herself.”
    “Before I taught, Sylvia, I bummed around a bit, worked as a gaudy dancer on the railroads, picked up work here and there, enough to keep going as an artist, enough to keep my family together.”
    “Family?” her mother said.
    “Jason’s staying for dinner,” Tobi said. “Okay?” She leaned against him, a taut stick leaning against a tree, and in her eyes, in her glance upward, there was something that turned their mother’s nose faintly blue at the wings.
    Karen’s father came into the kitchen then, and he and Jason shook hands. “Jason Wade Wilson, sculptor,” Jason said and, without missing a beat, he added, “Remember that name. It’s going to be famous.”
    “Arnie Freed,” her father said, and passed his hand over the bald spot on the back of his head. His mode was modesty.
    Then there was a lull in the conversation, one of those dead spots when nobody knows what to say. In fact, Karen thought, Jason was the only one who looked at ease. He stamped out his cigarette butt in the sink, brought out a rumpled pack, and lit another cigarette.
    “Would you like to see the backyard?” her father said finally.
    “Sounds good to me.” The two of them went out.
    Karen’s mother turned to Tobi. “How old is he?”
    “Thirty-five.” Tobi stuck her chin out.
    Karen did a bit of elementary math. Seventeen years older than Tobi. Ten years younger than her father, only eight years younger than her mother. And if you got right down to it, old enough to be her, Karen’s, father.
    Her mother must have been doing the same math. “He’s too old for you. He could almost be your father! What is he doing with a green, eighteen-year-old girl?”
    “Green!” Tobi’s voice rose. “Thanks, oh thanks. For your information, we’re in love.”
    Her mother’s nose turned blue again, then white. “Tobi—”
    “Age doesn’t matter.” Tobi cut her off. “I don’t care. He doesn’t care. Why do you care?”
    “He’s had other relationships,” her mother said.
    “So?”
    They were talking over each other.
    “What was that about a family?”
    Tobi hesitated, then said defiantly, “He was married before.”
    Her mother stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding a stirring spoon, looking as if she wanted to clobber Tobi with it.
    “And you might as well know, he has two kids.”
    “Wonderful.”
    “A